#zayd dohrn

[shakespeareanqueer]

I totally understand the sentiment and agree on the whole, but I do recommend if you ever get a chance to see or read a play called The Profane by Zayd Dohrn to check it out. Basically, a man raised in an restrictive Muslim family goes on to raise his own family to be liberal and progressive and believe in free choice, right up until his daughter chooses a more traditional Muslim path. It's beautifully written and heart breaking.

Republicans have indoctrinated paternalism to keep the next generation from questioning the flaws, deceptions, and ignorance inherent in conservative politics.

[emilybettsource]

Described as a dark comedy, this actually very appealing and incredibly interesting play is so much more. Award winning playwright Zayd Dohrn, gives us a truly original and unique story in Reborning, opening at the SOHO Playhouse on July 12.

Set in a doll maker’s studio in Queens, the concept of the play’s title may initially be interpreted as a direct link to the lifelike baby dolls that are made by artist Kelly (Emily Bett Rickards) who is often asked to produce exact doll replicas of peoples’ babies either as a sweet memento, or sometimes, on the slightly darker side, to somehow, on some level, replace a deceased baby as part of a grieving process.

Kelly lives with her boyfriend, Daizy (Paul Piaskowski) who also creates lifelike sculptures, but of a very different kind. New client, Emily (Lori Triolo) arrives to check on the process of the doll she has commissioned Kelly to make; an exact replica of her own deceased infant.

Lori Triolo also directs, and notes that the “body remembers what our brain often can’t” which really becomes the through-line for this story. The artist, Kelly, who comes from a tragic childhood herself, now lives an almost bohemian lifestyle but finds satisfaction in her work and prides herself on satisfying her customers. Her new client, Emily, who is very much upper crust and more refined, has her own tragic circumstances to still work through. As the doll’s form takes shape, they are both moved by what it becomes to represent, and this inanimate object subsequently becomes the catalyst for both of them to address previously unsolved emotional clutter.

The character of Daizy initially seems to provide the off-beat straight man in this trio, but even he cannot escape delving into his own childhood and revealing some of his own hard truths. His positive personality and stability – albeit unconventional – are what pull the three of them towards healing and resolving to let all them move forward to a more content and productive life.

What ensues from this set up is the entertaining story of unconventional relationships that develop, as well as exploring the big issues of love and loss. But these issues are not so heavy that they weigh down the play at all; on the contrary, they are stylishly a part of the story and a motive for the characters as they themselves inadvertently sort out some of their own past tragedies and baggage through their interactions with each other.

Dohrn cleverly gives us what is not written. The natural dialogue from the characters in moments of awkwardness between them has us knowing exactly what they’re trying to say when they can’t say it, thus mirroring exactly how it is in life. There is marvelous contrast between the three characters that play off each other superbly, making for great theater.

Rickards, Piaskowski, and Triolo are all equally outstanding, giving natural and comfortable performances with ease. There was only a slight lack of energy here and there in the delivery in some areas which unfortunately let some lines fall flat, but given the actors’ obvious talents and skills, I feel confident that the energy will pick up.

Rickards, as the doll maker Kelly, conveys a likeable earthiness, and a relatable characterization, even though her character’s circumstances are incredibly uncommon. She handles her high end dramatic moments with professional tact.

Piaskowski as the endearing Daizy is at once a lighter and comical presence in the play, but also skillfully manages to convey the very real and very present motives for his actions.

Lori Triolo is enchanting to watch and has a skillful knack as an actress in her ability to envelop and convey her environment. She was very engaging and gave a lovely performance with professional ease.

Great care has been taken by highly reputable veteran Scenic Designer, Peter Triolo, and Art Designer Jo-Marie Triolo who have created a wonderfully detailed doll-making studio on the stage and bringing its audience into a space and a world we might not otherwise ever be privy to experiencing.

Reborning is a very well written and excellently executed play that does not allow itself to become bogged down in its big themes, but is entertaining, even at times outright funny, and leaves you feeling very satisfied.

[katluna90olicity]

Readin some reviews about Reborning.. Great times for Emily

Rickards does a phenomenal job carrying this show. Her nuanced portrayal of Kelly feels approachable and charismatic, yet sarcastic. She lets us see a wide spectrum of the character – both the light and dark – helping to make the dramatic ending feel a little less unbelievable.

by Katie Gartlan-Close, Vancouver Presents 

[fuckyeahgreatplays]

As a community of Middle Eastern American theater artists of varying races, cultural backgrounds, religions, sexual and gender identities, worldviews and artistic aesthetics, we believe the entire theater industry has a responsibility to create a more equitable and inclusive structure for presenting marginalized voices. Playwrights Horizons is currently producing Zayd Dohrn's The Profane, a play that follows two Muslim, presumably Middle Eastern American families. We are deeply concerned by the lack of representation on the lead creative or producing team from the communities being portrayed on stage. Members of the Middle Eastern American theater community have raised this concern, along with issues about cultural representation in the play itself, in direct conversations with the artistic staff at Playwrights Horizons. These ongoing exchanges have been open and constructive, but there is much work to be done. In the March 30, 2017 New York Times interview by Alexis Soloski entitled "Faith and Identity Clash in The Profane: An Actor's Roundtable," the writer interviews the cast of the show - all actors of varying Middle Eastern identity. The talented cast was asked a number of questions ranging from their thoughts on the election, to how Middle Easterners and Muslims are portrayed in media and entertainment. One question in particular stood out as problematic: "Was it a problem for you that The Profane was written by a white playwright and has a white director?" It is indeed a valid question; however, Ms. Soloski ought to have directed her inquiry to the producing organization, Playwrights Horizons, who made the contentious hiring choices - not the actors. The actors in the cast are our colleagues and friends and we support them endeavoring to speak for these larger power structures, as many of us have done in the past. However, actors are employees, and their ability to speak freely in these situations is complicated by that reality. They should not be expected to defend the work, only to interpret it. They do not exist to answer for those in power. We also ask: Why, when there are so many gifted Middle Eastern and/or Muslim playwrights and directors, are there still no decision makers of Middle Eastern descent or Muslim faith involved in a production about Muslims?

Middle Eastern American Theater Artists Pen Letter Addressing THE PROFANE, Inclusion; Playwrights Horizons Responds

I saw this production and I felt conflicted- on the one hand, how great to see so many Middle Eastern artists on stage, in a universal family drama! On the other, I felt uncomfortable that it was written and directed by white men. I’m so glad to see Noor Theater and Playwrights Horizons are in dialogue about this (click through to see Playwrights’ response). 

[oldpunkfromda90s-blog]

Lineages of Protest: A Brief Review Of, Reflection On, and Postscript to Season 1 of the podcast Mother Country Radicals By Chris  White

Lineages of Protest:

A Brief Review Of, Reflection On, and Postscript to Season 1 of the podcast Mother Country Radicals

By Chris  White

The first season of Zayd Dohrn’s podcast, Mother Country Radicals, is exceptional.  First, in an era where everyone releases recordings of tired conversations into the world for 15 minutes of fame, it is well written, well produced, and well paced. My friend who told me about it  said something to the effect of, “Have you heard that Serial podcast about the Weather Underground?” Zayd has such a unique intimate connection to the material and an access to people about a part of their lives that is closely guarded. And also, he discovers things in the reporting that he did not know or realize before.  But also, I like it especially because it fills in a lot of context of both my family’s life and my own journey. 

Zayd Dohrn is the oldest son of Bernadine Dohrn and William Ayers who were part of an underground, sometimes violent, direct action movement against U.S. Imperialism and racism beginning in the 60s.. He was born while his parents were still in hiding and grew up as they emerged from it. 

