Madison Theatre Company: Angry At Arizona and Tea Party? Come Watch Us Kill Some Conservatives!
An apparently liberal theatre group in Madison, Wisconsin, is playing victim in response to pushback they’ve gotten for putting on a play that has liberal grad students murdering “right-wingers.” Hey, we take jabs at the Left, too, or so goes the claim. But comments from the theatre’s artistic director, Rachel Jenkins-Bledsoe, while marketing the event, provides links to the Tea Party and the Arizona illegal immigration issue. Bledsoe presents the production as an outlet for frustration from the nation’s current Right-turn. One can only imagine the outrage were a Southern religious university to produce a play that had “redneck” Christians killing them a bunch of liberals, while making jokes about themselves in the process….
Why am I thinking that nuance would get lost in any press coverage?
MADISON, Wis. — Religion is at center stage of a new play from Madison’s Mercury Players Theatre that is stirring up controversy over its political tone. “The Last Supper” is provoking more than just strong reviews. The director is getting hate mail. “I did hear that we were compared to Nazis at one point,” said director Doug Holtz.
The “Mercury Players Theatre production is about liberal college students who invite some incredibly conservative guests to dinner and then kill them. “We did contact the police, and they felt that due to the nature of some of the e-mails and responses, that they were so intense that maybe some security would be advised,” said Holtz.
Now, take a look at some local coverage and commentary from Jenkins-Bledsoe of the Mercury Theatre. She is invoking political frustration on the part of liberals as a reason to enjoy the show in which conservatives are murdered. How that suddenly becomes nothing more than a moral discussion once the lights go down and the curtain goes up remains unclear. Obviously, the artistic director is appealing to the worst instincts within her presumably liberal audience to drum up interest in the production. Do Madison liberals sit around and fantasize about killing conservatives? Bledsoe would seem to think so, but then, perhaps she would know, assuming she’s a liberal, too.
In effect, says Mercury’s artistic director, if you are bothered by a presumed Right-shift in America, getting together for some yuks while liberal grad students murder a bunch of Right-wingers should be great fun and just the thing if you’re a Madison liberal! This from The Daily Page:
Liberal grad students have a plan for right wingers, 1/21-2/12, Bartell Theatre’s Drury Stage, showing 8 pm Thursdays-Saturdays and 6 pm Sundays. $15 (talkbacks with playwright Dan Rosen & actress Nora Dunn follow 1/28-29 shows). 661-9696 ext. 5“The Last Supper is a perfect Mercury fit. Mercury strives to keep our art current, poignant, radical and a bit raw — so does Dan Rosen’s The Last Supper. If you have felt helpless and unheard through the outrage of our own culture right now – through Arizona, through the Tea Party, through Madison’s own political turn – then this is the show for you!” said Mercury’s Artistic Director, Rachel Jenkins-Bledsoe.
So much for the New Tone.
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Comments
can't think the unthinkable
Submitted by MidAmerica on Sun, 02/06/2011 - 11:54am.
They refuse to make the connection that it is the obama Whitehouse and the Liberals in Congress that has destroyed the Democrat Party.
MidAmerica,
Submitted by Agnostic on Sun, 02/06/2011 - 12:15pm.
I have to disagree with you slightly on that account. IMHO, what is hurting the Democrat party is exposure to the sunlight from the internet and FOX news. Talk radio - not really that much except as a spring board for the internet and to some degree FOX. It isn't even the conservative part of FOX that is doing the damage but just the slow realization by people that there is another side to the news.
Personally, I try not to blame socialist for their ideas because I believe the main culprit in the world today is the media. Whether because of the infiltration of the media by communist as stated in the communist manifesto or just the natural inclination of people matriculating though the university journalism schools the media's one 'side' fits all reporting has hidden the mistakes and bad ideas of the left for at least three generations now and has done massive damage to the point of view in this country. Some of this is the people's fault for relyig on the media too much. IMO, reading President Obama's books alone would have prevented him from being elected regardless of who you believe actually wrote them. But since the media didn't report on the books except to say how great they are only the people already won over to the ideas of the left and the news junkies on the right were ever exposed to his books.
Bad ideas don't win because people are fooled - bad idease win because people only see one point of view.
agree
Submitted by MidAmerica on Sun, 02/06/2011 - 1:24pm.
The democrats are only popular when they are out of power and can promise the peope rainbows and unicorns. What is happening now with the democrats happened during LBJ, Carter and Bill Clinton's first term. When democrats are actually in power the country revolts against them.
