Monday, November 13, 2017

Worth a Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

Nearly a year later, video game voice actors end their strike

Ars Technica: Nearly a year after voting to strike against 11 major video game publishers, voice actors in the SAG-AFTRA union voted overwhelmingly to approve a tentative agreement that will get them back to work for at least the next three years.
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Actors' Equity Treasurer: Proposed Tax Bill Would Harm Thousands of Actors, Stage Managers

www.broadwayworld.com: Sandra Karas, an actress, tax attorney and the Treasurer of Actors' Equity Association, the labor union for actors and stage managers on Broadway and across the nation, released the following statement on behalf of the union after news reports that a tax bill introduced in the House of Representatives today would eliminate a variety of itemized deductions
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What Is Censorship? The Tale of Michael Weller's "Buyer Beware"

www.clydefitchreport.com: Yesterday morning I read up on Brandeis University’s decision to cancel a production of Michael Weller’s new play, Buyer Beware. Or at least that’s how the Boston Globe framed its reporting, echoed by The New York Times. I discovered later, however, that while the Globe’s headline clearly aimed to do what a good headline does — quicken the pulse — to characterize the matter as “Brandeis cancels play amid protests over racism” feels more a case of spin than spleen. I write this post as we mark one year since the US elected the single greatest purveyor of false narratives since P.T. Barnum started counting suckers. The Brandeis-Weller brouhaha should remind us that narratives, whether false or shaded, don’t just bubble up from the D.C. swamp. They happen in the arts, too.
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Did ‘Thomas and Sally’ Romanticize a Master/Slave Relationship?

AMERICAN THEATRE: In a particularly disturbing moment in Thomas and Sally, a new play by Thomas Bradshaw, a 41-year-old Thomas Jefferson takes the 15-year-old Sally Hemings’s face in his hands and kisses her. “I love you, Sally,” he says. Then, without asking her permission, he starts to undress her. For actor Tara Pacheco, who played Hemings every night in the production at Marin Theatre Company (MTC), the moment was fraught. “She’s being kissed, and she’s not consenting to that initiated sexual relationship at all,” Pacheco explained recently. “She kissed him, but it’s the classic consenting to one thing doesn’t mean you’re consenting to something else.”
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New OSHA Training Requirement in Nevada for Entertainment Industry

www.hsi.com: Starting January 1, 2018, the State of Nevada will require specific workers in the entertainment industry to complete an OSHA 10-hour (non-supervisory employee) or an OSHA 30-hour (supervisory employee) safety and health general industry course and receive a completion card within 15 days of hire.
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Worth a Look - Weinstein

Five more articles...

L.A. District Attorney Launches Sexual Abuse Task Force for Entertainment Industry

Variety: Los Angeles District Attorney Sharon Lacey has created a task force of veteran prosecutors to deal with sexual abuse crimes in the entertainment industry.

Lacey made the announcement Thursday, adding that her office has not yet received any cases from law enforcement for criminal filing.
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Why Aaron Sorkin refused to write a crude Nicole Kidman sex scene

www.usatoday.com: Here's a prime example of how sexual harassment can be baked into the filmmaking experience.

Aaron Sorkin, speaking to USA TODAY about his directorial debut, Molly’s Game (in select theaters Dec. 25), starring Jessica Chastain, recalled the way he was once asked to script a Nicole Kidman sex scene for 1993’s Malice.
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Why I Stopped Watching Woody Allen Movies

Far Flungers | Roger Ebert: A few months back, on the heels of a scandal where someone was not punished for sexual assault in any way, a friend asked me what I felt would be an appropriate reckoning. “I at least want them to lose their job,” I said. “I want their lives to be disrupted, and I want others to see that if you do that to someone, your life is turned upside down, so you better not do that to someone.”
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Hollywood's History of Sexual Harassment

The Mary Sue: As we go through the news every day, it seems as though another male figure, whether he be an actor, producer, or director, is being accused of sexual harassment or assault. The sad reality is that there may be no end to the allegations because sexual assault in Hollywood is about as old as Hollywood itself.
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Sexual harassment affects nearly everyone: Poll

Business Insider: Sexual harassment in the workplace isn't an industry issue. Nor is it a toxic workplace issue. It's an issue that affects literally everyone.

