People Before Profit blog

Independence Day: Let America be America again

Thu, 30 Jun 2016 15:23:00 +0000

As Americans mark the 240^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the Revolution of 1776 this weekend, People's World presents the poem, "Let America be America again," by Langston Hughes (1902-67). One of the great American poets and fiction writers, Hughes' work was known for its powerful depiction of the lives of the working class in our country - particularly the lives of working class African-Americans. As he once said, "My seeking has been to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America and obliquely that of all humankind."

In this poem, published in the 1938 International Workers' Order pamphlet, A New Song, Hughes issues a call for the nation to live up to its great ideals of freedom and equality. He looks to a time when America will be a land where liberty is not crowned with a "false patriotic wreath," but rather becomes a place where "opportunity is real" and "equality is the air we breathe."

In our own time, when demagogues harken back to an imaginary past and try to convince us that America needs to be "great again," it is appropriate to turn to Hughes. He reminds us of the dream of what America could be, but not yet is.

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed-

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

But opportunity is real, and life is free,

Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.

I am the red man driven from the land,

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek-

And finding only the same old stupid plan

Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,

Tangled in that ancient endless chain

Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!

Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!

Of work the men! Of take the pay!

Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.

I am the worker sold to the machine.

I am the Negro, servant to you all.

I am the people, humble, hungry, mean-

Hungry yet today despite the dream.

Beaten yet today-O, Pioneers!

I am the man who never got ahead,

The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream

In the Old World while still a serf of kings,

Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,

That even yet its mighty daring sings

In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned

That's made America the land it has become.

O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas

In search of what I meant to be my home-

For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,

And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,

And torn from Black Africa's strand I came

To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?

Surely not me? The millions on relief today?

The millions shot down when we strike?

The millions who have nothing for our pay?

For all the dreams we've dreamed

And all the songs we've sung

And all the hopes we've held

And all the flags we've hung,

The millions who have nothing for our pay-

Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again-

The land that never has been yet-

And yet must be-the land where every man is free.

The land that's mine-the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME-

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose-

The steel of freedom does not stain.

From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,

We must take back our land again,

America!

O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath-

America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

We, the people, must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

The mountains and the endless plain-

All, all the stretch of these great green states-

And make America again!

---

Photo:

Mitchell Siporin's 1937 woodcut, "Workers Family." | Oakton Community College

“Hunt for the Wilderpeople”: Outlandish outlaws in New Zealand’s Maori bush

Thu, 30 Jun 2016 13:44:00 +0000

This is a banner week for South Seas Cinema, the film genre set and shot in the Pacific Islands. It kicks off with writer/director Taika Waititi's gem, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, made on location in Aotearoa/New Zealand. This good-natured, well-made film is a sheer delight and absolute joy to behold, and although there is some off-color language and violence, is recommended viewing for most children and families.

In essence, Wilderpeople is about an urban Maori (the indigenous people of NZ) juvenile delinquent type, Ricky Baker (the droll, roly-poly Julian Dennison), who is placed in a foster home somewhere out in the bush. There he is begrudgingly adopted by "Uncle" Hec, a Caucasian ex-con and "bush man" played by the great Sam Neill. (Did you know that in addition to co-starring as Dr. Alan Grant in 1993's Jurassic Park and 2001's Jurassic Park III, as well as in 1999's Hawaii-set Molokai, Neill grew up in the South Island of New Zealand and co-directed/co-wrote an insightful documentary about that country's movies called Cinema of Unease?)

Due to non-technical circumstances beyond their control, when the state bureaucracy decides to remove Ricky from his foster home and send him to the "juvie" detention center for young "offenders," Ricky and Hec hit the bush. The runaways return to nature, living off the land, as a massive, months-long manhunt searches high and low for the outlaws in what Aussies would call the "outback."

Enough said about the plot, which builds up to a Thelma and Louise type of ending - except this is more of a comedy. Wilderpeople is really about family, love and the bonds that form between people (oh yeah, and between humans and canines). I guess it's also a statement about multi-culti unity and a condemnation of government bureaucracy. It's highly amusing and occasionally hilarious. Waititi, who is part-Jewish/part-Maori (hey, don't laugh: My daughter, the singer Marina Davis, is part-Jewish/part-Samoan and she lives in Auckland, NZ), has a keen film sense and the low budget movie is shot with a discerning eye and feeling for cadence, and is thoroughly cinematic and extremely entertaining in every single frame.

The supporting cast, including Maori actress Rima Te Wiata (whose father was a renowned opera singer) as "Aunt" Bella, is letter perfect. Other standouts include Oscar Knightley - who co-starred in 2006's Samoan Wedding and Sione's 2, which are to Polynesian movies what Friday-type flicks are to African American films - as a clueless copper. His sidekick, the overbearing child welfare bureaucrat Paula, is portrayed by Maori actress Rachel House (2002's Whale Rider). Kiwi actor Rhys Darby plays Psycho Sam, a back-to-nature wild man (and wildly funny man) who lives off the grid and seems like a less threatening cross between ZZ Top, Yosemite Sam and the Unabomber.

Taika Waititi, who is also an actor, steals the show in a cameo as a clergyman who - like those daft evangelists who somehow think devout Christians should endorse Donald Trump - has at best a nodding acquaintanceship with the Gospel. This triple threat co-starred in and co-directed/co-wrote 2014's vampire comedy What We Do in the Shadows and directed episodes of the New Zealanders in New York series Flight of the Conchords that aired on HBO. Just as Once Were Warriors' helmer Lee Tamahori went on to direct a James Bond pic, his fellow Maori moviemaker Waititi is similarly "going Hollywood," helming 2017's big budget Thor: Ragnorak.

Wilderpeople has reportedly earned more money at the NZ box office than any other moving picture ever released in the Land of the Long White Cloud, and the audience at the ArcLight Hollywood laughed their collective heads off and gave it a well-deserved ovation. Young Mr. Dennison made a humorous personal appearance for a post-screening Q&A and after-party at the Record Parlour on Selma Street. It is probably the best picture to come out of NZ since 1994's Once Were Warriors (that masterpiece's female lead, the inestimable Rena Owen, attended the ArcLight screening).

In additional South Seas Cinema news: On June 27, Josh Fox's anti-global warming documentary How To Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can't Change premieres on HBO. This eco-doc was shot, in part, on location in the South Pacific. And from Waititi to Waikiki, the comedy Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates - shot, in part, on location in Hawaii - opens July 8. In the meantime, you can't go wrong this weekend hunting down a theater playing the knee-slapping, heartwarming Hunt for the Wilderpeople, a joy for people who love their indies to run wild. I simply can't recommend this highly original rib-tickler enough - and bring the kiddies (over around nine or so).

L.A.-based reviewer Ed Rampell co-authored "Made In Paradise, Hollywood's Films of Hawaii and the South Seas" and "The Hawaii Movie and Television Book" (see here).

Coal and silk: Two impressive new documentaries

Tue, 28 Jun 2016 10:21:00 +0000

Two new documentaries, both of them stunning not only in their execution but in their implications, raise all the critical issues about the worth of human life. One takes place in the violent coal mines of the Southwest a century ago, and another takes place today in many locales leading up to appearances in concert halls all over the world.

The first is "Ludlow: Greek Americans in the Colorado Coal War", and the second is "The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble".

"Ludlow", written and directed by Leonidas Vardaros, premiered this past March at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival in northern Greece, and has since been shown to enthusiastic audiences all over the country. The 72-minute film narrates the story of Greek immigrants at the beginning of the last century, many of them Cretans, who ended up in distant Colorado working under inhuman conditions in the coal mines owned by John D. Rockefeller Sr. and Jr. and other mine owners. Together with immigrants from 22 other countries, these sorely exploited miners revolted and wrote a proud page of American labor history, known as the Colorado Coal War of 1913-14.

The immigrants started arriving at the beginning of the 1900s. They were intentionally kept divided by ethnicity in the many Colorado and New Mexico towns where coal mines were located. But they overcame formidable differences in a common movement to join the United Mine Workers of America, helped along by Mother Jones, who appeared on the scene to inspire them. Workers from Italy, Croatia, Serbia and other places already had some exposure to labor struggles and socialist, class-based ideological concepts. The Greeks less so, as the past several hundred years of their history had been consumed with fighting against the Ottomans for their independence. But they did have military experience in that struggle, which came into play as they took up rifles in self-defense against the thugs and goons of company-paid militias, the National Guard, and later U.S. Army troops all aligned against labor.

It is a story not often mentioned in history books - other than those by radical historians. But as the documentary shows, this monumental struggle remains alive in the memory of the children and the grandchildren of the men and their families who fought for their lives and their human dignity. Descendants recount their parents' history with pride for their forebears and anger over the injustices they faced. Greek-American historian Dan Georgakas speaks with gracious understatement when he says, "Labor relations in America have never been gentle."

