Shownotes
The episode also offers a refreshing approach to discussing conservative representation in the arts.
Rather than advocating for a particular message or agenda, Robert Cooperman, our guest, and owner of Stage Right Theatrics, promotes the Natural Theater. This presents the founding philosophy of the country through art.
“We have protagonists on stage who are not defined by their victim status...there is going to be hope and redemption, which I think is very important and meaning."— Robert Cooperman
This philosophy encompasses human nature, natural rights, and God, and the protagonists on stage are not defined by their victim status. By creating plays that focus on human nature rather than oppression, the Natural Theater provides a unique perspective that sets it apart from other conservative representations in the arts.
The podcast's emphasis on hope and redemption also offers a refreshing take on the genre, rejecting the idea that we are adrift in a meaningless universe.
"Let's have the civil conversation. I'm not budging from my point of view, but I'm going to unlike the left, I'm going to allow another point of view and let the marketplace of ideas decide which is the one that's going to win out."— Robert Cooperman
We also talk about the challenges and opportunities of promoting conservative voices in an industry that is often dominated by liberal viewpoints.
"Our goal is to produce theater from a conservative, traditional point of view because I think we are bombarded every day with messages through the arts as well as other avenues of this woke, left wing ideology." - Robert Koopman.
A big shout out to Andrew Klavan, who was instrumental in the early stages of Stage Right Theatrics with his play, The Uncanny.
Upcoming performances include:
Aug. 18 & 19 at 7:30 PM EDT; Aug. 20 at 1:30 PM EDT
Lynette Grace’s incredible true story of being a stabbing victim who befriends and forgives her assailant.
Nov. 10 & 11 at 7:30 PM EDT; Nov. 12 at 1:30 PM EDT
That beloved musical is about two young lovers and their bickering fathers. Featuring “Try to Remember,” “Soon it’s Gonna Rain,” and other memorable tunes.
Stephen Palmer is the Managing Partner for the law firm, Palmer Legal Defense. He has specialized almost exclusively in criminal defense for over 26 years. Steve is also a partner in Criminal Defense Consultants, a firm focused wholly on helping criminal defense attorneys design winning strategies for their clients.
Norm Murdock is an automobile racing driver and owner of a high-performance and restoration car parts company. He earned undergraduate degrees in literature and journalism and graduated with a Juris Doctor from the University of Cincinnati College of Law in 1985. He worked in the IT industry for two years before launching a career in government relations in Columbus, Ohio. Norm has assisted clients in the Transportation, Education, Healthcare, and Public Infrastructure sectors.
Brett Johnson, My Podcast Guy®, is an award-winning podcast consultant and small business owner for nearly 10 years, leaving a long career in radio. He is passionate about helping small businesses tell their story through podcasts, and he believes podcasting is a great opportunity for different voices to speak and be heard.
Transcripts
I do. And as always, I need to open up by saying I love everybody, even people I vociferously disagree with.
Steve Palmer [:All right, we know.
Brett Johnson [:And I don't know what that means for the rest of the show anyway.
Steve Palmer [:And we got a special guest today, so I promised guests, and now we have one. We have Robert Cooperman. For those who followed some of my other iterations of this at Lawyer Talk, he's been a guest here down at 511 Studio C before. But we got to meet Robert when, you know, guess what he does? He has a theater in town called Stage Right. Did I get that right, Rob?
Robert Cooperman [:It's Stage Right Theatrics if you want to be right.
Steve Palmer [:Really?
Robert Cooperman [:All inclusive?
Steve Palmer [:Yes. Now he sounds like he's got an Ohio wait a minute. You don't sound like you have an Ohio accent. Not at all but Robert Cooperman, and he runs a theater. He manages a theater here, right here in Dublin, Ohio. And he's got some really interesting, really interesting angle on the arts and theater. So we've got a guy who is maybe a little bit common sense, like we are, that means conservative, like we are, and does it with an artistic flair. So how does that happen? Stay tuned. We're about to find out. So, Robert, why don't we just start? Man why don't you introduce yourself? I know I already know this stuff, and we know this stuff, but nobody else does it. I don't want to say nobody. Others, really. We'll just say others may not.
Robert Cooperman [:There might be a few out there that don't know. But I'm Robert Koopman. I am the founder and president, as Steve said, of stageride theatrics. We have been in existence for about seven years now, and our goal is to produce theater from a conservative, traditional point of view because I think we are bombarded every day with messages through the arts as well as other avenues of this woke, left wing ideology. And I said about seven years ago, how come we don't see the conservative point of view on stage when everybody in the arts is talking about inclusivity and diversity? And there was none as far as I'm concerned. So I decided to stick my neck out and create this company. And we started with a one night only conservative theater festival, which, of course, shook up the hackles of the local theater community. But since then, it's become a staple of our company, and we do it every year. And we produce plays by mostly people across the landscape who and I mean the country who feel that their voice is not being heard because of the themes and slant of their particular plays. And so at least I give them a forum in which their plays can be read and possibly performed.
Steve Palmer [:And it's not just from talking to you before. It's not just that the conservatives are getting excluded. It's certain plays that maybe don't have a certain message get excluded, whether the writer might be conservative or not conservative or what's your experience with that?
Robert Cooperman [:Well, look, plays get rejected in general for one reason. For a couple of reasons. One of which the play stinks. All right, we'll give that one. Right. Okay.
Steve Palmer [:Woke, not woke, whatever.
Robert Cooperman [:The play sucks. We're not going to and I didn't know to use the word sucks because I'm from New York City, and we don't talk like that.
Steve Palmer [:No, it's all like formal kings.
Robert Cooperman [:Exactly. Well, I'm from Queens, so that's close enough. Queens, England. Right. So anyway, that's one reason. Another very practical reason why plays do not get produced is because they are unproducible. And what that means is that the playwright puts in something like there'll be a full scale battle of knights coming on in full armor, and then in the next scene is sunshine and an empty landscape. You can't do these things. Even major Broadway houses can't do these things. So that's another reason. But let's face it, the arts are dominated by the left. And if the left sees something in a play that will that triggers them a message, a theme, a character who is not toeing the ideological line, then they will reject that play outright, whether the play is merited or not.
Steve Palmer [:Well, let me ask you this, because it seems to me that look, just from listening to the sources that I have, that it's not just that they have messages that certain movies, scripts, books, plays, whatever it would be, have a certain message that is contrary to the ideology. It is that they don't actually promote the ideology. So it's become almost passive at times where your art has to do something that promotes a certain ideology, not just is contrary to it, but actually has.
Robert Cooperman [:To push it, has to promote it. No, I would absolutely agree with that. And my fear is that it's becoming so commonplace that people just accept that this is the ideology. And that's why we need a company like Stageride Theatrics to offer a counter point of view. We're not looking to take over the arts, although that wouldn't be terrible. But we are looking for a place at the table. And right now, we're not even allowed in the room. That's why we exist. And I exist among, you know, a theater community in general that just, you know, scorns me. Or have they've gotten used to the fact that I exist because I've been around for seven years? Right.
Steve Palmer [:You're not going away.
Robert Cooperman [:I'm not going away. Right. So, like, I'm I'm this rash that keeps coming up on their skin. But more and more, we do have people who are willing to work with us, but the general consensus is that I won't go to see his shows and I won't go to see and I won't audition for him because I am a tolerant person and I just can't tolerate him.
Steve Palmer [:So you would let them audition, but they won't audition for you? That's correct. You're intolerant exactly. Yes.
Robert Cooperman [:You hit it right on the head.
