Open Rehearsal: The Court Theatre Blog
May 27, 2010
Daniel Minter’s Art
Maine-based artist Daniel Minter has designed the postcards for two Court shows this season, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and The Mystery of Irma Vep. Sizwe director and resident artist Ron OJ Parson brought Daniel to our attention, and now he’s returned to contribute art for the final show, Sizwe Banzi is Dead. Here’s a full image of Daniel’s original art, based on photographs shared by Ron of South African townships:
More of Daniel’s art can be seen here.
Sizwe Banzi is Dead runs Wednesdays through Sundays until June 13.
May 19, 2010
The Arizona Immigration Law
Immigrants and advocates for the illegal marched April 23 outside the State Capitol in Phoenix. Monica Almeida/The New York Times
In the post-show discussions after Sizwe Banzi is Dead this weekend, one issue that audience members consistently raised was the new Arizona immigration law, which grants state and local police broad powers to enforce federal immigration law. The New York Times paraphrases the bill:
The law would require the police “when practicable” to detain
people they reasonably suspected were in the country without
authorization. It would also allow the police to charge immigrants
with a state crime for not carrying immigration documents. And
it allows residents to sue cities if they believe the law is not
being enforced.
Audiences have been drawing connections between the enforcement of immigration documents in Arizona and the South African passbook law, which regulated the movement and employment of South African blacks and led to frequent unwarranted incarceration under legal apartheid. While I would caution against making broad statements of equivalency between U.S. immigration law and South African apartheid, what’s resonant in Sizwe Banzi is Dead is the infringement on basic human rights and dignity that a banal state-issued document (like a passbook, like immigrant papers) can support. Thus, as a widely cited example, a brown-skinned man may get pulled over for so much as rolling through a stop sign as an excuse to check his immigrant papers. The argument against the law, an argument that Sizwe Banzi is Dead makes quite powerfully, is that this kind of targeting and profiling of a sect of the population—namely, poor brown-skinned men and women—is nothing short of an existential infringement that violates an individual’s human (or natural) rights. The assertion from supporters of the new law that “you should have nothing to fear if your papers are in order” misses the larger consequence that such a law creates a paranoid system of human coercion over an unempowered people. Thus does Sizwe Banzi assert that “I am a man,” thus do Arizona immigrants assert that “we are human”—these laws take away those basic assumptions.
Allen Gilmore as Sizwe Banzi in Sizwe Banzi is Dead
Of course, what you think of the Arizona Senate bill has a lot to do with what you think of U.S. immigration law, which the Arizona law, in some ways, merely follows to its logical conclusion (ie. sustained local enforcement). What Sizwe Banzi is Dead does, however, is to illustrate exactly the human cost of such a measure, and indeed, goes a long way toward forcing your opinion on the way we handle regulate immigration in this country.
You can read the full text of the Arizona Senate bill here.
May 11, 2010
Censorship and Police Interference
First preview for Sizwe Banzi is Dead is less than forty-eight hours away. Playwright Athol Fugard recounts a previous opening night of the play in a South African township:
The venue was St. Stephen’s Hall in New Brighton, Port Elizabeth, and the occasion was our first public performance of Sizwe Banzi is Dead in a black township in South Africa. Date: September 1974. The play was already nearly two years old, but it was only after its West End run that we felt sufficiently protected by its overseas success to risk the hazards involved in a township performance. Up until then its life in South Africa had been restricted to private performances before invited audiences… circumstances which theoretically made us safe from censorship and police interference. I say theoretically because even under those circumstances there had been incidents. The last one had been just prior to our departure for London. Half an hour before a performance at The Space Theatre in Cape Town we found ourselves confronted by the Security Police and a warning that if we proceeded with the show we would be charged under the Group Areas Act. They claimed the performance would constitute ‘...occupation of a building in an area which had been zoned strictly for whites.’
As far as openings go, I would say that Court Theatre has it easy, except that most of us theater people actively dream of putting up work that invites censorship and police interference.
May 10, 2010
Albee’s Three Tall Women Completes the Season
Two months ago we released our 2010/11 Season short one show, which we promised to announce at a later date. At this time, I’m pleased that we can finally announce Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women as the play that will complete our season. This will be the second play by Albee that I’ve directed at Court Theatre, following our 2004 production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. I spent a great deal of time with my copy of Three Tall Women this winter, wrestling with my own conflicted opinion of the play and its view of life and death. The play follows three women, named only A, B, and C—one woman in youth, one woman in middle age, and one woman on her death bed. As the elder woman reflects on her life—including the estrangement of her son, widely interpreted to represent Albee himself—she develops clarity of mind that transcends her debilitated body. Albee wrote the play shortly after the passing of his adoptive mother, with whom he had a fraught relationship; he has often described the writing process of Three Tall Women as an “exorcism.” It is a wickedly funny play, but persistently difficult, and the residual venom between Albee and his mother is very foreign to my own personal experience. Nevertheless, I admire the kinetic energy and the scope of the text, and it provides an extraordinary challenge to me and three actresses—exactly the kind of challenges I like to seek out. Famously, this was the play that made people take a second look at Edward Albee, and I think it’s actually the right classic play to fill the final slot of the 2010/11 Season. I hope to announce the three talented actresses who will fill the parts soon—check this blog again for more news!
In the meantime, be sure to learn about the rest of the plays in our 2010/11 Season: The Comedy of Errors, Home, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, and Porgy and Bess!
Kevin Gudahl and Barbara E. Robertson in Court’s 2004 production of Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? directed by Charles Newell.
May 5, 2010
William Kentridge’s MINE (1991)
I don’t want to work on the mines. There is no money there. And it’s dangerous, under the ground. Many black men get killed when the rocks fall. You can die there.
Sizwe Banzi is Dead
One of my favorite artists, William Kentridge, is a South African film-maker who animates his own charcoal and pastel drawings. In Mine, Kentridge portrays the inhuman living conditions of black mine workers. Undesirable and underpaid as it was, mine work was a viable and common option for black South Africans who couldn’t find employment in the cities.
Sizwe Banzi is Dead opens May 13.
