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homomenhommes · 6 months

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THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … December 15

1904 – W. Dorr Legg (d.1994), was a landscape architect and one of the founders of the United States gay rights movement, then called the homophile movement.

He trained as a landscape architect at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and from 1935 was professor of landscape architecture at Oregon State Agricultural College (now Oregon State University), but moved back to Michigan in the 1940s to care for his father and the family business. While there he fell in love with Merton Bird, an accountant.

Hoping to find a social environment more accepting of their interracial relationship, Legg, who was white, and Bird, an African American, moved to Los Angeles in 1949. Shortly thereafter the couple founded a social organization for interracial gay couples, the Knights of the Clocks, a name that Legg called "deliberately ambiguous." The society flourished for several years in the early 1950s.

The couple actively joined the national Mattachine Society, but Legg later led a split to co-found ONE, Inc.. Legg and Bird were among the six original members of ONE, which took its name from a line by Thomas Carlyle, "A mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one."

Legg gave up his career as a landscape architect to become the business manager of the organization's monthly publication, also called ONE, the first issue of which appeared in 1953. It became the first widely distributed gay publication in the United States.

The magazine was a slim volume at first, typically running from twenty to thirty pages in length. The content initially consisted mainly of essays on topics of interest to the gay community but also included stories, poems, and book reviews. As time went on, the magazine grew, featuring articles on gay studies in the humanities, social and natural sciences, and medicine. By the end of the 1950s, the magazine had attained a distribution of five thousand copies.

The United States Post Office confiscated the October 1954 issue of ONE on the grounds that it was "lewd, obscene, lascivious and filthy" and could therefore not be sent through the mails.

ONE sued Los Angeles Postmaster Otto K. Olesen, who prevailed in the first round when in March 1956 U. S. District Judge Thurmond Clark agreed that the publication was obscene. He also stated that "the suggestion that homosexuals should be recognized as a segment of the populace is rejected."

ONE appealed the decision in the Ninth Circuit, which upheld the lower court's ruling in March 1957. The case next went to the United States Supreme Court.

The justices ruled in favor of ONE in January 1958. Their decision in ONE, Incorporated v. Olesen was per curiam, meaning that they held the issue to be so obvious that no lengthy written opinion was needed.

The news media gave the Supreme Court decision scant attention. Nevertheless, the case was a landmark, establishing the right to send gay and lesbian material through the mail. It had enormous consequence for the fledgling rights movement.

ONE remained in publication until 1969. Financing it had long been a problem. Donors had helped keep the magazine afloat, but the loss of their monetary support combined with a loss of readership to magazines of a more radical viewpoint made the enterprise no longer viable.

Legg traveled to Germany in the 1950s to recover the remains of the archives of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft.

Legg died in Los Angeles on July 26, 1994 of natural causes. He was survived by his life partner of thirty years, John Najima.

In 2011 the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association announced that Legg would be inducted into its hall of fame.

1937 – In his explicitly gay works, Mutsuo Takahashi, internationally recognized poet and playwright, celebrates homosexual desire.

Takahashi was born in Japan on December 15, 1937, and educated at Fukuoka University of Education. He has published several volumes of poetry, including You Dirty Ones, Do Dirtier Things (1966), Poems of A Penisist (1975), The Structure of The Kingdom (1982), A Bunch of Keys (1984), Practice/Drinking Eating (1988), The Garden of Rabbits (1988), and Sleeping Sinning Falling (1992).

As a child, Takahashi spent much time with extended family and other neighbors. Especially important to him during this time was an uncle that served a pivotal figure in Takahashi's development, serving as a masculine role model and object of love. However, historical fate intervened, and the uncle, whom Takahashi later described in many early poems, was sent to the battlefield in Burma, where illness claimed his life.

Takahashi and his mother went to live in the port of Moji, just as the bombings of the mainland by the Allied powers intensified. Takahashi's memoirs describe that although he hated the war, World War II provided a chaotic and frightening circus for his classmates, who would go to gawk at the wreckage of the B-29s that fell from the sky and to watch ships blow up at sea, destroyed by naval mines. Takahashi writes that when the war came to an end, he felt a great sense of relief.

In his memoirs and interviews, Takahashi has mentioned that in the time he spent with his schoolmates, he became increasingly aware of his own sexual preference for men. This became a common subject in the first book of poetry he published in 1959.

Few poets bring as much skill and passion to their poems, especially those that consider homosexual desire. His work in drama has also earned acclaim. He won the Yamamoto Kenkichi Prize in 1987 for his stage script called Princess Medea. Other works in drama include an adaptation of W. B. Yeats's play At The Hawk's Well and a noh play inspired by Georges Bataille's Le Procès de Gil de Rais.

Even in his earliest work, Takahashi writes with vitality and precision about homosexual desire. Although Japan does not outlaw homosexual relations, the homosexual there remains an outcast because often he does not engage in the rituals and practices of Japanese family life.

The "okama" ("queen") is laughed at and ostracized. The more he is ostracized, the easier it is to keep the laughter going—at the okama's expense. Takahashi's poems give dignity to the okama, celebrating both his sexual desires and his outcast status.

Homoeroticism was an important them in his poetry written in free verse through the 1970s, including the long poem Ode, which the publisher Winston Leyland has called "the great gay poem of the 20th century." Many of these early works have been translated into English by Hiroaki Sato and reprinted in the collection Partings at Dawn: An Anthology of Japanese Gay Literature.

About the same time, Takahashi started writing prose. In 1970, he published Twelve Views from the Distance about his early life and the novella The Sacred Promontory about his own erotic awakening. In 1972, he wrote A Legend of a Holy Place, a surrealistic novella inspired by his own experiences during a forty-day trip to New York City in which Donald Richie led him through the gay, underground spots of the city. In 1974, he released Zen's Pilgrimage of Virtue, a homoerotic and often extremely humorous reworking of a legend of Sudhana found in the Buddhist classic Avatamsaka Sutra.

Moreover, most of Takahashi's explicitly gay work celebrates desire, finding joy in the male body much as Walt Whitman's poems do. The poems eagerly name body parts as they probe desire and longing.

The speaker of Takahashi's masterful poem "Ode" celebrates his erotic and promiscuous life much as a priest celebrates the Eucharist. This 1,000-line poem begins with a parody of the Mass: "In the name of / Man, member, / and the holy fluid, / AMEN." As the speaker seeks out sex in the places most frowned on by his society, he is reborn, saved by each new encounter. The glory hole, for example, takes on spiritual significance. Only what is "made flesh" satisfies.

Poems of A Penisist is one of the most important collections of poetry on homosexual desire and sex written in this century. The personae in these poems do not compromise—they see the world as outsiders ("a faggot that fingers point at") but being outsiders brings them joy and meaning. As the majority society mocks and condemns them, their joy in their identity as gay men, as individuals who enjoy pleasure with other men, gives them strength.

1958 – Alfredo Ormando, Italian homosexual, who committed ritual suicide to protest Church policies toward homosexuality.

Ormando was one of eight children from an impoverished family, who had been struggling to make a success of a writing career, after spending two years in a seminary. He had been suffering from serious depression, which clearly had multiple causes.

In December 1997 he wrote this letter to a friend of his in Reggio Emilia:

Palermo, Christmas 1997 Dear Adriano, this year I can't feel it's Christmas anymore, it is indifferent to me like everything; nothing can bring me back to life. I keep on getting ready for my suicide day by day; I feel this is my fate, I've always been aware but never accepted, but this tragic fate is there, it's waiting for me with a patience of Job which looks incredible. I haven't been able to escape this idea of death, I feel I can't avoid it, nor can I pretend to live and plan a future I do not have; my future will just be a prosecution of this present. I live with the awareness of who's leaving this life and this doesn't look dreadful to me! No! I can't wait for the day I will bring this life of mine to an end; they will think I am mad because I have chosen Saint Peter Square to be the place where I'll set myself on fire, while I could do it here in Palermo as well. I hope they'll understand the message I want to convey; it is a form of protest against the Church which demonises homosexuality, demonising nature at the same time, because homosexuality is its daughter. Alfredo.

On 13 January 1998 he set himself on fire in Saint Peter's Square in Rome to protest the attitudes and policies of the Roman Catholic Church regarding homosexual Christians. After two policemen put out the flames, he was brought to Sant'Eugenio hospital in critical condition. He died there 11 days later.

After his death, the Vatican denied that this had anything to do with the Church or homosexuality. Through its spokesperson, Father Ciro Benedettini, the Church downplayed the significance of the act.

In 2000, the year of the Jubilee, Pope John-Paul II exhorted his followers in the same spot where Alfredo Ormando had set himself on fire two years prior, telling them that homosexuality was "unnatural," and that the Church had a "duty to distinguish between good and evil."

In 2005, the new Pope Benedict committed himself to even harsher anti-gay teachings, initiating what some see as a gay witchhunt within the Catholic clergy, fighting same-sex partnership legislation worldover, and sending the message that homosexuals have no place in God's kingdom.

However, in September 2013, Pope Francis said the church shouldn't "interfere spiritually" with the lives of LGBT people in a wide-ranging interview in which he also said the church cannot focus solely on opposing abortion, contraception, and marriage equality. A month earlier, the pope told a group of reporters that he wouldn't judge gay priests, asking, "If someone is gay and seeks the Lord with good will, who am I to judge?"

Change comes slowly in the Catholic church.

1974 – We're not sure of the exact date but sometime in December 1974, two Boston Gay rights activists, Bernie Toal and Tom Morganti, created a symbol of Gay pride. It was not to have lasting influence but it's damned cute and certainly speaks to the creativity that occurred in the years following the Stonewall uprising. The symbol was the purple rhino. The entire campaign was intended to bring Gay issues further into public view. The rhino started being displayed in subways in Boston , but since the creators didn't qualify for a public service advertising rate, the campaign soon became too expensive for the activists to handle. The ads disappeared, and the rhino never caught on anywhere else. As Toal put it, "The rhino is a much maligned and misunderstood animal and, in actuality, a gentle creature. But when a rhinoceros is angered, it fights ferociously." At the time, this seemed a fitting symbol for the Gay rights movement. Lavender was used because it was a widely recognized Gay pride color and the heart was added to represent love and the "common humanity of all people." The purple rhinoceros was never copyrighted and is in the public domain.

1977 – On this date Quebec becomes the first jurisdiction (larger than a city or county) in the world to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation. The Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms prohibits discrimination in employment, housing, certain services and other activities in the public and private sectors.

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ucflibrary · 4 years

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Ready to fly your flag?

Pride Month has arrived! While every day is a time to be proud of your identity and orientation, June is that extra special time for boldly celebrating with and for the LGBTQIA community (yes, there are more than lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender in the queer community). June was chosen to honor the Stonewall Riots which happened in 1969. Like other celebratory months, LGBT Pride Month started as a weeklong series of events and expanded into a full month of festivities.

In honor of Pride Month, UCF Library faculty and staff suggested books from the UCF collection that represent a wide array of queer authors and characters. Click on the read more link below to see the full list, descriptions, and catalog links.

With the Libraries’ on remote resource access, the usual extended physical display isn’t available so we have created a list of ebooks and streaming videos that you can access from the comfort of your home.

A Wild and Precious Life: a memoir by Edie Windsor A lively, intimate memoir from an icon of the gay rights movement, describing gay life in 1950s and 60s New York City and her longtime activism which opened the door for marriage equality. Edie Windsor became internationally famous when she sued the US government, seeking federal recognition for her marriage to Thea Spyer, her partner of more than four decades. The Supreme Court ruled in Edie's favor, a landmark victory that set the stage for full marriage equality in the US. Beloved by the LGBTQ community, Edie embraced her new role as an icon; she had already been living an extraordinary and groundbreaking life for decades. Suggested by Kelly Young, Administration

How We Fight for Our Lives: a memoir by Saeed Jones Haunted and haunting, Jones's memoir tells the story of a young, black, gay man from the South as he fights to carve out a place for himself, within his family, within his country, within his own hopes, desires, and fears. Through a series of vignettes that chart a course across the American landscape, Jones draws readers into his boyhood and adolescence--into tumultuous relationships with his mother and grandmother, into passing flings with lovers, friends and strangers. Each piece builds into a larger examination of race and queerness, power and vulnerability, love and grief: a portrait of what we all do for one another--and to one another--as we fight to become ourselves. Suggested by Sandy Avila, Research & Information Services

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: essays by Alexander Chee Chee’s manifesto on the entangling of life, literature, and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these essays, he grows from student to teacher, reader to writer, and reckons with his identities as a son, a gay man, a Korean American, an artist, an activist, a lover, and a friend. He examines some of the most formative experiences of his life and the nation's history, including his father's death, the AIDS crisis, 9/11, the jobs that supported his writing--Tarot-reading, bookselling, cater-waiting for William F. Buckley—the writing of his first novel, Edinburgh, and the election of Donald Trump. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera Juliet Milagros Palante is leaving the Bronx and headed to Portland, Oregon. She just came out to her family and isn't sure if her mom will ever speak to her again. But Juliet has a plan, sort of, one that's going to help her figure out this whole "Puerto Rican lesbian" thing. She's interning with the author of her favorite book: Harlowe Brisbane, the ultimate authority on feminism, women's bodies, and other gay-sounding stuff. With more questions than answers, Juliet takes on Portland, Harlowe, and most importantly, herself. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

No Tea, No Shade: new writings in Black queer studies edited by E. Patrick Johnson This book brings together nineteen essays from the next generation of black queer studies scholars, activists, and community leaders who build on the foundational work of black queer studies, pushing the field in new and exciting directions. Suggested by Jada Reyes, Research & Information Services

