Fic: "alt.shakespeare.burbage" (Slings & Arrows)
For sionnain. Thanks to likeadeuce for help and about half of this, and to the American Shakespeare Center of Staunton, VA for further inspiration.
Darren was late.
Geoffrey wished he could believe that it was because Darren had been working, but Anna shattered that illusion by admitting that she'd seen Darren on her way to the meeting, standing in the parking lot smoking Italian cigarettes and lecturing some poor intern from the scene shop who didn't know any better about Franco-Swedish minimalism, which Geoffrey was 99.9% sure he had just made up.
"All right," Darren said when he finally came swanning into the conference room twenty minutes late. "Kindly be quick, I have a committment in...twenty-three minutes. Allons-y."
"Good of you to join us, Darren," Geoffrey said, glaring down the length of the table. Darren flicked the end of his scarf over his wrist and examined the fringe over his glasses.
"I don't wish to banter, Geoffrey. I don't wish to give my precious time to soul-crushing bureaucracy. I wish only to return to my work."
"Darren," Richard said cautiously, leaning forward with that hopeful, ingratiating smile that made Geoffrey want to hit him with a chair. "We need to talk about your new project."
Darren eyed him suspiciously, fanning the fringe of his scarf in front of his eyes. "What about it?"
"Well, it's been a little...off-the-books." Richard looked at Anna for support. She looked at Geoffrey. Geoffrey rolled his eyes.
"You can't just make stuff up using Festival resources and not tell anybody, Darren," he translated, annoyed at once again being the only one in the room with any spine. "Why do you do these things?"
Darren rose up out of his chair. "Perhaps if I wasn't being censored..."
"Oh, God," Geoffrey sighed, slumping back.
"Darren, nobody censored you," Richard said, showing a startling flash of human spirit. "We just decided that your proposed performance plan wasn't going to work without a little more lead time."
Darren sat down again, giving him a cold, withering stare. "Yes, authenticity is so terribly inconvenient."
"All right, Darren, we've heard it before," Geoffrey said, trying to head off disaster before it got there, but of course his life was just too awful for that.
"In authentic Elizabethan theater," Darren said, his voice rising to its customary half-shout, "there were no directors, no wardrobe department, certainly no carping harpy from the union, and only two days of rehearsal time."
"Darren," Anna said cautiously, "you do understand why we can't pay you a director's salary if you're not going to be directing, right?"
"I would be supervising and instructing," Darren said, sitting up straighter in his chair. "Geoffrey, don't think I don't know that rejecting my idea was all your doing."
"We took a vote, Darren," Geoffrey snapped. "And stop trying to change the subject. We gave you an actual play to actually direct, not permission to release your actors into the wild and run off with a webcam to do God knows what."
"It is a web-based acting seminar," Darren said, biting each word off with withering diction, "not some sort of vanity project. I leave those to you and Ellen."
"Webinar," Anna murmured, and Geoffrey swung around in his chair to face her, his retort to Darren dying unsaid.
"What was that?" he asked.
She looked up, blinking. "Web-based seminar. They shorten it to webinar."
Geoffrey stared at her for a long moment, until she turned decidedly red and fumbled to push her hair back behind her ears, hiding her face with her hands.
"Never say that word again, Anna," he said. "Please."
"Yes," Darren said, frowning at her. "It's ridiculous. But if we're done debating terminology, may I return to my work?"
"No," Richard said, obviously trying to assert some kind of control over the meeting and just as obviously failing. "We're not done here."
"I don't see why not," Darren said sulkily. "You all have yet to ask me a single valid question."
Geoffrey closed his eyes for a moment, devoutly wishing that there was any possible way to advance this without having to ask the only question that was coming to mind. "Darren," he said finally, "do we, at any point in this...production, see your dick?"
"Inhibition is the enemy of art, Geoffrey," Darren said, flicking his scarf back over his shoulder. "I'm not surprised that you've forgotten that, given your hopelessly bourgeouis sensibilities, but some of us still hold true to the ideals of the theater."
"Internet pornography is not one of the ideals of the theater."
