“You haven’t shown any sign at all of respecting what I have to say or even wanting to hear it. I’m not gonna go stand under that safe.”
This from a gun-loving former Facebook friend in response to my invitation to join an on-stage conversation about how to reduce gun violence in this country. I actually get this sort of response frequently from gun lovers, because whenever they come trolling at my virtual door with whatever twisted logic their addiction has tortured them into accepting, I always invite them to join a future evening of theatre that I am planning, so they can put their counterfeit rationalist money where their soon-to-be-no-longer-virtual mouth is. I think the reason for their reluctance is related to something I touch upon in an explanation I posted here on Just Wrought about why I delete cloaked commenters:
…I know it’s considered the custom of internet country to post anonymously, but there is no tradition of it in the theatre. In the world of live performance, one says one’s words in public and stands by them with [one’s] body. So as a rule I won’t be accepting any more anonymous posts. Stand and deliver, people!
What’s particularly disappointing in the case of my gun loving former Facebook friend is that he’s an experienced— and damned talented— actor. Therefore he lacks the excuse offered by so many other trolls who claim that I have the advantage of them onstage, being show folk myself. (I suspect my friend may also belongs to that vast majority of performers who believe, sadly, that the world owes them their next show, instead of vice-versa.)
In the past few years I have produced or been a part of quite a bit of theatre that deals with the immediate and difficult issues of our times, especially involving gun violence. I’m deeply proud, for instance, that my short play “White Boy Can Take a Punch” was part of last May’s magnificently uplifting offering, Hoodies Up!: The Trayvon Martin Protest Plays. My Living Newspaper production company, NewsWrights United also covered one of Puget Sound’s most egregious gun massacres in our second edition, The New New News, staging the manhunt for Maurice Clemmons after he murdered four cops in cold blood.
Here’s what I learned from the above experiences: theatre is one of the safest places to explore the implications of real life tragedy. As uncomfortable, challenging, frustrating, even humiliating, sometimes boring, often righteously indignant or unrelentingly Leftist as theatre can be, it is also uniquely illuminating, uplifting, life-affirming and much more respectful of our many differences as citizens than nearly any other communications framework I can think of.
So my friend who claims to be so worried about the Acme safe falling on his head also knows that according to the rules of his Looney Tunes metaphor, if such should befall him in a theatre, he would instantly be able to open his eyes, stand up, dust himself off and again join his battle against his wrong-headed road runner adversaries. So he’s bluffing, essentially. My friend doesn’t really want to avoid danger, or even pain. No, he’s too much of a gun-toting tough guy to want to spare himself those risks. What he wants to avoid is humiliation. And no one who steps into the theatre for a conversation can be guaranteed to duck that. Audiences are can be harsh, and humiliation, along with its nobler twin, humility, are deeply woven into the fabric of what we offer, and what we receive in return. If one seeks, at all costs, to avoid disgrace, then one is wise to always avoid the stage, and not just when it is serving in its noble capacity as a crucible for societal discourse.
But here’s my ultimate question for my friend, and for anyone who holds the doomed gun advocate’s position: given that humiliation is an unavoidable risk of wider life, isn’t it wiser still to serve yourself an inoculation of it in the safe space that art offers? Otherwise, aren’t you running the risk, out in the big scary world beyond, of being more tempted to “protect” your point of view with that all-too-deadly, non-cartoon gun you’re clutching?
More to come.
