Shakespeare's Refugees

Organized labor didn't have a fan in Shakespeare. Most of his depictions of the urban working class involve riots. Londoners in Henry 6.2 ("Kill all the lawyers!") and Romans in Coriolanus go nuts in the streets till disorder is quelled. And in J. Caesar, Antony's funeral speech incites a mob to kill a poet just for sharing names with a conspirator.

Anyway, last weekend my mind wasn't on labor either (hence a Friday post). I spent more thought on the refugee crisis in Europe, another subject you wouldn't look to Shakespeare for. Surprise! He did write a scene that addresses the crisis beautifully.

Some background: popular scholarship says our guy wrote a few scenes for The Book of Sir Thomas More, a play (despite the title) about the great English humanist. And that 'wrote' is literal. Five 'hands' composed the manuscript, and scholars are pretty sure that 'Hand D' is Shak's.

As an in-house writer, one of Shakespeare's jobs was to write (or rewrite) pivotal scenes for plays that his company owned the rights to. In Thomas More, he gets the scene where Sir Thomas defuses a 1517 riot against foreigners in London (AKA Evil May Day). Here's the big Act Two speech:

Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise
Hath chid down all the majesty of England;
Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,
Plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation,
And that you sit as kings in your desires,
Authority quite silent by your brawl,
And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;
What had you got?

Aren't lines 3-5 vivid? Anyway, here the mob wants to deport the immigrants. By rioting, they usurp the king's authority. So their demands would set a dangerous precedent:

What had you got? I'll tell you: you had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,
How order should be quelled; and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an aged man,
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another.

Shak argues in a few plays that mob rule leads to lawlessness. In a similar defusing-the-mob scene in Coriolanus, he even reuses the line "would feed on one another". Okay, so let's skip the next bit, which has More cite the divine right of monarchy (the king is "a god on earth") and reiterate that riot --> Hobbesian anarchy. In a fit of chutzpah, More even recommends the mob beg for forgiveness! Then:

You'll put down strangers,

Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,

And lead the majesty of law in line,

To slip him like a hound.

That last 'him' refers to 'the majesty of law', which is led by a leash. More predicts the outcome, once order has been restored:

                              Say now the king

(As he is clement, if th' offender mourn)

Should so much come too short of your great trespass

As but to banish you, whither would you go?

What country, by the nature of your error,

Should give you harbor? Go you to France, or Flanders,

To any German province, to Spain or Portugal—

Nay, anywhere that not adheres to England—

Why, you must needs be strangers.

That hypothetical contains a threat: riot, as treason, is a capital offense. In a best-case scenario, the king will just banish you. More is setting up an obvious irony but he elaborates the point:

                              Would you be pleased

To find a nation of such barbarous temper,

That, breaking out in hideous violence,

Would not afford you an abode on earth,

Whet their detested knives against your throats,

Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God

Owed not nor made not you, nor that the claimants

Were not all appropriate to your comforts,

But chartered unto them, what you think

To be thus used? This is the strangers' case;

And this your mountainish inhumanity.

More urges the crowd—the rioters but also the theater audience—to an act of sympathy, to see themselves in their victims. By denying the humanity of others, these rioters would become inhuman themselves.

Okay, so it's not a great speech, even after I've cut a dozen dull lines. It's got some good lines—the opening images are very good ("the wretched strangers" etc) and so is the "shark" verb followed by "men like ravenous fishes"—but it's strictly work-for-hire. Yet the sentiment of this speech, quite possibly from Shakespeare's own hand, is as vital as it is simple. Today we see human beings fleeing a catastrophe, and one of human making. It must not be answered with "mountainish inhumanity."

Incidentally, Sir Thomas More was revived in Nottingham, 1963, starring a young Ian McKellen. Nowadays Sir Ian trots out this speech for gay events. Here's a clip with intro; skip to 2:45 for the speech itself. I cut a few more lines than he did, so I'll include his edit beneath the link and you can follow along.

Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise
Hath chid down all the majesty of England;
Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,
Plodding to the ports and costs for transportation,
And that you sit as kings in your desires,
Authority quite silent by your brawl,
And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;
What had you got? I'll tell you: you had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,
How order should be quelled; and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an aged man,
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another.

                              O, desperate as you are,
Wash your foul minds with tears, and those same hands,
That you like rebels lift against the peace,
Lift up for peace, and your unreverent knees,
Make them your feet to kneel to be forgiven!

