The downfall of 'Bette Davis'
uggoisme wished to hear about the taking down of the woman now known as Bette Davis.
The coup has not yet begun, but the current situation is this. Ms. Davis is a fixture in my sleepy little town. She has managed to run a successful theatre company but completely lacks merit. You see, for her, theatre does not equal the creative process plus artists. Important to her are selling tickets and her name in print. She is a modern-day P.T. Barnum.
An apt description since, of late, her theatre company is not unlike a circus.
Ms. Davis, despite all of her success, is slowly going crazy. My good friend, the Piano Man, has noticed it more quickly than I--he has been planning his own coup from within for some time and keeps her close.
Things have always been unpleasant around her domain, with the exception of a particular season four years ago. She believes in low cost over quality and her shows are notoriously overpriced. She has terrible interpersonal skills. She is miserly. Some notables:
- Ms. Davis holds a one-week workshop for children twice a year. She recycles her scripts often, so as a result, some of the children have performed in the same play five times. If you are caught acting up in her workshop, she will throw a shoe in your general direction.
- She makes no effort to improve on her own abysmal directing skills and never goes to other companies' shows.
- Every show she produces is 'the best show she's ever done.' When the Piano Man told her to stop telling people lies, she responded, "This is how you sell a show."
- She claims never to take a paycheque except for once a year when she holds a workshop with a grant from HRDC to help EI pensioners. Despite the fact that we are all artists, we can do math.
- If she can borrow it from someone, she will not pay for it. Sometimes she claims not to have any money to pay people for odd jobs, so she pays them in crap such as t-shirts.
- If you work for this woman, she expects you to sell your soul.
- Her housemate, who she has never admitted to be her partner, is brilliant in all the ways that Ms. Davis is not.
Things have gotten worse this season. Two of her three resident playwrights can write, and one of them is having a successful run at the moment--the show was rehearsed in only two weeks as she is slipping and left everything until the last minute. Playwright 2, the Piano Man, is refusing to have his name as playwright on this year's offering. Playwright 3 is a resident playwright only because she has, we suspect, given Ms. Davis some sort of 2-for-1 deal on terrible scripts composed of stolen Internet jokes. Playwright 3's offering this summer is a play about golf and she knows nothing about golf.
Ms. Davis has started retelling the same stories and missing performances. She has one capable office administrator who she forces to work by herself in a back office with a refreshing view of the parking lot. Also, she has grown paranoid of her landlord who owns the building she works in.
More to follow as events unfold ...