A Boalian Viewing of "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" (Spoilers)

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In Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed, the first chapter analyzes The Poetics as descriptive of theater as an instrument of social homogenization. Boal treats all narratives with an Aristotelian structure as propaganda. Captain America: The Winter Soldier has such a structure, and promotes a libertarian view of government surveillance justified by fear tactics as un-American.

In short, Aristotle's "coercive system of tragedy," according to Boal  presents an individual who, due to his or her hamartia, or fatal flaw, stands outside the social norm. The tragedian uses empathy to help us identify with the protagonist. Through the recognition of his or her error and the ensuing catastrophe, the protagonist's hamartia is purged from society. Our empathy leads to fear that the same could happen to us, and we are supposed to experience catharsis, or rejection of the anticonstitutional flaw we share with the protagonist.

Boal divides this process into four stages:

First Stage ~ Stimulation of the hamartia; the character follows an ascending path toward happiness accompanied empathetically by the spectator. Then comes the moment of reversal: the character, with the spectator, starts to move from happiness to misfortune; fall of the hero. (37)

Captain America's (Chris Evans) hamartia falls under Boal's fifth type of Aristotelian conflict: "Anachronistic Individual Ethos Versos Contemporary Social Ethos." (45) His world view is defined by 1940s patriotism, and the belief that America stands for honesty, loyalty and freedom. His world view stands in contrast to that of Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) who is leading the development of weapons of mass destruction for S.H.I.E.L.D. As Cap observes, "This isn't freedom; this is fear." Our empathy for him is facilitated through a pair of audience surrogates: Sam Wilson/Falcon (Anthony Mackie) and Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson). Sam offers a human alternative to Cap's superhuman invulnerability. As a veteran of our current wars and the leader of a PTSD support group, Sam represents an identifiably human reaction to war. Black Widow is a female alternative to the male-centric world of superhero movies. As Rob Keyes notes on Screen Rant, Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow has emerged as the leading superheroine in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which has yet to produce a film with a woman in the title role. Anthony Mackie's Sam Wilson is meant to connect the audience to the humanity of our service-people in a film about a superhuman soldier, and Johansson's Black Widow is a major connection point for Marvel's female audience. The trio's moment of reversal comes with Nick Fury's apparent assassination, and their fall when Cap and Black Widow are bombed out of the bunker. They become fully rejected by the contemporary social ethos of militarization justified by terror.

Second Stage ~ The character recognizes his error - agnagorisis. Through the empathetic relationship dianoia-reason, the spectator recognizes his own error, his own hamartia, his own anticonstitutional flaw.

The protagonist and audience surrogates realize that they've been serving HYDRA under the guise of S.H.I.E.L.D. By situating the audience in sympathy with Cap, Falcon and Black Widow, screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely imply that we share their interest in anachronistic values of righteous battle for freedom against the modern culture of fear and government surveillance.

Third Stage ~ Catastrophe; the character suffers the consequences of his error, in a violent form, with his own death or with the death of loved ones.

Neither Captain America nor any of the deuteragonists die. The Winter Soldier (the antagonist situated as an anti-Captain America), however, represents a death of Cap's best friend. As Falcon observes before the showdown, "Whoever he used to be, the guy he is now, he's not the kind you save - he's the kind you stop." In other words, the Winter Soldier is not Bucky. Widow's exposition earlier in the movie is more explicit: she talks about the Winter Soldier as a "ghost".  Cap's loss of Bucky Barnes to HYDRA crystallizes his alienation from the contemporary social ethos.

Fourth Stage ~ The spectator, terrified of the spectacle of the catastrophe is cured of his hamartia.

Captain America's hamartia, at its root, was mistaking S.H.I.E.L.D. for HYDRA. More universally, he mistakenly ascribed his own anachronistic prioritization of freedom to the culture of fear promoted within the government. Since he and his collaborators are the ones with whom Marvel wants us to identify, Captain America: The Winter Soldier serves to comment upon the current culture of government surveillance justified by fear of terrorism within a science fiction fantasy narrative.

Maintaining "Midsummer's" Frothy Foundation

Isaac Lamb and Cristi Miles

David Greig and Gordon McIntyre's Midsummer (a play with songs) is a good example of theater that manipulates our emotions through empathy with the protagonists, but it's not a great example. If it was a great example, Greig wouldn't have complicated the characters' direct addresses with screenplay jargon.

