781 posts
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Post by latefortheoverture on Jan 6, 2020 12:10:16 GMT
Just missed the Lucky Dip seats that were released the other day, anyone had luck with the returns queue? Seems I'm very late to the party! Any luck with day seats? I’m out of the country until next week but really want to see this. I kept ringing the box office, and on my 4th try I got lucky with 2 row D returns for later in the month! Just keep ringing- some staff will say it's sold out straight away, and be quite abrupt. But I always asked if they could check the system for the latest updates. And each time I asked they had something, but it wasn't until the 4th time that something suited my needs. Good luck, I'm sure you'll get something! |
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Post by NeilVHughes on Jan 6, 2020 17:52:32 GMT
After the subtlety of A Kind of People and especially Unknown Rivers found this particularly disappointing as it didn’t give the space for sub-luminal racism which on reflection after seeing the other two plays is by definition the toughest form of racism to counter as it is below the surface and impacts all our daily interactions even if ‘unknowingly’
This play didn’t give me a cause for reflection in the way the other two plays did and found the second part and especially the ending undermined the intent, is it space or the right to exist equally in all spaces that is expected and for me it is the latter which is why I did not participate in the denouement.
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Post by n1david on Jan 11, 2020 17:45:21 GMT
There’s an argument that if you intend to provoke people, you shouldn’t then be surprised if that provocation leads to unexpected behaviour...
NB I wasn’t there, but Twitter reports that the situation was genuinely unpleasant - however given the structure of the play, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for at least some of the audience to wonder if this was planted behaviour.
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Post by intoanewlife on Jan 11, 2020 18:50:41 GMT
There’s an argument that if you intend to provoke people, you shouldn’t then be surprised if that provocation leads to unexpected behaviour... NB I wasn’t there, but Twitter reports that the situation was genuinely unpleasant - however given the structure of the play, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for at least some of the audience to wonder if this was planted behaviour. Why? Because there no such thing as racist middle aged white men? |
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Post by n1david on Jan 12, 2020 2:29:35 GMT
No, of course there’s such a thing as racist middle aged white men. But it’s possible that some members of the audience thought that this could be a cast member or a plant designed to provoke a different type of reaction from the audience or to be more directly confrontational to the cast. As I said, I wasn’t there and I am certainly not defending his actions or views in any way whatsoever. It’s more an observation that when the fourth wall is smashed so comprehensively as it is in this play, other audience members might look at unusual audience reactions and wonder if they too have been staged (in the immediate moments afterwards).
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Post by intoanewlife on Jan 12, 2020 16:10:17 GMT
No, of course there’s such a thing as racist middle aged white men. But it’s possible that some members of the audience thought that this could be a cast member or a plant designed to provoke a different type of reaction from the audience or to be more directly confrontational to the cast. As I said, I wasn’t there and I am certainly not defending his actions or views in any way whatsoever. It’s more an observation that when the fourth wall is smashed so comprehensively as it is in this play, other audience members might look at unusual audience reactions and wonder if they too have been staged (in the immediate moments afterwards). Ah gotcha. I highly doubt it. The show doesn't need it and it's sold out so I doubt they need to pull off any stunts at this late stage of the game. I believe in New York it got a lot of these kind of reactions, it was only a matter of time before someone cracked here. |
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Post by Snciole on Jan 14, 2020 18:22:22 GMT
Er... Have any people of colour on here seen this. I am going on Saturday and the spoilers for the end sound very intriguing. As a light skinned person of colour it all sounds like it will create havoc and judgement.
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Post by intoanewlife on Jan 14, 2020 19:48:29 GMT
Er... Have any people of colour on here seen this. I am going on Saturday and the spoilers for the end sound very intriguing. As a light skinned person of colour it all sounds like it will create havoc and judgement. I saw 2 memorable moments from black audience members. One was a young black guy who was scolding his white mate for participating in a certain point in the proceedings. The other was an older black woman who proclaimed loudly when it was all over 'well I don't even know what the hell was just going on'... Take from that what you will lol |
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Post by bordeaux on Jan 14, 2020 20:07:17 GMT
Er... Have any people of colour on here seen this. I am going on Saturday and the spoilers for the end sound very intriguing. As a light skinned person of colour it all sounds like it will create havoc and judgement. There was no havoc when I was there. We reacted as you would expect a largely liberal middle-class UK audience to react, that is to say in different ways but not quite as, say, a US audience might. |
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Post by Snciole on Jan 14, 2020 20:40:26 GMT
I think I might react like the old black woman. What a queen.
