Robert DuSold

So, I watched Tar… I’m not gonna use the slash thingy.. for our purposes it’s Tar without the à because… Tar is easier.

I watched the film in installments.. it took me a week of a half hour at a time.. I have a feeling if I watched it in a theater I would have wanted to grab a coffee or three and kept my eye on the exit.

I found the bingey method worked for me. It’s a sorta clobber you over the head cancel culture morality tale that has one of the best takedowns and framing of the current state of the art that I’ve ever seen.

Cate Blanchett… she of the “let’s do away with acting competitions” while she’s clutching an acting award for dear life, is pretty great in this film.

There’s a scene in the beginning where her character is teaching a master class at Juilliard. She plays a renowned conductor who is obsessed with music.. and herself.. to the detriment of, well, everyone in her little world.

I sorta lived that collateral damage in a past life… in fact I sorta lived this movie in some profound ways.

Anyway, she mixes predation and art and sex and power and gets her comeuppance in the end… in a weirdly on the nose sorta way.

I love that a woman gets to own that in this film. I think that distinction makes all of it a more powerful and relatable dilemma.

That aside, what really struck me is the scene between Tar without a slash and a self described male “BIPOC pansexual” student who refuses to play Bach because he was a “cisgender white male misogynist”.

She starts the scene by asking why he chose Juilliard.. was it to be part of a brand or did he want to learn? From my experience, the commercialization and branding of colleges often supersedes education … even when I went to college.

She…in her hubristic, powerful way tries to open the student up to the possibilities music has to offer and to not frame art in identity or politics… because that limited framing could very easily be applied to him in the future, and also limit his present art.

She basically strips him bare, and demands he just…

Listen to the music.

The scene is packed with so many brilliant lines… here’s a couple that stood out to me:

Siloing what is accessible is curating for the masses.

Don’t be so eager to be offended… the narcissism of small differences leads to the most boring conformity.

As I look at this season on Broadway, the conformity is everywhere… and the result is pretty boring.

So, at the end of the scene.. with surgical precision she reduces the student to his outward, self described identity as a warning really.

Then he storms off and calls her a fucking bitch.

On his way out, she calls him a robot.

Unfortunately,the architect of your soul seems to be social media.

That line is a three course meal. I feasted on it.

The movements that have been born of late.. particularly “WE SEE YOU WHITE AMERICAN THEATER” are reactions to the killing of George Floyd.

The righteous anger is very understandable.. and the villains are cisgender white men.

I’m old enough to have been through the war on me in the 80’s and 90’s .. and I survived the AIDS crisis.

Larry Kramer, a fucking fierce activist and playwright didn’t want to change theater.

He wanted to change the world.. and he did. He fundamentally changed the medical industry in this country, amongst many other things.

He kept writing plays.. fucking brilliant seismic plays…and I feel like the civil rights movements of late are trapped inside the Broadway Bubble and not gaining traction where it matters.

What do we all do with the brutal, targeted killing of Tyre Nichols? The narrative is skewed, and I’m not sure how the Broadway reformations are responding.

I hope it opens up a new understanding of police brutality and lack of training.

We are … all of us… bathed in identity. And I think the obsession that we all have with race and gender and sexuality is not making theater, at least, any better.

The artistic conformity .. and fear really.. is stifling it.

I got another letter… I feel like Monsieur Andre without a slash in “Phantom”.. yes I played that part in the First National but didn’t post pics of me on social media to make it real…from Actors Equity asking if I’d like to be on a disciplinary board to kick members out of the union for “alleged offenses”.

The first thing that popped into my mind was that’s sorta weird because they’re being sued by a producer for defamation who they deemed a racist.

In order to serve on the tribunal, you have to take a course in “unconscious bias” training and also submit yourself to a “personal unconscious bias” assessment.

We all have unconscious biases.

I do wonder if the “unconscious bias” will include visceral, conscious bias to cisgender white dudes… of all varieties, or if that’s just too big of a hill to climb at this moment we seem to be having.

Anyway, I am definitely not the guy for that gig. I’m getting a fractured tooth pulled tomorrow and that sounds more appealing.

You wanna dance the mask, you must service the composer. You gotta sublimate yourself.. your ego, and yes, your identity. You must, in fact stand in front of the public and God and obliterate yourself.