Rabbi Menachem Creditor

I’m going to my first-ever religious Jewish service tomorrow morning — at Congregation Netivot Shalom in Berkeley, where I’ve performed and improvised a few times.  I called my friend Menachem Creditor, the temple’s rabbi, to ask — among other things — what one wears at a Jewish service.  (Thanks to my late father’s love of church ceremonies and my six years at an Episcopalian choir school, many Christian services are more than familiar to me.)  Our connection wasn’t great — he was about to pick up his daughter from her school bus and I was about to pick up my son from school — but he told me that, if I wasn’t wearing a yarmulke and … something else I couldn’t hear … someone would hand them to me.  He said the service starts at 8 a.m., but usually only “visitors” come then, and that I should plan to arrive at about 10 or 10:15.

Recently I have been struggling with learning about my Jewish heritage, as I prepare for the next stage of development of my show Andy Warhol: Good for the Jews (opening at Theater J in Washington D.C. in March and at The Jewish Theatre San Francisco in April).  Just finished reading David Mamet’s The Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism, Self-Hatred, and the Jews, a book of essays about how assimilated Jewish “apostates” such as myself are engaged in treason against our own race.  Now reading some more of Wallace Shawn’s book of essays (titled, simply, Essays), in which he seems to ally himself with all people, regardless of tribe or nationality — a stance I have long felt myself to hold.  But, spurred by this project and by Mamet’s pugnacious arguments, I am excited to at least think of myself as a member of this ancient tribe.  (And yet, I have to say, whenever Mamet talks about how great and wise the Jewish writings and traditions are, I reflexively think, “But isn’t every major religion and culture — that is to say, every one of long-standing — equally wise and great, albeit perhaps coming at things from different angles?”)

And then there’s the God thing.  I’ve had no experience of God — which, the more I read and listen to theologians, may actually put me in their camp.  People, including Rabbi Creditor (and my atheist father), have described God as something like the full potential of the human imagination.  Even there, I think (perhaps frivolously?), “What about the imagination of animals and plants, and of the vast universe?”  And then I stop myself and think, “Well, that would pretty much be God, wouldn’t it?” (if the universe had an imagination).  And I am reminded (and it makes me smile sometimes) how shallow my thinking is.

And yet I keep wanting at least to move forward.

May I confess that turning 50 has not been as uneventful, emotionally, as I had anticipated?  Possibly this has something to do with the fact that my father had a stroke at 55 and died at 59.  But I think it has more to do with my ambivalence regarding how relatively important or unimportant it is that I am alive.  Is it possible to kind of separate out these two feelings: (1) that I am not particularly important in even the medium-sized scheme of things and (2) that the fact that I am alive — that I have been so unimaginably fortunate as to have a chance to be alive one time — is enormously meaningful?

My stepfather, Frank, a mensch, who has made my mother’s life so wonderful (and the rest of the family’s as well), has been ailing.  He and my mom are both in their 80s (though she’s several years his junior), and so when there are ailments they tend to raise a larger question: Is this part of a serious decline?  My mom is, as she is typically in these situations, remarkably clear-minded about what’s going on; in addition, among Frank’s amazing children is one — Rachel — whose husband, Peter, is either a geriatrician or a gerontologist, depending on what the dictionary would tell me if I were to look it up.  (He’s a doctor who works with old people.)  Rachel and Peter arranged for Mom and Frank to go from Chicago (where they live in a beautiful high-rise on the South Side) to visit with them in Cleveland.  As of Mom’s last email, Frank has been improving greatly; I cannot begin to tell you how hopeful this makes me.

I’m trying to work with time — to accept it, not let it be the enemy, let it just be.  I have a tendency to resort to kind of a willful narcolepsy in response to things that challenge me.  Maybe I’m somewhat depressed most all the time.  The things that make me happy: I’m wildly in love with my family, just really blissed out when I’m with them.  I have friends whom I love.  I love living in Berkeley.  I am a proud American.  I am a proud un-American.  I am proud to be a Jew, and totally confused about what that means.  (I imagine that I would be equally proud to be whatever else I happened to be born as.)  I love listening to music, and reading.