Over the Top: a raw journey to self-love by Jonathan Van Ness Before he stole our hearts as the grooming and self-care expert on Netflix’s hit show Queer Eye, Jonathan was growing up in a small Midwestern town that didn’t understand why he was so…over the top. From choreographed carpet figure skating routines to the unavoidable fact that he was Just. So. Gay., Jonathan was an easy target and endured years of judgement, ridicule and trauma—yet none of it crushed his uniquely effervescent spirit. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll come away knowing that no matter how broken or lost you may be, you’re a Kelly Clarkson song, you’re strong, and you’ve got this. Suggested by Kelly Young, Administration

Queer, Trans, and Intersectional Theory in Educational Practice: student, teacher, and community experiences edited by Cris Mayo and Mollie V. Blackburn Queer theory, trans theory, and intersectional theory have all sought to describe, create, and foster a sense of complex subjectivity and community, insisting on relationality and complexity as concepts and communities shift and change. This collection brings these crucial theories together to inform pedagogies across a wide array of contexts of formal education and community-based educational settings. Suggested by Anna Dvorecky, Cataloging

Real Queer America: LGBT stories from red states by Samantha Allen Allen takes us on a cross-country road-trip stretching all the way from Provo, Utah to the Rio Grande Valley to the Bible Belt to the Deep South. Her motto for the trip: "Something gay every day." Making pit stops at drag shows, political rallies, and hubs of queer life across the heartland, she introduces us to scores of extraordinary LGBT people working for change, from the first openly transgender mayor in Texas history to the manager of the only queer night club in Bloomington, Indiana, and many more. Suggested by Sandy Avila, Research & Information Services

Shakesqueer: a queer companion to the complete works of Shakespeare edited by Madhavi Menon Exploring what is odd, eccentric, and unexpected in the Bard’s plays and poems, these theorists highlight not only the many ways that Shakespeare can be queered but also the many ways that Shakespeare can enrich queer theory. This innovative anthology reveals an early modern playwright insistently returning to questions of language, identity, and temporality, themes central to contemporary queer theory. Chasing all manner of stray desires through every one of Shakespeare’s plays and poems, the contributors cross temporal, animal, theoretical, and sexual boundaries with abandon. Together they expand the reach of queerness and queer critique across chronologies, methodologies, and bodies. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

Sister Outsider: essays and speeches by Audre Lorde In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change. Her prose is incisive, unflinching, and lyrical, reflecting struggle but ultimately offering messages of hope. This commemorative edition includes a new foreword by Lorde-scholar and poet Cheryl Clarke, who celebrates the ways in which Lorde's philosophies resonate more than twenty years after they were first published. Suggested by Jada Reyes, Research & Information Services

Stories I Told Myself: a memoir by Brian D. Crimmins (UCF Thesis) Stories I Told Myself: A Memoir explores the experience of growing up gay in the 1980s. It is one boy's journey toward self-acceptance set against the conservative backdrop of a rural community on California's central coast. The story illuminates the hunger for a life different than the one being lived, and the ever-present sense of being different exacerbated by bullying and unrequited love. It is a narrative of evolving identity, and includes cultural insights and societal context of the time period. The author poses a fundamental question, "How did I make it out of the 80's alive?" and he explores the answer with poignant humor and self-examination. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

The Book of Pride: LGBTQ heroes who changed the world by Mason Funk Captures the true story of the LGBTQ civil rights movement from the 1960s to the present through richly detailed, stunning interviews with the leaders, activists, and ordinary people who witnessed the revolution and made it happen. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

The Crimson Letter: Harvard, homosexuality, and the shaping of American culture by Douglas Shand-Tucci Historian Douglass Shand-Tucci explores the nature and expression of sexual identity at America's oldest university during the years of its greatest influence. The Crimson Letter follows the gay experience at Harvard in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, focusing upon students, faculty, alumni, and hangers-on who struggled to find their place within the confines of Harvard Yard and in the society outside. Suggested by Pat Tiberii, Interlibrary Loan & Document Delivery Services

Time is the Thing a Body Moves Through by T Fleischmann Sebald meets Maggie Nelson in this autobiographical narrative of embodiment, visual art, history, and loss. T Fleischmann uses Felix Gonzales-Torres's artworks--piles of candy, stacks of paper, puzzles--as a path through questions of love and loss, violence and rejuvenation, gender and sexuality. From the back porches of Buffalo, to the galleries of New York and L.A., to farmhouses of rural Tennessee, the artworks act as still points, sites for reflection situated in lived experience. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

Trauma, Violence, and Lesbian Agency in Croatia and Serbia: building better times by Bojan Bilić This book uncovers some of the major moments in the fragile and still poorly known herstory of feminist lesbian engagement in Serbia and Croatia. By treating the trauma of war, homophobia, and neoliberal capitalism as a verbally impenetrable experience that longs to be narrated, this monograph explores the ways in which feminist lesbian language has repeatedly emerged in the context of strong patriarchal silencing that has surrounded the armed conflicts of the Yugoslav succession. The book renders visible a surprising diversity of activist initiatives and the resilience of transnational affective ties, which testify to the creativity of lesbian activist mobilizations in the ambivalent semi-peripheral space that used to be Yugoslavia. Suggested by Anna Dvorecky, Cataloging

We Are Everywhere: protest, power, and pride in the history of Queer Liberation by Matthew Riemer and Leighton Brown Have pride in history. Through the lenses of protest, power, and pride, this is an essential overview -- and a visual record -- of the history of the Queer Liberation Movement in the United States. With exhaustively researched narrative and hundreds of stunning photographs, this sweeping book traces queer activism from its roots in the late-nineteenth-century -- long before the pivotal Stonewall Riots of 1969 -- to today, casting new light on many of the movement's trailblazing activists and organizations. Suggested by Christina Wray, Student Learning & Engagement

#ucflibrary #featured bookshelf #reading #booklr #lgbtqia+ pride #queer

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cunyappliedtheatreblog · 5 years

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Countdown Profile: Week 5 Antonio David Lyons (’13)

Antonio David Lyons (’13) is an actor, musician, and activist. Antonio produces work with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and is founder of We Are Here, an initiative to address masculinity with boys and men from New York to Capetown, through theatre. Interview by Michael Wilson (’11).

What are you up to in the world today, Mr. Antonio Lyons?

At the moment I am getting ready to head to South Africa tomorrow, for a bit of respite, and to check in with my organization, We are Here, and the people on the ground there...and also shoot a music video for a song I recorded the last time I was in South Africa.

And yesterday was quite a whirlwind day: I finished guest starring on an episode of a TV series here, called Seal Team, playing a Congolese general…very interesting storyline dealing with the complications of war.

Then also, I accepted an offer from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for a nine-month contract with them, starting in January, to produce a version of Comedy of Errors...it’s part of a larger envisioning by Lue Douthit, called Play On!, where she commissioned a series of playwrights who were people of color, had different gender identities, sexualities, to reimagine works of William Shakespeare. One: to make the work more accessible, and, two: to move the conversation that Shakespeare started in his work further. It will be a touring show that engages communities in a very meaningful kind of way…[without the] elitist component that often comes with Shakespeare.

Sure, everyone thinks it’s just…it is from the white, European canon. And it has this history of consolidating white culture and white power.

Exactly. Exactly. I think it will elevate the work.

And I know also that you’ve been involved with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for years. Do you remember the year that you started with them?

The first time I went must have been 2013 or 2014…it was like right after we graduated, this opportunity came up, to go as a producing fellow.

How does the experience you had at the MA [in Applied Theatre] inform the work you do at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival?

You know, I’ve been really fortunate, because every time I’ve gone to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, it’s been to do work that absolutely uses artistic practices to engage community in meaningful ways. The first time I went was as a producing fellow, and I really learned a lot about the organization, about how a major institution like that produces theatre. One of the things that attracted me to it was that the artistic director is and was at the time Bill Rauch, who had come from Cornerstone Theatre. I was really interested in getting a handle on how he brought those sensibilities from Cornerstone as a community-based theatre really focused on helping people tell their stories, and helping people use theatre to address issues that were impacting their communities.

I’m interested in this craft and challenge of using old English plays to work in equity—what’s a moment or story of how that’s worked for you?

The process of commissioning. This work of William Shakespeare is always treated very preciously, as if it can’t be touched, it can’t be adapted, it can’t be updated, it can’t be expanded…and what Play On! does, is it challenges these notions of white supremacy inherent in language and culture: that it [Shakespeare's language] can only fit in certain bodies. Play On! Challenges all of that. It challenges marginalized bodies, and allows them to take this work, find themselves in the work, and see what it looks like in their skin, from their world view, which I think is very much about what it means to be an applied theatre practitioner.

Moving on, to help readers understand the multi-interested, multi-talented person you are: describe your music.

Oh my god. It’s my heart. Laughs. My music is my heart. It allows me, in a visceral kind of way, to say things that I don’t often get to say, to express things that I’m thinking, to address issues that are meaningful to me, and to use words and sound to move people…put that together and my music is a…heart movement. My music is a heart movement!

I’m sad this is only a written piece…the way you said “heart movement” was a song right there!

Laughs. Yeah. It uses the fullness of who I am, in terms of my Caribbean-ness, the African-inspired-ness, particularly of South Africa, with me having lived there for so long. It incorporates my poetry…and when I’m performing, it incorporates my dance.

And where can people find it?

Antoniodavidlyons.com and it’s also on Spotify and iTunes and Amazon.

Let’s jump over to We Are Here, because this would not be a complete conversation without talking about your project. Would you describe it?

We Are Here, it started as a one-person show, then it moved into this social activism campaign. Now it’s grown into a non-profit to addresses the core issues of identity, masculinity, and gender-based violence. In 2016, 2017, we were able to expand the work as we expanded the organization, to also include addressing issues of sexual and reproductive health and HIV/AIDS prevention. Part of what we really were aware of is that same sort of negative behaviors that can lead to gender-based violence can lead to exposure to HIV/AIDS and other STIs. The risky behavior is the same.

And over the course of the years, it was amazing to grow from the show, post workshop discussions, some workshops here and there, to having a new five-day curriculum, that went into community and strategically worked with populations of men and boys that ranged from 12 to about 30. We went from it being primarily two people and a part-time volunteer-ish person, to now having three kind of full-time people and five facilitators to do that work.

That’s amazing. I didn’t know that was happening.

Yeah. It was part of the US Government, through PEPFAR and Johnson and Johnson—they launched an initiative called DREAMS. The DREAMS initiative was all over the continent, and it was a search for best practices in addressing HIV and AIDS, with primarily women and girls, and also rolling out a preventative tool called PrEP. We were approached by a female-led organization out of Atlanta, called Sister Love, to be partners with them in applying for the DREAMS initiative grant, to do work in south Africa. We said yes, because part of the grant provided opportunities to do programming for male partners of their primary target population.

And so that happened, and it was a really amazing opportunity. The organization grew, we learned a great deal. We were able to have what I felt was a really great impact with some of the young men and boys we engaged with.

What were the biggest obstacles to healthy relationships that you worked with, with these men and boys?

You know, this idea of masculinity. One moment that comes to mind is this deep-dive conversation we were having, in the relationship module. [The men were] having conversations about how women are not able to be your friend—that they’re sexual objects. A great many of them were absolutely full-on committed to this idea. And what else came out of that moment was the thing that applied theatre does, right? Use theatre-based approaches to have conversations, and, if it’s well scaffolded, to create opportunities where people are easing into thinking and changes, and, before they know it, they’re having these epiphanies. One of the young men, in the midst of the conversation with his other friends, said, "I didn’t know you guys thought that way.” And he was like, “I don’t agree.” And it was a really difficult moment, challenging his friends and his peers on their behaviors. And challenging himself. We did the difficult work of holding space for that conversation.

What was the hardest part about it?

I think the hardest part was where I didn’t know where it was going to go. I was like, “oh my god, oh my god, we done opened up something here.” Because you want to hold space where people can have difficult conversations and not walk away wounded to the point of not being able to find healing. Or to [not be able to] come back to themselves.

Would you say more about how you used theatre in those projects?

In terms of the activities…they did some role playing. We did a lot of physical stuff, because we realized that, for men and boys, moving was really important. We used assessment tools, like human barometer. We used opportunities for collaging and visioning. We used an opportunity for them to do, in role playing, hotseating.

Did you use the piece, the poetry that was the basis for your solo show?

From that, I developed processes where we used the text. They would read from the text, and then there would be an opportunity to create the text embodied, then transform whatever that story was, and make it applicable to their own lives.

How much did you share from your own story: hey, this is me, Antonio, I’m a facilitator, I got into this work because…

I didn’t share that in that way, but, at points within processes, challenging dangerous ideas required a fine line between being a facilitator and being a mentor. Because there’s this…I think, at least for the community that I engaged with, as a facilitator there’s this unrealistic expectation that you would be neutral, in a way. And I think it’s problematic and unnecessary and dangerous, because what you’re asking of participants is to be open, honest, and vulnerable. Then in this neutral, semi-therapeutic role, you’re not [being open, honest, and vulnerable, yourself]. When you open up and reveal a part of yourself and your perspective…you break down that sense of hierarchy, you know.

What’s a point where you stepped in with that mentor side?

That conversation around women as friends. Because while they were able to challenge each other to a particular point, there was a hard disruption that had to happen, in terms of what it does to a community and a society, and to women themselves, when you cannot humanize women. When you cannot humanize other people.

What about men who have sex with men and, you know, I’ve never been to South Africa, but I would not be surprised if that was one of these invisible things—it happens but no one talks about it.