William Ayers, once served on a foundation board with Barack Obama, and was therefore a central figure in the opposition research about Obama the candidate. My favorite tv moment during the 2008 election was the Saturday Night Live skit in which they portray William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright performing the Gnarls Barkley song Crazy. 

One of the episodes, the fourth one I believe, describes the death of Diana Oughton in a Greenwich Village townhouse due to a bomb that exploded during manufacture. I first heard about Diana Oughton when I was in high school. I lived in my mother’s basement where one of her bookshelves was. There was a sensational biography of Diana Oughton next to an anthology of underground newspapers. My mom told me about almost getting kicked out of high school for distributing the newspaper and making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for protests that Oughton was a part of. 

Someone in the podcast says something to the effect of, “Those who do don’t tell and those who tell can’t do.” I assume that if Mother Country Radicals was a movie, my parents and some of my other relatives would be composite characters and extras. I imagine them in the closing credits with role names like Hippy Making Sandwiches #2 and Woman Living In Commune. But what do I know? None of them would want to have burdened me with any information nor would they have shared specifics about themselves or their friends.  

 When I was growing up in the 80s I remember the feeling that my parents were from the 60s. My mom has so many stories, but the accuracy of them is unclear. My dad mostly just says that it was a very difficult time and that it’s hard for him to think about. 

In the 80s, there were a lot of cultural tropes about the 60s.  There were reruns of Laugh In and The Monkees. I went through a period of being obsessed with The Beatles.

During my childhood, there were many pop culture references to groups like the Weather Underground and also to the Symbionese Liberation Army or SLA who were known for allegedly kidnapping and possibly recruiting the heiress Patty Hearst. The one I remember most vividly was a two part Laverne & Shirley episode. I saw the films Flashback and Rude Awakening in the theater which were both screwball comedies about radicals emerging from the underground into a world they struggle to understand.  I wonder if the Dohrn Ayers family has ever seen either of these films, because I can almost hear their eyes rolling. 

My parents met at a concert in Gallup Park in Ann Arbor organized by the 60s activist John Sinclair. It was the MC5 opening for Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen. Do you remember the end of Back To The Future where Michael J Fox has to play Johnny B Goode so his parents will kiss or else he will cease to exist? That’s how I feel about these two bands.

In particular, the stoner country stylings of Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen are particularly bizarre cultural artifacts. I have a live album in which they do an epic cover of the long form narrative country classic “Hot Rod Lincoln.” In this version, the singer has to convince the police officer that pulls him over that he is not some “long haired hippie S-L-A  commie weirdo.” “I had to show him my house.”.

My parents have such very hippy wedding photos.They were two hippies that loved to cook and planned to get married and open a little hippy restaurant.  And then they have the most awkward photo of my dad with a haircut and a shirt and tie with my mom in a sprawling apartment complex . At this point my dad has stopped being counter cultural and is being mentored in food service management by a man named Michael from whom I got my middle name. By the time I was born, my dad was an assistant manager at the Stouffer’s Restaurant at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York City.  

 In between, there are stories. There is the honeymoon where they attempt to hitchhike to California. My mom says that the Bay Area was exhausting, because my dad was constantly wandering off and she had to rescue him from being taken by cults. She says he would come up to her and say something like, “These guys in the van have these really good free burritos and they just want us to go with them so they can show us this really cool place.”

And after I was born, we eventually  moved back to the Midwest, and my mom’s stories continue. They are of a different era. My dad took a job in Flint, Michigan,  as the assistant food service manager of Hurley Hospital where part of his brand was that he went along to get along with his employees’ union.  While the Fair Housing Act passed in 1969, our historically white Flint neighborhood was only just beginning to integrate in the 80s. And for my mom, what we would say in today’s anti-racist parlance  is that she was recruited by black leaders to do the organizing and emotional labor with the parents who supported integration.

 I did get taken to protests growing up. I remember seeing Jesse Jackson get in a heated exchange with police in Washington D.C at an Anti-Apartheid protest. during a family road trip. But more often, I was at community meetings and canvasses. Slow careful populist organizing was what I witnessed, not the frantic disruption of “Days of Rage.”

Meanwhile, the generation between us, perhaps the youngest siblings or older niblings of the Weather Underground, were supporting Latin American uprisings like the Sandinistas and attempting to infiltrate factories. One epicenter of this was the factories around me in Southeastern Michigan, and another was the textile factories in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Also, in Flint, you could see the traces of the old left. Every year, my cub scout troop would march in a parade with the surviving sitdown strikers who in 1936 occupied Chevy In The Hole, over by my house, and won recognition for the UAW.

About first grade, I had a friend Juanita, a white kid with a Latin name, who started coming over after school so her hippy mom could stay at work. And then in return, I would sometimes go over there or join them on camping trips. I only met her dad a couple times, but he was one of those leftists who had long hair, worked in the factory, and sold radical newspapers on street corners. Juanita and I got enrolled in a weekly Alvin Ailey style dance class at the arts center on the historically African-American side of Flint. We were the only white kids and I was the only boy in the class. I felt insecure about having to wear tights. I remember my Republican grandparents coming from Ann Arbor for the recital.

But the initial attempts to build left wing factions inside the UAW and in nonunion factories sputtered due partly to a lack of rank and file interest in leftist theory and also the intense wave of deindustrialization.The big auto companies slashed the Michigan workforce through automation, outsourcing parts and processes to nonunion suppliers, and also exporting jobs to Texas and Mexico  I remember when the Detroit Tigers played a Texas Rangers home game and half the stadium was wearing Tiger hats. Michael Moore’s Roger & Me came out when I was in middle school and talked about how this process led to Flint falling apart and having more rats than people. These days, people who hear my wife and I spent part of our childhoods in Flint ask us about the water crisis, but that happened long after we had lived there. And also, the block I grew up on was devastated by disinvestment and abandonment years before the water crisis.

The water crisis in Flint is better understood when you look at what happened years earlier when Coleman Young was Mayor of Detroit. So many white families refused to live in a city with black leadership that Southeastern Michigan became a ring of suburbs who used and extracted resources from Detroit but fought viciously against any resources going into Detroit. It was a similar pattern of racism and neglect that lead to the takeover and mismanagement of Flint’s government and failed to continue the water treatment that had previously prevented lead from leaching into the taps.

There were some activists who got their coworkers involved in a stronger more authentic space in the labor movement, but it was from talking about occupational health and safety more than Marx and Lenin. There was also an organizing wave of “pink collar” office jobs that was  informed by feminism and lead by the organization “9 to 5” which inspired Jane Fonda to help make the film 9 to 5 that I saw in the theaters.

Also,  in 1979, a group of Greensboro counter protesters were shot and killed at a Klan rally, and the movement there scattered. Many of them would eventually be in the staff and/or leadership of unions and nonprofits I would later work with. 

My parents split up, my mom got sick, and the late 80s found me in high school and living with her in affordable housing on the edge of the increasingly fluent Ann Arbor. My mom bought me an army surplus jacket like she used to wear as an SDS militant and I covered it in art and buttons. I started going to punk shows in a basement on Hill Street where bands like Green Day played a couple years before they became big names playing stadiums.

The first Gulf War led to a resurgence of radical youth organizing. A group of students at my high school threatened a walk out and then negotiated with the principal to have a “teach in” forum about the war instead. A member of the Bush Sr. cabinet flew in to speak in between our parents’ generation of anti war activists.  The war, along with the collapse of Soviet Communism, led to a revival of interest in Anarchism.

But also, the collapse of the leftist movement in the factories devolved into what felt like fifty mostly white middle class students in sixty different partisan leftist organizations that constantly fought over a shrinking amount of  attention. If you’ve ever seen the heated argument between the Judean People’s Front and the People’s Front of Judea in the Monty Python movie LIfe of Brian, then you know exactly what it was to sit in a cafe near the University of Michigan in the 80s and 90s watching stacks of rival leftist newspapers fall over each other while people argue about interpretations of Marxism while drinking expensive coffees.. 

