NOTE (Added 18/09/09): Maggie, who was in the show, wrote a blog about reading this review. In the interest of free discussion, here’s the link: http://makingmek.wordpress.com/2009/09/17/short-story/
It’s been interesting for me writing this review, because it’s a negative one and I know two people who were in the play (hi Mattie and Maggie!). I think the point in writing these is to say what I think but not get caught up thinking that it matters.
Gitmo was another play in Hatched. As the name suggests it was about the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and issues surrounding that. It was run of the mill protest stuff, what I expected from a bunch of young people making a political statement. And for some reason that frustrated me. Maybe I want too much, but the subject is so momentous, complex and human and Gitmo’s treatment of it was one-dimensional, unimaginative and didn’t touch me emotionally. It manhandled its material, it neither let the material speak for itself nor brought new light and perspective to it. The idea of documentary theatre, as this show classified itself, is interesting. It prompts the question, why not just write an essay or make a documentary? I’m sure there’s a good answer, but if a production’s answer is to use the theatrical form to ‘grease the message’, it makes me feel I’m being treated like an infant. And I felt that at a number of points in Gitmo. The intensely earnest performances ran over the cliches again and again. It became one-sided to the point of caricature. The way they portrayed U.S. senators was riduculous, merely regurgitating their negative cliche. And one particular speech made me cringe. It was a speech of a detainee, talking about how he had not done anything wrong. What he said, talking about sticking to his religion etc., suggested he meant that any actions against America were not wrong because they were justified by the Qur’an (which by the way they are, see 8:39). The show, however, presented it as the steadfast stand of an innocent. People complain about the political right wing being absolutist, but it’s opponents, including those many who oppose politicians on proncipal, are just as guilty. Our society is uncomfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity, left and right equally. To quote John Patrick Shanley in the introduction to his Pulitzer winning Doubt:
“We are living in a culture of extreme advocacy, of confrontation, of conflict and of verdict. Discussion has given way to debate. Communication has become a contest of wills. Public talking has become obnoxious and insincere. Why? Maybe because deep down under the chatter we have come to a place where we know that we don’t know…anything. But nobody’s willing to say that.”
Overall it lacked any agknowledgement that terrorists do actually exist and what they do ain’t good. I’m not suggesting the show had to support everything that happened at Guantanamo Bay, but if they’re aiming to educate the audience, at least show the whole picture, even if its only to say, ‘even this doesn’t justify torture’. Now of course not every show has to explore all the different perspectives or elements of a subject, not every show is ‘educational’, maybe the focus is just on the suffering of the detainees, regardless of context. But the show didn’t convey the power of this either. When an actor is speaking with such self-righteous earnest, any emotional power the content of her words may have is drowned out. They described shocking humiliating things, but rather than letting them speak for themselves, they REALLY IMPRESSED UPON US THAT THIS IS BAD. And that drove me away.
John Patrick Shanley continues,
“What is Doubt? Each of us is like a planet. There is a crust, which seems eternal. We are confident about who we are. If you ask we can readily describe our current state. I know my answers to so many questions, as do you. What was your father like? Do you belive in God? Who is your best friend? What do you want? Your answers are your current topography. Seemingly permanent, but deceptively so. Because under that face of easy response, there is another you. And this wordless Being moves just as the instant moves; it presses upward without explanation, fluid and wordless, until the resisting consciousness has no choice but to give way.”
What I’d hope for in a show that is hoping to convey something like the suffering of the detainees is for at some point the stage, the acting, the theatre of it to dissapear. To leave shockingly raw and undisguised the souls of the actors and the audience, and the reality of the material. For that planet’s crust to be fractured, allowing the fluid interior to show through. When these interiors, of actor, audience members and subject, touch, then the shiver of understanding runs through your gut. Then torture is made more real than watching a trillion news reports could make it. Gitmo remodelled my crust slightly, but was too crusty itself to break through it. Why is it that the word crusty is so funny?
There were a few moments in Gitmo when the crust began to wobble slightly, but the play itself imposed itself too strongly, holding it steady. Peter Brook says in The Empty Space.
