John Wilkins is the theater critic for KQED Arts. He was the Artistic Director of Last Planet Theatre for ten years and teaches in the Writing and Literature program at CCA. Follow him on Twitter @johnrwilkins2
By John Wilkins
ACT's 'Vietgone' Lands Somewhere Between Brilliant and Awful
At Center Rep, 'Red Speedo' is a Terrifying Mask for Our Unethical Age
'Skeleton Crew' Tries to Capture the Corpse of an American Tragedy
The Mysteries of Harold Pinter's 'Birthday Party' Change Over Time
‘Bondage’ Unleashes a Destabilizing Force Between Black and White
The Best Bay Area Theater of 2017
Two Sly Inversions of the Epic at CounterPulse's 'Diaspora 2017'
For the Holidays, Two Plays Adapted From Movies — Plus One Winner
Shotgun's Daring 'Black Rider' Aims for, and Pierces, the American Heart
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"content": "\u003cp>Two months ago during the intermission of Star Finch’s terrific \u003cem>Bondage\u003c/em>, I spent fifteen absurd minutes with three random theatergoers parsing and debating the meaning of the title of Qui Nguyen’s \u003cem>Vietgone\u003c/em>, the new play receiving its Bay Area premiere under Jaime Casteneda’s lively direction at ACT’s Strand Theater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I thought the title was an obvious, straightforward reference to the fall of Saigon and the plight of South Vietnamese refugees; a woman wearing a fox fur boa thought it was a clever pun on the Vietcong. “Too clever,” countered a balding gentleman in a plaid jacket, only to be counter-countered by a full-bearded fellow in a black cowboy hat and rhinestone boots. 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It says a great deal about Nguyen’s roving imagination that everything we said was true, though none of us could have guessed how terrific and awful \u003cem>Vietgone\u003c/em> would be, perhaps the most unbalanced play in terms of quality I’ve seen in some time — or ever for that matter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At his best, Nguyen has written a haunting, neo-Brechtian, rap-infused epic that follows party girl Tong and family man-fighter pilot Quang (a brilliant James Seol) as they escape Saigon, end up in a refugee camp in Arkansas, and discover just how vast America is. That it all ends at a dining room table in 2015 is a wonderful demonstration of how every epic takes us home, even when returning home is an impossibility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nguyen catches the richness and imperfection of Tong and Quang’s lives in Saigon. Tong is resisting the repeated proposals of the hapless fellow she’s sleeping with from time to time, desperate to escape the expectations of her family to marry and settle down. And Quang is certain of South Vietnamese victory (with American help) or at least not sudden defeat, while yearning to see his young children. When his wife visits him without bringing his son and daughter, he’s devastated, already a ghost to his own life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13827087\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13827087\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_043-e1520926355173-800x451.jpg\" alt=\"Quang (James Seol) is devastated when his wife Thu (Cindy Im) visits him without their children.\" width=\"800\" height=\"451\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_043-e1520926355173-800x451.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_043-e1520926355173-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_043-e1520926355173-768x433.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_043-e1520926355173-1020x576.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_043-e1520926355173-1180x666.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_043-e1520926355173-960x542.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_043-e1520926355173-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_043-e1520926355173-375x212.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_043-e1520926355173-520x293.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_043-e1520926355173.jpg 1361w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Quang (James Seol) is devastated when his wife Thu (Cindy Im) visits him without their children. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Neither of these two ordinary people are ready for the Vietcong’s victory. Through no fault of their own they’re catapulted out of one world and into another uncertain American one — Tong with her disapproving mother and Quang with his best friend Nhan. \u003cem>Vietgone\u003c/em> is deadly effective when it’s at its simplest, just people talking to one another about what they care for and what they’ve lost. And Quang and Tong’s hip-hop soliloquies are a perfect example of this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1975 hip-hop was just a glimmer in the Sugarhill Gang’s collective unconscious. Nguyen’s ahistorical redeployment of the form is a lovely kind of cultural appropriation before the fact. When you hear Tong and Quang rap to Shammy Dee’s haunting minor key score, you understand how rapping is a solace to all those who are dispossessed and angry. At moments like these you can’t deny that \u003cem>Vietgone\u003c/em> possesses a kind of conceptual genius, and that Nguyen has found or reinvigorated a more fluid and expressive form of playwriting than we’re used to in the American theater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So here’s the damning, sad fact of it all. In the midst of all this brilliance is some truly dreadful writing — weak-minded parodies, sitcom tripe, and post-modern juvenilia. The play begins with the playwright (one of the actors playing Nguyen) laying out the rules of the play. It’s the type of postmodern knowingness and false experimentalism that masks what essentially is a conservative and retrograde impulse: let me lead you by the hand so you do not have to think.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13827088\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13827088\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_076-e1520926703893-800x440.jpg\" alt=\"(L to R) Tong (Jenelle Chu) and her mother Huong (Cindy Im) argue about the merits of American life.\" width=\"800\" height=\"440\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_076-e1520926703893-800x440.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_076-e1520926703893-160x88.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_076-e1520926703893-768x422.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_076-e1520926703893-1020x561.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_076-e1520926703893-1920x1056.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_076-e1520926703893-1180x649.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_076-e1520926703893-960x528.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_076-e1520926703893-240x132.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_076-e1520926703893-375x206.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_076-e1520926703893-520x286.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_076-e1520926703893.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(L to R) Tong (Jenelle Chu) and her mother Huong (Cindy Im) argue about the merits of American life. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Rather than slip into the subtleties of a complex world, the play too often panders to our supposed ignorance and disinterest. Tong’s mother is drawn in such broad, unrealistic strokes that the only way Cindy Im can play her is to wallow in the worst kind of comic shtick. She’s not so much a character as a series of gimmicks and many of her scenes cripple the play’s delicate sense of reality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In not trusting the audience to understand what’s before them, you can sense Nguyen losing trust in his material. In the second act he relies on a series of movie parodies to both move along and comment on the action. Every one of them is a disaster of nonsense, from a montage of rom-com classics (\u003cem>Say Anything\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Ghost\u003c/em>) to a \u003cem>Kill Bill\u003c/em> fight sequence that only serves to remind you what a dedicated and precise artist Quentin Tarantino is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But then there’s the last scene, where the fictionalized playwright Nguyen, who turns out to be Quang’s son, interviews his father. It’s a lovely, funny, and searching conversation that in many ways is a rebuke to Nguyen’s lack of artistic discipline. Hectoring his father to tell him the truth of the Vietnam war, or at least the truth a young liberal artist would want to hear, Quang sets him straight, both politically (“When America come [to fight], they gave us hope”) and artistically — “Stick to writing funny plays, son, this stuff too sad for old man like me to recount just to help you write another war story.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13827092\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13827092\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_284-e1520927213262-800x440.jpg\" alt=\"Quang (James Seol) and best friend Nhan (Stephen Hu) get into a ruckus with a redneck (Jomar Tagatac).\" width=\"800\" height=\"440\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_284-e1520927213262-800x440.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_284-e1520927213262-160x88.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_284-e1520927213262-768x422.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_284-e1520927213262-1020x561.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_284-e1520927213262-1920x1056.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_284-e1520927213262-1180x649.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_284-e1520927213262-960x528.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_284-e1520927213262-240x132.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_284-e1520927213262-375x206.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_284-e1520927213262-520x286.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_284-e1520927213262.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Quang (James Seol) and best friend Nhan (Stephen Hu) get into a ruckus with a redneck (Jomar Tagatac). \u003ccite>(Pho0to: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It’s a sharp critique from a fictional father to a fictional son of Nguyen’s own making, and real advice that the real Nguyen should have heeded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Vietgone’ runs through Sunday, April 22, at the Strand Theater in San Francisco. For tickets and information click \u003ca href=\"http://www.act-sf.org\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "A mix of war, motorcycles and hip-hop adds up to one of the most unbalanced plays in recent memory.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Two months ago during the intermission of Star Finch’s terrific \u003cem>Bondage\u003c/em>, I spent fifteen absurd minutes with three random theatergoers parsing and debating the meaning of the title of Qui Nguyen’s \u003cem>Vietgone\u003c/em>, the new play receiving its Bay Area premiere under Jaime Casteneda’s lively direction at ACT’s Strand Theater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I thought the title was an obvious, straightforward reference to the fall of Saigon and the plight of South Vietnamese refugees; a woman wearing a fox fur boa thought it was a clever pun on the Vietcong. “Too clever,” countered a balding gentleman in a plaid jacket, only to be counter-countered by a full-bearded fellow in a black cowboy hat and rhinestone boots. He claimed that all our interpretations “could be subsumed under the playwright’s obvious allusion to Sophocles’ \u003cem>Antigone \u003c/em>and that the play was probably about burying the dead, exile, the proper way to mourn the loss of family, country, and a way of life.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13827086\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13827086\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_047-e1520926020400-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"(L to R) Nhan (Stephen Hu) and Quang (James Seol) helicopter as many people as they can to safety after the fall of Saigon.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_047-e1520926020400-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_047-e1520926020400-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_047-e1520926020400-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_047-e1520926020400-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_047-e1520926020400-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_047-e1520926020400-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_047-e1520926020400-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_047-e1520926020400-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_047-e1520926020400-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_047-e1520926020400-520x293.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_047-e1520926020400.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(L to R) Nhan (Stephen Hu) and Quang (James Seol) helicopter as many people as they can to safety after the fall of Saigon. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>We all nodded in unison. “Impressive,” baldy in plaid murmured. “Well, whatever it means,” fox fur added, “It must have been agony.” Laughing at her witticism, the house manager ushered us in for the second act. It says a great deal about Nguyen’s roving imagination that everything we said was true, though none of us could have guessed how terrific and awful \u003cem>Vietgone\u003c/em> would be, perhaps the most unbalanced play in terms of quality I’ve seen in some time — or ever for that matter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At his best, Nguyen has written a haunting, neo-Brechtian, rap-infused epic that follows party girl Tong and family man-fighter pilot Quang (a brilliant James Seol) as they escape Saigon, end up in a refugee camp in Arkansas, and discover just how vast America is. That it all ends at a dining room table in 2015 is a wonderful demonstration of how every epic takes us home, even when returning home is an impossibility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nguyen catches the richness and imperfection of Tong and Quang’s lives in Saigon. Tong is resisting the repeated proposals of the hapless fellow she’s sleeping with from time to time, desperate to escape the expectations of her family to marry and settle down. And Quang is certain of South Vietnamese victory (with American help) or at least not sudden defeat, while yearning to see his young children. When his wife visits him without bringing his son and daughter, he’s devastated, already a ghost to his own life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13827087\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13827087\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_043-e1520926355173-800x451.jpg\" alt=\"Quang (James Seol) is devastated when his wife Thu (Cindy Im) visits him without their children.\" width=\"800\" height=\"451\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_043-e1520926355173-800x451.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_043-e1520926355173-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_043-e1520926355173-768x433.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_043-e1520926355173-1020x576.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_043-e1520926355173-1180x666.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_043-e1520926355173-960x542.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_043-e1520926355173-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_043-e1520926355173-375x212.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_043-e1520926355173-520x293.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_043-e1520926355173.jpg 1361w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Quang (James Seol) is devastated when his wife Thu (Cindy Im) visits him without their children. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Neither of these two ordinary people are ready for the Vietcong’s victory. Through no fault of their own they’re catapulted out of one world and into another uncertain American one — Tong with her disapproving mother and Quang with his best friend Nhan. \u003cem>Vietgone\u003c/em> is deadly effective when it’s at its simplest, just people talking to one another about what they care for and what they’ve lost. And Quang and Tong’s hip-hop soliloquies are a perfect example of this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1975 hip-hop was just a glimmer in the Sugarhill Gang’s collective unconscious. Nguyen’s ahistorical redeployment of the form is a lovely kind of cultural appropriation before the fact. When you hear Tong and Quang rap to Shammy Dee’s haunting minor key score, you understand how rapping is a solace to all those who are dispossessed and angry. At moments like these you can’t deny that \u003cem>Vietgone\u003c/em> possesses a kind of conceptual genius, and that Nguyen has found or reinvigorated a more fluid and expressive form of playwriting than we’re used to in the American theater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So here’s the damning, sad fact of it all. In the midst of all this brilliance is some truly dreadful writing — weak-minded parodies, sitcom tripe, and post-modern juvenilia. The play begins with the playwright (one of the actors playing Nguyen) laying out the rules of the play. It’s the type of postmodern knowingness and false experimentalism that masks what essentially is a conservative and retrograde impulse: let me lead you by the hand so you do not have to think.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13827088\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13827088\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_076-e1520926703893-800x440.jpg\" alt=\"(L to R) Tong (Jenelle Chu) and her mother Huong (Cindy Im) argue about the merits of American life.\" width=\"800\" height=\"440\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_076-e1520926703893-800x440.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_076-e1520926703893-160x88.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_076-e1520926703893-768x422.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_076-e1520926703893-1020x561.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_076-e1520926703893-1920x1056.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_076-e1520926703893-1180x649.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_076-e1520926703893-960x528.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_076-e1520926703893-240x132.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_076-e1520926703893-375x206.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_076-e1520926703893-520x286.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_076-e1520926703893.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(L to R) Tong (Jenelle Chu) and her mother Huong (Cindy Im) argue about the merits of American life. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Rather than slip into the subtleties of a complex world, the play too often panders to our supposed ignorance and disinterest. Tong’s mother is drawn in such broad, unrealistic strokes that the only way Cindy Im can play her is to wallow in the worst kind of comic shtick. She’s not so much a character as a series of gimmicks and many of her scenes cripple the play’s delicate sense of reality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In not trusting the audience to understand what’s before them, you can sense Nguyen losing trust in his material. In the second act he relies on a series of movie parodies to both move along and comment on the action. Every one of them is a disaster of nonsense, from a montage of rom-com classics (\u003cem>Say Anything\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Ghost\u003c/em>) to a \u003cem>Kill Bill\u003c/em> fight sequence that only serves to remind you what a dedicated and precise artist Quentin Tarantino is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But then there’s the last scene, where the fictionalized playwright Nguyen, who turns out to be Quang’s son, interviews his father. It’s a lovely, funny, and searching conversation that in many ways is a rebuke to Nguyen’s lack of artistic discipline. Hectoring his father to tell him the truth of the Vietnam war, or at least the truth a young liberal artist would want to hear, Quang sets him straight, both politically (“When America come [to fight], they gave us hope”) and artistically — “Stick to writing funny plays, son, this stuff too sad for old man like me to recount just to help you write another war story.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13827092\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13827092\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_284-e1520927213262-800x440.jpg\" alt=\"Quang (James Seol) and best friend Nhan (Stephen Hu) get into a ruckus with a redneck (Jomar Tagatac).\" width=\"800\" height=\"440\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_284-e1520927213262-800x440.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_284-e1520927213262-160x88.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_284-e1520927213262-768x422.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_284-e1520927213262-1020x561.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_284-e1520927213262-1920x1056.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_284-e1520927213262-1180x649.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_284-e1520927213262-960x528.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_284-e1520927213262-240x132.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_284-e1520927213262-375x206.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_284-e1520927213262-520x286.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03/VTG_284-e1520927213262.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Quang (James Seol) and best friend Nhan (Stephen Hu) get into a ruckus with a redneck (Jomar Tagatac). \u003ccite>(Pho0to: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It’s a sharp critique from a fictional father to a fictional son of Nguyen’s own making, and real advice that the real Nguyen should have heeded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Vietgone’ runs through Sunday, April 22, at the Strand Theater in San Francisco. For tickets and information click \u003ca href=\"http://www.act-sf.org\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "At Center Rep, 'Red Speedo' is a Terrifying Mask for Our Unethical Age",
"headTitle": "At Center Rep, ‘Red Speedo’ is a Terrifying Mask for Our Unethical Age | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>The fascinating American playwright Lucas Hnath’s \u003cem>Red Speedo\u003c/em>, receiving its Bay Area premiere at Center Rep in Walnut Creek under Markus Potter’s scalpel-sharp direction, captures a strange quality about ethical thinking — it helps to not have any. Ethics, that is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s an awful proposition, and one we resist throughout the play’s lurid, 80-minute sprint to hell, even as scene after scene unfolds to demonstrate otherwise. In that, \u003cem>Red Speedo\u003c/em> is of the moment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hnath has a gift for burrowing into experiences containing an electric sense of reality. There’s a vivid stickiness to his characters and the situations that he puts them through. In \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/2017/02/14/the-christians-isnt-so-much-a-play-as-a-strange-brilliant-sermon/\">\u003cem>The Christians\u003c/em>\u003c/a> (at the SF Playhouse last year), a sedate, Protestant church service becomes the unlikely scene for a rueful accounting of a pastor’s troubled marriage. Here, it’s a swimming club’s locker room on the eve of the Olympic trials that serves as the springboard for a brutal disquisition on the nature of sacrifice and identity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13824150\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13824150\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/1024x1024-e1518254294953-800x444.jpg\" alt=\"(L to R) Ray listens to his older brother Peter explain the complexities of the swimming business to him in 'Red Speedo' by Lucas Hnath.\" width=\"800\" height=\"444\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/1024x1024-e1518254294953-800x444.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/1024x1024-e1518254294953-160x89.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/1024x1024-e1518254294953-768x426.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/1024x1024-e1518254294953-1020x566.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/1024x1024-e1518254294953-960x533.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/1024x1024-e1518254294953-672x372.jpg 672w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/1024x1024-e1518254294953-240x133.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/1024x1024-e1518254294953-375x208.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/1024x1024-e1518254294953-520x288.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/1024x1024-e1518254294953.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(L to R) Ray listens to his older brother Peter explain the complexities of the swimming business to him in ‘Red Speedo’ by Lucas Hnath. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Ray, a swimmer with serious Olympic aspirations, sits on a bench incessantly eating carrots, while his older brother Peter, a lawyer and his kind of manager, begs Ray’s coach to take a mysterious stash of drugs and flush them down the toilet: “People hear that one of your swimmers has been doing performance enhancing drugs, and people start to think that the whole team, and then Ray, who’s always been clean… gets implicated.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a classic setup, so clear that a child could parse it: Ray is dumb but talented, Peter is sleazy but compelling, and Coach holds his ground for the good of the sport. Hnath has a keen sense of ritual, the way some situations demand that we take on certain qualities or behave in ways that have nothing to do with our actual beliefs and commitments. The stakes are real, but the players are detached — outside observers to their own dramas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13824152\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13824152\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/RSO_108-e1518254650671-800x448.jpg\" alt=\"Ray tries to talk his ex-girlfriend Lydia into getting him some PED's for an important race in 'Red Speedo' by Lucas Hnath.\" width=\"800\" height=\"448\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/RSO_108-e1518254650671-800x448.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/RSO_108-e1518254650671-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/RSO_108-e1518254650671-768x430.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/RSO_108-e1518254650671-1020x571.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/RSO_108-e1518254650671-1180x660.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/RSO_108-e1518254650671-960x537.