 Some of my friends went to the selective enrollment Community High School, Commie High,  as it was affectionately called,  was where there was an open campus, rampant alternative chic, students calling teachers by their first names, and other values and practices that seemed to come out of the 60s cultural space. However, most kids did not get into Community. There were so few spots and so much demand that at one point parents were literally camping out to be in line for enrollment. The kids in my mostly POC neighborhood disproportionately ended up in the mainstream high school which felt less pressure to reform because families with resources who wanted something different should just go to the alternative school. While Community High students could leave campus for any reason without penalty, an Ann Arbor police officer at my high school would literally hide in the bushes to bust you for doing the same.

That was a strange part of my upbringing. The values of intervention and attention to the disparities in the world that the Weather Underground wanted to address in solidarity with the Black Panthers and Black Liberation Army turned into a lot of spaces that were supposed to create a container for those values but became exclusive spaces for people who were mostly wealthy and white. One of the reasons that I got into punk was that between Grateful Dead tickets, organic cotton clothing, and high grade marijuana, I couldn’t really afford to be a hippy. Parents in Ann Arbor were very interested to read about neighborhoods like mine, but lost their freaking minds if the African American kid next door to me got in one little fight at their kid’s school.  Being a white articulate poor person helped me get a lot of financial aid that allowed me to attend a small, high tuition “progressive” liberal arts college. We boycotted Pepsi over their involvement in Burma and took classes about Saul Alinsky, but we had very few African American students if any. 

 Meanwhile after the end of the Vietnam War, another wave of anti war activists calling themselves Movement For A New Society or MNS moved en masse to a working class neighborhood in West Philadelphia. The ones with means would buy some of the large houses that were dropping in price so that people could have an inexpensive room and the free time to be part of organizing. Many found jobs and leadership positions in the American Friends Service Committee, the social justice ministry of the Quaker Church. MNS  and allied activists created a training institute, a book publisher, a food coop, a land trust, and other social and economic infrastructure that supported an activist lifestyle.  

Meanwhile or a little later, a number of activists began taking over and squatting large tenement buildings on the Lower East Side of New York that had either been abandoned or kept vacant by speculators. Many were part of the punk rock or new wave art scenes. Some that left New York bought or squatted in Philadelphia and enjoyed the immense infrastructure that Movement For a New Society had built. One house I lived in off and on for 8 years, was a former squat that the residents had managed to purchase at a tax sale.

The new wave of anarchists that came out of opposition to the first gulf war during my high school years turned into, during my college years, what I jokingly refer back to as the golden age of anarchist franchise organizing. On weekends, I would hitch hike from my isolated college campus  into town and end up sleeping on the floor of an activist household. This group of people had met at protests and conferences and moved there together. They bottomlined the regional or local chapters of  Earth First, Food Not Bombs, Anti Racist Action, Radical Cheerleaders, radical library, 60’s poltical prisoner support group, books to prisoners project, etc.  I started showing up and eventually traveled and visited projects across the country, especially in California’s  Bay Area. 

On New Years Day 1994, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation or EZLN rose up in arms to seize the land from the handful of wealthy families that owned most of the state of Chiapas in Mexico  It was the first post Soviet revolution. This indigenous army, many of which had survived Reagan’s bloody intervention in the political tumult in neighboring Guatemala, immediately declared a ceasefire and attempted negotiations. People from across Mexico and the world organized support caravans and delegations of human rights observers. I would eventually spend time there in the late 90s. While the Mexican Government has mostly failed to honor its promises and conducted a low intensity war, the EZLN has mostly held on to the land and created a development model on its own terms lead by its own people.  

After graduation and before and after my trips to Chapas, I ended up in West Philly. A Zagat review of my favorite neighborhood Eritrean restaurant described it as being in the “Anarchist Section of Philadelphia.” I was enticed to get the “West Philly Deal” which was the idea that if you moved to West Philly and joined the activist community you would get a cheap room, six romantic dates (or dried figs), a bicycle made out of spare parts, and a role in a band. Also, West Philly was where the Food Not Bombs (a movement of radical food distribution collectives) and ACT-UP chapters were becoming more diverse and having more traction with and ownership by affected communities of color, though progress was slow and not without problems. .  

During my second trip to Chiapas, I missed the 1999 World Trade Organization Protest in Seattle. I had been traveling around the country going to different protests with what felt like the same 200 people and therefore had planned to go to Mexico instead. But then just about every other activist in North America was there as well as the activists who were about to take over SEIU, HERE, and  the AFL-CIO. It was the zenith of the movements that had started organizing in reaction to the first Gulf War. I was then part of a number of follow up mega-protests though they seemed to dwindle in size and effectiveness.

The September 11th attacks seemed to change the political space in which movements operated. Also, the legal fallout from the protests at the 2000 Republican National Convention had taken years to clear up.

 About that time,  I’d heard that the janitors union needed someone bilingual in English and Spanish to help. I showed up and was shocked to learn that I was getting paid for a 9 week internship normally reserved for members. I had been surviving off of odd jobs and medical studies for five years and never been paid to be part of a movement (although protest movements had allowed me access to a lot of resources.)  I stayed at the union for six years and then followed the man who hired me back into community organizing. Now twenty years have passed and I have bounced between paid labor organizing, community organizing, and fair housing enforcement ever since . 

And now my stepkids think I’m a strange old guy from the 90s. They think of me in a foggy photo of a sea of black denim of filthy white kids screaming along at a Los Crudos show in a Losaida Squat.(not that this happened all at once as far as I can remember).  There’s a goofy clip of me on the news in Eugene Oregon in 1996  and a picture of me in a boxcar a few days later wearing a shirt with a Propagandhi patch.These look so retro now, but to me that was almost yesterday. 

I’m hoping there will be more seasons of Mother Country Radicals. I would love for Season 2 to cover the era when middle class, mostly white,  leftists coming of age in the 80s who supported left wing uprisings in Latin America  tried to become factory workers. Maybe there could be prequel seasons about Alinsky and the Civil Rights Movement and the characters in Reds. Maybe I would be a background character in the season about the 90s.   

[eloquence-of-felicities]

realitycurve: Today is the one year anniversary of opening night of Reborning by Zayd Dohrn Off-Broadway at the SoHo Playhouse in NYC. The world looks very different a year later. Pictured @emilybett, playwright Zayd Dohrn, @loritriolo and @paul.piaskowski. #anniversary #nyc #theater #soho #offbroadway #newyork #theatre

[fyeahebr]

RealityCurve : Today is the one year anniversary of opening night of Reborning by Zayd Dohrn Off-Broadway at the SoHo Playhouse in NYC. The world looks very different a year later. #offbroadway #newyork #theatre

[frembett]

@RealityCurve Today is the one year anniversary of opening night of Reborning by Zayd Dohrn Off-Broadway at the SoHo Playhouse in NYC. The world looks very different a year later. #offbroadway #newyork #theatre

https://twitter.com/RealityCurve/status/1282337473238953985

[writemarcus]

Watch This Space: Playwrights Train for All Media

As dramatists begin to write for all media, the nation’s playwriting programs are starting to teach beyond the stage.

BY MARCUS SCOTT

In 2018, a record 495 original scripted series were released across cable, online, and broadcast platforms, according to a report by FX Networks. And with the growing popularity of streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon (not to mention new players like Disney and Apple), a whopping 146 more shows are up and running on various platforms now than were on air in 2013. So how does peak TV relate to theatre?