“During a talk to a group at a university I…asked for a volunteer. A man came forward, and I gave him a sheet of paper on which was typed a speech from Peter Weiss’ play about Auschwitz, The Investigation. The section was a description of bodies inside a gas chamber. As the volunteer took the paper and read it over to himself…he was too struck and too appalled by what he was reading to react with the sheepish grins that are…customary….he began to read aloud. The very first words were loaded with their own ghastly sense and the reader’s response to them. Immediately the audience understood. It became one with him, with the speech- the lecture room and the volunteer who had come on to the platform vanished from sight- the naked evidence from Auschwitz was so powerful that it took over completely…his reading, technically speaking, was perfect…because he had no attention to spare for self-consciousness, for wondering whether he was using the right intonation. He knew the audience wanted to hear, and he wanted to let them hear: the images found their own level and guided his voice unconsciously to the appropriate volume and pitch.
After this I asked for another volunteer, and gave him the speech from Henry V which lists the names and numbers of the French and English dead. When he read this aloud, all the faults of the amateur actor appeared….he put on a false voice that strived to be noble and historical, mouthed his words roundly, made awkward stresses, got tongue-tied, stiff and confused, and the audience listened innatentive and restless…I proposed an experiment…the audience was to endeavour to…try to find a way of believing that these names were once individuals, as vividly as if the butchery had occured in living memory. The amateur began to read again, the half silence became a dense one…it turned all his attention away from himself, onto the subject matter he was speaking…his inflections were simple, his rhythms true.”
Gitmo was the opposite of this situation. The plain evidence, so near in time, nearer than Auschwitz was to that audience, was treated like the volunteer originally treated Henry V. The actors were ‘actorly’, and impressed the importance and gravitas of their words artificially. They dominated their words, rather than letting what theysaid be something beyond them. They shoved it into us, using it to cow us with its power, rather than being cowed with us at this evidence which humbles theatrical convention.
It’s a strange phenomena isn’t it? The more a performance tries to draw us in, the more we superficially go along with them, the more the rawer parts of our being are actually alienated. And when we are alienated in the Brechtian sense, in my experience we actually come together more. Brecht’s pretty relevant here as his theatre had a social aim and so did Gitmo. Brechtian alienation treats us as adults, giving us the space to make up our own minds, to find our own way. In some way it creates space…a space into which our full being can spread. In contrast, watching Gitmo I felt like it was more about the actors, I didn’t feel trusted. People already hold certain views, have certain images around an issue like this, and I’d hope from a play to have the range of my thinking and feeling pushed outward, and to then be able to find my own place in that.
Gitmo wasn’t objective enough to be like a documentary, and wasn’t human enough to touch me emotionally. Knowing the people who see things at St. Martins, it preached to the choir. Rather than putting a grain of sand into the oyster, it gave more oyster flesh. And it is only around a grain of sound that a pearl can grow.
I’ve realised this review/pondering colludes in the very thing it comdemns. That confrontational culture. In another part of that Preface Mr. Shanley says (italics are mine): “It’s evident in political talk shows, in entertainment coverage, in artistic critisism of every kind, in religious discussion.” Well I guess we’re in this together. I’ll try to get away from that in future. Break through the crust, which in my case here is made largely of such things as references to Brecht and Beckett. Why don’t we all give it a go, and try to bring more Doubt into our minds, when we and our world are used to spitting on it?
N.B: Where the word ‘doubt’ is used here, it is meant in the sense of “The condition of being unsettled or unresolved: an outcome still in doubt.” (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/doubt)
I also saw this show at Hatched. I thought it was one of the strongest pieces, along with Hunny Bun and Baby Doll. What I thought this show tried to do was look at alternative ways of staging and presenting work. All of the other pieces were very traditional and conservatively staged. Its sad because Hatched is the perfect environment to take risks and try something different but most people don’t. Gitmo used a lot of theatrical techniques in a very short show and handled them all very well. Technically it was the most mature and well thought out work there.
I can’t help but feel reading your review that you may have slightly missed the point of the show. You seemed to think that it needed to tell us that terrorists are bad. Don’t we already know that? I didn’t think this piece was trying to package the entire debate about the terrorism, war and torture into one 20 minute performance. Instead I think it assumed the audience knew what was happening in the world around them and added its perspective to that debate. I like to think I’m a pretty well informed person, but I didn’t know a lot of the stuff that was raised in that show. Torturers using menstrual blood, the US Navy calling suicide “asymmetrical warfare”. That is pretty shocking stuff and I thought Gitmo did a good job of packaging some pretty heavy material into an accessible format that at times even made me laugh. It certainly challenged me and made me think more then any of the other pieces I saw that night.
Jalen there is a difference between friends sitting down and discussing a performance and posting your opinion online. Matty might have a good grace to thank you for your opinion but frankly this did not feel to me at all appropriate or how a friend would comment on a performance. It made me feel sad and betrayed to have a friend post something like your review in an open forum.especially when in your first paragraph you know that what you are going to say might hurt or offend people. Was posting this review really worth losing a friend over? I am not saying you are not entitled to your opinion, because you most certainly are but I do not agree with the manner you have chosen to begin a dialogue in such a public and embarrasing way.