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/RSO_108-e1518254650671-240x134.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/RSO_108-e1518254650671-375x210.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/RSO_108-e1518254650671-520x291.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/RSO_108-e1518254650671.jpg 1444w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ray tries to talk his ex-girlfriend Lydia into getting him some PED’s for an important race in ‘Red Speedo’ by Lucas Hnath. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Peter’s frantic harangues have their own special geometry and life, while Ray is a canny cipher whose goals shift with jack-rabbit quickness, and Coach digs the privileges of playing and saying coach-like things, whether they make sense or not. And then there’s Ray’s ex-girlfriend, sports therapist and one-time drug connection (he is of course using PEDs) Lydia. By the time she enters the scene, you realize how stunning these stock characters can be when infused with actual, human desires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fans of Kabuki Theater love the emotion that its elaborate masks and makeup both contain and release. \u003cem>Red Speedo\u003c/em> has a similar jolt. Everyone is perfectly what he or she is, and that allows for a freedom of spirit and a rather loose, amoral sense of ethics. Ray’s spiked blond hair, toned body and red speedo scream “Olympic swimmer.” His image is as controlled and defined as any Hollywood casting agent could ever hope for, and yet his soul is something else.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Confessing to his brother that he’s been using PEDs, Ray equates them to “affirmative action” for lesser athletes. He claims that he isn’t breaking the rules because the rules state that the drugs will harm him and he’s just fine, and then he tries to cap off that bit of argumentative jiu-jitsu with some Buddhist philosophy. And that’s just the start.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13824155\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 611px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13824155\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/920x920-1-e1518255261661.jpg\" alt=\"(L to R) Brothers Ray (Max Carpenter) and Peter (Gabriel Marin) share a moment of joy in 'Red Speedo' by Lucas Hnath.\" width=\"611\" height=\"351\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/920x920-1-e1518255261661.jpg 611w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/920x920-1-e1518255261661-160x92.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/920x920-1-e1518255261661-240x138.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/920x920-1-e1518255261661-375x215.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/920x920-1-e1518255261661-520x299.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 611px) 100vw, 611px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(L to R) Brothers Ray (Max Carpenter) and Peter (Gabriel Marin) share a moment of joy in ‘Red Speedo’ by Lucas Hnath. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It’s an idiot’s performance, exactly what we would expect of Ray, and yet it works. By the time he finishes explaining the difficulty of his situation — he has to dope up to have any chance of winning the next day’s race — Peter has essentially thrown his life over to him. And this is the beauty of \u003cem>Red Speedo\u003c/em>: that the fantasy of the most hackneyed clichés is more alluring than ethics, sense, or the actual living of a life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I have to say one more thing: Center Rep is not known for producing daring plays, and I couldn’t help wonder after this sharp, smart production of \u003cem>Red Speedo\u003c/em> why they would fill their schedule with \u003cem>Shirley Valentine\u003c/em> and Disney’s \u003cem>Freaky Friday\u003c/em>. If you’re capable of fun and complexity and excellence, as Center Rep clearly is with \u003cem>Red Speedo\u003c/em>, it should be fought for and embraced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Red Speedo’ runs through Sunday, Feb. 18, at the Dean Lesher Center in downtown Walnut Creek. For tickets and information \u003ca href=\"http://www.centerrep.org/season1718/theliar.php\">click here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The fascinating American playwright Lucas Hnath’s \u003cem>Red Speedo\u003c/em>, receiving its Bay Area premiere at Center Rep in Walnut Creek under Markus Potter’s scalpel-sharp direction, captures a strange quality about ethical thinking — it helps to not have any. Ethics, that is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s an awful proposition, and one we resist throughout the play’s lurid, 80-minute sprint to hell, even as scene after scene unfolds to demonstrate otherwise. In that, \u003cem>Red Speedo\u003c/em> is of the moment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hnath has a gift for burrowing into experiences containing an electric sense of reality. There’s a vivid stickiness to his characters and the situations that he puts them through. In \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/2017/02/14/the-christians-isnt-so-much-a-play-as-a-strange-brilliant-sermon/\">\u003cem>The Christians\u003c/em>\u003c/a> (at the SF Playhouse last year), a sedate, Protestant church service becomes the unlikely scene for a rueful accounting of a pastor’s troubled marriage. Here, it’s a swimming club’s locker room on the eve of the Olympic trials that serves as the springboard for a brutal disquisition on the nature of sacrifice and identity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13824150\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13824150\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/1024x1024-e1518254294953-800x444.jpg\" alt=\"(L to R) Ray listens to his older brother Peter explain the complexities of the swimming business to him in 'Red Speedo' by Lucas Hnath.\" width=\"800\" height=\"444\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/1024x1024-e1518254294953-800x444.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/1024x1024-e1518254294953-160x89.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/1024x1024-e1518254294953-768x426.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/1024x1024-e1518254294953-1020x566.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/1024x1024-e1518254294953-960x533.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/1024x1024-e1518254294953-672x372.jpg 672w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/1024x1024-e1518254294953-240x133.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/1024x1024-e1518254294953-375x208.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/1024x1024-e1518254294953-520x288.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/1024x1024-e1518254294953.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(L to R) Ray listens to his older brother Peter explain the complexities of the swimming business to him in ‘Red Speedo’ by Lucas Hnath. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Ray, a swimmer with serious Olympic aspirations, sits on a bench incessantly eating carrots, while his older brother Peter, a lawyer and his kind of manager, begs Ray’s coach to take a mysterious stash of drugs and flush them down the toilet: “People hear that one of your swimmers has been doing performance enhancing drugs, and people start to think that the whole team, and then Ray, who’s always been clean… gets implicated.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a classic setup, so clear that a child could parse it: Ray is dumb but talented, Peter is sleazy but compelling, and Coach holds his ground for the good of the sport. Hnath has a keen sense of ritual, the way some situations demand that we take on certain qualities or behave in ways that have nothing to do with our actual beliefs and commitments. The stakes are real, but the players are detached — outside observers to their own dramas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13824152\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13824152\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/RSO_108-e1518254650671-800x448.jpg\" alt=\"Ray tries to talk his ex-girlfriend Lydia into getting him some PED's for an important race in 'Red Speedo' by Lucas Hnath.\" width=\"800\" height=\"448\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/RSO_108-e1518254650671-800x448.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/RSO_108-e1518254650671-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/RSO_108-e1518254650671-768x430.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/RSO_108-e1518254650671-1020x571.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/RSO_108-e1518254650671-1180x660.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/RSO_108-e1518254650671-960x537.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/RSO_108-e1518254650671-240x134.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/RSO_108-e1518254650671-375x210.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/RSO_108-e1518254650671-520x291.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/RSO_108-e1518254650671.jpg 1444w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ray tries to talk his ex-girlfriend Lydia into getting him some PED’s for an important race in ‘Red Speedo’ by Lucas Hnath. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Peter’s frantic harangues have their own special geometry and life, while Ray is a canny cipher whose goals shift with jack-rabbit quickness, and Coach digs the privileges of playing and saying coach-like things, whether they make sense or not. And then there’s Ray’s ex-girlfriend, sports therapist and one-time drug connection (he is of course using PEDs) Lydia. By the time she enters the scene, you realize how stunning these stock characters can be when infused with actual, human desires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fans of Kabuki Theater love the emotion that its elaborate masks and makeup both contain and release. \u003cem>Red Speedo\u003c/em> has a similar jolt. Everyone is perfectly what he or she is, and that allows for a freedom of spirit and a rather loose, amoral sense of ethics. Ray’s spiked blond hair, toned body and red speedo scream “Olympic swimmer.” His image is as controlled and defined as any Hollywood casting agent could ever hope for, and yet his soul is something else.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Confessing to his brother that he’s been using PEDs, Ray equates them to “affirmative action” for lesser athletes. He claims that he isn’t breaking the rules because the rules state that the drugs will harm him and he’s just fine, and then he tries to cap off that bit of argumentative jiu-jitsu with some Buddhist philosophy. And that’s just the start.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13824155\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 611px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13824155\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/920x920-1-e1518255261661.jpg\" alt=\"(L to R) Brothers Ray (Max Carpenter) and Peter (Gabriel Marin) share a moment of joy in 'Red Speedo' by Lucas Hnath.\" width=\"611\" height=\"351\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/920x920-1-e1518255261661.jpg 611w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/920x920-1-e1518255261661-160x92.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/920x920-1-e1518255261661-240x138.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/920x920-1-e1518255261661-375x215.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/920x920-1-e1518255261661-520x299.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 611px) 100vw, 611px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(L to R) Brothers Ray (Max Carpenter) and Peter (Gabriel Marin) share a moment of joy in ‘Red Speedo’ by Lucas Hnath. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It’s an idiot’s performance, exactly what we would expect of Ray, and yet it works. By the time he finishes explaining the difficulty of his situation — he has to dope up to have any chance of winning the next day’s race — Peter has essentially thrown his life over to him. And this is the beauty of \u003cem>Red Speedo\u003c/em>: that the fantasy of the most hackneyed clichés is more alluring than ethics, sense, or the actual living of a life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I have to say one more thing: Center Rep is not known for producing daring plays, and I couldn’t help wonder after this sharp, smart production of \u003cem>Red Speedo\u003c/em> why they would fill their schedule with \u003cem>Shirley Valentine\u003c/em> and Disney’s \u003cem>Freaky Friday\u003c/em>. If you’re capable of fun and complexity and excellence, as Center Rep clearly is with \u003cem>Red Speedo\u003c/em>, it should be fought for and embraced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Red Speedo’ runs through Sunday, Feb. 18, at the Dean Lesher Center in downtown Walnut Creek. For tickets and information \u003ca href=\"http://www.centerrep.org/season1718/theliar.php\">click here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "'Skeleton Crew' Tries to Capture the Corpse of an American Tragedy",
"headTitle": "‘Skeleton Crew’ Tries to Capture the Corpse of an American Tragedy | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>There are scenes in Dominique Morisseau’s \u003cem>Skeleton Crew\u003c/em>, currently receiving its Bay Area premiere at the Marin Theatre Company under Jade King Carroll’s assured direction, that belong in a terrific play about Detroit auto workers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The most striking of these is when Reggie, a foreman proud of his ascension to middle management (another fantastic Lance Gardner performance), becomes so angered and infuriated by his company’s inhumane polices that he can’t remember whether he’s committed an act of violence or not. When it becomes clear that he hasn’t, it’s also clear just how much he wishes he had — and how significant the idea is, for him, of lashing out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Reggie and the other workers he supervises, the auto plant has become a mystery. It’s 2008. They can feel the precarious nature of the local and national economies. Everyone is in flux, and they’re all navigating an increasingly precarious future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13823626\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13823626\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517646793849-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Faye (Margo Hall) and Reggie (Lance Gardner) try to figure out how to navigate a tough situation in 'The Skeleton Crew' at the Marin Theatre Compa\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517646793849-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517646793849-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517646793849-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517646793849-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517646793849-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517646793849-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517646793849-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517646793849-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517646793849-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517646793849-520x293.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517646793849.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Faye (Margo Hall) and Reggie (Lance Gardner) try to navigate a tough situation in ‘Skeleton Crew’ at the Marin Theatre Company. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Faye, a longtime employee, cancer survivor, and union rep, has less than a year to get a full-benefits package; Dez, young, hardworking, and angry, is plotting his way to opening his own garage; and Shanita, incredibly talented and committed to her job, is pregnant and single. Morisseau catches in these characters the way work is intimately connected to the soul, and the natural resting place of dreams. (Or here, fractured dreams.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What’s fascinating about this up-and-down play is how much more effective it is when Morisseau forgets the bigger themes and sticks with the granular details of life in an auto plant. Reggie and Dez argue about protocol; Dez and Shanita share a particularly tasty dish of potatoes; Faye struggles over when to reveal inside information about the plant closing. Without explanation or adornment, we understand everything.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The problem is that Morriseau doesn’t leave it at that. An audience can sense whole worlds in just a few details, but rather than letting us follow the natural course of everyday life and coming to hard conclusions about the economic and political conditions of America, Morriseau too often indulges in poetic flourishes that strain for significance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13823624\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13823624\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Cunningham2_HiRes-e1517646365804-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Shanita (Tristan Cunningham) starts to realize the full scope of the situation in 'The Skeleton Crew' at the Marin Theatre Company.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Cunningham2_HiRes-e1517646365804-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Cunningham2_HiRes-e1517646365804-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Cunningham2_HiRes-e1517646365804-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Cunningham2_HiRes-e1517646365804-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Cunningham2_HiRes-e1517646365804-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Cunningham2_HiRes-e1517646365804-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Cunningham2_HiRes-e1517646365804-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Cunningham2_HiRes-e1517646365804-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Cunningham2_HiRes-e1517646365804-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Cunningham2_HiRes-e1517646365804-520x293.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Cunningham2_HiRes-e1517646365804.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Shanita (Tristan Cunningham) starts to realize the full scope of the situation in ‘Skeleton Crew’ at the Marin Theatre Company. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Shanita tells Faye that her Big Mama “used to say dreams from a pregnant woman actually more like prophecies,” and then recounts one that includes an “empty space with nothin’ in it [and] dust covering everything.” As she calls out to people who “don’t answer,” a strong wind comes and the “dust is scrambled in a group of letters that don’t spell nothin’.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s at moments like these (there’s a second act speech about traffic that operates in the same way) that the play loses its bite. Shanita’s speech is an artistic effect, rather than an interrogation of what happens to people under intense economic pressures. It stands apart from the play’s concerns and draws our attention away from the real drama: a war over money, resources, and civic responsibility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Morisseau knows that there’s a problem in Detroit — in its auto plants, in the way race informs economic decisions, and in the way corporations pretend that plant closures are abstract rather than human decisions. But she, along with much of the mainstream of American theater, hasn’t figured out how to give these insights voice outside of the most limited artistic choices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13823628\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13823628\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_HiRes-e1517647189753-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Dez (Christian Thompson) and Faye (Margo Hall) engage in a little workplace banter during a game of cards in 'The Skeleton Crew' at the Marin Theater Company.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_HiRes-e1517647189753-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_HiRes-e1517647189753-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_HiRes-e1517647189753-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_HiRes-e1517647189753-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_HiRes-e1517647189753-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_HiRes-e1517647189753-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_HiRes-e1517647189753-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_HiRes-e1517647189753-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_HiRes-e1517647189753-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_HiRes-e1517647189753-520x293.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_HiRes-e1517647189753.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dez (Christian Thompson) and Faye (Margo Hall) engage in a little workplace banter during a game of cards in ‘Skeleton Crew’ at the Marin Theater Company. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>There are elements of the crime thriller in\u003cem> Skeleton Crew\u003c/em>, but the genre it leans on the most is the workplace sitcom. When the play moves away from direct conflict over economic issues, which is when it is at its best, the action invariably falls back into comic bits: menopause jokes, nicotine patch jokes, baby-naming jokes, boss jokes, sexual harassment jokes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Humor is crucial to art and social change, but its deployment here dulls our political senses. In the familiar patter and setup of punchlines, we’re caught in the soothing rhythms of network television. And that keeps us at a distance from understanding what this particular situation, the Detroit auto crisis, should demand of us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Margo Hall’s Faye is perhaps indicative of the many tensions here. There are moments where Hall gives a searing and controlled performance. You look into her eyes and you see a woman who, at 50, has just had it, and is ready to let the world destroy her. But too often what we get is a performance of a performance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s a scene where Faye, who is living in the plant, gets dressed for work as she listens to an Aretha Franklin song. Nothing quite goes right, from fastening her bra strap to applying deodorant. As a bit, it’s a slick audience-pleasing piece of comic acting, but it tells us nothing of Faye’s life or the factory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13823630\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13823630\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517647447834-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Faye (Margo Hall) interrupts a heated argument between Dez (Christian Thompson) and Reggie (Lance Gardner) in 'The Skeleton Crew' at the Marin Theatre Company.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517647447834-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517647447834-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517647447834-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517647447834-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517647447834-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517647447834-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517647447834-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517647447834-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517647447834-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517647447834-520x293.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517647447834.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Faye (Margo Hall) interrupts a heated argument between Dez (Christian Thompson) and Reggie (Lance Gardner) in ‘The Skeleton Crew’ at the Marin Theatre Company. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Whether it manifests in a poetic speech or a comic routine, there’s a lack of verve and focus to Morisseau’s vision of American industry. At moments, you can see her talent for depicting the political and economic forces that are destroying whole communities, and her care for the subject material is obvious. But like so many socially concerned, contemporary American dramas,\u003cem> Skeleton Crew\u003c/em> has no clear purpose. That it ends both sentimentally and ironically is an indictment of a play that should have been a direct indictment of a grotesque economic and human failure in Detroit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Skeleton Crew’ runs through Sunday, Feb. 18, at Marin Theatre Co. For tickets and information, \u003ca href=\"http://www.marintheatre.org\">click here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>There are scenes in Dominique Morisseau’s \u003cem>Skeleton Crew\u003c/em>, currently receiving its Bay Area premiere at the Marin Theatre Company under Jade King Carroll’s assured direction, that belong in a terrific play about Detroit auto workers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The most striking of these is when Reggie, a foreman proud of his ascension to middle management (another fantastic Lance Gardner performance), becomes so angered and infuriated by his company’s inhumane polices that he can’t remember whether he’s committed an act of violence or not. When it becomes clear that he hasn’t, it’s also clear just how much he wishes he had — and how significant the idea is, for him, of lashing out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Reggie and the other workers he supervises, the auto plant has become a mystery. It’s 2008. They can feel the precarious nature of the local and national economies. Everyone is in flux, and they’re all navigating an increasingly precarious future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13823626\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13823626\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517646793849-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Faye (Margo Hall) and Reggie (Lance Gardner) try to figure out how to navigate a tough situation in 'The Skeleton Crew' at the Marin Theatre Compa\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517646793849-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517646793849-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517646793849-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517646793849-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517646793849-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517646793849-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517646793849-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517646793849-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517646793849-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517646793849-520x293.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517646793849.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Faye (Margo Hall) and Reggie (Lance Gardner) try to navigate a tough situation in ‘Skeleton Crew’ at the Marin Theatre Company. