Porcelain

Becky SarwateLeave a comment
(Source:http://prologuetheatreco.org/)

Mid-1980s London: the height of the global AIDS crisis when celebrity role models such as Rock Hudson, Freddie Mercury and gender-bending performer Boy George created space for homosexual young men to consider taking a few tentative steps out of the closet. At the same time, socioeconomic, cultural and familial acceptance were nascent enough concepts to render the struggle for physical and emotional safety a threat to personal freedom. And in a Western Hemisphere just waking up to the LGBT community hiding in plain sight, how much more complicated the issues for immigrants, already branded as “other?”

Into this knotty blend of history, sociology and human rights wades Prologue Theatre Company’s 2014-2015 season-ending production of “Porcelain,” directed by Matthew Ozawa. On a small stage, boasting a minimalist cast of five, Chay Yew’s 1992 work comes to colorful, violent, visceral life through the 21st Century prism of expanding marriage equality and a deep vein of xenophobia and nativism that runs through “enlightened” Western cultures.

Press materials accurately distill the plot as such: “Triply scorned — as an Asian, a homosexual, and now a murderer — 19 year-old John Lee [Scott Shimizu] has confessed to shooting his lover in a public lavatory.” The material knowingly leverages limited incidental suspense to examine a much larger mystery.

Yes, the audience is aware that John is guilty. But how does his particular brew of racial, sexual and personal isolation lead to a powerlessness that can only be defeated (in his mind) through a shocking act of human destruction?

Shimizu commands the stage as John, a lonely student who goes “cottaging (defined as anonymous sex in public bathrooms)” to assuage an unsatisfied need for physical and emotional connection. As the play makes clear, well before he became a murderous media sensation, John faced rejection from the Chinese immigrant community, gay society and even himself.

More than once as John shares his story with a prison psychiatrist, he uses the word “hate” to describe his tortured feelings about his appearance and the lifelong odyssey to find a place where he belongs. Shimizu’s performance is at once utterly sympathetic, unhinged and desperate. Exactly right.

A talented supporting cast uniformly gifted with the ability to slip quickly and seamlessly into the skins of representative London (TV presenters, old women, Chinese laborers and more) makes Shimuzu’s headlining work all the more successful. Cory Hardin, Scott Olson, Graham Emmons and Colin Sphar are a barbershop quartet of onomatopoeia, paparazzi flash, ethnic and social judgment rolled up into the screaming soundtrack of John’s consciousness. Without their strong, emotional work, John’s descent into identity hysteria would lack the necessary urgency.

The color red, origami and an ancient Chinese parable about a misfit crow follow John through the beginning, middle and end of his stage journey — storytelling devices that are both symbolic and literal. Red, representing both luck and death: origami an emblem of creativity and ruminating madness; the crow equally foreign at home and abroad.

These elements are woven into a beautiful but inevitably painful tapestry that unravels in tandem with John’s opportunity to assimilate. Even in prison, he is segregated via solitary confinement. And yet the murder, an act that permanently severs John from community of any type, may be the only powerful and deliberate choice of his life. It’s a willfully uncomfortable idea that both the material and Shimuzu’s performance force audiences to consider.

Running roughly 90 minutes with no intermission, Prologue Theatre’s “Porcelain” has a lot to say with no wasted words or fillers. Due to adult content including a rather graphic sexual assault, the production is decidedly adults only. It’s a chilling, thought-provoking piece worth placing on your early summer calendar.

“Porcelain” runs through July 15 at Greenhouse Theatre, 2257 N. Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL. For information or tickets, call 773-404-7336 or visit the Greenhouse Theatre website.

113th Congress Produces 22% of “Do-Nothing” 1947-1948 Counterpart (December 20, 2014)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

Do-Nothing-Congress

Similar to overpaid NFL “star” Jay Cutler’s reign of terror as the starting quarterback for the Chicago Bears, the best thing we can say about the 113th session of Congress is that it’s over. Setting a new standard for lethargic mediocrity, the body, which formally adjourned this week, passed just 200 bills over the last two years. By comparison, the 80th session of 1947-1948, affectionately referred to as the “Do-Nothing Congress,” shepherded a whopping 900 pieces of legislation. Harry Truman’s clever branding of Washington’s stuffed shirts was accurate at the time, but seems quaintly innocent from the vantage point of late 2014.

