Slippery Terminology
"You could not produce a play that was called The Nigger of Alabama, and throughout the entire play call the main character Nigger Joe," argues Joanne Lawrence of Disabled Americans Have Rights Too (DAHRT). She's protesting the Burien Little Theatre's production of The Cripple of Inishmaan, written by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh. Though she hasn't seen the production, Lawrence has read the play and feels it perpetuates prejudices. The able-bodied members of the theater argue that the play raises sensitivity and awareness, which Lawrence finds condescending; she draws a comparison with institutions that put in wheelchair ramps but never consult with people in wheelchairs about where the ramps would be best placed.
But language is slippery. Since starting her protest, Lawrence has received calls arguing that "disabled" is a more harmful term than "crippled." Everyone fights the words that were turned against them--for Lawrence, "I grew up being called 'crippled,' I grew up with names like 'gimp' and 'crip,' I grew up having to go to the 'Kiwanis Crippled Kiddies Camp,' which they don't do today."
However, suppression is not the only response to hate speech. The Philadelphia Theater Company has just produced African American playwright John Henry Redwood's newest work, called No Niggers, No Jews, No Dogs. BRET FETZER
Business Rules
Jeff Bezos, Seattle's Wizard of Oz, has been immortalized by the Billboard Liberation Front, those anonymous pranksters who brilliantly alter advertising. Bezos' face, previously half-smiling benevolently down at a San Francisco intersection on a billboard for Fortune magazine, now sports pennies for eyes next to the slogan, "In the land of the dead, the one-eyed man is king." Traci Vogel
What's Good for Pioneer Square
Keith Tabellione is another one of those bullish out-of-towners who thinks he knows what's good for Seattle. He's so sure, in fact, that he went ahead and built his own little dream project in Pioneer Square: an art gallery called the Lil' Red Shack Gallery (1028 First Avenue South at Royal Brougham Street) attached to 14 studios called the ArtStar Project.
Now Tabellione's vision is being affected by planned post-earthquake changes to Pioneer Square. To facilitate dialogue about these changes, the ArtStar Project will participate in this week's First Thursday art walk with a smash-bang experiment called Destruction/Construction: From 6 to 9 p.m., Tabellione will shovel thousands of pre-cast miniature bricks into the Lil' Red Shack Gallery, where blueprints of Pioneer Square buildings will be pasted to the walls. Until May 12, there is an open invite to people who wish to build a model of the neighborhood as they would have it (hint, hint, displaced artists). Tabellione also plans to set up a steel-plated room where you can tie notes to full-size bricks and shatter them for a little catharsis (hint, hint, displaced artists). Art supposedly processes the conflicts that surround us--or at least we're supposed to process these conflicts through art. Either way, Pioneer Square needs to start seriously processing itself; Destruction/Construction is one response. BRIAN GOEDDE
NY Via Seattle, Via NY
Nick Garrison, the fabulous Seattle actor who moved to New York, then moved back to Seattle to star in the glam-rock Hedwig and the Angry Inch at Re-bar, is now being lured to Chicago. He has reportedly been offered the starring role in the Chicago remount of Hedwig, beginning May 11, and running for 15 weeks. Seattle co-star Sarah Rudinoff notes that the offer was made so suddenly that Garrison will use the costume Adam Arnold designed for the Seattle production, "because there is no time to fit him with new digs." NANCY DREW
