Your Turn: The Blurry Lines Dividing Theater & Journalism
http://thekojonnamdishow.org/shows/2012-03-19/your-turn-blurry-lines-dividing-theater-journalism
The public radio show "This American Life" this weekend admitted to significant errors in a popular piece documenting the manufacturing of Apple products in China. The piece in question was adapted from a one-man theater show about the topic starring Mike Daisey. We explore the blurry lines that divide performance art from journalism, and how the two are bleeding into each other in today's media environment.
Guests
Howard Shalwitz
Artistic Director, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company
Comments
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I've been listening to This American Life. MANY of the shows clearly don't seem to be "fact-based"--they are funny, they are edgy, but I seriously doubt all the entertaining stories are fact-based. That's why I don't understand why they are so upset--I listen to be entertained, not to find out some breaking news story.
--Mike
Did I actually hear your guest say he was not interested in the truth in the theater? So what if someone makes up a story about a little Muslim boy from Kenya going to schools where he learned Marxist-Leninism and then was introduced into the U.S. where he rose to become President? It would all be a big lie, of course, but according to your guy, fully acceptable for presentation as the truth. I think this is reprehensible.
Your second from the last caller apparently did not listen to This American Life on Saturday. Ira Glass clearly stated their regret over the way they handled the event.
Great show. I have no problem with Mike Daisey's narrative as storytelling. Had it merely been presented as such, I would have been moved by it as art and troubled by the underlying issues. BUT Daisey clearly and consciously misrepresented things to Ira Glass. To me that's inexplicable and unethical. I can understand Glass being ticked off.
That being said, even with This American Life's fact-checking, I did a lot of Internet research before signing on to petitions. Even though it was presented as fact, I did take Daisey's story with a grain of salt.
The problem is that Ira Glass did not. That is certainly not his fault--Daisey just plain lied about his own accuracy in the monologue. Big mistake. Artistic license is one thing. Claiming something is accurate when it is not is quite another.
I have been in theater, my family has been heavily involved in theater, including acting, writing and directing. For one member, it was a profession. As a result I was appalled by the the attempts to justify lieing in the context of journalism as justified by/as theater performance, and in at least one comment, because some journalists lie. So appalled, in fact, that I broke a lifetime self-prohibition in that I am posting a comment on line.
Journalism is supposed to be about fact-based truth. Violation of that rule is a violation of the social, if not legal, pact between journalists and their audience. Truth is difficult enough to find and present under the best of circumstances. To justify deliberate falsification, convincingly presented as fact in the journalistic sense, is encouraging deceit and deception with the attendant lost of trust in just about any public information.
Theater is about interpretation, and audiences are invited to accept the underlying truth that the author and cast are trying to present, or to reject it. The honesty between the writers, directors and performers and the audience is part of the trust that everyone involved brings to the event; it is part of the challenge that theater people bring to their craft and to society. Without that trust and challenge, the exercise is devalued and cheap - in the derogatory sense of that word. As a person who values theater I find that highly undesirable.
JJ.