Steve Palmer [:See, that doesn't make common sense to me. And this is what we kick around here at the table.
Robert Cooperman [:Now, there is no common sense attached to this. I don't know. They feel that by working with my company, which, by the way, I have to say, we are, I think, among the most inclusive and diverse companies out there because we don't have a litmus test for who can join us. I've had people of all colors and people of all sexual persuasions, and I've also worked with people with physical and emotional handicaps.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah, so nobody's going to come to you and say, well, look, I happen to be of a certain sexual preference, or I happen to be of a certain race or that I believe certain things. You're not kicking them out the door for any of that.
Robert Cooperman [:If they're right for the part, come on in. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:Have it.
Brett Johnson [:Or you're not going to accept them.
Robert Cooperman [:Just because that's exactly right.
Steve Palmer [:That's a good point.
Brett Johnson [:No left toe. Right.
Robert Cooperman [:Even though they might claim that because that becomes their straw man argument.
Brett Johnson [:So are you scorned because of just the ego that's in the industry based on ego based I don't know if.
Robert Cooperman [:It'S based solely on ego, but I do think a lot of it is ego. But there's this odd feeling that if they work with my company, I don't know, they're going to become conservative. They might see another point of view and that will trigger them. I don't know what it means.
Brett Johnson [:Or is there a potential being blackballed for them?
Robert Cooperman [:Yes, I think there is.
Steve Palmer [:Government over at Stageride Theatrical.
Robert Cooperman [:That's right.
Brett Johnson [:Don't even show up.
Robert Cooperman [:I definitely think that is liking somebody's.
Steve Palmer [:Tweet that's in the wrong.
Robert Cooperman [:Yes. We did our festival, our annual festival in early February, and we had some cast members who were of the LGBT community. Like I cared. It didn't matter. We weren't sitting around discussing this. And from what I heard through my sources, to quote you, Steve, my sources told me that one person was told, you can get hurt. Jeez. Yeah. You can get just from being associated with us.
Steve Palmer [:See, in my line of work, which is criminal defense attorney work, we call that guilt by association. And everybody would normally hear that and say, that's bad.
Robert Cooperman [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:You shouldn't find somebody guilty just because they are associating with somebody who might otherwise be guilty, right or wrongly. And now it's become sort of everything that's good is bad and everything that's bad is good. The world's upside down.
Robert Cooperman [:Right? Upside down. Right. I would agree.
Norm Murdock [:Robert, can you hear me okay?
Robert Cooperman [:I can. Loud and clear.
Norm Murdock [:Okay. Being remote. I just wanted to jump in and point out, I believe this is correct, that part of your outreach has been the work in theater organization in the central Ohio general area. And you're actually heading up as either treasurer or director or some sort of leadership role in that community which involves theater companies which would be in editorially diametrically opposed, and you're working well with those other people.
Robert Cooperman [:Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:And so I think it shows that to me, if I have that straight, it shows that you don't just cashier other people and feel like you can't play in the play pen with them. You're out there slogging away, working with other people. I think that's long term, how we spread peace and harmony is by not staying in our lane, but feeling like the entire swimming pool is a place where we're allowed to be. If I have that correct, could you explain your role with the other theater group?
Robert Cooperman [:Sure. And I appreciate you bringing that up, Norm. I am on the executive committee of the Central Ohio Theater Roundtable. The Central Ohio Theater Roundtable is a consortium of about 30 something theater companies. We have a lot of theater companies in Columbus, in the central Ohio area. A lot of them, maybe too many of them, but that's another topic. But we have this group, we get together and we try to promote theater. And as part of our mission statement is all the obligatory words about diversity and inclusion and all that stuff. I am the treasurer. Which gives you an idea how bad off they are financially.
Steve Palmer [:How could you be trusted with yeah, absolutely.
Robert Cooperman [:No, the fact of the matter is there are a few people who are influential in theater in the central Ohio area who did say, even though I may not agree with you, I respect your right to do what you're doing. And it's people like this who help me along, but they are few and far between. As a matter of fact, I'm running for treasurer again on Sunday is our elections at the Central Ohio Robert. Well, I think I got a good shot because I'm running unopposed.
Steve Palmer [:So you're either going to get blackballed.
Robert Cooperman [:I'm either going to get back yeah. So I'm either going to get blackballed or I'm going to win this thing by a landslide. So I feel pretty good about my chance.
Brett Johnson [:Or they have an AI treasurer.
Robert Cooperman [:Exactly. Look, you never know. I like being on the executive some of the people who are on the executive committee now have decided not to continue for personal reasons, et cetera. But I like being on the executive committee because I feel that keeps me at the forefront of what's going on in theater in the Central Ohio area. And the people I work with there have all been wonderful to me on a one to one basis. But you don't find these people coming to my shows. I come to their shows. I go to their shows, but they don't come to my shows. But on a human level, just one on one, everything's cool. Somebody wrote about me on Facebook. I think it was a posting opposed to what I'm doing and my existence. And he said, yes, robert is a kind of a jovial fellow, but he is trying, of course, to undermine democracy. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:You look like a guy who's subversive that way.
Robert Cooperman [:I am. Well, that's how I can trick you.
Steve Palmer [:You're undermining democracy. Exactly. Because you will put on anybody on your stage who has a good play.
Robert Cooperman [:That's right.
Brett Johnson [:And they're angry because you have people filling the seats.
Robert Cooperman [:Yes. And one person wrote, he has every right to put on his shows. Oh, thank you, thank you. But I hope he has very small audiences. Well, thank you very much. Yeah. This is a theater person not supporting theater.
Steve Palmer [:Well, let me ask you I'm going to ask you about your shows in a second, but one quick question. How many others in the country, in the world, are doing what you're doing. In other words, showcasing sort of expressly, including all forms of theater arts as opposed to excluding arts. Now, you see what I said there? I didn't say showcasing conservative plays because I don't think that's just what you're doing.
Robert Cooperman [:No, not necessarily. Well, yes and no. We can talk about that, I guess.
Steve Palmer [:Showcase meaning that's all you're doing. Yeah, but who else is doing it? Who else is going to play a conservative play from a conservative writer?
Robert Cooperman [:From my research? Zero. I'm in. When you look up conservative theater, you find me. And that's how people find me, because there are people obviously in the arts who are more conservative and say, I'm not getting anybody to pay attention to me across a theater landscape. They look up conservative theater and boom, I come up and then they contact me and they send me a play or they talk to me or they want to interview me, et cetera.
Brett Johnson [:But that doesn't mean a series of shows may not have a CatCo, which I know is not the name, could have a conservative show in their lineup. Potentially.
Robert Cooperman [:Yeah, potentially. Of course.
Brett Johnson [:Not a full focus.
Robert Cooperman [:No, not a full focus. Look, I mean, I've actually stopped using the word conservative for my theater festival this year. I just call it the stage right? Theater festival. I think it served its purpose in that we were announcing to the world that we're going to be something else.
Brett Johnson [:Well, Kentucky Fried Chicken didn't have to do the fried piece of it anymore.
Robert Cooperman [:That's right.
