"Hanisch sought to rebut the idea that sex, appearance, abortion, childcare, and the division of household labor were merely personal issues without political importance. To confront these and other issues, she urged women to overcome self-blame, discuss their situations amongst each other, and organize collectively against male domination of society."As we approach the 50th anniversary of the article's publication, we can see how much Hanisch's theory has buoyed minorities defined by race, religion, gender, and sexual orientation in their struggle to achieve equal rights in a patriarchy that is adamantly resistant to change.
In ways too numerous to count, the Internet has helped raise the consciousness of those whose social and financial security may have insulated them from understanding the pain of less fortunate people. With the freedom to publish all kinds of material in electronic format, what were once mimeographed newsletters evolved into blogs and web portals that curated a wealth of new information online. The ability to distribute material electronically (and embed HTML links under text) made it possible for crucial information to travel faster and wider than ever before (I heartily recommend The Rude Pundit's recent post entitled "They Will Always Find Women to Hate").
In her recent interview for Rolling Stone magazine, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi recalled that:
"When the women marched, that made such a big difference. He [Trump] gets inaugurated -- one of the most disgraceful inaugural addresses ever, with no competition whatsoever for that title -- then the next day the women marched. The women marched! Oh, my God. It made such a difference. It wasn’t political. We didn’t organize it. It was spontaneous. It was organic. Women spoke and they saw the value of their presence. I don’t want to confine women to just [women’s] issues, as important as they are. Women here are leaders on national security. They’re leaders on economic security. Women have made their mark across the board. Certainly the impact on a woman’s right to choose and the rest of that. No denying that women have made a tremendous difference, but not to confine women to what you might think of as typical women’s issues. Every issue is a woman’s issue."
Bay Area audiences are currently savoring two extremely well-crafted and timely dramas that deal with marginalized characters struggling to "be seen" and be accepted on their own terms. In each play, members of a younger generation are confronted with the biases of their elders as well as the obstacles placed in their path by a long-established patriarchy. The how and the why of what makes dramas about topics such as gender roles and income inequality succeed in the theatre were beautifully analyzed by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar in his 2015 TEDx talk that contrasts the power of live theatre with today's "industrialized storytelling."
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In recent years, Berkeley Repertory Theatre has staged Akhtar's Disgraced and Marin Theatre Company has presented The Invisible Hand. MTC's audiences are currently witnessing a less intense but equally provocative confrontation in The Who & the What, an intergenerational drama about a conflicted Pakistani-American family living in Atlanta in 2013.When Akhtar's play had its world premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse in 2014, the playwright joked that it was “a comedy about two sisters and their father very loosely inspired by Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew but with the energy and pacing of Neil Simon with a Ph.D. in comparative literature." The basic premise is simple. The younger daughter, 25-year-old Mahwish (Annelyse Ahmad), is eager to marry her boyfriend, Haroon, but cannot wed until her older sister has found herself a husband. Unfortunately for Mahwish, her sister is in no rush to tie the knot and is suffering from a bad case of writer's block.
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| Denmo Ibrahim (Zarina) and Alfredo Huereca (Afzal) in a scene from The Who and the What (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
Zarina (Denmo Ibrahim) has spent the past few years working on a novel (written from a woman's point of view) about the relationship between the prophet Muhammad and his seventh wife, Zaynab bint Jahsh. Whenever Mahwish begs her older sister to tell her what the novel is about, Zarina simply answers "gender politics." Mahwish's lame promise not to tell anyone Zarina's secret is met with stunning pushback when Zarina reminds her younger sister that she has kept her promise not to tell anyone about Mahwish's willingness to let Haroon have anal sex with her while they wait for their chance to wed.
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| Annelyse Ahmad (Mahwish) and Alfredo Huereca (Afzal) in a scene from The Who and the What (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
If you think meddling Indian mothers are unrelenting in their efforts to arrange marriages for their children, meet Mahwish and Zarina's father, Afzal Jatt (Alfredo Huereca). Several years ago, when Zarina was dating a non-Muslim man her father did not like, Afzal demanded that she break up with her boyfriend. Zarina dutifully obeyed his wishes and has not had any interaction with Ryan since then (although Mahwish recently looked at Ryan's wedding pictures on Facebook).
