We all know that Daily Kos is much more than your average blog. It's more than a news site. It's a community. A community of inspiring heroes, everyday activists, progressive politicians, brilliant analysts, and thought-provoking philosophers.
And of course, it's a community of arrogant blowhards, shrill extremists, tin foil hatters, DLC apologists, pie throwers, and uber trolls.
Well, we at Yearly Kos want to roll all of that into a fun, interesting, and provocative series of presentations for your pleasure in Las Vegas next June. We want to capture what makes this site so great by bringing the voices of Daily Kos - your voices - to the Las Vegas Stage! And for that, we need your help.
First, a little bit of background on what I'm talking about. My theatre company,
Unconditional Theatre, creates work that inspires people to activism. To do this, we use documentary theatre - performances that use only the actual words spoken by (or written by, in this case) the people involved. If any of you are familiar with
Laramie Project, that's the kind of thing I'm talking about. We've already put together pieces about women on Death Row, Swing State travelers in `04, and Cindy Sheehan's Crawford protest. Now, we want to bring our skills to explore the wondrous joy (and the seamy underbelly) of Daily Kos.
I see something like this as an opportunity to show both the amazing strength and community of dKos, while pointing out areas where we are perhaps... less than effective. I'd want to use some of the most inspiring, infamous, asinine, moving, and ridiculous diaries to celebrate the power of this amazing group of people.
Of course, as with anything dKos related, this is a community project! And we want to hear from you! Please take a moment to help us out in the following areas.
- What are the diaries you think of when you think about Daily Kos? Susan G has already done a tremendous job in compiling a list of everyone's favorite diary. I plan to borrow heavily from that list, but is there anything else that comes up when you think about seeing the words of dKos being performed live? I know which diaries define the site for me, but I've only been around for a year. Who do you think are the most inspiring authors? What were the most engaging comment threads? Most well-debated arguments? Most entertaining flame wars? Most awesome rants? Most hilarious GBCW diaries? And please, please, be as specific as possible. Saying "The Primary Fights" is all well and good, but unless you have a diarist's name, or better yet a link, I'm going to have a heck of a time trying to find what you're referencing, especially if it's from the Paleolithic pre-tag days.
- How would you propose handling some of the... er... touchier moments in our history. I mean, no discussion of dKos would be complete without referencing pie fights, but how do you do that in a way that doesn't offend everyone all over again? Remember, we're only using actual words from actual diaries. Names can be changed to protect the innocent, I suppose, although that does take some of the fun out of it.
- How can we get people involved? I'm not exactly sure yet how we'll decide who's playing whom. Would you rather see your fellow Kossacks - or perhaps even yourself - portraying the likes of Armando and Hunter? Or do you think something like this would be stronger if we utilized the talents of folks with more theatrical experience? Some combination of the two? If you're interested in getting involved with something like this on a theatrical level, let me know.
I'm very excited about this project, and I hope you are too. Let's go to Vegas and put on a show!
Cross-posted at Yearly Kos