In an Associated Press piece entitled, 113th Congress Ends With More Fights Than Feats, writer Alan Fram observes (somewhat poetically), “The tempestuous 113th Congress has limped out of Washington for the last time, capping two years of modest and infrequent legislating that was overshadowed by partisan clashes, gridlock and investigations.” Limp is right. What little paperwork did make it to the President’s desk did nothing to address the nation’s broken immigration system, declining infrastructure, archaic and biased tax code, unlivable minimum wage and a host of other dire issues rendering America less functional.

Of course, despite maintaining a despotic stranglehold on the House of Representatives, none of this should be blamed on the GOP. Just ask them:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell: “How many times did we have the point of the week?… It was designed to make us walk the plank. It had nothing to do with getting a legislative outcome.”

Michael Steel, spokesman for House Majority Leader John Boehner: Republicans passed “jobs bill after jobs bill…But Washington Democrats — including President Obama and Senate Democratic leaders — have utterly failed to act.”

Moira Bagley Smith, spokeswoman for House Majority Whip Steve Scalise: “Considering the Senate is sitting on over 350 pieces of House-passed legislation from this Congress, I believe Senator Reid’s chamber single-handedly has earned the title of ‘least productive…’The contrast in productivity between these two chambers couldn’t be more obvious.”

Examples of these “350 pieces of House-passed legislation” include more than 50 votes designed to kill or weaken the nowclearly successful Affordable Care Act. And if you can’t recall the reported avalanche of awesome Republican jobs bills, you are not alone. Meanwhile in the Democratic-led Senate, legislation designed to raise the federal minimum wage, create equal pay for women, improve the student loan morass and extend jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed, proved DOA in the House.

So goodbye and good riddance 113th Congress, with your 15 percent approval rating. Better luck next year. Oh wait.

Per writer Aileen Graef of UPI, “When the 114th Congress enters its first session in January, it will be controlled by the Republican party which has already vowed to fight the White House on contentious issues including healthcare and immigration. With President Obama waiting to meet the new Congress ready to veto, it spells a grim future for productivity and approval ratings.”

As I suggested shortly after the November midterm elections, frustrated voters who thought they were sending President Obama and the Democrats a message at the ballot box (“Do something!”) were speaking to the wrong party. There’s no reason to believe that the 114th session will be any more productive than the last. Stonewalling has proven a GOP ballot box-winning strategy. Nothing will change until we demand it, and stop rewarding sandbaggers with additional terms in office.

Why Ferguson Is Also, And Again, About Guns (November 26, 2014)

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Ferguson Guns

A colleague who travels in opinionated and passionate social justice agitation circles asked me this week what I thought of the Michael Brown verdict. He wanted a reaction to the decision by a Grand Jury not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for, well anything. I replied truthfully. It’s hard to know where to begin sorting through the micro tragedies that culminate in this disappointing outcome for justice of every kind.

What’s happening in Ferguson, and rattling the cages of strained municipalities throughout the country, is, of course, about our complicated and corrosive attitudes about race. But it’s also about economic and educational inopportunity and inequality. It’s about a broken justice system that Brown family attorney Benjamin Crump rightfully concludes, “needs to be indicted.” And yes, always and forever when it comes to public safety and the senseless loss of life on American streets, it’s about guns.

No one disputes Officer Wilson’s legal right to arms on August 9, 2014. He is an enforcer of Ferguson’s laws, a servant of the public. However, the chain of events and the necessity of Wilson’s use of lethal force on the unarmed teen remain very much in question. In part what the tragedy points to is a fear-driven, trigger-happy culture promoted and profited from by forces such as the NRA and the gun manufacturers it represents. Whatever happened, as another colleague of mine asked this week, “to shooting in leg?” That’s if we accept just cause for firing in the first place.

What happened is that we have been listening to men like National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre tell us for too long that “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun.” With their smug and swaggering delivery, the old white cowboys have taken over the messaging machine of an organization that was founded with relatively admirable goals: to advance rifle marksmanship and teach firearm competency and safety.