Despite the prodigious efforts expended by the ruling class to erase the memory of the horrific 1914 Ludlow Massacre, the events are well documented in local newspapers of the period, in archival records found in local universities and historical societies, and in the work of dedicated historians and researchers. The film is fleshed out with generously employed period photographs, and with filmed interviews apparently made decades ago by surviving union members and the miners' children. Aside from old recordings of labor songs, the producers also got the musical group Romiosyni to make a professional recording of the song of the strikers, "The Union Forever," with instrumentation by Teo Lazarou. It is eerie hearing the English lyrics in Greek accents much like the original union miners must have used.

From these hard-to-find, but rewarding sources the filmmakers collected the evidence to create an engrossing documentary that keeps the viewer's interest alive from start to finish. The biography of union organizer Louis Tikas - "Louie the Greek" - is especially touching and tragic. The collective team, under the guidance of director Vardaros, consists of cinematographer Prokopis Dafnos, editor Xenofon Vardaros, sound engineer Andreas Gkovas, reasearcher Frosso Tsouka and narrator Rigas Axelos. Other members of the "Apostolis Berdebes" non-profit production company include Stefanos Plakas and Lina Gousiou. It's obvious this was a labor of love, one might even say a love letter sent to America from our Greek comrades. Every American owes them a debt of gratitude for a film that will remain forever an important reference for students and scholars.

At the time, the murderous events in Ludlow attracted the sympathies of labor all over the country. The name of John D. Rockefeller became synonymous with the worst criminal disasters and atrocities of the capitalist system. Yet within two decades, by 1935, with the passage of the Labor Relations Act, issues such as the eight-hour day, child labor, work safety and working conditions had been officially recognized.

A highly informative site for understanding the Ludlow history can be found here. Woody Guthrie sings the classic narrative ballad about the Ludlow Massacre in this YouTube version.

The Music of Strangers

Over the past 16 years, an extraordinary group of musicians has come together to celebrate the universal power of music. Named for the ancient trade route linking Asia, Africa and Europe, The Silk Road Ensemble, an international collective created by acclaimed cellist Yo-Yo Ma, exemplifies music's ability to blur geographical boundaries, blend disparate cultures and inspire hope for peace and global cooperation on the part of both artists and audiences.

You don't have to be an anthropologist or ethnomusicologist to know that cultures influence each other. To take an obvious example, so-called "Gypsy" music can be heard in every national style from the flamenco of Spain to the sound of the Russian balalaika. And speaking of which, guitar or dulcimer-type instruments can be found in world music almost anywhere you look. Indeed, as Yo-Yo Ma says, "The intersection of cultures is where new things emerge." Like human genetics, which can suffer from too much inbreeding, culture needs to be allowed to cross-pollinate and grow if it is to survive.

"The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble" is the latest film from the creators of the Oscar-winning documentary 20 Feet from Stardom and the critically-hailed Best of Enemies. It follows an ever-changing lineup of performers drawn from the ensemble's more than 50 instrumentalists, vocalists, composers, arrangers, visual artists and storytellers as they gather in locations across the world, exploring the ways art can both preserve traditions and shape cultural evolution.

Blending performance footage, personal interviews and archival film, culled from interviews, rehearsals and concerts by the musicians in some 33 countries, director Morgan Neville and producer Caitrin Rogers focus on the journeys of a small group of Silk Road Ensemble mainstays to create an intensely personal chronicle of passion, talent and sacrifice. Through these moving individual stories, some of them marked by immense pathos, the film paints a vivid collective portrait of a bold musical experiment and a global search for the ties that bind.

Some of the personalities we meet, aside from Ma, include superb instrumentalists such as Kinan Azmeh from Syria, Keyhan Kalhor from Iran, Cristina Pato from Galicia in northwest Spain, and Wu Man from China. The film is perhaps at its best when we focus on their sagas. To me, the single greatest highlight is the young Black man whose name I did not pick up - and I'm not even sure where he is from - who danced a lyrical hip-hop-inflected ballet to Ma's playing of Saint-Saëns' "The Swan." Now there is a genre that simply cries out to be incorporated more widely in larger-scale work: Why not a hip-hop version of Prokofiev's ballet score to "Romeo and Juliet" or to Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake"?

By comparison to these intimate cameos, I felt it somehow less impressive, in the end, to see and hear 20 or 30 musicians all massed on a stage pounding out the exciting, rhythmic pulses of "world music" that has captured the attention of global audiences. Once the beat and the harmonic relations have been established, it's relatively easily to "zipper" in a riff from a Chinese pipa, then a Galician bagpipe, and so on, extending an ecstatic piece out to hypnotizing lengths. It's both a dilution of authenticity and an expansion into blandness, neither of which in itself particularly makes musical history, however much fun it can be.

The jumpy, frenetic editing is consistent with contemporary viewing patterns. With so many stories to tell, so many individual personalities to know, and equally as many locales, in the blink of an eye a viewer is transported to dozens of exotic locales, and into the the musicians' private living rooms and surrounding neighborhood streets. It's an wild, exhilarating 96-minute ride around the world many times over.

The trailer for "The Music of Strangers" can be viewed here.

Photo: A period cartoon titled "The same old line up."

Black comedy “Armadillo Necktie” exposes open wound of U.S. in Iraq

Fri, 24 Jun 2016 14:17:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES - A new self-described "jet-black comedy" in its world premiere production takes on the national American character at the apogee of its foreign "nation building" enterprise. It takes place in a desolate stretch of borderland in eastern Iraq near Iran, where U.S. Army Colonel Ulysses Simpson Armadillo (Bert Emmett - shrewd observers will note the significance of his character's initials) has been searching tirelessly for the native insurgents who, years earlier, murdered his beloved wife.

Armadillo's trusty Executive Officer Buckley Dunham (Matt Calloway) is an African-American role; he's a career soldier under the Colonel's command, who has become more of an emotional caretaker to this loner/loser than an active member of the military in a position at least somehow in a larger chain of accountability.

One of the recurring jokes in the play is Armadillo's age, which starts out at 85, which makes sense, as it might be some 20 or 25 years since the original incident happened, perhaps even when Saddam Hussein was a U.S. client. Every few minutes the Colonel has occasion to mention his age, which grows a decade each time. By the end of the play he hasn't physically aged but has seemingly become one of the undead, a vampire stuck in the Iraqi craw like the ghost of a dead tarantula (not my simile - it's one of the playwright's reiterated images.)

Gold ingots "redistributed" and "lost"

Writer Peter Coy recently wrote in Bloomberg Businesweek, "Despite a crying need for better infrastructure, investment in it has fallen in 10 major economies, including the U.S., since the financial crisis, according to a new study by the McKinsey Global Institute. Meanwhile, China is still going gangbusters on roads, bridges, sewers, and everything else that makes a country run."

Col. Armadillo recalls that moment when he and his army comrades burst into one of Saddam's palaces and discovered a roomful of gold bullion ingots, which were soon "redistributed," but who knows where and to whom. When the Colonel relates what happened to his share, he claims that he invested it with a Chinese business partner, who "lost" it all. The playwright surely wants us to think about all the expended treasure we pissed away in our poorly thought-out "nation building" project, which resulted in exactly one new functioning "state" - ISIS - while other less adventurist countries proceeded apace with their own economic expansion.

Col. Armadillo's obsession to stay put and find his wife's killers is the central theme. It hardly occurs to him that since the killers' faces were covered with scarves they might simply have unrecognizably melted back into the "insurgent" landscape. It does not require a theatregoer to be particularly astute to question who is truly the criminal here - the so-called "insurgents" in their own land, or the American occupiers who have flown in from half a world away to rid the land of a despot, but nonetheless a secular one.

He has even become the stuff of legend, the warrior who years after hostilities have ended is still holed up in a remote cave waiting to be vindicated. So much so that a curious New York Times reporter, Madeline Sainz (Jennifer Laks), hoping for the big scoop of her career, braves desert dangers to reach him for an interview and potentially a book contract or two. Over the passage of time, measured not by New York minutes but by Middle Eastern eons, the media have become quite literally "embedded" with the stories they cover.

A fifth character is the Iraqi native, Aminah Abdul-haleem Ali (Shanti Ashanti, interestingly from Tel Aviv originally), whose agenda is also murky. Is she there to avenge her brother's death by the same hands as those that murdered the Colonel's wife? Or is she one of the "insurgents" herself?

Armadillo recalls Moby-Dick's Captain Ahab. Perhaps even more aptly, Joseph Conrad's 1902 novella Heart of Darkness, the narrator Marlow's story of his obsession with Kurtz, an ivory trader gone mad in the old Belgian Congo. Conrad questions which is the true place of darkness - Europe or Africa? Is there such a bold line between so-called "civilized" people and "savages?" Conrad was among those of his day, like Mark Twain, who dared to challenge his country's imperialist and racist premises.

Playwright Gus Krieger, a Los Angeles-based writer-director-producer of stage and screen, could be considered in that company. He seems to prefer his scripts gory. They feature killing, battle, wrath, horror, slashers, and thrillers. The "necktie" in the title of the current play refers to hanging with the victim's own guts.