Once a way for financially strapped playwrights to land stable income and adequate health insurance, television has since emerged as a rewarding venue for ambitious dramatists looking to forge lifetime careers as working writers. Playwright Tanya Saracho is the current showrunner for “Vida” on Starz. Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa is the series developer of “Riverdale” and “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.” Sheila Callaghan is executive producer of the long-running black comedy “Shameless.” Sarah Treem, co-creator and showrunner of “The Affair,” recently concluded the Rashomon-esque psychological drama in November.

To satiate demand for more content, showrunners have sought to recruit emerging playwrights to fill their writers’ rooms. It’s now common practice for them to read plays or spec scripts penned prior to a writer’s graduation.

Many aspiring playwrights have caught on, enrolling in drama school intent on flirting with virtually every medium under the umbrella of the performing arts. Several institutions around the country have become gatekeepers for the hopeful—post-graduate MFA boot camps bestowing scribes with the Aristotelian wisdom of plot, character, thought, diction, and spectacle before they’re dropped into the school of hard knocks that is the modern American writers’ room. Indeed, since our culture has emerged from the chrysalis of peak TV, playwriting programs have begun training students for a career that includes not only the stage but multiple mediums, including the screen.

Playwright Zayd Dohrn, who has served as both chair of Northwestern University’s radio/TV/film department and director of the MFA in writing for screen and stage since 2016, said versatility is the strongest tool in the kit of the program’s students.

“We offer classes in playwriting, screenwriting and TV writing, as well as podcasts, video games, interactive media, stand-up, improv, and much more,” he explained. “There’s no one way to approach the craft, and we offer world-class faculty with diverse backgrounds, professional experiences, and perspectives, so students can be exposed to the full range of professional and artistic practice.”

Dominic Taylor, vice chair of graduate studies at UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television in California, also agrees that multiplicity is the key to the survival of a working writer. “In the industries today, whether one is breaking a story in a writers’ room or writing coverage as an assistant, the ability to recognize and manipulate structure is paramount,” Taylor said. “The primary skill, aside from honing excellent social skills, would be to continue to study the forms as they emerge. Read scripts and note differences and strengths of form to the individual’s skill set. For example, the multi-cam network comedy is very different from the single-cam comedy—‘The Conners’ versus ‘Modern Family,’ let’s say. It’s not just the technology; it is the pace of the comedy.”

Taylor, a distinguished multi-hyphenate theatre artist working on both coasts, said that schools like UCLA offer a lot more than classes, including one with Phyllis Nagy (screenwriter of Carol). UCLA’s program also partners with its film school, and hires professional directors to work with playwrights to develop graduate student plays for productions at UCLA’s one-act festival, ONES, or its New Play Festival. Taylor also teaches four separate classes on Black theatre, giving students the opportunity to study the likes of Alice Childress, Marita Bonner, and Angelina Weld Grimké in a university setting (a rarity outside of historically Black colleges and universities).

Dohrn, a prominent playwright who is currently developing a feature film for Netflix and has TV shows in development at Showtime, BBC America, and NBC/Universal, said that television, like theatre, needs people who can create interesting characters and tell compelling stories, who have singular, unique voices—all of which are emphasized in playwriting training.

“Playwrights are not just good at writing dialogue—they are world creators who bring a unique vision to the stories they tell,” Dohrn emphasized. “More than anything else, a writer needs to develop his/her/their unique voice. Craft can be taught, but talent and creativity are the most important thing for a young writer.”

For playwright David Henry Hwang, who joined the faculty at Columbia University School of the Arts as head of the playwriting MFA program in 2014, success should be a byproduct, not a destination. “As a playwright, I don’t believe it’s possible to ‘game’ the system—i.e., to try and figure out how to write something ‘successful,’” he said. “The finished play is your reward for taking that journey. The thing that makes you different, and uniquely you, is your superpower as a dramatist, because it is the key to writing the play only you can write. Ironically, by focusing not on success but on what you really care about, you are more likely to find success.”

Since arriving at Columbia, one of Hwang’s top priorities was to expand the range of TV writing classes. This led to the creation of separate TV sub-department “concentrations,” housed in both the theatre and film programs. All playwriting students are required to take some television classes.

“We are at a rather anomalous moment in playwriting history, where the ability to write plays is actually a monetizable skill,” said Hwang, whose TV credits include Treem’s “The Affair.” “Playwrights have become increasingly valuable to TV because it has traditionally been a dialogue-driven medium (though shows like ‘Game of Thrones’ push into more cinematic storytelling language), and playwrights are comfortable being in production (unlike screenwriters, some of whom never go to set). Once TV discovered playwrights, we became more valuable for feature films as well.”

Playwrights aren’t the only generative theatremakers moving to the screen. Masi Asare is an assistant professor at Northwestern’s School of Communication, which teaches music theatre history, music theatre writing and composition, and vocal performance. The award-winning composer-lyricist, who recently saw her one-act Mirror of Most Value: A Ms. Marvel Play published by Marvel/Samuel French, said that the world of musical theatre is not all that different either; it’s experiencing a resurgence in both cinema and the small screen: Lin-Manuel Miranda, Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, Justin Hurwitz, and Benj Pasek and Justin Paul have all written songs that were nominated for or won Oscars. The growth of YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter have offered new ways for musical theatre graduates to market and monetize their songs and build an audience.

“The feeling that a song has to ‘work’ behind a microphone in order to be a good song is really having an impact on young writers,” said Asare. “The song must sound and look good in this encapsulated video that will be posted on the songwriters’ website and circulated via social media.” She noted that in this case, the medium of video is also changing the medium of musical theatre itself. “Certainly it may lead to different kinds of musicals—who knows? New experimentation can be exciting, but I think there is a perception that all you have to have is a series of good video clips to be a songwriter for the musical theatre, a musical storyteller. I think that does something of a disservice to rising composers and lyricists.”

Some playwriting students, of course, are not interested in learning about how to write for television. But many who spoke for this story agreed that learning about the different ways of storytelling can be beneficial. One program in particular that has its eyes on the multiplicity of storytelling mediums is the Writing for Performance program at the California Institute of the Arts. Founded by playwright Suzan-Lori Parks in 2001 as a synergy of immersive environments, visual art installation, screenplay, and the traditional stage play, the program has helped students and visiting artists alike transcend theatrical conventions. Though Parks is no longer on the CalArts faculty, her spirit still infuses the program. As Amanda Shank, assistant dean of the CalArts School of Theater, puts it, “Every time she came to the page, there was a real fidelity to the impulse of what she was trying to communicate with the play, and the form followed that. It’s not her trying to write a ‘correct’ kind of play or to lay things bare in a certain prescribed way.”

That instinct is in the life fiber of CalArts’s Special Topics in Writing, a peer-to-peer incubator for the development of new projects that grants students from across various departments the opportunity to develop and produce writing-based projects. Shank defines the vaguely titled yearlong class, which she began, as a “hybrid of a writing workshop and a dramaturgical project development space.” A playwright and dramaturg, Shank said her class was born of her experience as an MFA candidate; she attended the program between 2010 and 2013, and then noticed her fellow students’ lack of ability to fully shepherd their projects.

“I was finding a lot of students that would have an idea, bring in a few pages or even bring in a full draft, but then they would kind of abandon it,” said Shank. “I wanted a space [that would] marry generative creativity, a place of accountability, but also a place that was working that muscle of really developing a project. Because I think often as artists we look to other institutions, other people to usher our work along. Yes, you need collaborators, yes, you need organizations of supporters—but you have to some degree know how to do those things yourself.”

