Stage Voices

By Bob Shuman

Even in a gentrified East Village (now old news), there is an abandoned mattress on Second Avenue, police barricades at the crossing, the trash of paper shopping bags, and plastic deli containers, strewn across the pavement. It’s fifty years since the Bicentennial—where does the time go?; now it’s Americas 250^th birthday—and fifty years, also, since Theater for the New City began taking it to the streets, with plays written by Crystal Field (her first was Mama Liberty’s Bicentennial Party, 1976).  She’s a writer of the light, or what needs to be shone a light on (Shakespeare is one also—his plays typically started at 2:00pm, open-air, as is today’s performance, too, of The Root of It All: A Dentist’s Tale.

Shakespeare lasted about 20 years in London (not a bad run). For three different NYC theaters, under her aegis, Field has, so far, stayed 50. Shakespeare could hold audiences because, for one, in his time, there were limited recreational alternatives, among cattle, sheep, and beheadings. Here, where the average person’s attention span is 72 seconds, new challenges prevail: figuring out how to keep preoccupied, dissembling humanity focused, as an instance, in the gritty sweat outside in August, during the flow of downtown traffic, among pedestrians, bicyclists (who could kill you), cabs, or even a sudden gust of wind.

The primary focus of The Root of It All: A Dentist’s Tale, pertains to the dislocations of Immigration and Custom’s Enforcement, ICE. The show is dedicated to Renée Good and Alex Pretti, the gunned-down Minnesota anti-ICE observers. However, the theatrical event also honors Nolan Wells, whose disappearance in Mississippi, over the July 4 weekend of this year, is under investigation as being racially motivated. Add, too, Bonnie Tyler, the husky-voiced Welsh pop singer who died in July, and there are others, in a time of growing anxiety regarding war.  Jesse Wells’s “No Kings,” is one of the song selections of the pre-show; he sounds like Dylan—another example of a hole in time, the ‘60s, ‘70s, right here, free. “No lies and no bullets/ No bombs,” he  intones, rawly,  “and no need for kings, no kings, no kings.”

Typically, Theater for the New City’s street plays are a celebration of the working New Yorker and the crazy city itself. Today’s performance features characters recognizable, from a dental waiting room; but other works, from half a century of urban observation, have incorporated subways and busses, courtrooms, and employment offices, dancing ethnic populations, stranded commuters, perplexed health care and government workers, Colonial legislators, even figures fantastical, including a living Statue of Liberty. Plots work as fast as the rolling canvas backdrop in this show (by Mary Blanchard, Lytza Colon and Kanako Nagayama), utilizing scenes from American history, pinpointing Lady Liberty, of course. Democracy is important to Field and her audiences, lauding “a Republic, if we can keep it.”

She began writing outdoor theater pieces, against the Vietnam war (working with poor and minority students in Philadelphia), ascertaining that “for poetry to find its true audience, the bonds of authoritarian criticism must and can be transcended.” Call her writing agitprop, political theater, or simply survival in a volatile carnival or circus atmosphere, like Shakespeare, Field has a feel for life in the moment: situations, low comedy, villains, lyrics, as well as movement (actually, Field is a dancer and an actress in theater and film, of importance). Besides writing The Root of It All, she also figured out a way to direct it. Stephen Sondheim once discussed what made theatrical songwriting resonant: He said words had to float above the music so that they could be understood immediately and integrated. Likewise, Field’s are direct enough to hold though a day’s chronobiology, in her case, where an audience is not captive but won’t wander off (the mood enhancing, and shifting, jazz-oriented score in The Root of It All is by Peter Dizozza, and played by his band of extremely fluid musicians: keyboard; trumpet/fugelhorn; sax/percussion/ drums; trumpet; saxophone; and rehearsal piano).

Field’s comedy is absurd, delightfully, positing the fact that all teeth pretty much are the same (and color divisions don’t exist). It’s a joyful insight for the day, where everything can change at the insatiable touch of an iphone. The developing story involves the plight of a child (well played by Anton Wagner), who has been separated from his family; his father; the dentist of record; and his lovelorn dental hygienist.  The action broaches deportation and lowering quality of life, the new mayor, inflation, government-run grocery stores, and the coming elections. Even protests-

Maybe that’s what we’re watching, I am figuring out: a protest. The metaphor for this production of The Root of It All may be what we’re part of:  a peaceful protest, and it has been implanting itself from the start. Since the Marvin Gaye music and the pre-show, with balletic and acrobatic feats; since the audience participation, where we have been realigning to allow communication—to get on the same wavelength (but not in a “pull-the-wool-over-your eyes,” sneaky way). We’re welcoming it. That’s what this feels like. So much of the messaging in our lives is fractured, incomplete, regarding the Iran conflict, that Gaye’s 1971 song “What’s Going On?” sets a right vibe: the tune was actually cowritten with Renaldo “Obie” Benson and Al Cleveland, as it turns out, after they witnessed police brutality against anti-war protesters.