The work I do — making stories on stage and on film — is, in part, the craft of working with time.  Its masters teach me — or try — how to make of my limitations (or, perhaps, the ordered confessions of those limitations) a sort of strength, or at least a living.  For thousands of years Jews have commented in the margins of history, creating pressurized, often indecipherable (at least to many) counter-narratives to the prevailing ones.  At 50, facing the task of fitting my infinitesimal story into the vast tapestry I sense is there, I guess I want to say to myself (and to you) that I will try, very hard, as hard as I can, to be open to any possibilities that present themselves.

And why is it that the prospect of going to temple for the first time arouses these chaotic thoughts in this atheistic, apostate Jew?  I’d give you my usual superficial answer, but I want to try something different this time: I want to have the experience, rather than imagine my way through or around it.  I am, as the great Suzanne Vega song puts it, tired of sleeping.

Posted: January 9th, 2010 under Andy Warhol: Good for the Jews?, Berkeley, Jews, Rabbi Menachem Creditor.
Comments: 6

My longtime theatrical collaborator, David Dower, is far away, in Washington, D.C.  So as we collaborate on our new piece, Andy Warhol: Good for the Jews?, we are experimenting with communicating via Twitter (among other methods, like the old-fashioned telephone call).

If, for some reason, you’d like to join us on our continuing journey (which, admittedly, will sometimes seem obscure or confusing, as you will be joining us a dozen years into our overall conversation), you can go on Twitter and “follow” warholjew (that’s me) and WarholDir (David).  And if you feel moved to offer a reply, or argument, or question, you can send out a Twitter tweet with “@warholjew” (but not the quote marks) embedded in your message — such as:

@warholjew You call yourself a Jew?

Or:

@warholjew, I knew Andy Warhol. Andy Warhol was a friend of mine. And you, sir, are no Warhol Jew!

That way, I will be sure to see your tweet.  (Add “@WarholDir” as well, and David will see it too.)

Also, as with all Twitter streams, you have to read from bottom to top — i.e., in chronological order.  And to take in the whole conversation, you’ll have to hit “More” a few times, to get to the beginning — which is to say, bottom.  (Do Twitter streams in Hebrew start at the top, I wonder?)

My hope is that this can be another way for me to improvise within a community — an extension of my live improvs at theaters — and to get more of the feedback that I find so invaluable.  My fear is that none of this will be of any interest to anyone, and that I am pissing (my Twitter stream) into the wind.

But I have to say that, so far, it’s been really helpful — exciting even — to be able to jump out of the shower, jot down a bunch of 140-character-max ideas as warholjew, and then — not long after — find a series of David’s brilliant responses waiting for me the next time I check.  And I’m curious to see whether this can become a community thing as well, with your input.

At the same time, by the way, I continue to maintain my ordinary, ecumenical Twitter and Facebook identities.  Oh, and I also still exist in the physical world — though in a much less organized way.

Posted: December 31st, 2009 under Andy Warhol: Good for the Jews?, David Dower, Facebook, Twitter.
Comments: 2

A few years ago, my sweet brother-in-law Nathan Sato and his lovely wife, Miki Azuchi, ran off to Hawaii and launched a brave and improbable new career making delicious local chocolates.  Due to the intense yumminess of their products, their company, Malie Kai, has been branching out — just now reaching the Bay Area, where both outlets of the Berkeley Bowl now carry their stuff.

These chocolate bars (which come in several varieties — including with crunchy “nibs,” my favorite) make excellent stocking-stuffers — though our own most recent samples mysteriously “disappeared” before they could make it into any stockings.

Highly recommended!!

Posted: December 18th, 2009 under Berkeley, Malie Kai Chocolates.
Comments: none

Even my lovely and powerful computer is getting fed up with all the multitasking. When I ask it to let me use Firefox, it rope-a-dopes me — asking, in effect, “Do you really need to use Firefox?  Wouldn’t you be just as happy sticking with your email application?”  I need to click on the little Firefox icon a few more times before the machine grudgingly brings up the browser.

I feel my laptop’s pain (something I’m sure we’ve all experienced, though possibly not on our wedding night): There are so many things I’m trying to do right now that I feel myself approaching a sort of fugue state.

On one of my “tabs” on Firefox is an uploading video that my brother Jake and I made yesterday, alerting our supporters at IndieGoGo.com that we plan to shoot the next installment of our new film, Love & Taxes, next weekend — and gently asking for even more donations.

