And that’s a wrap on the first week of rehearsals for Richard II. I think it’s going to come together well and be the show I’ve had rattling around in my head these last few months. At least the parts we’ve put on their feet are working relatively well. I’ve always liked conceptual Shakespeare. At least as long as the concept helped clarify theme and character. We still do the plays after four hundred years because the ideas and insights into humanity remain timeless which in turn makes it easy to set the plays anywhere and at any time and not confine them to Elizabethan drama. Richard II may be about specific political events in late 14th – early 15th century England but thos are just surface trappings to exam how a man with absolute power undoes himself by his unwise application of that power. It’s something we see all the time – and it’s become pretty much a daily occurence under the current administration. Richard is not our current president. Richard has self awareness and that’s the tragedy. In hindsight he understands what he has done that has caused his downfall. The president isn’t a tragic figure. He’s an operatic one. He’s larger than life and if he is taken down by the gods, he will be unable to comprehend his role in that process. He’s the Duke in Rigoletto, not a conflicted Shakespearean protagonist.
So what has our Duke of Mantua and his court been up to these last few days? NATO still holds (but it’s unclear just what the outcome is going to be for Ukraine or the Baltics – it’s a good thing Russia is running out of men). The Iran/Israel contretemps remains somewhat obscure. Iran’s nuclear program was permanently damaged… no it wasn’t just set back… the news is wrong… congress is wrong… the Democrats are leaking falsehoods… the Democrats were not given the intel for political reasons… I am in agreement that the mullahs of Iran should not have nuclear weapons. I am not in agreement that the best way to deal with the issue is lobbing ballistic missles back and forth. Diplomacy is much more likely to come up with equitable solutions. The trouble is that the current administration seems to have gotten rid of all the experienced diplomats with true knowledge of the parties involved.
There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth that a Muslim with progressive views has come out of nowhere to be positioned as the next mayor of New York City. The far right are exclaiming that he should be denaturalized and deported. If we’re going to start playing that game, a future Democratic administration could deport the current first lady, the movie star former governor of California, and a large portion of the right wing voting block of Southern Florida. The left wing is soul searching as to how a corporatist third way democratic insider was defeated (despite significant compromise in the past). The current leaders of the Democrats need to wake up to the fact that demography is destiny and that their attempts to keep all power in an entrenched circle is doomed to fail. Their refusal to embrace the candidates of younger generations, public repudiation of David Hogg, and general tone deafness in dealing with the concerns of younger millennials and generation Z do not bode well. They are supporting a system which has continuously economically squashed younger generations preventing them from developing and achieving the milestones of maturity that we have valued in this culture. These are the conditions that breed revolution. If we didn’t live in a time of birth control and these young people had masses of children they couldn’t properly feed and care for, it would already be upon us. There will be more and more candidates like this on the left and they will win more and more elections.
I am waiting for more and more exposes as to what’s acutally going on in ICE detention facilities. None of it is good. They are over crowded, under staffed, and appear to be run by for profit entities interested in government contracts but not in those entrusted to their care. Throw in a bunch of masked bully boys with no professional training and it’s a disaster in the making. When the madness passes and we hear about horrors, I don’t want to hear any ‘we didn’t know’ from anyone. Yes you do. You just don’t want to admit that we could do such things in this country. A better term for the tent city they’re setting up in the Everglades is Alligator Auschwitz as there’s no other proper term for it than concentration camp.
Something I have noticed. Pretty much every report on someone snatched off the street is of how they are ordinary workers, mothers, students. They are gleefully rounding up those that are legal permanent residents who had a run in with the law years ago. There have been almost no reports about gang members being or criminals being taken. First off, there aren’t that many and they aren’t going to be easy to find as they aren’t likely to show up at scheduled court dates. Second, they’re likely to fight back and the passel of quasi-legal bullies aren’t about to enter a situation where they might be injured. If they were really rounding up hardened criminals, wouldn’t it be the easiest propaganda in the victory to parade their mugshots and rap sheets on the nightly news? The lack of such things tells me everything I need to know.
And this brings me back to my staging of Richard II, taking place in a holding cell of a political prison. We should all be thinking about the misuse of power these days and it should inform what we do in terms of voting patterns and holding our leaders to account. Shakespeare had a lot to say about power and its abuse and misuse. I want people to leave this show thinking. I don’t want them feeling that their side in our current divide is right or wrong. I want them to dig deeper than that and soul search about the meanings of political power and what are right and wrong ways that it is used. I hope I’m smart enough to get that on the stage.
Life, The Universe, and Everything 