Ireland Arrival. And crosscheck.

 art, culture, Ireland 2012  1 Response »
Jul 202012
 

Today I arrived in Dublin for a three-week study abroad course. Sixteen graduate students will arrive on Sunday and begin an in-depth exploration of how Irish arts practitioners engage with various communities in the art-making process. We call this applied theatre or community-engaged theatre, depending on your persuasion. Simply put, I view it as creating theatre with people who may or may not identify as artists in an attempt to explore an issue faced by those people and/or the community in which they live. Others may get more flowery or righteous with their definitions, but I like to keep it practical and real.

The day itself was a bit rocky, as my housing at Trinity College is a mess. As I write this post, my young, French, temporary flatmate is out celebrating her last evening in Dublin with a group of friends. Angelina and I were thrust together unknowingly by the the Accommodations Office for just one nite, and I’ve had the “pleasure” of sharing a bathroom with a young French woman with a lot of bath and shower products. Imagine my delight when I learned this after traveling for many hours and being told (and I triple checked it) that I would be housed alone. And after waiting for five hours for my flat to be ready. It was a challenging day. At 40 years old, I do not expect to be living in a youth hostel type situation with a 20-something young lady.

Then at 5:00pm I met a new colleague, Phil Kingston of the Abbey Theatre, and he was a welcome breath of rationality. Phil will be doing a morning of input for my students, focused on the community-engaged work he is developing through his post at the Abbey Theatre. I found our conversation invigorating, as this is a man working to define what the act of making community-engaged theatre can actually and realistically mean for the national theatre of Ireland. It’s a tall brief, but talking with Phil, I got the distinct sense that he’s more than begun to tackle the challenge in ways that I’m very excited to learn more about on Wednesday.

I ended my day with Jenny MacDonald, one of my Irish teaching colleagues on the course. Jenny has taught with us for four years now, and she’s a great energy. I also appreciate her very grounded way of thinking through what we do as artist-facilitators and how we do it. And what it means for our identities. It’s very easy to get lost in all of it, wondering who we are and why we do what we do. Is it for the money? Does it keep us from pursuing what we really want to be doing? How does working with communities of artists and non-artists inform the individual artist’s process. These questions started percolating in some of the conversation with Phil, and then came to a head with Jenny. And ultimately, it comes back to two central ideas for me, ones that emerged out of each of these conversations.

#1 (with Phil): No matter what kind of work that’s happening and regardless of the context, the artist and her/his aesthetic can’t disappear or be subverted by something else (like an agenda). If artist and aesthetic even begin to fade in importance just slightly, the art will drop away or only weakly emerge, muted and underdeveloped.

#2. (with Jenny): Maybe perfection is embracing the imperfect. Maybe letting people see our work when we’ve reached a natural stopping place could be far healthier than trying to develop something until it’s perfect and lifeless. I think here about the way we develop plays in the United States. What would happen if I just started showing a play every week, having it read out loud to whoever would listen? Maybe even get actors to move around a bit? And just a few people come watch it? In my living room? Is that theatre? According to Eric Bentley it is. Theatre: any live event where A performs B for C. There you have it. Letting my work be what it is, rather than trying so hard to make it perfect. A new goal. Virtually impossible, but I’m gonna try.

I know this post is all over the place. I’m jet lagged, but wide awake. I took an Ambien and it’s done nothing…

I’m going to try to write while I’m leading this course. I’ve fallen off the blogging and play wagon, and I need to get back on. Ireland, the land of literati, has inspired me artistically before, but I’ve never tried to harness it’s magical powers as a more traditional writer. Let’s all stay tuned and see what happens.

The more you see the less you know: Thanks, U2

 art, culture  No Responses »
Jul 152011
 

Finally saw something inspiring. Attended the U2 360 tour in Philly last evening.