Program alum Virginia Grise agrees. Grise has been a working artist since her play blu won the 2010 Yale Drama Series Award. She conceived her latest play, rasgos asiaticos, while still attending CalArts. Inspired by her Chicana-Chinese family, the play has evolved into a walk-around theatrical experience with some dialogue pressed into phonograph records that accompany her great uncle’s 1920s-era Chinese opera records. After developing the production over a period of years, with the help of CalArts Center for New Performance (CNP), Grise will premiere rasgos asiaticos in downtown Los Angeles in March 2020, boasting a predominantly female cast, a Black female director, and a design team entirely composed of women of color. Her multidisciplinary work is emblematic of the direction CalArts is hoping to steer the field, with training that is responsive to a growingly diverse body of students who may not want to create theatre in the Western European tradition.

“You cannot recruit students of color into a training program and continue to train actors, writers, and directors in the same way you have trained them prior to recruiting them,” said Grise. “I feel like training programs should look at the diversity of aesthetics, the diversity of storytelling—what are the different ways in which we make performance, and how is that indicative of who we are, and where we are coming from, and who we are speaking to?”

As an educator whose work deals with Asian American identity, including the play M. Butterfly and the high-concept musical Soft Power, Hwang said that one of his goals as an educator is to train a diverse body of students and teach them how to write from a perspective that is uniquely theirs.

“If we assume that people like to see themselves onstage, this requires a range of diverse bodies as well as diverse stories in our theatres,” Hwang said. “Institutions like Columbia have a huge responsibility to address this issue, since we are helping to produce artists of the future. Our program takes diversity as our first core value—not only in terms of aesthetics, but also by trying to cultivate artists and stories which encompass the fullest range of communities, nationalities, races, genders, sexualities, differences, and identities.”

The film business could use similar cultivation. In March 2019, the Think Tank for Inclusion and Equity (TTIE), a self-organized syndicate of working television writers, published “Behind the Scenes: The State of Inclusion and Equity in TV Writing,” a research-driven survey funded by the Pop Culture Collaborative. Data from that report observed hiring, writer advancement, workplace harassment, and bias among diverse writers, examining 282 working Hollywood writers who identify as women or nonbinary, LGBTQ, people of color, and/or people with disabilities, analyzing how they fare within the writers’ room. In positions that range from staff writer to executive story editor, a nearly two thirds majority of this surveyed group reported troubling instances of bias, discrimination, and/or harassment by members of their individual writing staff. Also, 58 percent of them said they experienced pushback when pitching a non-stereotypical diverse character or storyline; 58 percent later experienced micro-aggressions in-house. The biggest slap in the face: When it comes to in-house pitches, 53 percent of this group’s ideas were rejected, only to have white writers pitch exactly the same idea a few minutes later and get accepted. Other key findings from the report: 58 percent say their agents pitch them to shows by highlighting their “otherness,” and 15 percent reported they took a demotion just to get a staff job.

But there was more: 65 percent of people of color in the survey reported being the only one in their writers’ room, and 34 percent of the women and nonbinary writers reported being the only woman or nonbinary member of their writing staff; 38 percent of writers with disabilities reported being the only one, and 68 percent of LGBTQ writers reported being the only one.

For Dominic Taylor, the lack of diversity and inclusion in TV writers’ rooms can be fought in part by opening up the curriculum on college campuses, which he has expanded since joining the faculty at UCLA. “Students need a comprehensive education,” Taylor pointed out. He noted the importance of prospective playwrights being as familiar with Migdalia Cruz, Maria Irene Fornés, James Yoshimura, Julia Cho, and William Yellow Robe as they are with William Shakespeare, and looking at traditions as vast as the Gelede Festival, the Egungun Festival, Shang theatre of China, as well as the Passion Plays of Ancient Egypt.

“All of these modes of performance predate the Greek theatre, which is the starting point for much of theatre history,” explained Taylor. “It is part of my mandate as an educator to complete the education of my students. Inclusion is crucial to that education.”

After all, with the growing variety of platforms for story and expression, why shouldn’t there also be diversity of forms and voices? Whatever the medium of delivery, these are trends worth keeping an eye on.

Marcus Scott is a New York City-based playwright, musical writer, and journalist. He’s written for Elle, Essence, Out, and Playbill, among other publications.

[frontmezzjunkies]

The Profane:  Ramsey Faragallah, Ali Reza Farahnakian. All Photos by Joan Marcus.

The Profane: Compiling Clues in the Hopes to Understand

By Ross

There is an immediate connection to the father figure that opens Zayd Dohrn’s The Profane at Playwrights Horizons. And there is also curiosity. His behavior in the first five minutes register as profound and meaningful reactions to something that has happened or is about to happen.  Something that he has to figure out how to cope with. We just are not privy to the knowledge of what that thing is quite yet. As directed by Kip Fagan (Roundabout Underground’s Kingdom Come), the answers aren’t easy and they certainly aren’t spoon fed to us. They trickle out to our inquisitive minds wrapped in vague clues and obscure references without categories or details given. It’s an arresting notion that keeps us leaning in and paying close attention for the tidbits that are doled out subtlety that make this play such a compelling creature.

The Profane: Ali Reza Farahnakian, Tala Ashe.

The father, Raif Almedin (a strong and gifted Ali Reza Farahnakian), a first generation immigrant is safe and sound in his liberal enclave of the West Village of New York.  His daughter arrives home, a pretty young woman named Emina played with precision by Tala Ashe with what appears to be her boyfriend.  Raif ignores his greeting, his out stretched hand, and his whole presence essentially, which is the first of many clues that this is where the conflict resides.  The conflict itself is not obvious or apparent.  The young man’s name is Sam (well played by Babk Tafti), polite and nervous to find him in the house of his girlfriend’s parents, the play offers no immediate reasonings that would cause this impolite behavior. So we wait.  One by one the others enter-  Emina’s mother, the embracing Naja (a solid Heather Raffo) and Emina’s sister, the wilder Aisa (the engaging Francis Benhamou who also plays double duty as a very different kind of woman, Dania in Act II).  Once the whole family have all gathered into this warm living room, we sit back waiting for the other clues so we may discover what the ever increasing tension is all about.

The Profane: Ali Reza Farahnakian, Francis Benhamou, Babak Tafti,, Tala Ashe, Heather Raffo.

This is a play similar in kind to the more straight forward Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, the 1967 film starring  Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier, Katharine Hepburn and featuring Hepburn’s niece Katharine Houghton that portrayed a (then rare) positive representation  of interracial marriage. In The Profane, it isn’t about race, but about faith, and the intricate details of religion that place those born into the same construct sitting at very different ends of the active belief spectrum. This liberal family is going to have to come to terms with their daughter, embracing with the openness that she was taught and utilizing all of the free will given to her, as she announces to her family that she has fallen in love with Sam. It is only soon after do we find out that his young man is from a very conservative Muslim family from White Plains, and this does not sit well with her father, a man who left behind his Muslim beliefs when he immigrated to America so many years ago.

The Profane: Ali Reza Farahnakian, Babak Tafti.

Act II takes us one step beyond that ground breaking 1967 movie when we, along with Emina’s parents, travel to meet the entrepreneurial immigrant family of Sam. Raif and Naja reluctantly drive out to White Plains for an afternoon meet and greet with the future in-laws for a backyard lunch.  Sam’s parents, the earnest Carmen, portrayed clearly and exacting by Lanna Joffrey, and her husband, the jovial and kindly engaging Peter, (a wonderfully precise performance by Ramsey Faragallah) are not what we imagine.  From the dialogue in Act I, I was expected a more rigid father but Peter is nothing like I had envisioned. It is here in their lovely appointed suburban home (impeccably detailed design work by the team of: set: Takeshi Kata; costume: Jessica Pabst; lighting: Matt Frey; sound: Brandon Wolcott) that tolerance is pushed to the limit and all the prejudiced notions of the other are launched forward when everyone is shoved beyond their threshold.  It’s a sharply constructed piece and surprising in its authenticity, but not surprising that when confronted by the extreme differences of another, we flail and fall back on prejudiced preconceived notions bolstering intolerance and the opposite of acceptance.