The Armadillo Necktie is a mashup of theatrical genres, beginning with grand guignol (torture by electrical current applied to a captive's testicles opens the show). The captive is Bruce Walker (Morgan Lauff), an unscrupulous mercenary whose loyalties are under suspicion. The action rapidly switches back and forth to farce, satire, slapstick, thriller, revery and dreamscape, and the theatre of ideas, with various weapons on display. Be prepared for sudden turn-on-a-dime reversals of fate as guns and swords are pulled and explosives are primed to go off. There's even an all-against-all "Mexican standoff" that, like other elements in the play, reflects the inability of forces either to advance or retreat. People can get stuck in this sun-struck time-warp for decades, centuries maybe. Afghanistan comes to mind.

The playwright seems to want to test the limits of our squeamishness, but just as we are about to reach them, the mood is broken by a hilarious quip or bit of stage action. We are emotionally jerked around by one ricocheting countermove after another until our heads spin with confusion. The dialogue races by, and each of the characters has a totally distinct mode of delivery and accent, so close attention must be paid. Direction by Drina Durazo is tight and breathless - perhaps too much so? On a first hearing any viewer is bound to miss a lot of words in the script. It's the kind of writing that bears reading as much as seeing, so we might pause to pick up all the allusions and cross-references. In the end we have to trust the playwright to have connected all the dots - the emerging image is not easily discerned in one viewing.

What does it mean to "win?"

Asked why write a play about war in the Middle East, Krieger says, "The baby boomers had Vietnam, the millennials had the collapse of the global economy, and my peers and myself - a generation in the middle - had that dusty, amorphous quagmire of cash, carnage, and human life known as "Operation Iraqi Freedom," "Operation New Dawn," or - to those embracing its open-endedness - the simple bark of a four-letter, all caps IRAQ. A mysterious conflict, one with ever-moving goalposts and ever-changing objectives, one that upended the concept of "winning" so thoroughly that even the most staunch proponents of black-and-white jingoism were eventually forced to find a mirror and give themselves that long, uncomfortable look called nuance."

He calls his play "jet-black comedy," and as a master of nuance he surely must be thinking that Col. Armadillo, who initially arrived by jet with thousands of U.S. troops, is essentially running a maverick, unauthorized "black site," where torture persists long after the news about Abu Ghraib has faded from the headlines. There seems to be a trend in theater today toward - and I have seen all these terms used - "edgy black comedy," "nasty black comedy," "pitch black comedy," and now "jet-black." The genre grants space to an almost anything-goes Wild-West free-for-all of politically incorrect speech, lurid, sexist, hyper-real action bordering or actually featuring violence, over-the-top situations and language, all given cover by the protective rubric of "comedy."

Pursuant to a recent scandal in the Chicago theatre world, some acknowledgment has appeared about the critics' role in treating such anti-social work as freshly, powerfully "authentic." Now, please don't misunderstand: I am not saying this applies to The Armadillo Necktie as a work of art. Yet there are features of the repulsive, torturous and bloody that we are asked to sit back in our seats and accept in good spirits as "comedy." I know people see stuff like this every day on TV, and it filters into the news once in a while, but I mention this only to say that this crude trend can get out of hand mighty fast, and I am just signaling my apprehension.

Anyway, the Group Rep's design team including Chris Winfield and J. Kent Inasy (sets, Inasy also lighting), Angela M. Eads (costumes), and Todd Ball and Hisato Masuyama (props), among others, is cracker-jack. There seems to be a palpable esprit de corps at Group Rep.

The Armadillo Necktie plays through July 31, with performances Fridays and Saturdays at 8 pm, and Sundays at 2 pm. There will be Q & A Talkbacks after Sunday matinees, June 26 and July 17. Appropriate for ages 18+ because of mature material and language. For tickets go to: www.thegrouprep.com or 818-763-5990. The Group Rep performs at the Lonny Chapman Theatre, 10900 Burbank Blvd., North Hollywood 91601.

Photo: Doug Engalla

Anti-slavery classic revived for the stage as “Tom”

Thu, 23 Jun 2016 09:32:00 +0000

TOPANGA CANYON, Calif. - Will Geer's Theatricum Botanicum's (WGBT) production of Tom is artistic director Ellen Geer's adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1851 abolitionist novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Geer, who also directed, added post-Civil War scenes depicting Stowe (Melora Marshall), who is still fretting over slavery. These additional 1886 vignettes enable the playwright to presciently ponder the plight of Blacks after the Reconstruction Era, but also in our own times wherein police and vigilante violence, institutionalized racism, the racist Trump candidacy, and more continue to beset and bedevil African Americans. These Stowe sequences, interwoven into the fabric of the play - which is mostly a dramatization of the original book - also allow Tom to explore feminist issues, particularly the role of women in literature.

Most of Tom, like its literary source, is set in the antebellum South. Many are likely to find this excursion to the land of cotton to be quite disturbing. The systematic cruelty required to maintain and enforce slavery is graphically depicted onstage. Along with whippings there are detestable auctions of humans, breaking up families. (Speaking of which, you might want to leave the kiddies at home. Sensitive souls may be disturbed by the harsh historical realities depicted onstage.)

All human beings yearn to be free and in order to rein this natural liberty-loving tendency in, slave masters like the despicable Simon Legree (Thad Geer) had to constantly use brutal force. The perpetual abuse inherent in a dehumanizing system that reduced flesh and blood thinking and feeling people to mere property is truly revolting (in every sense of the word).

Gerald Rivers is an interesting choice to depict Tom. A mainstay at the Theatricum, Rivers has played Shakespearean and other characters at this Topanga Canyon outpost of Los Angeles beneath the stars. But the dreadlocked Rivers is best known, and rightfully so, for his perfect portrayal of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., which he does in an excellent one-man show.

In Stowe's novel and WGTB's version, it's true that Tom declines to become a runaway and is extremely loyal to his more benevolent masters. However, Tom does urge others to flee slavery and ride that underground railroad to freedom. And most importantly, he refuses Legree's direct order to do something ethically abhorrent to literally save his own skin. In doing so, Tom is arguably defying slavery and committing an act of civil disobedience. One could argue that Tom - with his Christian, turn-the-other-cheek faith and pacifism - is an archetype for Dr. King himself, who, like Tom, was consumed by the racist culture around him.

On the other hand, as Durant Fowler - the actor who played George Harris - pointed out to me at the world premiere's after party, his character may well be the prototype for Malcolm X. George joins Eliza (Jasmine Gatewood) as they run away with their son toward freedom in Canada (in a canny bit of casting Durant's real-life son, Angelo Fowler, plays his onstage child). When vigilantes citing the Fugitive Slave Act attempt to apprehend the trio to return the "property" to their "rightful owner," George opens fire on them. One could make the point that George is also the literary archetype for Jamie Foxx as the title character in Quentin Tarantino's 2012 film Django Unchained.

And while we're at, the friendly relationship between the little blonde plantation daughter Eva (Lily Andrew) and Tom was also the prototype for the onscreen pairing of Bill Bojangles Robinson and another young girl, Shirley Temple, in 1935 flicks such as The Little Colonel and The Littlest Rebel. Apparently, in the '30s, these interracial pairings were deemed acceptable and unthreatening because the age differences between the Black male adult and the white female child excluded sex from the "innocent" equation. (Since Blacks were regarded by racists as being "childlike," this coupling may have been widely perceived as being between two children.)

Eliza's fleeing across ice floes on a partially melted river, of course, influenced D.W. Griffith's shooting of a similar, dramatic icy scene featuring Lillian Gish in the 1920 silent morality play Way Down East.

Tom makes good use of Gospel music and Negro Spirituals - some are performed live, while others are recordings, including some Paul Robeson numbers. As usual, the actors, playing in the hilly wilds of deepest darkest Topanga, make good use of the rustic space in an amphitheater environment. Actors sometimes bolt up and down the aisles, and when Eliza and Harry flee, they are glimpsed above the set per se on the hillside making their way through the forest - the clever theatrical equivalent of a long shot.

Standouts in the cast include Earnestine Phillips in a double role as Tom's wife Aunt Chloe and Prue (Mammy-like archetypes), a WGTB stalwart equally at home reciting Shakespeare. The brutal slaves Sambo (Rodrick Jean-Charles) and Quimbo (Clarence Powell) are quite chilling as Legree's enforcers - reminding me of those traitorous "kapos," Jews who collaborated with the Nazis to oppress their own brethren in the concentration camps.

It's remarkable, in terms of how art expresses the zeitgeist, that this production premiered almost on the exact 50^th anniversary of Stokely Carmichael's famous 1966 "Black Power" speech. The heartbreaking two-act Tom reminds us that, alas, the problems Stowe exposed and Stokely opposed continue in our own day and age. Racism may be America's original sin - but unfortunately, it continues today.

