"Silence of Malachi Ritscher"

"we will be sure his sacrifice was not made in vain"

By performing the play only 10 times and then burning the script to ensure that it will never be seen again?

Obviously his message isn't an important one?
If I were making a 'sacrfice' in hopes of having my message be heard (lets say no one even comes to the play) why would I want to have my work be destroyed?

Tell Kilroy he MIGHT want to hold on to this for documentation purposes

FIRST of all...this is the 3rd script we have produced and will ultimately burn. The burning keeps us on our toes and forces us to make theatre that speaks to people today...not 20 years from today. Our plays are pertinant now and Silence is no different. Today, it is an important piece of theatre in 2 years, 10 years, it will be dated and unimportant socially...see (god love them) Angels in America, Waiting for Lefty, or any other social piece that is now only historic rhetoric...

The point of burning the script manifold...

1. Theatre is a visual medium, not a recorded medium. If you want to re-experience art, view a painting, read a book or poem or listen to some music. Theatre is a personal connection between actor and audience that is unique every time you see it.
2. Kilroy has stated that he feels this is the best end for this particular script. He has brought Malachi into a world that is not of his creation. In burning the play, he feels he is letting him go.

Very few people heard Malachi when he immolated. This theatre platform is designed to make people listen up. It is saying that we are creating a piece of art for you...chicago. We are not workshopping a script and taking it to Broadway. We are not producing Macbeth because I want to play Macbeth. We are not recreating old work for our artistic masturbation. We are trying to create a unique-once-in-a-lifetime experience for our audience. Period.

If you beleive Malachi's message is important, then spread the word. We, as theatre producers, can only do so much. It is up to you to tell people how you feel. If this play can instill a much needed social dialogue, then we are successful.

Ever hear of Buddist monks and sand mandalas? They spend serious time constructing a beautiful thing and then they let it go.
We are trying to encourage people to demand more from their entertainment than remakes...we have wonderful creative minds and it is a shame that anyone would be content with recreating another person's artwork...the novelist does not re-write hemmingway. The painter does not re-paint Goya. We do not re-produce other people's theatre.

If you are too close-minded to see that then you can blow me.
--so speaketh the 521
http://www.myspace.com/theatre521

I dont understand a few things here. It seems like you are basically saying 'if you miss this, too bad for you, we are only gonna do it so many times because we dont want the message to become obsolete'.
I have a beef with that. Are you not forcing it into obsolesance by refusing a longer run of the show? A message cant survive if no one is passing it on.
Also, you say that if a person wants to re-experience art, they should choose and artform other than theater. I can agree with that to an extent, but are you not just re-experiencing Ritscher's life (from your own outsider perspective)?
I seems to me, along with your closing statement about 'blowing you', that the practice of burning the script, along with a seriously limited run can be attributed to people just being obstinate.

I seems to me your closing statement about me be obstinate is ignorant and uninformed...did you read what I wrote or just grab on to what may have upset you?

Let me put this whole thing another way...

Our play is designed to raise the awareness of our audience TODAY, when it is most urgent to raise that awareness. When an audience saw "Waiting for Lefty," they saw a play that spoke to them about the social situation they were living in. Now, while I love the play, it cannot possibly speak to me the way it spoke to them. That is the beauty and curse of live theatre. I chose to look at it as beauty.

Perhaps you should see the play before you make judgements on what it is about. The play is not about Re-experiencing Malachi's life. It is attempting to take a look at what could cause a (wo)man...any(wo)man...to go to the extremes he chose to go to and why did no one hear him. Obviously, any sort of fact-based fiction is going to be a re-telling of the fact, but this does not mean we need to retell a play that has all ready been told.

Believe me. I have never felt more for a piece of theatre I have been responsible for creating. It means more to me than anything, especially given the importance of the subject. I want to reiterate...If you feel strongly, as I do, about Malachi's statement, then SPREAD THE WORD. Visit his webpage savagesound.com and get to know who this man was and TALK ABOUT HIM. Talk about how he made you feel and what you want to do about it. I chose to produce Kilroy's play because I felt it was the best way to communicate my feelings to a large group of people, but I also beleive I can communicate best to the portion of the population I know best...Chicago. I can only say "look at this" and hope others will pick up the torch.