On another tab is the enewsletter-generating program I use: I plan to send out an eblast to my peeps today about a couple of improvs I’ll be doing (towards an expanded version of my monologue Andy Warhol: Good for the Jews?) in San Francisco over the next two weeks.  (The improvs — each open to a maximum of 15 audience members, so that few will be able to speak of the chaos and disaster — will be on Dec. 21 and 22 at 8 p.m. at The Jewish Theatre San Francsico; call 415.292.1233 to reserve a spot.)

Another tab holds yesterday’s article from the San Francisco Chronicle detailing brother Jake’s ongoing collaboration with Robert Reich on terrific little videos that give simple explanations of complicated policy issues.  At the same time, I keep checking my email for updates regarding an event that Jake and I are trying to put together: me interviewing Reich on stage at the Berkeley Rep in January, and filming it for use as a pilot for our new interview show, Josh Kornbluth Talks to Strangers.

There are also:

• Word documents with in-progress contracts, a proposed budget for a possible concert film of my show The Mathematics of Change, my running diary of research and thoughts toward the Warhol piece, thoughts toward a future monologue about playing the oboe and spirituality (working title: Practice), notes from my fellow members of the Berkeley Energy Commission toward a report we’re preparing on local control of our energy production (so we can more aggressively fight global warming), and the text of President Obama’s very interesting Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.
• My RSS reader, which offers continually updating summaries of all the items on all the blogs I like to follow — DANGER! WILL SUCK UP ALL ATTENTION IF ALLOWED TO!
• PDF documents with scenes, notes, and schedules for the Love & Taxes shoot.
• JPEGs of possible locations for the L&T shoot.
• A complete script, in “Final Draft” software, of L&T.
• An audiobook, in iTunes, containing an unabridged recording of a complete history of the Jews (I just started it, but I suspect there may be some suffering).
• A printer utility warning that I am about to run out of cyan-colored ink — which is actually okay, since (a) I will soon vaporize and thus won’t need to print anything and (b) I have no real idea what color “cyan” is, and suspect that few if any of my documents will need to be tinted cyan.

Which is just for starters, and does not take into account the books by and about Kafka, Brandeis, and other “Warhol Jews” that are staring accusingly at me from the bookcase, asking why I have not finished them yet; nor the pile of unsorted papers I brought back from my recent trips to India and Portland (guess which place was drizzlier); nor the fact that my new booking agent has been waiting a week for me to send him the technical requirements for my “smaller” shows (i.e., the cheaper ones); nor many other things that are now rolling around vaguely but impatiently in my head and working their way down to my esophagus, from whence they will eventually try to reflux their way back out into the world …

But really, the idea is to just start with something, right?  Baby steps.  Okay.  Right.

I’ll pee.  Yes, that is what I’ll do first.  I will pee.  Peeing is good.  It also involves stepping away from the computer, which will be a relief for my laptop and myself.  We both need some space.  Too much multitasking.  Too many tasks to be multi-ed.  Go back to a simpler time, when people left their front doors unlocked and movies cost under $10 and one person doing one task on one computer was the subject of worldwide awe and admiration.  That is what I will do.  And it will be nice.

Posted: December 11th, 2009 under Andy Warhol: Good for the Jews?, Berkeley Energy Commission, Global Warming, India, Interviews, Jews, Love & Taxes, Portland, Robert Reich, Touring, YouTube.
Comments: none

Golda Meir, the first member of Warhol's minyan, takes a seat and waits for the others.

For his “Jewish Geniuses” portrait series, Andy Warhol ended up choosing 10 subjects — coincidentally (or not?), the number of Jews you need to start a religious service.  (Technically, I’ve been told, a minyan is traditionally 10 men — but as a feminist Jew, I think I’ll just go with a gender-free definition.)  As I have been working on Andy Warhol: Good for the Jews?, I’ve found it helpful to pair up the 10 — not for any thematic reasons, necessarily, just as a mnemonic device:

• Ein/Stein: Albert Einstein and Gertrude Stein.
• Rhapsody in Lou: George Gershwin and former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.
• Acting Out: Sarah Bernhardt and Sigmund Freud.
• Metameirphosis: Franz Kafka and Golda Meir.
• I and Thou (and Thou and Thou): Religious philosopher Martin Buber (author of I and Thou) and the Marx Brothers.

Now, you may notice that — with the Marx Brothers — there are actually 12 members of Warhol’s minyan (not even counting Zeppo or Gummo!).  So, okay, let’s call this a “baker’s minyan.”

