Itamar Moses on Dan Rottenberg's smokescreens

If there's one thing critics and playwrights alike appreciate, it's the critical role of drama in arousing interest in any given subject. And the essence of drama is conflict. So the continuing dialogue between both parties in this site is surely a healthy thing.

In the latest round of this Hundred Years' War, I seized upon a letter from the accomplished playwright Itamar Moses (author of Outrage, Bach at Leipzig and The Four of Us) that complained, among other things, about "fragile and infantile critics." To me it offered an opportunity to discuss a bizarre phenomenon: communicators who blame the audience if their message fails to get across. (See "When a playwright blames his critics.") Several readers took me to task (see March Letters) and Moses himself engaged me in an e-mail colloquy, highlights of which I share with you here.

Itamar Moses to Dan Rottenberg, March 18, 2009

Thanks for publishing my letter. What actually upset me so much about your piece was how misleading it was to the casual reader. To someone coming across it without context, it looks like what happened is I got some kind of bad review and then wrote an angry letter in response to it. We both know this isn't remotely what happened, and yet you published an open letter to me, with my name in the headline, calling me out for "blaming my critics." When of course no one criticized me and I wasn't blaming anybody. And if by "blaming the audience" you simply meant that I criticized critics as a group, and that criticizing people isn't a good way to communicate with them or to get them to change or improve...well...I'll just let the irony of that admonition, coming from a critic, hang in the air...

You're also right about what the substance of the disagreement is: that was my point. There was a crux for this debate that I tried to point out in both of my letters and, yes, that's it. One clarification I'd add to my position is this: I'd make a distinction between content and context. In a review, I agree with you: A critic can write basically anything he or she wants, or can get by the editor, or what have you. As with the art itself, history will sort out what was worthwhile and what wasn't, and trying to stifle plays or responses to plays is counterproductive in all kinds of ways.

But your Manichean view lacks some necessary nuance. Because someone employed as or presenting himself as or otherwise wearing the hat that says "Professional Theater Critic" and writing on, say, the arts page of a newspaper is presenting his work in a particular context.

So if I, Itamar the playwright, privately tell you, Dan, the critic/historian/gadfly, that I think Jim Rutter has been robbing houses, even though I have no evidence of this, that communication has a different valence than if I am a police officer. Even then, though, it may not be a violation of professional standards. But what if I say it publicly at a podium at a press conference, wearing my policeman's uniform? To say that these contexts have no bearing on what is and isn't professionally appropriate is just silly.

Or if we're at a party and I look at a spot on your arm and say, "You should get that mole checked out," I'm just some asshole. But if you know I'm a doctor, the context changes. And if I'm wearing scrubs and we're in my office, then I might need to consider more carefully what I say. So if Jim Rutter calls me on the phone and says, "The Vibrator Play sucks," or even "The Vibrator Play is awesome," there's a difference between that and his publishing it under the banner of an arts publication with a little box that says "Theater Review."

Let's not forget how all this started: Jim Rutter was watching a reading. Not a production. And then he put on his uniform and took out his gun and reviewed it.

Dan Rottenberg to Itamar Moses, March 18, 2009

I'm sorry if you took my column personally. I'm just trying to provoke dialogue, which I believe is the path to truth, which no one can ever fully ascertain. Whether you or I is right or wrong really strikes me as irrelevant. (You may have noticed that among the playwrights who criticized one of my arguments was my own daughter, Julie Rottenberg.) Your original letter obviously stimulated a response on my part that you didn't intend to stimulate, but that's what happens when people read letters (or attend plays). In any case, I do appreciate your participating in our dialogue.

Itamar Moses to Dan Rottenberg, March 18, 2009

I mainly agree with this philosophy with the caveat that, since it can be used as an all-purpose shield, it thus has the potential for abuse. One form of public speech that is not protected, for instance, is slander. I could hire a plane to fly over Philadelphia trailing a banner saying awful things about you and say, "Well, I know that isn't the response you intended to provoke, but that's what I was moved to do by your e-mail." There's a threshold beyond which pleading that kind of innocence is just disingenuous. I'm not suggesting that you crossed that threshold. Merely that it exists.

Oh and: If it wasn't your intent that I take your column personally, you probably shouldn't have entitled it: "An Open Letter To Itamar Moses." Just a thought.

Dan Rottenberg to Itamar Moses, March 19, 2009

You seem to suggest that there is such a thing as "bad" speech. I disagree. Even false or distasteful or "irresponsible" speech has value— first, because it provides insight into the speaker, and second, because it gets bad ideas out in the open where they can be examined in the light of day rather than fester underground.

If a man denies the Holocaust, for example, that tells us something useful about him. The best protection against "bad" speech, I would argue, is not laws against libel and slander but healthy skepticism— which I think the multitude of fallible voices on the Internet helps to promote.

Itamar Moses to Dan Rottenberg, March 19, 2009

Again we basically agree, especially if we draw a distinction between speech that is technically illegal and speech that is "bad" in some larger Judeo-Christian moral/ethical sense, which I would say isn't really for us to judge. And, you're right: Allowing bigots and madmen to expose themselves is overall healthier for society, not least because most of the time restrictions on speech are far more corrosive than the speech they seek to stifle could possibly ever be.

Again, though, I have to say I find something a little disingenuous in the way you leap from the specific to the abstract. Third parties discussing this exchange might very well debate how the questions of free speech play into it. But coming from you, right now, it just seems like a rhetorical smokescreen.

You say something misleading and scurrilous about someone publicly. They object. "But, oh," you say, "are you suggesting there is such a thing as bad speech? Why don't you just reply as part of this free and open forum instead of trying to stifle me?" And now the debate is not about the misleading statement that began it but rather about whether or not I support freedom of speech.

So what I would also say is this. Yes, Dan. The fact that you wrote an "open letter" to me personally with my name in the headline and then linked to it with a line reading, "When a playwright blames his critics"— which is incredibly misleading, since I did nothing of the kind— and then buried my response by linking to it in a way that requires people to scroll down through many letters, one of which is also confusingly by me while not being the response to your essay, thereby making it needlessly hard to find my refutation of your insidious implications about me, any and all of which serve as effective distractions from the actual catalyst for this debate, which was your decision to publish Jim Rutter's review of a staged reading of a play by Sarah Ruhl...? Yes. All of this "tells us something" about you and about the Broad Street Review. And it is, yes, valuable information to have.

Dan Rottenberg to Itamar Moses, March 19, 2009

Points well taken. Ultimately we're a fallible human operation that's just getting its act together and always will be (like most human endeavors), which is why the concept of a cultural high priest (e.g., your "Professional Theater Critic") strikes me as a foolish illusion. Some media may seek to present themselves as authority figures, which is fine. But we're striving for something different and, I think, more honest.