It looks as though Mabou Mines DollHouse director Lee Breuer has brought back the banished fellatio scene in his play at the Dock Street. After some negative comments following Thursday night’s preview performance of DollHouse and a conversation with Nigel Redden, Breuer decided to remove the short scene, which is why I didn’t see it on Friday’s night’s official opening performance. The Post and Courier’s Mindy Spar was at the show last night, however, where she spoke with Breuer and saw that he’d reintroduced the fellatio scene. Spar says Breuer told her he’d heard about a blog begging him to bring the scene back, and so he simply did. (Read Spar’s full explanation of her experience at the play on Dan Conover’s blog here.)
The blog comment Breuer referenced was very likely one on this site from a woman named Randy Risher, who posted a comment about my blog post “DollHouse Fails the Oral Exam,” where she begged Breuer to bring the scene back. See Randy’s comment here.
It’s possible that Randy made the same post on Dan Conover’s site. Regardless, it’s nice to know that not only are we being read, we’re having an impact. Kudos, Dan.
Blogs break down the walls between writers, their subjects and the audience. That’s their power. I think this episode is a great example of how alert journalists (you and Mindy) used a new medium to focus attention on an issue, attracting readers (Randy and others) to comment, sparking conversation in the actual theater-going crowd and eventually providing an artist (Lee Breuer) with support for doing the right thing. This is about as good as it gets.
Comment by Daniel Conover — June 1, 2005 @ 8:07 pm