Yet it seems appropriate that this version of Uncle Tom's Cabin is being performed right near the cabin of Woody Guthrie, the people's troubadour who fought for truth, justice and the progressive way with his guitar - that machine that killed fascists, as Woody said. Onstage, the Stowe of 1886 denies that slavery has really ended and the same could be said of our own time, as this drama reminds us that racial injustice persists.

Tom is playing in repertory through Oct. 1 at Will Geer's Theatricum Botanicum: 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga, Calif. 90290. For repertory schedule and other information call: (310) 455-3723 or see: www.Theatricum.com. This season's production of Romeo and Juliet is reviewed here.

Photo: left to right, Charis Holloman, Gerald C. Rivers, Jasmine Nicole Jacquet, Earnestine Phillips / Ian Flanders

A Dutch composer dissects American media in "The News" opera

Tue, 21 Jun 2016 15:55:00 +0000

Netherlands composer JacobTV's (aka Jacob Ter Veldhuis) multi-media tour de force The News takes audiences on a madcap odyssey to the netherworld of news reportage with one of the most wildly inventive productions this reviewer has experienced in any medium for years. Combining a big screen filled with stunning imagery, the nine-piece LBO Orchestra, Austrian-born conductor Andreas Mitisek and two live anchorwomen, Long Beach Opera's interdisciplinary The News jet propels opera into the 21^st century - if not into the realm of an entirely new art form altogether.

The News' theme is an often jarring exploration of news media, exquisitely expressed by the voices and antics of the attractive anchors, soprano Maeve Höglund and rhythm vocalist Loire Cutler. Like much of the televised reportage we are subjected to and often behold spellbound on our television sets, The News has a disturbing dichotomy. There is the trivialization and pandering that cable and network news is rife with, including injections of inappropriate sexuality, especially by women purportedly doing weather and traffic reports.

For example, last May - reportedly in response to real-time emailed complaints - meteorologist Liberté Chan was given a sweater to cover up what has been described as a skimpy cocktail outfit while she delivered a live weather report on KTLA-5. FOX "News'" often blonde talking heads are another case in point of sex appeal trumping knowledge of current events.

The epitome of this trend of looks over substance is the pretty but preternaturally ignorant Dana Perino, George W. Bush's former press secretary who summed up the Bush regime's grasp of world affairs when, at a news conference, she showed complete ignorance as to what the Cuban Missile Crisis was. In 2007, Wonkette called this blonde airhead "Dumber Than Everyone Else In History." What's this babbler's "punishment" for being so staggeringly ill-informed? Why, promotion to a perch as a FOX "News" pundit, where she can regularly spew her know-nothing thoughtless thoughts, but of course!

The News spoofs this lunacy with biting satire, particularly in a racy sequence where the anchorwomen, sporting stunt bared bosoms, race about the Broad Stage auditorium, cavorting with the audience. But as the opera observes, this widespread trend of sexualization and dumbing down of what purports to be reportage is extremely dangerous. For example, consider this anecdotal incident:

Around May 12, I watched hours of TV reportage on the so-called 24 hour cable news networks. What passed for journalism was mostly a parade of the brewing transgender-engendered bathroom brouhaha and heaps of Trump trivia. At the same time, Brazilian head of state Dilma Rousseff was suspended from the presidency as part of an impeachment process. Not only is Brazil the largest nation south of the proverbial border, but this summer's Olympic games are scheduled to be held there, amidst reports that from viruses to incomplete facilities, Rio may not really be ready to host the world's sports competitions.

Meanwhile, the cable networks that subject us to such benighted coverage, besiege viewers - who pay for their disinformation in an attempt to find out what the hell is happening in their world - who are also forced to consume unwanted, unsolicited commercials that, again, they are compelled to pay for. Come the revolution, I want to personally guillotine the brainstorms who came up with this demented business model.

Meanwhile, back at the review:

The News goes on to show the depth of human misery that televised reportage in particular can expose, bringing home collages of the suffering of people, from Somalia to Syria to Hurricane Sandy and beyond, with disturbing imagery appearing on the huge screen hanging above the orchestra. This complicated opera is so complex and hard to fully grasp, that I wasn't exactly sure what Ter Veldhuis was trying to say. Although footage of disasters, from Fukushima to Athens riots and so on, is indeed often exploited on TV, one of the worthy functions of journalism is to reveal the human condition and what is actually going on around the world. Is the composer contrapuntally comparing the tube's degrading trivialization to what the media's mission is supposed to be? Is this the counterpoint JacobTV is aiming for?

Your guess is as good as mine. Be that as it may, the music and singing are superb - alternately moving, moody, amusing. Cotler's scatting is flawless. The entire show, perfectly directed by Tanya Kane-Parry, is a feast for the eyes, as well as the ears and (open) mind. According to the playbill, The News, which premiered in 2011, "is constantly updated." Indeed, the current edition depicts a character who seems tailor-made for operatic excess: The Donald, he who exalts himself. (And also tailor-made for cable news: On June 20, the day the prez-il-duce candidate's campaign manager was fired, CNN bestowed upon flunky Corey Lewandowski more airtime in one extended, commercial-free (!) interview than the cable network gave Sen. Bernie Sanders during his entire race. Just like CNN let Elián González's crazy Cuban exile distant relatives in Florida rant and rave on and on, on live TV during that despicable episode in the 1990s - likewise, more airtime than CNN ever gave Fidel Castro.

The News is the best music musing on news media since the Beatles' 1967 "A Day in the Life" on the "Sgt. Pepper's" album and the most incisive, cutting-edge critique in a fictional mode of what passes for TV journalism since 1976's and 1987's by now woefully outdated Network and Broadcast News. If media commentators Jeff Cohen, co-founder of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, and the late Danny "The News Dissector" Schechter composed opera, this may very well have been the show they'd create.

In the Philip Glass and John Adams mode, this one-act avant-garde opera isn't everyone's cup of tea, especially Puccini purists and Tchaikovsky traditionalists. But for those with a penchant for the aesthetically adventurous, boundary-expanding and philosophically thought-provoking, this reviewer has breaking news for you: For must-see TV and opera, turn on and tune in to JacobTV's The News.

Long Beach Opera presents The News on Saturday, June 25 at 4 pm and Sunday, June 26 at 2:30 pm at the Santa Monica College Performing Arts Center Eli and Edythe Broad Stage, 1310 11^th Street, Santa Monica, CA 90401. Pre-opera talks with JacobTV and LBO Artistic & General Director Andreas Mitisek take place an hour before each performance. For more info: (562) 432-5934; www.longbeachopera.org/index.php.

Photo: Long Beach Opera, by Keith Ian Polakoff.

Romeo and Juliet jinxed in East Jerusalem

Tue, 21 Jun 2016 15:32:00 +0000

"For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo."

We all know how this narrative turns out, how longstanding tribal hatred put the jinx on the forbidden relationship between these two archetypal lovers. Everyone in the world knows what you mean when you refer to a "Romeo and Juliet type of situation."

Ah, but it's all in the telling, and this year's brilliant re-creation of Shakespeare's 420-odd-year-old tale at Will Geer's Theatricum Botanicum, an outdoor amphitheatre in Los Angeles' Topanga Canyon, sets it in modern-day East Jerusalem. This multicultural city straddling Israel/Palestine is the epicenter of one of the world's oldest conflicts, between the Muslims and the Jews. Like so many other epics of national and ethnic loathing, this one too begs to ask, Is this entirely necessary? Is there not some other way? Are we doomed to learn nothing from these legendary lovers who somehow through the vicious strife discovered a path toward tolerance, acceptance and love?

It's significant to recall that the Theatricum has its roots in the 1950s McCarthy-era Hollywood blacklist, when banned actor Will Geer created the venue as a haven for blacklisted actors. The theatre is known for its productions that frame contemporary issues through the lens of classic literature. Will Geer's daughter Ellen Geer directs; she has revised the play accordingly for her modern-day conceit.

"By setting this great play in East Jerusalem, the cultural and religious differences explode and deepen the text, revealing what the next generation has to face," says Ellen Geer. "Daily, young people negotiate through what was not created by them, but by parents and cultural differences that they have been brought upon with since birth. To honor parents is all young people want. With this kind of strife, our children suffer."

The outlines of the play conform to the Bard's familiar text. The play opens at an East Jerusalem checkpoint where an outbreak of the old feud between the Capulets and the Montagues takes place. Israeli soldiers behave brusquely with their batons.

I later learned that the devotedly pro-Israel Simon Wiesenthal Center had registered its objections to the staging while still in rehearsal, met with the company, and that the original guns with which the Israeli soldiers were equipped onstage had now been eliminated in favor of the nightsticks. "We do not believe in censorship," Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Wiesenthal Center said. "But this production has degraded a classic play into a heavy-handed anti-Israel propaganda platform" rife with "Israel bashing."