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Post by zahidf on Jan 14, 2020 21:12:47 GMT
I saw what they were doing, and some of it was excellent, but overall I think it felt disconnected and it didn't quite work.
When I went, I found it hilarious how everyone didn't respond at the end, until one person did and suddenly 90% of the audience who qualified followed them!
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Post by zahidf on Jan 14, 2020 21:13:34 GMT
An older white man was demanding an explanation for both the show and the young woman's politics / viewpoint the day I was there, but that was all. He just made himself look a bit of a plank, to be honest, and the actor ignored him. Yeeesshhh. Its billed as a political play in a liberal theatre. Not sure what he expected |
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Post by Stasia on Jan 15, 2020 13:10:37 GMT
I liked all the ideas the play rises and makes you think of, but not in its ending. While it was the talk about race and perception of people with different skin colour in America, it was one thing, but when the actress was talking to the audience, to me directly, I felt that it looks like people forgetting that there are white people from "third world countries" who possess significantly fewer rights than, say, a POC in the UK.
As a Russian in Russia, I don't feel protected, I feel that our human rights are in such a deep hole, I am not able to live where I want to live because of the immigration laws and even my UK tourist visa that I had to get to see that play cost more than what I earn in 2 weeks.
Even if I was able to emigrate to the UK or another European country (and I'm not because of the legislation), I would still be discriminated compared to those who have darker skins but "proper" passports.
Every day I am risking to get 3 years in jail for saying that I support LGBT rights or for criticising the authorities. I have to bribe people to get "free" cancer treatment (and then pay for the medicine itself).
And I am ready to bet my money that if we take 1000 random POC in the UK and compare with 1000 random Russians, you'd be surprised to see who has fewer rights and more discriminatory situations in their everyday life.
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Post by intoanewlife on Jan 15, 2020 19:55:33 GMT
This play is about racism. Russians are not a race. What Stasia describes so powerfully in her post is xenophobia, which while based on the same ignorance and prejudice is a different thing. You can hide your nationality, you can't hide your skin colour. Women and people of colour will always cop the worst of it.
Pretty much everyone is discriminated against for some reason or another which is why most of us develop empathy for other people. It is that way from the moment we start mixing with people outside of our insular family group and often even within that family group. It comes from the fact that we are all incorrectly taught at a very early age that our self esteem and importance is based on what other people think of us and for people to like us we must be 'better' than someone else. This of course is the exact of opposite of what self esteem actually is. Self esteem comes from within us, not from outside of us.
We then go through the rest of our lives comparing ourselves to others and wanting to be better than them so we feel better about ourselves. But to be better than someone else we have to choose the people we think we are better than and they must become 'lesser' to us. The easiest way to do that is to pick those who we perceive or are taught are the opposite of us. Those that don't look like us, those we presume are weaker, those we can beat easily. They become our first targets and we lose all sense of empathy for our chosen victims. They deserve everything they get.
It is usually those with the least amount of self esteem who are the most racist/xenophobic and they usually get their strength from groups instead of remaining individuals because they need that group to feed their self esteem. It makes them feel powerful, it makes them feel superior. That power becomes their replacement for self esteem and they become addicted to it.
At the moment we have a whole generation that are fighting to become individuals everyone worships by turning into something they are not, while at the same time falling over themselves to fit into as many groups as possible to prove they are better than everyone else. A 'like' for something we do or say or share from a complete stranger has become more powerful than someone in real life 'liking' us for who we actually are.
What this is doing to the human psyche cannot be under estimated. We are currently in a situation where cluster B personality disorders have jumped from around 5% of the population to well over 30% in less than 10 years. Social media/media/political propaganda is literally throwing people onto the psychopathy scale on a delay basis and we are loving every minute of it. This should scare us, but it doesn't. We are all clambering to make that change, more people will like us that way. Buzzzzzzzz!!!