The Profane: Lanny Joffrey, Ramsey Faragallah, Ali Reza Farahnakian, Heather Raffo.

Dohrn had me completely entwined in the conflict as it slowly unfolds in this quick two act play.  I found myself leaning in to catch every clue and subtle re-attunement that these two families have to make within themselves and with each other.  But the final scene threw me for a loop.  There is a sweet dynamic between the two characters in the final scene (I won’t ruin it for you with details), one drenched in love and care, but I can’t quite wrap my head around what Dohrn is trying to say. There is something about the shift of faith that an immigrant may have when arriving in America for the first time.  You can feel that the meaning of these final few passages are heavy with importance but the clues aren’t there to fully comprehend.  Maybe I wanted a more neatly wrapped up wedding present that showed resolution and a breakthrough. And maybe that’s the point, that these moments don’t get a simple nor an easy conclusion. That faith and love are two things that never arrive or end in a clear or understandable way.  I felt letdown by the final moment as if I missed the prize. It’s a beautifully read passage from one of Raif’s novels but my wish is that after all the clues that were so meticulously compiled over the course of the play, we understand something a wee bit more.  But yet, here I was, after all those clues, feeling like I was left unresolved.

#frontmezzjunkies reviews: #TheProfanePH at @PHnyc #ZaydDohrn The Profane: Compiling Clues in the Hopes to Understand By Ross There is an immediate connection to the father figure that opens Zayd Dohrn's 

[rustbeltadventure]

Lineages of Protest: A Brief Review Of, Reflection On, and Postscript to Season 1 of the podcast Mother Country Radicals By Chris  White

Lineages of Protest

A Brief Review Of, Reflection On, and Postscript to Season 1 of the podcast Mother Country Radicals

By Chris  White

The first season of Zayd Dohrn’s podcast, Mother Country Radicals, is exceptional.  First, in an era where everyone releases recordings of tired conversations into the world for 15 minutes of fame, it is well written, well produced, and well paced. My friend who told me about it  said something to the effect of, “Have you heard that Serial podcast about the Weather Underground?” Zayd has such a unique intimate connection to the material and an access to people about a part of their lives that is closely guarded. And also, he discovers things in the reporting that he did not know or realize before.  But also, I like it especially because it fills in a lot of context of both my family’s life and my own journey. 

Zayd Dohrn is the oldest son of Bernadine Dohrn and William Ayers who were part of an underground, sometimes violent, direct action movement against U.S. Imperialism and racism beginning in the 60s.. He was born while his parents were still in hiding and grew up as they emerged from it. 

William Ayers, once served on a foundation board with Barack Obama, and was therefore a central figure in the opposition research about Obama the candidate. My favorite tv moment during the 2008 election was the Saturday Night Live skit in which they portray William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright performing the Gnarls Barkley song Crazy. 

One of the episodes, the fourth one I believe, describes the death of Diana Oughton in a Greenwich Village townhouse due to a bomb that exploded during manufacture. I first heard about Diana Oughton when I was in high school. I lived in my mother’s basement where one of her bookshelves was. There was a sensational biography of Diana Oughton next to an anthology of underground newspapers. My mom told me about almost getting kicked out of high school for distributing the newspaper and making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for protests that Oughton was a part of. 

Someone in the podcast says something to the effect of, “Those who do don’t tell and those who tell can’t do.” I assume that if Mother Country Radicals was a movie, my parents and some of my other relatives would be composite characters and extras. I imagine them in the closing credits with role names like Hippy Making Sandwiches #2 and Woman Living In Commune. But what do I know? None of them would want to have burdened me with any information nor would they have shared specifics about themselves or their friends.  

 When I was growing up in the 80s I remember the feeling that my parents were from the 60s. My mom has so many stories, but the accuracy of them is unclear. My dad mostly just says that it was a very difficult time and that it’s hard for him to think about. 

In the 80s, there were a lot of cultural tropes about the 60s.  There were reruns of Laugh In and The Monkees. I went through a period of being obsessed with The Beatles.

During my childhood, there were many pop culture references to groups like the Weather Underground and also to the Symbionese Liberation Army or SLA who were known for allegedly kidnapping and possibly recruiting the heiress Patty Hearst. The one I remember most vividly was a two part Laverne & Shirley episode. I saw the films Flashback and Rude Awakening in the theater which were both screwball comedies about radicals emerging from the underground into a world they struggle to understand.  I wonder if the Dohrn Ayers family has ever seen either of these films, because I can almost hear their eyes rolling. 

My parents met at a concert in Gallup Park in Ann Arbor organized by the 60s activist John Sinclair. It was the MC5 opening for Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen. Do you remember the end of Back To The Future where Michael J Fox has to play Johnny B Goode so his parents will kiss or else he will cease to exist? That’s how I feel about these two bands.

In particular, the stoner country stylings of Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen are particularly bizarre cultural artifacts. I have a live album in which they do an epic cover of the long form narrative country classic “Hot Rod Lincoln.” In this version, the singer has to convince the police officer that pulls him over that he is not some “long haired hippie S-L-A  commie weirdo.” “I had to show him my house.”.

My parents have such very hippy wedding photos.They were two hippies that loved to cook and planned to get married and open a little hippy restaurant.  And then they have the most awkward photo of my dad with a haircut and a shirt and tie with my mom in a sprawling apartment complex . At this point my dad has stopped being counter cultural and is being mentored in food service management by a man named Michael from whom I got my middle name. By the time I was born, my dad was an assistant manager at the Stouffer’s Restaurant at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York City.  

 In between, there are stories. There is the honeymoon where they attempt to hitchhike to California. My mom says that the Bay Area was exhausting, because my dad was constantly wandering off and she had to rescue him from being taken by cults. She says he would come up to her and say something like, “These guys in the van have these really good free burritos and they just want us to go with them so they can show us this really cool place.”

And after I was born, we eventually  moved back to the Midwest, and my mom’s stories continue. They are of a different era. My dad took a job in Flint, Michigan,  as the assistant food service manager of Hurley Hospital where part of his brand was that he went along to get along with his employees’ union.  While the Fair Housing Act passed in 1969, our historically white Flint neighborhood was only just beginning to integrate in the 80s. And for my mom, what we would say in today’s anti-racist parlance  is that she was recruited by black leaders to do the organizing and emotional labor with the parents who supported integration.

 I did get taken to protests growing up. I remember seeing Jesse Jackson get in a heated exchange with police in Washington D.C at an Anti-Apartheid protest. during a family road trip. But more often, I was at community meetings and canvasses. Slow careful populist organizing was what I witnessed, not the frantic disruption of “Days of Rage.”

Meanwhile, the generation between us, perhaps the youngest siblings or older niblings of the Weather Underground, were supporting Latin American uprisings like the Sandinistas and attempting to infiltrate factories. One epicenter of this was the factories around me in Southeastern Michigan, and another was the textile factories in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Also, in Flint, you could see the traces of the old left. Every year, my cub scout troop would march in a parade with the surviving sitdown strikers who in 1936 occupied Chevy In The Hole, over by my house, and won recognition for the UAW.

About first grade, I had a friend Juanita, a white kid with a Latin name, who started coming over after school so her hippy mom could stay at work. And then in return, I would sometimes go over there or join them on camping trips. I only met her dad a couple times, but he was one of those leftists who had long hair, worked in the factory, and sold radical newspapers on street corners. Juanita and I got enrolled in a weekly Alvin Ailey style dance class at the arts center on the historically African-American side of Flint. We were the only white kids and I was the only boy in the class. I felt insecure about having to wear tights. I remember my Republican grandparents coming from Ann Arbor for the recital.

