Rolly Crump
FROM: Castle Chat A Disney Dispatch Feature
A Chat with Disney Playwright Dennis Giacino
Bitch! Excuse me, but that's what they are: bitches. Of the Kingdom! Award-winning playwright Dennis Giacino presents the Disney princesses as you've never seen (or heard) them before in his play, Disenchanted. We chat amicably enough.
For those who don't know Dennis Giacino, let me put him on hold for a second and run down his highlights.
Dennis is a former Disney World Cast Member who years after his departure from the Mouse wrote a play called Disenchanted (otherwise known as Bitches of the Kingdom). The play premiered in Orlando, where it sold out, and now it's showing in New Jersey, Dennis' current stomping ground, where it's... sold out.
Not only is the show sold out, it won the Seventh Annual NJ Playwrights Contest. Peter Filichia, writing for the Star-Ledger, called it a 'sensational production', and even some Disney executives have (privately) told Dennis that the show had them laughing so hard their ears near fell off.
Will your ears fall off, too? Yes, if you think it's hilarious for the Disney princesses to stand up on their stiletto heels, fist bump the hell out of one another, and let Mr. Disney know just where he can stick it.
Of course, Dennis has them do it with much more style than that.
And now, let's chat with Dennis...
You wrote Bitches in the Kingdom, but it wasn't that long ago when you were in the Kingdom, working for the Mouse.
DENNIS: Yes! I worked at Disney World between 1993-1995.
Right out of school?
DENNIS: Not quite. I graduated college in 1983, taught history and reading for several years, coached basketball, then went into radio and voice-overs. That brought me into writing and comedy, and somehow I ended up in Orlando. At the time, Disney was hiring like mad, and so I went for an interview in their awesome casting building, and came out a Cast Member myself.
Did you interview for a particular job?
DENNIS: I interviewed for whatever they had.
And what they had was an opening in a new program called Vacation Planning, which was a fancy name for ticket selling. I worked at the TTC. My job was to strike up conversations with people who wanted to 'spend one day in the Magic Kingdom' and try to discover how long they were staying in Orlando.
Then my mission was to help them save money by selling them a hopper pass for the same number of days that they'd be in town. In a sense, I wasn't so much selling tickets as I was planning vacations, and that's why they called us Vacation Planners.
Do you work behind the counter or would you rove the TTC?
DENNIS: Both. I started in the booths, then became a Guest Service Greeter. I was one of those guys wandering around in white shirt, black pants, and Mickey tie. I spearheaded the Greeter program, actually, and the idea was to have Cast Members available to answer any questions from guests about any aspect of Disney world.
There's a lot of aspect down there. Did you learn all that in the Traditions course, or did they provide special training?
DENNIS: Traditions first, then special training. As Guest Service Greeters, we were supposed to train the Vacation Planners, too.
Another program we got off the ground was called No Strings Attached.
If a Cast Member sees someone drop their ice cream cone, for example, they write a note on a pad they carry with them (it's probably electronic now) and give it to the guest, who can redeem it for a replacement cone. It was known as a 'guest service recovery'.
They'd get that new cone, no charge, and no strings attached.
Did you ever catch people dropping their cones on purpose in order to wheedle a freebie?
DENNIS: You know, that's sort of where the training came in. Disney keeps a computer file at Guest Relations with the names of folks who may have started with dropping half-eaten cones and then worked their way up to another things they shouldn't be doing. Those folks would get no guest recovery.
A 'No Magic' list...
DENNIS: Yeah! The people on it would be those who've asked too many times for compensation or a reward based on ridiculously minor occurrences. That sort of stuff does happen, and Disney's on top of it.
How long were you in Vacation Planning?
DENNIS: About six months. Then I was promoted to Training Coordinator in the Magic Kingdom. I was put in charge of the 'spieling attractions' because Disney knew that I had a theater arts background.
My job was to make sure that Cast Members working from a script were performing that script properly. So I had to be able to perform all the scripts, and that included the ones for Jungle Cruise, Haunted Mansion, the Enchanted Tiki Room, and others.
New Cast Members would rehearse in front of you?
DENNIS: Yeah, but also the Cast Members already in place. I'd be 'that guy' dressed as a Jungle Cruise skipper tagging along for the ride, and then the other Skipper and I would have a talk later in the day.
You were moving up the ranks. Why leave the Mouse for New Jersey?
DENNIS: They were prepping me, for sure. I kept getting questions like "when are you going to move into a full management position?". But I just wasn't interested. I had other goals.
