Gag Order on Chicago Theatre Bloggers
May 19, 2008 by dennisbaker
FinicialTimes.com is reporting that a Cook County judge issued a gag order to be placed on a number of Chicago theater bloggers. The gag orders barrs all parties from publicly discussing a case of blogger Rebecca Zellar potentially suing another theatre blogger Don Hall over a bad review. The original post and comments at the GreyZelda site have been removed but FT.com recovered comments from the ghost post “A Brief Public Statement.”
Chicago bloggers directly under the jurisdiction of the court order include Devilvet, GreyZelda, Paul Rekk, Don Hall, Trailing Spouse Blues, Nick Keenan, and Jay Raskolnikov.
I went and read Don Hall’s review of GreyZelda Theater Company’s production of The Striker directed by Rebecca Zellar. There one can get an idea of the tensions rising between Zellar and Hall. Then Jay Raskolnikov writes a post about Hall’s review and states “the director lashed out in the comments.” This starts a heated discussion on his blog. I say heated, but I am not sure if all this justifies a lawsuit. I hope things get resolved peacefully as this is the darker side of the theatrosphere.
Technorati Tags:chicago, theatre, theater, Don Hall, Rebecca Zellar, Paul Rekk, Jay Raskolnikov, GreyZelda Theater Company, theatrosphere
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3 Responses to “Gag Order on Chicago Theatre Bloggers”
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The gag order is a gag. Nick at Rat Sass created the “fake” domain name and was just trying to stir up some shit.
Rebecca has a bit of a history of going off on critics that have less than glowing things about her work, a trait I actually find admirable - if art isn’t worth getting into a row over, it ain’t worth much, I figure.. Her veiled threats to sue me are just silly posturing, though. I think she thought she might have a libel case until she actually looked up what libel is.
And, having read the review in question, do you really think it’s that bad? I intended it to be a mixed review - I certainly didn’t hate the thing, I just had some problems with the acting choices (which, in my opinion, were pretty awful).
Thanks Don for the heads up. I feel sheepish. I thought the idea was extreme, but in this day and age people pretty much sue for anything (or at least try to). True, I did not think the review was all that bad. I am glad to hear it was a gag and that there is some good discussions going down in Chicago. Sounds like you guys have a tight theater community there.
Yeah, be careful there. Rat Sass (different Nick) can get um… eloquent. In a kind of Les Mis as produced by Artaud and the inmates of Charenton Asylum kind of way. He’s called me a PR clique, which is pretty funny if you know me - he doesn’t.
There’s an interesting group of folks - Rat Sass has been at it for years - who use blogging about theater as theater. Which I think is pretty hot, if you know that it’s happening. And it’s pretty alarming, if you don’t.