No, that’s real. There are lots of organizations that specifically and openly deal with men and MSM communities. There aren’t a lot of organizations that incorporate that in terms of the bridge between heterosexuals and MSMS, in terms of building relationships and understanding—

—but what about these boys, because masculinity—

Well with us—

How did you deal with that?

—with us what we did not do was ask anybody about their sexual identity. Or how they engage sexually. And it’s always a hard line for me, because I never want any other identified person to feel marginalized or spotlighted. I don’t allow certain languages that may be derogatory to pass by. Because there was one point where that came up. The term that was used for a gay man was a “half man.” [I said] “Okay, let’s deal with that. Let’s get all the way in that right now.” So we did. The people who identified as gay in the room quickly understood, “okay...”

“…he’s got our back.”

All the facilitators in the room got our back. And those who use that language understood, this is going to be challenged, and that’s not okay in this space. And they’re able to engage with these other people who were clear about who they were, and walk away with a different perspective.

Thank you. No surprise, we’re coming up on 40 minutes here, and I feel like we’re just getting started…what would you want someone who is thinking about building a life in theatre and education and social justice to know, what gift would you give them?

Lean into your passion, and that it’s all possible.

We were talking years ago and you’d wanted to have this kind of thing come to fruition, from the growth of We Are Here to landing acting gigs of the profile that you were just shooting recently. So it’s possible indeed.

Yeah, I’m really excited. I’m really excited to see where it goes next. I’m looking at putting together a tour of We Are Here in the US next year, so working with my managers on crafting that, doing a guest star recurring on Bosch, and I’ll be back on that series in the new year. Yeah, you know, now we’re in the hard part of trying to identify funding sources in South Africa. Because that project was for a limited time, in terms of that funding source. It ended up being a very challenging experience, but we learned, and we move forward.

You learn and you move forward.

That’s the skinny my friend.

Thank you so much. Travel safe tomorrow.

Thank you. Ah. I’m so excited. I’m exhausted and excited at the same time.

1 note · View note

burkedeboer · 6 years

Text

Wanting, Before the Storm

1 F, 2 M.

Stranded on a Colorado mountain pass is a beautiful car that is broken on the inside. Its frantic riders are two beautiful people who are broken on the inside. After a one night stand, the coke-addled pair of lovers ripped off the St. Louis mob and hit the highway for California. Now the mob comes from the east. A blizzard comes from the west.

This is a story of bad decisions.

First read at the Oregon Playwrights Society, February 2016. First staged at Western Oregon University, February 2017. Full text below the break.

Along the highway. VALENTINA CAVALLARO stands in the cold. She wears a Halloween costume, the sort that is bought on the cheap and shows a lot of leg. HORSE is in the car grinding the starter. He wears a helmet that would announce him as a centurion legionnaire, were it not for the fact that, like his arms bracers, it is plastic. They are that reckless age that allows one to behave as they do.

Evening is settling. A storm’s coming.

VALENTINA God damn it, Val.

HORSE Huh?

VALENTINA How in the fuck… (She sighs, looks around. A pause. And then - )

HORSE What?!

VALENTINA I wasn’t talking to you! (She produces her cell phone, looks at it.) Fuck.

HORSE (Hops out of the car, but knocks his head against the doorframe. He nearly sprawls out on the ground but catches himself. He flings the helmet.) This goddamn thing!

VALENTINA One bar. Come on, just gimme one bar…

HORSE I think there was one in Wanting.

VALENTINA What?

HORSE That town we went through? I think there was a bar in that town back there.

VALENTINA What the fuck are you talking about?

HORSE I don’t know. (He goes to the hood of the car, opens it.) You know anything about motors?

VALENTINA Horse, I don’t even know what this car is.

HORSE Really?

VALENTINA Don’t say shit.

HORSE Huh?

VALENTINA I see it in your eyes, you were gonna say some shit. Just don’t.

HORSE Maybe I wasn’t!

VALENTINA Then it’ll be easy for you.

HORSE These cocksuckin’... (Rips the plastic Roman arm bracers off.) Why are we still in our costumes?

VALENTINA It’s not like you gave us time to change.

HORSE You got any cell service?

VALENTINA No! I don’t! Cars don't break down: your car breaks down. I always have service: now I don't have service. And everyone in the world owns a cell phone, except for your broke ass. That’s just the way it works, isn’t it?

HORSE (Putting his arms around her.) Yeah, but you know what babe?

VALENTINA What’s that.

HORSE Your luck can only change if you keep playing.

VALENTINA Did that philosophy work for you in Kansas City?

HORSE (Breaking – back to the engine.) Yeah, yeah. Kansas City was an anomaly. (He fights and rips a part out from the engine. He looks at it. He’s not sure what it is.)

VALENTINA It’s not even luck at this point, it’s fate. Destiny. I’m going to die. And if it doesn’t happen in Chicago, or St. Louis, it’ll happen here. Buttfuck Nowhere, Colorado.

HORSE If that’s what this place is called maybe we should stay here a while.

VALENTINA Horse.

HORSE Ah, it’s not that serious anyway.

VALENTINA It’s not? You went a hundred all across Kansas because it’s not that serious?

HORSE I only hit a hundred a couple times!

VALENTINA Talking the whole time about “beating the snow.” “Gotta beat the snow.”

HORSE Well she’s a Mustang, babe.

VALENTINA …Okay?

HORSE Don’t worry about it, I’m gonna head back into town and sniff out a mechanic.

VALENTINA What, you’re gonna leave me here?

HORSE Someone needs to stay. Just to watch the car.

VALENTINA Stay here, watch the car, freeze to death. I got it.

HORSE You can wait inside, can’t ya? Turn on the heater.

VALENTINA …Oh my God.

HORSE Huh?

VALENTINA Don’t worry about it.

HORSE That’s what I’m saying! It won’t be long, beautiful. Two shakes. (exits)

VALENTINA (Watches him go with lustful appreciation. After he’s significantly gone, she shakes her head.) God damn it, Val. That’s how the fuck you got here. (Pulls off the veil and tosses it with the other Halloween scraps.) I’m an embarrassment. Left St. Louis, left the casino, left Stephen, all for fucking California? Not even California, because I’m going to die on this mountain pass. So it’s all for… Some country bumpkin talking about California. (She checks her phone again – a gasp of pleasant surprise. She quickly dials, then speaks into it.) …Hey, Stevie baby. I know, I know-… I’m in Colorado. …Yeah, well. …I want to come home. …Good! Then come get me. …Along the highway, straight through Kansas, and, uh, what was that? …What? I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that… Yeah. Yeah, I’m with Horse so what. …Yeah, we got all the coke, but we’re broke down outside of fucking “Wanting.” That’s the name of the town. Wanting, Colorado. As in “I’m not Wanting to be in Colorado.” …I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. …No, the-… What? (She listens a bit to the utter nothingness on the line. Looks at her phone. Rages at it. Sighs.) Okay. This is fine. Horse is right, I just need to, ah… Need to relax. (From the backseat of the car she produces a duffel bag. From this she begins to knuckle up a bump of coke.) Just a bump. Just taking the edge off. For clarity! (Does the bump.) Okay!! For clarity… I completely lack self-control, that’s clear. Because evidently I’m ruled by my vagina. That is clear. That tight butt of his, those arms. And that smile. That’s really all it took? Damn it, Drunk Valentina. Okay. Past Me is an asshole. Present Me is paying the price for it. And unless Present Me makes some better decisions, Future Me is totally fucked. (Does another bump.) Now things are twice as clear. If I get back to St. Louis, I can go back to The Sundowner. They can’t fire me. I’m Valentina fucking Cavallaro, they can’t fire me! So I go back to work, and Stephen will take me back. He always does. Sweet Stephen. As well he should though, ‘cause it’s his fucking fault, moving to St. Louis. Wouldn’t have happened if we stayed in Chicago. But okay, there we go. Right? Just get a motel, and wait for Stephen. It’s not the worst plan. There have probably been worse plans. Like going to California with someone you’ve only known for four hours. That was pretty fucking stupid. This dumbass cowpuncher. Well, he’s not so dumb. He cleaned house in that basement game after all, and Fat Daniel was playing in that. Fat Daniel never loses, especially at Texas Hold ‘Em. The family always makes sure of that. You’d have to be a halfway genius to pull that off. So you got to admit, he’s pretty sharp. And he’s pretty fine. But for fuck’s sake. What do I care about a tight ass? Why is that so important? What am I gonna do, am I gonna fuck that ass? … I could. I mean if he wants to stay in Buttfuck Nowhere a while. Christ. Don’t even know anything about the son of a bitch. I know he’s from Omaha. Or at least that’s what he said. Might as well believe him, at this point. I know he calls himself “Horse.” Jesus. That’s real classy, you know, a man calling himself “Horse.” At least the name fits or I’d really be mad. And that’s how you let yourself get suckered. …But then again… Why is that a bad thing? That’s something else I don’t know. What’s so bad about feeling good? That’s why you work in the first place: to have money, to buy things, to feel good. So what the fuck, why are you beating yourself up? It’s all going to be okay. (After a moment, a realization.) He is going to kill him though. Stephen is going to kill him. He’s going to walk Horse out into the woods, and he’s going to shoot him in the head. (Horse enters with TRAVIS.)

HORSE But if you could do it without having to tow her I’d really appreciate it.

TRAVIS I’m sure you would.

VALENTINA He’s going to make me watch too.

TRAVIS ’68 Fastback! I think I might have to tow this after all.

HORSE Oh?

TRAVIS To my house. Park it in the car port.

HORSE Oh yeah. (Climbs into the car and begins to dig through the back seat.)

TRAVIS I’ve got a 2007 GT, this would look real good right next to it, the classic and the current. (Sees engine) Jesus H. W. Bush.

HORSE Uh, there’s – baby, can you hand him that thing? On the ground out there?

VALENTINA The helmet?

HORSE The what? The… No, that thing.

VALENTINA Right. Here, he took this out. (She hands him the part. He looks at it. Sighs and nods.)

HORSE (Emerges, holding a pool cue case.) Yeah, that didn’t look right to me.

TRAVIS Well it shouldn’t have looked wrong. (Goes to work.)

HORSE (Sees duffel bag.) Whoa. Yeah, let’s put that away. (He does, and then sits in the driver’s seat to screw the two-piece cue together.)

VALENTINA Just trying to stay warm.

HORSE It is a bit chilly, huh? I might have to warm up myself in a bit.

TRAVIS Where you kids from anyhow?

HORSE Huh?

TRAVIS Would you quit grunting so much? “Huh.” You kick a pig on the butt and it says “Huh.”

HORSE What?

TRAVIS That’s better.

HORSE …What?! (Goes to hop out of the car. Hits his head on the frame again, and this time he does lay himself out.)

VALENTINA How do those clouds look to you?

HORSE (Sits up) I’m not a fuckin’ weather man.

TRAVIS Where’d you learn to talk like that in front of a lady?

HORSE Could you-

VALENTINA Yeah, why do you cuss so much? (Horse scowls. She laughs.)

HORSE (Gathers up himself and his cue.) Could you just… Could you just fix the motor?

TRAVIS I’m trying. It’s a process.

HORSE Yeah, I’m sure. Well, I’m off again.

VALENTINA What?

HORSE I was right, they do have a bar in town. With four pool tables. I’ve got some money to make.

VALENTINA Horse.

HORSE Yeah, babe.

VALENTINA I’m gonna need you to not. Right now. Okay?

HORSE Wh-... Aw, shit, you don’t gotta worry about Travis, he’s just fixing the motor.

VALENTINA I’m talking about this. (Gestures at the cue.) This was why you had to leave St. Louis. This was why you said we couldn’t stop in Kansas City.

HORSE Uh, no it’s not.

VALENTINA No?

HORSE This is not why I had to leave Kansas City and St. Louis.

VALENTINA Really.

HORSE That was because of poker, horse racing, and sports bets. This is pool!

VALENTINA Well when you put it like that.

HORSE How about I put it like this: that redneck bar was full of cowboys and oilers. It was like Texas football in there. They got all that cattle and oil money and if it’s not burning holes in their pockets yet, all I’ve gotta do is strike the match.

VALENTINA You just threw like three metaphors and a simile at me, give me a second to digest that.

TRAVIS I wouldn’t try to hustle any of those roughnecks.

HORSE Aw, I’m not worried about bravado, Trav. Everywhere you go thinks it’s the toughest place in the world. (to Valentina) And I’ll tell ya something else. St. Louis, Kansas City, Omaha, there was all organization there. The Sons of Silence, the Irish mob, and the folks you work for. The Italian folks. This outfit is just some working stiffs.

VALENTINA “Folks.” “Outfit.” Who the fuck are you?

HORSE I’m your man.

TRAVIS All right, now, I got after him for swearing in front of you. You don’t get off the hook.

VALENTINA If I wanted any shit from you I’d scrape it off your teeth. (to Horse) Wait, Omaha?

HORSE …Omaha. It’s where I’m from.

VALENTINA Right. You said that. But you never said that you were run out of Omaha.

HORSE …Well. I was.

VALENTINA What happened in Omaha?

HORSE Don’t worry about Omaha.

TRAVIS You guys sound like Peyton Manning before the snap.

HORSE (processes this, then laughs) “Omaha! Hut hut!” Yeah, this is Broncos country, huh? Better get outta here.

TRAVIS You a Chiefs fan?

HORSE Naw, Vikings. I look too good in purple.

VALENTINA Oh no, it’s not gonna work out.

HORSE What?

VALENTINA I’m a Bears fan. Obviously.

HORSE Hey, I can be a Bears fan. You saying I can’t be a Bears fan? Well I’m a Bears fan now, who gives a shit.

VALENTINA Is switching teams that easy?

HORSE For you, beautiful, anything’s easy.