Steve Palmer [:So this brings us to how I encountered you, because I listened to, I guess it would be a conservative thinker, although he doesn't strike me as all that conservative when you hear all he has to say. But Andrew Clavin, he's conservative, I guess, by definitional, structure, but very open minded guy about all ideas, all thoughts. And Andrew Clavin is one of the guys who I have turned to for all sorts of insight and thoughts on not only politics, but mostly art. He's an artist. He's a writer. He's written tons of novels. He's written movie scripts. Anybody out there who hates him, he probably liked some of his stuff without even knowing it, and I think that's how he found you. So Andrew Claven, now, I think he's with The Daily Wire, which is a conservative news network or conglomerate of podcasts and shows and other media. Now, how did he find you? And when I heard him talking about one more thing, I heard him talking about a play in Dublin, Ohio. I was sitting on my couch listening to his podcast, and he's like, yeah, my play is showcasing in Dublin, Ohio. And I'm like, Well, I live in Ohio, and that's like ten minutes from me. How do I get tickets? I immediately went online and I bought four tickets, and I called Norman said, hey, my son and I are going to this play. You're going with us. And we went, but sort of give us that backstory on how all that happened.
Robert Cooperman [:Sure. Well, I had made a connection with the Heritage Foundation. I actually went to Washington. Somebody introduced me to one of the people at the Heritage Foundation. And we were chatting about what we can do to promote conservatives in the arts. And they were thinking about doing some kind of a conference or something like that. Anyway, I was on a call, like a zoom call. The person I was in contact with was Katie Gorka, who is Sebastian Gorka's wife, and she's no longer with the Heritage Foundation. But we were chatting, and here's Andrew Clavin. And I knew the name, but I wasn't absolutely sure. But anyway, he was part of the conversation. And not long after that conversation, I got an email from him saying, hey, I've got this play called The Uncanny. It's based on my novel, and I was wondering if you'd be willing to take a look at it. And so I looked at it and I really liked it. I read it a couple of times. I really liked it. There were a couple of things that I felt were along that unproducible strain with my budget. But I talked to him about it and I said, we can't do exactly what you're thinking, but we can do this. And he was so thrilled to at least that's the perception I got. He was very thrilled to have us consider doing it. And I said, yeah, let's do it. And I really benefited by getting a director who was a film guy, a film buff, and he turned some of those scenes that Claven had set on stage into film pieces. And it was a multimedia and, hey, listen, you know, it was fabulous.
Steve Palmer [:It was incredible.
Robert Cooperman [:And the great thing was that Clavin was so generous with his time, not only through email conversing with me and the director, but also came to the show.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah, he was there. So, Norm, you were there. And what's interesting about it and I'll let Norm comment on this, too.
Robert Cooperman [:It.
Steve Palmer [:Didn'T strike me as it wasn't a conservative agenda. It was just a play.
Norm Murdock [:No, it was a play.
Robert Cooperman [:Well, yeah, if you narrow it down to say it's got to have a particular conservative agenda, then yeah, then it would be really a very political piece, I think. And we do produce those. However, we are pushing if I can talk about this now, we are pushing something called the Natural Theater. And the Natural Theater is something that I came up with, and what it talks about is how do we present on stage or through the arts the philosophy of the founding of this country, which involves human nature, natural rights. Right. The nature's, god, things like that. What does that mean? Well, it means that we have protagonists on stage who are not defined by their victim status. It means that things at the end of the play, even if there's death, even if there's suffering, even if there's sorrow, there is going to be hope and redemption, which I think is very important and meaning. And I think that's very important because we see a lot of these plays, especially from the times of the world wars to the present, where we are told that we are kind of adrift in this meaningless, cold universe with no meaning that we can subscribe to objectively, but rather just the meaning that we create for us at the moment. Well, my theater company rejects that because I don't believe not only A, I don't believe it, but B, I don't believe that that was part of the founder's vision. I mean, there was clearly hope and redemption and a betterment of human beings. Another piece of that is human nature drives dramatic conflict. It's not oppression, state oppression or anything like that bigotry or any of those isms and things that people accuse conservatives of. It is human nature that drives that. And it is the realization by the character, the main character, if you will, the hero. Do I say hero?
Steve Palmer [:Hero.
Robert Cooperman [:Do I have heroes anymore? And not mean a Subway sandwich.
Steve Palmer [:Not been a hero who's not also a victim, right?
Robert Cooperman [:That's right. Or is a hero by virtue of.
Steve Palmer [:His or her only hero because he's a victim.
Robert Cooperman [:He's a victim. Right. These people recognize within themselves their flaws and work to improve their flaws and not blame everybody else. Those are the kinds of things we support in the natural theater. Because I think it, as the founders said, was naturally the way human beings operate. A very famous quote from The Federalist 51 by James Madison said, if men were angels, there'd be no need for government. And my twist on that is, and I'm being inclusive, men and women, of course, but if men were angels, there'd be no need for theater.
Steve Palmer [:That's a great quote.
Robert Cooperman [:Isn't that brilliant? I think it's brilliant.
Steve Palmer [:Thank you. Well, and what you're talking about is you have to recognize that this is not just the founding of our country. This goes way back to almost the origin, right. This notion that you overcome adversity and take responsibility for yourself. And we are on a journey to improve ourselves. None of us are perfect, and we have to overcome. And that's where the satisfaction of life is found, not in becoming a victim and then getting everybody's sympathy. That's right. All the best stories I'm trying to think of some examples, but it seems to me all the best stories in our arts are like that.
Robert Cooperman [:Oh, you're absolutely right. I focused on the founding of the country because this is America and I want to celebrate the red, white and blue. But the fact of the matter is, you can find a great natural theater play in Sophocles's Oedipus or in Shakespeare?
Steve Palmer [:I was going to say just pick a Shakespeare.
Brett Johnson [:I was just going to ask what your thoughts are and the Shakespeare works in regards to what you're trying to because people have a relationship with Shakespeare works, right? Somebody has they like one of his works, just something's clicked. That's where I think right, yeah, I.
Robert Cooperman [:Think pick the play. Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, any of those. I'm focusing on the tragedies, of course, because they make the most thematic sense. But yeah, Shakespeare heroes, if you will, even if they are dead at the end, which in a sanctuary and tragedy, there's really nobody left. But they fulfill the requirements of the natural theater, let's put it that way.
Steve Palmer [:Let me ask you this. I know I'm going to get off topic a little bit, but I'm curious. Your opinion on it. Is there a backlash against Shakespeare in theater? In other words, are people still producing Shakespeare plays? Or has that become sort of anti woke and people aren't doing anymore? Because it seems like even the most liberal actors, even the craziest ones, they start with doing Shakespeare in the park or something.
Robert Cooperman [:Yeah, absolutely. There is a pushback on Shakespeare, but it's not a pushback that puts him out of the way. What it does is they change the plays. They change the plays. So now you have all kinds of things. Look, that's not to say that a piece like Hamlet is not open to interpretation and placed in a different setting or different kinds of not Danish royalty, let's put it that way.
Steve Palmer [:You could take the same story.
Brett Johnson [:Well, look how many times Romeo and Juliet's been done over.
Robert Cooperman [:I mean, that's right.
Brett Johnson [:It's underlying theme of a movie.
Robert Cooperman [:Say?
Brett Johnson [:Oh, that's Romeo and Juliet.
Robert Cooperman [:That's right. You're exactly right. So that's what's going on. There's a movement now to well, there has been for a while, but it's picking up some steam again to expose Shakespeare as the kind of white supremacist that he was, which of course, I'm saying tongue in cheek, which I can do. It just doesn't work out that way. But yeah, it was a white supremacist. So they're applying a woke veneer to Shakespeare. When you're dealing with Shakespeare, you're dealing with somebody who's been interpreted so much over the last few hundred years that it's almost accepted that we're going to have a new take on him, a new point of view on him. But when you dig right down to it and strip all that veneer away, what you've got are the kinds of plays that we were describing that talk about speak to human nature, redemption and hope and the triumphs and tragedies of being a human being.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah, he had a little wokeness, right. Wasn't the 12th night, there was some cross dressing going on in the there.
