ELEMENTARY

Here in my hometown of Greenville, South Carolina there is a local community theatre director who is celebrated...despite his belligerent, unhinged, angry behavior with his volunteer cast and crew.

He is an older gentleman, long in both local college and community theatre. He is a costume designer first and foremost, I believe…a stage manager on occasion, too. He has elevated himself to director perhaps because he thinks that his flair with wardrobe gives him profound directorial vision.

Or maybe he just likes being an autonomous authority figure. Maybe he needs people who will obey him, suffer him, fear him.

I think I’ve seen a play or two he directed—can’t really remember. What I can remember is the staged reading I worked on with him. He was pretentious, self-absorbed, and full of desperate personal insecurities that manifested themselves in boorish tirades about “professionalism” and “old school style.”

He told this story once about forcibly giving an actor something called a “G.I. bath." I still have no idea what that is or what he meant. But he told the story with relish...like a movie Nazi talking about torturing a prisoner.

This man recently spent two months berating, mocking, and attacking my friend Robert who was cast as the lead actor in a play he was directing. This so-called director’s abusive behavior was witnessed firsthand by at least a dozen other crew and cast members, theatre staffers...even the theatre’s executive director. Only one spoke out on behalf of my friend. All others kept their heads in their books and cow-towed to the abusive man’s tirades.

So who cares, right? I mean, there is so much injustice, suffering, and pain in the world. Who cares if some mincing old man barks at a pack of volunteers in some dim, community theatre somewhere in the Deep South?

As long as people are willing to be abused in the name of mediocre community theatre, there will be tiny tyrants happy to oblige them.

I am unsettled by this reality in my community. I am indignant. Abusive men thrive in my community’s arts organizations. Foolish, egotistical, self-absorbed, mean men have become the identity, the spirit of one established community theatre here in my hometown…and that may very well be the case in other local arts organizations as well.

My friend Robert resigned his role in the play after being flattened into submissive nothingness by a cruel, proud, taskmaster. I’m glad he did. But I am livid that the awful human being continues…unchecked.

I did reach out the the theatre's Executive Director. Her response read just like a battered woman in a Lifetime movie:

"I appreciate your concern but please know that we have replaced [Robert] and all is well and the entire cast is now finally thriving and energetic about the show."

So apparently they're thriving, now. Interesting. It appears that the end has justified the means.