VALENTINA Horse… (They make out.)

TRAVIS Not to interrupt anything but…

HORSE Yeah?

TRAVIS But I will anyway. I do have to haul this into the shop.

HORSE No, please, no you fuckin’ don’t.

TRAVIS You’re right, I don’t. I could just leave you stranded here.

HORSE You haven’t even tried to start it again. (He runs to the car. The cue doesn’t fit through the door and he bounces off and goes rolling.)

TRAVIS Well your starter’s wore down so I don’t really need to. That’s just one of the problems.

HORSE Fine! You know what. Fine. Guess we’ll stay the night here.

TRAVIS Probably gonna stay a couple.

VALENTINA Oh no.

HORSE (Pops trunk, begins unloading bags) Don’t worry, baby, that just means we get to see all the sights of Wanting. Almost seven thousand people here, something’s got to entertain them.

VALENTINA What about… I thought we needed to beat the snow?

TRAVIS You’ll definitely need to beat the snow. This rig will not handle in it at all.

VALENTINA And what about those clouds? Just look out there, the snow’s coming.

HORSE That’s one possibility.

TRAVIS Those clouds do look pretty rank.

HORSE They might not even start dumping until they’re on the other side of us.

TRAVIS No, son, just look out there, over the foothills. Look, come over here and look.

HORSE (Now getting bags from the backseat.) I don’t need to look! I don’t need to look.

TRAVIS You can see it down over the foothills. It’s already snowing, and it’s coming this way.

HORSE Then let it snow. Let it dump everything it’s got on the foothills, and we’ll just go south. Go around it. Take the long way to California. Hell, it might even quit at any moment.

TRAVIS I doubt the odds of that one.

HORSE The smallest odds have the biggest payouts.

TRAVIS So am I towing your car or not?

VALENTINA We need to get out of here, babe.

HORSE Aw... Aw man.

VALENTINA What?

HORSE You never called me “babe” before.

VALENTINA That wasn’t the important part of that sentence.

HORSE It was a pretty great part though.

VALENTINA Okay, babe, listen to me.

HORSE Listening.

VALENTINA We need to leave.

HORSE I don’t see why. We’re already not beating the snow, supposedly. You’ve got to play the hand you’re dealt; all there is to it.

VALENTINA I think we need to get this snow between us and…

HORSE And what? St. Louis? They’re not that sore over me.

VALENTINA You’d be surprised.

HORSE Would I?

VALENTINA My fiancé’s coming.

HORSE Huh?

VALENTINA My fiancé. I told him where we were.

HORSE Well why’d you do that?

VALENTINA I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking clearly. But I am now, and-

HORSE You can whip this into shape at your shop, Trav?

TRAVIS I can get it going again.

HORSE Tonight?

TRAVIS No not tonight. It’s past five, my shop’s closed.

HORSE Can’t ya open it?

TRAVIS I can. I won’t.

HORSE Well aren’t you a lotta help. How long’ll this take?

TRAVIS Couple days, I said.

HORSE Couple days, he said. Then I guess I get to meet this chump. You’re really engaged?

VALENTINA Technically, yes.

HORSE What’s “technically” mean?

VALENTINA He asked me to marry him and I said yes.

HORSE When was this?

VALENTINA June.

HORSE June? And you’re not married by October?

TRAVIS It’s November now.

HORSE It’s November now! Even worse.

VALENTINA We were planning for spring.

HORSE Well ain’t that just fucking typical. I wouldn’t marry you in spring. I wouldn’t be so typical. You’re not a typical girl.

VALENTINA We’re engaged. And he’s coming after us.

HORSE “Engaged.” You sign anything?

VALENTINA No.

HORSE You shake on it?

VALENTINA No.

HORSE

Then what the hell.

TRAVIS You generally don’t shake on engagements.

HORSE Stay outta this, Travis. (to Valentina) So how ‘bout it?

VALENTINA How ‘bout what?

HORSE It’s not spring right now. I’m ready to go. Dump the chump, trade your draft pick.

VALENTINA You’re asking me to marry you?

HORSE Yeah. Look. (Takes the ring off her finger. Gets on his knee.) Valentina-… Uh… Valentina. Would you make me the happiest man in the world?

VALENTINA Oh my fucking God.

HORSE I’ve never been with anyone as good as you. I bust four nuts last night.

VALENTINA You really wanna get married, Horse?

HORSE Only if you’d have me.

VALENTINA You fucking know it, baby. (He rises, picking her up. They kiss. Travis slow claps.)

HORSE Let’s stop in Vegas. Find us an Elvis.

TRAVIS You don’t even need to go to Vegas.

HORSE Nuh uh?

TRAVIS No. Colorado doesn’t have a waiting period for marriage licenses either.

HORSE Well… Well what do you think, beautiful?

VALENTINA Get married here?

HORSE Go find the justice of the peace of Wanting, Colorado. It’s the American thing to do.

VALENTINA Sure. And the car is old. All that poker money is new.

HORSE Yeah yeah yeah, there you go. And all the coke is “borrowed.”

VALENTINA That’s right, it is.

HORSE What’s next?

VALENTINA Uhh...

TRAVIS Something blue.

VALENTINA Oh yeah!

HORSE How about my Levis?

VALENTINA I think I need to be wearing the blue thing.

HORSE (Sets to kicking off his boots.) Well we can take care of that quick enough.

VALENTINA We’ve got everything we need right here! Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s fucking do it. (They make out, Horse pulling off his pants.)

TRAVIS I for one am very happy for you. I’m gonna go get that tow truck now. (exits)

HORSE All right. (Hands Valentina his pants. Peers out to the west as he puts his boots back on and she puts on the jeans.) Damn, that is a storm. I told you though, didn’t I? I told you Halloween was the shift. It’s like flipping a switch, it’s autumn one day, then November starts and suddenly everything freezes over. Suddenly there’s frost on the pumpkin.

VALENTINA You sound like a farmer.

HORSE Yeah, huh? The weather is serious conversation for my people.

VALENTINA I’m a little scared, Horse.

HORSE You don’t gotta be scared, it’s just some snow.

VALENTINA He knows where we are. He’s coming after us.

HORSE Who? Your ex?

VALENTINA Yeah.

HORSE Well, from what I know about him he sure likes to take his time. Let him come. And let the snows come too. The micks, the Omaha bail bondsmen, those Sons of Silence sonsabitches, let ‘em come. Bring ‘em all on. Who is this chump anyway? Your ex, what’s his story?

VALENTINA He works for the family. He works with me.

HORSE What, at The Sundowner?

VALENTINA Yeah. All of our St. Louis operations are through the casino.

HORSE What was his name?

VALENTINA Stephen.

HORSE Stephen at The Sundowner? One of the bouncers?

VALENTINA That’s one of his jobs.

HORSE Yeah it is, isn’t it. Stephen Vacchese?

VALENTINA You know him.

HORSE Sure. He’s weak. Not physically, of course. But emotionally.

VALENTINA You’re totally right. I could never put it into words.

HORSE I could kick his ass. Emotionally.

VALENTINA You’re so right.

HORSE You’re too much woman for a guy like that. You can see it in his eyes, how nice he is.

VALENTINA I mean… He has killed people before.

HORSE Oh. Has he really?

VALENTINA Two guys. That I know of.

HORSE Why’d he kill ‘em?

VALENTINA I don’t know. We told him to, I guess.

HORSE “We?”

VALENTINA Yeah, you know. The Cavallaros.

HORSE Oh. You’re a Cavallaro. Right.

VALENTINA Yeah.

HORSE Your last name’s Cavallaro.

VALENTINA Did you not know that?

HORSE

You don’t just “work at The Sundowner.”

VALENTINA I’m not cooking the books or anything. But yeah. I’m a Cavallaro.

HORSE Okay. Okay. (He goes to the duffel bag.) See, but that’s just what I was saying, isn’t it? He’s weak. Just because he’s told to kill someone, he does it. Not because he wants to, just because he’s told. See, I’m an asshole like that, I’ve never killed anybody. (He palms a handful of coke.) Ain’t a man on the goddamn planet can make me kill someone. Call me an asshole. I accept it.

VALENTINA What’s the matter?

HORSE Nothing’s the matter. I just need to clear my head.

VALENTINA For clarity.

HORSE For clarity! (Snorts the coke in a wild rip, dusting his entire face.)

VALENTINA Horse…

HORSE Yeah baby!

VALENTINA It’s starting to snow.

HORSE You’re telling me! (Rubs his gums. He looks to the sky.) Ah. Huh. Okay. You know what. This actually solves all our problems.

VALENTINA I thought we were trying to avoid the snow.

HORSE See, if you’re a Cavallaro and we get married, then the Cavallaros won’t want to kill me. They can’t kill me. I’ll be in the family.

VALENTINA Just like they can’t fire me.

HORSE Yeah. What? Yeah! They can’t fire this beautiful woman, and that’s exactly who’s vouching for me. If this beautiful woman vouches for me.

VALENTINA I’ll vouch for you.

HORSE Aw, babe. You got my back.

VALENTINA Of course! It’s the best part of you. (She twirls her hand and at the command he spins around for a booty dance. She squeals with glee.)

HORSE And Kansas City won’t be able to touch me either or they’d be starting a war with Chicago.

VALENTINA They probably wouldn’t go to war over you.

HORSE Huh?

VALENTINA Chicago. My dad. Probably wouldn’t go to war if you got killed.

HORSE Well, I know that, I just mean, fuckin’… Kansas City don’t know that! It’s like the Cold War, baby, the Cuban Missile Crisis. The fear of bombs being dropped is enough to stop the bombs from dropping.

VALENTINA Yeah, okay!

HORSE So Chicago can’t touch me, Kansas City won’t touch me, St. Louis is smoothed over… Hell, I don’t need to go to California. And since I don’t need to live off these winnings in California, I can use them to pay off Omaha. Hot damn. I fuckin’ love you babe.

VALENTINA I love you.

HORSE You’re saving my skin right now in a million ways. We just need to seal the deal. Which means – (He offers his hand. She shakes it.) Babe.

VALENTINA I love you too.

HORSE Remember what I was saying earlier, about luck changing? I think our luck has changed, don’t you? (He climbs into the car, this time without incident.) And when your luck is good you’ve got to ride that luck. As long as luck is giving, you’ve got to keep on taking. (The starter grinds and then FIRES UP! Cheers from the two and HORSE bolts from the car. He slams the hood. They run , gathering all their bags and pitching them frantically into the trunk. Each with bags in hand, they collide, but don’t quite go tumbling. They laugh, they kiss. Then the car gurgles and dies.) Well I'll be a son of a bitch.

VALENTINA ...You’re a wanted felon, right?

HORSE Huh?

VALENTINA If there are bail bondsmen after you. You’re a felon. For jumping bail? If we go to the justice of the peace, that'll come up.

HORSE Oh. Oh yeah. Odds are they would. (At this, his eyes light up.) Odds are!

VALENTINA The odds are against us.

HORSE Just where we want 'em. Come on babe, let’s get back to town before we’re totally froze!

The storm is swelling. He crouches, offering his back. She jumps onto him, pool cue in hand as a lance. Their laughter is drowned out by the howling wind. It comes in fierce and freezing. They gallop off, unaware that the storm has set upon them.