Robert Cooperman [:Was didn't have the same purpose as.
Steve Palmer [:They were quite trans.
Robert Cooperman [:Yeah, they weren't trans. No, they weren't identifying as different they.
Steve Palmer [:Were, but she was not necessarily trans.
Robert Cooperman [:Right. And he took that a lot of that in his comedies from Roman comedy.
Steve Palmer [:Interesting.
Norm Murdock [:I didn't wasn't it the case, Robert Back, Stratford Avon, that at the Shakespeare.
Steve Palmer [:Hold on, you're breaking up, Norm.
Norm Murdock [:That's hard to do, actually. Male yes.
Steve Palmer [:So repeat the question. So we all got it, norm, you're breaking up on us a little bit.
Robert Cooperman [:They were men playing sorry, that was the thing. Yeah. They were young boys playing women. Yeah, that's absolutely true. Yeah. Usually not men. Usually young boys playing women.
Steve Palmer [:So back to it. We got sort of sidetracked on Shakespeare, but you produced a Clavin production, and I got to say, it was a phenomenal play. It was a phenomenal experience. And what really hit me is that afterwards, clavin comes out on stage with the cast and you and there was a Q and A. And what really struck me with a little bit of hope is that even the cast who didn't agree politically with Clayton were there and talking. Look, we don't agree necessarily with him, but we're here to perform our art and do what we do. And the people who were actors in the play did it phenomenally, even though they didn't agree politically. Imagine how that could happen.
Robert Cooperman [:Yeah, it was a wonderful forum for that. And, you know, we do a talk back after every show.
Steve Palmer [:We do that's talkback in the industry.
Robert Cooperman [:Yeah. I'd like you to use the jargon, please. Habeas corpus. We do a talkback. But of course, this one featured Clavin. We've had talkbacks with playwrights before, but none that were Andrew Clavin. And then afterward, he signed autographs and sat at the desk and met people and took pictures.
Steve Palmer [:It felt like he would have talked to me longer if I would have stuck around. But there was a line.
Robert Cooperman [:Yeah, it was a wonderful experience, and it put us a little bit on the map, that production. True. We're in Bora Bora, and I want to be in somewhere else, but we're there.
Steve Palmer [:So what's the current you said you just finished a production. What did you just finished and where are we going next?
Robert Cooperman [:Okay, well, the production we just finished was called that Poor Trapped Man. And it was by a playwright who happens to be an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, and his name is Joshua Denise, and he has written a play for us before for our festival. And he presented this play to me, and I was blown away, not only with the strength of the writing, but I saw immediately that this was a parable for the Middle East conflict. And the situation if I may, the situation was that there's this man named Jackie Cohen can't get more Jewish than Cohen. Okay? So Jackie Cohen, who has the deed to this house, the deed he got from his father, and he comes in and the neighborhood is all filled with. Mansions, but he's got this little teeny kind of a nothing of a house that he's holding onto. Now picture this and start thinking Middle East. He's this one lone Jewish character, although it's not expressly talked about that he's Jewish. And he is surrounded by people who want to kill him. And in the house is a squatter named Eddie. And that's the poor, trapped man. And Eddie doesn't want to leave that territory. So these brothers come in. They're all brothers. They're all related. Eddie and these other brothers come in and they negotiate with Jackie so that Eddie gets to live in Jackie's closet while Jackie has the house. And then Eddie, of course, proceeds to try to kill Jackie every chance he gets. And it turns out that the media is on Eddie's side. They feel he's the poor, trapped, abused man. Jackie's own children turn against him. They denounce him because he's not caring enough for this poor, trapped man who's trying to kill him. So they negotiate at some point that Eddie gets to take the whole living room in exchange for peace. So you see the land for peace gambit gambit.
Steve Palmer [:That has no end.
Robert Cooperman [:That's right. Well, that's the whole point in the play, is that next they try to get the staircase and next they try to get the upper level.
Steve Palmer [:First they came for our guns. That's right.
Robert Cooperman [:Yeah, that's right. So it's actually a very, very funny play, which puts it in kind of the absurdist vein. But absurdism tells you, as I mentioned before, that we live in a meaningless universe. This tells you that there is hope, because at the end, we light a candle and there's hope. And it's all from a Jewish perspective. And the media's complicit Joshua Denise, the playwright, skewers the media. He skewers the younger generation who have no idea what that deed means, even though Jackie keeps saying to his kids, please read the deed. The deed, of course, is the covenant. The deed, of course, is, if you will, the Hebrew Bible. What's in the Hebrew Bible? The Old Testament, as they say. And so I was thrilled with this play. The playwright came in on Sunday to see the performance. But what also, I guess, thrilled me in some way was that during the talkback, we had people who walked out very few, but we had people who walked out after the first act. And we had people telling us that the portrayal of Eddie as a Palestinian because they figured it out he's a Palestinian, that nobody wants his own brothers don't want him. Because, you know, the Palestinians were not accepted by any of the Arab nations when Israel declared its independence. They were appalled and quote, unquote offended by the portrayal of Eddie as a Palestinian, as dirty and ignorant and illiterate, et cetera. They were appalled by this. It did get me thinking. It did get me thinking about not that I would change a word of it, but it got me thinking. We as conservatives are appalled and offended by things we see in the arts. For example, if you recall the famous Piss Christ, if you recall that, which was a photograph of a statue of Christ on the cross immersed in urine. And the guy who did it, he said, I don't understand. He said, I'm a practicing Christian. He said he says, I'm trying to say or at least somebody interpreted it as he's showing that Christ has lost his value in the world by immersing him in urine. But people on the right, religious people, were appalled by this and offended. So it made me think, if it's wrong for Piss Christ to offend us, then it's wrong for me to offend somebody else. You may or may not agree with it. I'm kind of working it out in my mind.
Steve Palmer [:You're playing through it, I guess. What's the point of the art, maybe what is the artist trying to portray and why and isn't it our job to either like it or not our job, but we either like it or we don't. We either understand it or we don't. But I think it's unfair. Maybe what we try to do here at Common Sense Ohio and maybe the conservative ideal it's such a weird word to call how I believe, but it's like we're open minded. I try to be open minded about it. I try to see what they're trying to do. And I think some of the stuff that I sort of roll my eyes at coming the other way when it's so blatantly gratuitously in your face about what somebody's trying to do and say there was a Tom Hanks movie recently. I forget what it was I watched on Netflix, and it wasn't a bad movie. He was this old codger who was in the neighborhood, and his wife had died of cancer or something, and in the midst of it, they put this trans guy right, I heard about and cram it down your throat in a way that it was such a red herring. And I was watching with my son, and he and I both were sort of rolling our eyes, and I just looked at it. I was like, Why do that? Why it wasn't even veiled. It was an obvious statement. So maybe that's and that probably is true both ways. I mean, why shove can why shove the other side at somebody in such a red herring way? But it doesn't sound like that's what this play was. It was baked into the story.
Robert Cooperman [:Yeah, well, this person also thought that it represented the Republicans trying to take over democracy. And of course, she threw the name Trump out there.
Steve Palmer [:Which is lunacy.