To think what you say doesn’t matter is a naive thought as words, actions, always have consequences.
Hi Maggie,
I’ve thought about what you said a lot. So much in fact that I’ve been told to stop worrying about, that its not a big deal. In one way I agree, whether or not a play is good isn’t a big deal. Whether or not I like a play isn’t a big deal. In fact they’re so insignificant that it makes me feel like laughing. It’s so easy to get so caught up in our own little worlds, but when you think about the world, think about things like… what happened at Guantanamo Bay, for a pertinent example, something like how good a play was really is a mote of dust. But the fact that you felt/feel so hurt is a big deal.
And I really had to think, should I have posted this review or should I have kept it under wraps. And why?
I’m not sure, but I come down more on the side of it was ok for me to post it.
It seems to me the problem you have is with me posting it on this blog, not with me thinking it or with me saying it to people.
If that’s because you think people who didn’t see the show might read this and get a false impression, well that’s what’s so great about blogs, you can comment with another view, like Monty did. (I’m getting around to replying to that BTW Monty). If that’s not enough, I’m happy to post your side of the story as an actual post, so everyone will see it.
So if the problem is that you think what I said was incorrect, or came at things from the wrong angle, or got the wrong impression, or something like that, I’d welcome a discussion.
If however you’re suggesting that such a discussion shouldn’t even take place, that I should keep my opinion to myself, well I disagree.
What you’re asking is that I either write good things about a show you’re in or write nothing at all.
Obviously hearing something negative about something you’ve been involved in hurts. I’m not trying to brush aside what you’re feeling; emotions are there, whether they ‘should’ be or not. Then you’ve got to realise that my opinion has no special power. If I say I don’t like something that doesn’t make it bad. That’s what I meant when I said “what I think doesn’t matter”. I could say everything I said in that post, and if it was all wrong, well it’ll remain all wrong after I said it.
If it’s right, well yeah, then that does hurt. But I suppose it’s a matter of realising that whether a play’s good or not doesn’t matter. Either way, everyone has just as much value as a person.
I didn’t say what I said to be malicious, to hurt anyone. I’m not discouraging your involvement in theatre. I wrote it so that if people are interested in hearing my thoughts they can read them, if they’re not, they don’t.
When you do something like a play, you don’t know how its going to turn out. It could be the greatest in history, it could be the worst in the world. If it doesn’t go as well as you’d hope, that’s upsetting, but I don’t think it’s appropropriate to think that it should be ‘hushed up’. That I ‘shouldn’t tell people.’ That’s only if of course that you agree with me, which isn’t clear from your message but I obviously won’t assume that. If you don’t then as I said, write what you think and I’ll post it up for all to see. Or if you want to write it on your own blog I can put a link to it.
People who didn’t see the play could get a false impression from what I wrote, so hopefully reading something by you would correct that.
Everyone who saw the play had their own experience of it. And that won’t be changed by anything I or you, or anyone else writes.
I’m reviewing plays here, and I’m not going to hide what I think if it’s negative. I actually see it as having a level of respect for someone being to say something negative about something they’ve done. To say “Oh gosh I won’t say this” seems rather arrogant to me, it’s assuming that somehow what you say has some special value.
A little point, you said Matty had the ‘good grace’ to thank me. It didn’t seem to me like she said that to be nice or ‘graceful’, I thought she genuinely valued this kind of discourse (Gosh I’m using that word quite a lot aren’t I?), that she thought whether or it praised her or agreed with her, the very fact of such…writing…discourse, haha, existing is a good thing. Feel free to correct me there Matty.
I’m going to write some more as a comment on your blog, because reading that I really think you have the wrong impression about some things i think. For example, that you’re ‘untrustworthy’ and that you shouldn’t try new things in theatre. I most definitely do not think those things, but I’ll write more about that there.
Reading a bad review hurts, but that’s part of life, or at least part of acting! Once, again, I realise that that fact doesn’t change the fact that you feel hurt.
As far as exceptions for friends goes, we’ve never been particularly close, in fact we’ve never so much as gone out for coffee. But we obviously do have some sort of relationship, and no, I don’t think that’s worth losing over a blog: I’m willing to continue on as good terms as we have been. But if after this blog you don’t feel you can do that, well, obviously that’s your choice.
