YOU WISH TO REMAIN ANONYMOUS?

Via Scott Walters, I notice 99 Seats, an anonymous blog by a New York City-based theater practitioner. I'm interested to see how this experiment progresses. The writer wants to be able to write candidly about problems with our current model of theater production, something quite difficult to do for fear of alienating the wrong person (from a career standpoint) or tainting his/her argument with questions of agenda.

I'm of two minds about this. It seems like there's a lot of potential for something like this, for an anonymous writer who can cite specifics and name names without fear. (And I have no problem with people exercising caution for career considerations, by the way. Just about everybody in the world has to do that, in every field, and anybody copping a purer-than-thou attitude about it is being a dick.) On the other hand, it's hard for an anonymous blogger to stay anonymous for a couple of reasons. For one thing, you they have to carefully weight every word they write for clues that might reveal their identity, which I imagine would be grueling. Also, it depends on readers being able to engage the ideas and content of the blog without playing guessing games about the writer. (For example, my first response - my first response, before considering anything else - was: "Probably a guy, right? I mean, there are probably some women who own DVDs of The Rock and Cliffhanger, but there probably aren't many.")

Anyway, I'd like 99 Seats' experiment to thrive, so I wish him/her the best of luck, and am looking forward to continued reading.

I just realized my own name isn't on my blog. Well, clearly I'm not anonymous. Anyone who can't figure out who I am in under three minutes needs to enroll in remedial internet school.

--SlowLearner

Comments

[Scott Walters]

Maybe it could be a game: Unmask the Blogger. After each new post, people could try to analyze it for clues, and there would be prizes for the one to guess it first. Then we could make it into a musical...

[Chris]

Dear SlowLearner,
I'm working in Publicity for the Tantalus Theatre Group on their production of "Dreadful Penny's Exquisite Horrors." It's a new work and a relatively new company in Chicago and they are looking to catch the attention of Chicago-based Theatre blog writers.

We just put a new video up on YouTube. I hope you can look at it and this might interest you or your readers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xl3okbGYFg

[nick]

Mac says:
"An anonymous writer who can cite specifics and name names without fear."

Ain't it pretty to think so? Instead anonymous gives the polar opposite, something even more worthless than anecdotal evidence because it’s without even the context of an identifiable person saying it.

Anonymous says:
"Over the last few years, whenever I’ve talked to anyone who’s working in theatre, the overwhelming feeling I’ve gotten is one of powerlessness. Artistic directors feel beholden to their boards. Artists feel beholden to artistic directors. Audiences feel let down by the theatre. And board members feel beholden to the audiences. Young artists feel that they can’t break through. Older artists feel like they have to keep doing the same thing over and over to stay in. There is a palpable feeling of disconnect between the primal artistic urge and the product that hits the stage and the audiences feel it."

http://99seats.blogspot.com/2008/02/whats-wrong-with-this-picture.html

It's anonymous' own overwhelming feeling of powerless and palpable feeling of disconnect that's on display here, no one else's.