When you cease being empathetic towards others that part of your brain shuts down and it doesn't come back. Is a quick satisfying win over a complete stranger really worth that?
In the not too distant future gender, race, sexuality etc will no longer be an issue because literally more than half of the worlds population will blindly hate everyone simply because they exist.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jan 15, 2020 21:28:33 GMT
I’m glad this play has sparked so much fascinating and valuable discussion.
I do wonder what the experience of seeing this play is for ethnic minorities who are not black, and for those who are lighter skinned or “white passing.”
Ditto those with mobility impairments or other disabilities that bar them from participating.
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Post by Stasia on Jan 16, 2020 8:28:25 GMT
And there's one woman putting it all into perspective. Giving the play itself more thought, in light of the Markle debacle mostly, I did wonder if part of the reason the play didn't work so well in the UK is that we tend to put class above race? Racism of course exists as it does in the USA, but over here, we temper it with classism as well. If you fight up to the next class level, you find a different kind of racism is insulated slightly by acceptance? Just a thought I'm putting out there - a middle class black family in the USA is given different social status to one in the UK, as in, we don't have areas that can be described as "middle class black" as the do, but we do have "working class immigrant" ones, as it were. Probably a play there, come to think of it. Of course I can't judge the situation in UK from the inside but I think you're right in saying that UK has more "class" than "race"-related triggering situations. |
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Post by Stasia on Jan 16, 2020 8:44:30 GMT
This play is about racism. Russians are not a race. What Stasia describes so powerfully in her post is xenophobia, which while based on the same ignorance and prejudice is a different thing. You can hide your nationality, you can't hide your skin colour. Women and people of colour will always cop the worst of it. You may hide your nationality, but you can't hide your name, your passport, your accent and lots of other things. So I personally think these are the same situations, not the different one. As the one being discriminated on the base where I was born and facing prejudice when in the UK on the base of being "foreign", I think it is very similar to what people with different skin colour may be facing. But neither them not me can't stand in each others shoes so we can't measure who is more discriminated and less privileged. And speaking of "fair view", when the play started, I thought how lucky and privileged the black family is... I find the play valuable in terms of raising important questions and making you think and discuss. But I didn't feel the way these thoughts were put into the words impeccably. This ending could have been much more powerful while staying unsettling. For me it was more as a draft as a finalised Pulitzer-winning text. |
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Post by londonpostie on Jan 16, 2020 8:56:13 GMT
Fwiw, and statistically speaking, in sunny south London everyone is a minority - I would probably say the issue is discrimination/opportunity rather than racism because the issues are broader than skin colour. Example:
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Post by asfound on Jan 18, 2020 13:10:41 GMT
Er... Have any people of colour on here seen this. I am going on Saturday and the spoilers for the end sound very intriguing. As a light skinned person of colour it all sounds like it will create havoc and judgement. I'm going next week - I wasn't planning to initially as normally I can't stand these on-the-nose "issues" plays but it sounded interesting enough and I liked Slave Play so I thought why not? Just skimming over the comments here I sincerely hope I'm not going to have to participate... |
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Post by jadnoop on Jan 18, 2020 16:18:52 GMT
Hmm. This one really tested my patience. The opening, bizarre parody of 80s/90s sitcoms was awkward, but had the potential to set up something really interesting. However, at the end of the day, the message seemed disappointingly superficial and delivered with the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
As someone who’s mixed race and with parents with very different backgrounds (Asian and South American parents), the questions of identity, culture, stories, and who we are, and so on are particularly interesting and important topics to me. And yet this really didn’t feel like it had anything new or interesting to say.
And in terms of the approach, the various meta moments had the energy, but none of the exhilarating power of recent plays like When We Have Tortured Each Other Sufficiently, The Watsons, or the magnificent An Octoroon.
Two stars for me.
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Post by asfound on Jan 23, 2020 16:44:15 GMT
Yikes, found that genuinely painful to sit through. At the end, looking around the audience and at all the brightly lit white people on stage I had a definite Mitchell & Webb "are we the bad guys" moment.
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