HowlRound: When people meet most playwrights and performers, they want to know: What have you done that I might have seen? Sitting down with Joseph Assadourian before his show at The Playroom Theater in the theater district, one feels urged to ask: What were you in for?
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Society always has an intense fascination with prison. What goes on behind those bars? One is inclined to dismiss inmates as hardened criminals, thrown in the pen for the sake of protecting us law abiding citizens. Thus, the ground shakes when one is forced to sympathize with an convict. For some, this may take the form of a friend or relative getting mixed up in something or other and being tossed into the doghouse.
But an increasingly common scenario is becoming involved with criminals in a story. Works of art such as Bullpen and Orange is the New Black take something everyone has their own mostly negative perceptions about (the slammer) and invites you inside. By introducing you to a quirky but insanely lovable cast of characters, the audience is forced to rethink their former perceptions of the old skinner joint beaten into them by every other work of media.
Don't know if sympathizing with the stoney lonesome is necessarily the next big step for equality, but I suppose it couldn't hurt.
It’s interesting how the entertainment industry projects a prison lifestyle. Often times it is overdramatized. However, no matter how comedic, like Bullpen, or dramatic, like Orange is the New Black, they are connected by their ability to keep a level of reality in them. People watch it because they relate to it. They relate to a struggling detective or they empathize with the emotions portrayed by a character caught in the middle of it all. It seems weird that as an audience, people root for the supposed criminals.
Maybe that is the true problem? As a viewer, you are forced to see what they want you to see. They want you to connect and to relate. They want to create suspension and leave you wanting more. I suppose Bullpen does a good job, then. It breaks the stereotype of prison dramas. It hands the audience the truth in absurd but real way.
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