Posted: November 14th, 2009 under Andy Warhol, Andy Warhol: Good for the Jews?, Jews.
Comments: 1

Much of my creative focus for the next several months will be on expanding Andy Warhol: Good for the Jews? — an hour-long presentation I did in January, commissioned by the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco — into a full-length theatrical monologue, which will debut at Theater J in Washington D.C. in March and then play at the Jewish Theatre San Francisco in April and May.  My director and producer, as they have been (thank heaven) for years, are David Dower and Jonathan Reinis, respectively; I am also working with two of my favorite collaborators, designer Alex Nichols and composer Marco d’Ambrosio.

The original challenge laid down by the CJM’s commission was fairly simple: I was to visit (and, as it turns out, revisit and revisit) their exhibition “Warhol’s Jews: Ten Portraits Reconsidered,” guest-curated by Prof. Richard Meyer of USC.  The 10 portraits at the center of this exhibit were of famous 20th-century Jews whom Andy Warhol — after what turns out to have been a quite interesting and collaborative process of selection — had committed to silkscreen in 1980.  The collection (which appeared at the Jewish Museum in New York, among many other places) was received at the time with commercial euphoria and, for the most part, critical vituperation.  Hilton Kramer’s 1980 New York Times review is one of the nastiest I have ever read.  Here’s how it begins (as quoted in Meyer’s terrific essay in the recent show’s catalogue):

To the many afflictions suffered by the Jewish people in the course of their long history, the new Andy Warhol show at the Jewish Museum cannot be said to make a significant addition.  True, the show is vulgar.  It reeks of commercialism, and its contribution to art is nil.  The way it exploits its Jewish subjects without showing the slightest grasp of their significance is offensive — or would be, anyway, if the artist had not already treated so many non-Jewish subjects in the same tawdry manner.  No, the Jews will survive this caper unscathed.  So, very likely, will everyone else.  But what it may do to the reputation of the Jewish Museum is, as they say, something else.

Wow — tell us what you really think, Hilton!

I knew nothing of Warhol — and, sad to say, not so much about my fellow Jews (other than what I had picked up via osmosis by hanging out in various delis) — when I began working on this project.  Since then, I have been trying to make up for lost time — chatting up rabbis (well, two), reading books and articles on Warhol and Jews, and listening to audiobooks and watching videos by and about Warhol and about Jewish history.  For a Jew raised about as secularly as possible — and by parents who were no fans of Pop Art, either — this process is a great challenge, both exhilarating and confusing.

In a phone conversation I had with David today (he’s in Washington D.C.; I’m in Portland, Ore., right now), he pointed out that my previous monologues have placed me in various roles — son, husband, father — but have perhaps not actually come to terms with who I am (other than in relation to others).  I find this idea to be quite provocative, and will try to pursue it as I continue my researches and improvisations (assuming, of course, that there is an “I” to do the investigating).  A question that also interests both of us is how much of my parents’ communism may have been derived from the Jewish traditions that they broke away from.  (In my mom’s case, the rift actually came a generation earlier.)

Hovering over all the proceedings — as I study the Jews, as well as the very religious (Catholic) Warhol — is my continuing lack of belief in God (at least, as some sort of supernatural being), which is somehow joined with my lifelong fascination with theology.  (When you’re a Jewish atheist who spends six formative years at an Episcopalian choir school and has a communist father who’s obsessed with Jesus, some weird things can happen, I guess.)

In any case, there’s a lot to chew on here — and as I gnaw away at this juicy material, I will try to share elements of the process in this blog.  Anyone who is interested is invited — nay, beseeched — to join in the process in the “comments” section beneath each entry.  If there’s one thing I already know, it’s that dialogue is good — and not only for the Jews!

Posted: November 14th, 2009 under Andy Warhol, Andy Warhol: Good for the Jews?, Jews.
Comments: 1

It isn’t easy — at least for someone like me.  You move forward into the unknown, guided by those who have gone before.  They can tell you what it was like for them, but that doesn’t mean it will be the same for you.  You need support, you need the right tools — and you need to find the local Post Office.