The concert marked my seventh time seeing the men from Ireland live in concert. I started in 1992 with Zoo TV in the Spectrum in Philly with my dear friend Cathy, then Zoo TV at RFK in DC in the rain with Cathy again and Andrea, followed by Zoo TV at Vet Stadium in Philly with my brother Shawn who eventually eclipsed me in his adoration for the band and my friend Amy, among Cathy and others, who afterward said that she understood why girls held their faces and screamed for the likes of Elvis and the Beatles. (Side note: We slept on the street outside the Vet for fifteen plus hours to get those tickets just days after the riots in LA following the acquittal over the Rodney King beatings.)  Then the Pop tour at Franklin Field in Philly where thirteen of us almost got trampled, and my now sister-in-law Miranda and I witnessed a young woman “worshipping at her boyfriend’s altar” in a very public fashion. Miranda was 16 at most; I was mortified.

After a long hiatus, my brothers scored tickets to the Vertigo tour at the Wachovia Center in Philly watching from a super box directly opposite the stage. We had comfortable seats, bar/food service, etc. Going in, I proclaimed that I would act my age at this concert, as I was well into my 30s. Instead, I left hoarse from screaming like a teenager, eating my words.

Seeing U2 in concert is one of the places where the Salvatore brothers come together and agree. Anyone who knows Shawn, Brian, Kevin, and I would probably say that we are very different, and that has, at moments in our history, caused the typical tension between brothers. But the band has represented a site of neutrality for us, and our shared experience around these concerts creates a special bond that we can always return to, even when a disagreement over politics or family or whatever emerges.

My sixth time seeing U2 marked a very special time with my brothers. Brian and Shawn bought general admission seats on the floor of the Wachovia Center for the second leg of the Vertigo tour. I was reluctant to stand for three hours without a seat in a potential mosh pit, but I eventually succumbed to the peer pressure and signed on to go. The Vertigo tour featured a circular satellite stage that allowed the band members to mix with the general admission audience. U2 introduced this concept on the Zoo TV tour and repeatedly expanded it with subsequent outings. Certain general admission tickets gained access within that satellite oval via lottery. Of course, the Salvatore brothers wanted to be in that oval, but we knew the possibilities were limited. As we arrived at the concert that evening, we got out our tickets and moved through the scan line. I can’t remember which of us went first, but Shawn went last. None of the first three tickets registered anything other than the normal beep for entry. However, when Shawn scanned, an alarm went off, and the venue person asked, “Who are you with?” Shawn said, “These guys,” pointing at the three of us, and they proceeded to hand us pink bracelets that placed us in the center satellite oval on the floor. So I went from the potential of a huge mosh pit to a more intimate, privileged mosh pit, one that I was happy to enter. Bono was basically within reach at one moment, I jumped so much and so hard that I had shin splints the next day, and there are incriminating photos of all of us acting like complete, unadulterated wankers. Suffice it to say, the concert was an incredible experience that I will never forget. The Salvatore brothers still talk about it, and when we do, I get glassy-eyed and a little weak in the knees. It’s an important moment of shared history for us, and I am incredibly grateful for it.

Salvatore Shawn was absent from our party of eight last evening, as he opted for a break, and he was sorely missed. Brian and Kevin brought their wives (Meghan and Miranda–yes, the teenager from the Pop tour), some friends of Brian and Meghan’s, and my cousin, Renee. Renee is like a sister and had never seen U2 live, so the family affair continued. At one point, Bono’s profile came up on the INCREDIBLE live television show that they produced as the concert unfolded, and Renee simply turned to me and said, “I just changed my religion. OK?”.

U2 gave us their typical high-energy live performance, but the technical theatricality that has become a trademark over recent tours has just intensified on the 360 tour. Basically, a circular, ever-morphing projection surface provides a two-hour live, simultaneous broadcast of the concert. Renee, Kevin, Miranda, and I all work in the theatre in some capacity, and we spent the evening in awe of the magic and intimacy that unfolded before us. I should have carpal tunnel syndrome from pointing so much at what was happening. The music and vocals were awesome as usual, but the immersive quality of the experience is what makes the U2 live concert such an institution. As a theatre maker, I’m inspired by what they achieve. The boys know their roles in the performance, and they play them to the letter. And whoever directs this live broadcast is a genius. End of story.

