> William writes:
>
> At Chicago's vaunted Stppenwolf Theater, the current play,
> The Motherfucker With The Hat, may be a good play but why does it require
> the
> obscene title if not to add shock at the cost of cheapening the context
> and
> lowering the expectations of the audiences?
>
As perhaps the only playwright on our forum, I may alienate Stephen Adly
Guirgis by saying I stand with William on this. Guirgis's title reduces the
potential audience of his play, hurts the actors who want to be seen, and
degrades the theater in the eyes of many sensitive audience-members.
I myself am carelessly vulgar and obscene with a very few close friends, so
my reaction doesn't stem from prudery. Our household is staffed by a number
of religious caregivers, and I figure it would be a distinct unkindness to
"curse" regularly in front of a captive audience of good people who need
this job.
Similarly, I know there are theater-goers who wince at Guirgis's title. As
a theater-goer myself, I shy away from plays about dumb-and-dumber loser-s
lackers. The title told me (when the play was in New York) that these were the
sort of characters I'd be in for if I went to this play. So I didn't. It
also told me Guirgis himself has a mind that lacks the judgment I like to be
exposed to. It's juvenile to assume that allleged "honesty" justifies all.
William goes on to say:
"I think the best art alerts consciousness to an invisible and
supremely confident presence that we can suddenly imagine as ourselves growing
beyond ourselves."
Alas, I recoil from such vague and tipsy-seeming grandiloquence.
