Days of Our Lives
In a season of decision, artists and their companies grapple with the issues
compiled by Celia Wren
"The
nation's morals are like teeth,"
the playwright and social commentator George Bernard Shaw once
opined. "The more decayed they are, the more it hurts to touch them."
As the country's political climate grows increasingly heated in the lead-up
to the November elections—and the campaigns seem to air some of
Americans' most critical disagreements about morals and manners—Shaw's
words ring truer than ever. With alacrity and inventiveness, nevertheless,
the American theatre is joining the debate, occasionally taking sides,
more often urging audiences to come to grips with the questions, agonizing
though that process can sometimes be. The following survey, which makes
absolutely no claim to be complete or ideologically representative, samples
a few of the timely and politically resonant productions slated for the
coming months around the country. As Shaw himself might say if he were
around these days, pulling philosophical teeth: No pain, no gain. —Celia
Wren
Aaron Davidman, Corey Fischer, Naomi Newman, Eric Rhys Miller,
Traveling Jewish Theatre, San Francisco:
Traveling Jewish Theatre is currently at work on Blood Relative (formerly The Middle East Project), a collaboration created by Palestinian-Israeli, Jewish-Israeli, Jewish-American and Arab-American theatre artists and scheduled to premiere in March 2005. The goal is to move the inter- and intra-community conversations toward dialogue, in which each side is encouraged to listen deeply and be willing to give up what they think they already know. Only from this place can we begin to imagine possibilities of reconciliation.
Blood Relative's central character has an Israeli-Jewish mother and a Palestinian Muslim father, and the piece traces his attempts to live between two worlds, while a chorus draws on the Biblical and Koranic stories of Abraham, whom both peoples revere.
Although the theatre we make
avoids didacticism and tries to embrace the complexity of human experience,
in a certain sense we are always working in a political context. TJT is
an ensemble company, and our methodology depends on a collaborative structure-—a
process that allows room for ambiguity and complexity in ways that more
hierarchical forms cannot. Moreover, the way in which TJT relates to its
Jewish identity—as a potential bridge to all the other cultures—is
a strong political statement in itself, aligning us with those parts of
our heritage that embrace tolerance and diversity, rather than the ones
that emphasize triumphalism and exceptionalism.
Chris Coleman, artistic director,
Portland Center Stage, Oregon:
The notion of directing King Lear began to surface in my head about five years ago. Japan was tangled in a decade-long recession, Germany was still reeling from the ramifications of reunification, and the Russian economy was gasping for breath. For the first time in my life, America stood as the world's lone superpower. At the height of our economic boom, I started to feel uneasy. Every other fundamental dynamic in the universe operates in cycles: day/night; spring/fall; birth/death. Were we so arrogant as to believe that we were immune to the spin of Fortune's wheel?
In the midst of our "irrational exuberance," questions arose. What is our responsibility as the most powerful nation on the planet? How will the rest of the world treat us when our moment as "top dog" has faded? King Lear kept pushing its way in among these questions, as a play fundamentally about ego and the illusion of power.
Five years later, I open a Lear 30 days before the election. It is a Lear prepared in the midst of suicide bombings, false intelligence on W.M.D.s and the photos of Abu Ghraib. And it is a Lear in contemporary clothes, with a title character who feels like an American Alpha Male, more than an old guy with mean daughters. What is the role of my theatre, my production, in relation to this moment? Hopefully to speak as cogently and fearlessly as we can. To draw connections that seem relevant, and sidestep those that seem too obvious. What Shakespeare affords is the opportunity to look beneath the surface with greater complexity; to confront the illusion of our own power and sense of entitlement.
Late in the play, when he finds himself
smashed against the rocks of his own destiny, Lear realizes he is not
the center of the universe. In America today, I can't think of anything
more interesting to be chewing on.
Rick Davis, artistic director,
Theater of the First Amendment, Fairfax, Va.:
At Theater of the First Amendment, we are deeply interested in the often chaotic intersection of art and politics. Part of it is our location, 15 miles from the Capitol; part of it is a conscious homage to our company's name; part of it is the constellation of interests of our leadership and artists.
