I
joined the group Theater Tribe thinking it was simply a collection of theater bloggers around the world. I may not have realized what I was getting myself into. I began to get suspicious when I heard of them promoting their "values." At first I just thought it was the value of promoting theater, but I may have been wrong. Turns out Theater Tribe is almost entirely the creation of Scott Walker of UNC-Asheville who has five sets of values he wants to promote for theater (among them are taking the emphasis away from major cities and to produce more of a collective control. I would like better regional theater, of course, but I still think it's worth it to have a few centralized locations to aim for in the theater world - by that standard, should the film world abolish Hollywood?
Perhaps more discouraging is the emphasis on Daniel Quinn's book beyond civilization. Daniel Quinn authored the
Ishmael Trilogy which I have neither read nor heard of until a few days ago. The first Ishmael book was behind the movie
Instinct, a movie that, coincidentally came out within a year of
Battlefield Earth. And while there are multiple "
Ishmael Community" and "
Friends of Ishmael" websites, there's a surprising lack of secondary sources, but lots of absolute, seemingly manufactured praise, which is leaving me even more suspicious. It doesn't help that their websites compares themselves to the Ayn Rand Society, and that Wikpedia tells me that Daniel Quinn has been taken up by the "simplicity movement, the anarchist and the Anarcho-primitivism movement." So before I abolish my associations with the Theater Tribe, please tell me: do I have to promote the "Ideas " (capitalization scares me!) to be a member of the group, or can I just discuss theater with a series of serious and diverse thinkers about the subject, not those united under a single set of beliefs. Frankly,I'm reluctant to stay a part of the group even if members tell me I don't have to agree, but just to stop by, which is exactly what the Jehovah's Witnesses tell you. Because if that's the case, to quote Woody Allen via Groucho Marx via Freud, "I wouldn't want to be a member of any club that would have me as a member."
Labels: cults, theatre tribe, woody allen, wtf