The men of U2 have been inspiring me for almost 20 years now, and I look forward to their next outing. Their music lands in my head and my chest and reminds me about things that I need to consider and care about, their theatricality pushes my own artistic sensibilities, and their political and social messages offer me hope that so called “megastars” can still maintain a worthwhile global consciousness that others can and must aspire to achieve.

Thanks, U2, for personal history and inspiration and for showing your love.

Click here for the last night’s play list and some great photos.  And below, I’ve included some shots from my iPhone.  Click on the pics for their titles.

Thoughts on The Normal Heart on B’way

 art, culture  3 Responses »
May 202011
 

Last evening I attended a performance of the Broadway production of Larry Kramer’s landmark play, The Normal Heart, and I learned a lot of valuable information about the play in production.  I’ve taught this play a number of times in different classes that I teach at NYU, and I’ve used scenes from it in acting classes.  The current production directed by Joel Grey and George C. Wolfe takes a didactic script written in the early years of the AIDS pandemic and presents it in such a way that an audience stays with the story for much of the two and a half hours that it takes for the actors to move through the experience.  The production is largely successful, but it does not always overcome the limitations of the script.

Kramer’s play first ran off-Broadway in 1985 at the height of the AIDS pandemic in New York City, and it essentially serves as a call to arms in the fight against the disease.  The story of Ned Weeks, the play’s main character, is essentially Kramer’s own story, and the play follows his experiences creating Gay Men’s Health Crisis.  Because the play needed to teach and raise awareness in the 80s about the growing rate of HIV infection, the script contains long sections of exposition that sometimes hinder the narrative flow of the play.  Also, several of the characters are difficult to like, particularly the protagonist, Ned Weeks.  This presents a difficult challenge for the actors playing these roles, as if the audience can’t find a reason to like these people and root for them, the experience loses steam.  Quickly.

I’m happy to say that the acting in this production, for the most part, is the main reason that it has achieved popular and critical acclaim.  The action of the play takes place on a very simple unit set, and additional pieces of furniture are largely moved and manipulated by the actors.  It’s an actor-driven event, which also helps to keep the experience moving forward.  All elements of the design, including the projections, work well to remind of us of the overarching purpose of the play, which is to educate about the AIDS crisis.  Given that it’s now almost 30 years later, we know much of the information that’s being conveyed in the play.  It’s a testament to the actors that we still want to pay attention.  As my boyfriend pointed out to me last night, we know how the story ends, and it’s not good.  But these actors commit to the purpose of the play and its circumstances, and as a result, we stay with them.

Joe Mantello, known more now as a director than as an actor, plays Ned Weeks with an attention to likability that I appreciated from start to finish.  Ned’s tirades throughout the play can become tiresome, although they are filled with truth, but Mantello allows us to see Ned’s vulnerability, passion, and intelligence.  It was a privilege to see Mantello onstage, and I hope that he returns again in the future.  I thoroughly enjoyed watching the mechanics of his work as an actor.

John Benjamin Hickey plays Felix Turner, the eventual lover of Ned Weeks, and for me, his performance is the highlight.  Felix’s journey in the play is an unpleasant one, and Hickey takes that trip with very little assistance other than his own acting ability.  It’s an extraordinary progression that provides the audience with a cathartic moment in an otherwise preachy play.  Hickey calibrates his choices carefully and earns every moment that he has as the play draws to a close.  Felix also manages to help us see the tenderness in Ned Weeks, something no other character achieves in the play.  This stands to reason since Felix is the lover, but Hickey brings something to the portrayal that is genuine and thoughtful.