In a June 3^rd letter from the Theatricum Botanicum thanking the Wiesenthal Center for its input, the company wrote, "We are deeply impressed by the work of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and are grateful for the suggestion that we two organizations - committed for so many years to educating the youth of the greater Los Angeles community - might find ways to work together for our shared goals: greater understanding, greater humanity, greater peace."

In the next scene, the glasses- and sneaker-wearing Romeo (Shaun Taylor-Corbett) and his Muslim friends decide to attend the Capulets' masque party for Purim, and it's there that he meets the hosts' 17-year-old daughter Juliet (Judy Durkin). The entertainment at the party is a rapper who retells the Purim story to a funky backbeat, and everyone, including the Arabs, sings along with it. It's no coincidence that Geer has chosen to mark the Jewish Purim holiday in this way, for Purim, based on the biblical Book of Esther, is itself a story about religious bigotry and murder, in which neither side comes out particularly glowing with beneficence.

Capulet's (Alan Blumenfeld) household is rounded out by his wife Geveret (Karen Reed) and the Nurse (Melora Marshall), plus various hangers on and suitors. On the Montague side there are Romeo's parents Israel López Reyes and Celia Mandela (who wears the full hijab). Key characters in the story keep their original names - Mercutio (Rav Val Denegro) and Tybalt (Taylor Jackson Ross in a gender-bending role) - but instead of the Prince of Verona we get the Prime Minister. And Friar Laurence, hoping that the marriage he performs will end the family quarrel, becomes Mufti Zaman, who wears a keffiyeh and greets his friends "Salaam aleykhum." Juliet appears at the Mufti's house wearing a head covering out of respect for Muslim custom (although covering the hair is also a Jewish tradition). The numerous Christian allusions in the original play have been excised.

Most of Shakespeare's language is preserved intact (Geer has tightened up the action somewhat and it's played in two acts), but we also hear Arabic, Hebrew, and even a little Yiddish as the Nurse advises Juliet to marry Peretz (originally Paris), a Hasidic Jew with long sidelocks who is her father's choice for a spouse. Generous doses of music also emphasize that we are living amidst a barely coexisting multicultural Middle Eastern world. The Capulet and the Montague homes are decked out respectively with Israeli and Palestinian flags.

The specific language of the play, which first appeared in the 1590s, actually contributes to our understanding of this particular setting. The King James Bible dates from just a few years later - 1611. What most English speakers know of those canonical texts that became "the Bible" derives from this version. Shakespeare himself was, alongside King James and his corps of translators, one of the great stabilizers, and innovators as well, of the English language, so the Romeo and Juliet story sounds forth with suitably appropriate Biblical cadences.

Romeo is, like Juliet, a teenager. At first he is smitten with Rebecca (Rosaline in the original), but upon seeing Juliet quickly transfers his exaggerated, overwrought emotions to her. Taylor-Corbett and Durkin each play their youthful roles so freshly, Romeo ever on the move with his hip-hop dances and acrobatic leaps. His famous love soliloquies come off as a kind of rap, as in "enraptured," while Juliet swoons, pouts and flings herself about in adolescent abandon.

Ellen Geer has truly offered her public a revelatory interpretation with superb performances without exception. It's too bad this is just a play: If only the final peace concluded between the "Capulets" and "Montagues" had held, the world might have been spared one of the most intractable dilemmas of all time.

Romeo and Juliet plays in repertory with four other plays this summer through October 2 at Will Geer's Theatricum Botanicum, 15419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga CA 90290. For the full schedule and tickets contact the theatre at: www.theatricum.com or call (310) 455-3723.

Audience members are advised to dress casually (and warmly for evening performances), and bring cushions for bench seating. Picnickers are welcome before and after the show.

Photo: Shaun Taylor-Corbett and Judy Durkin, The Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum | Ian Fanders

“Home/Sick” stages the 1970s Weathermen movement with explosive impact

Fri, 17 Jun 2016 10:18:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES - On March 6, 1970 a home-made bomb, built by a small revolutionary group called the Weathermen, accidentally exploded in a Greenwich Village townhouse, an event which unleashed a national manhunt for the perpetrators. Home/Sick, a newly restaged play in its West Coast premiere production, examines the turbulent political era during and after the Vietnam War through the eyes of this radical group dedicated to "propaganda by the deed" that in the end attracted no followers.

South Africa in the 1960s and '70s may have been the world's most visible example of the principle enunciated by JFK that when peaceful revolution is blocked, violent revolution will surely ensue. Many other examples could be cited from Latin America, and Africa. In Asia, of course, Vietnam might have emerged after World War II as a unified nation under anti-Japanese occupation forces led by Ho Chi Minh, but that land was stymied by the reintroduction of French colonialism and then U.S. imperialist war.

In the U.S., nonviolent movements for change were met with vicious dogs, water hoses, police riots, vigilante guns, HUAC hearings, the electric chair, long prison sentences, and assassinations of key leaders.

In 1962 the "New Left" was born with the founding of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). At Port Huron, Mich., a few dozen student activists endorsed a manifesto for participatory democracy and a larger voice in government. SDS chapters sprang up at university campuses all across the country. By 1968, with the Vietnam War at its height and thousands of men being drafted into the military every month to carry death to people of color halfway across the world, SDS had over 100,000 members in more than 300 autonomous chapters, and many times more supporters.

Huge nationwide demonstrations against war, and abroad as well, seemed to have no impact, as both Democrats and Republicans in Washington relentlessly pursued their dream of rolling back the "dominoes" of socialist progress across the globe.

Increasing frustration with the lack of success at ending the brutal war led many in the student movement to question whether or not legal measures such as protest demonstrations and electoral politics were ever going to work. Democracy itself seemed to have ground to a halt. Dissension arose within the anti-war movement over what was the tactical way forward - and whether armed struggle should be part of it.

This gets personal

I was present at the 1969 SDS national convention where these issues came to a head. By all accounts, events there marked the end of what we had known as SDS. The organization split between the Revolutionary Youth Faction (I and II) - RYM II evolved into the Weathermen - and the Worker-Student Alliance promoted by Progressive Labor Party (PL), with which I identified. Both sides were intensely caught up in the Maoist phenomenon that divided the socialist world at the time.

RYM maintained that the old class analysis had broken down. "Hardhats" - what they termed the American labor movement - had thrown in their lot with the capitalist class for some rewards, such as wartime jobs, and could not be relied upon as allies in RYM's framing of the anti-racist, anti-imperialist struggle. Voting and protest no longer seemed to matter. Only disaffected youth possessed a vision of bringing democratic change to America - along with rock music, sexual freedom and dope. By contrast, PL still maintained that student alliances with workers was still a viable political strategy.

The convention was marked by a total breakdown in the debate over strategy. The raging language of argument had the character of a messy, angry divorce. The two sides seated themselves across the aisle from each other. At a certain point, in response to some notion proposed from the podium, one side got up on their chairs facing the other, and with their Little Red Books of Chairman Mao raised in their hands, gesticulated with them toward the others, chanting, "Bull shit! Bull shit!" In response, the other side stood on their chairs, also holding their Little Red Books, and waved them back, screaming, "Fuck you! Fuck you!" To this had come our mass student movement of opposition to war, capitalism, and imperialism. Clearly these people were no longer capable of sustaining a broad-based mass movement - of students or anyone.

After the convention a rump contingent, still claiming the legitimate mantle of SDS, controlled by forces involved with the Progressive Labor Party, held on for a year or so from new headquarters in Boston.

The Weathermen, one subgroup of RYM, took their youth-as-the-revolutionary-spearhead thinking one step further and established little affinity groups of committed cadre, who unsurprisingly happened to be almost all white and middle-class. They would pick up the old idea of "propaganda by the deed," setting off bombs in public facilities that, they reasoned, would make life in the U.S. unstable and "bring the war home" to our shores. "Our tools are the brick, the baseball bat and the truth," one character in Home/Sick says.

(Another couple of personal notes: Shortly after the Greenwich Village bombing incident, FBI agents tried to interview me in New Orleans, where I lived, about Cathy Wilkerson, a Weather cadre who had escaped after the explosion. I declined to speak with them.

Some months later, as a result of an anti-Vietnam War action, I found myself serving a 20-day sentence in New Orleans Parish Prison. I could reduce my sentence by half by going out daily to assigned worksites, such as cleaning government offices and police stables. In a police office one day, cleaning up with a pail of water and a mop, I glanced up at the bulletin board and saw WANTED posters with the names and pictures of some of my former SDS comrades now sought for breaking shop windows and planting bombs. Out of an elemental sense of solidarity I removed these posters from the wall, crumpled them up and threw them out with the trash.)

Making theatre out of this history

Home/Sick is a collectively written theatrical project by an ensemble called The Assembly to put one of these Weather groups under a microscope to see what motivated its participants, what kept them going, how they survived underground, and what they did as urban guerrillas. The Assembly has done impressive research both into the literature and interviewing those who have since surfaced and are willing to speak about their experiences.