Usually, orders at my online store are fulfilled by my fabulous business associate, Dana Dizon. But a recent eblast offering a $10 discount (still available, by the way, using the code BLAST1) resulted, happily, in more orders than we had expected — especially of the DVD of Haiku Tunnel, the movie I made with my brother Jacob several years ago.  And as it happens, Dana had sent most of our stash to Portland Center Stage, where I am doing a run of my show Ben Franklin: Unplugged. (After each performance, I plop myself in the theater lobby and kindly offer to sell my stuff to departing audience members.)

So Dana called me and — in as calm a voice as she could muster — told me I’d have to send out some of the orders myself.  Now, you have to understand that I have, well, issues about mailing things out; in fact, that is exactly what instigates the comic-neurotic plot of Haiku Tunnel: my character’s boss gives him a bunch of very important letters to mail out, and he doesn’t.  Now I’m the boss — and yet, strangely, still with many of the personality flaws I used to exhibit in my secretarial days.  (Meet the new boss — same as the old assistant.  Yikes!)

But people had paid for their books and DVDs, and needed to get them right away.  So, over the phone, Dana walked me through the online process by which I could print out customers’ packing slips (two copies, one for our records) and shipping labels (cut at the dotted line; staple the bottom half to our copy of the packing slip), and log all these actions as having been completed.

“Pick up a bunch of envelopes and boxes from the Post Office,” Dana instructed.

“Don’t tape over the barcode!” she added.  “They don’t like that.”

A worried silence from my end.

“You can do this!” she exhorted.

I could tell Dana was concerned.  She does everything incredibly well, and likes to do things herself.  If I messed up, she would feel responsible (I know, she shouldn’t — but that’s just how she is).  I took a deep breath, then headed over to Portland Center Stage to grab some copies of my merch and use their printer — and, as it turned out, their computer, their packing tape, and of course their stapler (as we all know by now that the bottom half of the mailing label must be stapled to our copy of the packing slip!).  Many of the theater’s astonishingly nice and helpful staff members showed me how to find everything — not to mention get over my usual skittishness around Windows computers (yeah, I’m a Mac guy, even though I look much more like the PC fellow in those commercials).

As I was applying the tape to the packages (though not over the barcode!), I heard a loud thrumming from somewhere nearby.  Eventually I realized what this was: the sound of a typical Portland rainstorm hitting the skylight.  So now I would have to carry all this stuff to the Post Office through the rain!  Postal workers do this all the time, I know — they’ve even been known to deal with sleet and snow; then again, they also go postal.

Fortunately, there was a respite from the downpour just as I left the theater.  Holding the packages label-side down — in case of any unexpected drippage — I made my way to the (fortunately nearby) Post Office.  I needed to hurry, as Dana had been very clear on the phone that I needed to actually mail the packages on the same day as I had printed out the mailing lables; otherwise, the entire global financial system would collapse (or something).  On line at the Post Office, I briefly became entranced by a display of bubble wrap (you have to admit, there’s nothing quite as marvelous as bubble wrap) — only to be told, somewhat gruffly, by the woman behind me that the next window was now open.  I handed my pile of merch to the postal worker (a grandmotherly looking woman with a tattoo on her forearm — god, Portland is cool!) and stared at her in fear and anticipation as she ran her scanner thingie over all my (untaped-over) barcodes.  She nodded at me.

“Everything okay?” I asked, tremulously.

“Yes.”

I felt a burst of endorphin-powered euphoria.  I had completed the task, even though it involved more than one step!  Haiku Tunnel DVDs, as well as Red Diaper Baby books and DVDs, were now on their way to all the incredible people who had ordered them.

I texted Dana that it was all over.  A moment later I got a text back from her, thanking me (even though, of course, I should have been thanking her for setting everything up so well — typical Dana).  If there were an emoticon for relief, I’m pretty sure she would have added it.

Then I headed back to my hotel, bathed in a warm glow of satisfaction and relief.  Fulfillment achieved — by me, for once.

Posted: November 12th, 2009 under Ben Franklin: Unplugged, Dana, Haiku Tunnel, Red Diaper Baby, Store.
Comments: 1

Haiku Tunnel, the “office comedy” I had so much fun making with my brother Jacob, is now available — exclusively! — at my online store.  (Sony ran out of them, apparently, and the slow economy has delayed their plans to put out a new batch as part of a cool “Signature Series” of DVD’s.)  Enter the code BLAST1 to receive $10 off your total order.  (This discount also applies to the Red Diaper Baby DVD and book.)