2 notes · View notes

zeldaspeaksmindfulness · 3 years

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Northlight Theatre continues free Interplay series of new play readings with A Distinct Society Written and directed by Kareem Fahmy Sunday, May 16-20, 2021 Northlight Theatre, under the direction of Artistic Director BJ Jones and Executive Director Timothy J. Evans, continues to engage audiences with its commitment to developing new work with free Interplay readings. A Distinct Society, written and directed by Kareen Fahmy, premieres Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 6:30pm. The cast of A Distinct Society includes Barzin Akhavan, Declan Desmond, Marika Engelhardt, Susaan Jamshidi, and Kevin Minor. The dramaturg is Leean Kim Torske. The Zoom Coordinator is Sophia Danielle-Grenier A quiet library that straddles the border of the U.S. and Canada becomes an unlikely crucible for five people from around the world. When an Iranian family, separated from one another by the "Muslim ban," use the library as a meeting place, the head librarian, a U.S. border patrol officer, and a local teenager have to choose between breaking the law and saving themselves. The play is set in the main reading room of the Haskell Free Library & Opera House, located on the border between Derby Line, Vermont, and Stanstead, Quebec. While the library and the circumstances around it are real, the characters and events in this play are entirely fictional. A Reuter’s feature about the library is available here. The reading is part of Northlight’s Interplay New Play Development program, providing customized support for new work in the critical stages of early play development. The premieres will be followed by a live Q&A with the director and playwright. Recordings of each play will be available for 96 hours following the premiere. Interplay events are FREE with a suggested donation, but registration is required to receive a viewing link. The reading premieres Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 6:30pm with a live post-show discussion, streaming through May 20, 2021. To register, and for additional details, visit northlight.org/events/interplay-distinct-society/. ABOUT THE ARTISTS Kareem Fahmy (Playwright/Director) is a Canadian-born playwright and director of Egyptian descent and is currently a TCG Rising Leader of Color. His plays, which include American Fast, A Distinct Society, The Triumphant, Pareidolia, The In-Between, and an adaptation of the acclaimed Egyptian novel The Yacoubian Building, have been developed at the Atlantic Theatre Company, New York Stage & Film, Oregon Contemporary Theatre, Capital Repertory Theatre, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Northlight Theatre, Target Margin Theater, The Lark, Fault Line Theater, and Noor Theater. He has directed and developed new plays at theaters around the country, including MCC, Ensemble Studio Theatre, The New Group, New Dramatists, The Civilians, Geva Theatre, Pioneer Theatre, Portland Stage, Silk Road Rising, San Diego Rep, and Berkeley Rep. Fellowships/Residencies: Sundance Theatre Lab, Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Phil Killian Directing Fellow), The O’Neill (National Directors Fellow), Second Stage (Van Lier Directing Fellow), Soho Rep (Writer/Director Lab), Lincoln Center (Directors Lab), New York Theater Workshop (Emerging Artist Fellow & Usual Suspect). Kareem is co-founder of the Middle Eastern American Writers Lab at The Lark and of Maia Directors, a consulting group for organizations and artists engaging with stories from the Middle East. MFA in Theatre Directing: Columbia University. www.kareemfahmy.com Barzin Akhavan (Peyman Gilani) Broadway: Network (Belasco). NYC: Macbeth (CSC), Richard II (Public/WNYC), Hamlet (Waterwell), Richard II (Public/WNYC). International Tour: Aftermath (Arktype). Regional: Pericles (Guthrie and Folger Theatre), Arabian Nights (Arena, Berkeley Rep, Lookingglass), A Thousand Splendid Suns (World Premiere, ACT SF and Theatre of Calgary), Shakespeare in Love (Baltimore Center Stage and Cincinnati Playhouse), The Kite Runner (World Premiere, San Jose Rep and Arizona Theatre Company), and Twelfth Night (Seattle Rep). He spent five seasons with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, four seasons with the Lake Take Shakespeare Festival, and one season with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. Film and TV credits include Joyful, The Blacklist, Chicago Med, Girls5Eva, Smash, and Law and Order CI. Declan Desmond (Declan Sheehan), making his Northlight debut, has worked with many Chicago theaters, including The Gift, Goodman Theatre, Marriott, Lookingglass, and Writers Theatre. He is currently finishing his junior year at Boston University, where he also studies acting. In his free time, he likes to practice singing, the guitar, and the violin while also coincidentally reading DC comics. He’s honored to be performing and can’t wait until theater can be performed live. Now more than ever people are yearning for connection, and the theater connects like no other art form. Thanks to all of his mentors, friends, and family who made this possible and always support him in his projects. Marika Engelhardt (Manon Desjardins) Theatrical credits include The Goodman Theatre, Steep Theatre, American Blues, A Red Orchid, Chicago Dramatists, and the Comedie Francaise in Paris. Television credits: Empire, Chicago Fire, The Chi, Easy on Netflix, Amazon's Patriot, and HBO's Somebody, Somewhere. Recent films include Come as You Are which premiered at SXSW, and a starring role in Knives and Skin, which premiered last year at the Berlin and Tribeca film festivals. Her performance was named one of the "Top Ten Performances of Tribeca 2019" by Entertainment Tonight. She is a graduate of the DePaul Theatre School where she is also an adjunct professor. Susaan Jamshidi (Shirin Gilani) is a Chicago based actor (SAG/AFTRA, AEA) and is participating in her second workshop of A Distinct Society. She recently performed in several shows at Goodman Theatre: A Christmas Carol '19 and '20 (the latter which was produced as a free streaming audio play), The Winter’s Tale, and Rohina Malik's Yasmina’s Necklace. Chicago credits include work with Lookingglass, Victory Gardens, Drury Lane, The Gift, Northlight, Remy Bumppo, Theatre Wit, and Sideshow Theatre Company (Jeff Award for Best Ensemble – Idomeneus), among others. International tours: Oh My Sweet Land (London/Toronto/Vancouver with Silk Road Rising). Regional theater credits include Arena Stage, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, among others. Film and television credits include Little Nations, Cicero in Winter, The Wallet, Chicago Med, Chicago P.D. and Sirens. Susaan earned her MFA from DePaul University and is represented by Paonessa Talent. Susaan is also an avid potter. You can follow her on Instagram @susaanlayla and @littlefigwheelworks Kevin Minor (Bruce Laird) (he/him/his) is a Chicago-based actor, director, and budding playwright. Kevin is currently a theatre teacher at Niles West and Niles North High schools in Skokie, IL. As an actor, Kevin has worked at numerous theatre companies including Asolo Repertory, Contemporary American Theatre Festival, Writers Theatre, Virginia Repertory, St. Louis Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams Theatre Festival, Heritage Theatre Festival, Slightly Askew Theatre, and many others. Kevin is represented by Stewart Talent. ABOUT INTERPLAY Since its inception in 2006, Northlight’s Interplay Program has invested in provocative new works by American and international playwrights, providing customized support in the critical stages of early play development. Through Interplay, Northlight seeks to serve the specific needs of the play and can provide playwright commissions, workshops with actors, and private or public readings. The public reading series is an instrumental part of the Interplay program, providing audiences the opportunity to participate in a part of the evolutionary process from initial idea to full theatrical production, including first-hand insight from the playwright. Also through the reading series, the playwright has the opportunity to hear audience response that is integral to shaping the play for full production. As of 2020, Interplay has provided support for 40 new plays, 33 of which have gone on to full productions – some at Northlight and others around the country, including the Goodman Theatre, the Humana Festival, TheatreWorks, and off-Broadway. Four plays have continued on to acclaim at Ireland’s famed Galway International Arts Festival. That staggering success rate has established Interplay as a valuable incubator for new work in the American theatre, and has helped cement Northlight’s national reputation as an important contributor to the American theatrical canon. Support for new play development and this reading, available at no cost to general and student audiences, comes from The Ralla Klepak Foundation for Education in the Performing Arts; The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; ComEd, An Exelon Company; BMO Harris Bank; The Sullivan Family Foundation; Illinois Arts Council, a state agency; The Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation; the John R. Halligan Fund; the Paul M. Angell Family Foundation; and Evanston Community Foundation. Northlight Theatre aspires to promote change of perspective and encourage compassion by exploring the depth of our humanity across a bold spectrum of theatrical experiences, reflecting our community to the world and the world to our community. Founded in 1974, the organization has mounted over 220 productions, including more than 40 world premieres. Northlight has earned 208 Joseph Jefferson Award nominations and 36 Awards, as well as ten Edgerton Foundation for New Play Awards. As one of the area’s premier theatre companies, Northlight is a regional magnet for critical and professional acclaim, as well as talent of the highest quality. Northlight is supported in part by generous contributions from Allstate Insurance; the Paul M. Angell Family Foundation; BMO Harris Bank; Bulley and Andrews; The Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation; ComEd, An Exelon Company; The Davee Foundation; Evanston Arts Council; Evanston Community Foundation; Lloyd A. Fry Foundation; Full Circle Foundation; John R. Halligan Fund; Illinois Arts Council, a state agency; Illinois Humanities; Katten Muchin Roseman LLP; Kirkland & Ellis Foundation; Margaret and Paul Lurie; The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; Jackie Mack and More; Colonel Stanley R. McNeil Foundation; Modestus Bauer Foundation; National Endowment for the Arts; Niles Township; NorthShore University HealthSystems; Northwestern University; The Offield Family Foundation; The Pauls Foundation; PNC Bank; Polsinelli; Ralla Klepak Trust for the Performing Arts; Room & Board; Sanborn Family Foundation; Dr. Scholl Foundation; The Shubert Foundation, Inc.; Skokie Community Foundation; The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust; The Sullivan Family Foundation; and Tom Stringer Design Partners.

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mutantsrisingrpg · 4 years

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Congratulations DEAN! You’ve been accepted as ARIEL.

The themes of illusion and manipulation and perception are certainly not lost in your app, Dean, and how central they are to Lenox is just so, so well written it feels like I could easily fall under the spell of one of his illusions. You’ve shown that this world and these powers don’t always harden those affected, and that spark of whimsy in Lenox really brings him to a new life. Even a simple headcanon as selling placebo drugs and using his powers to create the high gives me such a confidence in who Lenox is as a person, and I can’t wait to see his shenanigans.

Welcome to Mutants Rising! Please read the checklist and submit your account within 24 hours.

NAME/ALIAS: Dean

PRONOUNS: She/her

AGE: 22

TIMEZONE & ACTIVITY LEVEL: GMT, i’m fairly active bean and am always here to plot

In Character Information:

DESIRED ROLE: Lenox Syed GENDER/PRONOUNS: Cismale, he/him

DETAILS & ANALYSIS: This is where you show us who the character is to you! The format of this doesn’t matter, whether it’s in bullet points or in para form, and can be as long as you’d like it to be. Feel free to get creative!

Lenox as a boy’s name is of Scottish and Gaelic origin, and the meaning of Lenox is “with many elm trees”.

Syed or Sayyid or Sayed (Arabic and Urdu: سيدعلی) is a family of Syeds in South Asia, notably India and Pakistan. Syeds are the direct descendants of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad.

Lenox is lost in his own fantasy world. Creating so many illusions for people each day that he has became lost in one of his own. With a lack of attention through his childhood, he craves the limelight and approval of everyone around him and will do pretty much anything to get it, even if it’s false or trickery.

He’s so painstakingly constructed, he’s his own work of art. Each detail of his personality and appearance delicately manipulated into something strikingly beautiful. Someone you can look at with awe just by the way they talk or move. It’s almost hard to realise there’s another man beneath the mask, someone raw and damaged. Like a bird with a broken wing.

BIO:

Tw: Drug mention

His mother is just fifteen when she gives birth to him, swaddled in a blue blanket and passed immediately to the arms of a doctor; she never held him, never looked at his freshly reddened face as his cries wailed down the corridors. It’s not because of his mutation, not because his birth family couldn’t bare to raise a being burdened with powers. She was a child herself, naivety leaving adoption as the only logical decision.

A foster home decides to take him in, raising him from infancy without any awareness of any abnormality. It’s where he stays for the first nine years of his life, a cosy house in Oregon that housed five other children. But the dormancy of his powers didn’t stay concealed forever. It started with his foster siblings sleepwalking, Lenox’s dreams imprinting on them accidentally as they’d trample through the house enthralled by the vivid illusions of his fantasy worlds. Then it began intertwining into everyday life, emotional outbursts of temper alluding unsafe situations like fire or monsters that hid under the bed. Games became near impossible to differentiate between make believe and reality from the second he joined in.

“You’re unsafe,” it’s a comment he’d gladly wear as a badge of honour once he’d matured. But to the little boy being dragged away from his foster family, betrayed by his caregivers and turned in for research, the words grazed his skin like stinging nettles.

The four plain walls of the room only further ignite an overly active imagination, a tool that was dangerous to have with a power like his own. The eleven years he spends there does the opposite of what society would have hoped, boredom allows for focus and practice, it sharpens his talents and he’s able to put them to good use. By the end of his stay the doctors had favoured him among the rest, because he wills it so. They go easy on him, carefully placed illusions write false notes on his reports. Detailed and intricate enough so that he doesn’t get caught out, handwriting remarkably identical to each nurse or scientist that take their turn testing on him. He starts to admire the way it feels, too chaotic to be part of society and embedded with more potential than anyone could have known.

It’s when that potential reaches a point where imagination can no longer be imprisoned by those four walls that he decided enough was enough. The process of discharging himself was a meticulous operation. Theatrically staged and miraculously timed with an annual cell collecting test. Before he can be sedated he’s enticed the nurses into an imaginary induced coma, deep enough into his intoxication that he can use the poisoned needle on them. The theater only has the two women on the floor when the doctor enters, sly projections manipulating each person he’d bumped into on his way to the exit into that same sleep, a psychedelic world of kaleidoscope landscapes and stained glass colours, once awakening they would never see this boy again.

“You’re unsafe,” the same words, just a different context. An ally ushers him to leave Oregon and head to Chicago. A place where policies were loosened and his own kind somewhat tolerated.

The new city put Lenox’s own fresh start in full swing.

Fragile reality was a vehicle for his reinvention, so easily malleable that to change it was simpler and more natural to him than breathing. He’s masterful in the way it’s applied, diminishing a past life of shame and grit in place of high strung worth and superiority. He’d created himself with utter royalty, his own nobility evident by the way in which he moved, regally eloquent and unmistakably celestial to anyone who crossed his path.

He builds his career on the sins he knows other’s desire. Selling crushed up aspirin as a party drug in the underbelly of the city’s night clubbing scene, using his power to make it seem as if it were the legitimate stuff and not something that cost him a couple bucks from the convenience store across the street. Lenox could make them see whatever he wanted, turn their evenings into a production of his own design and leave with none of the being any wiser. It’s how Benjamin Granger catches word of him, a supposed mutant that was living life as if he were a king. He’s the first person to ever acknowledge his capability, strikes him up an offer he couldn’t refuse. Drawn like a moth to a flame after the minor suggestion of power and the infatuation that he was finally wanted by someone and to belong to something.

EXPANDED CONNECTIONS:

Chance Matthews: He’s the face he can’t erase from his mind, the curve of his lips engraved in deep fixations when he couldn’t fall asleep on a Sunday night. Perhaps it’s the fact that he shouldn’t do it that makes it more enticing, a lust to ignite underlying passion to unearth exactly what they had both been burying.

Jordan Rojas: Jordan is somewhat of a curiosity for Lenox to unpick. A closed book that is intriguing because of their close association together. Always keen to show his worth, to prove himself to those around him, perhaps it’s a dangerous combination should Jordan utilise the other’s naivety in combination of his powers in the way that Benjamin does.

Jack Mizuno: He likes that he can get so deep into their head, that he can have full control of a world that wasn’t Jack’s domain. It’s all to do with power and annoyance, a deep craving to see exactly how far he can push people before they hit their breaking point. Even then, it’s fun to flip that breaking point into a place of pure bliss and drop it again just when his subject is at ease. He’s like a lab rat, someone he tries his tricks on before taking them to the main show.