A number of industries have been implicated in the wake of producer Harvey Weinstein's alleged sexual misconduct, including Hollywood, politics, and sports. Before that, sexual harassment at work made headlines with tech's "bro-culture" problem. Before that, it was the media industry with Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly's oustings. And the list goes on.
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Monday, November 06, 2017

Worth a Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

What Is An Artist's Responsibility? The Question Of Trigger Warnings

The Theatre Times: My most common access need attending the theatre, after bringing a companion, is to sit at the end of an aisle, preferably close to the exit. This is to manage my anxiety, which fluctuates in intensity, and when booking a show weeks in advance, I don’t know how I’ll feel that day. It gives me the ability to make a quick exit if my anxiety flares up − it’s too loud for me today, too bright, too crowded. Or, if the show itself is too disturbing or triggering in its content. Triggering content is by far the top reason that I do make good use of my requested aisle seat to make a dash for fresh air and a place of calm.
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Female Freelancers Are Paid Way Less Than Men For The Same Creative Jobs

Fast Company: Gender-based wage discrimination in traditional business settings can be insidious because women who start out being paid less may be continuously offered less competitive raises or salaries when they change jobs. But many female entrepreneurs in creative fields—perhaps even those who think that owning their own business shelters from such bias—are actually seeing a similar disparity play out in a different way.
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Who Owns Marsha P. Johnson's Story?

jezebel.com: Hours after Netflix released the documentary The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson last Friday, director/trans activist/researcher Reina Gossett claimed the film was unfairly profiting off her ideas and work. The Netflix doc, directed by David France (whose 2012 doc How To Survive a Plague was nominated for an Academy Award), concerns LGBTQ civil rights pioneers Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, whom also are the focus of an as-yet-incomplete short film Gossett has been working on with Sasha Wortzel for several years, Happy Birthday Marsha! (It’s crucial to note that Rivera identified as transgender before her death in 2002, and that Johnson, who died in 1992 before the word transgender was really embraced discursively, identified as gay, a transvestite, and a drag queen. Nonetheless, both are considered by many as icons in the trans community.)
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What's It Like Being on the Autism Spectrum?

Theatre Development Fund – TDF: Of the many breakups, breakdowns, and breakthroughs featured in Uncommon Sense, Tectonic Theater Project's new play about people on the autism spectrum, cast member Andrew Duff's favorite scene involves "Noodle Night." Dan, who's on the spectrum, invites Sarah, who has no official diagnosis, to dinner, but when he has trouble using his fork, she tosses hers away and they both dig in with their hands, feeding each other, getting wildly playful, and ending up in a kiss. "It's a moment of connecting and understanding without a need for words," says Duff. "They accept each other for the way they are."
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Creating Saturday Night Live: Control Room

YouTube: Director Don Roy King and crew share how an episode goes from script to stage.
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Worth a Look - Weinstein

Harder to cull down to just five this week...

Surviving Sexual Harassment On Broadway, And Off: Guest Column

Deadline: Deadline asked three-time Tony nominated actress and writer Sherie Rene Scott, currently appearing off-Broadway opposite Jason Alexander in The Portuguese Kid, about her experience in dealing with sexual harassment and assault in the industry over the last two decades. It’s a subject that partly inspired Whorl Inside A Loop, the remarkable 2015 play she co-wrote and starred in.
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Linda Bloodworth-Thomason: I Knew About Harvey Weinstein. You Probably Did, Too