Midsummer relies heavily on the characters Bob (Isaac Lamb in this production at Third Rail) and Helena (Cristi Miles) telling the story of their amorous adventures directly to the audience. It feels like a pair of charming acquaintances telling you how they met. You're predisposed to relate to the story partly because you want to like your acquaintances and partly because you are thinking about how you met your loved one (or would like to meet your future loved one) while you listen to their story. But the brilliancy of applying this conversational approach to theater is complicated by Bob's frequent use of cinematic idiom that removes the spectators from the immediacy of the story.

Bob and Helena meet in a bar. Bob is there because he's a criminal and he's meeting one of his criminal contacts. Helena is there because she has a troubling secret she needs to forget about. She asks Bob to share her wine with her. He does, and the pair have an inebriated one-night stand. They agree not to see each other again, but fate intervenes and they meet just as Bob has acquired a plastic grocery bag full of pounds. It's not technically his, but with the bank shutting just as he arrives and it being his 35th birthday, why not just spend it? He invites Helena to run around Edinburgh with him, spending the bag of money that technically doesn't belong to him.

It's a very specific story about a specific couple in a specific city. And yet it accesses something universal. It's a happy story about a happy feeling that most of us have had and would like to continue having. The audience's identification with the characters is facilitated by Greig's use of direct address. It's really as if you asked a pair of people you've just made friends with, "How did you two meet?" and they answer with this awesome story about running around Edinburgh with a plastic bag full of money. We live vicariously through them. Who doesn't want a "how did you two meet" story like that? That strength is diluted by the screenplay jargon that serves to alienate the audience rather than inspire empathy.

This is a "dramatic" play (after Brecht), not an "epic" play. It would do Greig well to remember that. That's not to say this play is bad: it's a fantastic date play. Greig is a star playwright in Scotland, and has made a name for himself with socially conscious plays like The Events. Midsummer, however, is not socially conscious and shouldn't be. Attempting Verfremdungseffekt with it only weakens its frothy foundations. It's theater for date night, not theater for social change. If Greig wants to federalize the U.K., then this is not the play. If he wants to placate the bourgeoisie, then this is a nice little play to do it with.

 

 

Living Stories Development Log, 16. April 2014

"Can you imagine a world without electricity?"

Phil Albers' discussion topic at the end of his cultural movie night for Karuk TANF was particularly resonant for me. He was trying to make a point about how narratives existed for us on the Klamath River pre-contact, but for me the evening was one of looking at the usefulness of delicate technology.

Phil curated a selection of movies by Karuk videographers for movie night, including Living Stories (in which he appears as an interviewee). I went to the event planning on having a talk-back after Living Stories where I could suss out what was particularly engaging and where the video lost them to help me figure out the next stage in developing this project. The talk-back didn't happen, but what happened instead was probably just as informative.

The biggest problem with the current iteration of Living Stories is its visual stasis - it's all people talking to a point just off camera for an hour. As a theater artist, I've been brainstorming spatial ways to improve the viscerality of the experience. The video before Living Stories had the same visual stasis, so when the sound went out a few minutes into my movie and the audience perked up, I found a possible answer.

Video offers a lot of paradoxical possibilities as a medium. For example, as a recorded medium, it ought to have a stable longevity. Without constantly converting formats, however, that's not the case. It's also surprisingly brittle: the wrong combination of technologies can result in the video not playing, or not playing correctly. Third, and probably most alarmingly, video and film promote audience passivity. When we watch a movie, we sit back and consume the information, assuming that we're in good hands. It's only when something goes wrong, the instability and brittleness of the medium creeps in, do we sit up. This medium, that promotes passivity, has an equal potential to promote activity.

So what's next? First, I need to take a cue from the length of the other videos. I want to re-edit Living Stories into a series of discussions-by-juxtaposition on the central topics addressed in the interviews: books versus oral transmission, problems of translation, the role of traditional stories in mental health, etc. These smaller videos ought to play equally well separately as together. More importantly, I want to use the weaknesses of the medium to engage viewers as active participants in the issues under discussion. How can I present these problems using video in a way that the audience is not satisfied by the recorded material and needs to seek their own answers? And how can I structure that exploration? Ought I use curricula or game-play? Or a combination of the two?

And I need to figure out why the sound went out.