                              You'll put down strangers,
Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,
And lead the majesty of law in line,
To slip him like a hound. Say now the king
(As he is clement, if the offender mourn)
Should so much come too short of your great trespass
As but to banish you, whither would you go?
What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give you harbor? Go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, to Spain or Portugal—
Nay, anywhere that not adheres to England—
Why, you must needs be strangers. Would you be pleased
To find a nation of such barbarous temper,
That, breaking out in hideous violence,
Would not afford you an abode on earth,
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God
Owed not nor made not you, nor that the claimants
Were not all appropriate to your comforts,
But chartered unto them, what would you think
To be thus used? This is the strangers' case;
And this your mountanish inhumanity.

Read Rebeck's Speech on Female Playwrights

Earlier this week, Theresa Rebeck gave the keynote address for ART/New York's vendor awards. And she killed, giving a hard-boiled lecture on female playwrights in American theater. Read it over your morning coffee; it'll tell you more about the state of the art than any feature you'll skim in the weekend Arts & Leisure section of the NYTimes.

Most of her speech is tough-minded and anecdotal. But she backs up her experiences with facts. An excerpt to whet your appetite:

Generally, over the last 25 years the number of plays produced that were written by women seems to have vacillated between 12 and 17 percent.

This is a disastrous statistic, and it is related to another disastrous statistic, which is the number of women writers and directors in Hollywood. This year 6 percent of films were directed by women, and 8 percent of produced screenplays were written by women, or women had a shared credit on them. That means 88 percent of all plays were written by men, 94 percent of all movies were directed by men, and 92 percent of all movies were written by men.

Women playwrights like myself have a lot of anecdotal evidence to support some pretty coherent theories about why this is the case. People in the power structure seem more mystified and often they don’t seem sure that there is a problem. (One of them actually said to me, not to long ago, “But Theresa, where ARE the women playwrights?” Seriously, he looked me in the face and said that.) Several artistic directors have expressed concern at the idea of 'quotas,' they really don’t like the word 'quota.' I don’t like that word either. Another word I don’t like is 'discrimination' and, 'censorship,' and I wish I could get them to dislike those words as much as they dislike 'quotas.' 'Boys club' is another couple of words I could very well live without. But since there is so much murky territory in language, I think this discussion of numbers is very useful.

Earlier in the speech, she points out a hard irony: “Back in 1918, before women had the right to vote, the percentage of new plays in New York written by women was higher. It was higher before we had the vote.”

In the spirit of fairness, Rebeck also notes that the '09/'10 New York season does offer a number of very good plays by women (and incidentally omits a few, like Suzan-Lori Parks' current show at the Public and Sheila Callaghan's upcoming one at the Womens' Project). Her list includes some of the best shows of the season.

Go see them. See the plays that women write, talk about them to your friends (especially those in artistic management!), interview the writers and build features around their work. Pay attention to this speech, circulate it among theater artists and audiences, and work on changing the facts it presents. It's the 21st century; time to act like it.

Race, stereotypes & archetypes

I've got a few posts up on Metromix this week: a round-up of this week's new shows, & my review (finally!) of The Winter's Tale at BAM. It's one of my favorite plays, & a pretty good production. The "I have eaten and seen the spider" bit sent shivers right through me.

Did anyone else read Patricia Cumper's broadside on the Guardian's Theatre blog this week?

Young black people are growing up in a society where they are frequently stereotyped and alienated. They respond in many dynamic and creative ways – but we don't hear much about that. What makes it into the newspapers and on to the stage is dysfunction, criminality and violence. And if programmers can't find enough of these things in the work of Roy Williams, Kwame Kwei-Armah or Debbie Tucker Green, they may import plays such as The Brothers Size and The Emperor Jones to keep the stereotypes going.

I don't deny that the range of black experiences depicted onstage is limited. And we can mistake stereotypes for archetypes just as easily in NYC as they do in London. This week, the Signature Theatre, in a season of work by the Negro Ensemble Company, started showing Zooman & the Sign, which is arguably another play "that assumes that black men are violent, profligate & oversexed" (as Cumper generalizes). Possibly the 1980 play helped establish the stereotype; possibly it transcends it. I'll be curious to see it in the light of this piece.

But there's a bit of slippage in Cumper's article. She speaks as an artistic director frustrated by audience's expectations & writers' shortcomings. So (as above) she critiques other companies for programming choices. But she refers only broadly to "programmers, artistic directors, marketeers & such", whereas she singles out objectionable playwrights by name, claiming that they do not represent the black experience.

