New to Me

Quick thought -- as a white theater patron who enjoys seeing plays written by people of color and spends most of his theater budget on Broadway or major nonprofit theater productions, I often see the same "hot" playwrights getting more and more exposure. By almost any measures, plays by playwrights of color I've seen at the Public Theater in New York or the Guthrie in Minneapolis have been excellent and have expanded my frontiers of theatrical experience. I'm not complaining, but I sometimes find myself wondering what about other playwrights of color? Are there only these handful that tend to get major productions at major theaters that are worth seeing?
Of course not, and thanks to forward looking institutions like the Mixed Blood theater in Minneapolis for giving lesser known playwrights, particularly African American writers, an audience.
The Mixed Blood this fall produced "Prescient Harbingers, a trilogy of plays by three black male playwrights. I got to see two of the productions, "Gloria," by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, and "Hooded, or Being Black for Dummies," by Arvelle Chisholm. Both plays have been produced by highly regarded theater companies in other places and have received accolades, but both playwrights were new to me. Both plays were excellent, dealing with gun violence from two very different perspectives, but one similarity that struck me is that both plays incorporate humor abundantly in telling their stories. (I missed Hype Man, a Break Beat Play" by Idris Goodwin, but it received great reviews as well.)
Lesson learned: I need to get out more and see more productions by minority playwrights, especially those produced by great theaters that are a little off the beaten path.

The Burdens of History

Well, that's a pretentious title for what I plan to be a short and snappy blog entry. I recently saw the musical Hamilton on Broadway (it lives up to the hype) and I'm thinking about the extent to which a dramatist or fiction writer is expected to portray historic figures in a fair, reasonable light.
To put it in context, I read online that some historians have criticized Hamilton for its treatment of some of Alexander Hamilton's rivals and peers in the early years of the Republic.
Thomas Jefferson particularly is portrayed in a pretty satirical mode, and John Quincy Adams also is portrayed as a kind of phlegmatic caricature. (There seems to be little complaint about the treatment of King George III, who receives the most comical skewering.)
And I say: it's all fair game. Hamilton the musical isn't striving to be a history lesson. It's a dramatization of one of the more interest figures among the founding fathers of the United States. The play examines Alexander Hamilton's motives, his character, his ambition. It puts a spotlight on his enormous role in the formation of the republic. If Lin-Manuel Miranda used humor and caricature to achieve that goal, that's well within his rights as far as I'm concerned.
The show, even after three years on Broadway and several generations removed from its original cast, continues to receive a roaring ovation from the audience.

Girl from the North Country

I had been eyeing tickets for the Conor McPherson musical incorporating Bob Dylan songs, "Girl from the North Country," for a few days. I didn't realize that the production at the Public Theater, which was already nearly sold out, was still in previews. Then can Ben Brantley's ebullient review in the New York Times. I checked online after that review appeared, and the entire production run was sold out.
Enter the remnants of Hurricane Michael. I've had good luck getting theater tickets in bad weather, in the past, when a lot of people commuting in from outside of the city turn in their tickets rather than face the torture of driving into the city in bad weather. Still, it seemed something of a long shot, given how highly praised the production is.
But I went to the box office, and I was rewarded for my effort. I ended up seated near the center of a row, bout ten rows back from the stage.
Here's a quote from the Brantley review:
"What’s created, through songs written by Mr. Dylan over half a century, is a climate of feeling, as pervasive and evasive as fog. It’s an atmosphere of despair — with lyrics about lost chances, lost love and enduring loneliness — that finds grace in the communion of voices coming together."
Count me a bigger fan of Bob Dylan than I already was. And count me a big fan of playwright Conor McPherson as well. The story, which intertwines the residents and visitors to a boarding home in Duluth, Minnesota, during the Great Depression, is haunting, heartbreaking and often bleak, but McPherson uses Dylan's music to tease some hope and faith out of the beleaguered characters. The entire ensemble cast is excellent, but I'd have to single out Mare Winningham in particular for praise. Both her acting, and especially her singing, added depth and texture to the soul of this beautiful musical. 
According to the NYT review, representatives of Dylan actually approached McPherson about possibly using Dylan's songs as the basis of a musical. It seems to have been an inspired choice. 

Writ on Water

There are many ways to feel humbled as a poet (as the author of a mere chapbook, I'm familiar with most of them). But it can be equally disturbing to see a poet you hold in esteem fading into obscurity. For whatever reason, I don't feel like naming names at the moment -- perhaps out of a sense of denial that such a wonderful writer could be someday forgotten.
Since I'm on something of a budget, it's not beneath me to order books online from sellers that specialize in used books. In fact, I've saved quite a few shillings by settling for used copies. And since I often forget what I've ordered, the arrival of a small package in the mail is often a pleasant surprise, akin to receiving a book in one of those chain mail games where you send one of your favorite books to a stranger. I open them eagerly, and am often delighted to find a volume by an other who just happened to cross my mind a week or so ago.
Not for the first time, the volume I ordered most recently was one that had been decommissioned by an academic institution (in this case, Harvard College). I find it sad to think that curious readers browsing the open stacks at Harvard's library may not have the good fortune to stumble upon one of the most esteemed poets of my generation. He happens to be a writer I met once or twice at an LGBTQ writing conference a few decades ago, and he was quite charming in person. He's also one of the many writers of his generation who died well before his time, so his poetic output -- though I would consider him prolific -- was limited to a few volumes.
I'm trying to be optimistic. Perhaps Harvard had redundant copies of his last collection. Perhaps students at one of the nation's most esteemed universities still have opportunities to stumble upon his work. But for the moment, Harvard's loss is my gain. I finally do have a copy of his last volume in my collection.