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Faye, a longtime employee, cancer survivor, and union rep, has less than a year to get a full-benefits package; Dez, young, hardworking, and angry, is plotting his way to opening his own garage; and Shanita, incredibly talented and committed to her job, is pregnant and single. Morisseau catches in these characters the way work is intimately connected to the soul, and the natural resting place of dreams. (Or here, fractured dreams.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What’s fascinating about this up-and-down play is how much more effective it is when Morisseau forgets the bigger themes and sticks with the granular details of life in an auto plant. Reggie and Dez argue about protocol; Dez and Shanita share a particularly tasty dish of potatoes; Faye struggles over when to reveal inside information about the plant closing. Without explanation or adornment, we understand everything.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The problem is that Morriseau doesn’t leave it at that. An audience can sense whole worlds in just a few details, but rather than letting us follow the natural course of everyday life and coming to hard conclusions about the economic and political conditions of America, Morriseau too often indulges in poetic flourishes that strain for significance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13823624\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13823624\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Cunningham2_HiRes-e1517646365804-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Shanita (Tristan Cunningham) starts to realize the full scope of the situation in 'The Skeleton Crew' at the Marin Theatre Company.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Cunningham2_HiRes-e1517646365804-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Cunningham2_HiRes-e1517646365804-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Cunningham2_HiRes-e1517646365804-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Cunningham2_HiRes-e1517646365804-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Cunningham2_HiRes-e1517646365804-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Cunningham2_HiRes-e1517646365804-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Cunningham2_HiRes-e1517646365804-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Cunningham2_HiRes-e1517646365804-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Cunningham2_HiRes-e1517646365804-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Cunningham2_HiRes-e1517646365804-520x293.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Cunningham2_HiRes-e1517646365804.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Shanita (Tristan Cunningham) starts to realize the full scope of the situation in ‘Skeleton Crew’ at the Marin Theatre Company. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Shanita tells Faye that her Big Mama “used to say dreams from a pregnant woman actually more like prophecies,” and then recounts one that includes an “empty space with nothin’ in it [and] dust covering everything.” As she calls out to people who “don’t answer,” a strong wind comes and the “dust is scrambled in a group of letters that don’t spell nothin’.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s at moments like these (there’s a second act speech about traffic that operates in the same way) that the play loses its bite. Shanita’s speech is an artistic effect, rather than an interrogation of what happens to people under intense economic pressures. It stands apart from the play’s concerns and draws our attention away from the real drama: a war over money, resources, and civic responsibility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Morisseau knows that there’s a problem in Detroit — in its auto plants, in the way race informs economic decisions, and in the way corporations pretend that plant closures are abstract rather than human decisions. But she, along with much of the mainstream of American theater, hasn’t figured out how to give these insights voice outside of the most limited artistic choices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13823628\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13823628\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_HiRes-e1517647189753-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Dez (Christian Thompson) and Faye (Margo Hall) engage in a little workplace banter during a game of cards in 'The Skeleton Crew' at the Marin Theater Company.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_HiRes-e1517647189753-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_HiRes-e1517647189753-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_HiRes-e1517647189753-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_HiRes-e1517647189753-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_HiRes-e1517647189753-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_HiRes-e1517647189753-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_HiRes-e1517647189753-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_HiRes-e1517647189753-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_HiRes-e1517647189753-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_HiRes-e1517647189753-520x293.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_HiRes-e1517647189753.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dez (Christian Thompson) and Faye (Margo Hall) engage in a little workplace banter during a game of cards in ‘Skeleton Crew’ at the Marin Theater Company. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>There are elements of the crime thriller in\u003cem> Skeleton Crew\u003c/em>, but the genre it leans on the most is the workplace sitcom. When the play moves away from direct conflict over economic issues, which is when it is at its best, the action invariably falls back into comic bits: menopause jokes, nicotine patch jokes, baby-naming jokes, boss jokes, sexual harassment jokes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Humor is crucial to art and social change, but its deployment here dulls our political senses. In the familiar patter and setup of punchlines, we’re caught in the soothing rhythms of network television. And that keeps us at a distance from understanding what this particular situation, the Detroit auto crisis, should demand of us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Margo Hall’s Faye is perhaps indicative of the many tensions here. There are moments where Hall gives a searing and controlled performance. You look into her eyes and you see a woman who, at 50, has just had it, and is ready to let the world destroy her. But too often what we get is a performance of a performance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s a scene where Faye, who is living in the plant, gets dressed for work as she listens to an Aretha Franklin song. Nothing quite goes right, from fastening her bra strap to applying deodorant. As a bit, it’s a slick audience-pleasing piece of comic acting, but it tells us nothing of Faye’s life or the factory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13823630\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13823630\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517647447834-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Faye (Margo Hall) interrupts a heated argument between Dez (Christian Thompson) and Reggie (Lance Gardner) in 'The Skeleton Crew' at the Marin Theatre Company.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517647447834-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517647447834-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517647447834-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517647447834-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517647447834-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517647447834-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517647447834-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517647447834-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517647447834-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517647447834-520x293.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/02/MTC_SC_Thompson_Hall_Gardner_HiRes-e1517647447834.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Faye (Margo Hall) interrupts a heated argument between Dez (Christian Thompson) and Reggie (Lance Gardner) in ‘The Skeleton Crew’ at the Marin Theatre Company. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Whether it manifests in a poetic speech or a comic routine, there’s a lack of verve and focus to Morisseau’s vision of American industry. At moments, you can see her talent for depicting the political and economic forces that are destroying whole communities, and her care for the subject material is obvious. But like so many socially concerned, contemporary American dramas,\u003cem> Skeleton Crew\u003c/em> has no clear purpose. That it ends both sentimentally and ironically is an indictment of a play that should have been a direct indictment of a grotesque economic and human failure in Detroit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Skeleton Crew’ runs through Sunday, Feb. 18, at Marin Theatre Co. For tickets and information, \u003ca href=\"http://www.marintheatre.org\">click here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "The Mysteries of Harold Pinter's 'Birthday Party' Change Over Time",
"headTitle": "The Mysteries of Harold Pinter’s ‘Birthday Party’ Change Over Time | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Harold Pinter’s \u003cem>The Birthday Party\u003c/em>, receiving a slick and professional production at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.act-sf.org\">American Conservatory Theater\u003c/a> under Carey Perloff’s direction through Feb. 4, is a curious cultural artifact. Premiering at the Cambridge Arts Theater in 1958, the play snaked its way to a London opening that turned into one of those disastrous cause célèbres that artists can only dream of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Closing after eight performances to dismissive reviews, the play’s reputation was buoyed and bolstered by Harold Hobson’s after-closing take in \u003cem>The Sunday Times\u003c/em>, proclaiming that Pinter “possesses the most original, disturbing and arresting talent in theatrical London.” By 1960, \u003cem>The Birthday Party\u003c/em> was broadcast on British television to great acclaim, and Pinter was well on his way to major playwright status and a \u003ca href=\"https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2005/\">Stockholm christening\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pinter was the revolution that mid-century audiences wanted — and for almost 60 years he, along with Samuel Beckett, has stood for an ongoing theatrical revolt against conventional meaning. \u003cem>The Birthday Party\u003c/em> is a wonderful, early career case for how simple and allusive his plays can be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13819731\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13819731\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty2-e1516659717100-800x451.jpg\" alt=\"Be careful what gifts you accept Stanley (Firdous Bamji), even if they're from your landlady Peg (Judith Ivey). Everything's dangerous in Harold Pinter's 'The Birthday Party' at ACT.\" width=\"800\" height=\"451\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty2-e1516659717100-800x451.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty2-e1516659717100-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty2-e1516659717100-768x433.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty2-e1516659717100-1020x575.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty2-e1516659717100-1920x1083.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty2-e1516659717100-1180x666.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty2-e1516659717100-960x542.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty2-e1516659717100-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty2-e1516659717100-375x212.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty2-e1516659717100-520x293.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty2-e1516659717100.jpg 2042w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Be careful what gifts you accept, Stanley (Firdous Bamji), even if they’re from your landlady Peg (Judith Ivey). Everything’s dangerous in Harold Pinter’s ‘The Birthday Party’ at ACT. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Stanley Webber (played by Firdous Bamji), a former pianist who is wasting away his days at a decaying, seaside boarding house, suddenly finds himself subject to an investigation by a couple of maybe-gangsters — McCann and Goldberg (Marco Barricelli and Scott Wentworth). And to top it off, they and his elderly landlady Meg (Judith Ivey), who’s more than a little smitten with Stanley, are intent on throwing him an unwanted birthday party.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The play comes to a rather violent conclusion, though not a particularly enlightening one. We never know what’s motivating these characters, though they all seem terrified of unknown forces, even the villains. And so we might ask in these tense times, where many of us dream of political, aesthetic, and cultural change, just what the value is of Pinter’s assault on sense.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As strangely as the play ends, its beginning is rooted in a rather mundane realism. You can feel the stench of the everyday in the boarding house of Meg and her husband Petey (Dan Hiatt); cornflakes, newspapers, moldy tea, fried bread. It’s a stultifying scene and one any sensible person would try to escape.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13819736\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13819736\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_009-e1516661049896-800x452.jpg\" alt=\"Petey (Dan Hiatt) and Meg (Judith Ivey) go through the breakfast routine in Harold Pinter's 'The Birthday Party' at ACT.\" width=\"800\" height=\"452\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_009-e1516661049896-800x452.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_009-e1516661049896-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_009-e1516661049896-768x434.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_009-e1516661049896-1020x576.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_009-e1516661049896-1920x1085.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_009-e1516661049896-1180x667.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_009-e1516661049896-960x542.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_009-e1516661049896-240x136.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_009-e1516661049896-375x212.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_009-e1516661049896-520x294.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_009-e1516661049896.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Petey (Dan Hiatt) and Meg (Judith Ivey) go through the breakfast routine in Harold Pinter’s ‘The Birthday Party’ at ACT. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Here is the British drawing-room farce gone to seed, the implosion of the delicate, domestic dramas of Terrance Rattigan, and the advent of mysteries that Agatha Christie (whose \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mousetrap\">\u003cem>Mousetrap\u003c/em>\u003c/a> was already up and running in 1958, and raking in the dough) could never solve. Pinter has his eye on the cosmic and the unanswerable, but he starts in the dirt, and that’s always promising.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perloff’s production trades in the initial grime for a dithering cuteness. Nina Ball’s set is a little too clean and unworn for what Pinter’s after, and Judith Ivey’s Meg too much of a winning performance. She’s absolutely expert in her delivery, but she misses what the script calls for: Meg’s disgusting personification of her environment, a seedy slattern on the make who can’t keep her hands off her one boarder. There’s a nasty edge to Pinter’s work that the ACT production dulls at the onset. Why produce \u003cem>The Birthday Party\u003c/em> if you aren’t going to wallow with the pigs?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And yet there are pleasures to be had with both play and production: longtime ACT stalwart Marco Barricelli and a dandy Scott Wentworth make for a terrific McCann and Goldberg, especially in the play’s rousing second act that ends in the birthday party Stanley wishes to avoid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13819733\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13819733\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_129-e1516660088375-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"McCann (Marco Barricelli) and Goldberg (Scott Wentworth) give Stanley (Firdou Bamji) the once over in Harold Pinter's 'The Birthday Party' at ACT.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_129-e1516660088375-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_129-e1516660088375-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_129-e1516660088375-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_129-e1516660088375-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_129-e1516660088375-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_129-e1516660088375-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_129-e1516660088375-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_129-e1516660088375-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_129-e1516660088375-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_129-e1516660088375-520x293.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_129-e1516660088375.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">McCann (Marco Barricelli) and Goldberg (Scott Wentworth) give Stanley (Firdou Bamji) the once-over in Harold Pinter’s ‘The Birthday Party’ at ACT. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Watch the way Barricelli sings McCann’s Irish love song, or methodically tears a newspaper to pieces, or tries to think. The actions (both of character and actor) are so specific and self-contained that they possess a sense of reason and logic. We don’t worry about what we don’t understand — like Meg and Petey’s cheap decor, we simply accept the overwhelming reality before us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One can get lost in the joy that Wentworth’s Goldberg takes in playing both psychological and actual games. He practically waltzes through a round of Blind Man’s Bluff, while simultaneously torturing Stanley and seducing a young woman. His eyes are a riot of childish opportunities, as if the holiday spirit had taken a shine to evil. Whatever his motives, he’s dazzlingly alive, and there’s nothing meaningless about that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Faced with precise action and an abundance of detail, we can accept a world filled with unexplained mysteries. It’s when that loss of sense becomes an idea, a philosophical stance, or worse, an aesthetic style that we should revolt and ask real questions. It’s not surprising that McCann and Goldberg reduce Stanley to a grunting, spastic mute; the problem is that the play rushes and forces its way to that conclusion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13819734\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13819734\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty4-e1516660410786-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Goldberg (Scott Wentworth) dances around Peg (Judith Ivey) with the spirit of the devil in his eye during a game of Blind Man's Bluff in Harold Pinter's 'The Birthday Party' at ACT.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty4-e1516660410786-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty4-e1516660410786-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty4-e1516660410786-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty4-e1516660410786-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty4-e1516660410786-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty4-e1516660410786-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty4-e1516660410786-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty4-e1516660410786-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty4-e1516660410786-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty4-e1516660410786-520x293.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty4-e1516660410786.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Goldberg (Scott Wentworth) dances around Peg (Judith Ivey) with the spirit of the devil in his eye during a game of Blind Man’s Bluff in Harold Pinter’s ‘The Birthday Party’ at ACT. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>By the third act, Pinter rejects the richness and precision of the first two, and indulges in a surface absurdity that actively eschews sense. Whatever was motivating these characters (and I’m not saying we need to know) is lost to a series of arbitrary and random stabs at high style absurdist drivel. The whole thing collapses far before Stanley does.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A less reverential production, such as \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/13/theater/review-the-room-a-pinter-play-that-wont-be-onstage-for-long.html\">The Wooster Group’s\u003c/a> take on Pinter’s \u003cem>The Room\u003c/em>, might have found a more potent third-act solution. Instead, what we get here are the limits of illogic and the remains of a 60-year revolution. It’s a fine enough presentation as the status quo goes, but you just feel there’s so much more to be had — in the world, and in Pinter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cem>The Birthday Party\u003c/em> runs through Sunday, Feb. 4 at the Geary Theater in San Francisco. For tickets and information, \u003ca href=\"http://www.act-sf.org\">see here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Revolutionary in 1958, the play receives a clean, professional production at A.C.T. under the direction of Carey Perloff, and means something entirely different in 2017.",
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"description": "Revolutionary in 1958, the play receives a clean, professional production at A.C.T. under the direction of Carey Perloff, and means something entirely different in 2017.",
"title": "The Mysteries of Harold Pinter's 'Birthday Party' Change Over Time | KQED",
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"headline": "The Mysteries of Harold Pinter's 'Birthday Party' Change Over Time",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Harold Pinter’s \u003cem>The Birthday Party\u003c/em>, receiving a slick and professional production at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.act-sf.org\">American Conservatory Theater\u003c/a> under Carey Perloff’s direction through Feb. 4, is a curious cultural artifact. Premiering at the Cambridge Arts Theater in 1958, the play snaked its way to a London opening that turned into one of those disastrous cause célèbres that artists can only dream of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Closing after eight performances to dismissive reviews, the play’s reputation was buoyed and bolstered by Harold Hobson’s after-closing take in \u003cem>The Sunday Times\u003c/em>, proclaiming that Pinter “possesses the most original, disturbing and arresting talent in theatrical London.” By 1960, \u003cem>The Birthday Party\u003c/em> was broadcast on British television to great acclaim, and Pinter was well on his way to major playwright status and a \u003ca href=\"https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2005/\">Stockholm christening\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pinter was the revolution that mid-century audiences wanted — and for almost 60 years he, along with Samuel Beckett, has stood for an ongoing theatrical revolt against conventional meaning. \u003cem>The Birthday Party\u003c/em> is a wonderful, early career case for how simple and allusive his plays can be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13819731\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13819731\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty2-e1516659717100-800x451.jpg\" alt=\"Be careful what gifts you accept Stanley (Firdous Bamji), even if they're from your landlady Peg (Judith Ivey). Everything's dangerous in Harold Pinter's 'The Birthday Party' at ACT.\" width=\"800\" height=\"451\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty2-e1516659717100-800x451.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty2-e1516659717100-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty2-e1516659717100-768x433.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty2-e1516659717100-1020x575.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty2-e1516659717100-1920x1083.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty2-e1516659717100-1180x666.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty2-e1516659717100-960x542.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty2-e1516659717100-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty2-e1516659717100-375x212.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty2-e1516659717100-520x293.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty2-e1516659717100.jpg 2042w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Be careful what gifts you accept, Stanley (Firdous Bamji), even if they’re from your landlady Peg (Judith Ivey). Everything’s dangerous in Harold Pinter’s ‘The Birthday Party’ at ACT. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Stanley Webber (played by Firdous Bamji), a former pianist who is wasting away his days at a decaying, seaside boarding house, suddenly finds himself subject to an investigation by a couple of maybe-gangsters — McCann and Goldberg (Marco Barricelli and Scott Wentworth). And to top it off, they and his elderly landlady Meg (Judith Ivey), who’s more than a little smitten with Stanley, are intent on throwing him an unwanted birthday party.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The play comes to a rather violent conclusion, though not a particularly enlightening one. We never know what’s motivating these characters, though they all seem terrified of unknown forces, even the villains. And so we might ask in these tense times, where many of us dream of political, aesthetic, and cultural change, just what the value is of Pinter’s assault on sense.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As strangely as the play ends, its beginning is rooted in a rather mundane realism. You can feel the stench of the everyday in the boarding house of Meg and her husband Petey (Dan Hiatt); cornflakes, newspapers, moldy tea, fried bread. It’s a stultifying scene and one any sensible person would try to escape.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13819736\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13819736\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_009-e1516661049896-800x452.jpg\" alt=\"Petey (Dan Hiatt) and Meg (Judith Ivey) go through the breakfast routine in Harold Pinter's 'The Birthday Party' at ACT.\" width=\"800\" height=\"452\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_009-e1516661049896-800x452.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_009-e1516661049896-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_009-e1516661049896-768x434.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_009-e1516661049896-1020x576.