The play was first staged at Brooklyn's The Collapsable Hole in 2011, again in 2012 at the Living Theatre, and at Wesleyan University in 2014. It was named a Critics' Pick by the New York Times, Backstage and Off Off Online. It is recommended for mature audiences.

The time frame encompasses the period between the breakup of SDS and 1981, long after the Vietnam War ended. In 1980 several former Weathermen collaborated with the Black Liberation Army to rob a Brink's armored car in New York, during which two police officers and a guard were killed. During that decade the Weathermen were active, they successfully bombed dozens of sites with sufficient attention to detail so as to cause almost no casualties. It takes over two hefty hours of nonstop acting before they realize their guerrilla theory of revolutionary violence will not succeed.

Six characters portray composite characters based on actual Weathermen types. Real personalities emerge, but first a listener has to pry off the heavy veneer of sloganeering and rhetoric that suffuses the dialogue. These self-appointed "vanguard" leaders believe that "organizing" anyone is hopeless. This small, ingrown collective who strive so hard to conform to their high revolutionary standards have their flaws and weaknesses, only gradually acknowledging the reality that no one is following their lead. The valiant actors, who have themselves helped to create the play, are Edward Bauer, Ben Beckley, Kate Benson, Anna Abhau Elliott, Daniel Johnson, and Emily Louise Perkins.

The décor by Nick Benacerraf uses Venetian blinds mostly in a state of disrepair, and furniture, mattresses and props thrown about in a disarray that reflects the Weathermen's profound anti-bourgeois ideology. The sound design by Asa Wember incorporates many songs from the period. Fluid direction by Jess Chayes keeps her actors in constant motion, balancing the frequent self-destructive, accusatory tone against lyrical passages of reflection from the performers stepping into their personas as actors.

At the beginning of the performance an actor passed around 3x5 cards printed with the words "In my ideal America," and audience members were asked to complete them. At the end of the show, the actors read these cards aloud. People spoke of no war, no weapons, kindness, socialism, nationalized banks, love, peace, and "without Trump."

Clearly Americans still want change, progress, more peace (the show opened with a moment of silence over the massacre of 49 people at an Orlando LGBTQ nightclub early that morning), maybe even a political revolution however they think of that - goals in essence not so different from what the New Left of the 1960s envisioned, including, in a thwarted way, the Weathermen themselves. But how to get there? Home/Sick helps us understand a part of where we have come from, and people can draw their own conclusions about how to go forward.

Home/Sick plays six days a week (except Tuesdays) at the Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles 90025, through July 3. Tickets may be obtained at (310) 477-2055 ext. 2, or OdysseyTheatre.com.

Photo: Odyssey Theatre, Facebook, HOME/SICK.

Staceyann Chin takes Chicago by storm in one-woman show: “MotherStruck!”

Wed, 15 Jun 2016 15:17:00 +0000

CHICAGO- on Tuesday June 14th Staceyann Chin, lesbian spoken word activist and poet, starred in the first official Chicago performance for her one-woman show MotherStruck! Written and performed by Chin, co-produced by Rosie O'Donnell, Robert Dragotta and Culture Project, Motherstruck! was originally directed by Emmy, Tony and Grammy Award-winner Cynthia Nixon.

Motherstruck! is centered around Chin's own experiences a single lesbian mother in New York City. She takes the audience into a journey of her personal growth as we relive her heartbreaks and victories through narrative storytelling. Chin speaks in detail on a number of personal experiences, from the fragmented relationship with her aunt, to her struggle to get pregnant through artificial insemination. Chin is both electrifying and soothing in her presence, as she radiates of bold and vibrant confidence, whisking the audience along for the ride.

In what some would consider controversial moments of intimacy, Chin launches the show by reeling the audience into the dynamics of her polyamorous lifestyle. She talks about living in a loving and nurturing home with a husband, girlfriend, and mother-in-law. She draws a stark contrast to the conservative environment she grew up in her home country of Jamaica. Motherstruck! explores themes of womanhood, sexuality, as well as the complicated, and sometimes scary, reality of intersectional feminism.

Chin is not only a wonderful story teller, but occupies space in the most precise and intentional manner; often leaping from the darkest forgotten corners of the audience. Chin brings forth both tears of laughter and pain from every individual in the audience. Her presence has all the tenacity and power of a hurricane. Chin is truly a force of nature.

On a wider professional scope, Chin has done everything from Def Jam Poetry performances to "living room protest" with her young daughter. She was the recipient of the 2007 Power of the Voice Award from The Human Rights Campaign, the 2008 Safe Haven Award from Immigration Equality, the 2008 Honors from the Lesbian AIDS Project, the 2009 New York State Senate Award and the 2013 American Heritage Award from American Immigration Council. Most recently, however, she graced crowds with her presence for the Orlando vigil service at the Center on Halsted in Chicago. Her words rang powerfully across the sea of people: "If there was ever a year to wave that rainbow flag - if there was ever a year to wave that rainbow flag - this is it."

Motherstruck! Is now playing at the Greenhouse Theater Center's "Solo Celebration" 2257 N Lincoln Ave. The performance schedule for Motherstruck! is as follows: Wednesdays - Sundays at 7:30p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. Flex passes to the Solo Celebration! series, which offers admissions to five plays at a discounted rate, are now on sale. Single tickets range in price from $32 - $48 . Flex passes and tickets can be purchased by contacting the box office at 773-404-7336 or by visiting greenhousetheater.org.

Photo: CultureProject.org

“The Americans”: Who thrives, survives

Mon, 13 Jun 2016 11:19:00 +0000

Season 4/Episode 13: Persona Non Grata

Philip Jennings (Matthew Rhys), Soviet spy extraordinaire, doesn't like the mission he's currently on. He's been a disgruntled and disaffected soldier for the cause of protecting his country, which is why he's the unwilling would-be recipient of a sample of a U.S. military bioweapon.

Still, there he is, in disguise at a Washington, D.C. park, expecting his fellow long-time undercover operative, William, to show up with the ramped-up Lassa fever sample.

William (Dylan Baker) hates the mission even more than Philip. He knows how terrible a toll Lassa fever wreaks upon its hapless subject. He's a scientist who's been so long away from mother Russia he can scarcely recall the reason for his presence at the U.S. military bioweapons lab.

Yet because of the (KGB) Centre's focus on outfoxing the U.S. military, William is the crucial element in the handover. Elizabeth (Keri Russell), who is Philip's wife, went through the throes of a broken friendship and a faux honey pot trap in order to help gain William access codes to the U.S. bioweapons lab.

Much is on the line and so William carefully cossets the Lassa fever sample in a tobacco tin, knowing from previous experience how badly accidental exposure can go for all involved.

Problem is, the FBI knows William is a fake American. Soviet embassy analyst Oleg, in the throes of grief and confusion, told FBI agent Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich) about the presence of a Soviet agent at a U.S bioweapons lab.

Oleg (Costa Ronin) only wanted to keep his undersupplied countrymen from accidentally releasing bioweapons. This being the 1980s, he likely doesn't know about American failures in weapon containment. He believes the omnipresent myth about U.S. competence in all things scientific.

Oleg means well; the FBI not so much.

As he enters the park, William realizes that he's been made. He makes a dash for it, temporarily finding shelter behind a statue. William can't let the FBI forcibly extract intel from him about fellow agents. Meanwhile, Philip is waiting, unaware, on a park bench.

Philip has a family in the U.S., unlike William, so for the latter, the decision is clear. He chooses certain death. He breaks open the vial of Lassa fever and gashes it into his palm.

William has served his country faithfully, if acerbically, for many years. He won't betray it even now, and thus the operative infects himself with the sample.

He steps around the statue and finds himself surrounded by FBI agents. "Stay back," they yell.

"I suggest you stay back. You need to take me to a biocontainment treatment facility right now." His hands outstretched, they can see the gashed hand and the deadly threat it poses.

"You heard him, stay back," an agent shouts.

Elsewhere in the park, with William nowhere in sight, Philip checks his watch, gets up and walks off at a deliberately careful pace.

Back home, Philip and Elizabeth's daughter, Paige (Holly Taylor), is in bed studying her Spanish homework, a book about nuclear weapons close by.

She recently learned of her parents' true occupation and has displayed an aptitude for the trade. Elizabeth comes up the stairs with a basket of clothes. She deposits the clothes, and gets in bed with Paige for a mother-daughter moment of solidarity.

Paige leans on her. "If we're in danger, if things can happen, maybe I need to learn how to defend myself."

"I can teach you a few things," Elizabeth says. Paige seems comforted, as well she should. Given the amount of violence then and now against women, Paige is lucky to have a mother so well versed in lethal self-protection.

Her daughter comforted, Elizabeth is back in her own bed when Philip gets home. He tells her that William didn't show. She has a small bit of intel in that their neighbor, Stan, "didn't come home again tonight."

Being pros in the business, they think William might show up for the alternate meetup the next day.

