“I just saw the production; it premiered tonight after being postponed due to the recent hostilities in the county. My sister plays Sharpay Evans and it was thrilling to be able to watch it in the midst of such an ugly national crisis - very emotional.” That’s the comment that Milia Ayache, from Lebanon, left in answer to my entry about a “Multi-cultural High School Musical.”
Milia also directed me to the event profile on Facebook, which I have happily added to my profile (though I don’t think I’ll be able to make it, sorry). Theatre de Mazitou, the production house exclusively licensed by Disney to produce High School Musical in Lebanon, also talks more about their purpose in producing the musical. They held the objective “to reinforce and enhance novelty in Lebanon, shake up their talents and intellect and give them a chance to express themselves in their country. The lines of work we approach are utterly in respective of the growth of childrens intellect, internal and external development as well as their output.”
The troupe had to overcome a situation not commonly faced by theatrical groups - on May 8th, the country fell into “chaos” as a general strike was called - and by strike, we’re not talking about people holding placards and marching in a line. “You could hear gunfire crackling across Beirut all morning” reports Robert Fisk. In spite of this, they carried on with the premiere a week later, and I’m incredibly impressed and hope they have a fantastic run. Kudos to them for the bravery in the face of very difficult times, and holding to the theatrical tradition of “the show must go on.”
“If the same Lebanese theater group were to put on something by Sondheim, would it bother you less?” asks Milia. I understand the question - the idea that some plays are “classics” and that something of a higher perceived quality, it somehow stops being cultural assimilation and becomes common human experience.
I don’t know if my objection is so much to the author of the show or even the quality as much as the language. I believe that there are probably excellent Lebanese playwrights and stories that, if U.S. theatre goers were more open, would add to the cultural richness of Broadway (not to mention TV and movies). But international cinema remains the purview of upper-class liberal hippy types (yes, I’m generalizing and stereotyping here) and the international theatre scene remains the purview of the Ivory Tower of academia. I think, in the end, we all lose out in the one-way spread of cultures.
Correction: While having lunch with Douglas Rosenberg today, he corrected one fact that was not clear in my recent post about John Henry. While it is true that John Henry never actually served in Vietnam, he was in the army, and served honorably; the interesting thing is that the metaphor of the war and combat experiences became a metaphor for the struggles he endured as a gay man, as an artist, and as someone fighting AIDS. I apologize for the error.
Jealous of my Friends: A fellow blogger and online friend of mine, Viviane, is sitting as I write this at a performance of Passing Strange, the hot new musical on Broadway. I mentioned a while back that this looks to be the hot new show, and it’s getting hotter. Seven - count ‘em, seven - Tony nominations, including four for the shows auteur and autobiographical subject, Stew:
Best Musical
Best Actor: Stew
Score: Stew and Heidi Rodewald, and lyrics by Stew;
Book Musical: Stew
Orchestrations: Stew and Rodewald
Featured Actor and Actress: Daniel Breaker and de’Adre Aziza
I recommend that when the Tony’s happen you gather with friends in front of a big screen TV with a lot of rolled-up white socks. Whenever someone thanks God, or has a horrific dress, or seems insincere, or you just feel like it, hurl your socks at the screen, booing loudly.Trust me, it’s fun. Almost as much fun as watching the nominated musicals (damn you, Viviane!). I will console myself with some of the free music downloads that are available, but I’m sure you’ve already done that yourself, right? Or, like me, you’re counting the days until May 27th when the whole cast album becomes available on iTunes…
John Henry was a self-described “performing artist/educator” who realized he was dying of AIDS and decided to turn his preparation for death into a performance piece. With the collaborative help of Douglas Rosenberg and Ellen Bromberg, a dance/technology piece was born.
A large part of that piece dealt with John Henry’s experiences as a combat soldier in Vietnam. He integrated those experiences into the piece, combining video of combat footage with live onstage dancing. You can see several videos of the stage performance here; as the piece toured, however, the performance was required to change to accommodate John Henry’s declining health as AIDS took his body.
