Kanye West Isn’t the Only Person Behaving Badly at the Theater; The Daily Beast, December 4, 2018

Tim Teeman, The Daily Beast; Kanye West Isn’t the Only Person Behaving Badly at the Theater

"Manners are not just individual, they are collective. Going to a theater where thoughtlessness is so blithely practiced is a sad reminder how we have forgotten, or are forgetting, to occupy collective spaces in a civilized fashion. Theater noise-makers cut across all boundaries of class and age; what they share is a selfishness, of which using a mobile phone is the most visible and rankling example.

Here’s the thing. You are not at home. There are people sitting next to you. There are actors, like Bryan Cranston, trying to do their job a few feet from you. Yes, they are on a set, and yes the stage looks like a fictional world. But actually, we are all there together, and the social contract here is that you keep your mouth shut, and let the actors act. They can hear you. We can hear you."

Some white ‘Star Trek’ fans are unhappy about remake’s diversity; Washington Post, June 23, 2017

Travis M. Andrews, Washington Post; Some white ‘Star Trek’ fans are unhappy about remake’s diversity

"Indeed, the ‘Star Trek’ series, as Manu Saadia put it in the New Yorker, has always been about inclusion, diversity and breaking down human-made social barriers. Saadia wrote:

Each successive “Star Trek” cast has been like a model United Nations. Nichols’s black communications specialist worked alongside George Takei’s Japanese helmsman and Walter Koenig’s (admittedly campy) Russian navigator. Leonard Nimoy’s Spock was half-human, half-Vulcan, and he bore traces of the actor’s own upbringing in a poor Jewish neighborhood in Boston. The Vulcan hand greeting, for instance, which Nimoy invented, is the Hebrew letter shin, the symbol for the Shekhinah, a feminine aspect of the divine. The original series aired only a few years after the Cuban missile crisis, at the height of the Vietnam War and the space race, and its vision of a reconciled humanity was bold. Nichols, who considered leaving the show after the first season, has said that she was persuaded to stay on by Martin Luther King, Jr., who told her that he watched “Star Trek” with his wife and daughters.

This isn’t the first time an entry in the “Star Trek” series has come under fire for including ever more diverse characters. Just last year, the film “Star Trek Beyond” portrayed Sulu as a gay man. It was the first time the series featured an openly gay character, and some fans were furious."

'This is violence against Donald Trump': rightwingers interrupt Julius Caesar play; Guardian, June 17, 2017

Calla Wahlquist and Lois Beckett, Guardian; 'This is violence against Donald Trump': rightwingers interrupt Julius Caesar play

"A rightwing protester has been charged with trespassing after interrupting a New York production of Julius Caesar during the assassination scene and shouting: “This is violence against Donald Trump.”

The protester, who later identified herself as Laura Loomer, interrupted the Shakespeare in the Park production on Friday night and shouted “this is political violence against the right” while audience members booed and told her to get off the stage.

The incident was filmed by Jack Posobiec, a rightwing provocateur best known for helping to spread the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. He stood up as Loomer was escorted off stage by security guards and yelled at the crowd: “You are all Goebbels. You are all Nazis like Joseph Goebbels … You are inciting terrorists. The blood of Steve Scalise is on your hands.”...

In a statement issued after the play, director Oskar Eustis said: “Free speech for all, but let’s not stop the show.”

“The staff removed the protesters peacefully and the show resumed with the line ‘Liberty! Freedom!’,” he told the New York Times. “The audience rose to their feet to thank the actors, and we joyfully continued. Free speech for all, but let’s not stop the show.”"

To Boldly Go Where No Fan Production Has Gone Before; Slate, 7/13/16

Marissa Martinelli, Slate; To Boldly Go Where No Fan Production Has Gone Before:

"The issues at the heart of the Axanar case are complex—in addition to copyright infringement, CBS and Paramount are accusing the Axanar team of profiting from the production by paying themselves salaries, among other things. Abrams, who directed 2009’s Star Trek and 2013’s Star Trek Into Darkness, promised during a fan event back in May that the lawsuit would be going away at the behest of Justin Lin, the Beyond director who has sided, surprisingly, with Axanar over Paramount. But despite Abrams’ promise, the lawsuit rages on, and in the meantime, other Trekkie filmmakers have had to adapt. Federation Rising, the planned sequel to Horizon, pulled the plug before fundraising had even started, and Star Trek: Renegades, the follow-up to Of Gods and Men that raised more than $132,000 on Indiegogo, has dropped all elements of Star Trek from the production and is now just called Renegades. (Amusingly, this transition seems to have involved only slight tweaks, with the Federation becoming the Confederation, Russ’ character Tuvok becoming Kovok, and so on.) Other projects are stuck in limbo, waiting to hear from CBS whether they can boldly go forth with production—or whether this really does spell the end of the golden age of Star Trek fan films.

Axanar may very well have crossed a line, and CBS and Paramount are, of course, entitled to protect their properties. But in the process, they have suffocated, intentionally or otherwise, a robust and long-standing fan-fiction tradition, one that has produced remarkable labors of love like Star Trek Continues, which meticulously recreated the look and feel of the 1960s show, and an hourlong stop-motion film made by a German fan in tribute to Enterprise—a project almost eight years in the making. It’s a tradition that gave us web series like Star Trek: Hidden Frontier, which was exploring same-sex relationships in Star Trek well before the canon was ready to give us a mainstream, openly gay character."