This week JSP and I went to two events, a film: Training Rules and a play: Robots vs. Fake Robots. Both events hosted short talks with the audience after the main production.

Training Rules is a documentary about women's basketball at Penn State and was shown as a part of the Walker Art Center's Queer Takes: Standing Out series they are doing for Twin Cities Pride. The film shows how Penn State supported coach Rene Portland and her "No lesbians" policy on the Big Ten women's basketball team. It was remarkable to see this level of homophobia and abuse that went on until 2007. The film was well received by the audience and afterward The University of Minnesota's Mary Jo Kane, Ph.D., gave a short t alk about homophobia in women's sport. The audience engage in a questions and answer session that was revealing about how the University of Minnesota is now a leader in non-discrimination. It was an eye opening evening regarding how sports are perhaps the last bastion of unapologetic discrimination.

Robots vs. Fake Robots is a play by a Los Angeles, California native, David Largman Murray. The play received several positive reviews. I hated the play for the first 10 minutes, before I fell into the world of the play and began to see that there was more to the play than I was giving it credit for. The actors were committed to their roles and the somewhat strange language used in the play stopped being irritating and became interesting. Genuine character development on the parts of both robots and fake robots were convincing. The dancing, also an irritant to me in the first few minutes of the show, became entertaining and endearing. By the end of the show, I was won over, this script and this production are very good.

Thursday's audience at Robots vs. Fake Robots seemed very, unsophisticated, based on the manic laughter coming from various blocks of seats during some parts of the show. I imagine that there were several young people in attendance that came because of the title and had never before seen a live theatre production. After the show was over there was a short discussion including the playwright, who had flown in from LA; the director; the producer; and several actors. JSP did not want to stay for the discussion but I convinced him it would be short. It was short and and also illuminating to hear various opinions and experiences from those involved in the production.

Training Rules and Robots vs. Fake Robots were back-to-back, a pair of widely divergent cultural perspectives. Both proved enjoyable and insightful.