This fall we are reviving Paul
D'Andrea's version of Lessing's Nathan the Wise—the story
of Muslims, Jews and Christians finding common ground in 12th-century
Jerusalem. This parable of religious tolerance offered our audiences a
healing energy in October 2001; this year it will receive a Sept. 11 concert
reading. Then, in January, we will premiere Dianne McIntyre and Olu Dara's
Open the Door, Virginia, a theatre-dance-musical piece about
the 1951 school walkout by African-American students in Farmville, Va.,
which gave momentum to Brown v. Board of Education. Dianne and
Olu are creating a deeply felt response to an under-appreciated moment
in American history, one that left scars that are still to be healed.
I see I've used variants of the word healing to describe both
projects. I think it's a word that is too seldom invoked in politics,
and even in art. Perhaps our theatrical contribution to the national political
discourse this fall and winter will be centered around that word.
Crystal Field, executive director,
Theater for the New City, New York City:
In September, we'll be performing Code Orange: On the M15, an operetta I wrote and directed, with music by Joseph Vernon Banks. It's about a bus driver who, feeling useless and desperate, is on the brink of committing suicide when he encounters a Lower East Side Genie. The Genie, complaining of racial profiling due to his clothes (a turban, a T-shirt and pointed shoes), offers him three wishes: to see the world, to be mayor for a day, and in the end, to go home. The driver's now-magical bus takes him all over the world and opens his eyes to child-care workers, the plight of Iraqi peasants, the White House and the Republican Convention. The musical ends in a community garden on the Lower East Side, where political organizing is happening. Our hero is now full of community activism, world peace, environment protection, etc.
I do think theatre artists can impact
the political scene. My work in political theatre will help to inspire
and give courage to those who agree with me. It will knock some people
off the fence in the right direction. It will give those who would rather
we shut up about our opinions a warning that voices of traditional Democratic
values are alive and well and not about to disappear.
Loretta Greco, producing artistic director,
The Women's Project, New York City:
Everyone from Sophocles to Hegel to Judith Malina has wrestled with the Antigone myth, and in October 2004, the Women's Project takes up the story again with The Antigone Project. Five women playwrights—Tanya Barfield, Karen Hartman, Chiori Miyagawa, Lynn Nottage and Caridad Svich—have each written a short play in response to the Greek tale, casting their eyes over contemporary culture with a special focus on the Patriot Act and Homeland Security. According to these playwrights, Antigone lives among us still—as a surfer girl surrounded by surveillance cameras, for example.
As artists we in many ways teeter
on the periphery, thoughtfully contemplating the actions of the whole.
With each piece of new work we are reporting back on the state of our
humanity. The timeliness of The Antigone Project seems obvious
to us: When "compassionate conservatism" manifests itself in an authoritarian
administration not unlike Creon's rule, it is easy to lose faith in the
potency of individual acts. This makes the urgency of Antigone's protest
all the more inspiring as we attempt to galvanize each member of our community
to exercise their individual voices (loudly) in what may be the most critical
election in recent memory.
Kevin Heckman, producing artistic director,
Stage Left Theatre, Chicago:
We're producing a world premiere play: John Green's The (W)hole Thing, a rude, crude geopolitical farce that takes a hard look at U.S. involvement in the Middle East and, more broadly, asks questions about the path of this country since 9/11. We'll open Sept. 28 and close Nov. 6, just four days after the election. We're also considering doing a special performance on election night.
Theatre artists certainly can
have a role in the political scene, but I don't know that most of us choose
to assume one. There's a great fear of challenging audiences, I think.
We underestimate theatregoers and shy away from talking about hard subjects
or taking on sacred cows—like race or patriotism—in a truly
complicated way. Theatre shouldn't necessarily be educating people about
current events—that, theoretically, is a job for reporters. But
theatre can provide a filter for that information. I'd say that kind of
filtering is the job of art in any society.
Jane
Martin, playwright,
an undisclosed location:
In the next few months, my new play Laura's Bush will be premiered by Seattle's just-launched Washington Ensemble Theatre (WET), together with San Francisco's Brava and the Performance Network in Ann Arbor, Mich. A kind of satirical satyr play, the piece tells the story of a small-town librarian who discovers Laura Bush is blinking a Morse Code cry for help in her public appearances. With the aid of a local sex shop worker, they abduct Laura and she reveals that her husband has been replaced by a captured body double of Saddam's, who has had an extreme makeover. The neo-cons discover the women's hideout and Colin and Condoleezza negotiate to control the First Lady, but we find neither are whom they seem to be. In a final shootout, an American emperor emerges.…
What else can we do except write
what compels us? I worry that any responsibility in conflict with that
need produces inauthentic work.