While they knew that the live performance piece would die along with John Henry, Rosenberg and Bromberg wanted his legacy to live on, and therefore began working on a documentary (also titled Singing Myself a Lullaby) that would talk about the creation of the stage piece and the issues as he prepared himself for death.
Here’s the kicker: after he died, in the process of doing research the documentarians discovered that John Henry had never actually served in Vietnam. All of his stories, his richly evocative dancing, the tremendous emotion he engendered in others as they heard his tale and watched the videos with the movement - all of it was a lie.
At the same time…there is something to be said about the fact taht when one touches that many people, when such a powerful work is created, it takes on its own kind of truth. And that ends up being the subject of the documentary, which has excerpts here and can be purchased here.
I’m more interested in the fact that John Henry found it necessary to take on the trappings of his generations’ biggest tragedy. He didn’t pretend to be a fireman or a doctor or a speedboat racer. No, he found something in the miasma of war that seemed necessary to him as he performed in the final days of his life. He’s not around to ask if he’d convinced himself of what happened. Isn’t it interesting, though, that out of all the common experiences that our culture shares, we keep coming back to war as the defining factor? Even me - I spent two years as a Marine, twenty as a father, ten as a dancer - yet when I talk about my life, it’s the Marine that people latch on, assuming that it changed me and formed me more than anything else.
And the thing is, I can’t really argue that. I didn’t even serve in combat, but every day I think about something I did in the Marines, and as recently as six years ago I was walking out of a grocery store as a colonel in uniform was walking in, and my hand was halfway up in salute before I caught myself. Perhaps because it’s such a movement-based discipline, it resonates with dancers, who also find things burned into their bodies as they perform.
Whatever the reason, while not the truth he was telling, John Henry’s story tells a deeper truth about us all, I believe.
In the tradition of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, the new David Mamet play, November, is set just a few days before a presidential election. While having the site be a pseudo-official campaign site, complete with “Vote Now!” buttons, it’s also very entertaining. You also don’t have to watch too much to be able to tell which particular president is the model for Nathan Lane’s role, but again, they do it in a lighthearted way.
I’m sure I won’t get to see it on Broadway, but I’m also sure it won’t be far from a movie, probably with the same cast.
I often talk about the way that dances evolve, the way that they influence each other. Last night, in fact, I watched an excellent performer named Arielle do a hip-hop/bellydance fusion piece (she was also a competitor in a local So You Think You Can Dance competition, featuring Hok, interview forthcoming). Some dances are meant to be joined, and complement each other well.
I’m not so sure that this new turn of Morris Dancing is a good thing, however. According to this article in the UK Independent, there is a movement to take the traditional white-hanky-waving bell-jangling wholesome Morris Dance and turn it into, as the reporter put it, “the devilish spawn of Hell’s Angels and medieval mummers.”
It’s an interesting article, and you can learn a lot about Morris Dancing - with the caveat that while a lot of people have opinions about it, nobody really knows what it’s about. The interesting thing is the new generation, coming in with skulls on their hats and purple lipstick and embracing heartily the sexual and pagan aspects of the dance. It will be interesting to see what the old guard pagans make of that.
I have close friends in Minnesota who are part of a Morris Dancing team, and they also embrace the sexual and pagan aspects - in fact, they have a longstanding arrangement as the official Morris Dancers for the Smitten Kitten, an feminist sex-positive store. As for the pagan, well, as Wil Stryk (and what an apt name for a guy who operates an accordion for people hitting sticks together) put it to me, “We don’t really believe that we have to dance on May Day in order for the sun to come up the next day.”
I’m more interested in the fact that John Henry found it necessary to take on the trappings of his generations’ biggest tragedy. He didn’t pretend to be a fireman or a doctor or a speedboat racer. No, he found something in the miasma of war that seemed necessary to him as he performed in the final days of his life. He’s not around to ask if he’d convinced himself of what happened. Isn’t it interesting, though, that out of all the common experiences that our culture shares, we keep coming back to war as the defining factor? Even me - I spent two years as a Marine, twenty as a father, ten as a dancer - yet when I talk about my life, it’s the Marine that people latch on, assuming that it changed me and formed me more than anything else.
