Talk:Shakespeare in the Park (New York City)

Article coverage

• Setting: Delacorte Theater.
• Content: New York Shakespeare Festival.

I'll add the appropriate Main article... section headings. --Wetman 13:03, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Untitled section 1

For some reason this article is edit-protected, but this: "Fewer than 1,000 of the 1,872 seats are part of the free program because tickets for every other row are sold at $350 a pair to "Summer Supporters." Tickets were much easier to obtain before this policy was instituted" is not accurate - policy dictates that 70% of all tickets must be distributed free for each performance, with rare exceptions (opening nights, special events like the 2007 'Hair' concert. 156.47.15.10 (talk) 23:20, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Should we mention the names of the protesters or not?

In this article, there is a section that refers to the Julius Caesar play depicting the titular character as a figure similar to Donald Trump. In that section, I originally added the names of the protesters since 1). Both individuals have wikipedia articles and 2). They are mentioned in the sources such as New York Times and CBS News. However, several users, such as JamesLucas, have argued that the protesters shouldn't have been mentioned because adding them would cause "out-of-proportion attention given to the two protesters and/or WP:CITEKILL". Along with JamesLucas, I have subsequently removed needless details regarding the circumstances of the protesters. However, I was wondering if we should mention the protesters in this article or not. Yoshiman6464 ^♫🥚 19:36, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

For any editors tuning in now, I'll note that back in June we had a handful of IP editors come in guns-blazing and not showing a lot of willingness to fact-check or strip their language of a pro-Trump bias. Oknazevad did a great job helping me tamp things down, weeding-out the outright fabrications, and yelling at people on my talk page 😏 until the IP mob moved on, which was pretty sudden, all things considered. And while I don't want to put words in oknazevad's mouth, I know we both let the text sit for some weeks while things played out in the news. Eventually another IP editor came along and removed the entire paragraph, and we let that sit too. Yoshiman6464's restoration woke me up, and I did some poking around. Ultimately I thought it best to leave the event but remove mention of Laura Loomer and Jack Posobiec. Key factors:

• The story has largely disappeared from the news, but since the end of June, there's been a handful of mentions of the production and the protests, and I haven't seen Laura and Jack mentioned by name except in pieces primarily about Laura and/or Jack.
• The protest involved two performances. I've only seen passing mentions of the second event, but it seems that the second interrupted performance did not involve Laura or Jack.
• The two protesters had no prior connection to the Public Theater or Shakespeare in the Park; they have no ongoing dialogue with the theater or its artistic director. In the grand scheme of things, my take is that their disruption was more about garnering publicity for themselves rather than affecting the institution of Shakespeare in the Park. Therefore, within this context, they are not personally notable.
• All of this affected two performances of a single production out of thousands of nights played out over 60-some years. In the grand scheme of things, this event should be a very small part of this article.

Regarding my note on WP:CITEKILL, I was noting that we had 4 reference covering 2 sentences while the rest of the article still needs lots of TLC. Regardless of whether Laura and Jack are mentioned, I think the third and fourth can be cut.

Thanks to Yoshiman6464 for being the only editor pushing for inclusion of these details willing to discuss the issue in a manner becoming of a Wikipedia editor. —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 20:55, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

You're welcome JamesLucas. I removed the extra citations (CBS News and Daily Best) for the detail regarding the two protesters, leaving only New York Times' report. Yoshiman6464 ^♫🥚 22:11, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

I think we can leave out the names. They're marginally notable figures and this serves largely to promote them. oknazevad (talk) 01:39, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

The incident was widely reported, not just in NYC; mentioning it here is only proper, and the current coverage of 2 sentences cannot be called WP:UNDUE. Withholding the names seems churlish and unencyclopedic to me. If editors want to tackle undue verbiage in the article, the "Ticket distribution" section is a good place to start. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 05:40, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

While I personally suspect that self-promotion was the ulterior motive for these "protests", and thus hate to give them the attention, I think we probably do need to give the names here. Their notability in connection with the theatre or the institution isn't all that relevant (they're not notable in that sense), but the fact that the protest were carried out by people notable for activism is relevant. Particularly if there was a second disruption by other people; which latter should also be mentioned as part of the same overall incident (controversy over the depiction). However, for properly contextualising it, the paragraph should also mention other notable instances where Cæsar is portrayed in a way that comments on a real world political figure and the play to comment on contemporary society or culture (which is fairly common, aiui). Oh, and it's not Trump that resembles their portrayal of Cæsar, but the other way around (unless we're trying to claim that Trump is deliberately imitating their production's Cæsar).