Meanwhile in a Russian insane asylum, "powerful friends" have obtained the release of Misha, a young soldier who spoke out against the grinding war in Afghanistan.

He's told to shut up about the war and go back home. Misha happens to be the out-of-wedlock son of Philip, a by-blow during Philip's adolescent training in all things KGB.

When he returns to his maternal grandfather's crowded apartment, he's presented with a previously hidden packet of foreign currency and passports. It's the legacy from his late mother. Misha learns that his father is a travel agent in the U.S.

Next season will likely feature this living reminder of Philip's past life in the Soviet Union, but for the moment, our show's focus is on what's going on in the present circa early 1984.

The moment is irredeemably bleak for William, who has achieved his goal of infection and thus removal of himself as a truth-leaking threat to the Soviet Union.

It's an awful way to go. Agents Beeman and Dennis Aderholt (Brandon Dirden) watch William from a sealed windowed room above. They identify themselves via loudspeaker to the stricken man.

"Is there anything we can do to make you more comfortable?" asks Beeman.

"Comfortable," William snorts. "Nothing you or anyone can do to make comfortable. In a few days anything inside me that matters will ooze out through my orifices. I'm a dead man...it's an unusual feeling."

Aderholt ineffectually offers the man a Coke. William laughs, of course. Such an American response, to offer a commercial product to ease insupportable pain.

While William dies in double-step time, his countryman, Arkady (Lev Gorn), who is the KGB Rezident at the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C., receives unwelcome news. Oleg has turned in his request for a transfer back to Moscow.

Oleg's mother is distraught over the combat death of Oleg's younger brother in the Afghanistan war.

Arkady understands the situation. He sighs and shakes Oleg's hands. "You're a good son."

Yes, a good son, but perhaps not the wisest of ones, given what's going on across town with the imminently dying William, dying because Oleg leaked important intel to Beeman.

But at the moment Elizabeth doesn't know what's going on with the mission. She returns home with a load of dry cleaning, greeted by the ever-studious Paige at the dining room table.

Paige tells her that the problematic Alice, wife of Pastor Tim, has given birth to a baby girl. It's Paige's fault that the pastoral couple knows about her parents' true occupation. The two families are stuck to one another, as a result.

The scene unfolds in a crucial fashion, for daughter instructs mother on the best means of visiting the new family. Paige is probably right. A slow roll-out rather than the Jennings family en masse to the churchy couple. That said, the fact that Elizabeth is allowing Paige to run this particular part of a mission means we should expect more Paige spy-girl action next season.

As for Philip, while he doesn't yet know about William's predicament, he's well aware of his own, and in the careful confines of the cultish Est self-help group, he reveals how he came to choose working as a travel agent [spy] as a young person. "You choose a job before you really like it. Pick something because it fits what you like, but life changes things. You change. One day you wake up [and] you don't want to go to the office. You don't want to do it. Every morning I wake up with this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach."

When the leader/trainer comes back at Philip with the salvo that he could quit his job, Philip responds, "I can't. I made commitments, made promises to people I love."

"Do you think your family would no longer love you if you quit?" the molder of minds asks. This is the type of food for thought liable to give one indigestion.

Philip and Elizabeth meet up with their handler, Gabriel, who delivers the unwelcome news that William has been detained by the FBI.

Says Gabriel, "I'm not saying he walked it toward them, but he's in a position they can entice him with stuff."

The decision is obvious: they must vacate their previously safe house.

Further up the domestic chain of command, the Rezident, Arkady, sits across the table from Wolfe, the FBI counter-intelligence head, who's apoplectic about not only William's arrest but also other transgressions, including the, as it so happens, accidental death of former head Gaad in an earlier episode.

"You're being expelled from this country," Wolfe says flatly. "You have forty-eight hours to get out."

So much for Tatiana's promotion to the first female Rezident in Kenya. She'll have to stay and fill in for a time until a replacement can be found for Arkady.

Back at the embassy, he's taking the news about as well as can be expected. Tatiana (Vera Cherny) is in a tight spot, though. She'd offered a secondary spot in Kenya to her lover, Oleg, but now, not only is that possibility off the table, he must tell her of his plans to return home to care for his bereaved mother.

"You're a good son," she tells him, echoing what Arkady had said earlier.

Talk about a dutiful son. His work mentor, Arkady, is being kicked out of the country because of Oleg's ill-conceived revelation about the bioweapons mission. And now, he's leaving town?

Something tells me Oleg might not be spending much time back in Moscow, after all.

Across town in a biocontainment room, William's condition is rapidly growing worse. Agent Aderholt offers via loudspeaker, "Is there someone we can contact for you?"

"After so many years in your country as your unwelcome guest, there is no one."

"Did you like what you did?" Aderholt asks.

William, feverish and knowing he will die soon, responds, "It was exciting at first. I was committed to something. I was invisible...It made me feel special, then over time the thing that made me special, my secret power became a curse. I was alone, isolated."

Up in the sealed observation booth, Agent Beeman looks devastated. He has a troubled past rarely revisited on this show, but it's one in which he worked undercover for a white supremacist organization in St. Louis. He, too, felt invisible, and then isolated and vulnerable.

Now he sees below him a man in the process of giving his life for his country. Beeman sees William as representing his past and possibly his future.

Philip and Elizabeth's present is fraught with peril, for as Gabriel tells them, the longer William is in custody, the more potentially dangerous their situation becomes. It's time to strongly consider returning home to the Soviet Union.

"The Centre wants to welcome you with honors the moment you say you are ready. With William under arrest you're under immediate danger," he tells them.

Philip and Elizabeth are aghast. Gabriel is in the unenviable position of trying to alert them and yet keep their emotions from escalating into panic.

"I know, I know you've always been in danger," he says. "That can dull your senses. I think it's time. I want you to go home and get your kids and get yourself to a safe house. But of course it's your decision."

Afterward, Philip and Elizabeth sit in their car, shocked and trying to make sense of the advice. How could their kids-particularly unclued-in son, Henry-adjust to a sudden life in the Soviet Union?

During their years in the U.S., they've built a family, so a decision to flee can't just be solely about what's best for the parents.

William almost had the beginnings of a family, but as he remembers in his feverish state, "They wanted me married. We were fighting...she went back. I wish I could have been with her all these years, like them. A couple of kids, living the American dream...Never suspect them. She's pretty; he's lucky."

Listening from above, do Beeman and Aderholt recognize these vital clues William has revealed? Philip and Elizabeth, described in their essence.

It's been a busy, snowy day for Philip and Elizabeth, so they can be forgiven for being somewhat distracted upon their arrival home. Henry is watching the tail end of coverage of the Super Bowl, one that the Washington football team lost in a thorough thwacking.

Up in the couple's bedroom, Elizabeth looks through the window at Beeman's car, just arrived next door. Not accompanied by a phalanx of police cars, so they're not under arrest yet.

Time for Philip to go across the street to retrieve daughter Paige. Beeman, who's been up all night watching William in his death bed, behaves with a feverish, unshaven vitality. Not infected, but clearly a bit unhinged by the experience of watching a man not unlike him die.

Beeman takes Philip aside and whispers with a weird joviality that he found Paige and his son, Matthew, in the act of necking.

"You're the father of the bride. You can use the back yard if you want," Beeman jokes, but as for Philip, it's all he can do to contain his emotions as he retrieves Paige.

As soon as father and daughter are safely outside, Philip delivers his words with maximum bluntness. "I don't want you to see him."

"Dad-"

"Don't do this. You have no idea, no idea."

Across the street, from a second floor bedroom window, Elizabeth watches this waking nightmare, as at any moment they may have to flee, and their neighbor may become the engineer of their downfall.

Will their next season involve a sudden trip to Moscow? What toxic aspect of U.S. foreign policy will the show creators next focus on?

Many of our questions to be answered next year and many new ones to be posed.

Photo: "The Americans" Facebook page

“Turn Me Loose”: Dick Gregory brought to life on NYC stage

Thu, 09 Jun 2016 15:56:00 +0000

NEW YORK - A stand-up comedian on a bare stage. That's pretty much what you get, with very scant elaboration, in Gretchen Law's sensationally effective new work Turn Me Loose, a play starring Joe Morton about comic genius Dick Gregory now on view at the Westside Theatre in New York. Famous singer-songwriter John Legend is a principal producer of the play.

Almost every scene is a set-up for some memorable quips and sharp observations about life in these racist United States, seen through the eyes of a commentator who has been a public figure since the early 1960s and who still calls in from time to time. Gregory, now 83, changed the way America perceived Black comedians, with his trenchant social satire that cut uncomfortably close to the bone of our national conscience.

Gregory directed his wit against the foibles of white racism, but neither did he spare his Black brothers and sisters. He pokes loving derision at the readiness of his community to dub Bill Clinton the "first Black president," yet when Barack Obama came along they said "you're not Black enough!"

A master of words and their intricately nuanced subtexts, he talks about the fearsome potency of the phrase "Black Power." What else could convey that bold brand of politics? "Brown strength?" Uh, no.