EXTRA:

https://stereotypicalcancerwrites.tumblr.com/tagged/ch:%20lenox%20syed

(tba, watch this space I legit SPAM my character tags hard)

Lenox spends a lot of his spare time writing and doodling. It’s all extremely sketchy, there’s never any sort of final draft. It helps his imagination, which is a much exercised tool in his life.

He is probably more invested in mental health than most. Meditation and yoga being a crucial part of his daily routine after a bowl full of sugar packed cereal.

He’s naive and eager to please anyone that might create a bond with him, he craves companionship after never really understanding it due to the absence of it in his life.

Lenox works as a part-time playwright, using his illusions to improve the production of his stories and only ever receiving the best reviews from critics.

He also works as a drug dealer, never selling legitimate stuff but using over the counter medicines with the combination of his powers to masquerade as the real stuff.

He has an unruly sweet tooth. He keeps lollipops in his back pocket and will order dessert off a menu at a restaurant instead of a main meal. His favourite thing on the planet is warm cookie dough and ice cream.

He listens exclusively to Grunge music. Celebrity Skin by Hole is his absolute jam and he only ever sings Are You Gonna Be My Girl by Jet is his go to karaoke song.

Lenox is openly proud of his sexuality as a homosexual, though he’ll flirt with anyone and anything for the fun of it.

He prefers tea over coffee.

He’s a bit of a poetry dork, he collects first edition poetry books and his most prized possession is a first edition of Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg.

He’s very judgemental of how others present themselves and will tell you if your new shirt is ugly.

Lenox lives in a small apartment, anyone that enters he’s carefully to make them see it as 3 times bigger than it actually is with far more light.

He has a fear of heights.

ANYTHING ELSE: Did you have any questions or any changes you wanted to discuss with us beforehand?

Nope all good!!!

#accepted #accepted: ariel

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directlywithlizzie · 5 years

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Director’s Notebook: Sense and Sensibility

Let the research begin!

The Journey to Jane

After spending a delightful autumn with the Bennet sisters staging Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon’s Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley for Oregon Contemporary Theatre, I’m looking forward to Spring with the Dashwoods. Prior to these projects I had fairly limited experience with Jane Austen’s novels. I’m a embarrassed to admit now, I was for a long time reluctant to read them, echoing the extremely sexist sentiment expressed by some of my male friends and fellow English majors in college, “I’m not interested in trivial stories about women tittering about the house gossiping about marriage.” No, no! I wanted to read serious literature in college, the works of Shakespeare and Chaucer and Milton! For a long time I was under the delusion propagated by some in academic circles that there was “Literature” and then there were a number of literary subcategories by authors other than White Cis-Gendered and Male to be studied in specialized elective topics courses. The capital “L” GREAT LITERATURE was canonized because it was assumed to be capital “U” UNIVERSAL while everything else, while perhaps possessing literary merit, was somehow less-than. Mary Shelley and Virginia Woolf might get a passing nod in a British Literature survey course, but Kazuo Ishiguro or Zadie Smith? Forget it! Because if, God-forbid, too many white women or people of color became required reading, it would come at the cost of some poor dead, white male author . . . and then where would we be?

It wasn’t until graduate school that I found feminism and began to discover how patriarchy and white supremacy permeated even the most liberal spaces of society. (I know . . . right?) At one point, an old white, male tenured professor gave the grad students a list of several hundred capital “G” Great Plays “every theatre graduate student must read” before even considering a career in academia. The list was (unsurprisingly) white and male. The only female playwrights that appeared were Aphra Behn and Lorraine Hansberry and the only people of color were Luis Valdez, August Wilson, and (again) Lorraine Hansberry. I argued in a small seminar course with said Old White Tenured Professor about the need to open up the canon, that if we weren’t actively working to do this . . . then who would? Students would never know about Catherine Trotter, Margaret Cavendish, Hrosvitha, George C. Wolfe, Suzan-Lori Parks, Cherrie Moraga, and Lynn Nottage to name a few. He smiled in that kindly patronizing Old White Tenured Professor way and said, “Sure, we should read these authors, but does that mean we don’t read Shakespeare anymore?”

In my mid-twenties, I discovered how my education and life experience, for all its privilege, had deprived me of perspectives not fixed in white-maleness. In literature, pop culture, and life experience, my existence was always as other, always on the fringes of what the mainstream considered to be some idea of “Universal” humanity. My girlhood icons were so limited: Princess Leia and Tela were rare females amidst a sea of men on quests to save the galaxy. I came to consume and mimic the male comic voices of Monty Python, 90s era Saturday Night Live where women were generally dismissed or entirely absent. I reveled in “boy’s club” humor that lampooned women as frivolous, stupid, or slutty. I took pride in the fact that most of my friends were male, that I was “one of the guys” and took the comment “you write like a man,” as the greatest possible compliment. My literary heroes were Holden Caulfield and Benjamin Bradock. Looking back, I see a young girl whose tastes and interests were shaped by patriarchal assumptions that women simply matter less. At the time I would proudly say something like, “Well, if they were good enough, then they would have made it!” Good enough by what standard? I never thought to ask that question. I was always a voracious reader and I could have found Jane Austen and the Brontes on my own . . . but people don’t know what they don’t know. And what I “knew” then, reinforced in and outside the classroom, was that my time was better spent admiring Joseph Heller than Louisa May Alcott.

And all that time . . . Jane Austen had been waiting for me with something I would have loved all along. In 2009, I directed Arcadia, my first Main Stage production at Oregon State University. Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play captured my imagination during a high school trip to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Arcadia wasn’t the first play I ever saw or was affected by, but it was the first play that truly gave me pause to say: Theatre can do that!?! In some ways Arcadia influenced me to pursue a career in theatre. The script is incredibly witty, smart, and romantic . . . and the setting in a late 18th century English country estate and precious heroine makes it all the more appealing!

Here in 2019 I get to revisit many of the same themes and the visual aesthetic I had the pleasure of exploring ten years ago. Sense and Sensibility and Arcadia are, of course, stylistically two very different plays, but they do share similar themes of status, social class, and clever young women struggling with their roles in “polite society” of the 1790s. Young Thomasina, the math prodigy at the center of Arcadia, possesses wit and imagination well beyond her years and cloistered experience as the only daughter of Lord and Lady Croom. Thomasina shows little interest in fulfilling her duty to “marry well,” and instead pours her passion and energy into her studies and her tutor and friend, Septimus Hodge. Thomasina, like many Jane Austen heroines, exists within her society as an outsider-insider, a misfit within the upper-crust. Like Lizzy Bennet or Emma Woodhouse, she possesses her own mind and asserts her agency, however unlike them, Thomasina meets a tragic fate while Austen’s characters experience unambiguously happily-ever-afters. Thomasina Coverly has been one of my favorite characters in all of literature since I was fifteen years old, long before I knew anything about her literary predecessors. In a roundabout way, she was my gateway into appreciating the worlds of Pemberley or Barton Park. Without knowing it, I adored Jane Austen before having actually read any Jane Austen.

More to come as the process gets underway!

#directing #theatrelife #janeausten #alifeinthetheatre #senseandsensibility #literature #smashingpatriarchy

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andrewplaysmusic · 7 years

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2¢: Trump-Caesar, Theatre, and Line Crossed

There has been a lot of talk going on about the recent production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar at the Public Theater in New York. Let me put these two pennies on the table.

The issue is this

The Public Theater’s production of Julius Caesar blatantly depicts the titular character as President Donald Trump; there is uncanny resemblance in his appearance, among other similarities. The character is murdered as part of a conspiracy by other characters. Critics of the free “Shakespeare in the Park” claim that it incites violence; corporate sponsors of the Public have withdrawn their funding or distanced themselves from the production.

Critics that merely cite that the production as "‘Trump’-stabbing” understand the situation and the play poorly. The production encourages violence just as much as the musical Les Miserables condones shooting a child. (I can’t help but to recall a similar situation in which the Metropolitan Opera’s 2014 production of The Death of Klinghoffer was criticized and protested against as glorification of terrorism.) On the contrary, Julius Caesar is the condemnation of “those who attempt to defend democracy by undemocratic means.”

“It’s an odd reading to say that it incites violence, because the meat of the tragedy of the play is the tragic repercussions of the assassination.... “The play could not be clearer about the disastrous effects of violence.” -Bill Rauch, Artistic Director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (The New York Times)

In a New York Times interview Oskar Eustis- the Public’s artistic director and director of the controversial production- asserts that “This production does not hate Julius Caesar... This production is horrified at his murder.”

In fact, the play revolves more around the downfall of Brutus as the tragic protagonist; he is vital to the planning and execution of Caesar’s assassination. Following the assassination is a show of the deadly repercussions of usurping democracy. In a way, the production speaks against those who may have wished an unfortunate demise of our president.

The Public Theatre has been the birthplace of many well known shows, including A Chorus Line, and more recently Hair, Fun Home and Hamilton. On their website they claim to be “an advocate for the theater as an essential cultural force, and leading and framing dialogue on some of the most important issues of our day.” And that is precisely what they have done. In this “hyperpartisan age,” there are loud voices across this internet.

From the right-wing

The president’s son weighs in on this situation in a response to a tweet from Fox News.

“I wonder how much of this 'art' is funded by taxpayers? Serious question, when does 'art' become political speech & does that change things?” --Donald Trump, Jr. (Twitter)

This is an interesting point. The Public Theater, according to Eustis in a New York Times interview, is mostly funded through private donors, claiming that the loss of their corporate sponsors are not a huge deal financially. However they do receive some government funding. The City of New York, which provides funding to the Public’s production, stood by their sponsorship, citing that otherwise it would amount to censorship. The National Endowment of the Arts, although having previously funded other projects at the Public, stated that they have not been funding the controversial production in any way. It should be noted that people speculate that their very upfront announcement has to do with their ever slimming chances of existence under the Trump Administration.

This issue I take with Trump Jr.’s tweet is the use of quotations around “art”. Despite any differences one has to a work of art, it remains 100% art. One may have many disagreements. It could be political, like this production, or the songs of Pete Seeger. They could be artistic, such as the case of Jackson Pollack’s painting techniques. John Cage’s 4�� 33″ is infamous for drawing philosophical debate in music. Regardless, each work is art within its own right. Trump Jr.’s question of when art crosses the political line demonstrates a lack of understanding of art. Art is rarely a “feel good” product. It’s more often packed with emotion, rhetoric, story, and commentary; political speech and art are not mutually exclusive (ask Shostakovich). If the arts do not comment on both the concord and discord of today, then it has neglected its humanitarian role in our society.

From the left-wing

“It’s an upsetting play, but if there’s a production of ‘Julius Caesar’ that doesn’t upset you, you’re sitting through a very bad production... It’s clear that the corporate sponsors who pulled out are just being cowardly and caving in to a lot of cranky right-wing people because Breitbart and Fox News told them to.” --Tony Kushner, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright (The New York Times)

There are a lot of folks calling for the boycott of Delta Airlines and the Bank of America due to “financial censorship.” While I cannot deny that this is financial censorship, I can sympathize with the actions of the corporations. After all, their withdrawal is a form of expression in of itself.

The corporations

Three corporations associated with the Public’s production have distanced themselves. Most recently American Express has backed away from the production. Bank of America also withdrew their funding from the production, but announced that they will remain a sponsor for Public Theater. Delta Airlines, however, completely backed out their support as the theater company’s official airline. Delta Airline’s defense is that the Public’s “artistic and creative direction crossed the line on the standards of good taste,” regardless of political preference. Distancing from the Public is understandable. Their fear of the implications of even being associated with the production is probably for nothing, however. By nature of having been in the pit, one way or another, someone will be calling for a boycott. However, Delta’s complete withdrawal seems rather over-reactive and reminiscent of the uninformed critical sentiment.

Good taste/bad taste

For me, I am usually quite insensitive to good taste/bad taste in art, as I admit that there is usually acceptable, albeit not necessarily agreeable, justification. However something that I do find in bad taste is the depiction of a murder of a living, non-fiction, human being. Although Eustis claims that the character is Julius Caesar, there is no denying the implications. I feel similarly, in the case of controversial 2014 film The Interview (although not actually a murder, but an assassination attempt on a living foreign leader).

Regardless, as an artist I must defend the freedom of expression, for I cannot fathom the pain of being censored myself. However, I don’t have to agree, and I have every right to debate it. An exception is if something has a realistic potential for inciting violence, which I do not believe is a concern here.

Other productions

In his interview with the Times, Eustis mentions a Obama-as-Caesar production of Julius Caesar directed by Rob Melrose in 2012. The production, Eustis asserts, was left untouched by the left.

"This is about the right-wing hate machine. Those thousands of people who are calling our corporate sponsors to complain about this — none of them have seen the show. They’re not interested in seeing the show. They haven’t read Julius Caesar. They are being manipulated by ‘Fox & Friends’ and other news sources, which are deliberately, for their own gain, trying to rile people up and turn them against an imagined enemy, which we are not.” --Oskar Eustis (The New York Times)

The Melrose production received $25,000 in funding from the NEA (Grant #12-3200-7004).

Following the line of articles regarding the Public’s production, the New York Times released an article about other Julius Caesar productions in history that have captured the story through the lens of the times.

“When Caesar is killed, it’s horrifying, it’s awful — whether it’s Obama or Trump. Trump, Republicans and Democrats should all take heart that what this play says is that killing a political leader, no matter how righteous your views are, is a bad idea — a terrible idea.” --Rob Melrose (New York Times)

Finally

I want to end this post with a final quote from Oskar Eustis. It transcends the politics of the controversy, and addresses a wider concern; a lesson from Julius Caesar.