Economic Inequity in "Water by the Spoonful"

Daniel José Molina

There's a fine line between creating socially conscious theater and creating theater that exploits the poor. Playwrights writing about a community that's not their own are more likely to cross that line. Quiara Alegría Hudes, in Water by the Spoonful, dodges that bullet. What's less clear is what exactly her play, rooted in economically blighted North Philadelphia, contributes towards a solution to her community's problems.

Hudes starts writing her plays about North Philly by interviewing her relatives who still live there (she lives in Brooklyn). She adds a layer of fiction to protect the innocent, and then writes award winning plays that are being staged in some of the nation's best theaters, like the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. While allowing the disenfranchised denizens of a community where the most viable economy is drug trafficking to tell their stories is empowering, it's not clear that Hudes' "Elliot Cycle" contributes much else to her community.

The first act of Water by the Spoonful is two seemingly divergent stories: one of a veteran affected by PTSD who has just lost his adoptive mother, the other of a chatroom for people struggling with crack addiction. The set, designed at OSF by Sibyl Wickersheimer, is two columns of blue square platforms. The chatroom participants use these as their individual worlds, but the vet Elliot (Daniel José Molina) and his cousin Yasmin Ortiz (Nancy Rodriguez) are freer in their transgressions of the blue boundaries. Towards the end of the first act we discover their connective tissue - both stories are principally located in North Philly, and Odessa Ortiz, a.k.a. Haikumom (Vilma Silva), is both the founder of the chatroom and the birth mother of Elliot. The second act brings the characters face to face with their demons, whether they be Elliot's PTSD or Odessa's guilt over the death of her daughter, and the addictions that their demons bring with them.

While there is a token rich white man in the chatroom (John a.k.a. Fountainhead, played by Barret O'Brien), this is really about poverty in North Philly. Elliot is a soldier, and we know that our military is built on the backs of economically disadvantaged young people. For those who stay in North Philly, the primary means of employment is selling drugs to local addicts and recreational users from other neighborhoods. These problems are rooted in a complex history of race-based socio-economics, including limited opportunities for Blacks and Latinos, and white flight. One play played primarily for middle to upper class whites in Oregon, however, is unlikely to promote equity and better quality of life for denizens of disadvantaged communities. Granted, Hudes' documentary process of writing plays that allows voices from an isolated and blighted community to be heard from New York to Oregon is empowering, but that empowerment does not necessarily create employment opportunities for North Philadelphians outside of the drug industry.

There are two good ways to avoid exploitation in creating theater about disadvantaged communities: the first is to have significant ties to the communities you're creating theater about, and the second is to use your theater to work towards solutions for your community's significant issues. Hudes has deep familial roots in North Philly, so it's not like she's telling stories about somebody else's economically devastated community for financial gain. However, it's unlikely that a play in Ashland can have a direct positive impact on the economy of North Philadelphia.

Clowning at The Cocoanuts

http://osfashland.org/productions/2014-plays/the-cocoanuts.aspx

Oregon Shakespeare Festival's The Cocoanuts demonstrates, paradoxically, the limitations imposed upon the text both by the Marx Brothers' use of film as a medium, and by OSF's use of stage.

The Cocoanuts was originally a Broadway musical written for the Brothers by Irving Berlin and George S. Kaufman (and it's adapted here by Mark Bedard). The Marx Brothers came up in vaudeville, with audience interaction as part of their act. Breaking the fourth wall translates from smaller comedy stages to the big Broadway ones, but doesn't to film. At the same time, Berlin and Kaufman wrote this play for the Marx's clown characters, which limits OSF's clowns (Eduardo Placer, Mark Bedard, Bret Hinkley and John Tufts) with impersonating somebody else's lazzi.

Placer plays Robert Jamison/Zeppo, an aspiring architect making ends meet at the Cocoanuts Hotel while wooing the well-off Polly Potter (Jennie Greenberry). But her staid rich mother, Mrs. Potter (K. T. Vogt) will none of it - she wants Polly to marry the likewise-moneyed Harvey Yates (Robert Vincent Frank). Fortunately for Robert, he's got his employer Mr. Hammer/Groucho (Bedard) in his corner. Oh, Hammer won't pay him his back wages - smart-ass puns instead of amenities do not a solvent hotelier make. But, assisted by Chico and Harpo (Tufts and Hinkley), Hammer instills just enough anarchy to dissolve social distinctions and help this bright-eyed idealist marry the girl of his dreams.