Timothy Near, artistic director,
San Jose Repertory Theatre, California:
In September, San Jose Rep will produce G.B. Shaw's dizzingly provocative Major Barbara, which I will direct. Although it is an expensive, three-set, large-cast period play, we decided to put our limited resources toward this production so that, in this election year, the Rep can present something that will stimulate thought and conversation. I want to get people talking about our values, our history and what we want America's future to be—how we identify the roots of problems and what we must do to make change. Shaw raises thorny issues about the complex relationship of religion, international economics, education, class, poverty and the military industrial complex—and he also addresses individual responsibility. Hanging over the stage in Act 3, when the play goes to Undershaft's munitions factory, there will be an aerial battleship that appears to be the grandfather to our stealth bomber. I hope this will help the audience connect 1905 to 2004.
I want them to ponder Shaw's
message that we can't feed our desire to change the world by just doing
nonprofit work, be it the church or nonprofit theatre. We must look at
the whole system and those who lead it, and act boldly for positive change.
I hope this Major Barbara will flag poverty as an important global
issue and will get people thinking about how we are going to control and
direct corporate power. Because Major Barbara is funny and entertaining,
I believe the majority of the audience will be stimulated by Shaw's incendiary
and illuminating ideas.
Jennifer L. Nelson, producing artistic director,
African
Continuum Theatre Co., Washington, D.C.:
To the extent that the African-American aesthetic encompasses sociopolitical relevance as a primary value, the two shows ACTCo will do this fall (Romulus Linney's A Lesson Before Dying and August Wilson's Two Trains Running) both have bearing on the election season. Both plays deal with people with historically limited means trying to maintain a sense of dignity in the face of a faceless, impersonal bureaucracy. In Lesson, a teacher becomes politically savvy when he is engaged in a struggle for justice. In Two Trains, a community witnesses its gradual demise in the face of urban redevelopment. Beyond the war, these are issues we deal with daily that affect the quality of our lives; these are issues that lead us to say, as Holloway does in Two Trains, "That's the way it works in America."
It is the responsibility of the citizen-artist
to be an active part of the community that sustains her. That, to me,
means asking questions, presenting thought-provoking material, and engaging
audiences in creative dialogue about who we are, where are we going, and
what we are going to be when we get there. It is not my responsibility
to try to tell people what to think-only to encourage them to think.
Fred Newman, artistic director,
Castillo Theatre, New York City:
At Castillo, we make political theatre. It's not political in the partisan sense—our theatre doesn't speak to one party as opposed to another party. Political discourse, at least as practiced in the U.S., tends to be narrow and constrained. In the theatre you can speak more broadly and deeply. Castillo's political theatre is a cultural activity that encourages people to see and think about hard issues—race, class, gender, poverty—in different, often unexpected ways.
For example, Stealin' Home, which opens our 2004–05 season, is about baseball great Jackie Robinson, and it explores issues of race relations and sexuality. On Saturday nights, our improv comedy show This Is Your Ridiculous Life features professional psychotherapists conducting onstage interviews with audience volunteers whose stories become material for on-the-spot improvisations by the Castillo ensemble. This Is Your Ridiculous Life says: "Here's another way of looking at your life." That's political.
There are different
ways of looking at life—indeed, there are different ways of looking
at looking. That's why we make political theatre.
Jim Nicola, artistic director,
New York Theatre Workshop, New York City:
New York Theatre Workshop will continue to showcase Patriot Act: A Public Meditation, an evening with media critic and political commentator Mark Crispin Miller. In this provocative multimedia presentation, Miller draws on the news, official government reports and the like to level a blistering attack on the political establishment, the press and America's culture of commercialism. In an entertaining sidelight, the young prestigidator Steve Cuiffo periodically chips in with magic tricks.
I think as theatre artists we'll inevitably impact the political scene. For NYTW, Patriot Act seemed to be the right project at the right time, partly because it's an interesting experiment in theatrical form. As far as its very powerful content goes: This piece really spoke to me and woke me up, and I felt it was important to give that to our audiences, since we are in a unique moment of threat to our democracy. Miller is trying to make sense of history, to wake us up from this age of consumerism and materialism and show us that we can't be complacent.
At NYTW, we always try to put
forward strong, provocative thoughts. We never expect audiences to embrace
ideas wholesal—-we're not indoctrinating them. We say to them, "You
have to have an opinion. You have to be informed. You have to think. We
don't try to tell you what your ideas are, but you should figure them
out."
