by Alexandra Bowman. @scripta_bene.
NEW YORK,NY - Broadway playwright Billie Rattleblade has drawn attention from critics, audiences, and licensed psychologists for a particular aspect of her literary style: creating characters and making them suffer. Doctors and local authorities are now wondering whether Rattleblade, along with every other storyteller to ever exist, is not only an artist, but also a legal sociopath.
“I get this sick delight out of it,” admitted a nonchalant Rattleblade, stroking a hairless cat, which is impressively hard to do in a straitjacket. “I sit down with my laptop and think of what precious, innocent cinnamon rolls I can birth from my mind - like the mighty Zeus birthing Athena from his - and then imagine ways I can desolate them beyond comprehension. I love my job. I love art.”
According to local English major and occasional licensed psychologist Mandy Spencer, the signs are undeniable that Rattleblade and her creative ilk are indeed deranged lunatics devoid of conscience and empathy.
“Lest we forget that Hamlet is entirely about a man flirting with vigilante justice. Little Lord Fauntleroy is playing dress-up as judge, jury, and executioner,” fumed Spencer, who should not watch a Batman film anytime soon. “And the ‘greatest playwright of all time’ is out here telling our children that it’s OK to murder your uncle because your dad’s ghost told you to? Lord help us. I formally advise that high school theater departments should not have any of the tall troubled white boys playing Hamlet.”
Subsequently, Columbia University scholar of theater and literature Thea Terr burst into our office and shrieked that the works and legacies of storytelling’s greatest names demand reexamination.
“For centuries now, this idea that ‘more pain equals more depth’ has been winning dangerous maniacs critical acclaim and encouraging them to metaphorically kill again,” said Terr, who has tweeted thousands of screenshots of individual films’ contrasting Rotten Tomatoes critic and audience scores, each time with the caption “the two Americas”. “Ever since Aeschylus’ The Persians was performed in 472 BC by a bunch of bedsheet-wearing perverts in open-air stadiums, audiences have been swindled into watching - and pretending we enjoyed - theatrical adaptations of writers’ emotional disorders, featuring characters we’ve been expertly manipulated to identify with enduring hideous agony.”
In related news, everyone who has ever enjoyed Les Misérables is currently being put in solitary for being entertained by slavery, child abuse, and forced prostitution.