But the initial attempts to build left wing factions inside the UAW and in nonunion factories sputtered due partly to a lack of rank and file interest in leftist theory and also the intense wave of deindustrialization.The big auto companies slashed the Michigan workforce through automation, outsourcing parts and processes to nonunion suppliers, and also exporting jobs to Texas and Mexico  I remember when the Detroit Tigers played a Texas Rangers home game and half the stadium was wearing Tiger hats. Michael Moore’s Roger & Me came out when I was in middle school and talked about how this process led to Flint falling apart and having more rats than people. These days, people who hear my wife and I spent part of our childhoods in Flint ask us about the water crisis, but that happened long after we had lived there. And also, the block I grew up on was devastated by disinvestment and abandonment years before the water crisis.

The water crisis in Flint is better understood when you look at what happened years earlier when Coleman Young was Mayor of Detroit. So many white families refused to live in a city with black leadership that Southeastern Michigan became a ring of suburbs who used and extracted resources from Detroit but fought viciously against any resources going into Detroit. It was a similar pattern of racism and neglect that lead to the takeover and mismanagement of Flint’s government and failed to continue the water treatment that had previously prevented lead from leaching into the taps.

There were some activists who got their coworkers involved in a stronger more authentic space in the labor movement, but it was from talking about occupational health and safety more than Marx and Lenin. There was also an organizing wave of “pink collar” office jobs that was  informed by feminism and lead by the organization “9 to 5” which inspired Jane Fonda to help make the film 9 to 5 that I saw in the theaters.

Also,  in 1979, a group of Greensboro counter protesters were shot and killed at a Klan rally, and the movement there scattered. Many of them would eventually be in the staff and/or leadership of unions and nonprofits I would later work with. 

My parents split up, my mom got sick, and the late 80s found me in high school and living with her in affordable housing on the edge of the increasingly fluent Ann Arbor. My mom bought me an army surplus jacket like she used to wear as an SDS militant and I covered it in art and buttons. I started going to punk shows in a basement on Hill Street where bands like Green Day played a couple years before they became big names playing stadiums.

The first Gulf War led to a resurgence of radical youth organizing. A group of students at my high school threatened a walk out and then negotiated with the principal to have a “teach in” forum about the war instead. A member of the Bush Sr. cabinet flew in to speak in between our parents’ generation of anti war activists.  The war, along with the collapse of Soviet Communism, led to a revival of interest in Anarchism.

But also, the collapse of the leftist movement in the factories devolved into what felt like fifty mostly white middle class students in sixty different partisan leftist organizations that constantly fought over a shrinking amount of  attention. If you’ve ever seen the heated argument between the Judean People’s Front and the People’s Front of Judea in the Monty Python movie LIfe of Brian, then you know exactly what it was to sit in a cafe near the University of Michigan in the 80s and 90s watching stacks of rival leftist newspapers fall over each other while people argue about interpretations of Marxism while drinking expensive coffees.. 

 Some of my friends went to the selective enrollment Community High School, Commie High,  as it was affectionately called,  was where there was an open campus, rampant alternative chic, students calling teachers by their first names, and other values and practices that seemed to come out of the 60s cultural space. However, most kids did not get into Community. There were so few spots and so much demand that at one point parents were literally camping out to be in line for enrollment. The kids in my mostly POC neighborhood disproportionately ended up in the mainstream high school which felt less pressure to reform because families with resources who wanted something different should just go to the alternative school. While Community High students could leave campus for any reason without penalty, an Ann Arbor police officer at my high school would literally hide in the bushes to bust you for doing the same.

That was a strange part of my upbringing. The values of intervention and attention to the disparities in the world that the Weather Underground wanted to address in solidarity with the Black Panthers and Black Liberation Army turned into a lot of spaces that were supposed to create a container for those values but became exclusive spaces for people who were mostly wealthy and white. One of the reasons that I got into punk was that between Grateful Dead tickets, organic cotton clothing, and high grade marijuana, I couldn’t really afford to be a hippy. Parents in Ann Arbor were very interested to read about neighborhoods like mine, but lost their freaking minds if the African American kid next door to me got in one little fight at their kid’s school.  Being a white articulate poor person helped me get a lot of financial aid that allowed me to attend a small, high tuition “progressive” liberal arts college. We boycotted Pepsi over their involvement in Burma and took classes about Saul Alinsky, but we had very few African American students if any. 

 Meanwhile after the end of the Vietnam War, another wave of anti war activists calling themselves Movement For A New Society or MNS moved en masse to a working class neighborhood in West Philadelphia. The ones with means would buy some of the large houses that were dropping in price so that people could have an inexpensive room and the free time to be part of organizing. Many found jobs and leadership positions in the American Friends Service Committee, the social justice ministry of the Quaker Church. MNS  and allied activists created a training institute, a book publisher, a food coop, a land trust, and other social and economic infrastructure that supported an activist lifestyle.  

Meanwhile or a little later, a number of activists began taking over and squatting large tenement buildings on the Lower East Side of New York that had either been abandoned or kept vacant by speculators. Many were part of the punk rock or new wave art scenes. Some that left New York bought or squatted in Philadelphia and enjoyed the immense infrastructure that Movement For a New Society had built. One house I lived in off and on for 8 years, was a former squat that the residents had managed to purchase at a tax sale.

The new wave of anarchists that came out of opposition to the first gulf war during my high school years turned into, during my college years, what I jokingly refer back to as the golden age of anarchist franchise organizing. On weekends, I would hitch hike from my isolated college campus  into town and end up sleeping on the floor of an activist household. This group of people had met at protests and conferences and moved there together. They bottomlined the regional or local chapters of  Earth First, Food Not Bombs, Anti Racist Action, Radical Cheerleaders, radical library, 60’s poltical prisoner support group, books to prisoners project, etc.  I started showing up and eventually traveled and visited projects across the country, especially in California’s  Bay Area. 

On New Years Day 1994, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation or EZLN rose up in arms to seize the land from the handful of wealthy families that owned most of the state of Chiapas in Mexico  It was the first post Soviet revolution. This indigenous army, many of which had survived Reagan’s bloody intervention in the political tumult in neighboring Guatemala, immediately declared a ceasefire and attempted negotiations. People from across Mexico and the world organized support caravans and delegations of human rights observers. I would eventually spend time there in the late 90s. While the Mexican Government has mostly failed to honor its promises and conducted a low intensity war, the EZLN has mostly held on to the land and created a development model on its own terms lead by its own people.  

After graduation and before and after my trips to Chapas, I ended up in West Philly. A Zagat review of my favorite neighborhood Eritrean restaurant described it as being in the “Anarchist Section of Philadelphia.” I was enticed to get the “West Philly Deal” which was the idea that if you moved to West Philly and joined the activist community you would get a cheap room, six romantic dates (or dried figs), a bicycle made out of spare parts, and a role in a band. Also, West Philly was where the Food Not Bombs (a movement of radical food distribution collectives) and ACT-UP chapters were becoming more diverse and having more traction with and ownership by affected communities of color, though progress was slow and not without problems. .  

During my second trip to Chiapas, I missed the 1999 World Trade Organization Protest in Seattle. I had been traveling around the country going to different protests with what felt like the same 200 people and therefore had planned to go to Mexico instead. But then just about every other activist in North America was there as well as the activists who were about to take over SEIU, HERE, and  the AFL-CIO. It was the zenith of the movements that had started organizing in reaction to the first Gulf War. I was then part of a number of follow up mega-protests though they seemed to dwindle in size and effectiveness.

The September 11th attacks seemed to change the political space in which movements operated. Also, the legal fallout from the protests at the 2000 Republican National Convention had taken years to clear up.