The media has leaned towards democrats ever since Big Media came into existence. And as in any organization you have to go along to get along. It becomes a self perpetuating echo chamber. During the age of Cronkite the news was tempered with the experiences of a generation that had to literally fight to save this country from tyranny and knew the consequences of a country weakened by disunity. Now with the sixties boomers in so many positions of power they have brought along their street protesting shut em down until we get our demands met philosophy into the editorial meetings. To them it's all about their side winning the consequences be damned. The obamacare debacle is a perfect example of their immature win at any cost attitude. The lies,bribes, backroom deals and middle of the night votes appalled the nation. Reminds me of the sixties watching on the news where protesting students have occupied a universities presidents office and are literally trashing the place and dumping files out of the windows. Sounds just like our last congress.
From the onset of television
Submitted by Willis_Leon_Johnson on Sun, 02/06/2011 - 4:25pm.
From the onset of television broadcasting, the 'news' was to be presented as a "Public Service" as a condition of their broadcast license.
Sometime in the early 1960's the rule was changed to allow broadcasters to begin selling advertising during the news casts in order to boost revenues.
SINCE THAT CHANGE the media has taken it upon themselves to promote social and racial unrest in order to boost the viewer numbers and increase their rates to the advertisers.
The media repeatedly showed only selected portions of a video deliberately to enrage the Black Community during the Rodney King incident, and when the evidence showed that there was reasonable cause for the force used by the police, and they were acquitted, the riots ensued as planned by the media.
The media knew that olbammer would be a disaster for The United States and they kept his failures and inabilities quiet and hidden for the electorate in order to reap the windfalls following his failed 'presidency'.
The 'republicans', should they decide to do so, could repeal that original change and require the "news" to be presented as a "Public Service" as a condition of their broadcasting license and REQUIRE that all "OPINION SHOWS" be labelled as such with very stiff penalties for violations up to and including very long prison sentences in 'general population prison environments' for any and all executives responsible for program content.
But HEY! I'm just a mean spirited , cranky old goat that lives in the past.....
End 'gun violence in America' - Require training and MANDATORY "Shall Carry" by every Citizen.
If harry reid is the best person to lead the senate, what does that say about the other 99 senators?
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Submitted by Dave. on Mon, 02/07/2011 - 2:00am.
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Vote for the American in November
The all-too-common murder fantasy...
Submitted by UltraC on Mon, 02/07/2011 - 1:52am.
... seems to be the way they intend to "win" the debate of ideas.
Witness for yourselves
Submitted by HockeyKid on Mon, 02/07/2011 - 9:54am.
the "civil discourse" the libs are supposedly so concerned about in the wake of the Tucson incident. Nicely done, Ms. Hyphenated-Surname et al.
"Beauty is only skin deep, but liberal's to the bone." - me
Actually I've seen this movie.
Submitted by Dotcoman on Mon, 02/07/2011 - 6:32pm.
Actually I've seen this movie. Seriously, there's a movie out there called 'The Last Supper' Pretty funny.
In the movie, it's really about the hypocrisy of Liberalism and snooty young liberals who having been coddled and convinced of their own infallibility choose to look down their noses at the rest of the world, and how they wind up getting their theirs in the end. They showcase a lot of stereo types on both sides and the audience are meant to hate the Conservative (such as they are presented) as loathsome scabs on society, or rather just exactly what our young liberal enlightened college grad students know all Conservatives to be.
And the central message, as always with a group of liberals, is that the end always justifies the means. If you are a Liberal you are superior and thus it is ok to hate anyone not you. That is to say anyone not nearly as smart, thin, now, wow, sexy, cute, hip, stylishly dressed, of obvious good breeding stock of the upper middle class, well educated, as you. And most of all, you just know that its ok to murder them because they make you hate them for not being as enlightened open-minded and non-judgmental as your perfect little self, naturally is.
In the end a conservative talk show host turns the tables on the murderous bastards .
So that said, I kind of sort of find it hilarious that some Libtard group thinks this this story is a hot ticket and wants to run it as a play. The irony totally flies over their own heads on soooo many levels here.
I say kinda sorta; cause they might have had some conservative point out the earlier ironies to these hypocrites and they might have rewritten the damned thing to suit their own agenda.
Regardless, so much for Liberal Socialist Democrat "civility" in Madison post the AZ shooting.
Now it's again ok to put on plays about murdering Conservatives and Christians, for the sole reason, that we don't like them, and "collectively" that makes it ok. Cause you know, everyone hates Conservatives and Christians and the world would be just so much better off with out them. Totally justified, right?
I say let them put on their little play and consider themselves so superior and clever. That is as long as they don't touch the last act and leave it intact.