I hope she doesn't see simple blaxploitation in Kwame Kwei-Armah's Elmina's Kitchen -- or several of August Wilson's plays like Seven Guitars & King Hedley II, for that matter. These are morally complex tales in a realist style with substantial characters. I also hope she doesn't see them as somehow insufficiently black when she asks, "how do black theatre practitioners put their own stories on the mainstage of those big theatres?"

I'm all for more provocative shows about race in theater, but also for more racial diversity generally in theater. I was happy to note black performers in Guys & Dolls. And that's one reason that, while I recognize the argument against casting Phylicia Rashad as the matriarch in August: Osage County, I think the benefit (a great performer in a juicy role) outweighs that. (And, parenthetically, I find the play's addressing of race half-assed & tacked on.) At any rate, she'll be playing against the hoary stereotype of the black earth mother (Cumper's phrase). I'm glad that the producers are thinking outside the box: proper casting be damned, let's see what Rashad does with the role!

NY Times op-ed

Lunchtime, time to check the news. And what happy line do I read on today's NY Times op-ed page? Kristol's piece ends with "This is William Kristol's last column."

Hurray! No more paltry rationalization of executive criminal activity, no more fudging of data to support exploitative policies, no more half-baked predictions of doom which subsequent events fail to support (he's like an anti-Cassandra: I don't listen to his prophecies, & then they don't come true). So long, screwy, see you in St. Louie!

Of course, even in that last quote, Kristol can't help fudging the truth: it's only his last Times column. Presumably he'll keep writing elsewhere. (And stay on as Jon Stewart's punching bag.)

Inauguration coverage

I've never experienced anything quite like Obama's Inauguration. As I walked to the Capitol from my pal Rodd's place, I was comforted that we were sharing the same path and the same intentions. I'd compare it to the feeling you get on the subway when you're going to a ballgame or a protest: a camaraderie that comes from shared sense of purpose. But that comparison's not quite right. Maybe it was the cold air of the early morning, but my anticipation lacked elation.

Outside the fenced areas was dizzying. A river of people streamed from Union Station, unending, like it was bigger inside than out. But once inside the Purple Zone (I love the name, it sounds like something from a comic book), people simply milled like cattle on a range, maybe a little surprised at how much space there still was. It didn't take much effort to worm my way to a good spot just left of center. Then I stood & waited.

The cold seeped through the layers of clothing. It sapped the crowd &, I think, muffled the energy, even once the ceremony started. At least, I'd expected a roar when Obama entered, like a crowd cheering the home team at a sports arena. There were cheers, but it didn't register on the Richter Scale. When each of the former presidents were announced, we alternated cheers'n'jeers: Carter ("yayyy!") Bush #1 ("grumble..."), Clinton ("YAYYYYYY!") Bush #2 ("Boooooo!"). The lustiness of the last surprised me, since till that point the crowd had played it cool. Then a chorus of "na na, nana na na, hey hey hey, goodbye!" started up. Still, the loudest response overall came not for the Obamas but for their daughters.

And from where I stood, that was the high point of the crowd's energy. The Inauguration seemed to have a weary but satisfied atmosphere. We'd taken terrible punches as a country over the last eight years, & were happy just to be standing as the final bell rang. We wouldn't pogo or hug, we'd just shake each other's hands, slap a few backs, & drift apart so we could get back to work.

That's why Obama's sober speech was appropriate. He wasn't at his best (off the top of my head, I can think of four speeches he's made that were better), but he recognized the moment. He didn't whitewash the dire state of the union, & he refused to offer pat comforts. He also didn't hesitate to criticize the outgoing administration (a friend compared it to Stephen Colbert's roasting of Bush in 2006) or his Democratic predecessor, for that matter.

I didn't walk away ecstatic like I'd expected to. Witnessing the inauguration wasn't quite cathartic for me -- it couldn't purge the last eight years of bile I'd been forced to swallow. So it was a canny choice for Obama to close by alluding to the eve before the Battle of Trenton. (It also allowed him to use cold as a metaphor in his closing: "in this winter of hardship... let us brave the icy currents." That really spoke to the crowd.) By citing that low moment in American history, Obama reminded us that we can soldier on, while simultaneously acknowledging that our struggles may last for years.

