#2) from my teens until present day my mother has dismissed my negative feelings as me being hormonal

[abutterflyobsession]

you: how're you doing?

me: I made my shrink worried about me

[cllynchauthor]

That post you made was a mess, just fyi. 1) I went through the thread you linked, and I found the authors reasonable and respectable. The playwriter's worked with people with disabilities for 10 years, and it's clear he cares about the issue. 2) The fact Lawrence is a puppy isn't automatically pejorative. That's how art works. I haven't seen the play, but it's probably a metaphor for the teen's lack of agency or something like that. Also writing something a certain way doesn't mean you -

“- approve of it. Have you even seen the play? 3) Please stop pretending anyone represents the autistic community and that you guys speak with one voice. It’s seriously dehumanizing to think a large and diverse group of people shares the same views. In that view there is an autistic man who loved the play - I guess his voice doesn’t count because he disagrees with you?”

--

I love this anon message because it contains pretty much every argument that people are using against the autistic folk protesting this play. 

Like, I’ve been watching #puppetgate unfold since day one, read the reviews, read the responses from @allinarowplay. You think I haven’t heard these points before?

I’ve read them so many times now in tweets and reviews that your message just looks like one of those ransom notes that are made from cut and pasted words out of the newspaper.

But since Tumblr is new to #puppetgate, SURE, let’s address them! 

First of all, my #puppetgate summary was a truthful, if flippant, tl;dr of the past two weeks’ worth of Twitter drama. 

I apologize if my brief humorous take on a complex and nuanced debate didn’t meet the standards of a random stranger on the internet. 

Let’s discuss it in more serious detail.

1) You can care about an issue and still handle it really poorly. No one doubts this playwright’s intentions. But, as you say, he was a CARER for 10 years. That doesn’t mean he understands how it feels to be autistic and in fact, ableism is built right into ABA and other therapies used by carers. 

So yeah, he cares. And he still made an ableist play.

Also, the thread you mention was BELOW the video I linked to wherein the puppet designer says, and I quote:

“Laurence is non-verbal, and the power that puppets have is that they explore movement and with a turn of their head or a small movement they give life and character that you wouldn’t achieve with a human actor.”

Which is why I snidely summarized their position as 

“ This puppet is going to be SO MUCH more like an autistic child than a human could ever be!”

https://twitter.com/allinarowplay/status/1092410318960148481

Also, there is a brief shot of their script in that video at 2:19 and if you pause it and look at it you can see that the parents are joking about how their kid is like a puppy.

“Shits wherever he wants” is clearly visible.

This is the stuff the positive reviews consider funny, honest, and brave.

According to reviews, the child is present in the background throughout most of the play. Which means they talk like this IN FRONT OF HIM and this is never brought up as an issue/problem. 

In fact, non-autistic reviewers don’t even seem bothered by it, probably because they share the common misperception that non-verbal high needs autistic people don’t understand what is going on around them. So…. yeah. I don’t care how well meaning the playwright was. 

The playwright consulted the National Autistic Society and they told him they couldn’t support the play “due to its portrayal of autism, particularly the use of a puppet to depict the autistic character alone.”

But he didn’t change his mind about the puppet.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/critics-say-new-play-that-uses-a-puppet-to-portray-an-autistic-boy-dehumanises-those-with-the-condition/ar-BBTk5kC

So again - sure, maybe he cares. But he also wasn’t willing to change his vision despite the warnings of the Autism organization that he was hoping would endorse his play. 

2) Of course a puppet isn’t inherently pejorative. For one thing, the autistic community is very positive about Julia, the autistic muppet on Sesame Street.

The outrage involves a lot more nuance than that. First of all, it’s the choice to make the puppet grey and ugly. This was obviously an artistic decision. The first version of the puppet has black hair too and no eyes, just dark sockets like a skull. 

Not exactly Julia.  

And even with that, I was on the fence and willing to wait for the reviews to come out before I made a judgement. 

Like you, I thought perhaps it would be made clear in the play that his puppet-ness and greyness represented lack of agency. And maybe the designer was thinking that way. 

But if that is the case, it does not come across. 

In fact, the reviewers who enjoyed the play repeatedly dismiss the controversy by saying that the play “isn’t really about Laurence.” 

https://www.timeout.com/london/theatre/all-in-a-row-review

“The production is also about the situation, rather than about Laurence himself.“

https://www.thereviewshub.com/all-in-a-row-southwark-playhouse-london/

“sadly the grey-faced puppet adds nothing to the production that a living actor – adult or child – could not have provided.”

