How to Endure a Lousy Work of Art

Enduring a lousy work of art, particularly when it’s theater, is like being cornered by someone at a party who won’t stop talking at you. It’s very hard to extricate oneself from one of these rants. It’s almost an act of aggression, say like walking out of Cats. People look at you. In the case of your conversant or interlocutor, if that is the case, its requires far more rebellion. You have to get around them no matter how rude it is to cut someone off in mid-sentence. Amateur plays which you attend for the sake of novice director or actor, you may unfortunately know, pose an even more difficult problem since your activity can be so hurtful as to make them give up theater, if that is their ambition, forever. But what are you to do? Let’s say your kid's English teacher invites you to the senior class's 8-hour production of Strange Interlude or the even more voluminous Nicholas Nickleby. Walk out and your kid is going to flunk.

read "Moose Murders" by Francis Levy, TheScreamingPope

and listen "Ain't That Peculiar" by Marvin Gaye