"The fact that you believe in the concept of pornography as a genre only proves that I'm right."
Richard rapped his knuckles on the table. "All right, all right, I think we're getting away from the point, here."
"Yes, please do clarify what is the point, Richard," Darren trilled, slouching down in his chair. "I have to prepare notes for my next class. That young man from technical services is setting up the camera even as we speak. He's terribly earnest. I think he missed his calling somewhere along the line."
"Darren," Geoffrey said with exaggerated patience, holding on by his fingernails. "You let a middle-school drama class sign up for your...seminar."
"Yes?" Darren gestured grandly. "Your point?"
"Well." Geoffrey looked to Richard for help. That was completely hopeless. He looked to Anna.
"Darren," she said gently, "you've sort of put the entire festival on sexual-predator status."
"This is ridiculous," Darren said, his voice rising again toward its comfort zone firmly in histrionic territory. He pointed at Geoffrey. "It is an Internet-based acting seminar, no different from the little enrichment experiences Richard insists we offer during the season, only instead of intellectually illiterate unwashed peasants who walk in off the street, my students are genuinely interested and eager to learn."
"It is entirely different from those, Darren," Geoffrey said, getting up out of his seat and leaning on the table, "because you are prancing around the Internet naked."
"I hardly prance."
"Darren, you have pranced since the day I met you, and you will be prancing long after despair has driven me to an early grave."
Darren looked at him for a moment, pursing his lips. "Don't make promises you don't intend to keep, Geoffrey."
"Okay, okay." Richard put his hands up. "Let's compromise."
"What a shock," Darren said, "the bureaucrat wants to compromise. You would sell out art for five pieces of silver."
"Don't bring religion into your Internet peep show," Geoffrey said, and Darren jumped to his feet, slamming his hands down on the table.
"That is enough, I am done, this meeting is over."
"We've confiscated your webcam," Anna said firmly, "and if you're not at rehearsal today, we're cancelling your contract."
Darren stared at her for a moment, eyes narrowed. "I think you're bluffing."
"Try me," she said.
Darren exited in a huff, Richard on his heels making placating noises, and Geoffrey gave Anna an admiring look. "Nicely done."
"Thanks," she said, gathering up her papers. "I've had a lot of practice."
"Small children?"
"Richard." She glanced at him. "Geoffrey, the interns mentioned you haven't given them back the laptop you borrowed yet. I thought you were just going to look at Darren's seminar and then wash your hands for an hour. You called the Internet an unclean thing."
"Oh, well," Geoffrey said, shrugging. "It turns out there are a few things out there that require my attention."
"Require it?"
Geoffrey hesitated for a moment, gesturing helplessly. "There are these people, out there, fighting each other to the death over the most painfully stupid question imaginable."
"I can imagine quite a few," she said cautiously, "which one specifically did you have in mind?"
He could feel his blood pressure rising just thinking about it. "Who wrote Shakespeare's plays."
She blinked. "Shakespeare did, didn't he?"
"Yes, Anna. Yes, he did." He took a deep breath, reminding himself that nervous breakdowns over trivial matters were expensive and inconvenient. "But there are people who refuse to accept reality. And this has been going on for years! There are archives! I had really hoped this whole thing was just a few crackpot academics with nothing else to do with their time, but no. No." He was shouting, despite himself. Damn it. "There are people genuinely discussing this, and they are crazy."
Anna's eyes were very wide. "And you know crazy."
"It is one thing that I do, indeed, know." He took another deep breath, but it really just wasn't doing anything for him. "I'd like to drag them all out into the street and hit them in the face with a Complete Works. What a bunch of assholes. Oxfordians, Baconians--"
"Does that make you a Stratfordian?" she asked, then took a step back at the look on his face.
"I am not a Stratfordian, Anna," he said, his voice going deathly soft. "I am just right."
"Got it," she said, nodding again and snatching her papers up off the table. "I have to go now."
"So do I," he said, holding the door for her. "People require my guidance and wisdom."