And a big thanks to all of you for keeping on top of this and working together to find a solution. I'll file a feature request with the WMF WikiLove team to add a "Mass hand out virtual cookies" function! :) --Xover (talk) 10:11, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

For comparative purposes, activist Michael Moore made a widely watched, highly awarded documentary about General Motors in the late 1980s called Roger & Me. That movie had press coverage hundreds of times more extensive than this Caesar incident did, and still Mr Moore's name does not appear in either the main article on GM or History of General Motors. Decades-old institutions are so much bigger than the protesters that a well-edited article is just not going to get down to that level of detail. Wikipedia is an encyclopædia, not a newspaper or a promotional platform for the individuals involved.

Regarding the word ordering of Trump and Caesar, Xover, it's really a tricky sentence to write without leaving the door open to possible misinterpretation. I understand your point (it would, of course, be chronologically nonsensical to suggest that President Trump has been tying his neckties down to his crotch for years because he saw an actor do it in 2017), but the current wording does not make any implication of causality in either direction and, importantly, doesn't accidentally suggest that the a character named Trump appears in the production, which was the case in some of the versions pushed by IP editors back in June. —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 14:50, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

I did some minor copy-editing to illustrate what I mean regarding Trump vs. Cæsar, and added a little bit of context (plot) from the play (we can't assume all readers are familiar with the plot). And while I was at it I added some quotes from its defenders to balance out the critics (again, it provides context crucial to understand the critics' position). Feel free to revert if you find it objectionable; I mainly mean it to be illustrative for the purpose of this discussion.

Regarding the protestors, I see your point, but I still think the fact that conservative and alt-right activists chose to make hay about this is lower-case n notable; as is the fact that actual protests that disrupted a performance took place, rather than just some critic kibbitzing on their blog or complaining on talk radio. It would also make sense, as the NY Times does, to simply describe (neutrally) the all-out-of-proportion nature of the protests (Goebbels? ISIS? Not a lot of sense of proportion there!) to let the reader draw their own conclusions. Just mentioning the protest without detailing their nature and contents gives the impression of being far more reasonable than they appear to have been, but characterising them thus runs the risk of veering into editorialising (and violating NPOV). That being said, I'm not entirely sure how to do that without giving them undue weight. --Xover (talk) 16:24, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Oh, and I meant to add that we should try to find some way to include reference to Giffords as important context for the criticism (the right, both mainstream and alt-, are to a degree reacting to complaints from the left about similar behaviour, the Palin crosshairs map in the wake of the Giffords shooting being a prime example). Without thinking too deeply about it, I am undecided on whether making that connection would require a RS to do so to avoid running into NOR and SYN. --Xover (talk) 16:35, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

@JamesLucas: I do so request. Why do you keep putting the Trumpian cart before the production's horse? Trump is incidental in that sentence; it's the production we're talking about and the politician they reference is strictly speaking irrelevant. And either way, it is not Trump that has similarities to the production, it's the other way around. --Xover (talk) 06:22, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

@Xover:So, as I touched briefly before, there has been confusion that the Trump-like Caesar was meant to be Donald Trump (and we know this because unambiguous language to that effect was added on more than one occasion in June). Therefore, it's surprisingly important that the sentence in question cannot possibly be read to mean that the Public "portrayed" Donald Trump in the literal sense. Unsurprisingly, different takes on the wording of this sentence each have their pros and cons:

