It’s been a week. The usual full work week plus tech rehearsals and now the first two performances (of eight) of Little Women. I can tell I’m getting older. I was tired heading into the theater this evening and I didn’t get my usual bump of energy getting ready for the show through the rituals of mic check and makeup and getting the costume on and running lines in my head. And it wasn’t my best performance. Every scene I had had at least one line come out as a complete paraphrase. So apologies to my fellow cast mates (and to the authors). I have nothing that must be done tomorrow morning so I plan to sleep in and hopefully a wallow in bed will restore the missing synapses. Fortunately, I’m an old hand at this performing thing now so even if the words weren’t quite right, the intent was proper and I didn’t drop character or change anything all that much so the audience wouldn’t know unless they were following along with a script in their hands.
So how is the show? I am not the correct one to judge. The buzz I am hearing back from reliable sources is that it is quite good. I know those of us on stage have all been a bit nervous. A chamber musical with a cast of ten means that there is no where for any of us to hide. There’s a certain safety in numbers on stage, especially in a musical but this one leaves each and every one of us exposed and needing to use our abilities to create character, mood, scene, and emotion to draw the audience in to the storytelling. The one thing I will say about it, from watching most of it from the wings, is that I think we have found the heart of the show and that the actresses portraying the various March women have created a family which the audience can identify and sympathize with and whom we all relate to on a very fundamental level which is the magic that Louisa May Alcott brought forth in the original novel, based on her own family and upbringing and why one hundred and sixty years later it is still read and admired.
When I do a show like this, with performers good enough to have national careers if life circumstance did not keep them in Birmingham, I constantly ask myself why the hell am I on the stage with these incredibly talented people when I’m so ordinary. I can act a little, I can sing a little but am more of a choral singer than any sort of solo vocalist. I lost whatever minimal dance talent I once had to age over the last decade. But I do show up for rehearsals prepared to work and I’m generally a nice guy who rarely creates drama in a company so I guess people like having me around. I wonder how much longer I’ll have the stamina for the fourteen to sixteen hour days. Retirement from medicine will help that issue but there’s still a few more years before that takes place, unless the incoming Trump administration makes it impossible for me to continue in medicine while being true to my personal moral and ethical code regarding patient care. I don’t have any shows lined up after this one closes. But I know me. There’s a need for me to be part of the creative process of music theater. It’s my version of team sports. I’ll audition or get asked to be part of something and next thing you know I’ll be cursing myself as I try to shove new lines and lyrics into my rapidly aging brain.
There was an assassination on the streets of New York this week. An unknown gunman shot and killed the CEO of one of the largest health insurers in the country as he prepared to enter the annual shareholders meeting. I cannot condone violence or murder but it’s been very interesting to watch the political discussion and fallout of the act. United Health Care has made many rich by denying service to its clients. Somewhere between 20 and 30 percent of its claims are denied payment, a much higher rate than most insurers. Its profits are astronomical. Social media posts about the crime are followed by page after page of comments from ordinary Americans who have personal stories of denials, medical bankruptcies, and loss of health or even life from delayed or denied care. There is a certain amount of celebration of the act of the Ding Dong the Witch is Dead variety. (I finally did see Wicked – I liked it). There is a lot of discussion that the establishment is far more upset about this particular gun crime (with one victim) than the hundreds of school shootings with thousands of victims over the last few decades. The CEO class seems to have recognized they are somewhat vulnerable and corporate websites are rapidly scrubbing identifying details on their top executives. There seems to be some turning to the incoming administration (whose ranks are full of the CEO class – I believe thirteen billionaires have been nominated to high level positions) to do something. Perhaps the Republicans may start to realize that a lack of second amendment controls and flooding the nation with more guns than citizens wasn’t such a good idea.
If you look at the distribution of wealth in the US today, so much has been sucked out of the former middle class and redistributed to our aristocracy that the imbalance is now worse than France under Louis XVI and we all know how that turned out. Are we on the edge of revolution again? Did those who voted for Trump based on populism and a belief that he would somehow magically restore the economic success of the middle class understand that he would place everything under the control of the financial aristocracy whose main aim is to continue to enrich themselves and their ilk at the expense of everyone else? When Trump is no longer able to command his cult and that is fully exposed, where do those energies go? Was January 6th our Bastille moment? Is it yet to come? Will the Republicans or the Democrats produce the new Danton and Robespierre and Marat or will they arise from some new coalition that forms as the population continues to be pushed down towards economic serfdom? Can deflective campaigns against immigrants and transsexuals, designed to distract people’s attention from the real economic forces that are pushing them towards lower standards of living, continue to work or will Joe and Jane America finally see the emperor is without his clothes? Why am I writing this rather than curling up with the cat and trying to get a full night’s sleep before tomorrow’s matinee?
The murder of Brian Thompson may prove to be an inflection point in the history of our health system. Our system has been dysfunctional for decades. It has been in a state of slow collapse in recent years, starting with the economic forces unleashed with the privatization and for profit motives introduced in the late 70s and accelerated in the 80s. This was accelerated by the strains of the pandemic. The next major stressor, the aging of the Baby Boom is just about to hit. The oldest boomers turn 80 in just over a year and the system has done nothing to prepare itself for the needs of that population. One killing on the streets of New York has ripped off the scab allowing frustrations to rush out of the wound, allowing both left and right to understand that they have been equally harmed by our ridiculous health care industry and exposing its iniquities in a new way. A social problem that we can agree on as a problem, even if we may not agree on the path to solution, is a start to reestablishing common ground, and exactly opposite to what the incoming administration wants or needs as they plan on a government solely for their benefit. It may get awfully interesting. And I think I’m seeing some new themes for my next book.
Life, The Universe, and Everything 