this is leah winklers website

Seems that you guys can’t handle any honesty in reviews. Out of the three reviews that you chose to post as some sort of rebuttal, two of them had to disclose a bias. In other words, don’t worry about using other reviews to counter this negative review–just makes it look like you’re ok with reviews, as long as they provide positive feedback and support.

Based on your email chain it appears that even you acknowledge that “theater is dying” and you acknowledge that this piece was created in response to the lingering death. I didn’t once get the since from his review that he was looking at it from a “white, privileged, yadda yadda” lens. Just seemed like he understood what your intentions were and said that you failed in delivering your message (he clearly gets what the message was), and if anything, you probably hurt your cause of proving theater’s worth–rather than help as you intended.

Also, 3rd paragraph, last sentence, he refers to Vorhees as “video director” and never once says ‘booth guy’ — says board operator in the tech booth at the end — funny how anger can warp words).

You say your cause is to keep alive a theater that is for everyone and not just white, upper middle class (quite specific really) or independently wealthy elites (this to say you’re ok with the dependently wealthy? That is probably a necessary stance in ‘Billyburg’).

Why don’t you work to find ways to bring your theater to these audiences? I can bet you that the less privileged, non-white, non-upper middle class, non-wealthy theater audiences are not attending performances in Williamsburg for $18. (excluding of course the dependently wealthy you serve)

In fact, on the website it says,

“The Brick: for the nerds, outcasts, and mad experimenters of theater. That includes both creators and spectators.”
—Time Out New York

This says nothing about the discriminated, underprivileged audiences which are excluded from the arts. Read over your emails, gather your thoughts and don’t let your anger over one person’s opinion of your show boost your own egos. Your responses end up sounding just as pretentious and snarky as the reviewer with the BFA.

first of all, why are you anonymous? If you’re going to make huge assessments- have the guts to put your name on it.

Second of all, thanks for the comments. We will be using them in the preshow. And thanks for pointing out my typos, very helpful. I’ve fixed them. If you come to the show,  you will see that Snakes simply addresses the unfairness of class division in the theater and the leverage rich theater artists have over poor theater artists with humor and anger. We’re just writing our perspective  that isn’t addressed all the time

Here are my responses to your comments.

Seems that you guys can’t handle any honesty in reviews. Out of the three reviews that you chose to post as some sort of rebuttal, two of them had to disclose a bias. In other words, don’t worry about using other reviews to counter this negative review–just makes it look like you’re ok with reviews, as long as they provide positive feedback and support.

Actually, we love honesty in reviews. That’s why we made such a big deal out of this one and wrote about it.  It’s an interesting debate. And of course every artist loves positive reviews. Do you not expect artists to defend their work?

Based on your email chain it appears that even you acknowledge that “theater is dying” and you acknowledge that this piece was created in response to the lingering death. I didn’t once get the since from his review that he was looking at it from a “white, privileged, yadda yadda” lens. Just seemed like he understood what your intentions were and said that you failed in delivering your message (he clearly gets what the message was), and if anything, you probably hurt your cause of proving theater’s worth–rather than help as you intended.

We assessed that he was looking at it from a “white priveledge, yadda yadda” lens ( thank you for making it sound like criticizing white privilege, which is a huge issue in this country- a country founded on slavery is a bad thing) because we looked at his bio and he’s a white dude who went to NYU. Theres nothing wrong with being a white dude who went to NYU- but it did piss us off that a white dude from NYU was lecturing to us, a group comprised of a female, a minority female, a gay male and admittidly- a privileged white dude (chases) – about petty narrative structure without addressing the message of class. I see how that can read as immature, but that’s how we felt. Can’t help it.
Again, why are you posting this as an anonymous person? Are you the guy who reviewed us? It says from your IP address that you are from Cincinnati. Wish you could come see our show and you’ll see what I mean.

Also, 3rd paragraph, last sentence, he refers to Vorhees as “video director” and never once says ‘booth guy’ — says board operator in the tech booth at the end — funny how anger can warp words).

Thanks for pointing that out! I’ll fix it in the blog post that he refers to Vorhees as board operator in the tech booth ( which is also incorrect btw).

You say your cause is to keep alive a theater that is for everyone and not just white, upper middle class (quite specific really) or independently wealthy elites (this to say you’re ok with the dependently wealthy? That is probably a necessary stance in ‘Billyburg’).
Why don’t you work to find ways to bring your theater to these audiences? I can bet you that the less privileged, non-white, non-upper middle class, non-wealthy theater audiences are not attending performances in Williamsburg for $18. (excluding of course the dependently wealthy you serve) In fact, on the website it says,“The Brick: for the nerds, outcasts, and mad experimenters of theater. That includes both creators and spectators.”—Time Out New York. This says nothing about the discriminated, underprivileged audiences which are excluded from the arts. Read over your emails, gather your thoughts and don’t let your anger over one person’s opinion of your show boost your own egos. Your responses end up sounding just as pretentious and snarky as the reviewer with the BFA.

