Today's Pet Peeve (A Continuing Series)

Today's pet peeve is people who are assholes and don't respect artists or art enough to express their disagreement with the art/ists in non-destructive ways. I'm specifically referring to the horrible incident at Mike Daisy's performance of "Invincible Summer" at American Reperatory Theatre in which a group of 87 audience members stood up and left in the middle of his performance, one of them dumping a glass of water on the original outline that he uses to structure his unscripted show. Apparently it was a school group who didn't do a very good job researching what they were going to see and they were offended by the language he was using. It makes me sad, not only because they were rude, aggressive and physically destructive, but because Daisy's performance, which I saw this winter at the Public, is so raw and emotional and funny and challenging, and I think that if they had stayed they would possibly have gotten a lot out of it.

Much has been said about protesting styles and free speech and all of that in the wake of this incident. Sure, of course, Daisy has the right to say what he pleases in his performance. And surely the audience members have the right to stand up and leave if they don't like the performance (you know you all have done it), but even if it was only one kid that made the choice to destroy Daisy's art by ruining the outline, there is something disturbing about a culture of disrespect that allows that decision to be made. Not only did this person feel that he had the right to walk away from something he didn't like or understand, he felt he had the right to destroy it as well.

So my pet peeve is assholes.

Watch the video clip HERE and read Mike Daisy's comment on the situation HERE.