No, you're not in the wrong place. The webring memberships you see below once belonged to an amateur improvisational theatre forum. Nobody ever dropped by the board, so the concept was radically rethought. In part, it has been broadened to include writing and non-improvisational theatre. Given how many people enjoy doing two or three of the above, and how entangled these interests can become, this seemed to be a natural extension of the concept of the old board. Given the amateur playwright's difficulties in casting, and the actor's eternal troubles in finding roles to perform, a little networking might prove useful for all involved. Also, there was some perception that those looking at the pages might be unclear as to what kind of crowd to expect, and so some effort has been made to be a little more specific about that. The webring memberships have been recycled in response to reconception, and the pages set up for the old forum have been, as well.
Let's start with an understanding - this board is not here to provide free advertising for established fiction reading events. In part, I suppose that this might be because one of those events left a really foul taste in my mouth. Maybe so,
but those events can promote themselves without the assistance of my little free bulletin board. This board is for somebody who'd like to get a few people together to do a little Improv by the point at Fullereton, read some fiction in the Bourgeois Pig, or something casual like that. What we will be doing is not High Art, nor is it intended to be. If one needs a manifesto statement, let's say that it's a small attempt to contribute to the building of a folk literary and theatrical tradition in the area, making the arts back into something done by the people, not just by a self-described elite.
In this particular case, "the people" are relatively well educated. Why not? People in general like to be able to socialise with their own kind, and grad students and professionals are no exception to this rule. I don't claim or demand boundless knowledge of our cultural heritage, but it is only fair to say that the GED crowd won't feel any more at home at one of our events, than a mathematician would feel if he were to drop by Slugger's. A lot of people spent the PC era making pleasant noises about the need for inclusiveness, but the reality is that as much as we may try to put on an act and pretend otherwise, we don't all get along together, and as much as we may try to fake it, we aren't really moving in that direction, so let's forget the political correctness and get back to reality. If you're not a well-educated professional or headed in that direction, this won't be the crowd for you. Nor - and pardon my bluntness - is there any reason why it should have to be. In the case of our hypothetical mathematician in Sluggers, nobody is going to be expected to go out of his way to make the guy feel welcome. Fair is fair, kids. "Regular folks" have their own places to be, so for them to complain about our "elitism" or "snobbery" because we want places of our own would be purely hypocritical. Which is to say that this topic is closed to further discussion, and I would ask you to either respect that fact or depart. We're not here to fight with the terminally argumentative, and I won't hesitate to show such people the door.
(For obvious reasons, yes, you will need a password for this forum. To get one of those, drop by the guestbook for Twilight, and submit a post requesting an appointment. Yes, in person. Please be sure to include a link to a current photo of yourself, so that I'll be able to recognize you when we meet, probably in a near north side coffeehouse. I insist on screening people in person, to weed out some of the more unpleasant individuals one tends to run into online).
Relaxation is what all of this should be about, and that really does tie in to the "folk art" aspect of what I'd like to see people doing here. I remember an instructor I had who spoke, with a slight undertine of anger, about people who'd put on a performance and alter his words, and his willingness to use the force of copyright law to put an end to that. His privilege, perhaps, but I must admit to having a few reservations about such a stance. The plays of Shakespeare, I understand, were often not completely original works, but brilliant reworkings of material that, in the man's day, would have been out in the public domain, the concept of "copyrighting" still being off in the future. Much of the beauty of the pre-modern artistic traditions of the West came from things that were traditions, with each building on what had gone before him. I can understand that some writers will feel that their work is part of them, but if no writer ever sets ego aside, what becomes of the possibility of any part of the United States developing the kind of rich folk tradition that our ancestors built on? At what cost does the self-assertion come?
Maybe this is part of the importance of the fact that what we're doing at these events is not our life - we're not so deeply invested in what we're doing that we can't set the egos aside, and just have a good time. If that sounds like what you're looking for, the forum lies ahead.
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