Well, here we are at Week 3 of my project. In the musical Rent, Jonathan Larson wrote that we should measure our lives in love. I am measuring my life in plays. It's the same thing, I guess.
I am happy to tell you all that I succeeded in writing a play that had nothing to do with Shakespeare this week. It was tough - when you study one guy for three years, he tends to take over your brain. Just a little advice in case you're thinking about grad school. ;)
This week's play, Fish on a Bicycle, was inspired by a post from She The People, a blog run by The Washington Post. The post can be found here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/post/lap-dances-for-businesswomen-no-thanks/2012/01/20/gIQAes2KDQ_blog.html.
This week's play explores what it would mean for a couple of men to prove that they were team players to their female boss. When I started writing it, I really didn't have a clear idea of where I was going with this piece. After writing it, I was surprised at how, well, violent and angry it was. I knew I had a definite reaction to the Post piece, but I guess I didn't realize HOW angry it made me. That's the great thing about writing - it gets all of those emotions and thoughts out of your body and onto paper.
Great play! I especially "enjoyed" the banter between the two salesmen at the beginning; you conveyed their sliminess really well. I can't wait to read more!
ReplyDeleteThis has nothing to do with what you wrote, except that, because of your post I went to read Parker's article. While I get where she's coming from, I have a problem with Parker's analysis. Yes, I definitely think that suggesting women should just go along with their male colleagues to strip clubs in order to be "team players" is absolutely ridiculous. There's no way any form of business should ever take place in or be contingent upon going to a strip club (or Hooters or similar places that sell sex along with drinks/food).
That said, I feel like her indictment of strip clubs as "disgusting" is a little harsh; she forgets that there are some women--perhaps they're a minority, but I don't necessarily think that's always the case--who actually enjoy stripping and find it empowering. Now, I'm not trying to defend strip clubs and I do think they can be incredibly degrading, but I've known a couple women who were strippers (and I knew them outside of their profession, obviously), and they really loved what they did and didn't find it disgusting or degrading at all (and they found it offensive when someone assumed that they should feel degraded). Not sure why I felt like throwing that out there... I guess it's just that it gets to me when people (like Parker...not you!) assume that all sex workers are without agency.