The rest of the cast is strong but not always in the same league as Mantello and Hickey.  Lee Pace as Bruce Niles is compelling in the second act when he delivers his monologue about the loss of his third partner.  The story is devastating to listen to, and Pace stays disconnected enough to force us to see every detail that he describes.  He holds back on the emotion, and it’s an effective technique to get the audience to listen carefully to the circumstances rather than simply weep for his loss.  Unfortunately in other moments in his performance, Pace takes on this stance with his upstage leg forward and leaning back on his downstage leg.  I think it’s an attempt to establish an archetypal image of this good looking gay man from the period, but instead it reads as George Washington standing in the row boat, crossing the Delaware River. I remember Pace’s work when he was a student at Juilliard, and I was surprised by this strange physicality.  I think he’s a great actor.

Jim Parsons of “Big Bang Theory” fame does an excellent turn as Tommy Boatwright, providing several great one-liners and moments of breath in a very heavy evening.  Ellen Barkin makes her Broadway debut as Dr. Emma Brookner, a tough, wheelchair-bound doctor handling most of the early AIDS cases in New York City at the time.  Her moments are well-played, but she’s got one of hardest pieces in the play, a second act monologue that basically stays on one emotional pitch from start to finish.  Barkin manages it well, and the audience acknowledged that at the conclusion of the piece last evening, but I couldn’t help but wonder if there’s a bit more to Dr. Brookner.  I think she’s written as a fairly two-dimensional character, but I think there’s more there.

At the top of the performance, we see the actors come onstage, place various set pieces, and Barkin gets into her wheelchair.  It’s an indication that we’re about to watch a play, and that we should not forget that these are actors playing characters, a Brechtian staging technique that stops the audience from having a catharsis.  As the performance unfolds, Grey and Wolfe add the actors not in the scenes, placing them in chairs upstage to witness what’s unfolding before them.  I typically love this technique of mirroring the audience’s experience with the actors onstage, but I did not love it as a convention in this performance.  As soon as it started, I knew why it was being used, but I was perplexed by the choice of when to start it.  I can’t even actually remember for sure where that moment was, but I’m curious why it’s not there from the beginning.

Overall, I was thrilled with the opportunity to see such an accomplished company of actors take on a truly difficult and important play.  The Normal Heart is an ancestor of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, and as a gay theatre artist living and working in New York, it presents a view that has certainly shaped how I move through the world.  I’m grateful for the play and for my experience last evening.

 

Six Flags Times Square = cultural dilution

 art, culture  3 Responses »
Mar 142011
 

In his March 10 article entitled “A Broadway Makeover for ‘Priscilla’ Queens,” New York Times writer Patrick Healy reports on the new musical, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and its journey to the Broadway stage.  You can read his article here: http://nyti.ms/fOqwOP.  And if you didn’t know, this musical is based on the 1994 movie, featuring two drag queens and a transsexual.

As you might imagine from the title, Mr. Healy spends a significant amount of space in the article highlighting the many changes made by Broadway producers (including Bette Midler) “for the highly competitive market of commercial Broadway.”  Throughout the article, Healy uses words and phrases that repeatedly illustrate the underlying intention of the producers: to sell more tickets by making the play more palatable for middle American audience members who travel great distances to “Six Flags Times Square” to “ride” the newest thrill musical.

Here are some examples of his language and the language of his interviewees, named as such when necessary, along with my response in italics:

“…a musical about two drag queens and a transsexual on a road trip didn’t need extra raciness or profanity” – a paraphrase of Bette Midler  (JS: I wonder what Bette’s friend Barry Manilow thinks about this.)

“…it’s not quite as down and dirty, not as in your face so much that you might pull back.” – Bette Midler (JS: Since when did Bette Midler care about something being too down and dirty?)

“But this is also an era when Broadway productions with gay themes are packaged as family shows, so much so that the casual observer might not have realized that the main characters…were gay lovers.”  (JS: I don’t even know how to respond to this statement.)