Adding Haiku Tunnel to my store has called up many happy (and frantic) memories of when we made the film in the summer and fall of 2000 (the movie was released in 2001), among them:

• Discovering, on the first day of shooting (in my brother’s old apartment), that I would be required mostly to lie in bed and “act” asleep.  (I turned out to be a natural at this!)
• Seeing the look of delight and amazement on the face of our executive producer, David Fuchs, when he showed up that morning and saw all kinds of trucks and equipment up and down the street.  How, he wondered, had we gotten so much out of so little money?  (No one had the heart to tell him that most were for a commercial shooting nearby.)
• Preparing to shoot a crucial scene in an office building in downtown Oakland, only to learn that (a) the actual guard on duty refused to relinquish his post to our fictional guard, (b) by the time we were finally ready to shoot, it was lunch hour — and thousands of people were about to flood our “set,” and (c) a Mexican Independence Day parade was approaching the building.  (We solved the first problem by appealing to the “real” guard’s love of film, the second by — I’m afraid — having our P.A.’s stall all the building’s elevators for a few minutes, and the third by working really, really fast.)
• Me running into George Lucas at the Skywalker Ranch while we were doing our postproduction sound there, and blurting out, “Thank you, Mr. Lucas!!”  He looked aghast, as if he had been ambushed by a slightly slimmer Jabba the Hutt.  (I learned later that you’re not supposed to talk to him at all, or even look at him; he’s very shy.)
• Getting the phone call from Isaac Hayes’s manager that Mr. Hayes had watched a video of our movie and had liked it — and was thus granting us the right to use his great cover of Dylan’s Lay Lady Lay.
• Doing an all-nighter in the edit room to complete a rough cut of Haiku to submit to Sundance — and then falling asleep on the BART train and going way past my stop.
• Getting the message from our sweet and brilliant producer, Brian Benson, that we had gotten into Sundance — and Jake and I busting out our “We-Got-In Strut” as we walked with David Fuchs to a celebratory lunch in North Beach.
• Carrying the just-barely-completed reels of our film on the plane to the Sundance Festival.  (They were heavy!)
• Going to meet the legendary Tom Bernard and Michael Barker of Sony Classics at midnight at their chalet in Park City (where the festival takes place), just as Hollywood-perfect snow began falling.
• Seeing a trailer for Haiku at a local movie theater in Berkeley and thinking, “Wow, my head is scarily big!”
• Attending a sold-out preview screening of the film in San Francisco with a lot of our cast and crew — and David Fuchs beaming, saying, “Wow, people really seem to like it!”

… and so many other memories, as well.  Now Jake and I are making the kind-of sequel, Love & Taxes, and having just as much fun (and angst).  One day, the film gods willing, you will be able to see that movie in theaters and on your home screens.  In the meantime, there are the Haiku Tunnel DVD’s — preserving the happy efforts of a bunch of quixotic, film-making optimists for as long as these types of media remain watchable.  It’s a nice feeling.

Posted: November 3rd, 2009 under Haiku Tunnel, Store.
Comments: 4

What I do on stage is called “solo performance,” and people sometimes ask me (with real sympathy), “Isn’t it lonely up there?”

And I tell them, emphatically, No, it isn’t!

There’s my crew — up in a booth (possibly knitting during the long stretches between cues).  There are all the characters in my monologues — often people who are very dear to me, some of them no longer alive but very much in my thoughts and my heart as I (imperfectly) portray them.  There’s my producer, whose love of and respect for the theater I have the honor and duty to represent.  There’s my director and collaborator: these stories we create are, in a deep way, a chronicle of our evolving friendship.  There are the designers and the composer, whose beautiful worlds I inhabit.  There are my family and friends, whose encouragements and loving corrections continually run through my mind.  There’s the theater staff — working in a field that offers strictly limited remuneration but unlimited epiphanies.  There’s my own staff — my colleagues who (among other things) arrange for my travel (and that of my set and costumes) and absorb my freak-outs.  There are my investors, and those who choose to donate to the theater.  And, of course, there is the audience: changing in personality from show to show, sometimes rapt, usually adventurous, occasionally sleeping peacefully (dreaming, perhaps, of an actual drama, with multiple actors) — always granting me the enormous gift of their cumulative genius.

So no, it’s not lonely at all on stage.  As for this hotel room, however — well, that’s another story.

Posted: November 2nd, 2009 under Performances, Theater, Touring.
Comments: 2

The International Upper Middle Class Shall Be the Human Race?