Robert Cooperman [:Yeah, which is lunacy. So what I thought about as I'm starting to think about this more and I plan to write an article or I hope to write an article for the Epic Times about that. I am a contributor to the Epic Times, and I was thinking that, you know what? The art itself has to it shouldn't be silenced as a piece of art. I think let the public decide whether they want to embrace it or not. You know? So the art itself, I think, should not be censored. You know, there was some movement with that and with the Maple Thorpe exhibits and the other one, the Holy Virgin Mary with the elephant dung on it that I know Rudy Giuliani, who I like, said that he wanted the Brooklyn Museum not to show it. And that's where I think I was working this through in that I think it should be shown.
Steve Palmer [:You know what it is, though? Maybe we're talking sort of like this overton window idea of, like, what is so far out there is so offensive to one side or another that you can't even show it. But I think what bugs me the most is when people act like something is awesome just because it has this sort of red herring in it. It's like people are staring at a blank wall and calling it art. I'm looking at it. And music is this way, too, in the 90s, sort of all rock. A lot of this sort of happened. People I remember just listening to something, I was like, Look, I get what they're doing. This is horribly out of key, and they're trying to make some statement. They're trying to do something different. I appreciate it, but it really sucks. I hate it. Right? And you're looking at people and they're like, acting like they like it.
Robert Cooperman [:That's right.
Steve Palmer [:When they really don't. And I think that's maybe what bugs me about some of this stuff is when people fake it and want to like it because they want to be part of this progressive notion that we're smarter and we've transcended this conservative BS.
Robert Cooperman [:Especially if you're in the odds.
Norm Murdock [:It's almost like a product placement, like showing some kind of promotional thing in a movie, and it doesn't really fit the flow of the story. It's like a boulder in the middle of a flat plane. You know, some glacier dropped it there, but it doesn't really belong.
Robert Cooperman [:Right.
Norm Murdock [:And you're wondering, why is this actor holding a can of coke in a movie with the label so prominently featured? It's just clunky to do that. Robert, I wanted to ask you about a play that I regret didn't know about your theater at the time, but I'm fascinated by this. I believe an Irish playwright that you've worked with, phylum MacAleer, an immigrant to the United States, and he did a play that you premiered, I believe that's right. Called Ferguson. Truth matters.
Robert Cooperman [:Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:It just blows me away. There's African American actors and actresses that were in your theater with this production, and can you tell us about that? Because that is such a taboo subject. It's remarkable that you waded into that subject matter.
Robert Cooperman [:Well, thank you. I did, because theater has never been a safe space. So I want my theater to advance some other ideas. And one of them was the ideas that were presented. This is terrible English. I have a PhD in English. This is not saying a lot for the Ohio State University's English Department. The idea in fellow McAleer's play was that he took the transcripts of the I don't know if you call it a trial or there was some kind of illegal here I am talking to you. It's some kind of a legal meeting, if you will, of the policeman who shot Michael Brown, I think was his name, in Ferguson. And he put it together to show that the policeman was justified in shooting him. But the media covered it differently. Right. Hands up, don't shoot. Which never happened. And so he put this together, and I can't remember how I found out about it, but I contacted him, he responded to me and he gave me the rights to do it. And so we were the Ohio premiere of this play, so I can claim that to fame. And yes, there were African American I don't like the hyphenated Americans. I'm sorry. There were black performers in the show who vehemently disagreed with this. I don't know what there was to disagree with, because these were facts. Right. He presented these facts and laid it out there. And you saw quite logically, that the policeman was justified in shooting Michael Brown lest the policeman get killed. And so these people did vehemently disagree, but they did it for the art. They also did it for the director, I have to say, who said, can you do me a favor? And they did it. I'm not really concerned about their motivation for doing it. The fact is they were up there and they did it. Now, after each show, we, of course, did a talk back and the director asked that this kind of social scientist kind of guy, I think he has a counseling business, whatever here in town, a black guy come up and lead the discussion. And that worked out fine because we had those who vehemently are opposed to the kinds of things that were presented were given the space to speak their minds. And actually, some of them thanked me afterwards. We're good. And that's what we're all about. Let's have the civil conversation. I'm not budging from my point of view, but I'm going to unlike the left, I'm going to allow another point of view and let the marketplace of ideas decide which is the one that's going to win out.
Brett Johnson [:Well, just like you have on your website, I love this. Disagreement does not equal hate.
Robert Cooperman [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:What a great statement.
Robert Cooperman [:Thank you. It is. We've trademarked that because I don't want anybody else using it.
Brett Johnson [:No, I agree.
Steve Palmer [:We just broke the trademark. You just said something that made me draw a parallel between what I do. I get the question all the time. I represent people charged with crimes, do it day in and day out, whether they're accused of raping a child, which is horrid to killing somebody, or even a speeding ticket. And people always ask, how do you represent all those guilty people? And maybe an actor has to struggle with this a little bit too. It's like, how do I take a role that I don't agree with? I used to argue, I took class with guitar and my instructor would always disagree. That what I did. And I don't know if he disagreed, but he sort of eye rolled. When I say what I do a lot is art. I have to find something I believe in in the case, become that person, sort of like acting and then portray it in a courtroom on behalf of my client. I find the cause to be that we find the truth in what we do, even if it's not innocence. So maybe the truth is they can't prove it. Or maybe the truth is this is really a good guy and there's too much prosecution going on there. There's an overreach. Or maybe the truth is, look, the guy just needs a defense and somebody has to do it. And if I don't do it, then everything breaks down. Or maybe the truth is my own ego and I need to go out there and just win case because of my businesses advanced. But whatever it is, I think actors probably have to do something like that too. And what you said is like, actors were disagreeing inherently. So you have black actors playing a part in a play that was contrary to what they believed and I guess comment on did you get to talk to any of those folks and how they handled that internally?
Robert Cooperman [:Well, I don't think I had many conversations specifically about that. But I will tell you that there were people there who I'm still friends with today and I really believe they did it for the art. They were able to put aside their personal convictions for 2 hours and be a character. And that's what actors are supposed to do, right.
Steve Palmer [:What a challenge. It seems like a great challenge.
Robert Cooperman [:Yeah. And so I appreciate and respect those people. I mean, do I think they're wrong ideologically? Of course. But I can respect them for stepping out like that and doing it. Whereas there are quite a few others who just won't even try because they just don't like what my company has to say. Don't forget I'm a jovial guy who's undermining democracy. Forget that.
Steve Palmer [:Well, think what that does, though. Think of the limits that puts on somebody's artistic potential.
Robert Cooperman [:Absolutely.
Steve Palmer [:If you if you never do anything that you aren't comfortable with, then you will never get out of your own comfort zone. And if you never get out of your comfort, then you don't improve. Right. When you go to the gym, you tear your muscles slightly. They get bigger and better, and you get stronger. If you never do that in your art, how do you ever get better? It's such a one dimensional approach.
Robert Cooperman [:Oh, it absolutely is. And those people kind of cocoon themselves in their little world where they don't want to be offended, they don't want to be hurt. You don't want to face any kind of adversity. So you can just be comfortable in your own skin. That's not what I don't believe that art's purpose is to make everybody comfortable in his or her own skin.
Steve Palmer [:The opposite. Right.
Robert Cooperman [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:You're supposed to sort of press shake.
Robert Cooperman [:You up a little bit is the.
Brett Johnson [:Same as an audience member.
Robert Cooperman [:Exactly.
Brett Johnson [:Walking out in the middle, it didn't give them the opportunity to stay through that whole play and talk about what they didn't like after the first part.
Robert Cooperman [:That's right.
Brett Johnson [:So they didn't get the opportunity to talk about it's.
