Monday morning ramble, continued

I'll be working (volunteering) backstage again in January after a much-needed three-month hiatus. Burnout was one reason I needed the break, but (offstage) drama was the other. I'd alluded to it in the RM Redux post, and it's not the main point here, either, but it was part of my need to stay the hell away from something that had become a source of joy, fun, and community.

If you're wondering where the continuity is with the previous ramble: the thread is selective outrage and offense. I looked for, unsuccessfully, Tina Fey's quote about how you can barely do comedy right without offending someone. Jezebel has articulated the key to socially-astute comedy: mock the right party. Or at least make light of things in a way that make people think, not in a way that reinforce oppressive social structures. "Avenue Q" did that brilliantly (see, for example, "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist.")
The play I worked in the fall was the perfect $hitstorm: BE (RM Redux man) was in my face all the time with his feelings for me, even as I continually put down my boundaries; I no longer felt what had been the magic of being backstage--I remember the exact moment when I realized it, when magic became tedium; and I was unimpressed by the show.

Not only was I unimpressed by the show, but I was actively not amused. I was not amused by any number of things in the play, but I was especially not amused by its elderly character with memory loss. It just wasn't funny.

"Not amused" is a level short of "offended." My gut instinct is to not take offense at the way issues are treated in theater, unless they are clearly offensive; my gut instinct is to take in the potentially offensive thing in the context of the plot, among other things. I also accept the value and importance at laughing about things that are tragic. Dad and I find ourselves laughing at mom--and mom at herself--but not in mocking ways; just because some things that are not from a happy source, sometimes happen to be funny.

And it wasn't the point of this play--a farce--to be thoughtful about Alzheimer's; it was the point of this play to make cheap jokes out of anything around. I'd worked another play in the spring--"33 Variations"--that was incredibly triggering in a different way. And in a way that was almost easier to take than the play this fall.

I'm not sure whether I would have found the elderly dad character funny if I didn't have my own, family reasons to not laugh, but I doubt it. I'll continue to stop short of being offended, but I can't find making fun of people's illness to be funny.