What’s happened is that the old Wild West trope of a lone man protecting home and hearth has been perverted into a “Me first. Take ’em in dead or alive” mindset. More than the gun itself, there’s no greater threat than a mildly powerful individual afraid of losing his or her place in a fragmented, unstable society. And for whatever reason, the white male Officer Wilson was threatened enough outside the proportionately overrepresentedconfines of the Caucasian-run Ferguson police station, that he opened fire six times on a young black man.

Did that fear stem from the historical tyranny of white male patriarchal ideology and the growing threat of its disappearance in a diversified 21st Century global community? Undoubtedly, it was an influence. Is the tragedy of Brown’s death magnified by the fundamental injustices of our criminal and legal systems, which disproportionately target people of color? Most definitely. And there’s no way we can separate the incident from the settling in of a new Gilded Age that is destroying opportunity for the middle and working classes, as well as the social safety net.

But also. Also. It’s the gun problem. Few will admit it out loud because it’s too unpopular, politically disadvantageous or career threatening. But dissemination does not change reality. We’re all afraid of getting shot – and with good reason. The US firearm homicide rate is over 10 times higher than that of the second ranking high-income nation on a Humanosphere chart (oddly, Portugal). Writer Kate Leach-Kemon summarizes the data: “When it comes to gun violence, the United States stands out.”

A few months ago while visiting Vancouver, it took me a full weekend to pinpoint exactly why I felt safer traversing the streets of the beautiful mountain town. Then I remembered Canadian gun laws. They go like this: “In Canada, civilians are not allowed to possess automatic firearms except those registered before 1978, handguns with a barrel of 105mm or less in length, and specifically modified handguns, rifles or shotguns.”

In the absence of fear for life and safety, the high internal alert that US gun culture forces most of us to adopt in our schools, neighborhoods and homes took a powder. And it was wonderful. For so many reasons, including nationalized health care, education and sensible gun laws, there aren’t Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin catastrophes north of our border.

Cynical individuals and agencies with dubious agendas have spent decades convincing us we can’t have that kind of relative peace here. So we stand by and shake our heads while young man fall. But they’re not telling the truth and we don’t have to tolerate the status quo.

Get Covered Illinois Uses Humor To Upend Republican Obamacare Lies (November 19, 2014)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

OP19OBAMACARE2

A report issued this week by the U.N. Population Fund estimates that 1.8 billion people worldwide are between the ages of 10 to 24 years old. This is the largest number of global youths in world history. In a New York Times story about the data, writer Somini Sengupta summarizes most important conclusion: “Whether [the young people] lift their nations to prosperity — or tear them to shreds — will depend…on how swiftly governments can respond to their demands for decent education, health care and jobs.”

While a majority of the surging youth population is concentrated in the impoverished countries of Southeast Asia and other hubs (with 350 million in India alone), the United States boasts a full fifth of its residents in this age group. Reiterating that these numbers are more than just informational, Sengupta urges, “Countries that do not tend to their young people now are likely to see higher fertility rates and poorly skilled work forces. The report calls on countries to pay particular attention to the needs of girls and young women, including the need for sexual and reproductive health services.”

Thus, the timing seems like it couldn’t be better for this clever ad from Get Covered Illinois, the Land of Lincoln’s health insurance marketplace. In an effort to boost lagging Obamacare enrollment for the young and healthy, which also provides the vital risk pool balance necessary to contain costs, the commercial takes aim at the invincibility trope of youth. It targets the under 30-somethings using a healthy dose of realistic fear, mitigated with humor.

At the same time, the tag line of Get Covered’s ad, “You’ll be OK, probably,” could and should have been highlighted by Democrats in the run-up to this month’s mid-term Gubernatorial and Congressional elections, as the actual Republican alternative to Obamacare. The commercial features young Illinois adults frolicking in spring meadows (clearly the footage was shot WELL before open enrollment as the daytime high is 16 degrees in Chicago at present). These happy people are sporting neck braces, eye patches and casts formed of bubble wrap, cardboard and duct tape as they promote and celebrate a “Luck” health care plan made just for them!

Cute antics aside, I wish the commercial would go farther in acknowledging the malevolent forces at work in the other ear of America’s youth. Take this headline from conservative writer John Fund at the National Review: Young People Should Say No to Obamacare. One of Fund’s more dubious arguments is that, “whether they are slackers, students, or software engineers, young people are smart enough to figure out that they can easily wait to sign up for coverage until after they get sick.”