Jack Reuler, artistic director,
Mixed Blood Theatre Company, Minneapolis:
Mixed Blood Theatre Company will produce Flags, a world premiere by Jane Martin that was commissioned and developed by the Guthrie Theater. The play will open Oct. 6 and close Oct. 31, two days prior to the election. The protagonist is a conservative blue-collar Vietnam vet whose son is killed in Baghdad. Over his home, the father flies the flag his son was holding when killed—but he flies it upside down. First the neighbors complain, then the media, then the government; and eventually the house is shown hourly on Al Jazeera as a symbol of the decay of nationalism in the U.S. Flags can, I contend, change minds—minds that can sway votes, which can lead to new leadership, which can save lives. The play does not pander to a preaching-to-the-choir mentality.
In 1990, Charles L. Mee spoke
at the opening of the national TCG conference. He suggested—and
I continue to contend—that when the seats are full, the audience
is smiling and the politicians are quiet, something is wrong. If power
is defined as access to information, then we at Mixed Blood yearn to be
a conduit of that information.
Randy Rollison, producing artistic director,
Cleveland Public Theatre, Ohio:
Cleveland Public Theatre is the region's most politically and socially engaged arts organization, so we looked long and hard for the perfect piece for the times. We didn't want anything too heavy-handed. We don't want to become like that crazy uncle who hands you pamphlets all the time. So, during the three weeks prior to the election, we're doing a production of Tony Kushner's A Bright Room Called Day, which he wrote in the mid-1980s, partially in response to Reagan's second election. It's a chilling, poetic piece about a group of artists in Germany who grapple with their own responses during the rise of the Nazis. As always, Tony says it best, so I'll cut away to him. This speech, written in short verse-like lines, is from Act 1, where it's delivered by Husz, a one-eyed Hungarian cinematographer:
"There is something calling, Paulinka. / If you still retain a shred of decency / you can hear it-it's a dim terrible / voice that's calling-a bass howl, like / a cow in a slaughterhouse … / It is calling us to action, calling us…to stop the dreadful day / that's burning now / in oil flames on the horizon.… This Age wanted heroes. / It got us instead: / carefully constructed, but / immobile. / Subtle, but / unfit / to take up / the burden of the times. / It happens. / A whole generation of washouts. / History says stand up, / and we totter and collapse...."
The howl this time is deafening.
If we don't find our strength now and prove sufficient, we have no right
to call ourselves artists or good citizens.
Sekou
Sundiata, poet and performer,
New York and touring around the country:
For those of us living and working in America in these times, it is impossible to ignore or deny the imperial power that America exerts in the world, as well at the consequences of that power at home. In response to this phenomenon, I am in the early stages of creating a personal "state of the union address," a contemplation of the meaning of America in both our dream life and our wide-awake life. I describe this project as a song cycle interspersed with spoken text. The script will be original poetry and lyrics based on both imagined and research material. I plan to spend the development period conducting community sings, poetry circles and public forums in various parts of the country. The communal experience of singing and reading poems together is a strategy to trigger conversations at the most meaningful level. These events will take place on university campuses, in senior citizen centers, street corners, etc. The idea is to gather images and language from a wide range of people.
I have invited various musicians to contribute music to the work. It is my attempt to move away from a solo artistic vision to one that is shaped and informed by other artists: Vernon Reid, Ani DiFranco, Valerie Naranjo, and Nona Hendryx, for example. Graham Haynes will compose the overall score. The text and music will be supported by the video projection of titles, still and moving images that are both metaphorical and representational. The goal is to create a music video/nonfictional documentary quality that can suggest a world of reality, and subterranean awareness.
Like many Americans, I have
been recalled to citizenship in the past few years—not an unexamined
citizenship of flag-waving and fear, but a critical citizenship that demands
radical new ways of imagining and acting in the world. If the fall of
the Berlin Wall signaled the end of the Cold War, then 9/11 and the aftermath
brought us into a completely new reality. And at the advent of new realities,
artists have always been called to respond to the shifting grounds of
their life and times. I see this project as a way for me to think out
loud, and with others, about where we are and what is possible.