 About that time,  I’d heard that the janitors union needed someone bilingual in English and Spanish to help. I showed up and was shocked to learn that I was getting paid for a 9 week internship normally reserved for members. I had been surviving off of odd jobs and medical studies for five years and never been paid to be part of a movement (although protest movements had allowed me access to a lot of resources.)  I stayed at the union for six years and then followed the man who hired me back into community organizing. Now twenty years have passed and I have bounced between paid labor organizing, community organizing, and fair housing enforcement ever since . 

And now my stepkids think I’m a strange old guy from the 90s. They think of me in a foggy photo of a sea of black denim of filthy white kids screaming along at a Los Crudos show in a Losaida Squat.(not that this happened all at once as far as I can remember).  There’s a goofy clip of me on the news in Eugene Oregon in 1996  and a picture of me in a boxcar a few days later wearing a shirt with a Propagandhi patch.These look so retro now, but to me that was almost yesterday. 

I’m hoping there will be more seasons of Mother Country Radicals. I would love for Season 2 to cover the era when middle class, mostly white,  leftists coming of age in the 80s who supported left wing uprisings in Latin America  tried to become factory workers. Maybe there could be prequel seasons about Alinsky and the Civil Rights Movement and the characters in Reds. Maybe I would be a background character in the season about the 90s.   

[emilybettbr]

Entrevista da Emily para shuString magazine

Se você tivesse perguntado a Emily Bett Rickards se ela estaria se vendo futuramente filmando a sétima temporada de Arrow seis anos atrás, você provavelmente iria tirar uma risada da jovem atriz. Era para ela estar originalmente apenas em um episódio como convidada, mas logo esse papel se tornou recorrente. "No meu primeiro dia de filmagem nós filmamos as duas cenas do episódio 3 da 1ª temporada e era pra ser isso... logo depois eu soube que seria chamada uma semana depois para fazer outro episódio então outro e outro e continuou até a 2ª temporada onde Felicity se tornou parte integral do show. Eu estava em êxtase e muito animada". Emily teve em seu coração sua escolha de carreira desde cedo e descreve essa como uma experiência natural. "Eu sempre amei histórias e contar histórias... isso não teve um rótulo ocupacional quando era mais nova mas quando eu descobri a atuação poderia ser o caminho foi uma progressão natural". Ela cresceu treinando na Vancouver Film School e descreve a experiência como "um curso intensivo de iniciantes no mundo em que eu estava prestes a mergulhar. Conheci meu primeiro mentor lá, Andrew McLroy - a primeira vez que eu estava em sua aula eu sabia que finalmente estava no lugar que deveria estar". Quando perguntada se ela poderia fazer algo além de atuar, Emily brinca despreocupadamente "provavelmente estaria fazendo leituras dramáticas para cães". Nas horas vagas ela gosta de cantar, mas é algo que "não tenho certeza onde isso vai levar". A talentosa atriz foi indicada em múltiplos prêmios por seu trabalho, e você provavelmente a conhece por seu papel como Felicity na série da CW, Arrow. A sétima temporada da série começou, e Emily está animada em continuar a interpretar um personagem que é muito parecido com ela. "Ela é muito focada como eu. Ela fica frustada quando coloca suas energias em algo que não funciona. Ela é muito mais organizada que eu." E sua química na tela com o seu parceiro de elenco Stephen Amell não passa despercebida, indo tão longe quanto ser indicados a múltiplos prêmios juntos como Choice TV Ship e duas como Choice TV Liplock no Teen Choice Awards. Emily descreve essa química como "natural" e diz que eles "foram destinados a serem amigos", e ela é também muito próxima do resto do elenco. "Somos muito unidos aqui - falta um ou outro quando o roteiro nos separa". Emily tem estado na indústria desde cedo, um novo personagem que ela interpretou recentemente tem sido seu favorito. "Recentemente terminei a produção de REBORNING escrito por Zayd Dohrn. A personagem que eu interpretei, Kelly, é muito especial para mim. Outra moça engra��ada que interpretei anos atrás foi Genevieve Kreme na web série Paranormal Solutions Inc. ... onde ela está? Adoraria trazer ela de volta". Num futuro próximo, você pode esperar para ver Emily em "mais teatro e brincando atrás das câmeras," e um novo filme indie que ela vem trabalhando também fez seu caminho nas telas. "Um filme indie FUNNY STORY, fiz o festival agora e estou tão emocionada, honrada e agradecida pela resposta que ele está tendo". No que diz respeito a Arrow, Emily conta aos leitores que eles podem esperar "algo diferente" dessa nova temporada. 

Fonte: shuString magazine Tradução: Emily Bett Brasil

[emilybettsource]

Source: Reality Curve Theatre

[hecatesan]

Tweeted

Tickets are now on sale for Reborning by Zayd Dohrn starring @EmilyBett @paulpiaskowski and @loritriolo who is also directing. Tix start at only $15 and you can grab them here https://t.co/u9L3wrnuvM 📷 @ShimonPhoto pic.twitter.com/FRX10AcA1T

— Reality Curve Theatre (@RealityCurve) May 29, 2018

[propsistops]

A few excerpts: 

“Playwrights Horizons is currently producing Zayd Dohrn’s The Profane, a play that follows two Muslim, presumably Middle Eastern American families. We are deeply concerned by the lack of representation on the lead creative or producing team from the communities being portrayed on stage. Members of the Middle Eastern American theater community have raised this concern, along with issues about cultural representation in the play itself, in direct conversations with the artistic staff at Playwrights Horizons. These ongoing exchanges have been open and constructive, but there is much work to be done.” 

“We also ask: Why, when there are so many gifted Middle Eastern and/or Muslim playwrights and directors, are there still no decision makers of Middle Eastern descent or Muslim faith involved in a production about Muslims? 

As Middle Eastern American artists, we are familiar with our stories being filtered through a predominantly white gaze. We take issue with producing organizations whose choices perpetuate the notion that we are a voiceless, powerless group, incapable of representing ourselves. Such a notion is supported by the continuation of Islamophobia and white privilege, and the Orientalist idea that our stories, experiences, fantasies, and myths need to be expressed for us. This keeps us out of the conversation and out of the full process of creation, and relegates us to passive subjects that must be interpreted, dissected, exoticized and so forth. 

While prompted by recent events, this letter is a response to many years of watching our stories be misrepresented, censored, appropriated, and exploited. Marginalized groups and people of color across the country continue to face these issues. As we bring to light our particular challenges as Middle Eastern and Muslim artists in the U.S., we also recognize our allied communities in this intersectional struggle for equity and representation.” 

I strongly encourage everyone to read the full text at the above link as they raise many very important points that are too often ignored in a modern theater that loves to decry itself as “more important now than ever” while doing the same white nonsense over and over.   Their site also includes a link to sign in solidarity.  

(You can read Playwrights Horizons response here below the original letter.) 

[eloquence-of-felicities]

Described as a dark comedy, this actually very appealing and incredibly interesting play is so much more. Award winning playwright Zayd Dohrn, gives us a truly original and unique story in Reborning, opening at the SOHO Playhouse on July 12.

Set in a doll maker’s studio in Queens, the concept of the play’s title may initially be interpreted as a direct link to the lifelike baby dolls that are made by artist Kelly (Emily Bett Rickards) who is often asked to produce exact doll replicas of peoples’ babies either as a sweet memento, or sometimes, on the slightly darker side, to somehow, on some level, replace a deceased baby as part of a grieving process.

Rickards, Piaskowski, and Triolo are all equally outstanding, giving natural and comfortable performances with ease.

Rickards, as the doll maker Kelly, conveys a likeable earthiness, and a relatable characterization, even though her character’s circumstances are incredibly uncommon. She handles her high end dramatic moments with professional tact.