Just had one of the strangest experiences of my life: hearing the Rotary Club of Portland sing “Little Boxes.”  As a red diaper baby from New York, now calling Berkeley my home, I was expecting at least a soupçon of disorientation at my first-ever Rotary Club meeting — but it never would have occurred to me that the proceedings would kick off with a lusty rendition of Malvina Reynolds’s famous song lampooning comfortable bourgeois culture.

Adding to the weirdness, I was dressed as Ben Franklin.  This was the idea of the fantastically named Devereaux Dion, the club’s current president.  He and his wife had attended an early performance in my current (and very fun) run of Ben Franklin: Unplugged at Portland Center Stage.  I remember spotting them from the stage: a handsome, middle-aged couple sitting in the front row.  I had snuck covert glances in their direction, to see if they were enjoying the show; at some point in the first act I finally saw Dev smile, and relaxed a bit.  Afterwards, Dev came up and introduced himself to me — following up with an email asking whether I might be interested in attending an upcoming Rotary Club meeting as “Ben.”

I should have warned him that I’m actually not a very good Franklin impersonator — in a way, Unplugged is about how I learned to love Ben without being able to embody him — but I was too delighted by his invitation to bring that up.  So today at noon (sharp — these Rotarians are nothing if not punctual) I found myself in a fancy ballroom in downtown Portland, in full Franklin regalia, preparing to recite a short excerpt from my show.  That’s when Dev brought this guy up to the lectern — apparently they start each of their meetings with a sing-along — who led the assembled Rotarians in an enthusiastic version of “Little Boxes” (they had the lyrics up on a screen).  The irony was not lost on anyone — in fact, it was celebrated: the fellow leading the recital introduced the song as being a parody of the kinds of folks who were in that very room.

I was stunned — a countercultural anthem was being, as it were, co-opted by “The Man.”  Turning to Trisha Mead, PCS’s delightful P.R. and publications manager (who had, thankfully, accompanied me to this gig), I said something about this moment being confirmation that not only had “my” people lost, but the winners were now actually able to gloat and joke about it!  She replied, with an understanding smile, that she could certainly imagine I’d be feeling a bit of cognitive dissonance.

But here’s the thing: these Rotarians were winning me over.  As I understand it (dimly, to be sure), the Rotary Club is about business leaders “doing well by doing good,” as Franklin liked to put it.  (Or maybe it was “doing good by doing well.”  Oh, well.  That’s why I don’t have an almanac.)  They contribute to many worthy causes — including, I’m pretty sure, the kinds of theaters I perform in.  They educate themselves on important causes of the day: the fascinating main presentation of this luncheon was by two creators of a potential totally “green” high rise in Portland.  (One of the presenters commented drily that not all architects design “boxes.”)  And, yes, they help one another in their business endeavors.  Soon after arriving in Philadelphia, Franklin launched a club, called the “Junto,” for doing these very things.  So these people are living the lives that Ben advocated for a self-fulfilled America.

And who am I — the Paine in the ass who smiles smugly while observing these high-toned ceremonies?  Well, not exactly: I’m a businessman myself now — my company, Quixotic Projects, owns my intellectual property (insert your joke here) and occupies a great deal of my time, energy, and hopes.  I could learn a lot from these businesspeople.  Plus, I’m a member of the Berkeley Energy Commission — and this green-building presentation was of tremendous interest to me in that regard.  So you could say that I’m a potential Rotarian myself.

And yet, and yet … I’m also still … me.  My aesthetics and politics — derived from the Old Left of New York, honed in the ’80s punk scene of Boston, and buffed to a Free Speech gleam in my beloved Bay Area — would probably tend to diverge a great deal from many (though perhaps not all) of those in that ballroom.  Of that I have little doubt.

After the Rotary luncheon, we walked back to the theater in a thoughtful silence.  Eventually, I said to Trisha, “Well, it looks like the Revolution is definitely over.”

Her eyes twinkled.  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” she said.

Maybe she’s right — and perhaps, when the time comes, Rotarians and red diaper babies will march shoulder-to-shoulder into a democratic, sustainable future that would make Malvina smile.

Posted: October 20th, 2009 under Ben Franklin: Unplugged, Berkeley Energy Commission, Portland, Quixotic Projects, Red Diaper Baby, Rotary Club, Touring.
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