Glad to hear you didn't turn into a department, Ken. Or maybe the Department of Ken might have been an interesting sort of place.
Bill
> On 18 May 2014, at 9:05 pm, Kenneth Wolman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
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> I've been heterosexual my whole life and now I find out I'm oppressing someone if I write about it. This is life played as Moliere.
>
> Maybe kids in my classes in the early Seventies weren't upset by A Doll's House--which really IS a disturbing play. I assigned a rather rude comedy by Michel de Ghelderode, a play called "Pantagleize," about a fashion journalist caught in a political revolution. Ghelderode called it "the farce to make you sad." Problem? Pantagleize's personal servant is a black man named Bamboola. Yep, it's that bad. THAT time I got responses, heated and angry ones. All the students were white. I saw the play at Queens College in 1964, and Bamboola was played by a man from my acting class, Milton Earl Forrest, who really was black. Okay, the play is nasty--but like Christopher Marlowe's plays, it tears at everyone, not just the one black character. It satirizes militarism, business, revolutionaries, and women. It's not NICE. The kids pitched a fit and, I am sure, remember me to this day as that jerk who assigned an offensive play that featured a black character. However, nobody turned me into the Department.
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> I should have taught "The Jew of Malta."
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> Ken
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