Hollywood Reporter: I always knew I wanted to be a writer. As luck would have it, my first three mentors were Hollywood giants Norman Lear, James L. Brooks and Larry Gelbart. These industry icons not only taught me everything I know about writing, they were also perfect gentlemen who never exuded even a hint of sexual impropriety. It wasn't until a few years later that I began to experience sexual harassment — the producer's hand rubbing my back inside my blouse during meetings; the studio exec who, on my first day, encouraged me to wear a bikini to work (sadly, I actually asked, "Why, is there a pool?"); the talent agent I literally had to wrestle to the ground in order to get out of his house. I didn't know then that this is a man's town, based mostly on male friendships. Forget those iconic letters that make up the Hollywood sign. It would be much more fitting if there was a giant penis casting a shadow over all the women who tirelessly endeavor to rise above this unpoliced playground for men.
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Against Allegedly

theconcourse.deadspin.com: There’s a word, and it’s quite short, for how the vast majority of information in this world is conveyed: Said. A person can say something. Multiple people can, together, say something. Old-timers in the newsroom will tell you that a document can’t say something because paper can’t talk, but that’s okay. Another, almost equally short word, stated, will do.
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Harvey Weinstein's Abuse Took Many Forms, As I Learned Firsthand

jezebel.com: I worked for Harvey Weinstein from May to August 2014. A successful independent film producer at the time, I had sold him two films in 2005, and produced over 20 altogether, 12 of them selections at Sundance. I was brought on to “fix” an ailing movie, Natalie Portman’s Jane Got a Gun, and then hired—ostensibly as a “fixer,” an “indie expert”—to help Harvey bring indie discipline and ingenuity to large films. When I left, I was paid for the duration of my contract and Harvey wrote me a complimentary letter, but my time there did not end well.
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5000 Artists Sign Open Letter Condemning Sexual Harassment In Their Industry

jezebel.com: Hundreds of artists have signed a letter condemning Knight Landesman, the publisher of Artforum, who resigned last Wednesday after being accused of sexual harassment by nine different women. A website for the letter opens on Jenny Holzer’s work, “Abuse of Power Comes As No Surprise.”
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Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Worth a Look - Weinstein

Another week of fairly dense coverage...


SAG-AFTRA Obtains International Support for Anti-Harassment Efforts

Variety: SAG-AFTRA has obtained a declaration from the International Federation of Actors urging the industry to work with unions to achieve workplaces that are free of discrimination, harassment, and retaliation.
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IATSE And Teamsters Condemn Sexual Harassment In The Industry

Deadline: The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees has issued a statement on sexual harassment in the entertainment industry, commending “the many who have courageously shared their stories of sexual abuse and harassment.”
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CMU, Point Park drama schools respond to Hollywood sex scandals

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: During the dozen years Don Wadsworth has been teaching the Business of the Business class for Carnegie Mellon University senior actors, there have been occasional discussions about the casting couch. Is it a myth? Is it a thing?

In the past few weeks, it has become “the elephant in the room,” Mr. Wadsworth said.
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Janice Min: Harvey Weinstein is “emblematic” of much larger issue

Salon.com: Late-night comedian Bill Maher sat down with Janice Min, the former president and chief creative officer of The Hollywood Reporter, to discuss the recent sexual harassment allegations against Harvey Weinstein, as well as how she believes the revelations are connected to the anger from the election of President Donald Trump.
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Harvey Weinstein Is a Monster of Hollywood’s Own Making. What Are We Going to Do About It?

Variety: We are at a tipping point.

