I woke up today (ridiculously early) feeling vaguely annoyed and a bit sad. I stayed in bed for a moment after turning of my persistent alarm and tried to look back into my dreams from the previous night. I wanted to sort out whatever this feeling was, where it was coming from and what had happened to me in my dreams. This is a new ritual I perform in the mornings as I have come to believe that my dreams have a rather large impact on what I feel like, emotionally, when I wake up. The feeling tends to linger and I find I have a hard time focusing on the present moment until I acknowledge what I dreamt about the night before. The most common emotions I awake with are the feelings of relief and wonder when I have dreamt that I finally found the hair brush I lost last week or the book I was looking for the day before. This triumphant feeling pervades until I realize that I haven’t found that book in my waking life.
Today, I opened my eyes to a feeling of sad resolution. As I searched my unconscious, I realized that my subconscious had been running through memories of the past two months of my acting class I have been taking every Sunday. I had been taking stock of all the moments in class when I felt offended, demeaned and saddened. At some point while I was dreaming about these re-created moments I came upon a feeling of clarity. I shall have to go back and tell you about this class and what it has entailed.
Early in the year I was feeling like a lazy actor, my acting muscles were weak and I was out of shape. I received an e-mail from someone who used to have a theater company here in New York. I had seen him act and knew that he was relatively successful. He was teaching an 8 week acting course, we would work on scenes, monologues and we would “have fun”. I signed up. I memorized the monologue he requested and showed up that first Sunday night all bright and shiny.
The past eight weeks have been a test of my patience and a lesson in integrity. The class consists of 6 women and 3 men. Two men over 40 and one in his 30’s, the women range in age from 17 to late 40’s. The first scene he assigned the beautiful 17 year old girl was from The Boom Boom Room, a 1960’s drama by David Rabe about a young girl , Chrissy, who works as a go-go dancer in a skanky club. She has vague memories of sexual abuse from her father and a mother who wanted her aborted ; the play follows her as she struggles through relationships with a cast of seedy characters, who expose her to drugs, violence and more abuse. The scene in which my teacher (let’s call him Jim) chooses for her and her partner is one where Chrissy is ‘dancing’ for men at the club, comes backstage and is propositioned by one of the other dancers (an older woman) and Chrissy entertains the idea of a lesbian relationship. The second time the scene was done, the young actress wore a costume: a stripper’s outfit (platform heals, hot pants and a bra) and simulated a lap dance for the first part of the scene. After the scene was finished, Jim asked a man in class what he thought, at which time he replied, “I liked the first five minutes!” My teacher laughed, the 17 year old giggled and everyone seemed to chuckle knowingly. Jim asked the other older man what he thought of the scene “It was great!”. Laughs all around. I was speechless. I was creeped out. As the next few weeks on the scene was worked on, no mention was made about the character’s fragility, her history of abuse, her disturbingly low self-worth. In fact Jim even made the comment one day in class, “All women are strippers.” I responded, “What does that mean? That’s a bit offensive don’t you think?” “I think 90 percent of attractive females in New York have worked in the sex industry in one form or another. I bet you money this is true.” He said.
“I don’t think so. I don’t know any women personally in New York who have worked in the sex industry..”
“Yeah, because they wouldn’t TELL you.” Laughing.
I looked around the room in horror. No one seemed to mind. One woman in class, in her mid thirties attempted to speak up. But it seemed like a lost cause.
The teacher asks one of men in class, “Hey, don’t you think that 90 percent of attractive women in New York have worked in the sex industry at one point or another?” he cornered him.