I don’t know if it’s an necessary stance in ‘billyburg”. I live in Queens. I am an Asian American female artist who comes from a poor family. Do you really want to pass those kinds of judgements on me? My demographic is excluded from the arts. I am living proof that theater is for people like me and not just the elites. This is why I fight for us and same with Teddy- who grew up in a cockroach infested house and Lindsay, who I wont speak for- but has been through shit you can’t imagine.  I guarantee you that ETG’s audiences are differentfrom the theater crowd, because we do reach out to them. Chase is a white male from the middle class ( growing up with more money than us) and he still believes in this message. You can judge us all you want, but we’re not the hipsters you wish we were.

Why don’t you work to find ways to bring your theater to these audiences? I can bet you that the less privileged, non-white, non-upper middle class, non-wealthy theater audiences are not attending performances in Williamsburg for $18. (excluding of course the dependently wealthy you serve)

Actually, we do. We gave away 24 tickets the other day to people who couldn’t afford it, and have been offering discount codes left and right for $12 tickets. And $18 is a bargain- just as much as a movie. You can ask anyone who comes sees our shows, that ETG theater goers are not typical theater goers because we do make a huge effort to reach out.

Anyway, thanks for commenting. I’m glad we touched a nerve.
Come see our show if you can!

From Teddy Nicholas:

First of all, the only reviews we had were yours and the ones we posted, and two of those were written by friends of the company. We can’t help it if those are the only reviews published on the internet so far and of course we’re going to use them anyway we can because that’s what a theater company does: Use reviews to reflect the audience’s reactions/perceptions of the piece.

Theater is a dialogue, not only with the audiences and critics, but with the mediums around it, including film, TV, music, and, of course, the internet. So we are glad when we have any reviews/feedback to us especially posted anonymously in comments on Leah’s personal blog to respond to because we enjoy continuing the discussion.

We created the piece out from a place of love and frustration: Love for theater and film, love for storytelling and exploring narrative, love for science fiction genres and over-the-top performance. Frustration because we are poor, struggling theater artists who couldn’t even make our budgetary goal from our fundraiser for our entire season of programming (we asked for $6,000 on IndieGoGo and didn’t quite make it (even though plenty of lovely and wonderful supportive friends and family contributed as much as they could and we thank them wholeheartedly) which is A LOT of money to us but not as much as a lot of other companies ask for in our downtown-DIY-theater community, and we produce work consistently).

So yes, there’s a sort of dichotomy of emotion and thought behind the creation of Flying Snakes in 3-D, but we also felt the two were complimentary with each other: We didn’t want to just create the science fiction narrative we were excited to make because it was fun and quirky and make people laugh, but we also didn’t want to be preachy and mopey about being poor and how unfair it is that we live in an economy that values trashy entertainment over thought-provoking, boundary-pushing work. So we combined the two and we felt the balance was well but obviously Mr. Mraz felt the work was imbalanced, which is fair, maybe our fast-paced dialogue raced too far ahead of him to catch up to us, or perhaps the meta-narrative devices were a little too confusing (although it’s not as complicated as the movie Inception, which by the way we make reference to with the music (something Mr. Mraz also failed to catch)).

And of course theater is dying. Look at the vast number of theaters closing because they can’t make their yearly budgets. Look at the number of grants that are decreasing year after year because the government would rather fund another war against an idea or bailout a financial institution that ultimately sets the economy back even further, instead of pouring money into something that might actually help stimulate discussion, as we are doing now, and bring communities together.

Do you think we don’t want to bring our work to other communities? Of course we do. We would love the opportunity to showcase our works to other venues, cities, countries, etc. BUT WE CAN’T AFFORD IT! DUH! THAT’S WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT!

And if it sounds like we hurt our cause of proving theater’s worth, and intentionally failed, then maybe that’s true, but it’s only because there’s isn’t a simple explanation. How can you reason why you feel passionately about an idea when you struggle to correctly articulate it to begin with?

Of course all of these issues are addressed in our show which sounds to me like you haven’t seen. What’s confusing to me is how Mr. Mraz seems to understand these points we’re making and yet writes this review where he doesn’t seem to allow those thoughts or ideas to sink in, nor does he seem willing to answer any of the questions we pose to the audience with this play.