( heard plays). Esperanto allows the spontaneous creation of neologisms which merely have to make sense and use the right grammatical affixes to be "right". In English I generally prefer the anachronistic term "radio drama" but that's because it's how I first heard it, on hissy going in and out short-wave transmissions from Europe and, at least one occasion I remember, Asia, in a darkened room with only the amber color of the lit up dial and the tubes shining through the ventilation holes in my father's old 1950s era receiver. I'd be afraid it would cause a fire if I tried turning it on now.
Radio or audio drama is the most logical form of theater for Esperanto because a. if you know how to use your digital recorder and have the right mics (not necessarily expensive ones) it is incredibly inexpensive to produce top quality material, b. it focuses on the text, the language and whatever meaning and ideas are contained in it instead of spectacle, c. the spectacle of seen drama, the looks of the actors, the costumes sets, etc. tend to drive down intellectual content and it so often soon looks dated and tacky, d. the wonderful but expensive practice of putting on stage plays for the tiny percentage of the Esperanto community that will be able to be in the audience is impractical as a means of having an Esperanto theater.
I think it's true for any poor, low resourced language group or minority group*. And unlike a stage play, the entire thing can be archived to be heard at any time by any one. It would be nice if the actors, directors, writers and others could be paid for their work but I doubt that's ever going to be done universally. It will be what the arts are, art other than visual art which is sold as an investment opportunity or funding a lavish or high-status performance as a status achievement for the rich, done for the love of it and the desire to communicate.
* Here's an example of a member of a very small minority group, Drag queen - HIV positive - residents of Northern Ireland about whom this piece of theater is made, out of his direct experience on the horrible social media, Grindr. I was skeptical of it the first time I heard it but it gave me so much to think about, especially about various issues of objectification of human beings as the source of so much evil and pain. And how social media has made really horrible people able to terrorize and hurt people by the same means that people try to hook up for casual sex. And how it isn't really what he wants. It is extremely rich in content. It's not your typical TV - Hollywood bull shit.
Alexander Charles Adams - Hi, I’m Mattie (HIM)
This week, Alexander Charles Adams of SMASH/CUT joins me to discuss their piece, “Hi, I’m Mattie (HIM)”.
Matthew Cavan is an actor and drag queen in Belfast, Northern Ireland; he came out about his HIV-positive status in 2010, and has since faced a torrent of criticism, shaming, and even death threats. The piece we’re playing today, “Hi, I’m Mattie”, is a verbatim piece — that is, the script is taken word-for-word from interactions that Mattie had on the gay dating app Grindr, where he discloses his HIV-positive status up-front.
Afterwards, Alexander (the producer of the piece) joins me to talk about the origins of SMASH/CUT, and many other things besides!
Listening to Alexander Charles Adams in the post play discussion talking about his challenging collaboration with a far different person at LSU was interesting. It shows that the extreme separations that the online world seems to exacerbate can be navigated and mitigated and coped with in real life on a human, opposed to an inhuman level. I think the discussion of Grindr points to how it, like gay porn, comes to be destructive and to enhance self-imposed inequality instead of lessening it is excellent. That is inevitable whenever people are objectified, whenever people are treated and considered to be material objects and our experience of social media is long enough so that we know that is a danger of it. It isn't freedom, it is self-oppression.
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