“Act Three, Scene One of Shakespeare’s JULIUS CAESAR takes place on the Ides of March, 44 B.C.

By the time that scene is over, democracy will have vanished from the face of the earth for almost two millennia, until some English colonists on the eastern seaboard of North America start throwing tea into Boston Harbor.” --Oskar Eustis (Public Theater)

Whatever happens here, take care of your democracy. It’s fragile, and precious.

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newyorktheater · 4 years

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Katie is a puppet in more ways than one in “The Copper Children,” a play by Karen Zacarias that is based on a horrifying true story. Katie is one of the immigrant toddlers shipped from New York City to Arizona in 1904 that led to a custody case newspapers dubbed the trial of the century. If there are echoes in this historical drama of the current family separations at the border, the specific series of events depicted in this arresting play chronicles an almost surreal combustion of desperation and bigotry.

“The Copper Children,” streaming through July 22, is the inaugural play in what has turned out to be the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s first digital season; it was planned initially as one of the two world premieres in the festival’s 85thseason, until COVID-19 shut the season down.

The play begins in the Arizona mining towns of Clifton-Morenci that are hit by two crises: A strike by the Mexican miners, who are paid less than half that of the Anglo miners, is interrupted by a violent storm that floods the town, drowning 50 residents within minutes, mostly family members of the Mexican miners. These towns are full of misery and injustice, and something even more unspeakable: Toxic pollution from the copper mines causes one of the highest rates of infertility and stillborn in the U.S.

“This land is cursed,” says Mexican miner Cornelio Chacon (Christopher Salazar.) His wife, Margarita (Caro Zeller) laments: “I’ve carried six babies. And all of them have died.”

Meanwhile, in New York City, the Sisters of Charity run an orphanage, The Foundling Hospital, that is overrun with babies. These are not all orphans; some are the off-spring of impoverished families unable to care for them. (“In 1904,” one of the cast members tells us, “25,000 children live in orphanages in New York City. Another 43,000 live on its streets.”) One mother, Allwyne (again Caro Zeller), insists the nuns take in her daughter, Mary Katherine Fitzpatrick — Katie (portrayed by a puppet.) The nuns are unable to place Irish immigrant children like Katie into local foster homes, because of anti-Irish prejudice . So the nuns come up with a plan to place them out West with “good families with Catholic values,” as certified and selected by the local priests. And so little Katie joins one of the “orphan trains” that were shockingly common at the time, and winds up in the care of Margarita and Cornelio – but not for long.

It was anti-Irish prejudice that drove Katie into their care, and anti-Mexican prejudice that snatched her out of it.

When Katie and the other children arrive at the station, accompanied by the nuns and an agent who has arranged the trip, they were greeted by a group of curious Anglo women from the town.

“Look at how pretty they all are,” Lottie Mills (Kate Hurster) exclaims. “And all these little ones are white!” Lottie, who is another one of the town’s childless women, tells the nuns, “I want Katie.’

They explain that all the children have already been assigned to local couples.

“I am not on this list. But I can provide a good home…”

“Mrs. Mills, are you of the Catholic faith? “ asks one of the nuns (Sarita Ocon) “Catholic? Me? No. “ “Then, I’m sorry, Mrs. Mills. We cannot help you.” “Oh, am I not good enough!? “

Lottie becomes outraged when she learns that the families the local priest has selected for the children are Mexican. The priest, Father Mandin (Eddie Lopez), himself an immigrant from France and unaware of local prejudices, saw them straightforwardly as good families with Catholic values. Even the New York nuns are taken aback by his choices.

Father Mandin defends them: “They have jobs and homes. Many can read and write. And I promise you, not one of them would ever feel so desperate as to abandon a child at an orphanage.”

The Anglo townsfolk become up in arms, literally. It doesn’t help that the agent had made the poor Mexican families pay for the transportation costs for the children – which looked to the townsfolk (and newspaper headline writers) like the Catholic Church was selling little white babies to poor brown people.

Lottie enlists her husband Charles Mills the superintendent of the mine (Rex Young), and he gathers together an armed mob. In the custody case in the Supreme Court of Arizona the following year, a lawyer requests that the word “mob” be stricken from the record and replaced with “indignation committee” – a clue to what follows.

‘The Copper Children” is one of the 37 plays that the Oregon Shakespeare Festival has commissioned as part of its long-running American Revolutions series; previous commissions include Robert Shenkcan’s plays about LBJ “All The Way” and “The Great Society,” Paula Vogel’s “Indecent” and Lynn Nottage’s “Sweat” – all of which went on to Broadway, the last of which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

This latest promising play in this cycle was supposed to run in ten months, opening in March. It was shut down a few days after it opened. Like many theaters, OSF is trying to navigate through this challenging era by streaming some of their productions. Unlike many other theaters, rather than offering it for free but soliciting donations, the theater is charging $15 for viewing within a 48-hour period.

Yet, the recording was done early in the process and, as they tell us in a message at the beginning, intended for internal use, not for public streaming, so “as a result you will notice some sound and picture variations….” I also noticed how the staging of this “Brechtian ensemble play” (as the playwright calls it) is not optimal for a film. As directed by Shariffa Ali, the nine actors perform not just as characters but as storytellers, each taking turns presenting the narrative as the rest of the cast stands or stomps or claps, gathered together on the stage or stairs or raised platforms of Mariana Sanchez’s abstract wooden set. This is all clearly geared for a live audience, and the videographer, perhaps trying to preserve the perspective of the live theatergoer, emphasizes long and medium shots over close ups. This has its merits; it’s always a tough call. By contrast, “Hamilton” on Disney+, for example, emphasizes close ups, which assigns the ensemble (and the choreography) largely to the periphery.

Still, Zacarias’ script is so powerful – in the sympathy with which she paints the individual characters, and the obviously extensive research she conducted to put the events in context — that the visual distancing in the video matters less and less as the 90-minute production proceeds, and we feel closer and closer emotionally to the story. Even on a screen on your computer, “The Copper Children” provides stunning illumination of a moment largely lost to history, which offers some uncomfortable parallels to our own.

The Copper Children Review: “Trial of the Century” child abduction dramatized at Oregon Shakespeare Festival Katie is a puppet in more ways than one in “The Copper Children,” a play by Karen Zacarias that is based on a horrifying true story.

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dipulb3 · 4 years

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Demonstrators say public safety re-imagined is a future without police

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/demonstrators-say-public-safety-re-imagined-is-a-future-without-police/

Demonstrators say public safety re-imagined is a future without police

Williams did what society conditioned him to do in such situations: he put both hands up in the air.

“I was acutely aware as a black man that my life was in danger in that moment if I didn’t have the right answers,” said Williams, an organizer with MPD150, a Minneapolis effort created by local organizers that supports the dismantling of the city’s police department and the reallocation of police funding to community-based organizations without a history of violence.

“What I needed then was not militarized folks who were worried that they’re under attack at any given moment,” Williams added. “It really drove home for me that even in the most benign of circumstances, police are a threat to me.”

Activists, like Williams, who are calling for the defunding and abolition of police, say the future of public safety doesn’t need to include police forces that systematically oppress black people, marginalized communities and communities of color.

Instead, public safety could mean supporting and funding a network of organizations, health care providers, social service agencies, religious and community leaders and others who provide safety, support and prevention. Directing funding in that way would lead to a decline in crimes linked to poverty and systemic disinvestment, activists say.

Once thought to be a pipedream that bounced around activist circles, the idea of public safety without the police forces of today has turned into a viable policy platform in the wake of the death of George Floyd and the protests that have followed. Floyd, a black man, pleaded that he couldn’t breathe while he was held down with a knee to his neck by a former Minneapolis police officer.

“We are seeing the political shift that is happening in real time here,” David Kennedy, director of National Network for Safe Communities and a criminal justice professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice said.

‘I have…zero examples of police helping me’

But there’s no one vision for what a future without today’s police would look like.

On one end of the spectrum, it means pulling money out of policing budgets and redistributing it to community-based intervention programs and services. Instead of sending an officer to a mental health or a domestic abuse call, for instance, a team of crisis workers who are better equipped to de-escalate and provide rehabilitation services would respond. In that example, some sort of policing force would remain, called on for violent situations.

On the other end of the spectrum, the goal is to completely abolish police in the US. Policing, some activists say, profits punishment over rehabilitation because of its origin as slave patrols that paid vigilantes to recapture escaped slaves.

“My horizon goal is a future where people are not policed,” said Kristiana Colón, an afro-Latina playwright, poet and co-founder of Chicago’s #LetUsBreathe collective, which began in 2014 as a way to support protesters on the ground at the Florissant Avenue encampment in Ferguson.

Colón, who works to bring the abolition of police to Chicago, said she is still recovering from being beaten by officers during the initial days of the demonstrations following Floyd’s death.

“I have absolutely zero examples of the police helping me,” she told Appradab in an interview, recalling an instance when she couldn’t get police to file a report about a break in at her home.

“I kept reaching out to them as though that’s going to happen. And that’s simply not how they function,” she said.

Cities are reallocating money from police budgets

In the wake of Floyd’s death, pushed by activists and the protests that have followed, some cities have announced plans to shift money from police departments.

In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti and Police Commissioner Eileen Decker announced that the city’s police budget would not be increased as planned and $100 million to $150 million would be reallocated to “further enhance community neighborhood policing.” New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio said he would reallocate some of the NYPD’s $6 billion budget to youth and social services, reversing an April budget proposal that suggested cutting $400 million from the same programs.

But no place in the country has gone as far as Minneapolis recently, where nine members of the city council — a veto-proof majority — pledged at a community meeting on June 7 to dismantle the police department in its current form.

‘Case study for a new era of how to enhance public safety’

Last week, 12 city council members unanimously approved a resolution to declare the intent to create a “transformative new model” of policing in the city, setting off a year-long process to envision and create a new way to keep people safe.

Five members also announced their intent to introduce a charter amendment for the November ballot of this year, which would propose the elimination of the Minneapolis Police Department to create “a new Charter Department to provide for community safety and violence.” A tedious process, according to local reporters, if it makes it to the ballot and is approved by voters, it would remove MPD from the city’s charter and the city could begin to dismantle it. Activists say this would circumvent Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who has said he’s not in favor of dismantling.

The council’s moves come after years of organizing from community activist groups including Black Visions Collective, Reclaim the Block, Black Lives Matter Minneapolis and MPD150.

After a series of high-profile killings by the police in Minneapolis and demonstrations to demand action, Black Visions Collective along with Reclaim the Block began a campaign in 2018 that organized hundreds of community members to go to city budget hearings and explain to their council members what makes them feel safe. More often than not, the answer was not police presence.

Those efforts bore fruit after video of Floyd’s death went viral and protests began.

Minneapolis Councilmember Steve Fletcher said police weren’t responding to 911 calls during the initial days of the protests, so community leaders and activists started emergency troubleshooting. Some of his colleagues, Fletcher said, broke curfew to organize neighborhood watches while he and others took calls and emails from citizens to resolve issues in the middle of the night.

“We were deeply engaged in the kind of community problem solving and crisis work that both brought people together and showed people how much community capacity for problem solving we have. And also, prompted a lot of in a very tough conversation among us informally,” Fletcher said.

Exactly what dismantling the police department in its current will look like in Minneapolis is unknown. Some say they don’t want it to look like Camden, New Jersey, which broke its police unions, hired more officers for less money and implemented reforms, but residents still experience aggressive surveillance and policing, according to criminology professor Brendan McQuade.

Still, Fletcher says he’s heard from his constituents that they’d like to have some sort of tactical force with the capacity to respond to dangerous situations. The rest will be decided with massive input from the community and organizers, along with the city council.

Responding with prevention in mind

In a police-free future, activists described a world where communities decide what behavior is allowed and highlight the importance of neighbors — not as watchdogs but as those who can respond with prevention in mind.

“There will be a focus on in-the-moment de-escalating a situation, and also making sure that everyone involved has the resources that they need,” said Molly Glasgow, a member of MPD150.

The restorative process will focus on understanding why the issue happened in the first place, Glasgow said.

In the case of a robbery or violent crime, Williams highlighted the use of community patrols that arose during the demonstrations in effort to guard against crime for the short term, until more money is invested into social services.

“Our neighborhood defense networks were an important part of recognizing that it was a threat and defending folks against it,” Williams said.

Another idea is to use an operator for emergency services that would direct 911 calls to a tactical force, fire department or a mental health crisis line depending on the situation instead of all calls going directly to the police. A version of it is already being used in Austin, Texas.

Another option is to deploy crisis teams, similar to the “CAHOOTS” program in Eugene, Oregon, that dispatch a medic, and crisis worker trained in the mental health field to each case.

In a police-free future, domestic violence cases could be handled not by relying on a carceral system, but by focusing on understanding where violence stems from, be it a mental health problem, a substance abuse problem, an unemployment problem or unaddressed trauma problem, Vitale said. Safety for the victim would be prioritized, as police typically respond to domestic violence calls after they’ve already been committed.

“What we want is a place in the community that people can go to and say, ‘I got a problem. I need some help, but I don’t want anyone sent to jail. I want to keep this family together if I can.’ And if that doesn’t work, then ‘I need help getting out of this arrangement,'” Vitale said, adding that communities can create violence centers or women centers with trained professionals to identify resources already present in their lives.

Organizers acknowledge the framework has to come together at a quick pace, even as potential challenges loom, including pushback from the police union.

Non-profits may be guides for cities

There are guides for how Minneapolis might create its new reality — though they exist on a smaller scale as non-profits or community-based programs funded by local governments.