I am obstinant. I am determined to make a difference in a field I feel passionately about. The entertainment industry doesn't think enough of you to give you an original work. They shoe-horn ideas into plays that didn't initially carry those ideas. They give you Survivor 12, another King Kong, and Wicked till they can't take any more money out of your pockets. Demand more from your entertainment. Be more selective about what you put in your brain. Don't support "second-handers" and their re-used products. Embrace the creative potential of the human spirit--the creative powerhouse that is the human brain. When we support re-made art, we support stagnation in our society...and I, for one, will not support it.

I have strong feelings about my art and the genre I have chosen to create in. If you are content reusing old material, go to work. Have fun spinning your wheels.

I am just trying to give a great piece of theatre to a deserving audience. I charge $5.00 to get in, I make it as available as I believe possible. Previous experiences in theatre have shown me that you don't need more than a five week run for a show and people don't want to go out on Thursday or Sunday to see a play. Theatre is poetry. It is urgent. When I tell you you have 10 performances to see this play, it sets up a sense of urgency and that is precisely what this subject deserves.

And if you have such a lack of sense of humor that you are upset about me telling you to "blow me" then you can blow me.

You are right about my grabbing onto things that upset me, and maybe grabbing onto things that confuse me.
I am not sure if I am won over on the idea of burning the script, but the ten show run you have given me a new/better perspective of. The sense of urgency I never thought of, and while I dont see the idea of theater being poetry as a reason for its urgency, I whole heartedly agree that it is urgent, the message itself is more urgent than any long running play I can think of.
I only wish that your scope wasnt only the Chicago audience, because there are so many more people who need your talent to spread the word where they are. Unfortunatly, many people who also lack a sense of humor, lack the eloquence to make such an important public statement as this play will hopefully make.
I wish you the best on the show, you are sending an important message. I guess the thing I need to remember is that you are DOING it, you are sending a message, regardless of what you do with it in the end.

Honestly, you write with such conviction, why do you have to end with 'blow me'? I dont want that to be the last thing I remember about a reply that was written with intensity, commitment, and passion. That was my only problem with it. It threw me off, and didnt seem humorous, only pissy.

Occasionally I let my over-the-top nature get the best of me. I hope the last thing you remember about this string is that I am trying to do what I can to make a difference...that is all any of us can do. Spread the word...

So, let me get this straight. In a country where imperialism still continues to this day, political thugs are performing miserably, and we are sending our citizens off to a war that is pointless, you're saying that 20 years from now, what is happening socially today will not matter?! If people are to ever actually LEARN from history, the present MUST be valued. I highly highly doubt that history will never repeat itself again.

If his script is not simply art for art's sake, then shouldn't its meaning/message be valued as well?

Yeah, and they also try to alleviate themselves from suffering in order to achieve nirvana. Without suffering, there would be no purpose for joy in life.

How is simply SAVING art reproducing it in any way?

I really don't know what else to say to you...

Read and re-read my posts. Stop clinging to what "angers" you and open your mind a bit. I think I have been pretty clear as to the nature of THEATRE in my view.

"The present" is what the whole theatre company is about--speaking about and encouraging discussion on the problems in our society. I would argue the fact that we burn the play has encouraged a dialogue right here...the problem is, no matter how many words I put on the electronic page, people such as yourself don't listen. You grab onto a few "quotable" segments of my post that piss you off and go running instead of taking the entire post into consideration.

The script's meaning is valued above anything else. This is why we are producing it on the level we are producing it.

I am not saying art cannot be reproduced. I simply think it's a pitiful shame to reproduce something that has been done when you have the potential to create something new. Isn't that much more exciting?