“At the same time much of the main advertising has been as comely as possible, featuring the beautiful women—actual women—who play the divas, supporting characters who deliver some of the songs.  Mr. Phillips [the show’s director] said he opted against extensive marketing with images of the three male leads in drag because ‘drag is incredibly difficult to photograph.’”  (JS: Since when is drag difficult to photograph?  The marketing for Hairspray featured images of Edna Turnblad. Such a cop out here.)

“’The most ridiculous [safe change] was the insistence that Tick look like an American-style leading man, a romantic lead, masculine, less gay, in order to get more bums in the seats.’” – Tim Chappel, costume designer for the show  (JS: Amen.  Well…)

“…accommodations did not stem from prudishness.” – paraphrase of Garry McQuinn, a lead producer  (JS: The lady doth protest too much, methinks.)

“We’re responding to a certain sensibility in New York that if you do X, you’ll sell more tickets.” – Garry McQuinn  (JS: a very heteronormative sensibility that perpetuates the idea that a group of people should be “tolerated.”)

“…a major payoff of the current version is its impact on heterosexual men in the audience, who have been known to shed some tears as Tick and Benji sing ‘You Were Always on My Mind’ to each other in the finale.”  –paraphrase of Allan Scott, co-writer of the script  (JS: Is this meant to make me feel better?  How is making straight men cry a “major payoff”?)

“All along we’ve wanted the audience to go away with a greater appreciation for tolerance and a greater appreciation for family.” – Allan Scott

As I read this article, these were the statements that got me a little worked up.  I particularly have trouble being “tolerated” as a gay man.  I appreciate not getting the crap kicked out of me, but being “tolerated” automatically implies a “less than” status that I refuse to be assigned.

I have not seen this new show yet, but Mr. Healy’s article makes me less inclined to rush out and buy a ticket.  It’s fantastic that a show is about to open on Broadway with all of these sexual identities and gender expressions represented, and I appreciate that the producers and creators want audiences to see a family at the heart of the show’s plot.  However, it sounds like they’ve messed with the very DNA of the story in order to sell seats.  It’s the age-old struggle to make back the investment and subsequently turn a profit.  I just wish that people would stop diluting culture to make a buck.  Or if they do dilute it, don’t proclaim that nothing’s lost and that the Kool Aide’s at full strength.  I’m tired of being watered down.

Do you think they cut the ping pong ball moment?

Turning a corner and staying open

 creativity  No Responses »
Feb 272011
 

This past Friday evening the project that I have worked on for the past six weeks finally came to fruition with a successful opening night performance to a very receptive audience.  Anyone who creates something and then presents it to the public, regardless of format or discipline, knows that the opening/launch can be terrifying.  In the past I’ve always found myself wringing my proverbial apron, unable to let go of the project, and wanting to run out of the theatre as the performance unfolded.  This time, I feel like I turned a corner in my practice as a director, and I learned to just trust the work that I’ve done, and more importantly, to trust the other people that I’ve made the work with:  the actors and the production team.  As a result, I found myself sitting in my assigned seat at 7:45pm, ready to experience the work, and feeling much calmer than I’ve ever felt before, a feeling that continued throughout the entire performance.  I actually enjoyed myself!

It’s a lesson that’s hard to learn, but one that makes a lot of sense.  The act of sharing any piece of art with an audience is dangerous and uncertain for the creators.  It requires a giant leap of faith that the audience members will engage with the piece and invest the energy to make meaning for themselves about what is being presented.  While I try to be as clear as I possibly can be in my art making, I’ve slowly come to realize that my vocabulary for making meaning won’t always match with every audience member’s vocabulary.  Which means that not everyone will like the work that I choose to present.  This used to bother me a lot, because I desperately wanted to be affirmed for the work that I was making, but I’ve come to accept that my job is to make the work that starts the dialogue, not to judge it or force people to like it.  Martha Graham sums it up quite well in the following quotation about art making:

“It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable, nor how it compares with other expressions.  It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to stay open and aware to the urges that motivate you.  Keep the channel open.”

Below you can find some pictures from the final dress rehearsal of Plays from the Provincetown Players, courtesy of our lighting designer, Emily Stork.

