Issues of Class

One of the themes, if you will, for the performances we saw in San Antonio, that no one touched on yesterday evening was class. I was reflecting on the shows and realized that class was an underlying idea in all of the shows, but in particular Paul Flores' piece. Gentrification, and all that implies, revolves around issues of class. People who have lived in neighborhoods for years, and are now being displaced, are usually thought of as from a lower class than those who are doing the displacement. While Americans may pride themselves on being not as conscious of class as societies who have a history of an aristocracy, this country is just as class-conscious as any European country. It's one of those things we try not to talk about or deal with, but we need to.

Danny Hoch is a playwright/actor who also deals with some of these issues in his work. He wrote and performed a solo show about gentrification in Brooklyn, called Taking Over. His work echoes Paul Flores' work about the Mission District in San Francisco. Different sides of the country - same issues. The Civilians, a theatre troupe based in New York, wrote a musical called In the Footprint: The Battle Over Atlantic Yards, about the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, and performed it in 2010. This also deals with some of the same issues Hoch deals with in his show. The Atlantic Yards project had both detractors and proponents for the use of the 22 acres to be reconfigured. The project was displacing people and small businesses to build a basketball stadium and other high-rise buildings close to downtown Brooklyn. People in the neighborhood fought for years against this development, but eventually lost out to the developer and the laws of eminent domain in New York.

While Pinkalicious and The Decorator weren't as overtly about class, there were still echoes of the theme in each show. It was obvious that the characters in Pinkalicious were well-off, or at least upper middle-class. I found it interesting to watch as the audience came into the theatre. Since Meghan and I arrived early we had the benefit of watching all of the children and parents stream in. Most of them appeared to be middle class, and there was a lot of pink clothing on the girls. Some of them had the accompanying goods to be a member of the Pinkalicious brigade - books, t-shirts, star wands. I found it rather disturbing to witness the blatant commercialism of the show, and the theatre. While I have been to shows, in particular touring Broadway shows, where hawking of t-shirts and other assorted goods related to the production occurs, I don't think it is appropriate to do so at a production aimed at children. That is not the purpose of theatre for young audiences (TYA). This type of commercialism promotes class divisions as well. What about the children in the audience whose parents could barely afford to buy tickets for the show? Those children may want the t-shirts and books that they see in front of them, but can their parents afford them? I feel that theatre can do a good job of bringing awareness to these types of issues but I don't feel a theatre should be promoting class divisions, whether subliminally or overtly.

The Decorator, while also not overtly about class, still promoted the message that only those women who are in a financial position to hire an interior decorator, who also moonlights as a husband killer, would be able to escape from their horrible marriages. What does that tell those women who are victims of domestic abuse? While abuse victims come from all classes, because of the control the abuser has over finances and movements of the victims, it is extremely difficult for someone in that situation to afford to escape. Often when a woman does escape, she is left in a precarious financial situation, sometimes barely above the poverty level. Another thing I found problematic about this play was the children. Amanda killed her husband, and left her daughters without a father. Did she even think about how this would effect her children? She was selfish, thinking only of herself. When you have children, your life becomes about more than yourself. You make sacrifices to do what is best for your children. That doesn't always mean what is best for you individually. I realize this was a dark comedy, and as such it did work on some level. I'm sure there were audience members who took it for what it was on the surface, and didn't consider the sub-text.

Overall, the biggest take-away for me from the theatrical experience was to think more about class, and how it impacts my life on a daily basis. I realize that I am privileged in many ways, but I also have had my own struggles in the past dealing with the stigma associated with being on food stamps, and using state medicaid in order to get medical care for my daughters. When you are on any type of state aid or welfare, people look at you differently when you are buying groceries or taking your children to the doctor's office. It is not a pleasant feeling to have, but as a single parent you don't always have a choice.

Dealing with Harsh Truths

I re-read Jarry's play, Ubu Roi, after reading Ubu and the Truth Commission. There are many parallels between the two pieces, and not just the obvious ones. Taylor and Kentridge have structured their work on Jarry's structure, down to the number of acts and scenes. Even the scene at the end of each play is similar. It is interesting to me how modern Jarry's work appears to a contemporary reader. The issues he deals with are the same things we are still dealing with - political corruption, political murder, bribery, power. These are all issues dealt with in Taylor and Kentridge's play as well.

In preparation for writing my paper I read a lot of articles on ethnography and performance. I find this work to be an ethnographic performance of sorts. The authors are taking words from the transcripts of the hearings, and putting them into a dramatic structure. This gives the audience a new way of listening to and hearing things they may be aware of on the surface, but may be trying to forget about, or ignore. I read Turner's book From Ritual to Theater in my MFA course work, and it had a profound influence on the way I think about writing plays. I have had, in a little room in my brain, an idea of trying to write a documentary type of piece about the Phelps culture in Kansas. I'm not sure yet what form this would take, but I know it would definitely be a piece with media components, like Ubu and the Truth Commission. The idea of puppets is appealing as well - puppets distance the audience from some of the horrors of apartheid in Taylor and Kentridge's play, and also present some truths to the audience that are more effective than if they were spoken by an actor.

Once upon a time I wanted to be an anthropologist. I think playwrights can be anthropologists through the use of ethnography - listening to the stories and translating them into a form that audiences can relate to, but not diminish the power of the original stories. I also find that Taylor and Kentridge's piece does this as well. There are many ways of telling stories, and some stories are so horrific that the only way to tell them is through some kind of filtering device. Theatre works well for this. I think it may work better than film. Some things are best left to the imagination of the audience.