If I had reproduced a play that had all ready been done, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. As we speak, there are a dozen anti-war plays being reproduced in the city right now...can you name one of them? I've brought this up before...do you know what Waiting for Lefty is about? Have you heard of it? Does it affect you? I will wager, unless you're a "theatre person," the answer is no.

You seem to be able to spout the rhetoric of the socially-angered activist...stop directing it at the people that ARE doing something about it and start talking to the people that aren't.

"I am just trying to give a great piece of theatre to a deserving audience. I charge $5.00 to get in, I make it as available as I believe possible."

Except that, at the end of it, you destroy the script so that no one else could perform the play, pass along the message or the story or whatever it is you're trying to impart. That seems contradictory to me.

It's not even a question of 20 years from now, but instead a question of RIGHT NOW. If his message--which you claim to be at the central point of your script--is so important, shouldn't other theater groups, other ad-hoc groups of people, other whomevers, be capable of sharing the message with others? By limiting the performances and destroying the script, you ensure MORE silence, not less.

I am encouraging the growth of human creativity...not the stagnation of re-producers. If you feel strongly about Malachi's message, find your own way to express it. The Silence of Malachi Ritscher is a product of love from the people that produce it. Why do you want to dillute that product?

I might also suggest that you re-read my posts...

Unfortunately, re-reading your posts ad-infinitum only makes this whole thing seem less thought out.

"Theater is a visual medium"

Really? What about the aural aspects of it? The storytelling? The movements? The actions? Theater is an all-encompassing medium. Relegating it to visual-only is selling it seriously short.

"Very few people heard Malachi when he immolated."

And very few people are going to be present at your performances. Even if they all sell out, you're performing to a small group of people in a huge town that's in a huge country that's in a huge world. If the purpose of your performance is to get people to "listen up," then you've predestined yourself for failure.

"If this play can instill a much needed social dialogue, then we are successful."

Again, if that's how you're gauging success, then I fail to see why eliminating any trace of the play will assist in instilling a much-needed social dialogue.

"Perhaps you should see the play before you make judgements on what it is about."

Except that the person that you posed that demand to probably doesn't live in Chicago. So what's she supposed to do? Too bad she couldn't stage it with some friends for folks in her town, huh?

"I am just trying to give a great piece of theatre to a deserving audience."

So why does this audience deserve to hear the sad, sorry tale of Malachi and an audience in, say, Sacrameno shouldn't?

"The script's meaning is valued above anything else."

I'm sorry but I simply feel that you're negating the meaning by telling everyone else that they can't use it. It's copyright taken to an insane degree.

Look, the main thing for me is this: As someone who knew Malachi, albeit through sort of tangental means (his skateboard designs), I've found his actions to be those of a sad, lost, and angry soul. That you have found meaning in them is wonderful (myself, I find them to be sadly meaningless), but that you claim an exclusivity to this piece--ensured by the destruction of it--feels like exactly the opposite of what should be taken away from Malachi's suicide.

You follow destruction with destruction. What's the point of that?

I really don't know what to say to you.

You seem to have it all figured out.

Next time, I'll produce Midsummer Night's Dream, as that's all you seem to care about seeing.

The fact of the matter is that I want to create new theatre. That is what I am doing. What are you doing? ...aside from quoting bits of what I say out of context.

Get your mind right and try to understand that which you clearly do not.

And use your mindless dialogue to spread Malachi's message and not try to put down the people that are all ready doing it.

Dan and Erin come off sounding pretty reactionary in this discussion. I say torch it.

Theater is the most banal and poliically bankrupt of all the arts
you should do an in·ter·pre·tive dance or maybe some sound poems.

then burn the theater down. The whold fucking building. And keep burning them down until the war ends. Otherwise, you are just pussies.

r.john...
You are so punk-rock.
I thought I had a chip on my shoulder...I am humbled.

is this the point in the rehearsal when all the theater dorks hug?

I really think your next production should be Cho Seung-Hui's plays and maybe a staged reading of all the AlQueda manifestos. Since, you know, you are more about the promotion than the production.