Really? Coming down with the common cold is one thing, but according to costhelperhealth.com, “Without health insurance, non-surgical treatment for a broken leg typically costs up to $2,500 or more for a fracture that requires a cast.” I don’t know many 20-somethings that have $2,500 on them at a given time. I don’t know many 40 or 50-somethings that do either. The cynical advice to America’s youth from GOP leadership amounts to this: We’d rather have you in bankruptcy court than participating in a successful program that provides access to quality care for millions more people. Because Obama hates job creators. Or something.

To go a step further, I also wish Get Covered would send a more forceful message to the young women of Illinois. While the U.N. Population Fund report acknowledges that “sexual and reproductive health services” are critical to the socioeconomic stability of a nation, the GOP willfully sticks its collective fingers in its ears. Illini ladies: no matter which Republican tries to tell you that repealing Obamacare will result in easier access to birth control, it’s just not true.

In an era of cynical and disingenuous political branding and advertising, I appreciate the Get Covered efforts to break a dangerous Republican stranglehold on the young public. Refusing to buy health insurance via the Affordable Care Act exchanges isn’t cool and rebellious. It doesn’t make you edgy. It just puts everyone at needless risk, and makes our country less affluent, productive and healthy.

Uh Oh! Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Meeting Spells Trouble For GOP Energy Platform (November 15, 2014)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

cry_baby

I have a smart friend who could have her own career as a political writer, were she not pursuing a PhD in another field. Earlier this week, she observed:

“So… that joint press conference with the Presidents of the U.S. and China at the [Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting] was sort of a big deal.

If I were in charge of an oil or natural gas company, and I had not yet read the writing on the wall and made the switch to investing less in oil and more in renewable…I’d be freaking out right now. I’d be up all night trying to figure out how to divest from carbon-based energy sources and move to renewables ASAP.”

Her assessment of the summit echoes that of a highly credible source, New York Times Nobel Prize-winning economist and Op-Ed contributor Paul Krugman. In a piece published this week, entitled “China, Coal, Climate,” the celebrated thought leader writes, “It’s easy to be cynical about summit meetings. Often they’re just photo op… At best — almost always — they’re just occasions to formally announce agreements already worked out by lower-level officials. Once in a while, however, something really important emerges. And this is one of those times.”

Pundits and lay people alike seem to agree that while we shouldn’t expect an overnight turnaround in global energy policy, the oil and coal syndicate which controls the Republican party, and to a great extent, the conversation about America’s non-approach to climate change, is on notice. Just one little public display requires a shift from the world’s oligarchs from offense to defense. For the first time since the Carter administration, us “tree hugging hippies” have reason to hope that humanity’s high-speed chase toward Earth’s destruction might be derailed.

Baby steps will be taken, but taken they will be. No matter how vague the language or undefined the qualitative steps forward, as Krugman notes, “we have it straight from the source: China has declared its intention to limit carbon emissions.”

Although there is clearly more at stake here than politics, a move like this can fast track the seismic cultural shift Americans are currently experiencing with other issues such as marriage equality or recreational marijuana legalization. As little as 10 days ago, when less than half of the electorate limped to the ballot box to vote red in the midterm elections, the specter of evolution (pun intended) seemed wildly impossible. Headlines such as this followed GOP victory almost immediately:Republicans Vow to Fight E.P.A. and Approve Keystone Pipeline. The party of scientific repudiation announced that infamous climate change denier Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma will lead the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The situation looked bleak. “It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel…” impotent.

Of course we’ll have to be patient and assess China’s follow through against its stated intentions. After all, not much time has passed since Hong Kong rebelled against the mainland’srevocation of promised free, fair and independent elections. And it’s not as though the United States has a blemish-free track records for the alignment of words and actions (a slavery infected “Land of the Free” comes to mind). But perhaps in the perverse way situations like this sometimes play out, China and America will keep each other honest. Neither country is a fan of being publicly embarrassed by the other. If the protection of a nation’s sociopolitical reputation is a motivator in upending decades of cynical energy policy, I’ll suppress a wish for better human impulses and concur with Krugman. It’s another long-term setback for the Republican agenda and “a good week for the planet.”