Not implied, not tucked under the surface, but right up top is Gregory's insistence that race hatred simply means the rich man can rob us all blind. Whites, too, are in bad shape now "right here in this crumbling infrastructure." The racially mixed audience at the performance I attended (and I'd guess all performances must be well integrated) howled with universal recognition of his truth-telling.

Gregory first came to prominence as a runner in St. Louis, where he grew up, in the early 1950s. He was known for his "fast feet and a fast mouth." A practitioner of nonviolence, he says, "My tongue was my switchblade."

His devoted mom died at 48, unconscionably too soon, but the memory of his mostly absent and irresponsible father still remains a sore point in Gregory's life, a negative example to overcome. Dick Gregory and his wife Lil had ten children together. They named one of his daughters Miss, so she'd always be addressed with respect.

Law devotes almost equal attention to Gregory's career on the comedy circuit as to his work for civil rights. There's a moment in the show when Gregory recalls the terms of a contract with one club - an apocryphal story, I presume - whereby every time someone in the house would shout the "n" word, Gregory would earn another 50 bucks. So here, in the theater, Gregory/Morton asks the whole audience to rise to their feet and all say the word out loud three times. The response was most telling: Everyone stood, but few could bring themselves to full-throatedly comply with his request. An uncomfortable murmur echoed through the house and then silence. We were stunned by Gregory's transgressive invitation to bigotry. Shrewd to the ways of the capitalist economy, he used the word as the title of his autobiography, explaining that whenever you'd hear the word you'd know "they're advertising my book."

In another scene Gregory recounts his experience on the Jack Paar show. At first he refuses, because he's observed that when a Black performer appears, he's walked off the stage when his turn is done. Whereas white performers get to sit down on the couch, banter with Paar a bit and relate to the audience. In the end Gregory won the right to sit on the couch.

Gregory was generous with his appearances to raise funds and awareness in the civil rights movement. He was friends with Mississippi NAACP activist Medgar Evers and was with him two weeks before he was assassinated in June 1963 at age 38. He recalls his last foray into the South with Evers, tailed by the police: "You could smell our demise in that Southern night air." Again, Gregory takes the wide-angle view of racism as but one tool in the right-wing toolbox: They "call themselves conservatives just to hide their bigotry; if conservatives get a hold of this country the middle class is going down." Don't forget, he says, "Rome crumbled from within."

And there are moments in time when humor is simply not called for. Gregory knows you just can't crack jokes about tragedy, murder, death and loss in the struggle.

Gregory has adopted new causes, particularly the evils of the American diet. He identifies sugar as "the cocaine of the food industry," and challenges all those folks who worry about terrorism. "Terrorism?" he asks. "Y'all gonna die from sugar, toxins and obesity." "Who is hijacking your life?...Occupy Wall Street? Occupy your life!" This is no exercise in Black cultural nostalgia: It's in your face now.

He recognizes that people are driven to their wits' end by this system. "If you're weren't insane you'd be crazy," he says. "One day," he predicts, "the ledger will be balanced," and you'll be asked one simple question: "How much service did you give your fellow human being?"

Joe Morton is an Emmy Award and multiple NAACP Image Award-winning film, TV and stage veteran. He currently appears as Rowan/Eli Pope in the ABC series "Scandal." In Turn Me Loose he is 110 percent riveting from beginning to end, a pure 90 minutes of life lived with passion, love for humanity, and side-splitting, socially conscious and often disturbing humor. Directed to perfection by John Gould Rubin, Morton segues instantly from a young man starting his astounding career to the present and back again as he surveys with grace all what he has done with his time on Earth.

The author has clearly done her homework. More than that, she has dived in headfirst into this rich vein of Gregory life and lore and extracted a compelling and important story. Her bio lists other plays with Black content as well: The Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of Her God, an adaptation from George Bernard Shaw, Al Sharpton for President, History Lessons, and Loving Charley Pride. The critical success of Turn Me Loose suggests that it may soon appear in regional theaters around the country, either with Joe Morton or another actor portraying Dick Gregory. Possibly this production may interest some theater companies in some of Law's other works. If the writing is on this level, they would be worth exploring.

John Carlin ably plays multiple minor roles as a white stand-up comic who lamely tries to warm up the crowd for Gregory, a heckler, a cabbie, and a supercilious, tone-deaf interviewer.

Turn Me Loose plays at the Westside Theatre, 407 W. 43rd St., New York City, through July 3 only. Tickets may be obtained at telecharge.com, or by phone at (212) 239.6200.

Further information about the play can be found here.

Photo: Joe Morton plays Dick Gregory.

“Junction 48”: Palestinian rappers searching for normalcy, humanity, and love

Thu, 09 Jun 2016 11:23:00 +0000

"A great movie is one that is not necessarily well made, but one that you can't get out of your mind," says Israeli director Udi Aloni of his award-winning Junction 48. This is what he hopes for with this film that addresses the contemporary rap music scene in the Tel Aviv suburb of Lod. The only Palestine-themed film at New York's Tribeca Film Festival this year was far better than unforgettable, and actually garnered the Best International Narrative Feature award. The jury proclaimed, "This award goes to a phenomenal, stand-out, powerful, thoughtful movie. It offers a new perspective and insightful approach to a story about how to be different and live together."

The highly expressive Aloni, who directed the equally unforgettable Local Angel back in 2002, has a firm grip on the realities of the Palestinian struggle. This film follows Kareem (Tamer Nafar), the "first Arab rapper," who when confronted about his lyrics says he's not political, just writing about his real life.

The Israeli city of Lod was once the Palestinian city of Lyd, a town where a railway passed through. The film gets its title from the fact that in 1948, tens of thousands of Palestinians were exiled from Lyd, shipped out on rails in order to resettle the town with Jews. It's now become a mixed city with severe crime, drugs and prostitution, and of course a heavy police presence.

Kareem's parents are concerned about directing their son away from these temptations. They are musicians who perform traditional music, in contrast to their son's rap style. One scene shows them performing at a political meeting with photos of Lenin on the wall. Kareem is close to his father, who plays the kanoun, an instrument in the harp family. When his father dies in a tragic car crash, his mother, seemingly overcompensating for the heavy loss, becomes a faith healer and mind reader, "treating" the superstitious local community. After it appears she is becoming obsessed with her newfound panacea, Kareem says, "I'd rather have her as a communist than a faith healer."

The film is inspired by the real-life experiences of musician Tamer Nafar, who co-wrote and acted in the movie. Tamer started the Arab hip-hop movement in 2000, and was also featured in Local Angel along with his group called DAM. That film also featured Aloni's well known activist mother, Shulamit, who appears in a memorable scene with Arafat when he was barricaded in his office building just before he died. She passed away just two years ago, and Aloni dedicated his new film to her in memory of her activism, including "single-handedly making homosexuality legal in Israel."

The action-packed Junction 48 has a contemporary music soundtrack, but often when traditional music is used, it dissolves into rap music in a very clever musical way. Showing the continuity of culture, and the integration of rap in a traditional society, it uses music to underscore the daily challenges of life as second-class citizens. Kareem's next-door friend gets involved in drug dealing, and when his house is bulldozed, his stash is destroyed. Unable to pay off his drug supplier, he meets an unfortunate end. His friends give a concert on the pile of rubble left from his home.

Before the film was screened at Tribeca, the director dedicated it to the late Juliano Mer Khamis, actor, director and founder of the Jenin Freedom Theater. He reminded the audience of the time he showed Juliano's powerful film Arna's Children back in 2004 at Tribeca. Aloni credited Juliano with teaching him how to "dance the move of the bi-national culture." Juliano's Jewish mother, Arna, was the founder of the Jenin Freedom Theater and the focus of the film. His Palestinian father, along with mother, were both communists in the early founding years of the state of Israel. Juliano used to say facetiously that he "embodies the Arab-Israeli conflict."

Director Udi Aloni along with the three lead actors answered questions at length after the screening. They emphasized how the last scene of the film appeared ominous about women's rights. Aloni, most likely influenced by his mother's activism, stated we must "take off our ideological glasses. It's not only that Palestinians are good, and Israelis bad. There is not one story, or one narrative. There is also a fight for women's rights. How do you fight for both things? You can't fight for gay rights and say f*** the Palestinians."

When asked if he had trouble filming in Israel, he ironically replied, "I'm a white Ashkenazi Jew in Israel. It's pure democracy for me. But more and more of this will disappear."

Tamer recapitulated his character's role saying, "He's not political. He doesn't want to be political, but everything is. He stands with his friend whose house is demolished, not for political reasons, but he's forced to be political. He has to find humanity, he wants to feel like a human being, fall in love. Young Arabs want to find normalcy through their own music."

At the 66th Berlin International Film Festival Junction 48 won the Audience Award. It's what the director hoped for - "a movie you can't get out of your mind."

A trailer for the film can be seen here.