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_009-e1516661049896-1920x1085.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_009-e1516661049896-1180x667.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_009-e1516661049896-960x542.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_009-e1516661049896-240x136.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_009-e1516661049896-375x212.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_009-e1516661049896-520x294.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_009-e1516661049896.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Petey (Dan Hiatt) and Meg (Judith Ivey) go through the breakfast routine in Harold Pinter’s ‘The Birthday Party’ at ACT. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Here is the British drawing-room farce gone to seed, the implosion of the delicate, domestic dramas of Terrance Rattigan, and the advent of mysteries that Agatha Christie (whose \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mousetrap\">\u003cem>Mousetrap\u003c/em>\u003c/a> was already up and running in 1958, and raking in the dough) could never solve. Pinter has his eye on the cosmic and the unanswerable, but he starts in the dirt, and that’s always promising.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perloff’s production trades in the initial grime for a dithering cuteness. Nina Ball’s set is a little too clean and unworn for what Pinter’s after, and Judith Ivey’s Meg too much of a winning performance. She’s absolutely expert in her delivery, but she misses what the script calls for: Meg’s disgusting personification of her environment, a seedy slattern on the make who can’t keep her hands off her one boarder. There’s a nasty edge to Pinter’s work that the ACT production dulls at the onset. Why produce \u003cem>The Birthday Party\u003c/em> if you aren’t going to wallow with the pigs?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And yet there are pleasures to be had with both play and production: longtime ACT stalwart Marco Barricelli and a dandy Scott Wentworth make for a terrific McCann and Goldberg, especially in the play’s rousing second act that ends in the birthday party Stanley wishes to avoid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13819733\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13819733\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_129-e1516660088375-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"McCann (Marco Barricelli) and Goldberg (Scott Wentworth) give Stanley (Firdou Bamji) the once over in Harold Pinter's 'The Birthday Party' at ACT.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_129-e1516660088375-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_129-e1516660088375-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_129-e1516660088375-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_129-e1516660088375-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_129-e1516660088375-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_129-e1516660088375-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_129-e1516660088375-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_129-e1516660088375-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_129-e1516660088375-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_129-e1516660088375-520x293.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/ACT_Birthday_129-e1516660088375.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">McCann (Marco Barricelli) and Goldberg (Scott Wentworth) give Stanley (Firdou Bamji) the once-over in Harold Pinter’s ‘The Birthday Party’ at ACT. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Watch the way Barricelli sings McCann’s Irish love song, or methodically tears a newspaper to pieces, or tries to think. The actions (both of character and actor) are so specific and self-contained that they possess a sense of reason and logic. We don’t worry about what we don’t understand — like Meg and Petey’s cheap decor, we simply accept the overwhelming reality before us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One can get lost in the joy that Wentworth’s Goldberg takes in playing both psychological and actual games. He practically waltzes through a round of Blind Man’s Bluff, while simultaneously torturing Stanley and seducing a young woman. His eyes are a riot of childish opportunities, as if the holiday spirit had taken a shine to evil. Whatever his motives, he’s dazzlingly alive, and there’s nothing meaningless about that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Faced with precise action and an abundance of detail, we can accept a world filled with unexplained mysteries. It’s when that loss of sense becomes an idea, a philosophical stance, or worse, an aesthetic style that we should revolt and ask real questions. It’s not surprising that McCann and Goldberg reduce Stanley to a grunting, spastic mute; the problem is that the play rushes and forces its way to that conclusion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13819734\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13819734\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty4-e1516660410786-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Goldberg (Scott Wentworth) dances around Peg (Judith Ivey) with the spirit of the devil in his eye during a game of Blind Man's Bluff in Harold Pinter's 'The Birthday Party' at ACT.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty4-e1516660410786-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty4-e1516660410786-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty4-e1516660410786-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty4-e1516660410786-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty4-e1516660410786-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty4-e1516660410786-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty4-e1516660410786-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty4-e1516660410786-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty4-e1516660410786-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty4-e1516660410786-520x293.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/BirthdayParty4-e1516660410786.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Goldberg (Scott Wentworth) dances around Peg (Judith Ivey) with the spirit of the devil in his eye during a game of Blind Man’s Bluff in Harold Pinter’s ‘The Birthday Party’ at ACT. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>By the third act, Pinter rejects the richness and precision of the first two, and indulges in a surface absurdity that actively eschews sense. Whatever was motivating these characters (and I’m not saying we need to know) is lost to a series of arbitrary and random stabs at high style absurdist drivel. The whole thing collapses far before Stanley does.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A less reverential production, such as \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/13/theater/review-the-room-a-pinter-play-that-wont-be-onstage-for-long.html\">The Wooster Group’s\u003c/a> take on Pinter’s \u003cem>The Room\u003c/em>, might have found a more potent third-act solution. Instead, what we get here are the limits of illogic and the remains of a 60-year revolution. It’s a fine enough presentation as the status quo goes, but you just feel there’s so much more to be had — in the world, and in Pinter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cem>The Birthday Party\u003c/em> runs through Sunday, Feb. 4 at the Geary Theater in San Francisco. For tickets and information, \u003ca href=\"http://www.act-sf.org\">see here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "‘Bondage’ Unleashes a Destabilizing Force Between Black and White",
"headTitle": "‘Bondage’ Unleashes a Destabilizing Force Between Black and White | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>America sometimes seems an endless conversation between black and white, as if slavery, the Civil War, the emergence of the Klan, the Civil Rights Movement, the southern strategy, Afrofuturism, and the tiki-torch return of white nationalism were one long dance of opposites. That rigid oppositional framing, though, is shaky, and especially in the face, the hair, and the skin of all Americans who slip between black and white.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so part of the pleasure of AlterTheater’s bare-bones, well-acted production of Star Finch’s gothic shocker \u003cem>Bondage\u003c/em>, ably directed by Elizabeth Carter, is the way Finch catches the destabilizing force of simply being neither black nor white. As William Carlos Williams memorably summed it up, “the pure products of America go crazy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13819307\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13819307 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage2-e1516174576801-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Zuri (Dezi Soléy) is a destabilizing force just by being alive in 'Bondage' by Star Finch.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage2-e1516174576801-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage2-e1516174576801-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage2-e1516174576801-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage2-e1516174576801-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage2-e1516174576801-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage2-e1516174576801-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage2-e1516174576801-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage2-e1516174576801-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage2-e1516174576801-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage2-e1516174576801-520x293.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage2-e1516174576801.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Zuri (Dezi Soléy) is a destabilizing force just by being alive in ‘Bondage’ by Star Finch. \u003ccite>(Photo: David Allen)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Finch places us in an island nether world some time before the Civil War, and begins with the outlines of a simple tale — 13-year old Emily’s father and aunt are trying to find her a suitable husband, though she would rather play with her cousin, Zuri, a mulatta slave and her handmaiden. The play begins with the cousins staring off at the distant sea. Zuri dances a bit, swaying to music of her own making, and Emily wants that too: to move as her cousin moves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a canny take on white desire. Zuri can barely understand Emily’s needs or has any inclination to fulfill them — “There’s nothing to teach,” she offhandedly remarks. Yet we know from a thousand movies that it’s supposedly Zuri’s job to teach her white cousin to dance — \u003ca href=\"http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/SaveTheLastDance\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">that’s the trope\u003c/a>. It’s a risible notion if there ever were one, but one deeply entrenched in the American psyche. Finch doesn’t so much critique the cliché as makes it inoperable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One might describe \u003cem>Bondage\u003c/em> as an unlearning play. Emily, in what she sees as an act of kindness, wishes she could turn her cousin white; Zuri responds, “But my skin is pale now. How much whiter would you wish me?” In her refusal or inability to understand the world around her, Zuri turns everything into an absurdity. That’s part of the brilliance of the play: you can’t help but see our present world as the inhuman result of the craziness she can’t get her mind around.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13819304\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13819304\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage1-e1516173777328-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"The hand of Azucar (Cathleen Riddley) tries to protect and silence Zuri (Dezi Soléy) in 'Bondage' by Star Finch.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage1-e1516173777328-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage1-e1516173777328-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage1-e1516173777328-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage1-e1516173777328-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage1-e1516173777328-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage1-e1516173777328-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage1-e1516173777328-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage1-e1516173777328-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage1-e1516173777328-520x292.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage1-e1516173777328.jpg 1602w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The hand of Azucar (Cathleen Riddley) tries to protect and silence Zuri (Dezi Soléy) in ‘Bondage’ by Star Finch. \u003ccite>(Photo: David Allen)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When Emily’s father Phillip looks at Zuri, he’s not only caught in the allure of desires he feels are illicit and enticing — her age (13), her heritage, his daughter’s truest friend — but also a way out of a meaningless life. For him, the indeterminate nature of her race becomes a sign of another way, an escape from limits and the opening up of new possibilities. One of Finch’s slyest jokes in the script is Phillip’s crazy wish to take Zuri to Bombay, where they can be artists together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In late 18th century America, Phillip’s dream is ludicrous, but enticing enough for Zuri to wonder just how real it might be. “What do you think life might be like in Bombay?” she asks Azucar, an older mulatta slave, “Could I pass for one of them [whites]?” In the world Finch creates in \u003cem>Bondage\u003c/em>, it takes a sexual predator to see a way outside injustice and grasp for new ways of thinking and being.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zuri is both too much and not enough of everything. Caught between father and daughter, adult and child, white and black, slave and relative (a cousin that Emily wishes were a sister), she unbalances the world by her mere presence. If you’ve read your gothic titans (the Brontë sisters and Daphne du Maurier), you know that the world, society, and its designated authorities will and must redress that imbalance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13819309\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13819309\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage6-e1516174930269-800x462.jpg\" alt=\"Azucar (Cathleen Ridley) watches in the background as Aunt Ruby (Emilie Talbot) goes in for the kill in 'Bondage' by Star Finch.\" width=\"800\" height=\"462\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage6-e1516174930269-800x462.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage6-e1516174930269-160x92.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage6-e1516174930269-768x444.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage6-e1516174930269-960x554.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage6-e1516174930269-240x139.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage6-e1516174930269-375x217.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage6-e1516174930269-520x300.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage6-e1516174930269.jpg 1018w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Azucar (Cathleen Ridley) watches in the background as Aunt Ruby (Emilie Talbot) goes in for the kill in ‘Bondage’ by Star Finch.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In \u003cem>Bondage\u003c/em> the redressing comes from Emily’s Aunt Ruby — Phillip’s sister-in-law, and, rather obliquely, Zuri’s half-aunt. Both Zuri and Emily’s mothers died under mysterious circumstances, and Aunt Ruby enters the scene as a restoration of the maternal and social order. Only this order is out of control and rule-bound to the point of sadism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Finch has a keen eye for how inbred and savage America’s racial hierarchies are, but she also takes a perverse pleasure in setting up and watching evil take its course. Aunt Ruby is more than an obvious villain: she’s a theatrical wellspring of insidious joy and chaos, and incisively performed by Emilie Talbot. The effect isn’t exactly sympathy for the devil, just sympathy for how difficult the maintenance of injustice is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13819311\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13819311\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage3-e1516176085904-800x451.jpg\" alt=\"Zuri (Dezi Soléy) knows there's only one way to escape in 'Bondage' by Star Finch.\" width=\"800\" height=\"451\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage3-e1516176085904-800x451.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage3-e1516176085904-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage3-e1516176085904-768x433.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage3-e1516176085904-1020x575.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage3-e1516176085904-1180x666.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage3-e1516176085904-960x541.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage3-e1516176085904-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage3-e1516176085904-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage3-e1516176085904-520x293.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage3-e1516176085904.jpg 1633w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Zuri (Dezi Soléy) knows there’s only one way to escape in ‘Bondage’ by Star Finch.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>At the point Zuri informs Emily that she thinks Aunt Ruby “intends to kill” her, there’s a part of you that says, of course, that would right the books, untangle the mess before us, and give that poor sadistic woman a rest. It’s probably the ugliest of the many ugly thoughts that \u003cem>Bondage \u003c/em>unleashes, and an unsparing depiction of the evil of logic, systems, and rigid forms of racial classification.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though Finch’s ambitious play falters towards the end, Zuri’s story is a vicious and unsettling account of the vast, shifty landscape that is neither black nor white. We might call that landscape America if we could only see it for more than a moment. What we do see, though, is a shock to the system and well worth seeking out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Bondage’ runs through Jan. 20 in rep with ‘\u003cem>Cow Pie Bingo\u003c/em>‘ at the Costume Shop in San Francisco. For tickets and information, \u003ca href=\"https://www.altertheater.org\">click here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"headline": "‘Bondage’ Unleashes a Destabilizing Force Between Black and White",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>America sometimes seems an endless conversation between black and white, as if slavery, the Civil War, the emergence of the Klan, the Civil Rights Movement, the southern strategy, Afrofuturism, and the tiki-torch return of white nationalism were one long dance of opposites. That rigid oppositional framing, though, is shaky, and especially in the face, the hair, and the skin of all Americans who slip between black and white.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so part of the pleasure of AlterTheater’s bare-bones, well-acted production of Star Finch’s gothic shocker \u003cem>Bondage\u003c/em>, ably directed by Elizabeth Carter, is the way Finch catches the destabilizing force of simply being neither black nor white. As William Carlos Williams memorably summed it up, “the pure products of America go crazy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13819307\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13819307 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage2-e1516174576801-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Zuri (Dezi Soléy) is a destabilizing force just by being alive in 'Bondage' by Star Finch.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage2-e1516174576801-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage2-e1516174576801-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage2-e1516174576801-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage2-e1516174576801-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage2-e1516174576801-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage2-e1516174576801-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage2-e1516174576801-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage2-e1516174576801-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage2-e1516174576801-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage2-e1516174576801-520x293.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage2-e1516174576801.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Zuri (Dezi Soléy) is a destabilizing force just by being alive in ‘Bondage’ by Star Finch. \u003ccite>(Photo: David Allen)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Finch places us in an island nether world some time before the Civil War, and begins with the outlines of a simple tale — 13-year old Emily’s father and aunt are trying to find her a suitable husband, though she would rather play with her cousin, Zuri, a mulatta slave and her handmaiden. The play begins with the cousins staring off at the distant sea. Zuri dances a bit, swaying to music of her own making, and Emily wants that too: to move as her cousin moves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a canny take on white desire. Zuri can barely understand Emily’s needs or has any inclination to fulfill them — “There’s nothing to teach,” she offhandedly remarks. Yet we know from a thousand movies that it’s supposedly Zuri’s job to teach her white cousin to dance — \u003ca href=\"http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/SaveTheLastDance\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">that’s the trope\u003c/a>. It’s a risible notion if there ever were one, but one deeply entrenched in the American psyche. Finch doesn’t so much critique the cliché as makes it inoperable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One might describe \u003cem>Bondage\u003c/em> as an unlearning play. Emily, in what she sees as an act of kindness, wishes she could turn her cousin white; Zuri responds, “But my skin is pale now. How much whiter would you wish me?” In her refusal or inability to understand the world around her, Zuri turns everything into an absurdity. That’s part of the brilliance of the play: you can’t help but see our present world as the inhuman result of the craziness she can’t get her mind around.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13819304\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13819304\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage1-e1516173777328-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"The hand of Azucar (Cathleen Riddley) tries to protect and silence Zuri (Dezi Soléy) in 'Bondage' by Star Finch.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage1-e1516173777328-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage1-e1516173777328-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage1-e1516173777328-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage1-e1516173777328-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage1-e1516173777328-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage1-e1516173777328-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage1-e1516173777328-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage1-e1516173777328-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage1-e1516173777328-520x292.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage1-e1516173777328.jpg 1602w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The hand of Azucar (Cathleen Riddley) tries to protect and silence Zuri (Dezi Soléy) in ‘Bondage’ by Star Finch. \u003ccite>(Photo: David Allen)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When Emily’s father Phillip looks at Zuri, he’s not only caught in the allure of desires he feels are illicit and enticing — her age (13), her heritage, his daughter’s truest friend — but also a way out of a meaningless life. For him, the indeterminate nature of her race becomes a sign of another way, an escape from limits and the opening up of new possibilities. One of Finch’s slyest jokes in the script is Phillip’s crazy wish to take Zuri to Bombay, where they can be artists together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In late 18th century America, Phillip’s dream is ludicrous, but enticing enough for Zuri to wonder just how real it might be. “What do you think life might be like in Bombay?” she asks Azucar, an older mulatta slave, “Could I pass for one of them [whites]?” In the world Finch creates in \u003cem>Bondage\u003c/em>, it takes a sexual predator to see a way outside injustice and grasp for new ways of thinking and being.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zuri is both too much and not enough of everything. Caught between father and daughter, adult and child, white and black, slave and relative (a cousin that Emily wishes were a sister), she unbalances the world by her mere presence. If you’ve read your gothic titans (the Brontë sisters and Daphne du Maurier), you know that the world, society, and its designated authorities will and must redress that imbalance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13819309\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13819309\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage6-e1516174930269-800x462.jpg\" alt=\"Azucar (Cathleen Ridley) watches in the background as Aunt Ruby (Emilie Talbot) goes in for the kill in 'Bondage' by Star Finch.\" width=\"800\" height=\"462\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage6-e1516174930269-800x462.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage6-e1516174930269-160x92.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage6-e1516174930269-768x444.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage6-e1516174930269-960x554.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage6-e1516174930269-240x139.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage6-e1516174930269-375x217.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage6-e1516174930269-520x300.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage6-e1516174930269.jpg 1018w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Azucar (Cathleen Ridley) watches in the background as Aunt Ruby (Emilie Talbot) goes in for the kill in ‘Bondage’ by Star Finch.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In \u003cem>Bondage\u003c/em> the redressing comes from Emily’s Aunt Ruby — Phillip’s sister-in-law, and, rather obliquely, Zuri’s half-aunt. Both Zuri and Emily’s mothers died under mysterious circumstances, and Aunt Ruby enters the scene as a restoration of the maternal and social order. Only this order is out of control and rule-bound to the point of sadism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Finch has a keen eye for how inbred and savage America’s racial hierarchies are, but she also takes a perverse pleasure in setting up and watching evil take its course. Aunt Ruby is more than an obvious villain: she’s a theatrical wellspring of insidious joy and chaos, and incisively performed by Emilie Talbot. The effect isn’t exactly sympathy for the devil, just sympathy for how difficult the maintenance of injustice is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13819311\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13819311\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage3-e1516176085904-800x451.jpg\" alt=\"Zuri (Dezi Soléy) knows there's only one way to escape in 'Bondage' by Star Finch.\" width=\"800\" height=\"451\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage3-e1516176085904-800x451.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage3-e1516176085904-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage3-e1516176085904-768x433.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage3-e1516176085904-1020x575.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage3-e1516176085904-1180x666.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage3-e1516176085904-960x541.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage3-e1516176085904-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage3-e1516176085904-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage3-e1516176085904-520x293.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/01/Bondage3-e1516176085904.jpg 1633w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Zuri (Dezi Soléy) knows there’s only one way to escape in ‘Bondage’ by Star Finch.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>At the point Zuri informs Emily that she thinks Aunt Ruby “intends to kill” her, there’s a part of you that says, of course, that would right the books, untangle the mess before us, and give that poor sadistic woman a rest. It’s probably the ugliest of the many ugly thoughts that \u003cem>Bondage \u003c/em>unleashes, and an unsparing depiction of the evil of logic, systems, and rigid forms of racial classification.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though Finch’s ambitious play falters towards the end, Zuri’s story is a vicious and unsettling account of the vast, shifty landscape that is neither black nor white. We might call that landscape America if we could only see it for more than a moment. What we do see, though, is a shock to the system and well worth seeking out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Bondage’ runs through Jan. 20 in rep with ‘\u003cem>Cow Pie Bingo\u003c/em>‘ at the Costume Shop in San Francisco. For tickets and information, \u003ca href=\"https://www.altertheater.org\">click here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "the-best-bay-area-theater-of-2017",
