{"id":9094,"date":"2016-01-05T10:43:09","date_gmt":"2016-01-05T15:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=9094"},"modified":"2016-09-29T11:11:18","modified_gmt":"2016-09-29T15:11:18","slug":"washingtonian-wsj-silent-shakespeare-defining-dc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/05\/washingtonian-wsj-silent-shakespeare-defining-dc\/","title":{"rendered":"Washingtonian Tags my WSJ Silent Shakespeare Piece as “Defining” D.C. in 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

Along with Donald Trump, Gov. Chris Christie,\u00a0 the Washington Redskins (with a name that liberals now\u00a0hate), \u00a0and reviled pro-Confederate flag protestors,\u00a0Washingtonian<\/strong> magazine credits me with one of the\u00a0“17 Moments of Local Outrage That Defined 2015<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Here’s\u00a0an outtake from the Washingtonian<\/em> article:<\/p>\n

July 14: Wall Street Journal vs. Wordless Shakespeare<\/a><\/em>
\nSynetic Theater wins bushels of awards and favorable reviews for its arty, sultry, and wordless adaptations of Shakespeare plays, but not from Wall Street Journal contributor James Bovard, who used his column inches <\/a>to diagnose the Arlington-based company as a symptom of \u201cbad Shakespeare productions in America.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Outrage-worthy? Synetic\u2019s 27 Helen Hayes Awards since 2001 would seem to disagree with Bovard\u2019s assessment, as would the mystery of whether he has actually seen one of the company\u2019s productions\u2014he wouldn\u2019t say.<\/em><\/p>\n

Actually, my WSJ piece was more playful than outraged, and it focused\u00a0more on Shakespeare than on the local theater company.\u00a0 But there was a huge uproar locally <\/a>because I had mocked a sacred cow of the local cultural scene.<\/p>\n

After seeing Synetic’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, I commented to a reporter from the DCist.com<\/a>: “Synetic offered dry humping in lieu of Shakespearean dialogue<\/strong>…. Maybe Synetic believes that its East European-style pantomime is superior to the words Shakespeare wrote. I disagree.\u201d\u00a0I was confounded to see Synetic\u00a0early on cast most of Shakespeare’s plot overboard. \u00a0Synetic Theater subsequently explicitly claimed that its performances were “deeper” than Shakespeare’s original.<\/p>\n

The Washington Post <\/a>published a long piece last month seeking to vindicate Synetic Theater\u00a0from my criticism and from the jibe in Sen. Lankford’s Federal Fumbles<\/a><\/strong> list of wasteful government spending.\u00a0 But a few days later, a Washington Post review bludgeoned Synetic’s latest would-be masterpiece – a wordless adaption of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.”\u00a0 The Post labeled Synetic’s performance <\/a>“curiously hollow,” “erratic,” and complained that “the production falls back on showy tricks to make up for some protracted and uninspired storytelling.\u00a0But the piling on of shtick… make the production seem too much like a talent contest. This version\u00a0 is so cavalier with plot that it doesn\u2019t even bother to resolve the crime that sets the play in motion.”<\/p>\n

Ironically, the response to the WSJ article <\/a>vindicated the final sentences of my piece: “The fact that many Washingtonians consider Silent Shakespeare an improvement rather than an oxymoron reflects unkindly on the capital\u2019s cultural pretensions. But perhaps we should not be surprised that the city that pioneered obfuscation is now exalting expunging English altogether.”\u00a0 The fact that Synetic wins lots of local theater awards doesn’t prove anything about its value outside a circle of D.C. insiders.\u00a0(A Washington Post article last summer conceded that the Hayes awards can be a farce<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

This nation will never have a shortage of dry humping regardless of whether the National Endowment for the Arts continues subsidizing Synetic Theater.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Along with Donald Trump, Gov. Chris Christie,\u00a0 the Washington Redskins (with a name that liberals now\u00a0hate), \u00a0and reviled pro-Confederate flag protestors,\u00a0Washingtonian magazine credits me with one of the\u00a0“17 Moments of Local Outrage That Defined 2015.” Here’s\u00a0an outtake from the Washingtonian article: July 14: Wall Street Journal vs. Wordless Shakespeare Synetic Theater wins bushels of awards […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9098,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[274,327,795,194,769,506],"class_list":["post-9094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-buffoonery","tag-cynicism","tag-dry-humping","tag-epigrams","tag-silent-shakespeare","tag-subsidies"],"yoast_head":"\nWashingtonian Tags my WSJ Silent Shakespeare Piece as "Defining" D.C. in 2015 - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/05\/washingtonian-wsj-silent-shakespeare-defining-dc\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Washingtonian Tags my WSJ Silent Shakespeare Piece as "Defining" D.C. in 2015 - James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Along with Donald Trump, Gov. 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