Steve Palmer [:A refusal to even look behind another door.
Robert Cooperman [:Absolutely.
Brett Johnson [:How many of us have sat through a movie or a play and just, like, probably wasn't worth the money, but I'm going to stick it out? There's got to be some redemption in this.
Steve Palmer [:Right.
Robert Cooperman [:I felt that movie. No, there's none. And people do come in with certain expectations about what my theater might be perfect. It might be I don't know. I've actually heard from a legal perspective.
Steve Palmer [:It'S not so perfect as a play.
Robert Cooperman [:Yeah, they do that play all the time.
Steve Palmer [:Now.
Robert Cooperman [:It's Twelve Angry Women or Twelve Angry Jurors, or if they don't have a large cast, they do six Jurors, twice as angry.
Steve Palmer [:There's only eight jurors.
Robert Cooperman [:One really pissed off guy. I kind of lost my train of thought there. Sorry.
Steve Palmer [:I did it, too.
Robert Cooperman [:No, that's fine. That's fine.
Norm Murdock [:There does seem to be a cultural backlash in Hollywood. There is more space now, I think, for conservative, or let's say mainstream, common sense actors and actresses and producers and playwrights and writers to come forward. It seems like the blacklisting. It might still be there, and I'm sure it is with a lot of Hollywood. But gosh, you got Jim Cavizal and Patricia Heaton. Tim Allen. Kurt Cameron. Kelsey Grammar james woods. David Mamay, john Void, clint Eastwood. You've got all these people that have now created some ability, I would think, for people to say, hey, we don't have to be a homogeneous population. We can have differences, and we can still be professional and work things out. I guess on a micro level or a macro level, that's what stage right. Theatrics is exploring all the time. I remember after Uncanny, the lead actor said, I disagree with just about everything that Robert Philosophically in terms of politics.
Robert Cooperman [:Right.
Norm Murdock [:But he was a tremendous actor in your production, and he went along with his role, but yet still preserved what he felt was his dignity and his point of view.
Robert Cooperman [:Right.
Norm Murdock [:Which is great.
Robert Cooperman [:Yeah. Are you talking about a stage actor or a film actor? I'm just curious.
Norm Murdock [:Your actor in?
Robert Cooperman [:Yeah, well, there were only two actors on stage and then there were actors in the film.
Steve Palmer [:So I was just wondering which one it was.
Robert Cooperman [:Okay, I have an idea who it was. Yes, he was a film actor, actually, and he's very proud to say he's of the other side and et cetera. I had heard that somebody decided to look through Clavin's script and told the director, this is full of misogyny. Which I didn't see any I didn't see any of that.
Steve Palmer [:Maybe quite the opposite, actually.
Robert Cooperman [:Yeah. I didn't see any of that. But this is standard stuff. But you talk about Hollywood. You're right. There are these people. Right. But they are still a very small, small minority. Hollywood doesn't seem to have gotten the message. That's what bugs me. They don't seem to get the message.
Steve Palmer [:They just keep doubling and tripling down tripling down what was the biggest blockbuster of our time. It's like Top Gun Two. Top Gun, which, look, it was a fun movie to go see, but it was hardly artistically pushing the envelope on anything.
Robert Cooperman [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:And yet we all looked at the world looked at that like, wow, this is awesome. It's because the BS that's been coming out that's so long has been just like this Tom Hanks movie. It's like, why do it? You have this chance to do something really cool. It's sort of like Grand Torino.
Robert Cooperman [:Yeah. I was thinking that the Clint Eastwood.
Steve Palmer [:Film, which was phenomenal. He took on all those same issues and did it in the way maybe I think your play was doing it. It's sort of made a parody of it.
Robert Cooperman [:That's right.
Steve Palmer [:And I don't know. So we've got this action thriller that would have been just an action thriller 25 years ago. Now is the best movie we've ever seen.
Robert Cooperman [:Right. I did watch that movie on a plane ride, I think to Israel this past fall.
Steve Palmer [:Top Gun Two. You watch Top Gun?
Robert Cooperman [:Yeah. Top Gun Two. Yeah. And yeah, I agree with you. I mean, it was whipped cream, meaning that it tasted really good. But it wasn't going to do a lot for me culturally afterwards. But I understand the feelings about it, that it was hooray. We've got something that we can embrace. Right.
Norm Murdock [:But controversy in Top Gun, too, was with the Chinese. Current Chinese government really wanted the character that the main character was wearing his father's flight jacket. And it had a South Korean flag sewn into that leather jacket.
Brett Johnson [:Is that right?
Robert Cooperman [:I didn't know this.
Steve Palmer [:The original topics jacket. They had to take off the South Korean flag?
Norm Murdock [:No, they left it in.
Steve Palmer [:I thought they had to take it.
Robert Cooperman [:Out for China, for the release in China, you mean?
Steve Palmer [:Yeah, I thought that maybe not. It was a controversy, but they wanted.
Norm Murdock [:It out of the movie completely.
Robert Cooperman [:For all markets. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:Johnny didn't want a hero character to be a Korean War veteran and wearing his jacket.
Robert Cooperman [:Right. All the more reason to keep it in.
Norm Murdock [:And Tom Cruise insisted that it stay in.
Robert Cooperman [:Good for him. Yeah, we'll give him credit. To me, the way that this movement is going to be forwarded is in the grassroots companies like mine, there are quite a number of Christian based filmmakers, some who do theater. They're out there on the landscape. I've interviewed a number of them. And I think that's how you're going to slowly but surely win over the hearts and minds of the population, which in general, I think, is willing to be won over.
Steve Palmer [:Well, this is what we do. And look, not to toot our own horn here, common Sense Ohio was that was the idea. Right. We can say we're a conservative podcast, but I like to think we just talk about things with common sense, ask questions. When I'm wrong, I'm wrong. When I'm right, I'm right. We'll argue, we'll bicker, we'll do whatever. And if you got a contrary idea, come on in. But I think people are starving for common sense. You can't piss down my back and tell me it's raining, to borrow Clint Eastwood's line. It's like people need more. I think fundamentally, all we have to do to it's a culture war, so to speak. And it's like you just speak the truth, and when you're wrong, admit it. When you're right, admit it and have a common sense approach at it. And I think you're right. It's a slow advance, but I think it's happening when you see Top Gun taking off like that, no pun intended, it's a little bit hopeful to me because people are sick of this crap.
Robert Cooperman [:I agree. And I think anything that heats up quickly, cools down quickly. So if this is a slow march toward truth, then that's going to last a long time, in my opinion.
Brett Johnson [:And what's exciting is the market wants it and the market supports it.
Robert Cooperman [:Right.
Brett Johnson [:So therefore, seats will be in, our butts will be in the seats, and tickets will sell. So take a chance.
Steve Palmer [:We don't have to go see if.
Brett Johnson [:Somebody will go to it or you may enjoy it. Give it a shot. It's worth the $20.25. I don't want ticket prices are but you know what I mean. Yeah, give it a shot.
Steve Palmer [:Well, this is like, maybe because of what's happened here, we had this splintering in the media. So you had Fox News, then you had MSNBC on the other side, and then both of those have sort of crumbled now. And now it's like us. It's Podcasters. It's andrew Clavid. It's Megan Kelly. Ben Shapiro and now going to be Tucker. And I don't always agree with Tucker, but he's out there speaking. What? He's out there debating people on some of this stuff, and I think it's awesome. And I think maybe your theater is like a version of that in the arts. I appreciate that. You don't have to go fly to New York to watch a play or wait for the Broadway production to come to the Ohio Theater or whatever it is.