"title": "The Best Bay Area Theater of 2017",
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"content": "\u003cp>In these end days of the year and perhaps the country, we might ask, just to while away the time, what we want from our American plays.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a child’s experiment, really, as there’s no theater imaginable that might save us from the disasters looming before us. Still, we might ask of our American playwrights that they perhaps point out a way, a path to follow that might have escaped our sight, or to paint a sign in the woods that might lead us to a new and secret city on a hill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s a rare group of American plays that did just that in the Bay Area of 2017, giving us a few gentle hints of where others have gone and where we might run.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>6. The Curran Theater, Taylor Mac’s \u003cem>A 24-Decade History of Popular Music\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13817664\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13817664 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/taylor_mac_act_3-17-e1513570788927-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Taylor Mac lights up American song in 'A 24-Decade History of Popular Music' at the Curran.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/taylor_mac_act_3-17-e1513570788927-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/taylor_mac_act_3-17-e1513570788927-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/taylor_mac_act_3-17-e1513570788927-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/taylor_mac_act_3-17-e1513570788927.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/taylor_mac_act_3-17-e1513570788927-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/taylor_mac_act_3-17-e1513570788927-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/taylor_mac_act_3-17-e1513570788927-520x293.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Taylor Mac lights up American song in ‘A 24-Decade History of Popular Music’ at the Curran. \u003ccite>(Photo courtesy of the company)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>If America were a 24-hour queer slumber party, then it would be something like \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/2016/10/12/how-i-survived-taylor-macs-24-hour-long-musical-history-lesson/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Taylor Mac’s \u003cem>A 24-Decade History of Popular Music\u003c/em>\u003c/a> — the country’s history at its most unguarded, wacky, and tragic. Mac is an extravagant realist, daring us to experience in full the songs that have marked the history of the nation for over 240 years. It’s an audacious examination and surrender to all the delights and discontents of the simple pleasures of song. Mac knows what we’ve felt and what we’re feeling, and he yanks it all out onto the open stage for everyone to see — with a razor wit and hard-fought joy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>5. The Shotgun Players, William Burroughs and Tom Waits’ \u003cem>The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13817665\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13817665\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackrider-4896-e1513570964847-800x480.jpg\" alt=\"Peg Leg (Rotimi Agbabiaka) has an offer of some magic bullets in 'The Black Rider' by William Burroughs and Tom Waits.\" width=\"800\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackrider-4896-e1513570964847-800x480.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackrider-4896-e1513570964847-160x96.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackrider-4896-e1513570964847-768x461.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackrider-4896-e1513570964847-240x144.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackrider-4896-e1513570964847-375x225.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackrider-4896-e1513570964847-520x312.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackrider-4896-e1513570964847.jpg 900w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Peg Leg (Rotimi Agbabiaka) has an offer of some magic bullets in ‘The Black Rider’ by William Burroughs and Tom Waits. \u003ccite>(Photo: Cheshire Isaacs)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Robert Wilson’s production of \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/2017/11/23/shotguns-daring-black-rider-aims-shoots-and-pierces-americas-heart/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">\u003cem>The Black Rider\u003c/em>\u003c/a> was an international sensation, a lavish valentine to German expressionism, and a lovely artifact of what the lush, extravagant subsidies of European Art House Theater can accomplish. Yet lurking beneath all those Euros was a nasty American attack dog of a play. Director Mark Jackson strips William Burroughs and Tom Waits’ fairy tale of magic bullets down to dime store essentials and subjects us to the logic of a brutal equation — if you love to shoot, you’re aiming to kill. A beautiful and entrancing nightmare for which, unfortunately, there is no antidote. (You can still see the bullets fly in the \u003ca href=\"https://shotgunplayers.org/Online/default.asp\">Shotgun Players\u003c/a>’ production running through Sunday, Jan. 21.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>4. Ubuntu Theater Project, Lisa Ramirez’s \u003cem>To The Bone\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13817666\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13817666\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Tothebone1A-e1513571265910-800x449.jpg\" alt=\"(L to R) Juana (Sarita Ocón) confronts the angelic Carmen (Carla Gallardo) in the Ubuntu Theater Project's production of 'To the Bone' by Lisa Ramirez.\" width=\"800\" height=\"449\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Tothebone1A-e1513571265910-800x449.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Tothebone1A-e1513571265910-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Tothebone1A-e1513571265910-768x431.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Tothebone1A-e1513571265910-1020x573.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Tothebone1A-e1513571265910-1920x1079.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Tothebone1A-e1513571265910-1180x663.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Tothebone1A-e1513571265910-960x539.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Tothebone1A-e1513571265910-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Tothebone1A-e1513571265910-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Tothebone1A-e1513571265910-520x292.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(L to R) Juana (Sarita Ocón) confronts the angelic Carmen (Carla Gallardo) in the Ubuntu Theater Project’s production of ‘To the Bone’ by Lisa Ramirez. \u003ccite>(Photo: Courtesy of the Company)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Lisa Ramirez’s play about a community of immigrant women working in a poultry preparation facility is an off-key bit of terror. Most of the screams are silent, and the victims more likely to simply vanish than to suffer the fate of the slaughterhouse — though that’s a constant threat, too. The play’s politics might be ripped from the headlines, but Ramirez’s characters are startling for their everyday dreams and concerns. This is what happens in America to all those the law refuses to recognize. And \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/2017/04/05/to-the-bone-explores-workers-lives-outside-the-law/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the Ubuntu production\u003c/a>, under Michael Maron’s direction, never lets us escape the awful truth that what we’re really watching is a human preparation facility — as if cutting up chickens wasn’t bad enough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>3. The Wooster Group, \u003cem>The Town Hall Affair\u003c/em> (at the Z Space)\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13817668\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13817668\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/TWG_THE-TOWN-HALL-AFFAIR_04_photo-by-Zbigniew-Bzymek_Kate-Valk_IMG_9196-e1513571974674-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Jill Johnston (Kate Valk) surveys her desk for clues to a wild evening in 'Town Hall Affair' by the Wooster Group.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/TWG_THE-TOWN-HALL-AFFAIR_04_photo-by-Zbigniew-Bzymek_Kate-Valk_IMG_9196-e1513571974674-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/TWG_THE-TOWN-HALL-AFFAIR_04_photo-by-Zbigniew-Bzymek_Kate-Valk_IMG_9196-e1513571974674-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/TWG_THE-TOWN-HALL-AFFAIR_04_photo-by-Zbigniew-Bzymek_Kate-Valk_IMG_9196-e1513571974674-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/TWG_THE-TOWN-HALL-AFFAIR_04_photo-by-Zbigniew-Bzymek_Kate-Valk_IMG_9196-e1513571974674-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/TWG_THE-TOWN-HALL-AFFAIR_04_photo-by-Zbigniew-Bzymek_Kate-Valk_IMG_9196-e1513571974674-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/TWG_THE-TOWN-HALL-AFFAIR_04_photo-by-Zbigniew-Bzymek_Kate-Valk_IMG_9196-e1513571974674-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/TWG_THE-TOWN-HALL-AFFAIR_04_photo-by-Zbigniew-Bzymek_Kate-Valk_IMG_9196-e1513571974674-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/TWG_THE-TOWN-HALL-AFFAIR_04_photo-by-Zbigniew-Bzymek_Kate-Valk_IMG_9196-e1513571974674-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/TWG_THE-TOWN-HALL-AFFAIR_04_photo-by-Zbigniew-Bzymek_Kate-Valk_IMG_9196-e1513571974674-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/TWG_THE-TOWN-HALL-AFFAIR_04_photo-by-Zbigniew-Bzymek_Kate-Valk_IMG_9196-e1513571974674-520x292.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jill Johnston (Kate Valk) surveys her desk for clues to a wild evening in ‘Town Hall Affair’ by the Wooster Group. \u003ccite>(Photo: Zbigniew Bzymek)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Wooster Group often finds plays in the garbage heap of history, and \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/2017/04/11/wooster-group-reimagines-crazed-1971-feminist-debate-with-norman-mailer/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">\u003cem>The Town Hall Affair\u003c/em>\u003c/a> is as stunning a dumpster dive into the past as you’re likely to get: an acid-tinged recreation of Norman Mailer’s infamous 1971 state-of-the-woman summit, where the pugilist-minded author opined, bullied, and presided over a panel of feminist luminaries to hilarious effect. The sly Germaine Greer and the erudite Diana Trilling are worthy foils to Mailer, but it is \u003cem>Village Voice\u003c/em> columnist and goofball supreme Jill Johnston who steals the show — and our hearts. In her antic tomfoolery, the Woosters discover a lovely dream of a possible future, one we’re only just beginning to glimpse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>2. California Shakespeare Theater, Marcus Gardley’s \u003cem>Black Odyssey\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13817669\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13817669\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackodyssey4-e1513572353376-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"(Foreground) Ulysses Lincoln (J. Alphose Nicholson) attempts to control a roiling storm as (L to R) Paw Sidin (Aldo Billingslea) causes trouble for Benevolence (Safiya Fredericks) and ticks off Great Grand Daddy (Lamont Thompson) in 'Black Odyssey' by Marcus Gardley.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackodyssey4-e1513572353376-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackodyssey4-e1513572353376-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackodyssey4-e1513572353376-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackodyssey4-e1513572353376-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackodyssey4-e1513572353376-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackodyssey4-e1513572353376-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackodyssey4-e1513572353376-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackodyssey4-e1513572353376-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackodyssey4-e1513572353376-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackodyssey4-e1513572353376-520x293.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Foreground) Ulysses Lincoln (J. Alphose Nicholson) attempts to control a roiling storm as (L to R) Paw Sidin (Aldo Billingslea) causes trouble for Benevolence (Safiya Fredericks) and ticks off Great Grand Daddy (Lamont Thompson) in ‘Black Odyssey’ by Marcus Gardley. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Why Shakespeare isn’t a model for American playwrights is a mystery of the field and an odd cultural misstep down the stairs of irrelevance. For now, at least we can marvel at Marcus Gardley’s contemporary twist on the Shakespearian romance, \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/2017/08/16/black-odyssey-evokes-emmett-till-hurricane-katrina-and-homer/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">\u003cem>Black Odyssey\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, simultaneously a love letter to Oakland, a testament to African-American faith and resilience, and a complex accounting of guilt and innocence. Here is a true epic, where the twists and turns of life keep on revealing what a miracle it is just to hold on and make it through one more day — over 16 long years of struggle. (\u003cem>Black Odyssey\u003c/em> returns to \u003ca href=\"http://www.calshakes.org\">Cal Shakes\u003c/a> for two weeks at the end of next summer.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>1. Marin Theatre Company, Thomas Bradshaw’s \u003cem>Thomas and Sally\u003c/em> \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13817670\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13817670\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_TandS_Phillips_Pacheco_HiRes-e1513572783555-800x448.jpg\" alt=\"Thomas Jefferson (Mark Anderson Phillips) and Sally Hemings (Tara Pacheco) start with music and then things get more complex in 'Thomas and Sally' by Thomas Bradshaw.\" width=\"800\" height=\"448\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_TandS_Phillips_Pacheco_HiRes-e1513572783555-800x448.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_TandS_Phillips_Pacheco_HiRes-e1513572783555-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_TandS_Phillips_Pacheco_HiRes-e1513572783555-768x430.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_TandS_Phillips_Pacheco_HiRes-e1513572783555-1020x571.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_TandS_Phillips_Pacheco_HiRes-e1513572783555-1920x1075.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_TandS_Phillips_Pacheco_HiRes-e1513572783555-1180x661.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_TandS_Phillips_Pacheco_HiRes-e1513572783555-960x538.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_TandS_Phillips_Pacheco_HiRes-e1513572783555-240x134.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_TandS_Phillips_Pacheco_HiRes-e1513572783555-375x210.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_TandS_Phillips_Pacheco_HiRes-e1513572783555-520x291.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_TandS_Phillips_Pacheco_HiRes-e1513572783555.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Thomas Jefferson (Mark Anderson Phillips) and Sally Hemings (Tara Pacheco) start with music and then things get more complex in ‘Thomas and Sally’ by Thomas Bradshaw. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Easily 2017’s most controversial and outrageous play, \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/2017/10/12/thomas-and-sally-thomas-bradshaw-marin-theater-company/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">\u003cem>Thomas and Sally\u003c/em>\u003c/a> (a Marin Theatre Company world premiere) rushes headlong into the shadows and corners of a newly minted America already tainted by its idiot embrace of slavery. Bradshaw’s depiction of the 44-year old Thomas Jefferson’s love affair with his 15-year old slave Sally Hemings is both a bold, grand romance and a wary take on whether love is even possible under those conditions. With a scientist’s eye for the ugly facts of human nature and a touch of Hitchcock’s \u003cem>Vertigo\u003c/em> (Hemings was the half-sister of Jefferson’s dead wife), Bradshaw’s comic epic imagines that we are all the daughters of the revolution — just not the revolution we thought.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Here’s a rare group of American plays that, as disaster loomed, pointed us toward a new and secret city on a hill.",
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"title": "The Best Bay Area Theater of 2017 | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In these end days of the year and perhaps the country, we might ask, just to while away the time, what we want from our American plays.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a child’s experiment, really, as there’s no theater imaginable that might save us from the disasters looming before us. Still, we might ask of our American playwrights that they perhaps point out a way, a path to follow that might have escaped our sight, or to paint a sign in the woods that might lead us to a new and secret city on a hill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s a rare group of American plays that did just that in the Bay Area of 2017, giving us a few gentle hints of where others have gone and where we might run.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>6. The Curran Theater, Taylor Mac’s \u003cem>A 24-Decade History of Popular Music\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13817664\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13817664 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/taylor_mac_act_3-17-e1513570788927-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Taylor Mac lights up American song in 'A 24-Decade History of Popular Music' at the Curran.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/taylor_mac_act_3-17-e1513570788927-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/taylor_mac_act_3-17-e1513570788927-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/taylor_mac_act_3-17-e1513570788927-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/taylor_mac_act_3-17-e1513570788927.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/taylor_mac_act_3-17-e1513570788927-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/taylor_mac_act_3-17-e1513570788927-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/taylor_mac_act_3-17-e1513570788927-520x293.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Taylor Mac lights up American song in ‘A 24-Decade History of Popular Music’ at the Curran. \u003ccite>(Photo courtesy of the company)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>If America were a 24-hour queer slumber party, then it would be something like \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/2016/10/12/how-i-survived-taylor-macs-24-hour-long-musical-history-lesson/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Taylor Mac’s \u003cem>A 24-Decade History of Popular Music\u003c/em>\u003c/a> — the country’s history at its most unguarded, wacky, and tragic. Mac is an extravagant realist, daring us to experience in full the songs that have marked the history of the nation for over 240 years. It’s an audacious examination and surrender to all the delights and discontents of the simple pleasures of song. Mac knows what we’ve felt and what we’re feeling, and he yanks it all out onto the open stage for everyone to see — with a razor wit and hard-fought joy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>5. The Shotgun Players, William Burroughs and Tom Waits’ \u003cem>The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13817665\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13817665\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackrider-4896-e1513570964847-800x480.jpg\" alt=\"Peg Leg (Rotimi Agbabiaka) has an offer of some magic bullets in 'The Black Rider' by William Burroughs and Tom Waits.\" width=\"800\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackrider-4896-e1513570964847-800x480.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackrider-4896-e1513570964847-160x96.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackrider-4896-e1513570964847-768x461.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackrider-4896-e1513570964847-240x144.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackrider-4896-e1513570964847-375x225.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackrider-4896-e1513570964847-520x312.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackrider-4896-e1513570964847.jpg 900w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Peg Leg (Rotimi Agbabiaka) has an offer of some magic bullets in ‘The Black Rider’ by William Burroughs and Tom Waits. \u003ccite>(Photo: Cheshire Isaacs)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Robert Wilson’s production of \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/2017/11/23/shotguns-daring-black-rider-aims-shoots-and-pierces-americas-heart/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">\u003cem>The Black Rider\u003c/em>\u003c/a> was an international sensation, a lavish valentine to German expressionism, and a lovely artifact of what the lush, extravagant subsidies of European Art House Theater can accomplish. Yet lurking beneath all those Euros was a nasty American attack dog of a play. Director Mark Jackson strips William Burroughs and Tom Waits’ fairy tale of magic bullets down to dime store essentials and subjects us to the logic of a brutal equation — if you love to shoot, you’re aiming to kill. A beautiful and entrancing nightmare for which, unfortunately, there is no antidote. (You can still see the bullets fly in the \u003ca href=\"https://shotgunplayers.org/Online/default.asp\">Shotgun Players\u003c/a>’ production running through Sunday, Jan. 21.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>4. Ubuntu Theater Project, Lisa Ramirez’s \u003cem>To The Bone\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13817666\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13817666\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Tothebone1A-e1513571265910-800x449.jpg\" alt=\"(L to R) Juana (Sarita Ocón) confronts the angelic Carmen (Carla Gallardo) in the Ubuntu Theater Project's production of 'To the Bone' by Lisa Ramirez.\" width=\"800\" height=\"449\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Tothebone1A-e1513571265910-800x449.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Tothebone1A-e1513571265910-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Tothebone1A-e1513571265910-768x431.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Tothebone1A-e1513571265910-1020x573.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Tothebone1A-e1513571265910-1920x1079.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Tothebone1A-e1513571265910-1180x663.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Tothebone1A-e1513571265910-960x539.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Tothebone1A-e1513571265910-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Tothebone1A-e1513571265910-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Tothebone1A-e1513571265910-520x292.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(L to R) Juana (Sarita Ocón) confronts the angelic Carmen (Carla Gallardo) in the Ubuntu Theater Project’s production of ‘To the Bone’ by Lisa Ramirez. \u003ccite>(Photo: Courtesy of the Company)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Lisa Ramirez’s play about a community of immigrant women working in a poultry preparation facility is an off-key bit of terror. Most of the screams are silent, and the victims more likely to simply vanish than to suffer the fate of the slaughterhouse — though that’s a constant threat, too. The play’s politics might be ripped from the headlines, but Ramirez’s characters are startling for their everyday dreams and concerns. This is what happens in America to all those the law refuses to recognize. And \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/2017/04/05/to-the-bone-explores-workers-lives-outside-the-law/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the Ubuntu production\u003c/a>, under Michael Maron’s direction, never lets us escape the awful truth that what we’re really watching is a human preparation facility — as if cutting up chickens wasn’t bad enough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>3. The Wooster Group, \u003cem>The Town Hall Affair\u003c/em> (at the Z Space)\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13817668\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13817668\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/TWG_THE-TOWN-HALL-AFFAIR_04_photo-by-Zbigniew-Bzymek_Kate-Valk_IMG_9196-e1513571974674-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Jill Johnston (Kate Valk) surveys her desk for clues to a wild evening in 'Town Hall Affair' by the Wooster Group.