Ida Becker's The Scene: Spoleto offers today's most intriguing bit of festival talk when she quotes at length from an e-mail about an intriguing public confrontation that reportedly occurred after a performance of Blind Date, a politically charged dance piece with an anti-war message.
As the (tepid, on the part of many people) applause was dying down, we heard a rather loud BOO from the balcony. I believe that it was Mr. (Paul T.) Jones himself who rushed back onto the stage and demanded "Who is that booing? Who booed?" as he paced across the stage. The man identified himself (I think with the "aid" of someone else in the audience) and the shouting began.
"Come down here and tell me what you did not like!"
"I am not coming down there!"
And so it went for some time. Some audience members thought that it might have been part of the performance, but I feel fairly certain that it was not. After a while Mr. Boo finally said that what he did not like (here I paraphrase for the most part) was having to watch pretentious, repetitive, "third rate" shows that pretend to address serious issues.
ANYWAY, Mr. Jones finished by saying "I'll stay out of your politics if you stay out of my art!" It was telling that he focused on the political issue since, to my mind, that was NOT the issue for Mr. Boo. About half of the audience began to applaud after that comment, something else that I thought was telling.
Now there's an interesting topic. If you know any more about this alleged incident, please tell us about it (crossposted from Lowcountry Blogs)...
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