Tomorrow

Yesterday I went to Tomorrow. But I didn’t drive a DeLorean. No, my Ford Taurus and I went to Action/Adventure’s new play, where we were informed before the show started that we would be seeing Tomorrow today. I might go back and see it later, maybe next week, but I don’t think it will be finished (bet you thought I was going to make the “tomorrow” pun again, didn’t you? No, I know when to stop.) It wasn’t yesterday, that’s for sure. 

Action/Adventure structured their play like the Zager & Evans standard “In the Year 2525” by creating a trope where they would cite a pop culture reference from each decade, 60s through 90s, envisioning the future, and then explore other stories about what the future might be like. However, the drama in Zager & Evans’ story comes from humanity’s increasing depravity in each century. Tomorrow lacks such a build. However, they do touch upon and develop the theme of cultural pessimism about the future. At least, I think they did, but this could just be a narrative that I'm imposing: Tomorrow lacks a clear focus and instead draws together a potpourri of stories, dance and song without anything more precise than “the future” to hold it all together. But this is what I think they were driving at:

Our visions of the future are based in our visions of the past and present. They need to be: the future is unknown, so all we have to go on is what is already familiar. Action/Adventure develops this by citing (past) cultural edifices looking at the future: Zager & Evans, Mad Max, Terminator, Ray Bradbury. But these stories all describe a future where humans have lost control and the only law is violence. When you put two and two together, this shows us that, at least since the 60s, our vision of our past and present is also one in which humanity has no control over its own fate and in the absence of that control are reverting to our default position of rampant violence. The word “apocalypse,” originally the “revelation” to St. John about God’s coming kingdomon earth, now indicates hell on earth. Even positive futures are seen with little hope: “utopia” literally isn’t any place. In fact, the most compelling moment in Tomorrow was when the ensemble juxtaposed “the sun will come out tomorrow” with global warming.

But, just like Action/Adventure started in a good direction with the Zager & Evans structure but didn’t follow through, they hampered the impact of our culture pessimism by preaching (like in church) optimism. While I could have forgiven the structural corruption brought on by a light focus on that pessimism, the force optimism took me out of it. Because of that, I just didn’t buy the story they were telling. The promise without delivery makes this play feel unfinished.

And what beer goes best with Tomorrow?

Well, this one’s a little harder. The easy answer would be Lagunita’s Pale Ale, since that’s what they were selling and that’s what I drank. But what self-respecting dramaturg takes the easy route and shirks research? Not this one, that’s for sure. So, just like Action/Adventure goes back in time for their source material and finds hardly anything but devastation and hopelessness yet inexplicably tries to end on a high note, I’m going go back to vintage beer advertisements and recommend that you grab a couple buds and head on down to 1050 SE Clinton next weekend. Tomorrow is problematic but not without promise. Where there's life, there's hope Bud.

http://vintage-ads.dreamwidth.org/tag/budweiser