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/TWG_THE-TOWN-HALL-AFFAIR_04_photo-by-Zbigniew-Bzymek_Kate-Valk_IMG_9196-e1513571974674-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/TWG_THE-TOWN-HALL-AFFAIR_04_photo-by-Zbigniew-Bzymek_Kate-Valk_IMG_9196-e1513571974674-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/TWG_THE-TOWN-HALL-AFFAIR_04_photo-by-Zbigniew-Bzymek_Kate-Valk_IMG_9196-e1513571974674-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/TWG_THE-TOWN-HALL-AFFAIR_04_photo-by-Zbigniew-Bzymek_Kate-Valk_IMG_9196-e1513571974674-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/TWG_THE-TOWN-HALL-AFFAIR_04_photo-by-Zbigniew-Bzymek_Kate-Valk_IMG_9196-e1513571974674-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/TWG_THE-TOWN-HALL-AFFAIR_04_photo-by-Zbigniew-Bzymek_Kate-Valk_IMG_9196-e1513571974674-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/TWG_THE-TOWN-HALL-AFFAIR_04_photo-by-Zbigniew-Bzymek_Kate-Valk_IMG_9196-e1513571974674-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/TWG_THE-TOWN-HALL-AFFAIR_04_photo-by-Zbigniew-Bzymek_Kate-Valk_IMG_9196-e1513571974674-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/TWG_THE-TOWN-HALL-AFFAIR_04_photo-by-Zbigniew-Bzymek_Kate-Valk_IMG_9196-e1513571974674-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/TWG_THE-TOWN-HALL-AFFAIR_04_photo-by-Zbigniew-Bzymek_Kate-Valk_IMG_9196-e1513571974674-520x292.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jill Johnston (Kate Valk) surveys her desk for clues to a wild evening in ‘Town Hall Affair’ by the Wooster Group. \u003ccite>(Photo: Zbigniew Bzymek)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Wooster Group often finds plays in the garbage heap of history, and \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/2017/04/11/wooster-group-reimagines-crazed-1971-feminist-debate-with-norman-mailer/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">\u003cem>The Town Hall Affair\u003c/em>\u003c/a> is as stunning a dumpster dive into the past as you’re likely to get: an acid-tinged recreation of Norman Mailer’s infamous 1971 state-of-the-woman summit, where the pugilist-minded author opined, bullied, and presided over a panel of feminist luminaries to hilarious effect. The sly Germaine Greer and the erudite Diana Trilling are worthy foils to Mailer, but it is \u003cem>Village Voice\u003c/em> columnist and goofball supreme Jill Johnston who steals the show — and our hearts. In her antic tomfoolery, the Woosters discover a lovely dream of a possible future, one we’re only just beginning to glimpse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>2. California Shakespeare Theater, Marcus Gardley’s \u003cem>Black Odyssey\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13817669\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13817669\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackodyssey4-e1513572353376-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"(Foreground) Ulysses Lincoln (J. Alphose Nicholson) attempts to control a roiling storm as (L to R) Paw Sidin (Aldo Billingslea) causes trouble for Benevolence (Safiya Fredericks) and ticks off Great Grand Daddy (Lamont Thompson) in 'Black Odyssey' by Marcus Gardley.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackodyssey4-e1513572353376-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackodyssey4-e1513572353376-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackodyssey4-e1513572353376-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackodyssey4-e1513572353376-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackodyssey4-e1513572353376-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackodyssey4-e1513572353376-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackodyssey4-e1513572353376-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackodyssey4-e1513572353376-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackodyssey4-e1513572353376-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/blackodyssey4-e1513572353376-520x293.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Foreground) Ulysses Lincoln (J. Alphose Nicholson) attempts to control a roiling storm as (L to R) Paw Sidin (Aldo Billingslea) causes trouble for Benevolence (Safiya Fredericks) and ticks off Great Grand Daddy (Lamont Thompson) in ‘Black Odyssey’ by Marcus Gardley. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Why Shakespeare isn’t a model for American playwrights is a mystery of the field and an odd cultural misstep down the stairs of irrelevance. For now, at least we can marvel at Marcus Gardley’s contemporary twist on the Shakespearian romance, \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/2017/08/16/black-odyssey-evokes-emmett-till-hurricane-katrina-and-homer/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">\u003cem>Black Odyssey\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, simultaneously a love letter to Oakland, a testament to African-American faith and resilience, and a complex accounting of guilt and innocence. Here is a true epic, where the twists and turns of life keep on revealing what a miracle it is just to hold on and make it through one more day — over 16 long years of struggle. (\u003cem>Black Odyssey\u003c/em> returns to \u003ca href=\"http://www.calshakes.org\">Cal Shakes\u003c/a> for two weeks at the end of next summer.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>1. Marin Theatre Company, Thomas Bradshaw’s \u003cem>Thomas and Sally\u003c/em> \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13817670\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13817670\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_TandS_Phillips_Pacheco_HiRes-e1513572783555-800x448.jpg\" alt=\"Thomas Jefferson (Mark Anderson Phillips) and Sally Hemings (Tara Pacheco) start with music and then things get more complex in 'Thomas and Sally' by Thomas Bradshaw.\" width=\"800\" height=\"448\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_TandS_Phillips_Pacheco_HiRes-e1513572783555-800x448.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_TandS_Phillips_Pacheco_HiRes-e1513572783555-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_TandS_Phillips_Pacheco_HiRes-e1513572783555-768x430.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_TandS_Phillips_Pacheco_HiRes-e1513572783555-1020x571.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_TandS_Phillips_Pacheco_HiRes-e1513572783555-1920x1075.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_TandS_Phillips_Pacheco_HiRes-e1513572783555-1180x661.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_TandS_Phillips_Pacheco_HiRes-e1513572783555-960x538.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_TandS_Phillips_Pacheco_HiRes-e1513572783555-240x134.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_TandS_Phillips_Pacheco_HiRes-e1513572783555-375x210.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_TandS_Phillips_Pacheco_HiRes-e1513572783555-520x291.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_TandS_Phillips_Pacheco_HiRes-e1513572783555.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Thomas Jefferson (Mark Anderson Phillips) and Sally Hemings (Tara Pacheco) start with music and then things get more complex in ‘Thomas and Sally’ by Thomas Bradshaw. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Easily 2017’s most controversial and outrageous play, \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/2017/10/12/thomas-and-sally-thomas-bradshaw-marin-theater-company/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">\u003cem>Thomas and Sally\u003c/em>\u003c/a> (a Marin Theatre Company world premiere) rushes headlong into the shadows and corners of a newly minted America already tainted by its idiot embrace of slavery. Bradshaw’s depiction of the 44-year old Thomas Jefferson’s love affair with his 15-year old slave Sally Hemings is both a bold, grand romance and a wary take on whether love is even possible under those conditions. With a scientist’s eye for the ugly facts of human nature and a touch of Hitchcock’s \u003cem>Vertigo\u003c/em> (Hemings was the half-sister of Jefferson’s dead wife), Bradshaw’s comic epic imagines that we are all the daughters of the revolution — just not the revolution we thought.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "two-sly-inversions-of-the-epic-at-counterpulses-diaspora-2017",
"title": "Two Sly Inversions of the Epic at CounterPulse's 'Diaspora 2017'",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://counterpulse.org\">CounterPulse\u003c/a>’s residency programs cover a lot of conceptual ground. In 2017, they’ve produced the “edge,” the “combustible,” and now the “diaspora” residencies, where two different artists or groups give us an evening of performance often form-fitted to the company’s Tenderloin space. Despite the thematic overlay, what you get always feels idiosyncratic, human, and alive to a vast variety of experiences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In many ways the series is a sly and casual inversion of what we’ve come to understand as the epic. There are no superheroes or villains, no cities under threat of alien invasion, no CGI of worlds at war and vast armies. Instead, there’s a simple understanding that to experience the epic, we have to identify with its opposite — the lost traveller (Odysseus), the scared child (Huckleberry Finn), the harried bureaucrat (Joseph K.), anyone who feels the vastness of our everyday world and is at its mercy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so \u003cem>Performing Diaspora 2017\u003c/em> offers to great effect two delicate heroes — the son, and specifically the idea of the son, in Javier Stell-Frésquez, Ivan “Ivy” Monteiro, and Davia Spain’s \u003cem>Mother The Verb\u003c/em>, and a lonely witness to atrocity in choreographer Randy Reyes’ \u003cem>Lxs Desaparecidxs\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘Mother the Verb\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13817220\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13817220 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP10-e1513068244566-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Javier Stell-Frésquez searches for his mother in the distance in 'Mother The Verb' at CounterPulse.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP10-e1513068244566-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP10-e1513068244566-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP10-e1513068244566-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP10-e1513068244566-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP10-e1513068244566-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP10-e1513068244566-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP10-e1513068244566-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP10-e1513068244566-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP10-e1513068244566-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP10-e1513068244566-520x292.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Javier Stell-Frésquez searches for his mother in the distance in ‘Mother The Verb’ at CounterPulse. \u003ccite>(Photo: Courtesy of the Company)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>At first, \u003cem>Mother The Verb\u003c/em> has the feel of a performance art stunt. Stell-Frésquez stands next to a coatrack in the CounterPulse lobby with a sign that says, “Dress Me As My Authentic Self.” Let’s just say he has quite a roving eye for the clothing of random audience members. Escape that trap and you’ll find yourself face-to-face with Monteiro (camped out on the theater’s risers) in a massive wig of wavy black hair and two plastic spray cans taped to his chest, spouting lines seemingly swiped from any number of nightmare mother plays — “I’m done trying to make you comfortable, fit in!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an audience discussion afterwards, the performers were vaguely surprised that everyone seemed a little wary during the prologue. They might underestimate the intensity of their personas, the way their commitment to the moment verges on what feels like a brutal psychic break with the world. Nothing that follows would dispel that notion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The conflict is archetypal: the hectoring mother and the son seeking escape. Stell-Frésquez’s long flowing hair and Monteiro’s nutty wig give them the look of mismatched twins. The first time they approach each other is more than a little disconcerting, and as the piece continues there are times where they are impossible to tell apart. Or, better put, their performances are so tightly bound that it’s easy to lose sight of the one for the other, as they seem to switch roles and flip back again in an instance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13817214\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13817214\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP3-e1513066347983-800x451.jpg\" alt=\"Javier Stell-Frésquez and Ivan “Ivy” Monteiro dance a strange duet in 'Mother The Verb' at CounterPulse.\" width=\"800\" height=\"451\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP3-e1513066347983-800x451.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP3-e1513066347983-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP3-e1513066347983-768x433.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP3-e1513066347983-1020x576.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP3-e1513066347983-1920x1083.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP3-e1513066347983-1180x666.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP3-e1513066347983-960x542.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP3-e1513066347983-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP3-e1513066347983-375x212.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP3-e1513066347983-520x293.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Javier Stell-Frésquez and Ivan “Ivy” Monteiro dance a strange duet in ‘Mother The Verb’ at CounterPulse. \u003ccite>(Photo: Courtesy of the Company)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Stell-Frésquez is a graceful and fluid dancer. You can feel the joy and precision of ballet in his movements, whereas Monteiro’s body is powerful and earthbound. To see them tied together by a swatch of red cloth as they try to negotiate a series of complex flips and turns is to see two people who can’t quite be free with or without each other. The contrast is shocking in its precision and the failure of their duet a crucial part of the tense beauty on show here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s as if the dance is dedicated to confounding and succumbing to all the failures of motherhood, both as a debt and an endless source of creative inspiration. So, true to its title, \u003cem>Mother The Verb\u003c/em> is constantly acting out and searching for new ways of being. When Stell-Frésquez lets loose a huge sheet of clear plastic over the stage, the child’s desires and the world suddenly become enormous. And in a touching end, it is that sense of a limitless imagination that proves too much for the mother to survive.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘Lxs Desaparecidxs’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13817212\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP9-e1513065846194-800x440.jpg\" alt=\"(L to R) Dancers Felix (Sol) Linck Frenz, Emilia Martinez Brumbaugh, Jose Abad, Randy Reyes, Stephanie Hewett and Bariel Christian feel the presence of the missing in 'Lxs Desaparecidxs' at CounterPulse.\" width=\"800\" height=\"440\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13817212\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP9-e1513065846194-800x440.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP9-e1513065846194-160x88.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP9-e1513065846194-768x422.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP9-e1513065846194-1020x561.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP9-e1513065846194-1920x1056.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP9-e1513065846194-1180x649.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP9-e1513065846194-960x528.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP9-e1513065846194-240x132.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP9-e1513065846194-375x206.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP9-e1513065846194-520x286.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(L to R) Dancers Felix (Sol) Linck Frenz, Emilia Martinez Brumbaugh, Jose Abad, Randy Reyes, Stephanie Hewett and Bariel Christian feel the presence of the missing in ‘Lxs Desaparecidxs’ at CounterPulse. \u003ccite>(Photo: Courtesy of the Company)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Lxs Desaparecidxs\u003c/em> really begins before it begins. As we return from the lobby to the theater, the dancers are huddled together off to the side of the risers. At a glance it feels like nothing more than a brief glimpse of a backstage get-together, and yet a more careful appraisal would have caught the religious overtones — bowed heads and an altar — and a sense that something or someone is missing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But you unconsciously forget that as the dancers file onto the stage one after the other. And then they stand there. And then one person falls and gets up. And another. And another. Over and over again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The opening has all the qualities of an exercise or game, a bit of contact improv, though each dancer does hit the ground with a nice, hollow thud. It’s the type of thud that makes you think a soul has departed; that is, if it weren’t for the way their eyes flutter while on the ground, and the preternatural way they hop back up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gradually, falling turns into snuggling, and snuggling turns into strange, precise swipes at one and other. A wrestling match breaks out, and then music, and we’re at a disco. The dancing turns solitary and frenzied, yet you feel the presence of others. And what was a slight feeling — someone’s missing — becomes a conscious idea. You start to think that there’s some invisible force or world shaping every aspect of these people’s lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13817222\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13817222\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP5-e1513068716177-800x447.jpg\" alt=\"Reyes and his dancers start to strip off their clothes, though they never finish in 'Lxs Desaparecidxs' at CounterPulse.\" width=\"800\" height=\"447\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP5-e1513068716177-800x447.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP5-e1513068716177-160x89.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP5-e1513068716177-768x429.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP5-e1513068716177-1020x569.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP5-e1513068716177-1920x1072.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP5-e1513068716177-1180x659.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP5-e1513068716177-960x536.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP5-e1513068716177-240x134.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP5-e1513068716177-375x209.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP5-e1513068716177-520x290.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Reyes and his dancers start to strip off their clothes, though they never finish in ‘Lxs Desaparecidxs’ at CounterPulse. \u003ccite>(Photo: Courtesy of the Company)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Reyes’ choreography is so fluid that you forget that anything is happening, and yet in the end the question of who is \u003cem>not\u003c/em> there is addressed, at least as it pertains to rituals and why we might have gathered at CounterPulse to begin with. We can at least say that there has been an offering to the unknown world around us, and that someone has kept a keen eye on the world of the missing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Performing Diaspora 2017’ runs through Saturday, Dec. 16 at CounterPulse. For tickets and information \u003ca href=\"http://counterpulse.org\">click here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Two invigorating pieces resonate for those who feel the vastness of our everyday world and are at its mercy.\r\n",
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"title": "Two Sly Inversions of the Epic at CounterPulse's 'Diaspora 2017' | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://counterpulse.org\">CounterPulse\u003c/a>’s residency programs cover a lot of conceptual ground. In 2017, they’ve produced the “edge,” the “combustible,” and now the “diaspora” residencies, where two different artists or groups give us an evening of performance often form-fitted to the company’s Tenderloin space. Despite the thematic overlay, what you get always feels idiosyncratic, human, and alive to a vast variety of experiences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In many ways the series is a sly and casual inversion of what we’ve come to understand as the epic. There are no superheroes or villains, no cities under threat of alien invasion, no CGI of worlds at war and vast armies. Instead, there’s a simple understanding that to experience the epic, we have to identify with its opposite — the lost traveller (Odysseus), the scared child (Huckleberry Finn), the harried bureaucrat (Joseph K.), anyone who feels the vastness of our everyday world and is at its mercy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so \u003cem>Performing Diaspora 2017\u003c/em> offers to great effect two delicate heroes — the son, and specifically the idea of the son, in Javier Stell-Frésquez, Ivan “Ivy” Monteiro, and Davia Spain’s \u003cem>Mother The Verb\u003c/em>, and a lonely witness to atrocity in choreographer Randy Reyes’ \u003cem>Lxs Desaparecidxs\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘Mother the Verb\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13817220\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13817220 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP10-e1513068244566-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Javier Stell-Frésquez searches for his mother in the distance in 'Mother The Verb' at CounterPulse.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP10-e1513068244566-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP10-e1513068244566-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP10-e1513068244566-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP10-e1513068244566-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP10-e1513068244566-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP10-e1513068244566-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP10-e1513068244566-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP10-e1513068244566-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP10-e1513068244566-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP10-e1513068244566-520x292.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Javier Stell-Frésquez searches for his mother in the distance in ‘Mother The Verb’ at CounterPulse. \u003ccite>(Photo: Courtesy of the Company)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>At first, \u003cem>Mother The Verb\u003c/em> has the feel of a performance art stunt. Stell-Frésquez stands next to a coatrack in the CounterPulse lobby with a sign that says, “Dress Me As My Authentic Self.” Let’s just say he has quite a roving eye for the clothing of random audience members. Escape that trap and you’ll find yourself face-to-face with Monteiro (camped out on the theater’s risers) in a massive wig of wavy black hair and two plastic spray cans taped to his chest, spouting lines seemingly swiped from any number of nightmare mother plays — “I’m done trying to make you comfortable, fit in!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an audience discussion afterwards, the performers were vaguely surprised that everyone seemed a little wary during the prologue. They might underestimate the intensity of their personas, the way their commitment to the moment verges on what feels like a brutal psychic break with the world. Nothing that follows would dispel that notion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The conflict is archetypal: the hectoring mother and the son seeking escape. Stell-Frésquez’s long flowing hair and Monteiro’s nutty wig give them the look of mismatched twins. The first time they approach each other is more than a little disconcerting, and as the piece continues there are times where they are impossible to tell apart. Or, better put, their performances are so tightly bound that it’s easy to lose sight of the one for the other, as they seem to switch roles and flip back again in an instance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13817214\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13817214\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP3-e1513066347983-800x451.jpg\" alt=\"Javier Stell-Frésquez and Ivan “Ivy” Monteiro dance a strange duet in 'Mother The Verb' at CounterPulse.\" width=\"800\" height=\"451\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP3-e1513066347983-800x451.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP3-e1513066347983-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP3-e1513066347983-768x433.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP3-e1513066347983-1020x576.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP3-e1513066347983-1920x1083.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP3-e1513066347983-1180x666.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP3-e1513066347983-960x542.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP3-e1513066347983-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP3-e1513066347983-375x212.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP3-e1513066347983-520x293.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Javier Stell-Frésquez and Ivan “Ivy” Monteiro dance a strange duet in ‘Mother The Verb’ at CounterPulse. \u003ccite>(Photo: Courtesy of the Company)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Stell-Frésquez is a graceful and fluid dancer. You can feel the joy and precision of ballet in his movements, whereas Monteiro’s body is powerful and earthbound. To see them tied together by a swatch of red cloth as they try to negotiate a series of complex flips and turns is to see two people who can’t quite be free with or without each other. The contrast is shocking in its precision and the failure of their duet a crucial part of the tense beauty on show here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s as if the dance is dedicated to confounding and succumbing to all the failures of motherhood, both as a debt and an endless source of creative inspiration. So, true to its title, \u003cem>Mother The Verb\u003c/em> is constantly acting out and searching for new ways of being. When Stell-Frésquez lets loose a huge sheet of clear plastic over the stage, the child’s desires and the world suddenly become enormous. And in a touching end, it is that sense of a limitless imagination that proves too much for the mother to survive.