But obviously this has really affected you emotionally, and if you want to talk about that and try to come to some sort of better place, I’m willing to do that.
I don’t however, think that the thing to do about that is to only write good reviews of shows involved people I know.
I was thinking though that maybe I should have let you know beforehand, so it wouldn’t come as such a shock.
As I said, if you want to write a rebuttal to the review, I’ll post it up.
When I first read your comment I was actually rather shaken. But I don’t think that because of that you shouldn’t have written it. But then again…that was a different thing to my review…
Hope you’re feeling a bit better,
*hug*
Jalen.
P.S. I just had another little chuckle at how seriously I’m being taken. Maybe it won’t hurt as much if you think about the fact that I’m just some random 17 year old. And what have I done theatre-wise? This year, performance-wise, nothing. So you one-up me there by default.
P.P.S.
I’m posting a link to your blog at the top of the Gitmo review. If you want me to take it off, let me know.
P.P.P.S. What with the late hour and all I haven’t read over this, so I’m sorry if I repeat myself heaps.
It had nothing to do with the show.
Obviously your review’s opinions on the show and our performance would have only really been relevant if we were running a longer season and you were trying to discourage people from seeing it.
Your opinion on the show and our performance, however disagreeable, isn’t really relevant anymore.
This was me pretty much saying I thought we were better friends than for you to post a harsh review online publicly criticizing a friend.
And your rebuttal that we’ve never even had a coffee together?
I wasn’t aware that was how a friendship was defined.
I did not criticise you, I criticized a show you were in.
I don’t decide whether it’s relevant or not, I just put my thoughts up and if people want to read it, or find it ‘relevant’ they do. And some people have because it’s had 54 views.
I don’t think I quite understand what you mean by ‘it had nothing to do with a show’.
Once again, I don’t see the issue with putting a negative review up, beyond the knee-jerk emotional impact, which can’t be avoided whether we’re best friends or we’ve never met. Unless its misleading, but I already offered a solution to that.
I didn’t say a friendship was defined by having coffee, I meant we haven’t has a close enough relationship for us to have had coffee together. However I don’t have any ill-will towards you, and as I said, I’m willing to go on with the same level of friendship we’ve always had, the review wasn’t an attempt to change that.
I’m sorry that you place so much value on what I say. As I said, it doesn’t change what the show was like or what peoples’ experience of the show is.
I’m writing a blog of theatre reviews, and that includes writing negative reviews. I didn’t consider any relationship we have as an obstacle to that. As I said, I didn’t do it to be malicious, so it’s not a matter of how much I like the people who were in the show. The greatest person in the world can be involved in a show I don’t like.
I can only repeat: whether or not a play was good has no implications for the value of anyone as a person.
I’m sorry if my review gave a different impression,
and I’m sorry that it’s come in between us.
Monty-
I’m sorry I haven’t responded to your commet yet, but I promise I will get around to it!
If don’t answer soon, feel free to post comments accusing me of avoiding discussion and to come after my family with a chainsaw. Or maybe not that last one. Yeah, no, just the first, sorry.
Hey all,
Thought I would add a smidgen to this lengthening page!
For the purposes of transparency, I was one of the four cast members in ‘Gitmo’.
It’s unclear from the review, Jalen, whether you realised that all the material in the piece (except for the children’s presenter scene) was verbatim text, taken from the actual words of real people. Perhaps you were aware of this, nonetheless it’s not really mentioned in the review, and I think it’s relevant to a debate about the piece.
You mention a particular detainee speech, I think you mean the final one? Your words:
“What he said, talking about sticking to his religion etc., suggested he meant that any actions against America were not wrong because they were justified by the Qur’an.”
I’m interested that you read the speech in this way, because in my mind (and I think in it’s intended meaning) the detainee IS actually innocent. We “presented it as the steadfast stand of an innocent”, because he was. I’m not sure of the actual origin of the speech (in fact it’s written as a poem), Laura could tell you, but alot of the play focussed on material surrounding the Tipton Three. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipton_three. They were a group of English men, widely believed to have been held at Guantanamo under false charges. The poem serves as a representation, I think, of the wrongful imprisonment of so many at the base.
I agree with your comments about absolutism on both sides of politics. I think in this case, due to the nature of a 20 minute piece of theatre, we endeavoured to make bold choices that were perhaps not particularly subtle, but which had strength and commitment to the material.