The Health Alliance for Violence Intervention is one non-profit example. Used in hospitals in 70 cities across the nation, violence intervention specialists from the same community arrive after a victim has been admitted to the hospital. They sit bedside to run a retaliation screening asking what happened and if the victim is still in danger, while providing supportive resources. And if the victim identifies the perpetrator or a network of community members does, the specialist then goes to the assailant to identify if risks still remain — hoping to bring both the victim and perpetrator into the organization, halting the cycle of violence and promoting restoration through mediation.

“We’re able to lower violence and their likelihood of coming back into the hospital with another gunshot wound, we’re really focusing on their health and healing,” said Fatimah Loren Muhammad, HAVI executive director.

The process works in large part because they’re not asking police-like investigation questions, but asking what the victim needs in effort to create a solution, as victims are less likely to talk to the police after injury, according to DLIVE executive director Ray Winans, a partner of the HAVI in Detroit.

“Our approach is never to go after the perpetrator in a sense of an investigation but it’s to get the perpetrator and the victim and or the network of folks to sit down and have communication.”

Asked what challenges Minneapolis can expect during their transformational process, Muhammad said it’s understanding the scale of investment that it will take. And without that, the initiative could fail.

“This is not a Band-Aid issue, right? We’re talking about structural racism, we’re talking about systems that have perpetrated harm or in whole communities for a long time. So, you’ve got to be very strategic and you’ve got to invest deeply,” she said.

Community knows ‘best way to keep each other safe’

Even organizers in favor of abolishing police departments still worry about what the future will look and what mechanisms will be put in place to handle crimes like sexual assault and violence, when the current system goes away.

“What are we going to put in place in order to make sure both things don’t happen? And that’s a larger reimagining of what liberation and freedom looks like for everybody moving forward,” Fadumo Ali, an organizer and teacher based in Minneapolis said.

But organizers and council members, who during the June 7 community meeting asked attendees to write down what makes them feel safe along with their questions and concerns as the first of many conversations, anticipate setbacks.

“We actually want to be honest about the fact that it sounds scary because we’re like, how are we going to keep ourselves safe? Our assertion is that our community knows the very best way to keep each other safe.” Noor added.

Replicating across the nation

As Minneapolis pioneers a plan to dismantle its police force, legislators at the federal level are not on the same page. Republicans have been looking to tie Democrats to the issue, while Democrats have voiced support for investing more in communities but not dismantling police forces.

“I think that a big part of this conversation really is about reimagining how we do public safety in America, which I support,” Sen. Kamala Harris said on ABC’s “The View” earlier this month.

“We have confused the idea that to achieve safety, you put more cops on the street instead of understanding to achieve safe and healthy communities you put more resources into the public education system of those communities, into affordable housing,” among other initiatives.

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar said she was not in favor of “abolishing public safety departments and police departments,” but said conditions can be put on their funding.

Federal legislators point to reforms like a major bill introduced in the House and Senate Democrats called the Justice in Police Act that would create a national ban on chokeholds as an acceptable use of force, create a National Police Misconduct Registry, provide incentives for local governments to conduct racial bias training for officers, and set caps on the transfer of military-grade equipment to law enforcement, among other initiatives.

But advocates of dismantling police forces say cities with some of the worst policing records have passed many of the reforms and not much has changed, as it falls on individual police chiefs to implement them and just lessens the amount of damage done by police officers instead of eradicating it.

“When we talk about reform, often what that looks like is more funding for the police justified by, ‘oh, we’re going to do more training, or we’re going to do different kinds of training,'” said Colón. “Reforms are to police what thoughts and prayers are to mass shootings.”

Williams is one of the people pushing for not just reform, but what he says is transformative change through the abolition of police forces.

Officers eventually accepted that he wanted to ask them for directions, he said.

But they warned him that should he need directions again, he should park far away and approach officers with his hands up, so as not to look like a threat, Williams said.

“Police abolition is ultimately about getting our communities the things that they need to be successful.”

Appradab’s Sarah Moon, Manu Raju, Clare Foran and Aaron Cooper contributed to this report.

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tsgjacksonholewyoming · 5 years

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ON STAGE @thecenterjh

What better way to spend a holiday than with Storm Large? Storm will love you, leave you, delight you and abuse you with wicked charm and stunning vocals that will have you begging for more. “Holiday Ordeal” is a night of music, gags, gifts and songs ranging from “Hallelujah,” to “Sock it to Me, Santa,” and the greatest holiday song never written for the holidays, “Somebody to Love.” This show is recommended for adults with a wicked sense of humor and tolerance for strong language; it may best be described as “not your mom’s idea of a holiday show.”

Storm Large Holiday Ordeal • Dec 3 • 7PM

Storm Large: musician, actor, playwright, author, awesome. She shot to national prominence in 2006 as a finalist on the CBS show Rock Star: Supernova, where despite having been eliminated in the week before the finale, Storm built a fan base that follows her around the world to this day.

In the 18-19 season, Storm performs her one-woman autobiographical musical memoir Crazy Enough at Portland Center Stage and La Jolla Music Society celebrating the show’s ten-year anniversary. Highlights of the season include debuts with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, the Maryland Symphony, and the Philly Pops, as well as return engagements with the Houston Symphony, New York Pops, and the Louisville Orchestra, with whom she recorded the 2017 album All In. Storm continues to tour concert halls across the country with her band Le Bonheur and as a special guest on Michael Feinstein’s Shaken & Stirred tour.

Storm made her debut as guest vocalist with the band Pink Martini in April 2011, singing four sold-out concerts with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. She continues to perform with the band, touring nationally and internationally, and featured on their CD Get Happy. Storm has also sung with Grammy winner k.d. lang, pianist Kirill Gerstein, punk rocker John Doe, Rufus Wainwright, and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer George Clinton.

Storm’s musical memoir, Crazy Enough, played to packed houses in 2009 during its unprecedented 21-week sold out run. Her memoir, Crazy Enough, was released by Simon and Schuster in 2012, named Oprah’s Book of the Week, and awarded the 2013 Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction.

Josh Ritter • Dec 27 • 7PM

An Evening With Chris Thile • Dec 17 • 7PM

The Mike Super 2.OH • Dec 29 • 7PM

STAY TUNED FOR OUR FULL WINTER SEASON ANNOUNCEMENT ON DEC 4! Click Here for Ticket Information.

#tsgjacksonhole #thecenterjh #artsinjacksonhole

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biofunmy · 5 years

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‘The Great Society,’ About L.B.J., Is Coming to Broadway

As soon as the Tony-winning “All the Way” closed on Broadway, the playwright, Robert Schenkkan, began working on a sequel.

Five years, endless rewrites and several productions later, that new play, “The Great Society,” is coming to Broadway.

The producer Jeffrey Richards announced on Thursday that he would present a 12-week run of the play, starting Sept. 6, at the Vivian Beaumont Theater (that theater, although located at Lincoln Center, is considered a Broadway house).

The play will star Brian Cox (“Succession”) as President Johnson; Marc Kudisch (“Finding Neverland”) as the Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley, Grantham Coleman (“Much About Nothing”) as Martin Luther King Jr., and Richard Thomas (“The Little Foxes”) as Hubert H. Humphrey. The production will be directed by Bill Rauch, who also directed “All the Way.”

“All the Way,” which starred Bryan Cranston both onstage and in a subsequent television adaptation, ended in November, 1964, when Johnson, who became president upon the assassination of John F. Kennedy, won election to a full term. “The Great Society” follows Johnson until March, 1968, when he announced that he would not seek re-election.

“It chronicles the high-water mark of the programs of the Great Society, and the growing tragedy in Vietnam,” said Mr. Schenkkan, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for “The Kentucky Cycle.” “It’s an extraordinarily dramatic period, and absolutely urgent — in many ways, I think of it as the origin story for our present political crisis.”

“‘All the Way’ is a drama,” he added, “and ‘The Great Society’ is a tragedy.”

The play was first staged at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2014, and then at the Seattle Repertory Theater (where it ran alongside “All the Way”). It has had several subsequent runs, including in 2017 at Asolo Repertory Theater in Sarasota, Fla., and last year at the Alley Theater in Houston, the Arena Stage in Washington and the Dallas Theater Center. Mr. Schenkkan said it has “changed considerably” along the way. “I wanted to get this right, and I’ve taken my time,” he said. “Now I feel the script is absolutely right and tight and ready for New York.”

The play is a commercial production, with a team led by Mr. Richards, taking place in a nonprofit house, Lincoln Center Theater. The producers are renting the space from the nonprofit, according to a spokesman for Lincoln Center Theater, but the nonprofit’s members will have an early opportunity to purchase tickets (starting Monday) and the theater is credited as a co-producer; the arrangement is similar to that of “Ann” in 2013.

Mr. Schenkkan, who wrote a play, “Building the Wall,” about the Trump era, as well as the script for a recent live reading of the Mueller report, said he believes his new play has resonance in today’s political climate. “It is a cautionary tale of presidential power,” he said. “There was a fight in 1964 over the vision for this country — who we are, what we stand for, what does it mean to be an American — and boy, does that sound familiar.”

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larryland · 5 years

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HARTFORD, CT — January 22, 2019 — Hartford Stage announced today the cast and creative team for Dominique Morisseau’s Detroit ’67. The powerful drama, produced in association with the McCarter Theatre Center, will perform at Hartford Stage Thursday, February 14, through Sunday, March 10.

Jade King Carroll, who previously helmed Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years and August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson at Hartford Stage, will direct. The cast from the McCarter Detroit ’67production will reprise their roles at Hartford Stage.

Detroit ’67 unfolds during an explosive moment in United States history — the civil and racial unrest that tore the city of Detroit apart. The play centers around Chelle and her brother, Lank, who make ends meet by turning their basement into an after-hours party. When a mysterious woman makes her way into the siblings’ lives, they clash over much more than the family business.

“Acclaimed director Jade King Carroll is returning to Hartford Stage for the third time to stage this great play by a contemporary master, Dominique Morisseau,” said Darko Tresnjak, Hartford Stage Artistic Director. “It is also wonderful to collaborate again with the McCarter Theatre Center, a company led for the past three decades by the incomparable Emily Mann.”

Dominique Morisseau is among 25 individuals nationwide to be named as a MacArthur Foundation 2018 MacArthur Fellow (also known as the “Genius Grant”). This prestigious fellowship is awarded to creative individuals – including writers, scientists, artists, social scientists, humanists, teachers, and entrepreneurs – who exhibit extraordinary originality and dedication in their careers. Morisseau was selected as a MacArthur Fellow for her reputation as “a powerful storyteller whose examination of character and circumstance is a call for audiences to consider the actions and responsibilities of society more broadly. With a background as an actor and spoken-word poet, she uses lyrical dialogue to construct emotionally complex characters who exhibit humor, vulnerability, and fortitude as they cope with sometimes desperate circumstances.”

Detroit ’67 is part of Morisseau’s “Detroit Project” trilogy, which includes Paradise Blue and Skeleton Crew – plays focusing upon the complicated yet hopeful history of her hometown. The Huffington Post called Morisseau “a direct heir to Hansberry, Williams, and Wilson. You feel the pulse and vibrations of her characters.” Philadelphia Magazine raved of the McCarter Theatre Center production, “Detroit ’67 has heart and soul. The subject matter places it in the grand tradition of realistic American drama.” US 1 called the production “extraordinary – an impressive and involving production.”

Morisseau’s body of work includes Pipeline, Sunset Baby, Detroit ‘67, Paradise Blue, and Skeleton Crew. She will make her Broadway debut this spring as book writer for Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations. Morisseau has had work commissioned by the Steppenwolf Theatre, the Hip Hop Theater Festival, the South Coast Repertory, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Her plays have been staged at The Public Theater, the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and the Atlantic Theater Company, among others.

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In addition to directing Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years and August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson at Hartford Stage, Jade King Carroll’s directorial credits include Trouble in Mind at Two River Theater and PlayMakers Repertory Company; The Whipping Man and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom at Portland Stage; Hello, From the Children of Planet Earth at The Playwrights Realm; Dominique Morisseau’s Sunset Baby at City Theatre Company; Seven Guitars, The Persians and Splittin’ the Raft at People’s Light and Theatre; and Mr. Chickee’s Funny Money at Atlantic Theatre Company.

The cast of Detroit ’67 includes Nyahale Allie (Seven Guitars, People’s Light and Theatre; Unspeakable, Apollo Theater) as Bunny; Will Cobbs (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Broadway; Autumn’s Harvest, The Public Theater) as Sly; Ginna Le Vine (Picnic, Transport Group Theatre Company; The New World , Bucks County Playhouse) as Caroline; Johnny Ramey (The Whipping Man, Baltimore Center Stage; The Liquid Plain, Signature Theatre) as Lank; and Myxolydia Tyler (The Mountaintop, Baltimore Center Stage and Vermont Rep; A Raisin in the Sun, Arkansas Repertory Theatre) as Chelle.

The creative team for Detroit ’67 includes Set Designer Riccardo Hernandez (Indecent, Broadway; Seascape, Hartford Stage) Costume Designer Dede M. Ayite (American Son and Fireflies, Broadway); Lighting Designer Nicole Pearce (Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years, Hartford Stage and Long Wharf Theatre; Hello, From The Children of Planet Earth, The Playwrights Realm); Sound Designer Karin Graybash (Having Our Say: The Delany Sister’s First 100 Years, Hartford Stage and Long Wharf Theatre; Intimate Apparel, McCarter Theatre Center); and Hair and Makeup Designer Leah J. Loukas (Sweat and Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, Broadway).

Heather Klein (She Has a Name, Off-Broadway; Well Intentioned White People, Barrington Stage Company) will serve as Production Stage Manager, with Nicole Wiegert (Henry V and A Lesson from Aloes, Hartford Stage) as Assistant Stage Manager.