That Drifting Feeling

Matthew Zapruder has a nice essay online (an excerpt from his new book) at the Paris Review about the experience of reading poetry. Rather than trying to summarize it, I'll let the link and this money quote suffice. "Poetry is a constructed conversion on the frontier of dreaming." Like Zapruder, I had difficulty enjoying or appreciating the poetry of John Ashbery when I first encountered him. Now, of course, I revere John Ashbery's poems. But back in my youth when I first encountered him my reading expectations were, well, conventional. I expected a clear theme, discernible images and even a plot. A little epiphany at the end of the poem that tied it all up nicely was much appreciated. Eventually I got used to the idea of an open field and the pleasures of drifting through various landscapes and geographies. Only then did Ashbery start making sense to me. But as the Talking Heads told us, "Stop Making Sense" is maybe a better strategy for conveying a mood or feeling.

Poetry Indoors and Outdoors

Ah, the season is finally upon us when poetry can move outdoors. At first I was a little discombobulated by the Bryant Park "reading room," which is actually just a few rows of benches and some sound equipment and Bryant Park where I've heard some excellent poets read in recent years. Last year, Ocean Vuong and Phillip B. Williams were among the attractions. This week, in what might have been the reading room's first poetry event of the year, I had the pleasure of hearing Jim Moore (one of Minnesota's best known poets) read alongside Marilyn Nelson and Katha Pollitt.
It can be a little distracting, sitting outside in blessed weather, one's attention sometimes drifts to the jugglers on the other side of the park. Tuesday night's reading consisted of a celebrations of the "poetry in motion" program, which posts broadsides of poetry in subway and bus stops. The readers not only read their own work that had been included in the program but also some of their favorite poems by other writers that have graced the subway walls.
And on Wednesday, I descended into the long, somewhat foreboding basement of the Cornelia Street cafe, another storied venue for literature and music, to hear Timothy Liu and some of his colleagues and students from William Paterson University read. Timothy Liu is always entertaining and upbeat, even when reading poetry that delves deeply into the body's most secretive crevasses and desires. His colleagues, poets Paul LeTorre, Karthik Purushothamam, and Scott Wordsmith were reminders that much of the most vital work being written today is being produced by young poets I often haven'theard of before I finally hear them read. Purushothamam collaborated on one piece with a singer songwriter who had written a song which shared some anti-Trumpian affinity with his poetry, which was a reminder that whenever musicians and poets perform together, it usually brings out the best in both of them.
And of course, I can't say enough about the Split This Rock poetry festival in Washington, D.C., which I finally attended in April. The fusing of poetry and activism seems especially needed in our current times, and perhaps earlier generations of poetry and activism have suffered from a stigma against politically informed poetry. Time we all got "woke" to the value of poetic activism.  Below are some pictures.

Katha Pollitt

Jim Moore in Bryant Park

Sarah Browning, Ellen Bass, Elizabeth Acevedo, Solmaz Sharif at Split This Rock

Danez Smith, Franny Choi, Fatimah Asghar, Hieu Minh Nguyen and Sam Sax also present at Split This Rock.

Farinelli and the King

Let me some up the best new play I've seen on broadway this year by saying this: I'll be shocked if Mark Rylance doesn't win a Tony Award for his portrayal of Spain's King Philippe V. For nearly the entire play, he is onstage, often deranged but always commanding attention. For that matter, the entire cast was great.
The play is Shakespearean in its scope and ambition. The fact that it's a historical play only makes it seem more timeless, though Farinelli and the King premiered in London in 2015. The music that accompanies the action lets the audience feel the way music can serve as a healing power even as we watch the king stammer in and out of sanity, with his bouts of reasonableness usually buoyed by the presence of the opera star Farinelli's music.
Playwright Claire van Kampen has done a magnificent job with a classic subject: an unhinged ruler presiding during perilous times. Many people see parallels between her King Philippe and the current U.S. President, but I see our current administration and his entire party as more corrupt and disingenuous than crazy (though there's certainly an element of that at play too). At any rate, the play is not so much a satire about our current times as a timeless meditation upon music's solace for the soul.

Frederico Garcia Lorca Comes to Town

I was very pleased that Alfred A. Kopf, The New School and the Poetry Society of America teamed up to host a reading of new translations by Sarah Arvio of the great Spanish poet. Some of the participants exclusively read the English translations, while others read Lorca's poems in both Spanish and English.
Readers included Cyrus Cassells, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Nathalie Handal, Roberto Montes, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Philip Schultz and Sarah Arvio herself.
I'm always taken aback when I realize how young Lorca was when he perished, and how much great work he created during what was essentially his youth. It was also interesting to hear stories about how his memory was not celebrated for a long time in Spain, though he is widely celebrated today. Minus the part about being presumably tortured and killed for his homosexuality and political stances, the arc of his billowing posthumous fame I think is kind of every writer's dream. Like I said, minus the Civil War discourtesy of his presumed assassination.