It should come as no surprise that in the theatre world, you run into a lot of drama queens. You know, folks who get worked up into a tizzy at the drop of a hat. “Ooh, my black shirt and black pants don’t match! Where’s the nearest funeral pyre?!” Or, “If Craig doesn’t talk to me at the cast party, I’ll just…I’ll just throw myself on a funeral pyre!” And occasionally, “Great mother of Maude Adams, I specifically asked that barista for a decaf mochasippi with half soy, half skim! I’m marching right back there and tossing her onto a funeral pyre!”
(Funeral pyres, FYI, are often invoked among my kind as the most dramatic type of death imaginable. Personally, I think Isadora Duncan did it better in the pouring rain with a long chenille scarf and the axle of a convertible Bugatti, but then, what do I know?)
Unfortunately, despite their overtly theatrical demeanors, drama queens often possess the least amounts of talent and acumen when it comes to producing real, live plays. In an attempt to shock-and-awe their nearest and dearest, drama queens invariably do ridiculous things to otherwise respectable shows: “Okay, so, are you ready for this? In the final scene of Death of a Salesman, I’m envisioning a ring of fire, from which Willy will rise, dressed in rags, wearing angel’s wings, to have a final graveside chat with his wife!” That kind of crap would be fine and dandy for an “Obsession by Calvin Klein” loop playing on a fritzed-out monitor at a run-down department store in Terre Haute, but it does little to further a freaking storyline.
It was recently brought to my attention that this empress among drama queens is on a rampage, casting aspersions about the future of theatre in New Orleans and speaking on behalf of New Orleans’ theatre community when he himself was only nominally a member. During his brief tenure in the city, the only plays I heard of Lane producing were Swerve, a new work by local playwright R. J. Tsarov, and The Maids, Genet’s work about…well, who knows what the hell it’s about.
I didn’t see the former, but it received uniformly hideous reviews, even from folks who usually find a couple of nice words to say about everything. The latter was so center-less, so completely ungrounded, so unengaged in telling the story of the play that I felt embarrassed for the actresses, all of whom were doing their damnedest to get through it with straight faces. If you’ve never been trapped in a room for nearly two hours with 30 other people who’d rather be shoving needles in their eyes, I can’t say I recommend it.
Luckily, Mr. Savadove doesn’t really know what he’s talking about–mostly because he’s never really bothered to speak to anyone in the city’s theatre community. If he had, he’d know that Le Chat has already put up two shows, one with Bryan Batt, the other with the incomparable Ricky Graham. He might also know that our company opens its annual holiday extravaganza in a mere two weeks. And of course, there are shows running in Metairie, Kenner, and on the Northshore, not to mention a bevy of shows opening right after the start of the new year.
So, bottom line: between Nagin and Blanco and Landrieu and everyone else in the city screaming about this that and the other for the last three months, I think we’ve had enough drama queens. Some people just ought to stay away.
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