I’ve read a LOT of reviews of this play by now. 

Reviews from mothers of autistic children who feel a kinship with the stressed, unhappy, dysfunctional parents. 

Reviews from people without a connection to autism who feel like they learned something. 

Reviews from autistic people and disabled allies who cringe at the ableism. 

None of them - NONE of them - allude to any kind of symbolism or thematic point running through the play which justifies or explains the puppet or its weird appearance.

And the reasons for the puppet given by the playwright, director, and playhouse make very little sense. 

In that promotional video I linked to they say that the puppet can communicate better than an actor could. I disagree. So does a non-verbal autistic mime who commented in the thread below. 

They also say that it allows them to avoid being offensive or stereotypical, which makes little sense because they still had a grown man grunting and flapping on stage, just with a puppet sprouting from his waist. 

They repeatedly argued that they couldn’t use an autistic child, as if acting wasn’t even a thing. They repeatedly argued that a human actor couldn’t do the sounds and movements, even though a human puppeteer was doing just that.

My favourite one was the review (linked above) that argued that “Laurence isn’t a character a person could play (neurotypical or not) as his autism is so particular and at times violent.”

...Has this guy never seen Titus Andronicus? 

A person can play ANYTHING.

On Broadway I have seen human actors play cats, lions, baboons, and witches. 

On multiple occasions a fine-boned actress has been used to play Peter Pan. I’m pretty sure you could cast a small actor to play a pre-teen boy. Then the play wouldn’t have attracted so much negative attention.

As for “writing something a certain way doesn’t mean you approve of it.”

True. 

My fans can tell you that my main character spouts a fair amount of ableism. They’ll also tell you that this flaw is addressed openly and resolved as part of her character arc. 

They’ll ALSO also tell you that the “villains” of my story embrace ableist ideals. So yes, I wrote ableist stuff. But you can tell by the waythese things are framed how the writer wants you to feel about them.

No, I haven’t seen the play because I don’t live in the same country as it and it would take 12 hours to fly there. But I read what people write about it and I draw my own conclusions.

And the fact that ableist jokes are punchlines does not endear me to the playwright or the puppet. 

You say you haven’t read the play, and from the sounds of it you haven’t read many reviews either. 

If you think it’s wrong for me to criticize it after watching all of this unfold over days and days, and reading a dozen reviews by people who loved it and people who hated it, then how is it right for you to defend it?

3) Aw, look at that straw man lying on its side! You did a good job there.

Nowhere in my puppetgate summary do I claim that 100% of autistic people feel the same way.

I was summarizing what has been going down on Twitter over the past two weeks. I know because I was there. Don’t believe me? Actually spendsome time on the puppetgate hashtag and the actuallyautistic hashtag and see what people are saying.

And of course less than 100% of #actuallyautistic people feel the same, but I want to point out that at the time of this writing, my #puppetgate summary post has nearly 11K notes, all of them expressing disgust at the idea of this play.

Autistic people are disgusted. Autism allies are disgusted. Even people with no connection to autism can often see why this is effed up.

Yours was the only message I have received trying to defend the idea of a play featuring a messed up family arguing, discussing bukkake, calling their child a “puppy” using language which results in the play being rated as 16 plus... all in front of their eleven year old…

But what really bothers me is that somehow people come out of there identifying with the parents and thinking that it is “brave” and “honest.” 

They blame autism for what it has done to this family.

THE DAD SHAT ON HIS WIFE’S PILLOW AND BLAMED IT ON HIS OWN SON.

And the really sad thing is that your lonely messages in my inbox didn’t contain a single unique thought. I’ve been seeing those tired excuses and straw man arguments all over twitter for weeks.

They don’t stand up.

I’ve performed in theatre. I was willing to withhold judgement until more details about the play emerged. 

I was hoping they would say something brilliant and profound about what life is like for an eleven year old child with autism who is being sent away because his messed up family can’t stand it any more.

But facts are facts… they didn’t.

All they are doing is telling audience after audience that it is funny to insult your autistic child in his very presence and that autism wrecks marriages.

You can understand why a LOT of autistic people would be a bit sensitive about that kind of message.

It doesn’t have to be everyone.