Three weeks ago, Harvey Weinstein was one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. Today, he is radioactive — denounced, dismissed, and defending himself against potential lawsuits and criminal investigation. It has felt for several days as if the sky is falling in Hollywood; as if the firmament that the entertainment ecosystem is crumbling before our eyes. It has been horrifying and cathartic, in turns; long-held secrets are being uncovered, while long-buried suspicions are being validated. What may have started with Harvey Weinstein is not ending with him: Already, several men throughout media and entertainment have been outed by their employees and in many cases, ousted by their employers. When a movement can unseat an agent, an editor, a showrunner, and an executive, it is just getting started. Little doubt there are more to follow.
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Worth a Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

"The World of The Hunger Games" Opens in Dubai

The Mary Sue: Irony has taken many blows in the marketing for Lionsgate’s adaptation of The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins’ young adult trilogy about a society which transforms suffering and death into reality-show entertainment – but this one might be the death blow. Variety announced that Lionsgate has partnered with Dubai Parks and Resorts to open “The World of The Hunger Games” theme park.
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Open Letter to Marin Theatre Company and to Our National Theater Community

Truth Telling – A Community of Black Women Professional Theatre Makers in the Bay Area, California: We, a community of African American/Black diasporic theater artists of varying cultural backgrounds, religions, sexual and gender identities, worldviews and artistic aesthetics, believe the theater industry has a responsibility to create work that does not do damage to the communities it attempts to represent on stage.

We are united in our belief that, from its very inception, Marin Theatre Company’s (MTC) current production of Thomas Bradshaw’s Thomas and Sally is an irresponsible, deeply harmful project with no accountability to black women and girls. As black artists, and as black women, we are all too familiar with our histories and our narratives being imagined through the gaze of white supremacist patriarchy. We take issue with producing organizations whose choices perpetuate the notion that we are a voiceless, powerless group, incapable of understanding how we are being represented. We take issue with the dismissal of our concerns and the erasure of our country’s violent history.
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Why Using These Pronouns In An Interview Could Cost You

Fast Company: During an interview, hiring managers always ask about your experience. They want to know what you did as well as the kind of results you delivered. But when you’re describing your current job, be careful of your word choice: Two pronouns in particular could send a bad message.
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OPINION: Why is there's still no justice for Radiohead drum technician Scott Johnson?

Musical instrument industry news | MI Pro: On the afternoon of 16th June 2012 in Toronto, Canada, an outdoor stage intended to host a performance by Radiohead collapsed, killing the band’s drum technician Scott Johnson and injuring three others. A subsequent investigation resulted in charges being brought against the concert promotors Live Nation, the staging contractors Optex and an individual staging engineer.
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What American theatre can teach us about diverse casting

WhatsOnStage.com: Whenever I come to New York City, I'm always struck by how much more diverse than London this city seems. Not just seems, but is: 56 per cent of New Yorkers are non-white, compared to 41 per cent of Londoners. That shifts the sense of your surroundings. It lessens the notion of majorities and minorities. Instead, the experience is one of a mix – genuine multiculturalism – exacerbated both by a tourist's eye and the city's cultural geography.
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Monday, October 23, 2017

Worth a Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

Midnight Rider Case: CSX Wants New Trial; Sarah Jones Family Fights It

Deadline: CSX is asking for a new trial after losing a civil case this past summer to the parents of Sarah Jones who was killed on a GA train trestle in 2014 while filming the Greg Allman biopic Midnight Rider, and the deceased camera assistant’s family filed a brief earlier this week to try to stop it.
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Equity Announces Major Change to Membership Candidacy Program

Backstage: On Tuesday, the nation’s union for stage actors and stage managers, Actors’ Equity Association, announced a change to their Equity Membership Candidacy program (EMC). The statement, emailed out to suitable candidates, explained that in 2018 the EMC program would be relaunched. The biggest shift? The amount of weeks a candidate would have to accrue before being offered membership to the union.
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How costumers are using cosplay to overcome disabilities

The Verge: One of the most beautiful things about New York Comic Con this past weekend was the diverse array of attendees at the four-day celebration. New York’s Jacob Javits Convention Center and its surrounding streets were filled with children, senior citizens, couples, families, seasoned cosplayers, self-proclaimed “blerds” (a portmanteau for “black nerds”), and everyone in between. It was hard to not be moved by the inclusive nature of the event, where thousands of people came to express their fandom for whatever character or property they identify with, whether that meant simply watching the crowd, or arriving in elaborate costumes they crafted themselves.
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Climate Change Theatre Action is held at NU for first time

dailynorthwestern.com: To Communication senior Isadora Porte, theater can be more than just a performance — it can be a call to action, too.