That anarchy includes improvising with the audience, which injects a certain unpredictability that changes the show night to night. What doesn't change are the lazzi, or stock business, of the clowns with the exception of Placer's Zeppo. In the movies, Zeppo Marx is always the straight-man, quite uninteresting compared to his vibrant elder brothers. That blandness gives Placer an opportunity to expand his character's repertoire; a luxury the other three clowns don't have in their responsibility to American comic iconography. This paradox teaches two important lessons about clowning: first, it belongs on stage. Comedy, as a tool of subversion and anarchy, thrives on the unpredictability of direct interaction with the audience. But even semi-rigid texts like Bedard's adaptation of Berlin and Kaufman, not to mention the iconographic legacy of Groucho, Chico and Harpo, limits the anarchy.

The paradox is that the stage allows freedom from the fourth wall, but theatrical conventions of textual supremacy and loyalty to the classics limit that freedom. That's not to say this play isn't good: it's great. The Marx Brothers, even in impersonation, work far better on stage than on screen. That said, Marx Brothers texts are limited by Marx Brothers films in that the films sustain their iconographic lazzi. A better choice might have been creating a full-fledged piece of commedia dell'arte: it would free the clowns from the text while retaining Oregon Shakespeare Festival's classical roots.

Producing a Gay Minstrel Show

https://www.camelottheatre.org/2014/producers.html

According to Theatre in America: Appraisal and Challenge, community theater is the most popularly accessible theatrical venue, but all too often settles for being a "diversion" or social gathering place, drifting away from the idea of theater as art. Camelot Theatre's current production of The Producers limits Camelot's accessibility not only by eschewing professionalism, but also by creating an exclusionary environment with clumsily homophobic jokes.

Camelot has seen great success with its Spotlight series, biographic pieces about historical pop singers that feature "a little bit of story and a lot of music." Unfortunately, that formula doesn't work for The Producers. Brooks uses Leo Bloom's character arch to soften the blow of his homophobic minstrelsy. That story is lost in amateurish acting and directing that pulls the punch that would legitimize this production as communally inclusive art.

The story's about Leo Bloom (Peter Wickliffe), and his journey to self-realization by forsaking his hellish job as an accountant for the fantasies of male virility offered by Broadway production. Max Bialystock (David King-Gabriel), the lately unfashionable Jewish producer, ushers him into this new life of tax fraud and buxom Swedish secretaries (Kelly Jean Hammond as Ulla). They license a neo-Nazi musical for their scheme to create a lucrative flog, and hire the worst director in town, the gay Roger DeBris (Don Matthews), only to see their fraud go up in flames when people love the play. Leo and Ulla skip town, letting Max take the fall, before returning for the reconciliatory "'Til Him."

That whole story hinges on Leo's journey. First he's a repressed accountant. Then he realizes his male virility with Broadway production and sex. But then he finds something else - love for Max. That's the story that needs to be told to make this compelling theater. But the story we see is "Leo's weirded out by Jews. Leo's weirded out by Nazis. Leo's weirded out by gays. Leo's weirded out by women." All of this, of course, is true initially, but the story ought to be about how Leo overcomes his prejudices. However, Leo doesn't get past this due to Wickliffe mugging his way through what ought to be a fraught journey, and director Livia Genise focuses on gay stereotypes (drag queens, the Village People, etc.). Most of this heteronormative prejudice can be chalked up to Brooksian satire (even though a straight man parodying the gays is suspect). But Brooks does soften the blow with a love song by a man for a man at the end of the play:          

"No one ever made me feel like someone

'Til him.

Life was really nothing but a glum one

'Til him.

My existence bordered on the tragic,

Always timid, never took a chance.

Then I felt his magic and my heart began to dance."

If you don't play this as "I came back because I love you," then the depictions of homosexuality in the play are all heavy-handed caricatures, and Leo's journey stops at becoming an alpha male like Max was. If you play it as a love song, then Leo's journey continues into the realization that he's bisexual. If you want a theater that includes the whole community, and not just the heterosexual mainstream, then just guess which story you want to tell.

Community theater not only needs to cultivate professionalism, but also to create a safe space for the whole community. The first means developing the technique to tell a compelling story, and the second means telling stories that embrace an inclusive world view. Camelot's The Producers is a good example of how not to do that. Instead of the courageous story about a young man realizing himself as a producer and bisexual, this Producers is simply a gay minstrel show.