Blog # 69…May, 2017
I don’t know about you but what’s going on in the world has
me perched much of the time on a knife edge between optimism and despair…BUT…
the Greens got 3 seats in BC, a David
and Goliath situation, but look what happened there.
I heard someone say recently (if it
was you, please let me know and I’ll give credit where it’s due) “Artists form
part of the fragile barrier standing between authoritarian control and open
democracy.” They also serve us by
exposing conflicts among our values and making us think. Many of us are searching for ways to stand up
for important gains in freedom and fairness in the world that are slipping away
and we need all the help we can get. Being
aware and keeping from being overwhelmed is about all I can manage some days.
As I write this, I’m listening to
Margaret Atwood (she’s everywhere these days and always makes me laugh as well
as think) speaking about The Handmaid’s
Tale - just released on a network that I don’t get but I did read the book. It’s a prescient warning about the
encroachment of dystopia, and is having a surge in popularity along with It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis, 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Ms Atwood’s book is by far the most recent,
having been written in 1985, the others in the 30’s and 40’s. How useful are
these pieces in informing us, mobilizing us, giving us a chance to speculate on
how we’d behave IF…
Reading them now has a certain
urgency because that IF has come scarily close and some of what seemed unimaginable
a few decades ago seems to be here and the rest looming and threatening out
there, no longer unthinkable. Reading
current media can be equally frightening, surrounding us and involving us in a giant
game of True or False. We’re losing independent news sources presenting contrary or subversive opinions just when
we need them most, so these works from decades ago are important visions of
what that IF might look like.
Playwright Robert
Schenkkan believes he has a responsibility to influence not just curate. He wrote his current play Building the Wall in the last week of
October 2016, sensing a crisis. “ I don’t see… a struggle between left or right
or liberal or progressive or Republican or Democrat. What we’re experiencing is an attack on fundamental
American values.” Schenkkan (who’s a Pultizer winner) hopes his play will
ignite a genuine dialogue across the political spectrum. He made his main
character a Trump supporter, very careful not to make him a one dimensional
stereotype. “It’s all too easy to dismiss people you disagree with as foolish
or not having a grasp of the facts or being bigoted or predjudiced or whatever,
that’s not helpful.”
Building the Wally is part of the
National New Play Network’s Rolling World Premiere and will be produced in
Ottawa by Horseshoes and Hand Grenades November 30-December 9. He wants it to be widely viewed so if you have a local theatre group, mention it to them.
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