Politics & Plays

Not a book review, but sufficiently similar that I think it belongs here...

I've been collecting programs in the last week. Friday was Chloe's culmination event for pre-school, and last night was the annual spring fundraising dinner at work. Saturday, we went to the Tamarind Theatre to see The Eyes of Babylon, a one-man autobiographical show about a gay Marine's experience in Iraq. Jeff Key, the writer-performer, fulfilled a life-long ambition when he joined the Marines in 2000, at the age of 34, going back in the closet to do so. His naked (sometimes literally) performance challenges whole sets of assumptions about what it means to be: gay, in the military, Southern. It problematizes simplistic views on either side of the political spectrum of what's happening in Iraq - sure, he's in Shiite southern Iraq, and sure, he's a gay actor in Los Angeles so he's probably pretty liberal, and sure, he came out last year to leave the military. But it's complicated, as all things are. In addition, he evoked how foreign things were here in the aftermath of September 11th, in my mind the most serious indictment of how far we've swerved off course in the past 3 1/2 years. And there's a love scene that's so unexpected, so touching, that it still makes me warm inside. Babylon is disarming, challenging, and entirely human.

Sunday took us up to Topanga, to the Theatricum Botanicum, for a series called Botanicum Seedlings, which consists of readings and workshops for plays in progress. It's a way of cultivating playwrights. The reading we saw was of Matt Pelfrey's An Impending Rupture of the Belly, a satirical reverie about a modern-day Willy Loman. In a world consumed with threat, danger, and consumption, can the wussy man survive? Or will he snap? I liked the reading format. Stage directions read, instead of witnessed, props half-assed, or missing. Actors carrying their scripts. Very minimalist. I personally think they should keep the show under-produced like this. As for the play itself, it was very biting and amusing, and certainly topical. But I don't know that it ever really connected with me. It'll find an audience though.

Plays are great fun. And plays, much more than novels, place great premium on being witty. I appreciate that.