1. The 2017 production of Julius Caesar stirred up controversy over the similarities between its portrayal of Caesar and President Donald Trump. – This was your version, and I actually think it's the most graceful, but I already know that you mean that there is a similarity between [Ceasar, as portrayed by the play] and [President Trump, from real life]. The downside to this version is that it's possible to read this as a comparison between [Ceasar, as portrayed by the play] and [President Trump, as portrayed by the play] due to the relationship of the nouns and modifiers within the sentence. I grant you that the lack of the word 'of' before 'President' is a strong indicator that this version of the sentence is talking about [President Trump, from real life], but I'm arguing that we need to achieve an extra high level of unambiguity here.
2. The 2017 production of Julius Caesar stirred up controversy over the similarities between its portrayal of Caesar and the real-life appearance of President Donald Trump. – This was a version I was kicking around last night as I was drafting as an attempt to put your before/after concerns to rest. This version has two problems in my mind. First, the phrase "real-life" strikes me as inappropriate for Wikipedia (but I guess I could swallow it). Second, the production's Caesar not only looked like President Trump but also had a Melania-like wife and some elements of his signature diction, so "appearance" doesn't really cover the spread. Maybe there's a way to fix this without making some unwieldy mess? I'm dubious but not closed to the possibility.
3. The 2017 production of Julius Caesar stirred up controversy over the similarities between President Donald Trump and the production's portrayal of Caesar. – This version that I returned to cannot be read as a comparison between [President Trump, as portrayed by the play] and [Ceasar, as portrayed by the play], so it solves the ambiguity problem. I do see the before/after issue that you're raising, but ultimately I think you're inferring a directional relationship that is not explicitly there. A rigorous reading of this version does not include any before/after or causal relationships since the conjunction "and" does not signal such in either formal or vernacular use.

So that's how I got to the version currently in the article. In normal circumstances, I'd actually favor your wording, but there is evidently a group of likely readers out there who would have an active interest in misreading the sentence if they can, and that demands a higher level of technical correctness, possibly at the expense of grace. If this is still not convincing, I give you my blessing to flip the order back! —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 22:26, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

@JamesLucas: Told you I planned to follow up later! :)

Now that the controversy has died down, I'd like to try to smooth this phrasing so that it no longer offends my obsessive tendencies so much.

The current version reads The 2017 production of Julius Caesar stirred up controversy over the similarities between President Donald Trump and the production's portrayal of Caesar. I would like to find some way to put this that places the emphasis on the production instead of on Trump, and preferably that better explains both what the connections were and the nature of the protests.

One possible approach would be In 2017, the production stirred up controversy by portraying a Caesar with eerie similarities to President Donald Trump. It uses the "In year, " crutch that I dislike, and that "eerie similarity" probably needs citation, but puts the focus back where it belongs without introducing ambiguity.

Another possible approach would be greater verbosity: The 2017 production was a Julius Caesar in which the portrayal of Caesar was intended to evoke President Donald Trump (including not just his physical appearance and mannerisms, but even going so far as to add a wife reminiscent of Melania Trump). The production was the subject of controversy when right-wing activists Whatsherface and Thatguy objected to what they characterized as the murder of a stand-in for President Trump and interrupted one performance. Despite the fact that the play is widely viewed as a cautionary tale against political violence, the on-stage murder of a Trump stand-in was seen as a threat of the same kind condemned in the wake of the 2011 assassination attempt on U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords. The activists complained that it was hypocritical to condemn Sarah Palin's use of violent imagery but not the production's depiction of the murder of a sitting politician.

I'm loath to go the verbose route as this is, in the big picture, a very minor incident from almost any perspective you care to take; but at the same time it merits some mention, and when mentioned at all should be explained sufficiently that the reader understands both the incident and its context. I don't know quite how to reconcile these concerns, and am not really proposing any of the above so much as throwing them out there in the hopes they will resonate with others. --Xover (talk) 15:42, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

I just made a update to the paragraph in question. Now that we're farther away from the summer in question, we can use the phrase 'recently inaugurated'! This is (a) helpful to anyone who may not be sure how long ago Trump took office and (b) serves as that qualifier I was looking for when I was kicking around 'real-life' (see bullet 2 above). I did elaborate a bit more by adding the qualifier 'visual and behavioral' to 'similarities', but I too am hoping to avoid verbosity, as you put it, in such a small paragraph. I also did some research on the 2018 sponsors to see how things shook out and updated the final sentence accordingly. Thanks for the prompt! —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 19:22, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

@JamesLucas: Oh, that's excellent. Yes, that neatly alleviates my concerns about both sentence structure and conveyed context in the paragraph. Great work James, and thanks! --Xover (talk) 06:10, 6 October 2019 (UTC)