Talk:Baņuta Rubess

Improving the article on Baņuta Rubess

Hi, I am Baņuta Rubess, the subject of this page. I have several objections to material on this page and I would like to be able to update it.

a, Baņuta Rubess (born 1956) is a Canadian theatre director, playwright, and professor. Here are my notes: I am not a professor, but I do identify as a writer. I also often identify as a hypenated person and therefore prefer to be called Latvian Canadian.

b. "

Rubess was a member a theatre collective called The Midnight Hags, founded by Mary Ann Lambooy. The collective created a piece called Burning Timeswhich premiered in August 1983 at The Theatre Centre. Burning Times used quotations from the Malleus Malificarum and told the story of female travellers who encountered the witch hunts. During the play's development, Lambooy disagreed with the other collective members about how they should run the collective. This dispute was so extreme as to have needed to be resolved by the Canadian Actor's Equity Association. After the initial production, Lambooy distanced herself from the collective and eventually wrote a letter to Nightwood Theatre to attempt to bar the group from re-staged Burning Times by invoking her copyright ownership.

Nightwood staged Burning Times under the name, Smoke Damage, in October 1983. The program for the production listed the play as being "written by Baņuta Rubess in collaboration with Peggy Christopherson, Mary Ann Lambooy, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Mary Marzo, Kim Renders, and Maureen White". Shortly thereafter, the authorship of Burning Times became the subject of a legal dispute. By December 1983, Lambooy stated that she would not give up copyright to Burning Times in addition to refusing to acknowledge Rubess as its principal author. The two parties came to the following agreement by the end of 1983:

"Rubess would receive all revenue up to $500 as playwright's royalties; any amount above that would be split as follows: 51 percent to Rubess, 45 percent to the Smoke Damage collective, and 4 percent to Lambooy.""

This entire paragraph takes up most of the article about me and is extremely misleading. It is based on the research of a single academic who never interviewed the other members of the theatre collective and this is entirely written from the perspective of a single party Mary Ann Lambooy. I have not idea where this person is. If Wikipedia wants to get involved in this ancient dispute about a play that never made the said $500 in royalties, I will ask other people to write to you. But I am not even aware of this agreement that is cited here, and the dispute did not become a 'legal' dispute since there were never any proceedings that I know of. I strenuously object to this spat from 1983 taking up so much space on my page; it is malign and misleading.

c. "Rubess was a member of The Anna Project which collectively created the play This is For You, Anna. The Anna Project consisted of Rubess, Suzanne Odette Khuri, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Patricia Nichols, Tori Smith, Barb Taylor, and Maureen White, though the play is usually credited only to Khuri, Macdonald, Rubess, and White. This is For You, Anna was originally presented as a twenty-minute play and premiered as a full-length play in 1984. Rubess went on to perform This is For You, Anna on tour with the Anna Collective, usually playing the roles Marianne #3, Narrator, Allegra, Eena, Interviewer, and Woman 1."

I want it to be acknowledged that I initiated this project. This is noted in the thoughts by An-Marie MacDonald in the afterword for the published play, in Canadian Theatre Review, Summer 1985, page 170. She describes how I was pulling together a company to work on a Nightwood-sponsored project. Moreover the notes from Tori Smith, in the same issue, on page 172. describes that the authors were the performers alone and this is why the play is 'usually credited' only to the four names included. Everything in this paragraph is also on the linked page to This is for you, Anna except for the fact that I initiated the project. I dont think your Wikipedia reader needs all this detail in the paragraph in the article about em, especially since I have gone on to make many, many more productions since 1985.

d. I started to work on augmenting information on this page, all of which was removed. I do not know where it was put. People turn to Wikipedia for basic information about me and this page is misleading. How may I improve it?

Rakstītāja (talk) 14:18, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Adding the edit request template so that users who follow edit requests are alerted to the request above. Tacyarg (talk) 19:32, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

@Rakstītāja: Hi! I have made the first of your changes, as it was reasonable and supported by sources already in the article. However, while reading your second requested change, I read the line "I will ask other people to write to you". Can you please elaborate on what you mean? Thanks! HouseBlaster^talk 02:46, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Sorry for my lack of clarity. Since this excerpt is a quotation from a book which is poorly supported by research, my point is that other artists who were involved in this conflict could write Wikipedia letters attesting to the weakness of this citation. This includes the Artistic Director of Nightwood Theatre at the time, Cynthia Grant, the collective member of the project and co-founder of Nightwood, Maureen White, and award-winning writer Ann-Marie MacDonald who who led the actors' strike against the director Mary Ann Lambooy whose point of view is represented here. I contacted Cynthia Grant who elucidated details about the legal case which I had forgotten, and who was also deeply distressed to see this shoddy academic work continue to have a life in Wikipedia. In my opinion, it is not the job of Wikipedia to settle an old score, or keep the rancor going. The play under discussion never made more than a few hundred dollars and really does not merit this level of engagement. Rakstītāja (talk) 12:13, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Unfortunately letters to Wikipedia are not sufficient for editing articles. For consideration, they would have had to been published in a reliable secondary source (see: WP:PRIMARYSOURCE) Please also review Wikipedia:Reliable sources for the types of sources we can accept. Xan747 (talk) 20:07, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm sorry regarding the lead you did not make all the changes I have requested.

First of all, I identify as a Latvian Canadian not a Canadian. Secondly I am not a "theatre director, playwright, and professor", I am a theatre director, playwright, writer, and teacher. Do you need proof of the fact that I'm a writer? Rakstītāja (talk) 12:16, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

CITEVAR

I am proposing that we change the citation style to make use of {{sfn}} for books, given the multiple duplicated citations to different pages of the same book. Thoughts? HouseBlaster^talk 04:30, 14 July 2023 (UTC)