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘Lxs Desaparecidxs’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13817212\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP9-e1513065846194-800x440.jpg\" alt=\"(L to R) Dancers Felix (Sol) Linck Frenz, Emilia Martinez Brumbaugh, Jose Abad, Randy Reyes, Stephanie Hewett and Bariel Christian feel the presence of the missing in 'Lxs Desaparecidxs' at CounterPulse.\" width=\"800\" height=\"440\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13817212\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP9-e1513065846194-800x440.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP9-e1513065846194-160x88.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP9-e1513065846194-768x422.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP9-e1513065846194-1020x561.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP9-e1513065846194-1920x1056.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP9-e1513065846194-1180x649.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP9-e1513065846194-960x528.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP9-e1513065846194-240x132.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP9-e1513065846194-375x206.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP9-e1513065846194-520x286.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(L to R) Dancers Felix (Sol) Linck Frenz, Emilia Martinez Brumbaugh, Jose Abad, Randy Reyes, Stephanie Hewett and Bariel Christian feel the presence of the missing in ‘Lxs Desaparecidxs’ at CounterPulse. \u003ccite>(Photo: Courtesy of the Company)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Lxs Desaparecidxs\u003c/em> really begins before it begins. As we return from the lobby to the theater, the dancers are huddled together off to the side of the risers. At a glance it feels like nothing more than a brief glimpse of a backstage get-together, and yet a more careful appraisal would have caught the religious overtones — bowed heads and an altar — and a sense that something or someone is missing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But you unconsciously forget that as the dancers file onto the stage one after the other. And then they stand there. And then one person falls and gets up. And another. And another. Over and over again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The opening has all the qualities of an exercise or game, a bit of contact improv, though each dancer does hit the ground with a nice, hollow thud. It’s the type of thud that makes you think a soul has departed; that is, if it weren’t for the way their eyes flutter while on the ground, and the preternatural way they hop back up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gradually, falling turns into snuggling, and snuggling turns into strange, precise swipes at one and other. A wrestling match breaks out, and then music, and we’re at a disco. The dancing turns solitary and frenzied, yet you feel the presence of others. And what was a slight feeling — someone’s missing — becomes a conscious idea. You start to think that there’s some invisible force or world shaping every aspect of these people’s lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13817222\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13817222\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP5-e1513068716177-800x447.jpg\" alt=\"Reyes and his dancers start to strip off their clothes, though they never finish in 'Lxs Desaparecidxs' at CounterPulse.\" width=\"800\" height=\"447\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP5-e1513068716177-800x447.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP5-e1513068716177-160x89.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP5-e1513068716177-768x429.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP5-e1513068716177-1020x569.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP5-e1513068716177-1920x1072.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP5-e1513068716177-1180x659.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP5-e1513068716177-960x536.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP5-e1513068716177-240x134.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP5-e1513068716177-375x209.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/CP5-e1513068716177-520x290.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Reyes and his dancers start to strip off their clothes, though they never finish in ‘Lxs Desaparecidxs’ at CounterPulse. \u003ccite>(Photo: Courtesy of the Company)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Reyes’ choreography is so fluid that you forget that anything is happening, and yet in the end the question of who is \u003cem>not\u003c/em> there is addressed, at least as it pertains to rituals and why we might have gathered at CounterPulse to begin with. We can at least say that there has been an offering to the unknown world around us, and that someone has kept a keen eye on the world of the missing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Performing Diaspora 2017’ runs through Saturday, Dec. 16 at CounterPulse. For tickets and information \u003ca href=\"http://counterpulse.org\">click here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "For the Holidays, Two Plays Adapted From Movies — Plus One Winner",
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"content": "\u003cp>I’m guessing here, but one of the main reasons \u003cem>A Christmas Carol\u003c/em> and \u003cem>It’s a Wonderful Life\u003c/em> are such great works of art is that their heroes are shattered, and they must put themselves back together in the coldest time of the year. As the days fall shorter in 2017, these classics are a sharp reminder that winter is brutal when your mind is ripped to pieces.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so we should be thankful for Keith Hennessy’s dance-theater-circus shocker, \u003cem>Sink\u003c/em>. It’s full of Christmas spirit — not just a sense of redemption and hope for the future, but also a rage at what the world and we have become. At the Joe Goode Studio until Dec. 9th, it’s not really a holiday show, yet in that grand tradition it confronts injustice with wild bursts of sentimentality and moments of savage beauty and grace. In Hennessy, we have an unlikely and true heir to Dickens and Capra.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But before slipping into the world of \u003cem>Sink\u003c/em>, two major holiday shows, \u003cem>A Christmas Story: The Musical\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Shakespeare in Love\u003c/em> opened this week at the SF Playhouse and the Marin Theatre Company. Both shows are based on well-regarded, overrated movies. And both are hindered by a desire to please, rather than taking on the vast and gnarled emotions of the season.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘A Christmas Story: The Musical’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13816646\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13816646\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/048A4958-e1512442952112-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Ralphie (Jonah Broscow) yearns for a Red Ryder B.B. gun.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/048A4958-e1512442952112-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/048A4958-e1512442952112-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/048A4958-e1512442952112-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/048A4958-e1512442952112-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/048A4958-e1512442952112-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/048A4958-e1512442952112-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/048A4958-e1512442952112-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/048A4958-e1512442952112-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/048A4958-e1512442952112-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/048A4958-e1512442952112-520x293.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/048A4958-e1512442952112.jpg 2016w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ralphie (Jonah Broscow) yearns for a Red Ryder B.B. gun. \u003ccite>(Photo: Jessica Palopoli)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>We should all be wary of shows that take the title of a popular property, slap a colon behind it, and announce that it is “The Musical.” Whatever benefits singing might bring to a story, these additions are almost always more about business than art.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The story of nine-year-old Ralphie’s desperate and imaginative attempts to get a Red Ryder B.B. gun for Christmas has its charms, especially in the movie’s less hurried and more meandering aesthetic. We’re caught in the whirlwind of a boy’s dreams, willing to go along in his quest that is in many ways as tangled and vexing as Odysseus’ path home. For a child, everything is an epic journey.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s a case to be made that musical numbers could bring Ralphie’s story to greater life, that the best showtunes catch the split between the vibrant force of dreams and the bitter consolations of reality. The problem is that \u003cem>A Christmas Story: The Musical \u003c/em>isn’t so much interested in Ralphie as it is our memories of the movie about him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The result is a vehicle and production that feels amped up for no discernible reasons. As the narrator, Christopher Reber delivers his lines with a forced jolliness that belies the off-key nature of the material. Ralphie’s simple wish often gets lost in production numbers that are overblown and indifferently staged. Even the ornate set, which includes a slide, seems out of focus, messy, and unfinished.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You want the piece and the production to relax, to give us a chance to feel Ralphie’s dreams on our own terms. But \u003cem>Christmas Story: The Musical\u003c/em> has an aggressive spirit that demands that we succumb to its ideas of fun and frivolity. I think even a child might want to resist that.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘Shakespeare in Love’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13816648\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13816648\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_SIL_Magill_Trout_2_HiRes-e1512443728344-800x451.jpg\" alt=\"William Shakespeare (Adam Magill) and Viola de Lessens (Megan Trout) share a love of language and more.\" width=\"800\" height=\"451\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_SIL_Magill_Trout_2_HiRes-e1512443728344-800x451.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_SIL_Magill_Trout_2_HiRes-e1512443728344-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_SIL_Magill_Trout_2_HiRes-e1512443728344-768x433.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_SIL_Magill_Trout_2_HiRes-e1512443728344-1020x575.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_SIL_Magill_Trout_2_HiRes-e1512443728344-1920x1083.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_SIL_Magill_Trout_2_HiRes-e1512443728344-1180x665.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_SIL_Magill_Trout_2_HiRes-e1512443728344-960x541.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_SIL_Magill_Trout_2_HiRes-e1512443728344-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_SIL_Magill_Trout_2_HiRes-e1512443728344-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_SIL_Magill_Trout_2_HiRes-e1512443728344-520x293.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">William Shakespeare (Adam Magill) and Viola de Lessens (Megan Trout) share a love of language and more. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>There was always something vaguely distasteful about Harvey Weinstein’s ability to muscle \u003cem>Shakespeare in Love\u003c/em> into a 1999 Best Picture Oscar, and now we can excise the “vaguely” part. The film has high-minded aspirations — Shakespeare, literary trivia, Judi Dench, the noteworthy presence of dramatist and screenwriter Tom Stoppard — but ultimately it’s less a movie to enjoy than to get behind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So it’s a bit of a surprise that there’s some life to Lee Hall’s stage adaption. It’s certainly not the absurd premise, that Shakespeare is suffering from writer’s block while writing the supposedly lost-to-history \u003cem>Romeo and Ethel, The Pirate’s Daughter.\u003c/em> It’s that every once and a while, the backstage drama springs to life, and you get a sense of what it must have felt like to produce a play in the Elizabethan age.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, those are scant and fleeting pleasures. Our only true sense of what it means to live and experience the era comes from Megan Trout’s constantly surprising and committed performance as Viola de Lesseps, Shakespeare’s love interest and eventual muse (in the play, not reality).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trout hurls herself around the stage with an athlete’s abandon and seems to be acting in an entirely different piece, as if any of this mattered. You feel the spirit of the season in her performance, and at times that’s enough to hold this professional, though uninspired, play and production aloft.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nonetheless, I do wish that considering the Marin Theater Company’s adventurous 2017-18 season (plays by Thomas Bradshaw, Young Jean Lee, and Jordan Harrison), they had challenged our sense of holiday spirit, rather than pandering to its most mundane and well-worn concerns. Why should winter be bereft of ideas and revolution?\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘Sink’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13816644\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13816644 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink1-e1512442132307-800x451.jpg\" alt=\"Keith Hennessy slow dances with himself in 'Sink' at the Joe Goode Studio.\" width=\"800\" height=\"451\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink1-e1512442132307-800x451.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink1-e1512442132307-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink1-e1512442132307-768x433.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink1-e1512442132307-1020x575.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink1-e1512442132307-1920x1083.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink1-e1512442132307-1180x666.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink1-e1512442132307-960x541.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink1-e1512442132307-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink1-e1512442132307-375x212.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink1-e1512442132307-520x293.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Keith Hennessy slow-dances with himself in ‘Sink’ at the Joe Goode Studio. \u003ccite>(Photo: Robbie Sweeney)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Keith Hennessey begins ‘Sink’ in a white Robert Cavalli sweatsuit and a goofy blond wig, while slowly dancing on a stool. In voiceover we hear a litany of his ideas, thoughts, and observations — “People who have been surprised by Trump haven’t read the comments section,” “What does it mean that Colin Kaepernick isn’t registered to vote?” It’s at this point that we’re invited — at first 10 volunteers, and then the rest of the audience — to step behind the makeshift curtain into what turns out to be a different kind of world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Curtains are becoming increasingly rare in contemporary theater and dance. When Hennessey asks us to join him on the other side, you wonder both what’s there and what’s been missing — in all these other performances where curtains have vanished.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13816642\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink4lastimage-e1512441726903-800x453.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"453\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13816642\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink4lastimage-e1512441726903-800x453.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink4lastimage-e1512441726903-160x91.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink4lastimage-e1512441726903-768x435.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink4lastimage-e1512441726903-1020x577.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink4lastimage-e1512441726903-1920x1087.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink4lastimage-e1512441726903-1180x668.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink4lastimage-e1512441726903-960x543.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink4lastimage-e1512441726903-240x136.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink4lastimage-e1512441726903-375x212.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink4lastimage-e1512441726903-520x294.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Keith Hennessy jumps and jumps and jumps in ‘Sink’ at the Joe Goode Studio. \u003ccite>(Photo: Robbie Sweeney)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sink\u003c/em> is rather obliquely about the Las Vegas and Orlando mass shootings and, like the beginning of those tragedies, we make a choice: We walk behind a curtain, we enter a space, and we join a community. Among Hennessey’s many strange talents is his ability to talk us into a set of relations, something that feels real and of the world. He explains to us what is happening, makes us comfortable, and only then does he perform.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So if you have ever wanted to see a white shadow; the eruption of a pagan god dancing in the air before you; or a man falling through a Christmas tree of deformed disco balls, then \u003cem>Sink\u003c/em> is the gift you need. It is a clarion call for justice, the miracle of surviving, and an amazing journey that embraces a volcano of everyday emotions, especially the ones of December.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here is a winter present worth unwrapping.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12127869\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Sink’ runs through Saturday, Dec. 9, at the Joe Goode Studio in San Francisco. For tickets and information, \u003ca href=\"http://circozero.org/current#/sink/\">see here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘A Christmas Story: The Musical’ runs through Saturday, Jan. 13, at the SF Playhouse. For tickets and information, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfplayhouse.org/sfph/\">see here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Shakespeare in Love’ runs through Saturday, Dec. 23, at the Marin Theater Company in Mill Valley. For tickets and information, \u003ca href=\"http://www.marintheatre.org\">see here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>I’m guessing here, but one of the main reasons \u003cem>A Christmas Carol\u003c/em> and \u003cem>It’s a Wonderful Life\u003c/em> are such great works of art is that their heroes are shattered, and they must put themselves back together in the coldest time of the year. As the days fall shorter in 2017, these classics are a sharp reminder that winter is brutal when your mind is ripped to pieces.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so we should be thankful for Keith Hennessy’s dance-theater-circus shocker, \u003cem>Sink\u003c/em>. It’s full of Christmas spirit — not just a sense of redemption and hope for the future, but also a rage at what the world and we have become. At the Joe Goode Studio until Dec. 9th, it’s not really a holiday show, yet in that grand tradition it confronts injustice with wild bursts of sentimentality and moments of savage beauty and grace. In Hennessy, we have an unlikely and true heir to Dickens and Capra.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But before slipping into the world of \u003cem>Sink\u003c/em>, two major holiday shows, \u003cem>A Christmas Story: The Musical\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Shakespeare in Love\u003c/em> opened this week at the SF Playhouse and the Marin Theatre Company. Both shows are based on well-regarded, overrated movies. And both are hindered by a desire to please, rather than taking on the vast and gnarled emotions of the season.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘A Christmas Story: The Musical’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13816646\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13816646\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/048A4958-e1512442952112-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Ralphie (Jonah Broscow) yearns for a Red Ryder B.B. gun.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/048A4958-e1512442952112-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/048A4958-e1512442952112-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/048A4958-e1512442952112-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/048A4958-e1512442952112-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/048A4958-e1512442952112-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/048A4958-e1512442952112-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/048A4958-e1512442952112-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/048A4958-e1512442952112-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/048A4958-e1512442952112-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/048A4958-e1512442952112-520x293.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/048A4958-e1512442952112.jpg 2016w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ralphie (Jonah Broscow) yearns for a Red Ryder B.B. gun. \u003ccite>(Photo: Jessica Palopoli)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>We should all be wary of shows that take the title of a popular property, slap a colon behind it, and announce that it is “The Musical.” Whatever benefits singing might bring to a story, these additions are almost always more about business than art.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The story of nine-year-old Ralphie’s desperate and imaginative attempts to get a Red Ryder B.B. gun for Christmas has its charms, especially in the movie’s less hurried and more meandering aesthetic. We’re caught in the whirlwind of a boy’s dreams, willing to go along in his quest that is in many ways as tangled and vexing as Odysseus’ path home. For a child, everything is an epic journey.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s a case to be made that musical numbers could bring Ralphie’s story to greater life, that the best showtunes catch the split between the vibrant force of dreams and the bitter consolations of reality. The problem is that \u003cem>A Christmas Story: The Musical \u003c/em>isn’t so much interested in Ralphie as it is our memories of the movie about him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The result is a vehicle and production that feels amped up for no discernible reasons. As the narrator, Christopher Reber delivers his lines with a forced jolliness that belies the off-key nature of the material. Ralphie’s simple wish often gets lost in production numbers that are overblown and indifferently staged. Even the ornate set, which includes a slide, seems out of focus, messy, and unfinished.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You want the piece and the production to relax, to give us a chance to feel Ralphie’s dreams on our own terms. But \u003cem>Christmas Story: The Musical\u003c/em> has an aggressive spirit that demands that we succumb to its ideas of fun and frivolity. I think even a child might want to resist that.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘Shakespeare in Love’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13816648\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13816648\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_SIL_Magill_Trout_2_HiRes-e1512443728344-800x451.jpg\" alt=\"William Shakespeare (Adam Magill) and Viola de Lessens (Megan Trout) share a love of language and more.\" width=\"800\" height=\"451\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_SIL_Magill_Trout_2_HiRes-e1512443728344-800x451.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_SIL_Magill_Trout_2_HiRes-e1512443728344-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_SIL_Magill_Trout_2_HiRes-e1512443728344-768x433.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_SIL_Magill_Trout_2_HiRes-e1512443728344-1020x575.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_SIL_Magill_Trout_2_HiRes-e1512443728344-1920x1083.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_SIL_Magill_Trout_2_HiRes-e1512443728344-1180x665.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_SIL_Magill_Trout_2_HiRes-e1512443728344-960x541.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_SIL_Magill_Trout_2_HiRes-e1512443728344-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_SIL_Magill_Trout_2_HiRes-e1512443728344-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/MTC_SIL_Magill_Trout_2_HiRes-e1512443728344-520x293.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">William Shakespeare (Adam Magill) and Viola de Lessens (Megan Trout) share a love of language and more. \u003ccite>(Photo: Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>There was always something vaguely distasteful about Harvey Weinstein’s ability to muscle \u003cem>Shakespeare in Love\u003c/em> into a 1999 Best Picture Oscar, and now we can excise the “vaguely” part. The film has high-minded aspirations — Shakespeare, literary trivia, Judi Dench, the noteworthy presence of dramatist and screenwriter Tom Stoppard — but ultimately it’s less a movie to enjoy than to get behind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So it’s a bit of a surprise that there’s some life to Lee Hall’s stage adaption. It’s certainly not the absurd premise, that Shakespeare is suffering from writer’s block while writing the supposedly lost-to-history \u003cem>Romeo and Ethel, The Pirate’s Daughter.\u003c/em> It’s that every once and a while, the backstage drama springs to life, and you get a sense of what it must have felt like to produce a play in the Elizabethan age.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, those are scant and fleeting pleasures. Our only true sense of what it means to live and experience the era comes from Megan Trout’s constantly surprising and committed performance as Viola de Lesseps, Shakespeare’s love interest and eventual muse (in the play, not reality).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trout hurls herself around the stage with an athlete’s abandon and seems to be acting in an entirely different piece, as if any of this mattered. You feel the spirit of the season in her performance, and at times that’s enough to hold this professional, though uninspired, play and production aloft.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nonetheless, I do wish that considering the Marin Theater Company’s adventurous 2017-18 season (plays by Thomas Bradshaw, Young Jean Lee, and Jordan Harrison), they had challenged our sense of holiday spirit, rather than pandering to its most mundane and well-worn concerns. Why should winter be bereft of ideas and revolution?