She stopped and gave him a grim look. "I assume you mean the actors waiting for you at rehearsal."
"Yeah," he said, nodding. "Them, too."
Darren was late.
Geoffrey wished he could believe that it was because Darren had been working, but Anna shattered that illusion by admitting that she'd seen Darren on her way to the meeting, standing in the parking lot smoking Italian cigarettes and lecturing some poor intern from the scene shop who didn't know any better about Franco-Swedish minimalism, which Geoffrey was 99.9% sure he had just made up.
"All right," Darren said when he finally came swanning into the conference room twenty minutes late. "Kindly be quick, I have a committment in...twenty-three minutes. Allons-y."
"Good of you to join us, Darren," Geoffrey said, glaring down the length of the table. Darren flicked the end of his scarf over his wrist and examined the fringe over his glasses.
"I don't wish to banter, Geoffrey. I don't wish to give my precious time to soul-crushing bureaucracy. I wish only to return to my work."
"Darren," Richard said cautiously, leaning forward with that hopeful, ingratiating smile that made Geoffrey want to hit him with a chair. "We need to talk about your new project."
Darren eyed him suspiciously, fanning the fringe of his scarf in front of his eyes. "What about it?"
"Well, it's been a little...off-the-books." Richard looked at Anna for support. She looked at Geoffrey. Geoffrey rolled his eyes.
"You can't just make stuff up using Festival resources and not tell anybody, Darren," he translated, annoyed at once again being the only one in the room with any spine. "Why do you do these things?"
Darren rose up out of his chair. "Perhaps if I wasn't being censored..."
"Oh, God," Geoffrey sighed, slumping back.
"Darren, nobody censored you," Richard said, showing a startling flash of human spirit. "We just decided that your proposed performance plan wasn't going to work without a little more lead time."
Darren sat down again, giving him a cold, withering stare. "Yes, authenticity is so terribly inconvenient."
"All right, Darren, we've heard it before," Geoffrey said, trying to head off disaster before it got there, but of course his life was just too awful for that.
"In authentic Elizabethan theater," Darren said, his voice rising to its customary half-shout, "there were no directors, no wardrobe department, certainly no carping harpy from the union, and only two days of rehearsal time."
"Darren," Anna said cautiously, "you do understand why we can't pay you a director's salary if you're not going to be directing, right?"
"I would be supervising and instructing," Darren said, sitting up straighter in his chair. "Geoffrey, don't think I don't know that rejecting my idea was all your doing."
"We took a vote, Darren," Geoffrey snapped. "And stop trying to change the subject. We gave you an actual play to actually direct, not permission to release your actors into the wild and run off with a webcam to do God knows what."
"It is a web-based acting seminar," Darren said, biting each word off with withering diction, "not some sort of vanity project. I leave those to you and Ellen."
"Webinar," Anna murmured, and Geoffrey swung around in his chair to face her, his retort to Darren dying unsaid.
"What was that?" he asked.
She looked up, blinking. "Web-based seminar. They shorten it to webinar."
Geoffrey stared at her for a long moment, until she turned decidedly red and fumbled to push her hair back behind her ears, hiding her face with her hands.
"Never say that word again, Anna," he said. "Please."
"Yes," Darren said, frowning at her. "It's ridiculous. But if we're done debating terminology, may I return to my work?"
"No," Richard said, obviously trying to assert some kind of control over the meeting and just as obviously failing. "We're not done here."
"I don't see why not," Darren said sulkily. "You all have yet to ask me a single valid question."
Geoffrey closed his eyes for a moment, devoutly wishing that there was any possible way to advance this without having to ask the only question that was coming to mind. "Darren," he said finally, "do we, at any point in this...production, see your dick?"
"Inhibition is the enemy of art, Geoffrey," Darren said, flicking his scarf back over his shoulder. "I'm not surprised that you've forgotten that, given your hopelessly bourgeouis sensibilities, but some of us still hold true to the ideals of the theater."
"Internet pornography is not one of the ideals of the theater."
"The fact that you believe in the concept of pornography as a genre only proves that I'm right."