As we've been discussing the South African Truth Commission, I've also been thinking about other areas of the world where these types of bodies have been set up. I wonder about the effectiveness of the work. In Argentina the government set up a body to investigate the crimes of the government and the military during the so-called Dirty War. There seemed to be a reluctance on the part of the government, however, to punish former military and government personnel for their parts in the crimes committed against the people. If there is to be no accountability in the end, then what good is a truth commission of any type? I'm also not sure how much better a war crimes tribunal is. Do these types of activities really bring an end to the trauma suffered by ordinary people during civil unrest or war? These are questions I ask myself all the time, and there are no easy answers. Some days I'm not even sure if there are any answers, but I think we have to keep trying to find them.

Social Justice and the Arts

I have a history with The Laramie Project in both of its iterations, which colors my views on this piece. For me, even though the plays focus on a specific incident of violence against an individual because of sexual orientation, there is still a universality there. Violence is a universal concept, as is power. Both of these are part of Matthew's story. While Tectonic has chosen to deal with one specific incident to tell the story of a hate crime, there are many other stories that could be told, and should be told. There are artists who are working on human rights stories every day, using many different media, not just theatre. There is something about live theatre, however, that can have a deeper and stronger impact on the audience. If just one person leaves the theatre looking at an issue from another viewpoint, then in my opinion the work has been successful.

Another reason the play and the incident has resonated with me so deeply is because Laramie could be Ottawa, Kansas. The prejudices run deep there as well. Kansas is 99.99 3/4% conservative, mostly Republican, and in small communities all over the state, the biases against anyone who is perceived as the other, show themselves in varied ways every day. When I was in The Laramie Project there were people who would approach me in Wal-Mart and ask why the university was putting on this production and what kind of behavior was I modeling for my daughter by being in the show. Needless to say, I was astounded by these types of comments, and could never come up with anything in reply at the time. I always thought of snappy comebacks much later. To me, this indicates that this type of theatre experience is still relevant and needed.

I am also drawn to works that speak to me about social justice issues, which this play does. I like fluff just as much as the next person, and I was in the audience when the touring show of Legally Blonde came to Lubbock, but I also want works that talk about bigger issues. In my writing I try to tackle some of those issues. I feel we have a tendency as a society to try and shove these things behind a door and never open it. It's the out of sight, out of mind theory of dealing with issues. It doesn't work because the issues don't go away. They just grow larger. Finally they grow so large that it seems almost impossible to deal with them.

I know I'm on my soapbox, and I apologize if I have offended anyone. These are issues I feel very strongly about, which is why I want to work with a non-profit arts organization. I believe that the arts have a vital role to play in social justice issues. Sometimes they are the best way to reach people and get them to think about the issue at hand from a different viewpoint. To me The Laramie Project, and other types of documentary theatre, raise interesting questions to which there are no easy answers. Laramie and Matthew Shepard are a part of our history as Americans whether we are from Laramie, Wyoming or elsewhere. I don't think it's a bad thing to be reminded of our past once in a while, lest we repeat it too often.

Communicating Mythology

There is something about mythology, of all types, that has a great appeal for audiences. Karnad's play has that appeal for me. I am interested in all types of mythology, probably because I am a playwright, and I tell stories in dramatic form. I have used my personal mythology, as well as fairy tales, to construct plays. For some reason, it seems that it is easier for me to communicate with an audience through some type of mythology, whether that be an established one, or one of my own making. Last summer I spent the first summer session in Prague, and we attended the Prague Fringe Festival, (a theatre festival), while we were there. Of course, it is impossible to see every show, and some of the shows we saw we wished we hadn't seen, but that is the nature of a fringe festival. The works we saw that resonated with me on a deeper level all had something to do with legend and myth. We saw two shows based on the Selkie myth, both of them presented by British theatre companies. The Selkie myth, for those who aren't familiar with it, is of women who are seals. They shed their skins to dance on the beach once a year, and if their skin is stolen, they must remain in human form until their skin is returned to them. Both of these shows portrayed the myth in totally different ways. Sealskin, presented by the Multi Story company, dealt with the subject using dance and song. The more traditional presentation was of The Harbour, by Limbik. It was a more straightforward telling of the myth. The Selkie myth is a Western one, but there is still something exotic about it. The Czechs who were in the audience were fascinated by the idea of a woman who is also a seal and how that story played out in the lives of the characters in these two shows. The other play we saw, that was my personal favorite out of all the shows I saw, was Kaguya, based on a Japanese folktale. It was a one-person show performed by Makoto Inoue of Japan. This piece was entirely non-verbal. We were handed a page that told us the story the performance was based on, but I found I did not need it at all. I didn't even look at it until I was back in my room later. The actor was able to tell the audience the story by his actions, with the music and lighting enhancing the piece. Karnad's play is giving us, the audience, a chance to explore and experience a mythology we in the West do not know. The otherness of the work and the unfamiliar mythology make it seem alien to us. However, most mythologies have some things in common - gods who make random decisions, which effect humankind, for example. I think one of the reasons I find mythology so fascinating, as well as somewhat comforting, is that it makes me realize I am not the only one who makes up stories to deal with the random things that happen in my world. Mythology still has a strong appeal today - just look at all the summer blockbusters coming out based on some type of mythology: Thor, X-Men First Class, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II - to name a few. These movies tend to do well at the box office. Perhaps they're the Greek tragedies of our day.