I also really appreciate your comments about the acting and theatrical style of the play (and about theatre in general, too). I have seen many a piece of theatre in which the performers push too hard, impress something too much. And, as a performer, it is something I try to steer clear of, and am constantly striving towards finding that “raw reality” in my performances (although, I suspect it may be one of those things you have to spend years training for). What you describe, that “shiver of understanding” would indeed be a fantastic theatrical experience, and unfortunately, I think it’s actually quite rare.
It’s fascinating to get such detail about someone’s response to the show, and I’m really interested in any other comments people who saw it might have about what they thought.
In the end, I think the best thing about the play is that it has sparked debate. You might not have liked it, but at least it caused enough of a reaction to start you thinking and keep you interested! If nothing else, that’s what I like about theatre, and I think we succeeded here!
I’m not going to venture too far into the other stuff going on, but just say that I think both Maggie and Jalen have a point in the issues they have raised (how diplomatic of me!). You have a right to operate your blog in the way that you feel, Jalen; and you have quite a right to feel upset Maggie. Part of my reason for writing this response has been to try and return the discussion to the review and analysis of the show. Perhaps if there is more to be said on a personal level, it should happen away from a public internet forum (or not, I don’t mean to sound like an annoying, preachy bitch).
This has turned into a somewhat lengthy smidgen.
Mattie
Thanks a heap Mattie,
Glad to see the discussion’s returned to the piece.
Yeah I did realise that most of the material was verbatim text, that was part of my point, I think that sort of material has such a power in itself that it’s more an issue of the actor not getting in the way of it. I’m not saying its going to be good by default, it’s more a matter of sort of…being humble in the face of the material. And letting it dictate your delivery rather than being too concerned with giving it an ‘intepretation’. Especially in a show of the type that Gitmo was, i.e. not a traditional narrative but rather a sort of…well documentary theatre is a good term. I’m not suggesting that’s easy, in fact its one of the greatest challenges, letting your performance being guided by things other than how you intellectually think it should go. But then again…maybe it isn’t too hard in a context like this when its almost like reading evidence, and when the subject is so…powerful. Like in that Peter Brook example. I suppose its not hard once you take the leap but its so hard to take that leap of letting go, of taking the risk. I do think that things are different in a piece like this (about a subject which has such power in itself and so immediate to us) than in any sort of piece. That is what most of my review was focusing on. I felt like it wasn’t given enough presence. Like there was too much concern with the theatre of it when sometimes that’s not needed. I felt like…the power of the material and the theatrical situation (people to people) wasn’t taken advantage enough and was sort of overridden with the concern for theatrical creation. Does that make sense? I think that Peter Brook example pretty much sums up what I’m saying. The Auschwitz piece gave that volunteer something that the Henry V piece didn’t give him. In the case of the Henry V bit it really would take ‘years of training’ and practice to give it the same level of power and truth, but in the Auschwitz piece that extra ingredient, which is also present in something to do with Guantanamo bay, let the same level of truth occur without those years of training. And I felt like in Gitmo, you had that extra ingredient but didn’t use it, or…sort of smothered it. Can you get some idea off what I mean? So yes I agree that it’s quite rare, but I think in this case you had a sort of…cheat haha, but, if you’ll allow me to get metaphorical for a moment, in your haste to run towards the castle on the hill, you missed the Holy Grail as your feet stumbled over it.
If I can continue that metaphor to adress your point about “due to the nature of a 20 minute piece of theatre, we endeavoured to make bold choices that were perhaps not particularly subtle, but which had strength and commitment to the material.” It’s like we are all running toward that castle on the hill, speeding, and you just got us to run faster, and maybe on a slightly different route, but in the same way that you didn’t stop us to notice the holy grail, neither did you say “Guys there’s this other path and direction over here that you’d never even notice”.
I’m not quite sure what you mean by commitment to the material?
It’s like…as I said, preaching to the choir. I would probably rather have seen a theatre piece supporting everything that went on at Guantanamo Bay, not because I support it, but for the very reason that I don’t. I would at least have had my ideas stretched and tested and probably modified a bit. As Monty said, we all have a basic idea of what’s happening, and most of us, meaning the people who saw that play, I’m guessing have pretty much the same view on it. And I felt like the show simplified that view and then added a few extra facts, but didn’t give much more than that. Sorry to quote myself, but it’s that thing of just putting more oyster flesh into the oyster instead of a grain of sand, an irritant. So it gave something yes, like the things Monty pointed out (Torturers using menstrual blood, the US Navy calling suicide “asymmetrical warfare”. ), but it is just added a little more to what was already there, rather than being an irritant in the consciousness which could niggle at our minds and result in changes, shifts. I really do think that oyster metaphor is the best way of explaining it. (It’s stolen from http://www.thewrestlingschool.co.uk/catastrophe.html by the way).