Richard rapped his knuckles on the table. "All right, all right, I think we're getting away from the point, here."
"Yes, please do clarify what is the point, Richard," Darren trilled, slouching down in his chair. "I have to prepare notes for my next class. That young man from technical services is setting up the camera even as we speak. He's terribly earnest. I think he missed his calling somewhere along the line."
"Darren," Geoffrey said with exaggerated patience, holding on by his fingernails. "You let a middle-school drama class sign up for your...seminar."
"Yes?" Darren gestured grandly. "Your point?"
"Well." Geoffrey looked to Richard for help. That was completely hopeless. He looked to Anna.
"Darren," she said gently, "you've sort of put the entire festival on sexual-predator status."
"This is ridiculous," Darren said, his voice rising again toward its comfort zone firmly in histrionic territory. He pointed at Geoffrey. "It is an Internet-based acting seminar, no different from the little enrichment experiences Richard insists we offer during the season, only instead of intellectually illiterate unwashed peasants who walk in off the street, my students are genuinely interested and eager to learn."
"It is entirely different from those, Darren," Geoffrey said, getting up out of his seat and leaning on the table, "because you are prancing around the Internet naked."
"I hardly prance."
"Darren, you have pranced since the day I met you, and you will be prancing long after despair has driven me to an early grave."
Darren looked at him for a moment, pursing his lips. "Don't make promises you don't intend to keep, Geoffrey."
"Okay, okay." Richard put his hands up. "Let's compromise."
"What a shock," Darren said, "the bureaucrat wants to compromise. You would sell out art for five pieces of silver."
"Don't bring religion into your Internet peep show," Geoffrey said, and Darren jumped to his feet, slamming his hands down on the table.
"That is enough, I am done, this meeting is over."
"We've confiscated your webcam," Anna said firmly, "and if you're not at rehearsal today, we're cancelling your contract."
Darren stared at her for a moment, eyes narrowed. "I think you're bluffing."
"Try me," she said.
Darren exited in a huff, Richard on his heels making placating noises, and Geoffrey gave Anna an admiring look. "Nicely done."
"Thanks," she said, gathering up her papers. "I've had a lot of practice."
"Small children?"
"Richard." She glanced at him. "Geoffrey, the interns mentioned you haven't given them back the laptop you borrowed yet. I thought you were just going to look at Darren's seminar and then wash your hands for an hour. You called the Internet an unclean thing."
"Oh, well," Geoffrey said, shrugging. "It turns out there are a few things out there that require my attention."
"Require it?"
Geoffrey hesitated for a moment, gesturing helplessly. "There are these people, out there, fighting each other to the death over the most painfully stupid question imaginable."
"I can imagine quite a few," she said cautiously, "which one specifically did you have in mind?"
He could feel his blood pressure rising just thinking about it. "Who wrote Shakespeare's plays."
She blinked. "Shakespeare did, didn't he?"
"Yes, Anna. Yes, he did." He took a deep breath, reminding himself that nervous breakdowns over trivial matters were expensive and inconvenient. "But there are people who refuse to accept reality. And this has been going on for years! There are archives! I had really hoped this whole thing was just a few crackpot academics with nothing else to do with their time, but no. No." He was shouting, despite himself. Damn it. "There are people genuinely discussing this, and they are crazy."
Anna's eyes were very wide. "And you know crazy."
"It is one thing that I do, indeed, know." He took another deep breath, but it really just wasn't doing anything for him. "I'd like to drag them all out into the street and hit them in the face with a Complete Works. What a bunch of assholes. Oxfordians, Baconians--"
"Does that make you a Stratfordian?" she asked, then took a step back at the look on his face.
"I am not a Stratfordian, Anna," he said, his voice going deathly soft. "I am just right."
"Got it," she said, nodding again and snatching her papers up off the table. "I have to go now."
"So do I," he said, holding the door for her. "People require my guidance and wisdom."
She stopped and gave him a grim look. "I assume you mean the actors waiting for you at rehearsal."
"Yeah," he said, nodding. "Them, too."