\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘Sink’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13816644\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13816644 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink1-e1512442132307-800x451.jpg\" alt=\"Keith Hennessy slow dances with himself in 'Sink' at the Joe Goode Studio.\" width=\"800\" height=\"451\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink1-e1512442132307-800x451.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink1-e1512442132307-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink1-e1512442132307-768x433.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink1-e1512442132307-1020x575.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink1-e1512442132307-1920x1083.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink1-e1512442132307-1180x666.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink1-e1512442132307-960x541.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink1-e1512442132307-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink1-e1512442132307-375x212.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink1-e1512442132307-520x293.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Keith Hennessy slow-dances with himself in ‘Sink’ at the Joe Goode Studio. \u003ccite>(Photo: Robbie Sweeney)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Keith Hennessey begins ‘Sink’ in a white Robert Cavalli sweatsuit and a goofy blond wig, while slowly dancing on a stool. In voiceover we hear a litany of his ideas, thoughts, and observations — “People who have been surprised by Trump haven’t read the comments section,” “What does it mean that Colin Kaepernick isn’t registered to vote?” It’s at this point that we’re invited — at first 10 volunteers, and then the rest of the audience — to step behind the makeshift curtain into what turns out to be a different kind of world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Curtains are becoming increasingly rare in contemporary theater and dance. When Hennessey asks us to join him on the other side, you wonder both what’s there and what’s been missing — in all these other performances where curtains have vanished.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13816642\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink4lastimage-e1512441726903-800x453.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"453\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13816642\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink4lastimage-e1512441726903-800x453.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink4lastimage-e1512441726903-160x91.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink4lastimage-e1512441726903-768x435.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink4lastimage-e1512441726903-1020x577.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink4lastimage-e1512441726903-1920x1087.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink4lastimage-e1512441726903-1180x668.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink4lastimage-e1512441726903-960x543.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink4lastimage-e1512441726903-240x136.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink4lastimage-e1512441726903-375x212.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Sink4lastimage-e1512441726903-520x294.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Keith Hennessy jumps and jumps and jumps in ‘Sink’ at the Joe Goode Studio. \u003ccite>(Photo: Robbie Sweeney)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sink\u003c/em> is rather obliquely about the Las Vegas and Orlando mass shootings and, like the beginning of those tragedies, we make a choice: We walk behind a curtain, we enter a space, and we join a community. Among Hennessey’s many strange talents is his ability to talk us into a set of relations, something that feels real and of the world. He explains to us what is happening, makes us comfortable, and only then does he perform.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So if you have ever wanted to see a white shadow; the eruption of a pagan god dancing in the air before you; or a man falling through a Christmas tree of deformed disco balls, then \u003cem>Sink\u003c/em> is the gift you need. It is a clarion call for justice, the miracle of surviving, and an amazing journey that embraces a volcano of everyday emotions, especially the ones of December.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here is a winter present worth unwrapping.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12127869\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Sink’ runs through Saturday, Dec. 9, at the Joe Goode Studio in San Francisco. For tickets and information, \u003ca href=\"http://circozero.org/current#/sink/\">see here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘A Christmas Story: The Musical’ runs through Saturday, Jan. 13, at the SF Playhouse. For tickets and information, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfplayhouse.org/sfph/\">see here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Shakespeare in Love’ runs through Saturday, Dec. 23, at the Marin Theater Company in Mill Valley. For tickets and information, \u003ca href=\"http://www.marintheatre.org\">see here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Shotgun's Daring 'Black Rider' Aims for, and Pierces, the American Heart",
"headTitle": "Shotgun’s Daring ‘Black Rider’ Aims for, and Pierces, the American Heart | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>What an artist seeks out, an artist finds. When William Burroughs accidentally shot his wife Joan Vollmer while playing a game they liked to call “William Tell,” he entered a state of trauma that would last for the whole of his career, an aesthetic awakening born of disaster.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Burroughs saw the sinister logic of all fables and myths of reckoning — as children of the fall, Adam and Eve’s as well as Lucifer’s, we’re always looking for everything to go very, very wrong. So it’s appropriate that disaster is the governing spirit for Burroughs, Tom Waits, and Robert Wilson in their neo-Brechtian musical, \u003cem>The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets\u003c/em>, which gets an acid-soaked reworking under Mark Jackson’s inspired direction for the Shotgun Players.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13815462\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13815462\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4841-e1511169732801-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"ATTACHMENT DETAILSSaved. blackrider-4841.jpg November 20, 2017 239 KB 1200 × 800 Edit Image Delete Permanently URL\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4841-e1511169732801-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4841-e1511169732801-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4841-e1511169732801-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4841-e1511169732801-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4841-e1511169732801-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4841-e1511169732801-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4841-e1511169732801-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4841-e1511169732801-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4841-e1511169732801-520x293.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4841-e1511169732801.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Old Uncle (Kevin Clarke) is always ready to use his bullhorn and shout out a few pertinent messages in ‘The Black Rider,’ at Shotgun Players’ Ashby Stage. \u003ccite>(Photo: Cheshire Isaacs)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Like all fairy tales, the story is simple. Wilhelm loves Kätchen, but Kätchen’s father Bertram is a huntsman and is dubious of a clerk who can’t shoot. Dad prefers Robert, who knows his way around guns, despite his wife Anne’s protestations about true love. There’s not one but two devils: Old Uncle and Peg Leg, the latter with a supply of magic bullets that kind of always hit their mark, or somewhere close to it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It takes a perverse spirit to ask a man named William who mistakenly shot his wife dead to write a libretto about a man named Wilhelm who can’t shoot and is about to be married. That’s Wilson for you, though, a master producer and creator of theatrical extravaganzas — everything he touches turns into a comic nightmare of perfectly composed and striking stage images.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Black Rider\u003c/em>, with its German cabaret-style score, premiered in Hamburg in 1990 and became an international sensation in both style, substance, and reception. In 2017, Jackson and Shotgun bring the tale back to America, where it belongs — not only because of the distinctly American voices of Burroughs (Missouri) and Waits (a master of mutated, bluesy Americana), but because we are a country that loves our guns and bullets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13815464\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13815464\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-5233-e1511170049892-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Peg Leg (Rotimi Agbabiaka) teaches Wilhelm (Grace Ng) in the ways of the gun.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-5233-e1511170049892.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-5233-e1511170049892-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-5233-e1511170049892-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-5233-e1511170049892-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-5233-e1511170049892-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-5233-e1511170049892-520x293.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Peg Leg (Rotimi Agbabiaka) teaches Wilhelm (Grace Ng) in the ways of the gun in ‘The Black Rider.’ \u003ccite>(Photo: Cheshire Isaacs)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In Wilson’s heavily European influenced productions, actors are often lathered in white makeup, three swatches short of a Kabuki mask and hard to tell apart. Everyone’s a twin in clown white. In contrast, Jackson and Shotgun cast with an eye to the American street. It’s as if they went out and bought costumes for types — accountant, huntsman, devil, ingénue, mom — and then looked around for anyone with enough crazy verve and talent to bring those clothes to life. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Hey, performance artist El Beh, want to play a prick with a gun, here’s some fatigues and a fake beard. Rotimi Agbabiaka, we’ve got a ruffled shirt and one red boot, how ’bout Peg Leg? You’ll do it if you play him three times past laconic, you’re in! Got a gray suit and goofy glasses, Grace Ng, Wilhelm’s calling you. Kevin Clarke, you’re the best hair actor in the Bay Area, get your scissors ready!\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13815459\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13815459\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4906-e1511169110525-800x449.jpg\" alt=\"(L to R) Wilhelm (Grace Ng, Kätchen (Noelle Viñas), Bertram (Steven Hess), Anne (Elizabeth Carter), Old Uncle (Kevin Clarke), Robert (El Beh), and Peg Leg (Rotimi Agbabiaka) dance and sing their way to hell.\" width=\"800\" height=\"449\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4906-e1511169110525-800x449.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4906-e1511169110525-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4906-e1511169110525-768x431.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4906-e1511169110525-1020x573.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4906-e1511169110525-1180x663.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4906-e1511169110525-960x539.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4906-e1511169110525-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4906-e1511169110525-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4906-e1511169110525-520x292.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4906-e1511169110525.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(L to R) Wilhelm (Grace Ng, Kätchen (Noelle Viñas), Bertram (Steven Hess), Anne (Elizabeth Carter), Old Uncle (Kevin Clarke), Robert (El Beh), and Peg Leg (Rotimi Agbabiaka) dance and sing their way to hell in ‘The Black Rider.’ \u003ccite>(Photo: Cheshire Isaacs)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Some might call it non-traditional casting. I’d argue that it’s just the kicks of theater and putting on a show. To see the cast lined up on the stage is to see America: every race, an array of ages, small and tall, the bald and the hirsute. There’s a joyous democratic spirit present that’s lost in the high gloss of Wilson’s original production.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in bringing \u003cem>The Black Rider\u003c/em> to its American core, Shotgun also brings us back to guns and bullets and the trauma at the heart of Burroughs’ art — after all, he’s a confessed killer, and no matter which way the story goes it keeps circling back to murders, inadvertent or otherwise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So despite all the exuberance and skill here — of the acting, of Waits’ beautiful music (under the direction of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.awesomeorchestra.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Awesöme Orchestra\u003c/a>’s David Möschler), of Jackson’s funhouse staging — we’re essentially watching a nightmare creep into reality, one we feel coming every step of the way. And in that sense the production is truly post-traumatic, a show fueled by the shock and desperation of knowing that you have shot a gun, that you have enjoyed hearing the crack of the bullet, and that when the smoke has cleared, you have murdered someone you loved.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13815458\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13815458\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4896-e1511168648804-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Peg Leg (Rotimi Agbabiaka) has a few devilish messages we should all heed.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4896-e1511168648804-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4896-e1511168648804-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4896-e1511168648804-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4896-e1511168648804-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4896-e1511168648804-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4896-e1511168648804-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4896-e1511168648804-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4896-e1511168648804-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4896-e1511168648804-520x293.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4896-e1511168648804.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Peg Leg (Rotimi Agbabiaka) has a few devilish messages we should all heed in ‘The Black Rider.’ \u003ccite>(Photo: Cheshire Isaacs)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It’s quite a message for a show and production of such stunning grace and pleasure. As Peg Leg sings, “The bullet may have its own will / you never know whom it will kill.” The devil knows, though, and in the end he’s happy that we only see him halfway coming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And as for our happiness in America, well, Shotgun’s \u003cem>Black Rider\u003c/em> makes it clear: we just want to keep pulling that trigger.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets’ runs through Sunday, Dec. 31, at the Ashby Stage in Berkeley. For tickets and information, \u003ca href=\"https://www.shotgunplayers.org/Online/default.asp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">click here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"description": "What an artist seeks out, an artist finds. When William Burroughs accidentally shot his wife Joan Vollmer while playing a game they liked to call "William Tell," he entered a state of trauma that would last for the whole of his career, an aesthetic awakening born of disaster. Burroughs saw the sinister logic of all",
"title": "Shotgun's Daring 'Black Rider' Aims for, and Pierces, the American Heart | KQED",
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"headline": "Shotgun's Daring 'Black Rider' Aims for, and Pierces, the American Heart",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>What an artist seeks out, an artist finds. When William Burroughs accidentally shot his wife Joan Vollmer while playing a game they liked to call “William Tell,” he entered a state of trauma that would last for the whole of his career, an aesthetic awakening born of disaster.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Burroughs saw the sinister logic of all fables and myths of reckoning — as children of the fall, Adam and Eve’s as well as Lucifer’s, we’re always looking for everything to go very, very wrong. So it’s appropriate that disaster is the governing spirit for Burroughs, Tom Waits, and Robert Wilson in their neo-Brechtian musical, \u003cem>The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets\u003c/em>, which gets an acid-soaked reworking under Mark Jackson’s inspired direction for the Shotgun Players.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13815462\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13815462\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4841-e1511169732801-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"ATTACHMENT DETAILSSaved. blackrider-4841.jpg November 20, 2017 239 KB 1200 × 800 Edit Image Delete Permanently URL\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4841-e1511169732801-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4841-e1511169732801-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4841-e1511169732801-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4841-e1511169732801-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4841-e1511169732801-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4841-e1511169732801-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4841-e1511169732801-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4841-e1511169732801-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4841-e1511169732801-520x293.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4841-e1511169732801.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Old Uncle (Kevin Clarke) is always ready to use his bullhorn and shout out a few pertinent messages in ‘The Black Rider,’ at Shotgun Players’ Ashby Stage. \u003ccite>(Photo: Cheshire Isaacs)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Like all fairy tales, the story is simple. Wilhelm loves Kätchen, but Kätchen’s father Bertram is a huntsman and is dubious of a clerk who can’t shoot. Dad prefers Robert, who knows his way around guns, despite his wife Anne’s protestations about true love. There’s not one but two devils: Old Uncle and Peg Leg, the latter with a supply of magic bullets that kind of always hit their mark, or somewhere close to it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It takes a perverse spirit to ask a man named William who mistakenly shot his wife dead to write a libretto about a man named Wilhelm who can’t shoot and is about to be married. That’s Wilson for you, though, a master producer and creator of theatrical extravaganzas — everything he touches turns into a comic nightmare of perfectly composed and striking stage images.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Black Rider\u003c/em>, with its German cabaret-style score, premiered in Hamburg in 1990 and became an international sensation in both style, substance, and reception. In 2017, Jackson and Shotgun bring the tale back to America, where it belongs — not only because of the distinctly American voices of Burroughs (Missouri) and Waits (a master of mutated, bluesy Americana), but because we are a country that loves our guns and bullets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13815464\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13815464\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-5233-e1511170049892-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Peg Leg (Rotimi Agbabiaka) teaches Wilhelm (Grace Ng) in the ways of the gun.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-5233-e1511170049892.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-5233-e1511170049892-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-5233-e1511170049892-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-5233-e1511170049892-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-5233-e1511170049892-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-5233-e1511170049892-520x293.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Peg Leg (Rotimi Agbabiaka) teaches Wilhelm (Grace Ng) in the ways of the gun in ‘The Black Rider.’ \u003ccite>(Photo: Cheshire Isaacs)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In Wilson’s heavily European influenced productions, actors are often lathered in white makeup, three swatches short of a Kabuki mask and hard to tell apart. Everyone’s a twin in clown white. In contrast, Jackson and Shotgun cast with an eye to the American street. It’s as if they went out and bought costumes for types — accountant, huntsman, devil, ingénue, mom — and then looked around for anyone with enough crazy verve and talent to bring those clothes to life. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Hey, performance artist El Beh, want to play a prick with a gun, here’s some fatigues and a fake beard. Rotimi Agbabiaka, we’ve got a ruffled shirt and one red boot, how ’bout Peg Leg? You’ll do it if you play him three times past laconic, you’re in! Got a gray suit and goofy glasses, Grace Ng, Wilhelm’s calling you. Kevin Clarke, you’re the best hair actor in the Bay Area, get your scissors ready!\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13815459\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13815459\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4906-e1511169110525-800x449.jpg\" alt=\"(L to R) Wilhelm (Grace Ng, Kätchen (Noelle Viñas), Bertram (Steven Hess), Anne (Elizabeth Carter), Old Uncle (Kevin Clarke), Robert (El Beh), and Peg Leg (Rotimi Agbabiaka) dance and sing their way to hell.\" width=\"800\" height=\"449\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4906-e1511169110525-800x449.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4906-e1511169110525-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4906-e1511169110525-768x431.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4906-e1511169110525-1020x573.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4906-e1511169110525-1180x663.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4906-e1511169110525-960x539.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4906-e1511169110525-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4906-e1511169110525-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4906-e1511169110525-520x292.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4906-e1511169110525.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(L to R) Wilhelm (Grace Ng, Kätchen (Noelle Viñas), Bertram (Steven Hess), Anne (Elizabeth Carter), Old Uncle (Kevin Clarke), Robert (El Beh), and Peg Leg (Rotimi Agbabiaka) dance and sing their way to hell in ‘The Black Rider.’ \u003ccite>(Photo: Cheshire Isaacs)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Some might call it non-traditional casting. I’d argue that it’s just the kicks of theater and putting on a show. To see the cast lined up on the stage is to see America: every race, an array of ages, small and tall, the bald and the hirsute. There’s a joyous democratic spirit present that’s lost in the high gloss of Wilson’s original production.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in bringing \u003cem>The Black Rider\u003c/em> to its American core, Shotgun also brings us back to guns and bullets and the trauma at the heart of Burroughs’ art — after all, he’s a confessed killer, and no matter which way the story goes it keeps circling back to murders, inadvertent or otherwise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So despite all the exuberance and skill here — of the acting, of Waits’ beautiful music (under the direction of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.awesomeorchestra.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Awesöme Orchestra\u003c/a>’s David Möschler), of Jackson’s funhouse staging — we’re essentially watching a nightmare creep into reality, one we feel coming every step of the way. And in that sense the production is truly post-traumatic, a show fueled by the shock and desperation of knowing that you have shot a gun, that you have enjoyed hearing the crack of the bullet, and that when the smoke has cleared, you have murdered someone you loved.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13815458\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13815458\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4896-e1511168648804-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Peg Leg (Rotimi Agbabiaka) has a few devilish messages we should all heed.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4896-e1511168648804-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4896-e1511168648804-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4896-e1511168648804-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4896-e1511168648804-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4896-e1511168648804-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4896-e1511168648804-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4896-e1511168648804-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4896-e1511168648804-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4896-e1511168648804-520x293.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/blackrider-4896-e1511168648804.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Peg Leg (Rotimi Agbabiaka) has a few devilish messages we should all heed in ‘The Black Rider.’ \u003ccite>(Photo: Cheshire Isaacs)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It’s quite a message for a show and production of such stunning grace and pleasure. As Peg Leg sings, “The bullet may have its own will / you never know whom it will kill.” The devil knows, though, and in the end he’s happy that we only see him halfway coming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And as for our happiness in America, well, Shotgun’s \u003cem>Black Rider\u003c/em> makes it clear: we just want to keep pulling that trigger.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets’ runs through Sunday, Dec. 31, at the Ashby Stage in Berkeley. For tickets and information, \u003ca href=\"https://www.shotgunplayers.org/Online/default.asp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">click here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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"soldout": {
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"title": "SOLD OUT: Rethinking Housing in America",
"tagline": "A new future for housing",
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