no. no more goddamn mamets.

Nowhere in 2017 thus far has the reactionary liberal mindset endemic to the blandly well-meaning, pro-"diversity" mainstream theater community been on display than within the wake of a HowlRound piece calling for a moratorium on producing David Mamet (and Neil LaBute, though this has been ignored for reasons discussed below). What follows is not a defense of that article as such; I acknowledge the article has its rhetorical flaws, and even those few who agreed with the fundamental premise have been forced to clarify the article's position. However, the reactions to this simple ultimatum, "No More Mamets," has, again, revealed the central obstacles to building a true theater of solidarity as the community currently exists.

Playwrights, directors, critics, artistic directors, producers, actors, agents, and everyone who does a combination of all the above took one glance at this article and smashed their brains into their own skulls in the rush to decry such a fascistic position as "Stop producing David Mamet plays." "You call for censorship!" they cried, those "activists" who support "gender parity" on stages and earnestly hashtag #TonysSoWhite (except, of course, 2016's Hamiltonian year, during which these same guardians of the culture smugly proclaimed the strength of diversity in the theater when compared to its vastly more profitable feudal lord, the Oscars). Perhaps we can expect these purportedly well-meaning humans to react thusly; many of these people still host a facebook profile pic with the Hillary campaign logo superimposed over their own body. However, even from further left comrades, the response has been astonishingly reactionary. 

The argument for continuing to produce Mamet's plays seem to fall into three categories.

1. They are "good plays," even if we acknowledge they have sexist/racist/homophobic/capitalist under- or overtones. 

2. We agree they are sexist/racist/homophobic/capitalist, but what you demand is censorship, which is unequivocally bad, and you are skirting fascism! 

3. Either of the above, PLUS, like, if you think Mamet is bad, write your own plays and produce those so we have more theater in general, and Mamet's plays become one perspective in a beautiful coalition of all perspectives, and then everybody decides for themself what's good or not. 

To these fallacies of logic I cannot but directly respond, and categorically refute.

First, to declare anything as "good," to decide that certain works of art hold "truths" that may, or even should, be witnessed and absorbed by citizens, is to reject entirely the work of dialectical materialism. In fact, such a tautological definition of "good" particularly when discussing a form of art is to align oneself with the status quo. It is the basic work of capitalism to use culture to reproduce itself, the Ideological State Apparatus as opposed to the overtly repressive, less effective force of violent mechanisms such as the police or jurisprudence. To decide that certain works of art have "goodness" within them, whether it be because the works are what we consider to be structurally pleasing, to reflect some sense of ourselves back to us, to merely delight or offer catharsis, is to slough off the imperative work of constantly examining the political operations of that art, and the conditions within which the art was created and continues to operate. It is undeniable that "goodness," by which we are again discussing a variety of possible manifestations of that term, be it moral, structural, etc., has shifted over the years even within the arrested development of American theater. We no longer allow, for example, white people to portray black people by darkening their faces. Where once such entertainment was considered "good," even occasionally very progressive depending on the individual portrayal of the character, we now all agree that in fact that wasn't good at all, but instead Very Bad. Even in arenas where this practice is still in use (see: the Met Opera's recent productions of Othello), the consensus is it's not something that should be allowed. To the "goodness" of the tightness of Mamet's structure, I roll my eyes and charge thee, only mildly in jest, with cultural imperialism. Structural aesthetics of Western drama (i.e. white drama), simply because it has evolved into what we are all used to (i.e. via white supremacy into cultural hegemony), does not imbue those works of art with "goodness"; merely it's what we're used to, how we've been consuming the narrative form since Aristotle. If you don't believe this, consider the Indian natya (drama), which traditionally would be performed for the better part of a day, with audience members free to enter and exit as they liked. Or the last time you sought out and responded to a traditional Noh performance. We can watch it and respect it, admire it, champion it, but do we bestow upon it the value of "good theater"?

Second, those who admit to the problems of a Mamet play, which is to say admit they are little more than spectacles of violence that one finds revolting, but calling for an end to any specific art is censorship. Categorically it is not. Censorship, by definition, can only be committed by the state. A private, mass-citizen rejection of another citizen's work is not censorship. The private citizen, even a coalition of private citizens, has no power to enforce censorship. They cannot establish a formal, political committee by which they allow certain works to be published or produced and deny others that right, and have their decisions enforced by repressive powers such as are at the disposal of government (imprisonment, execution, the stripping of civil and human rights). No one is arguing that Mamet's works should be burned by local or federal governments; no one is saying Mamet's writing instruments, be they Macbook, typewriter, pen and paper, or human blood scribed on walls with fingertips, be forcibly removed from him. No one, in fact, is even suggesting these works shouldn't be freely available at the library, on the internet (though Mamet himself may issue cease and desists to rival the Disney corporation), or anywhere literature is to be found (the Amazon bookstore?). What we are saying is the average citizen, be it the artistic director, the actors, the director, the theater subscribers, the interns, must each for herself demand a moratorium on the presentation of this type of work. We must do what citizens in resistance have always done, which is to wield our purchasing and labor powers, minimal as they are, to stop the spread of ideas that promote harm, or actually in fact enact harm (see: the Chicago theater scandal where many actresses were literally assaulted during the production of plays that presented males performing violence towards women, and these productions were given glowing reviews for their ferocity, courage, and verisimilitude). Such a stance is not fascistic but a humanistic imperative; in the way the alt-right is real but the alt-left is not. The ideologies are diametrically opposed, and politics is not a fucking merry-go-round, it's a straight-line current through human existence, and culture is not a facsimile horse on the turntable but a tidal jet.  

