After Dark, August 21, 2012

Am I Getting Laid?
What's with the mood...?
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

A friend was about to set off on the weekly column journey and asked for advice. I told him, "When you're pissed off, write down what's pissing you off, come back to it in three days and if it's still pissing you off...you've got a column!"

This week, as I was staring at the blank page now unblank before you, I realized that I'm not particularly pissed off about anything! Horrors! What's happening? I'm not getting laid more than usual, but it feels like when I was a younger man getting laid with mind-bending regularity. That young man had all the ugliness of the world around him as this older man does, but he - like me this week - was able to pass beyond the fixation on hopelessness and enjoy what is working.

I am absolutely over the moon - almost giddy - about the backlash!

Yes, yes, yes: the Healey story has never truly been resolved; the Factory Theatre crisis promises to explode in all our faces in the next weeks; the world is enraged - and rightly so - about Pussy Riot and those honest-to-goodness Fascists in the Kremlin; American Republicans are as scummy as they've ever been and the US election is hideous...

Moreover, I SHOULD be angry about the backlash against two articles we published this summer: on a production of The Taming of the Shrew in Montreal; on the iconography of SummerWorks. (Read the comments.)

But here's the thing...

I am absolutely over the moon - almost giddy - about the backlash! The comments on both articles are perfect symbols of what we are trying to do here at CharPo: encourage dialogue. Neither article set out to be provocative. They are both honest reflections by intelligent writers. But - BAM!!

Clearly we all want to talk. We want to talk about theatre. We love it and we want every aspect of it - from PR to closing night - to be right. Discussing these things causes reflection in theatre people and - the traffic numbers on our sites prove - audiences. I realize, too, that I like to swoop in and talk too. (Brad Fraser slapped me on the hands for liking it too much and doing it without reflection; he was right.)

The internet has made a national and, even, international dialogue possible. I'm all over the Guardian comments section because the accents may be different, but we still love to talk theatre. Indeed, we're delighted to!

So, this week, I am the kid who is getting laid.

Never fear...pissed-offedness is never far off. Meanwhile, enjoy the rest of the summer!