First hand experience with negative misconceptions
Or as Marc likes to call this entry: If Your Play Is About Sex Then You Must Be A Perv
From the desk of Marc Adam Smith:
As we close another successful run of Hurt So Good, I now feel free to relay to you an incident that happened on our opening Saturday night. I was accused by a gaggle of what I will call “soccer moms” of trying to sneak into the men's room to look at a young boy!
The incident begins with the call of nature. I go to the john and find it to be locked. Now, our theatre was in a shared space with a public restroom that should never be locked, so I was surprised to find it so. I knocked on the door and tried to get in, at which time four of the aforementioned soccer moms (who it turns out have children doing a dance recital in one of the other spaces) come over to me.
Here is a recap of our conversation:
The Moms: "What are you doing? There is a child in there!"
Me: “Okay, but it is a public restroom and I need to use it.”
The Moms: "He is part of that sex show!"
What I didn’t know at the time was that the Moms where upset that Hurt So Good was in the space and they did not want to their young ones to see our actors in their "sex costumes." Not that these folks had seen our costumes at all...
At this point, one of the Alpha Moms comes up to me and says, "What are you trying to do, get in the bathroom to look at the boy?" To which I replied, "No, I need to take shit." Well, needless to say, my salty language set her off and she started to make threats and told me how she could "take me out." As I struggled to hold back the laughter, I suggested she back off and I went into the bathroom.
The incident seemed to be over, but about 20 minutes later a cop comes into the theatre space looking for a bald guy. That would be me. So, the Moms went out and got the fuzz to get the “perv.”
The cast seemed worried, so I asked the officer if we could go outside and talk. I told him what happened and he said he had to talk to the other witnesses. He does so and proceeds to tell me, "I spoke to seven people and they all had different stories and you are the only one who is calm, so it appears to me that this is nothing.” He called it in as a 91 which is the code for a non call. Nice guy and not the first time I have ever been questioned by cops in my life, so even though I was upset and angry I held myself in check.
So the moral of the story is: If you need to use the bathroom and are cast in or working behind the scenes of a play that has to do with sex, use your home toilet or the Moral Soccer Moms of America will get you.
Editor’s Note: It is very interesting how reactionary people can be over perceived perversion. Our show was a romantic comedy, it just had a kinky backdrop. The fact that our advertising used sexy imagery, just made it all the more volatile. This was our little experience. I myself witnessed parents swatting our postcards out of the hands of children, but I also experienced others positively intrigued by our show and its marketing campaign. And interestingly enough, TV and film can get away with much racier stuff… heck, even print advertising! One look at any Calvin Klein billboard will make my point clear.
This was all an incident of misunderstandings and over-protectiveness on the part of the parents. I certainly can’t fault them for wishing to shield their kids from subject matter deemed inappropriate, but the fact that they jumped to upsetting conclusions that our director was a pedophile… that’s just too much. As Mistress Lyla says in our show, “BDSM is lumped together with bestiality, pedophilia and other unloving acts.”
This was just a small taste of what many in the community - or in any other alternative lifestyle for that matter - have to deal with every day. Protect your children, but don’t promote prejudice. Promote tolerance. I hope that our show, in some small way, did just that.
From the desk of Marc Adam Smith:
As we close another successful run of Hurt So Good, I now feel free to relay to you an incident that happened on our opening Saturday night. I was accused by a gaggle of what I will call “soccer moms” of trying to sneak into the men's room to look at a young boy!
The incident begins with the call of nature. I go to the john and find it to be locked. Now, our theatre was in a shared space with a public restroom that should never be locked, so I was surprised to find it so. I knocked on the door and tried to get in, at which time four of the aforementioned soccer moms (who it turns out have children doing a dance recital in one of the other spaces) come over to me.
Here is a recap of our conversation:
The Moms: "What are you doing? There is a child in there!"
Me: “Okay, but it is a public restroom and I need to use it.”
The Moms: "He is part of that sex show!"
What I didn’t know at the time was that the Moms where upset that Hurt So Good was in the space and they did not want to their young ones to see our actors in their "sex costumes." Not that these folks had seen our costumes at all...
At this point, one of the Alpha Moms comes up to me and says, "What are you trying to do, get in the bathroom to look at the boy?" To which I replied, "No, I need to take shit." Well, needless to say, my salty language set her off and she started to make threats and told me how she could "take me out." As I struggled to hold back the laughter, I suggested she back off and I went into the bathroom.
The incident seemed to be over, but about 20 minutes later a cop comes into the theatre space looking for a bald guy. That would be me. So, the Moms went out and got the fuzz to get the “perv.”
The cast seemed worried, so I asked the officer if we could go outside and talk. I told him what happened and he said he had to talk to the other witnesses. He does so and proceeds to tell me, "I spoke to seven people and they all had different stories and you are the only one who is calm, so it appears to me that this is nothing.” He called it in as a 91 which is the code for a non call. Nice guy and not the first time I have ever been questioned by cops in my life, so even though I was upset and angry I held myself in check.
So the moral of the story is: If you need to use the bathroom and are cast in or working behind the scenes of a play that has to do with sex, use your home toilet or the Moral Soccer Moms of America will get you.
Editor’s Note: It is very interesting how reactionary people can be over perceived perversion. Our show was a romantic comedy, it just had a kinky backdrop. The fact that our advertising used sexy imagery, just made it all the more volatile. This was our little experience. I myself witnessed parents swatting our postcards out of the hands of children, but I also experienced others positively intrigued by our show and its marketing campaign. And interestingly enough, TV and film can get away with much racier stuff… heck, even print advertising! One look at any Calvin Klein billboard will make my point clear.
This was all an incident of misunderstandings and over-protectiveness on the part of the parents. I certainly can’t fault them for wishing to shield their kids from subject matter deemed inappropriate, but the fact that they jumped to upsetting conclusions that our director was a pedophile… that’s just too much. As Mistress Lyla says in our show, “BDSM is lumped together with bestiality, pedophilia and other unloving acts.”
This was just a small taste of what many in the community - or in any other alternative lifestyle for that matter - have to deal with every day. Protect your children, but don’t promote prejudice. Promote tolerance. I hope that our show, in some small way, did just that.
Labels: Hurt So Good
posted by Melanie at
9:41 AM
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