Theater then, however, did feel more important, intelligent, and “adult” (as  the dancer Ann Reinking once pointed out), than it does today, reduced as it is, currently, to a discussion of entertainment value.  At that time, what dramatists wrote really mattered, in a way that people may not understand now, with so much vaporizing information overspilling, 24/7. Eric Bentley’s The Playwright as Thinker, reissued in 1967, but first published in 1946, was a serious hypothesis about social intellect. Going to see Cats, for example, in the ‘80s, could seem like a big step backwards, if someone went at all. But, go they did—and so the stage culture began changing. Others blame Annie. Not that Field won’t “burn it to the ground,” as she sees fit. Her monologue “Let It Go,” (circa 2007), for example, was a startling, blunt response to the price of the Iraq War. In it, a bright teen, nineteen years old, from Anywhere, U.S.A., waits to remeet her brother returning from war. She has been told she must remain cheerful and not talk selfishly about her brother’s accomplishments. She conjectures about how others waiting for the train are considering renewed physical relationships, but she also knows many military people have been wounded, maimed, and suffer from PTSD. Like her brother, many have been sent on multiple deployments, including to Guantanamo Bay: She understands her brother has not been spared tragedy. Then, in front of her family and her brother’s girlfriend, she breaks down, “letting go” of the painful reality she has promised not to feel.        

Finale of show. Photo by Jonathan Slaff.

Michael-David Gordon leads The Root of It All cast of twenty-one, adroitly. I always love it when publicity stills are sent to me, where he participates, comically. I’ve seen him conjure also a perfect, on-the-spot speech by Aaron, from Titus Andronicus. Plus, such a voice. Cheryl Gadsden is knowing/vulnerable as his girlfriend and the opposing ICE bad dudes and dancing enamels, myriad dental patients and students, immigrants, families, and make-believe or dream characters, as well as legal, political, and civic professionals, along with concerned citizenry, make this a stage, as full, active, and overflowing as the Met’s. (Visually, Field has a hilarious penchant for highlighting the odd one out.) Depending on where sights are set, one can see:  actors and musicians; tech people, running boards;  designers; volunteers; administrators; box office; crew; old-timers and those who may have lost teeth, not very long ago—they’re accomplishing amazing feats to which most of the audience is completely unaware (including me). 

How fantastic is it that there is a place to reflect on and contemplate the new city.

This is a victory.

 

(c) Bob Shuman. Publicist: Jonathan Slaff.

Visit Theater for the New City’s Web site.

SCHEDULE 

Saturday, 8/1 @ 2:00 PM – MANHATTAN: Outside Theater for the New City at E. 10th St. & First Ave.

Sunday, 8/2 @ 2:00 PM – BRONX: St. Mary’s Park at 147th St. & St. Ann’s Ave.

Saturday, 8/8 @ 2:00 PM – STATEN ISLAND: Tappen Park, Bay St. betw. 77th & 78th Sts. 

Sunday, 8/9 @ 2:00 PM – MANHATTAN: Central Park Bandshell, 72nd Street Crosswalk

Friday, 8/14 @ 5:00 PM – BROOKLYN: Coney Island Boardwalk at W. 21st Street

Saturday, 8/15 @ 2:00 PM – MANHATTAN: St. Marks Church at E. 10th St. & Second Ave.

Sunday, 8/16 @ 2:00 PM – MANHATTAN: Jackie Robinson Park at W. 147th St. & Bradhurst Ave.

Saturday, 8/22 @ 2:00 PM – MANHATTAN: Washington Square Park

Sunday, 8/23 @ 2:00 PM – QUEENS: Travers Park at 34th Ave. betw. 77th & 78th Sts.

Sat. 8/30 @ 2:00 PM- BROOKLYN: Sunset Park at 6th Ave. & 44th St.

Sun. 8/31 @ 2:00 PM – BROOKLYN: Fort Greene Park, Myrtle Avenue & St. Edwards Street

Saturday, 9/12 @ 2:00 PM – MANHATTAN: Sol Bloom Playground, W. 91st Street btwn. Columbus & Central Park West

Sunday, 9/13 @ 2:00 PM – MANHATTAN: Tompkins Square Park at E. 7th St. & Ave. A