When “demolition” becomes inspiration

 creativity  1 Response »
Jan 282011
 

In preparation to direct the three plays that will be featured in Plays from the Provincetown Players, I needed to come up with an idea, some kind of concept, that would allow me to unify three seemingly disparate one-act plays.  While each one is a gem on its own, presented together they can become a bit more unwieldy.

Part of what has fascinated me about the controversy surrounding the renovation and reconstruction of the Provincetown Playhouse has been the opposition of many community members to structural change within the theatre.  History tells us that the original building was a stable, then a bottle factory, and then finally a theatre when in 1918 George “Jig” Cram Cook rented the space and renovated it to be suitable for performances by the Provincetown Players.

To address the community members’ concerns, NYU agreed to maintain the integrity of the four walls of the original structure, but the interior would be gutted and redesigned to reflect the needs of a modern, 21st century theatre-making process. However, at one point during the demolition of the interior and the adjacent building, a large section of the theatre’s north wall was adversely affected.  Some say that NYU was trying to demolish the building.  I know from having worked in the space before the renovation/reconstruction and working in it now that the more likely reason was that the wall itself was extremely delicate and had actually been weakened in prior renovations, long before NYU even owned the property.

Regardless of what side one chooses to believe in that argument, the more important concept for me lies with dramatic possibilities of a wall collapsing and what might lie beneath and within that collapse.  I became interested in the idea of what might have been buried under the wall or even encased in the wall.  Could the Provincetown Players have left artifacts behind, and what would happen if someone found those artifacts?  How could I use an incident like this as the catalyst for performing these three one-act plays?

In brief, Aria da Capo by Edna St. Vincent Millay is a tough nut to crack.  It pulls from the British Harlequinade tradition and Greek tragedy, while simultaneously following the musical structure of a da capo aria, hence the name.  However, the play is interrupted at several points along the way and has subtle messages within that give insight into the time when it was written: 1920.

Fog by Eugene O’Neill is the story of two men trapped on a lifeboat after their passenger vessel crashes off the coast of Newfoundland.  Written in 1914 and one of O’Neill’s early plays that takes place on the sea, it reveals O’Neill’s interest in the struggle between art and business, as well as his own personal obsession with the Titanic disaster from just two years before.

Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles is the most realistic of the three plays and tackles the age-old conflict between men and women and how these two sexes see the world differently.  Using the story of a woman who allegedly killed her husband as its backdrop, Trifles allows an audience to watch the pieces of a puzzle come together for some and not for others.

Very different stories that need some kind of unifying framework in performance.

This is where the collapsed wall comes in.

We’re not going to include a collapsed wall in our production, but I have asked the scenic designer, Andy Hall, to take us backwards in recent time, to a moment when an imagined Provincetown Playhouse is being renovated.  In our initial discussions about scenic possibilities, I realized that all three plays have an element of discovery, and that the characters ultimately come to see what’s actually present in their own worlds.  Similarly, I think that in the renovated Provincetown Playhouse, even though it has changed radically, we can still see what’s there: the legacy of these three playwrights and many others who’ve worked there over the last century.  Legacy doesn’t disappear when a physical structure changes.

So, in short, five NYU students enter the active construction site of the Provincetown Playhouse to complete a school project.  Through a series of unfortunate events, they uncover a box containing a set of artifacts linked to the theatre and these three playwrights.  The young people encounter some other forces at work in the theatre, forces that lead them to discover scripts for these three plays.  Somehow, they find themselves enacting the plays, and the lessons learned from history and from art bring them to some conclusions about themselves.

Below, I’ve included photos that move from the Provincetown Playhouse under construction through to Andy Hall’s working model of the scenic design for the production.  The images serve as source and inspiration for me in the creation process, and I hope they pique your interest and encourage you to come out and see how we’ve turned a “demolished” wall into a catalyst for something theatrically compelling that also teaches about the history of the Provincetown Playhouse through the words, actions, and relationships of the people who used it, not through the bricks that were there in 1918.