Robert Cooperman [:That's right.
Steve Palmer [:We can see this stuff in your theater. And I remember growing up, there was like a play, Shakespeare or something going on in some small church in Galeen, Ohio. It's like that's out there. And I think those people are more open to this maybe now, because they're open to podcasts and getting their news different places. I think that's going to spill over into the arts. It has to.
Robert Cooperman [:I think it has to, too.
Brett Johnson [:I want to ask you going back to that question then, too. You mentioned earlier in the podcast about 30 arts groups in central Ohio and Kind making comments like maybe too many. But is that based in regards to just overlapping each other? Because I think that's healthy. That's great. But you know the inside baseball on this, though, of course.
Robert Cooperman [:Well, a little bit. Yeah, you devil's advocate. The problem is that, from my perspective, a lot of them are doing the same kind of stuff. All right. There was a point here in Columbus where, I mean, there were like four productions of Annie going on within a few months time. I have no objection to the Standard Theater Fair, the Rogers and Hammerstein stuff, neil Simon comedies, they have their place. They're wonderful. You want a night to relax and have a good time and sing a few songs in your head, I think that's wonderful. But my company doesn't do well. My company usually doesn't do that. The reason I say that is because in November, we are doing The Fantastics, which is a musical, which is a lovely musical. It's a small musical, and it's just hearts in the right place, that kind of thing. And so we're going to do it. Why are we doing it? A, I love the musical, and a lot of people in town love the musical, but also it's going to be a money maker. I got to be honest.
Brett Johnson [:It's funny you say that, because I was on the one time on the marketing committee for ballet met and artistic director, always wanted that edginess because that's the creativity. But they also know we got to do Dracula, right? We got to do The Nutcracker because we got to pay the bills.
Robert Cooperman [:How scary is Dracula pirouetting over to your neck? That's a question I have.
Brett Johnson [:Exactly. So I get the sides of that. You've got to have and you also have people on the board that want the traditional classical ballet, but at the same time, you get this Yang, and the Yang you got the artistic director who wants I really want the edgy stuff because I want new blood coming in for the new look of ballet here in Columbus.
Robert Cooperman [:Right.
Brett Johnson [:So it's that balance.
Robert Cooperman [:It is that balance. And mostly I'm going to fall on the balance of doing the edgy stuff.
Steve Palmer [:That's your lane, right, that's my lane.
Robert Cooperman [:But I will go on the off ramp to continue the driving metaphor and I will put on the it's more.
Steve Palmer [:Like the outer belt.
Robert Cooperman [:Is that the outer belt? That's an endless loop.
Steve Palmer [:So have you ever worked? I just had a thought. My youngest son, he plays music. He's a musician now. I've forced classical retired down his throat and he's almost better than I am. Not even almost, but he's really advanced. And I remember in grade school, he was on the stage, he's got to lead in one of the plays and he didn't even try, and he just did it. I still have that video, which is phenomenal. And it dawned on me, it's like, how does one advance in the arts to become an actor or performer or any of it if you're on the wrong side or the right side, rather, of the political debate? I mean, have you had any experience talking to actors about that or conservative actors?
Robert Cooperman [:A few, actually, actors and playwrights from across the country. And basically what they have to do is kind of closet themselves. They don't talk about it. If they come in appearing neutral and say nothing, they can skirt by. That's a shame, though. But then again, I don't expect people to come to an audition and say, hi, I'm a liberal and I'm letting you know. Although what's common now with auditions is, hi, my name is Robert Cooperman, and my pronouns are me, myself and I. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:Which is a veiled disguise way of saying I'm a liberal.
Robert Cooperman [:Right, yeah. Well, some groups in town are actually now you have to state it. I don't want to say names, but I've known of productions where everybody's pronouns are included in the play bill, whether you want them or not. It's just there's no choice. I will never choose to put in my pronouns because I think it's insanity. So I'm not going to do that.
Steve Palmer [:I agree. I got to think this through, because if you have to hide and sort of disguise your viewpoint and play in the shadows, if you're a conservative and you want to be in the arts, then you take it. Well, back to Andrew Clay. You take a guy like Clayton who said, you know what? I'm not doing that. I'm just going to come out and here's what I am. And if Hollywood rejects it, so be it. This is what I believe, this is who I am and this is what I'm going to produce. And he found tremendous success doing it. I think that's a lot because he's great at what he does.
Robert Cooperman [:Yes, absolutely.
Steve Palmer [:But he never would have had like I wonder if he had the same success if he didn't do. That, or he probably wouldn't be personally fulfilled as he is now.
Robert Cooperman [:I think that's true. Yeah. He's terrific at what he does. People appreciate it from an artistic perspective, and he's established himself, et cetera, so he can pretty much say what he wants. One of the questions I always ask people in the arts who are Conservative is, what recommendation do you have for younger people?
Steve Palmer [:Which is this question I asked you, I guess a lot more succinctly stated.
Robert Cooperman [:Yeah, well, I'm a pro at this. And they always say, don't give up and don't back down. But that also doesn't mean you don't walk in there announcing who you are other than your name. I'm a conservative, and if you don't like it, lump it well, because that's.
Steve Palmer [:Sort of contrary to the conservative view. Right. It's like, that's pride.
Robert Cooperman [:Right?
Steve Palmer [:That's pride. The deadly sin of pride. That's right. If you've ever CS Louis mere Christianity got a whole chapter devoted to pride. And it sort of is that, isn't it, to say, I am this, I.
Robert Cooperman [:Am this, and you better know it.
Steve Palmer [:And now I want you to know it. But if you just go in and be yourself. So I guess hiding doesn't mean hiding. Maybe it means don't announce it, but don't back down from don't back down.
Robert Cooperman [:Yeah. If somebody asks, you, tell them who you are. But you're right. Yeah. Truth. But you don't go in there announcing it. And to me, that pronoun stuff is announcing it was a recent audition that I was attending, and one person said that it was a she. Her pronouns were he, she, they, it, and I wasn't sure if she was trying to be parody it or the whole pronoun thing or just covering the gamut, so I chose to call her it. She offered it out there.
Steve Palmer [:Right.
Robert Cooperman [:She believes she's an it, so she's an it. The they thing blows my mind. You know, I'm an English PhD.
Steve Palmer [:It's maddening.
Robert Cooperman [:You don't you don't use you know, people hate when I say this, but you don't use a plural pronoun to replace a singular noun. That's not like it hasn't been done in this country for generations, but it's never right.
Brett Johnson [:And I'm on the side of the it has no soul.
Robert Cooperman [:Right.
Brett Johnson [:And I'm sorry, you have a soul.
Norm Murdock [:You do.
Brett Johnson [:I'm not going to call you it.
Steve Palmer [:Driving people of identity.
Brett Johnson [:Right. That's what the they think it is, a microphone.
Robert Cooperman [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:I have a funny story about that. I was at court, and I was representing somebody who was accused of some crimes, and this makes sense. Let's just say this was somebody who was trans. Right? Okay. I'm talking to her, and she's telling me about the case, and I was at court, and we were talking about a potential witness, and she used the word they talking about witnesses. And I stopped and I just said, Hold on a second. And I had this moment of doubt. Like, am I confusing this case with something else? Because I thought there was only one other person in the car, right? And I looked and I said, Wait a minute. As a lawyer, you're thinking, all right, do I want to be exposed to somebody who's not prepared for a case? I have this moment of doubt where I'm thinking, I better go check my file or make sure I got the right person here. And I didn't. I just said, Look, I thought there was only one other person in the car. And she goes, no, they that's my partner. That's the pronoun on. And I said, Listen, I don't care. I really don't care. I have no judgment over this whatsoever, other than we have to be specific. I'm going into a courtroom. I can't say they talking about one witness. And it caused me I never wrote it. I started to write it. I never finished it. But why you don't want your defense lawyer to be woke? Because I can't communicate, and you're an English major, and Brett, I know that it's like you have to use language that communicates to people with specificity.