I liked the entertainment industry, and I didn't want to sit in an office - though I did have the best office on property, right above Main Street in the Magic Kingdom. We'd all take a break every afternoon to watch the parade outside.
(Well, not the parade, we were watching the guests, I'd better say; in case we'd be able to improve their experience somehow...)
But at the time Disney wasn't where I wanted to be.
You were disenchanted.
DENNIS: That's funny. But no, i was never really disenchanted with Disney; I had become more enchanted by the idea that I could write and I could perform and I could travel all over the world doing it.
And now that's what I do, and people pay me to do it, Bob. I still don't know how that works. But it's been terrific.
How long were you working on Disenchanted?
DENNIS: About three years, mostly while I was touring with another show that I had also written.
We had our first workshop for Disenchanted in New York City during December 2009. It went well, and so in June 2010 I entered it in the New Jersey Playwrights Contest. The judges narrowed the hundreds of entries to three plays, and then in December 2010 they hosted performances of those plays and picked a winner - Disenchanted!
What was your competition?
DENNIS: There was a two-act comedy in the vein of Neil Simon, and there was a drama - it was called Women with Guns, Bob!
Watch out!
DENNIS: It was all about Iraq. Pretty heavy.
And then there was Disenchanted, with the storybook princesses portrayed as none too happy with how their roles in modern pop culture.
Part of the prize package was a stage on which to perform the play in New Jersey the following June, and that's what we used wrapped up doing.
But you'd performed it before?
DENNIS: Yes. Earlier this year, I was in Orlando, where the play ran under its alternate title, Bitches of the Kingdom, in the Orlando Shakespeare Theater as part of the Orlando Fringe Festival. The theater has 320 seats, and we sold out every night, then we extended our stay, and extended it again.
Any Disney folks in the audience?
DENNIS: Yes! People who work at Disney like to have a good laugh, too. There were a lot of Disney folks in the audience, and some higher-ups, too. I got some great connections as a result of the play.
Disney is not really the bullseye of the play, and I think most people who see it realize that the actual target is the princess complex, and how princesses are put on pedestals in our pop culture.
Peggy Orenstein would have no problem with that. I interviewed her a few months ago when she was getting flak about her book, Cinderella Ate Her Daughter. She made some of the same points you make, but without the humor. Maybe that's why she gets the flak and you don't.
DENNIS: I read an excerpt of her book in the New York Times, but yeah, she takes a mom's protective approach to it, and that's the difference. I don't buy into her argument entirely. There's nothing wrong with the princess culture, per se - as long as young women are aware that there are many cultures out there, not just princesses, and it's not necessarily the 'correct' way for them to live their lives.
Peggy's approach was 'this is bad, it's terrible, we should stamp it out', whereas mine gets the point across in a much different way.
I like Peggy, but I'm not with her 100% on the princesses. My little girl was a princess freak several years ago, then she went on to fairies, and now she collects bugs.
DENNIS: Exactly. I'm with you. It's stages. My show is about these princesses, from the original storybooks, who have been able to grow out of the fairy tales and not stay stuck in them.
They've grown into the Real Housewives of Disney World.
DENNIS: There you go, Bob; we'll make a mint on that one!
I didn't intend for the princesses in my play to be specifically Disney princesses. Had I done that, the message might have gotten lost, and let's be real about the legalese: Disney has a lot about the princesses locked up in copyright and trademark.
And they're going after more. Disney filed a trademark application not that long ago for the rights to 'their' princesses in everything but literature: costuming, live stage performances, and so on. I don't think that has any connection to your play, but Disney leaves no trademark on the table.
DENNIS: Yes, and i think they failed to get approval for Sleeping Beauty, which makes sense, because otherwise everyone who wanted to do anything with the fairy tale princesses - who have been around a lot longer than Disney - would have to go through Disney for approval.
Even if they do win, they'll only have control over whatever looks like their characters. They're now trying to go back in history and trademark things they didn't create. I went to the same well for my play as they did for their films - the public domain fairy tales. Disney wants to privatize public domain, and that's not going to be an easy thing to pull off.
All this legal talk makes me nervous. I'm looking forward to our collaboration: Beauty and the Bitches.
DENNIS: Absolutely. I love the concept.
I've got the beauty, you've got the bitches.
DENNIS: It's going to be a blast.
You read that correctly.
The bitches are off the stage and coming to Disney Dispatch.
Starting tomorrow, Dennis and I will co-author a new feature entitled Beauty and the Bitches. Each week we'll focus on a particular princess, with me presenting her docile side, Dennis her demonic side.
Don't ya dare miss it!