This is the exterior of the Provincetown Playhouse during the renovation in March 2010.

This is the interior of the Provincetown Playhouse during renovation, March 2010

An interior view of the Provincetown Playhouse, January 2011

This is the initial scenic design rendering by Andy Hall for Plays from the Provincetown Players

Model for Plays from the Provincetown Players, designed by Andy Hall

Photos 1 and 2 courtesy of Randy Susevich

Civics and Theatricality

 culture  7 Responses »
Jan 132011
 

I find myself in a hotel room in Miami, Florida writing this very first entry to my new blog, part of my 2011 goal to develop a writing habit. I’ve been struggling to get started, facing the fear of thinking that I have to say something new and innovative with every post that goes up on this bloody thing, and I’ve decided to just write and see what comes up.

I’ve been watching the coverage of President Obama’s speech in Tucson this evening, as part of the memorial service for the victims of the shooting last Saturday. I was traveling as the speech was happening, so I’ve only seen sections of it replayed on AC360 and on ABC News, but as I’ve come to expect, Barack Obama did not disappoint on the theatricality. My boyfriend texted me saying, “He is too young to be an elder, but he speaks as one,” and I think he’s got an excellent point. I would just amend the statement to say, “He is too young to be an elder, but he can certainly play one on TV.” Barack Obama is an effective speaker, one who easily moves audiences, to the point of raising suspicions in me during his 2008 campaign. Because I direct actors and write plays, I understand the mechanics of using words and their delivery to evoke an audience response. As a result I’ve often felt that Obama could be a little “smoke and mirrors.” I doubted his sincerity at times, because I could “see” the mechanics of his theatricality. I wondered at how so many people could be pulled in by his “performance,” and I worried that we were all being fooled. Why didn’t more people see what I was seeing? During his 2008 campaign, I chalked it up to people so desperate for change that they would gladly drink whatever Kool-Aid he was serving regardless of the consequences. Ironically, I think that many of these people who downed the cherry-flavored shot are now the ones who are hypercritical of Obama’s less-than-left position. I, on the other hand, have come to appreciate the President’s ability to deliver the message of the moment.

As I watched the excerpts of his speech this evening and listened to his vocal inflection and observed his physical gestures, I could see all the trappings of a very fine performer. The pundits wondered whether all of the moments of audience cheering and clapping during what was supposed to be a memorial service were appropriate, and I thought that was an interesting evaluation by three men who clearly had never attended any kind of funeral service that included a revival element with a preacher. Barack Obama used theatricality quite effectively to help people to mourn and to allow them to reconnect with feelings of pride about their community. Some cultures believe that death warrants a celebration, and I think that Obama found a way to locate that celebratory element and link it to the rejuvenation that many feel the United States needs in this moment. And not just because of one shooting massacre in Tucson. We have a lot of work to do, and Obama gave us all a little spanking without the sting that usually goes along with it.

After seeing these sections of the speech this evening and listening to the commentary, I’m not so suspicious anymore. Obama is embracing a longstanding tradition of using theatricality to illuminate civic responsibility. The Greeks did it with the stories of Oedipus and Clytemnestra and Orestes and Medea, people who committed acts that then needed to be judged based on the standards of their community. In Ancient Greece being a good citizen meant going to see these stories performed as tragedies and then thinking about the consequences. Shakespeare did the same with his history plays. He examined past rulers through a critical lens, and he used their stories to comment on the political upheaval in his own time period. Theatricality and civics have gone hand in hand for centuries because human beings need some kind of catharsis to truly understand what it means to be a citizen within a community. Tragedy forces us to see ourselves and those around us again, and that reflection of self wakes us up and creates empathy. Obama understands that, and he’s relying on the power of that empathy to instigate change. His theatricality may be calculated, but it’s warranted. It took me awhile, but the smoke and mirrors are gone, and I get it. And in this moment in particular, I’m appreciative.