One argument which I've seen quite less of, but was brought up by a dear comrade who has no particular personal connection to David Mamet plays but has "enjoyed" Mamet's works in the past, is that the sexism/racism/homophobia etc. so obvious in Mamet is its own indictment of those elements in society. Mamet, in other words, is the exemplar of toxic masculinity, a caveat auditor for that man (most men) who might feel the impulses of Mamet's men within himself. To this I say, Donald fucking Trump is president. "Toxic masculinity" has ascended, publicly, performatively, to the highest positions of global power. In this moment, a Mamet play is in no possible way anything other than a pale imitation of the world that currently exists. Warn of toxic masculinity, you say? Warn who? There is no one left to warn, and there is every one of those men enacting their real-life toxicity on everyone else. 

Finally, much has been made of the precarity of the theater itself. We shouldn't stop producing any kind of theater, when so little of it exists in the first place, and bringing it to life is a struggle for even the most splashy, popular-entertainment forms of the medium. Sure. This is a valid, potentially leftist perspective (though many who make it aren't doing so from a foundation of the necessity of redistribution, but in a reification of the status quo, the fear that cutting the "popular" kinds of theater will trickle down into cutting the already diminished "other" kinds). In accepting this premise, though, we must counter by saying only after the revolution. Indeed, in today's theatrical establishment, we should fight hardest for no more Mamets because of the scarcity of resources. Because as long as we, the artistic directors and directors and actors and consumers, allow Mamets et al to consume the resources of our stages, we simultaneously exclude writers whose work may be equally "good," but rejects (or at least does not actively engage in) the sexist/racist/homophobic acts of much of the heretofore unchallenged canon. When all perspectives are equally presented onstage, from writers, directors, performers of all identities and all political positions, then we may present Mamets to our hearts' content, as his and his ilk will no longer be the overwhelmingly dominant voice but one among a multitude, and the audience of new masses will receive all viewpoints and may engage critically with the delight of gluttonous feasters at a banquet, facing some dishes they may not personally enjoy but find more than enough of a fulfilling meal among others.

The sense one overwhelmingly has from reading hundreds of comments and responses to a single article arguing for the exact same things these people purport to desire i.e., "feminist, 'not-racist,' diversely representational" theater, is that calling any plays, or playwrights, unworthy of production is utterly taboo. It's the every-perspective-is-valid nonpolitics of contemporary Democrats; the non-feminism of a call for "inclusion" of all women, the Taylor Swift/Lena Dunham brand of equality, where the unequal social structure doesn't have to change so long as females, both cis and trans, svelte and heavy, have equal access to market competition. This is, assuredly, a result of yes, that most "theater" people are, like most Dems everywhere, entrenched in the mindset of decades of across-the-aisle Democratic governance, the Enlightenment view of politics as rational discourse rather than the Machiavellian power struggle wielded by the Republicans. But also it's a result of neoliberal market forces on the theater itself: theater is a world financially precarious; outside of tech-driven modernity; utterly, in its current commercial iteration, undemocratic, with an elite few producers and artistic directors at the top dictating what ascends while pitting those at the bottom against each other in a battle for time, resources, space, with an entire middle class of agents, literary managers and assistants, artistic associates (who are not themselves compensated appropriately, but are paid in the illusion of importance) acting as the swinging saloon door into the antechambers of possibility. In such a world, speaking out against anything other than the most generic forms of oppression could mean insulting someone. It could mean, in a cultural moment saturated in "positive vibing," "self-care," posting-as-activism, that one's negativity towards something is a negativity towards everything. 

By refusing to deeply, truly interrogate our darlings, and to unsentimentally cast them out when they are found wanting, or worse--we will be killed by them. The theater will continue to remain a place of hard-scrabble scarcity, while those few in power remain in power, and the masses below reinforce the hierarchy by accepting all art, all cultural product, as valid, noble, an antidote to physical, political, lived oppression and refusing to see such art's complicity with that oppression.