As far as that speech goes, I’d be really interested in finding out more about it! You could easily be right, maybe it’s just an overreaction from me because I saw it as more of the same (there we go again) thing of ignoring the fact that Islam is a cause of terrorism. I’m not saying all Muslims are terrorists, obviously not, you have to look at each person individualy, just like with anything, and not doing that is what leads to racism sexism all those isms. But it’s sort of awkwardly avoided that if you asked alot of terrorists why they did what they did they’d say ‘for Allah’. And from personal accounts i’ve read (check out Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, amazing book), it’s not as radicalised from all of Islam as is popularly made out. And contrary to popular belief, can be justified by the Qur’an without having to stretch interpretation. So I just saw that as another example of sort of sweeping through with a single simplified point of view.
But looks like I was probably wrong there. As I said though, it would be good to look into it.
Yes it has generated alot of discussion, which is always good (EDIT: not least of all for my blog’s view count!) Though I think what really matters is the experience of a play. I don’t just mean yours, but say for example if someone learnt something from this discussion which they then put into practice in a piece, then it would have value. Well obviously it has some sort of value, but I think as far as actual theatre’s concerned it has zero value. It’s fun and I love thinking about these types of things, obviously, but experience in the moment in the space with the actors and the audience overules everything else totally. And that’s how I judge theatre. To adress another of Monty’s points, yes it “used a lot of theatrical techniques in a very short show and handled them all very well.” But if that doesn’t make the show better what’s the point? I suppose it’s a matter of how you judge a performance. I say in the about section, I don’t value theatre by it’s dialogue with other theatre, I value it by the dialogue between actors, material, and audience, in the moment.
Think I actually covered most of your comment there Monty, finally, so there’s that done.
I really need to learn to express myself more concisely. Sorry. But then again maybe its a good thing in such a soundbite culture to have longer more detailed stuff going on.
I just got really excited about what’s going on here. A reviewer (not that I can call myself that but shh) having a (public) conversation about the piece with the creators and other audience members. And not just in a “you don’t get it!” “You should be banned from the stage!” kind of way.
Oh, one other thing. I was just reading something by a critic talking about how he always tries to at least find out what the artists’ intentions were before dissing them. I’m don’t agree with only judging a piece on a how well it fulfils its intentions, what if those intentions were to create a show involving lots of red costumes? They could fulfil that aim totally and yet obviously still have a terrible show.
BUT
I would be interested in hearing the intentions behind the piece. It definitely won’t do any harm.
Mattie?
P.S. Sorry for mispelling your name in earlier comments.
I have to STRONGLY disagree with your assertion that Islam causes terrorism. I think that religious extremism causes hatred. As someone who was brought up of Jewish faith I am painfully aware that it was Israeli militants in the 1960s who invented most of the techniques used by modern day terrorists. Isn’t the Crusades almost akin to Christian terrorism? And what about the hatred espoused by contemporary evangelical churches (Think Westboro Church – “God Hates Fags” etc.)? It is dangerous when anybody uses religion to foster an us versus them, good versus evil type scenario? Of course that is going to lead to hatred and violence and a lack of empathy for your victims.
I guess what concerns me is that one of your main criticisms of Gitmo seems to be that it is too left wing. That it didn’t take into account the other side of the argument. But hasn’t it been the right wing views on terrorism and Guantanamo that have prevailed in political debate and the media? At least until the election of Obama. Do they really need to be restated now in a piece of theatre?
My take home message from Gitmo was that it doesn’t matter what someone has or hasn’t done they still deserve the protection of their human rights. The very idea behind universal human rights is that if we don’t uphold them for everybody in every circumstance then all of our rights are diminished and at risk.
Oh and just to add my two cents to the other debate thats been raging. I think you do have to have an awareness as a critic that producing theatre is hard work and involves a large commitment of time and energy and sometimes money so I guess it easy to see how it can become personal for people who have invested so much of themselves into a project. And at the end of the day its always a lot harder to do/make something and a lot easier sit back and criticise. Personally I think while your review raised some really good criticisms of the show, it was too negative overall. I don’t know what the third show you saw was but I saw Savers and it was just fluff. I was so relieved when I saw Gitmo after that and it was something meaty I could sink my brain into. Even if you didn’t like the outcome I think its worth acknowledging that at least Gitmo took a risk and tried to do something different and that in itself is commendable.