Mid-thirties guy stumbles, “Uh, I don’t know. I think 90 percent is a little high…”
I was dumbfounded. What were we really talking about? What was the point of that inane comment? It struck me later that 50-90 percent of women who are sex workers are victims of childhood sexual abuse and the percentage is the same for non-sexual physical abuse. Compared to the general population, women in the sex industry suffer significantly higher rates of rape and violent assault, drug addiction, domestic abuse, depression and post traumatic stress disorder. I guess that is why his flippant comment struck me as offensive. At the time I could not put together these thoughts, I was so offended that I could not respond with words. He insinuated that most women secretly wanted to be strippers; like it’s a secret aspiration for all women to get paid to take off their clothes. But the idea that for many women it wasn’t a much of a choice or a dream job, but a result of mental and emotional childhood damage was ignored. Even when it was right there in front of him in The Boom Boom Room.
The next class he had one of the men work on a monologue from a play where the character, an edgy stand-up comedian describes how he rapes a dead girl because it felt too good not to. He describes in detail how he gets his penis stuck inside her and how this is ‘an awkward situation’. My teacher’s instruction is to perform this piece as if he is seducing all the women in the room and the way to do this is to behave ‘like you are the funniest, sexiest guy in the room but not give a shit if anyone is laughing at your jokes’. He called it “maliciously seductive”. The actor, who is a stand-up comedian, said after he did this monologue “Gee, huh..the females in the audience are like…huh, what’s this guy talking about?!” Interesting, I didn’t know having sex with dead people was a guy thing. This was cause enough for me to feel uncomfortable yet my instructor took it to another level.
“You know, when I played this part women would walk out of the theater! Ha! You know what I did? I followed them out. I would follow them out of the theater, down the stairs – saying the monologue the whole time! And one time, this girl who I did the play with said ‘Hey, you shouldn’t do that! Her boyfriend could be in the mafia or something and come after you.’ And I said ‘You can’t worry about stuff like that’!” He said, his chest puffed up proud as a peacock.
My mind went blank at his moment. I anticipated what I would receive had I spoken up – “That’s what brutal theater IS! Is that too real for you?”.
My guess would be that the women who walked out of the theater were rape victims who didn’t really want to sit through rape jokes. Or perhaps they were just women who, like me, felt sicker and sicker with every word and just needed to leave. Either way, my teacher thought it was so cool and badass to follow these women out of the theater. How strange! I thought stand-up comedians were supposed to make people (not just men) laugh, not run in fear and disgust.
I recently found a video of Patsy Rodenburg, a brilliant acting teacher; she said something that really struck me. It nearly took my breath away because I felt that she was talking to me personally. She was speaking about how many teachers teach with cruelty and how she was very frustrated by it. She brings up a central theme in Shakespeare: the abuse of power. She states how ironic this seemed; that there are people teaching Shakespeare who misuse their power.
Thankfully, I have only one more class to get through. Exactly half of me is filled with the feeling that some injustice has occurred and that these offences should not go unanswered. The other half of me, the part of me that woke me up this morning, feels deflated and sad that disrespectful behavior towards women is more common place than I believed. Or wanted to believe. Fighting it may be more like climbing a hundred foot brick wall; I will most likely exhaust myself, get hurt and not make much progress. I have made it known, perhaps too subtly, that I don’t appreciate disrespectful comments about women, even if it’s a joke. In fact more so when it’s supposed to be funny as I believe humor at times is used to hide violence towards women. How many times have I heard ‘Can’t you take a joke?’ Not when it’s meant to make devaluing women more socially acceptable. When there is cruelty involved I find it hard to laugh.
For the most part I remain quiet. I take it in and I am amazed. I am humbled. I am deeply saddened. Perhaps I am more fortunate than I thought; I have many men in my life who respect and honor me. Perhaps I don’t know how to fight this battle. Perhaps there is a sense of shame in showing one’s anger. Perhaps I have not figured out how to separate the two. And even that feels shameful. How does one fight sexism? How do you fight an idea? I admire people who find their strategy. I wish I could shamelessly find mine. But it seems like whole lot of work for one sexist asshole, doesn’t it?
Someone said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.”
I am a believer. It’s yet to be seen if I am a fighter.