Robert Cooperman [:That's right.
Steve Palmer [:So they understand what you're saying. And if you don't, you lose identity. You lose value. As Brett, like you said, you lose your soul.
Robert Cooperman [:Yeah. I think the whole they thing is dehumanizing because in a huge way. But these are people who want to announce their chosen gender to the world. Right. By using they, you've lost all sense of gender. Right. I don't know what you are. Yeah. If you want to be a he, say I'm a he. If you want to be a she, say I'm a she. But if you say I'm a they, then I don't know.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. And, you know, it's like back to the 12th Night. We started with this. Maybe we'll sort of wrap up. It's like the fact that that was a woman pretending to be a guy or dressed up. It's like that was the cool part of the story, and that was the identity of it. Her identity was important in that play, and it was funny and it was pretty cool. But this isn't what's going on. No, it is stripping people of identity, not giving them identity.
Robert Cooperman [:Don't forget that 12th night is a comedy. We've lost the whole sense of what's funny in this country. So it would never today something like that would be taken under the umbrella of gender construction and things like that or gender dysphoria, whatever you want to say. It's just funny, just somebody dressing up. But he it's really not.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. And that was part of.
Norm Murdock [:I think part of what will, in the long term bring down some of the progressive and woke stuff is the internal contradictions that are rolling out in real time and people are seeing it. The idea that trans men are competing in collegiate athletics and taking away these title nine scholarships. Potential is huge. Like that. Things where, as Steve mentions, it's just not precise and it's not scientific and it doesn't make any sense in logic. And I think as more and more of that rolls out the idea that we identify first by race or by gender the idea that of cultural appropriation, people are complaining that Sir Lawrence Olivier portrayed Hamlet, who was supposed to be a swarthy.
Robert Cooperman [:You mean a fellow thank you.
Norm Murdock [:Sorry. Yes. So they're upset about that, but yet a whole group of men can pretend to be women. Well, that isn't that cultural appropriation. You're taking on womanhood. You're not a woman, but you're taking those aspects on. You're violating the same norm that you're complaining Sir Lawrence Olivier violated.
Robert Cooperman [:Yeah. I think the contradictions are what are going to do them in, but again, pointing out those contradictions is not coming from the mainstream media generally, not at all. It's going to come from the grassroots. It's going to come from within America.
Brett Johnson [:You mentioned fans.
Norm Murdock [:People like Riley Gaines.
Robert Cooperman [:Yes.
Norm Murdock [:The people out there at the grassroots who this is really impacting and it's hurting them. As more and more of these stories roll out about how ridiculous and unfair and harmful this all is. I think what did we call that? The moms in Virginia when they went in to demand that the school board, the subject matter, the books, all of this stuff be gone through and make sure that there's not pornography or whatever for their children? It had a major impact on that election.
Robert Cooperman [:Absolutely.
Norm Murdock [:I think that's the long term thing that's going to bring this woke stuff down and make it irrelevant again. Right. Robert, you said when things ascend very quickly, they also descend quickly.
Robert Cooperman [:Right.
Norm Murdock [:And I think maybe this is an experiment that America is going through and it's going to fail.
Robert Cooperman [:I agree with you. I hope so. I agree with you. And I also remain hopeful that that is the case.
Steve Palmer [:So what's next at stage right, theatrics.
Robert Cooperman [:We have a production in August and it is called A Crime of Forgiveness. Now, this play is a true story of a woman who was visiting her friend and her friend's son, attacked his mother with a knife, killed her, and then attacked the friend and severely injured her. And she has forgiven him. And that's what this play is about. This is a true story. The playwright. Yeah. So I thought that forgiveness and the thing is about this play is that not only does she forgive him, but the criminal understands what he did was wrong. There's that soul searching that understands the fault lies not in our stars, but in ourselves. To quote that Shakespeare guy we mentioned before.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. What does he know?
Robert Cooperman [:Yeah, up and coming. But I really loved what this play had to say and she has actually spoken across the country about it. This is her first play, her name is Lynette Grace. So we are doing that play in August.
Steve Palmer [: are saying just over the last: Robert Cooperman [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:And if it's not, you never get through it.
Robert Cooperman [:That's right. And the forgiveness for me translates into hope, redemption.
Steve Palmer [:Right.
Robert Cooperman [:Which is what my company wants to show.
Steve Palmer [:And there's meaning there's something at the end of that adversity that has value. And if you never get through the adversity, and you just live it forever, you just never get anywhere.
Robert Cooperman [:That's right. And you just eat yourself up alive.
Steve Palmer [:All right, well, let's talk about how they get a hold of you or how they get a hold of Stageritiatrics. How do people buy tickets? How do they learn all about what's going on over there?
Robert Cooperman [:It's stagert.org. Is my website stagert.org? And from there, you can find out about our next productions, although I must update my website now that the other production closed. I'm a one man show, so I do all aspects of the business, if you will. And, yeah, Stageart.org, you can find out how to get tickets. You can find out what we're all about. You can see podcasts that I've been involved with. You can see Andrew Clavins play. Lots of different things on there. There's some great recipes. Okay, no, we didn't do that. Sorry, I forget half time. But that's where you can find us out. And also you can find out how to contact us. And I would love it. For people who are listening to this show, contact me and tell me what you think. Offer advice, offer suggestions, offer support, and like you said, offer some money. Sorry, I hate to be crass about it. I hate to be crass, but I exist on the largesse of our patrons. I don't have a great track record with local granting organizations.
Steve Palmer [:I can imagine not.
Robert Cooperman [:There's another story.
Steve Palmer [:But you're doing God's work. You're out there.
Robert Cooperman [:I like to think so. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:You're out there pushing an agenda. Agenda is not even the right word. Pushing a philosophy, I think, that has meaning and value for both sides of the aisle.
Norm Murdock [:Absolutely.
Robert Cooperman [:And that's something I want to reach out and continue to strive for.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. All right, well, with that, we're going to wrap up another Riveting Commonsensical episode of Common Sense Ohio. You can reach it@commonsenseohioshow.com where if you scroll down to the bottom, you can subscribe, or actually, right at the top, you can subscribe. You scroll down to the bottom, you can check out all of Norm's blog post, some of Brett's blog posts. I still lag behind, as I do every single work at the Big Goose Egg. I've not written a blog yet. I promise, one of these days I'll do it. And it would be really helpful for us if you subscribe to our podcast and share it with your buddy. And not just like you can share it on Facebook. If you want to do that, that'd be great, but I mean, like, at the picnic, at the Memorial Day party, at the graduation party, or whatever it is you're doing in the coming weeks. Say? Hey, look, we heard this show common sense. Ohio. Guy named Robert Cooperman was on, and there's lots of other great guests coming on, and they're really talking about things in a genuine way. Check them out. I promise you'll like it. See, that's all true. So you don't even have to lie. You can just like or you can just what she tells to do. Norm, we have to subscribe and share. So until now, we are coming at you right from the middle at www.commonsenseohioshow.com.