Still, I was lucky enough to get my catharsis afterwards. I happened to walk by the Capitol right as Bush's helicopter shuttled him off to his flight out. The sight of his chopper soaring off, & the knowledge that he was truly gone, warmed my heart more than anything Obama said. Na na, nana na na, hey hey hey, goodbye!

Inauguration Day, 7:30 am!

It's been a busy week, but that's no reason not to post. Sorry!

But my excuse for not posting these last few days is a pretty good one: I scored a ticket to the Inauguration! I'm down in DC right now at my old pal Rodd's place west of the Capitol. The foot traffic outside the window is astonishing, a busyness that I recognize from before a big ball game. But that's when you're outside the stadium; we're about a mile from the Mall!

So I've got a ticket in the Purple Zone, from the office of a Utah Republican, thanks to a college buddy who ended up in Salt Lake City (Nick O'Donnell, coming through!). I should be able to see pretty well, as long as I don't have a really tall person in front of me. I'd hoped to post once or twice from the event itself, but the radio's warning that cell phones may be jammed by signals. Oy, this is gonna be a mess!

So I'll post something later today once I've returned from the front line. In the meantime, sit back, enjoy the festivities in the warmth of your home, & I'll freeze my toes off!

Secretary of the Arts?

I've been thinking a lot about the petition for a cabinet-level position for the arts. Isaac fueled my motor w/ a great post. He argues that an Arts Czar would "[embed] the arts comprehensively throughout federal & state government agencies", comparing government support for the arts to its support for the sciences.

I've been thinking about how government should play a fundamental role in the arts. Like education & a free press, the arts are a necessary contribution to a healthy democracy because they broaden & educate minds. But also, as Mike Daisey's "How Theater Failed America" argues, American theater (like much of our culture) has adopted a corporate approach to the arts, & that structure is unsuitable for true creative production (except, debatably, on a massive scale, eg Hollywood). The state-structured & -sponsored approach is an alternative & potentially a democratic one.

Again, Isaac has a few suggestions -- co-ordinating w/ the Small Business Admin. & Community Devel. on new arts orgs, working w/ State on arts-based diplomacy. Though he argues that it wouldn't be a radical shift, I think it would be just that.

It's not just advocacy & co-ordination, it's not just embedding. I think a Sec-Arts (or a near-cabinet position, a la Head of the EPA) would demand new bureaus. It would rope in some surprising agencies (like the Smithsonian) & fund comprehensive projects (ethnography, archaeology). I'm envisioning a massive expansion -- what some would consider an intrusion, hence the radicalism -- of American arts in the government. In essence, it would turn part of the US Government into an artistic company.

But I'm all for this radical shift. And there is a precedent: FDR's Federal One, the largest of his New Deal agencies. Really, Isaac & I only disagree on semantics (in fact, he's a lot more pragmatic than I am). The more I think about it, the more I think it ought to be an "Arts & Sciences Czar," encompassing work on arts, sciences, applied & theoretical math, even athletics. Sec-Arts/Sci would work with Hollywood, B'way producers, & museums but also universities, publishers, researchers & sports teams.

Ultimately, the only reason I'm not convinced that Arts-Czar ought to be a cabinet position is a cynical one: that the position would be a purely symbolic gesture. We don't need an arts advocate: Obama has a good, clear arts policy (that includes increasing the NEA grant). But maybe the 36K signatories want a radical change in the relationship between arts & government. Not just more funding, not just more recognition, but a government that makes art. That's what having a Secretary of the Arts would mean.

Theater!

Ostensibly, this is a blog about theater and not David Foster Wallace. So here's a nod towards that lovely medium. Mike Daisey has been barnstorming the US with his great monologue, "How Theater Failed America". It's a phenomenal piece, covering not just theater but the corporate colonization of American life. Even if you disagree with it (& I've got friends & colleagues who do), you'll get a lot out of it.

But of course, not only am I coming late to this year-old discussion, I don't have time to do it justice right now. Instead, I'll shoot you over to Daisey's blog, where he posts a point-by-point response to a DC reviewer's arguments.

In other news, many people are swapping a mass e-mail & petition lobbying a Quincy Jones nom for Secretary of the Arts, a proposed new cabinet position. Chocolate City is no dream!

With his illustrious record of political activism (it's not just producing "We are the World" -- the dude marched with MLK), he's a pretty good fit. But no one yet has asked whether it's a necessary or useful government position. I'm thinking about it...