Jeanmarie Simpson, artistic director,
Nevada Shakespeare Company, Reno:
In the 2004–05 season, I will be touring my two-actor show A Single Woman, based on the life of Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress. She was a Montana-ranch-girl-turned-social worker-turned-suffragist-turned-world-traveler-turned-congresswoman, who voted against American involvement in both world wars, and never stopped working for universal disarmament. She died in 1973. Rankin's words ring with astounding contemporary relevance. She said, "You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake." Ultimately, the goal of A Single Woman is to introduce her remarkable life to as many people as possible-we're even developing a screenplay. Rankin had an unstoppable drive to make a difference in the way world governments settle their disputes. What a terrific lifelong goal to pursue. What else is there, really?
Prior to my experience with
A Single Woman, I would have said theatre artists didn't have
a role in influencing politics. But many patrons have written or called
me and said that, after seeing the show, they went out and registered
to vote, or signed up to volunteer with a PAC or peace group. So now I
consider that artists play a vital role in shaping the political climate
and keeping it honest. Arts administrators can't speak for us. We can't
rely on advocates. We must speak as often as we can and use our artistic
aplomb to frame our message in the sharpest and most convincing way. To
paraphrase Gandhi: As artists, we must be the change we want to see in
the world.
Sophia Skiles, events coordinator,
Theaters Against War, New York City:
THAW's Freedom Follies, which take place every month, began in July 2003, evolving from what was known as "24–7 Against the War," all-night theatrical filibusters coordinated by Josh Fox. Kristin Marting of New York's HERE art space generously donated dark time in her venue for theatre artists and citizens to bring virtually anything—songs, poems, readings, even a full-length performance of Mac Wellman's Three Americanisms—to engage in dialogue about the war. Noel Salzman, a theatre director, and I, an actor and teaching artist, stepped in to keep these events going, in the interest of creating a long-term pro-peace culture. Since then, hundreds of diverse artists and citizens have convened in spaces donated by THAW member theatres for the Follies—free cabarets made up of songs, readings and other material, ranging from the participatory improvisations of Playback Theater to veteran actress Dale Soules to playwright and provocateur Reverend Billy; from Hieronymous Bang's incendiary I'm Gonna Kill the President to the pageantry of Bread and Puppet.
At THAW—through the Follies,
our town-hall meetings, our teach-ins and other events-we try to respond
to the clarion call of Paul Robeson, who declared, "The artist must elect
to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative."
I think we all need to make conscious choices about how we conceive of
our level of civic participation. Being an artist can make those choices
more complex, richer. I'm not sure if I can speak to being able to influence
the greater political arena. As when creating a theatre piece, I can only
be clear about the thing itself, my role. But I can have hope—a
fervent, steely hope—for its impact.
Ron Sossi, artistic director,
Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, Los Angeles:
From late September through the presidential election—and then on tour through 2005—Odyssey Theatre will present a new one-man show compiled from Lenny Bruce's public performance material, as well as private writings and phone conversations (Lenny taped everything!). The project is not intended as a nostalgia piece, nor as a biography of Lenny's love life and drug problems. The primary goal is to introduce a whole new generation to the wit and wisdom of this seminal artist, who saw absurd comedy in the games of our society, and who courageously sustained his "straight talk" views of life in spite of numerous run-ins with the censorship of the day.
We hope that Lenny's most universal observations will stimulate some real and immediate political thinking on the part of voters as we enter the November election Olympics. A theatre artist always has the possibility of commenting upon, and even influencing, the political scene, either in a direct way (agit-prop, Brecht, etc.) or else by creating work that addresses primal human values and the universal questions of life. In my own career, which has ranged from the overtly political (e.g., the Chicago Conspiracy Trial) to more subtle metaphysical pieces (like Faust Projekt), I've come to the conclusion that the latter proves to be more profound and more lasting. If an audience member is subtly led to ponder the eternal questions, he or she seems more likely to develop an authentic personal philosophy and reasoned political stance. Also, of course, the more overt pieces do have that problem of drawing only the already converted.
This is not to say that a timely, overtly political piece cannot have great immediate effect (as I write, Fahrenheit 9/11 seems to be temporarily dominating the American collective consciousness), but will its effect on political conscience outlast the effect of a work by Shakespeare? Will it create those enduring changes of consciousness that are sometimes produced by great work about the universal dilemma of existence? In my opinion, probably not.
Related stories in American Theatre:
Cultural Citizenship, by Ben Cameron, January 2004
Winner Takes All, a journal of David Edgar's Continental Divide by Lorri Holt, October 2003
Against Political Theatre, by Mac Wellman, June 1990
Theatre and Politics in America, by Jim O'Quinn, October 1989
The Theatricalization of American Politics, by Elinor Fuchs, January 1987
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