Porte and other Northwestern students will get together Sunday to present Climate Change Theatre Action at NU, one of more than 200 theatrical performances in a biennial global series aiming to provoke dialogue and action toward climate change.
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Australian Government Wants to Give Satire The Boot

Electronic Frontier Foundation: The National Symbols Officer of Australia recently wrote to Juice Media, producers of Rap News and Honest Government Adverts, suggesting that its “use” of Australia’s coat of arms violated various Australian laws. This threat came despite the fact that Juice Media’s videos are clearly satire and no reasonable viewer could mistake them for official publications. Indeed, the coat of arms that appeared in the Honest Government Adverts series does not even spell “Australian” correctly.
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Worth a Look - Weinstein

There were dozens of articles in this vein last week...

'Casting Couch': The Origins of a Pernicious Hollywood Cliché

The Atlantic: The chorus of condemnation against Harvey Weinstein, as dozens of women have come forward to accuse the producer of serial sexual assault and harassment, has often turned on a quaint-sounding show-business cliché: the “casting couch.” Glenn Close, for instance, expressed her anger that “the ‘casting couch’ phenomenon, so to speak, is still a reality in our business and in the world.”
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Sarah Polley: The Men You Meet Making Movies

NYTimes.com: One day, when I was 19 years old, I was in the middle of a photo shoot for a Miramax film when I was suddenly told it was time to leave. I was wearing a little black dress, showing a lot of cleavage, lying seductively on my side and looking slyly at the camera. The part I had played in the movie, “Guinevere,” could not have been more removed from this pose. My character was an awkward girl, bumbling, in fact, who wore sweatshirts and jeans, and had little sense of her sexual power. But this was how they were going to sell the movie, and at a certain point, I was tired of being a problem, which is how a female actor is invariably treated whenever she points out that she is being objectified or not respected.
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The Protection Racket

jezebel.com: On Wednesday morning, BuzzFeed published a thinkpiece publicly revealing the fleeting existence of a list that began circulating among women in the media Wednesday afternoon, and was gone by Wednesday evening (a copy seemed to reappear late Thursday afternoon). Put briefly, the list, called Shitty Media Men, had roughly 70 names of men in the industry who were alleged to have engaged in a range of bad behaviors, from “creepy DMs” to allegations of sexual harassment, assault, and rape.
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Sex, Lies, and the Issue that's Larger than Harvey Weinstein

Cultural Weekly: Every time a character is killed in The Hateful Eight, Quentin Tarantino’s revisionist Western distributed by The Weinstein Company in 2015, blood and butchery splatter across Jennifer Jason Leigh’s expectant face. Tarantino stages these violent outbursts, and the degradation of the female lead, for gleeful male laughter. The residue on Leigh’s face is a porn trope: blood substitutes for semen. To promote the film when it opened, distributor Harvey Weinstein cajoled People Magazine into heavy coverage.

In microcosm, that’s the larger context for the past weeks in Hollywood — because Hollywood is just part of a pervasive cultural fabric that interweaves the complex relationship between business and art, studios and talent, power and media, men and women, entertainment product and sexual assault.
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Hollywood's Female Crewmembers Suffer Harassment Without the Platform of Stardom

Hollywood Reporter: The problem is endemic below the line too, where women are working in crafts long dominated by men only to face abuse: "We don't have the power that Rose McGowan or Angelina Jolie has."

The accounts of Harvey Weinstein's predatory moves on A-list actresses have generated headlines. But for the growing number of women who work on film and TV shows in a so-called "below-the-line" capacity — on camera and sound crews, in editorial and music departments — such harassment is all too familiar and widespread. And little is being done to stop it.
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