Not to be snarky...

Jonathan of Wellsung asks a humorous question:

Now and then it's amusing to consider what would happen if you gave a bunch of immensely pretentious undergraduate theater students a wad of cash, a huge scene shop, and a wildly impenetrable text.

To be fair, aren't all undergraduate theater students "immensely pretentious?" Isn't that, you know, the point? However, if you stray from Brecht, Williams, or maybe O'Neill, things get dicey. Mention Harry Kupfer (at the Komische Oper, Unter den Linden, or Bayreuth) or Nikolaus Lehnhoff, and you'll get a blank stare. That is, if they don't try to re-frame the debate in their own terms.

While I am an undergraduate, I do love shutting my colleagues down with this question:

So, do you think Christoph Schlingensief's production of Parsifal re-imagines Wagner's music-drama in such a way that it is dramatically consistent? More so than any of Wieland Wagner's ur-minimalist productions?

Works every time.