Young Jean Lee v/s Jeremy Harris — Page 3

Somewhat related but if you have CBS All Access, the episode of The Good Fight which covers Slave Play is one you shouldn't miss.

VintageSnarker said: "

I think Griffin Matthews made a very reasonable argument. However, I agree that if Samantha's evidence is limited to the "s**t in your wig" comment, it doesn't make a strong case. Lea clearly insulted and demeaned her multiple times. And she was definitely not shy about making transphobic comments. Samantha's inability to remember another definitively racist microaggression suggests that there wasn't one. Lea Michele was awful to everyone."

I think Mr, Matthews was EXTREMELY well-spoken and reasonable (possibly with the vague shot at BOM aside, but BOM can defend itself if necessary)! And I do not for a moment doubt that his experiences with the unnamed A.D. seemed entirely racist to him and for good reasons.

That being said, his complaint was identical to complaints I've heard from white, male writers at symposia, playwright programs, and in the pages of the Dramatist Guild Quarterly. As I said above, a lot, if not most, of show business is people behaving badly. I recognize this probably isn't something we can sort out right at this minute in history, but it's something we're going to have to sort out eventually if we want to effect change. Mr. Matthews should be one of the spokespeople when that day arrives.

As for Samantha and Lea, I just used the wig remark because it was one I could remember. I don't know either woman and I'm not qualified to evaluate the complaints against Miss Michelle.

Alex Kulak2 said: "Jesus Christ, that story about the playwright is horrible. I don't care if the dude wroteSpringtime for Hitler.YJL ruined a mentally ill man's career and drove him to homelessness over five lines in a play that almost nobody saw. She is absolutely in the wrong here."

Disagree. If you want to be a s***ty provocateur, you should be prepared to accept the consequences. People can get fired for memos or tweets. Staging a professional production with that kind of scene in it is not an innocent mistake.

anniebakerfan said: "I’ve never had a professor imply that I HAD TO take their notes. She was totally unprofessional."

Except this is NOT what happened? She said he was "ignoring" her notes, which does not imply what you are insinuating.

For anyone interested: Link

Updated On: 6/14/20 at 06:25 PM

My biggest question is, assuming everything my sources say is factual (what I depicted was Lee's own recounting of the situation, so who knows any alterations she made / if her perceptions are altogether accurate) and this playwright never worked again, why did Lee feel the need to bring it up again years later at a moment in time that is centered around black and African-American experiences? I would sort of understand if it was some big playwright who was being produced every other season by major Broadway and off-Broadway houses, but to what end does Lee's tweet accomplish anything?

Harris tweeted "I hadn't brought this [Young Jean Lee's teaching at Yale] during these last two weeks bc this isn't about POC infighting or the theatre, it's about BLACK PEOPLE BEING DISPOSABLE IN THE EYES OF THE LAW AND THE EYES OF AMERICA" & "This is not open season for ever [sic] IPOC [Indigenous Person of Color] to jump on the internet and say here's the time I was racism'd. THIS IS ABOUT BLACK PEOPLE." So, he obviously felt Lee's tweet and the fact that she was bringing up the play again was calculated and in bad taste because of the cultural moment.

I haven't had many interactions with Oskar, but every time I have spoken with him, he has always been kind and interested in feedback regarding the work The Public presented. Obviously my positive interactions with him don't counteract anyone else's negative experiences, but Lee has never accused Eustis of anything inappropriate. So I do think it is a little in bad taste to publically air a scene where it appears Eustis is engaging in sexual predation. It would be different if it was a nameless producer, because we obviously understand the intent of the scene, but Lee was not the only person mentioned in the scene and probably should have taken that into account before posting it so publicly.

GavestonPS said:

I think Mr, Matthews was EXTREMELY well-spoken and reasonable (possibly with the vague shot at BOM aside, but BOM can defend itself if necessary)! And I do not for a moment doubt that his experiences with the unnamed A.D. seemed entirely racist to him and for good reasons.

That being said, his complaint was identical to complaints I've heard from white, male writers at symposia, playwright programs, and in the pages of the Dramatist Guild Quarterly. As I said above, a lot, if not most, of show business is people behaving badly. I recognize this probably isn't something we can sort out right at this minute in history, but it's something we're going to have to sort out eventually if we want to effect change. Mr. Matthews should be one of the spokespeople when that day arrives.

Is Mr. Matthews EXTREMELY well-spoken for A BLACK MAN? Is this what you mean? Why does show business have to be people behaving badly? The time to sort this out is NOW! NO MORE WAITING! Are you permitting Mr. Matthews to be one of the spokespeople? Is it up to you to decide who the spokespeople are? What are the requirements to be a spokesperson? Is it to be EXTREMELY well-spoken?

A Director said: "
Is Mr. Matthews EXTREMELY well-spoken for A BLACK MAN? Is this what you mean? Why does show business have to be people behaving badly? The time to sort this out is NOW! NO MORE WAITING! Are you permitting Mr. Matthews to be one of the spokespeople? Is it up to you to decide who the spokespeople are? What are the requirements to be a spokesperson? Is it to be EXTREMELY well-spoken?"

A Director, you have made so many excellent posts in this thread, please try not to go off the rails now.

You know perfectly well that I said nothing about judging Matthews in some special category of "black man". The reason I emphasized his ability to articulate his thoughts was that so much of the culture is currently engaged in what I called "a national primal scream" in another thread. This is even more true of my white friends than POC. Matthews, on the other hand, chose to respond--as you have--in a thoughtful and reasoned manner. That is ALL I meant.

And that was all I meant about "timing", not that black civil rights have to "wait" until some future time convenient to white people, but that the culture as a whole seems incapable of reasoned discussion right at this moment. At the moment, any failure to achieve deserved success by a POC is being ascribed to racism, when the fact is very few white individuals achieve the success in the theater they deserve on the basis of talent and hard work.

But now that I've written those two paragraphs, I realize they might not have been clear to you unless you had just read my posts in this and other threads. So the fault here is probably mine. I apologize for not being clearer.

As for "people behaving badly" in the theater, I've worked in amateur, professional and academic theater since the early 1970s. I've yet to find an exception. (Individual people are often exceptions, of course; I'm talking about institutions, for profit or not.) I suspect it's because more stable people tend to work in more stable fields, but I haven't made a formal study of causation.

If you have managed to create and sustain a Theater of the Nice (as a friend of mine proposed long ago only half-facetiously), good for you!

joevitus said: "As one who knows zilch about the power of Ivy League academia, could YJL actually have gotten someone completelyblackballed in the New York theater world?"

Her power to do so wouldn't be from her teaching at Yale, it'd be from her influence as a well-received and talented playwright in the downtown scene of NYC. She had a lot of clout from the late 2000s through the late 2010s. I obviously don't know the extent of how much she was able to blacklist this unnamed playwright she posted about, but I think someone of her notoriety would be able to influence that behavior.

If your post was deleted, try checking your "in box". I had one post deleted from this thread and one from another. In both cases I received a PM with the post in full and the reason it was deleted. (Had nothing to do with my words, as it turned out, but the fact that I was responding to the post of somebody else and HIS post was deleted.)

So there's a place to check for an explanation...