A wealthy widower who owns 30% of the taxi business in Atlanta, Afzal has devoted himself (and his wealth) to making his daughters happy. However, with a doting father's zeal and an overbearing parent's complete lack of respect for personal boundaries, he has created a fake profile on muslimlove.com using Zarina's pictures in order to attract and vet potential suitors by arranging to meet them for coffee dates. The candidate who has made the best impression so far is Eli (Patrick Alparone), a certified plumber who grew up in Detroit, converted to Islam, runs a soup kitchen in a poor neighborhood, and has become an imam. Eli claims to have sat next to Zarina at a conference several years ago, although he was never able to get her phone number.
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| Alfredo Huereca (Afzal) and Patrick Alparone (Eli) in a scene from The Who and the What (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
When Zarina learns what her father has done behind her back, she is furious, but eventually agrees to meet Eli. Their conversation is awkward as Eli keeps talking about Islam from a man's point of view. After Zarina calls him out by telling Eli that he has said nothing that would reveal the slightest understanding of how a woman experiences Islam, their conversation becomes a lot more interesting. By Act II, they have wed and Zarina has finally finished her novel.
As Eli reads the manuscript, he quickly grasps its incendiary potential to challenge traditional tenets of Islam and its patriarchy. And yet, as Laura A. Brueckner (MTC's literary manager and resident dramaturg) explains:
"By writing her book, Zarina is participating in Islam’s tradition of women studying and interpreting holy texts. What’s new (and upsetting to her family) is her application of Western literary analysis to a text that believers hold is a vehicle for truth and law."Unable to overcome his curiosity, Afzal secretly removes the manuscript from Eli's backpack one day and, after reading it, explodes in anger. Not only does he forbid his daughter from publishing her novel, he bans Zarina from their home and declares her dead to him in front of a horrified Mahwish.
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| Alfredo Huereca (Afzal) and Denmo Ibrahim (Zarina) in a scene from The Who and the What (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
Under Hana S. Sharif's direction, Alfredo Huereca's Afzal (like an easily provoked version of Sholem Aleichem's famous dairyman, Tevye) struggles to preserve his culture's rigid patriarchy while fighting a futile battle against modernity. With costumes by Anna Oliver, lighting by Wen-Ling Liao, and Tim Mackabee's fluid set design, MTC's ensemble does an impressive job of making their characters appear compassionate in the face of Afzal's formidable wounded ego. Patrick Alparone brings a quiet strength to his portrait of Eli as a "white" imam who genuinely loves his wife. Torn between supporting Zarina's freedom of expression and finding the strength to stand up to his father-in-law's dysfunctional demands and attempts at emotional and financial bribery, he feels caught between a rock and a hard place.
As Zarina, Denmo Ibrahim's warmth and wisdom go a long way toward taming her husband's misguided assumptions about gender roles while taking care not to destroy her father during his irrational outbursts of anger. In many respects, the character of Mahwish seems more like a prop who can witness the culture war taking place between the conservative family values of her father's generation and her more liberated sister's superior intellect and idealistic personal politics. Akhtar's surprise ending delivers one of the best curtain lines in contemporary theatre.
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| Annelyse Ahmad (Mahwish) and Patrick Alparone (Eli) in a scene from The Who and the What (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
Performances of The Who and the What continue at the Marin Theatre Company through March 24 (click here for tickets).
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When one looks at the social problems caused by income inequality in America, it soon becomes obvious that the people who are quickly marginalized because of their earning capacity tend to be women and minorities. The callousness and lack of empathy from the Trump Administration shone brightly during the recent government shutdown when federal employees and contractors found themselves in desperate straits due to a cruelly manufactured crisis.During the shutdown, so-called "helpful suggestions" included applying for a loan, considering one's lack of employment as a vacation, picking up freelance work and, as always, "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps." Churches and food banks were quickly overwhelmed with requests for help (much to the consternation of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who demonstrated how pathetically out of touch Trump and his cohort are).
Crowded Fire Theater is currently presenting the Bay area premiere of Transfers, an exceptionally well-written play by Lucy Thurber. Originally produced by MCC Theatre, the play's world premiere took place off-Broadway on April 23, 2018 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. Two months later, Transfers won the Off Broadway Alliance's award for Best Play of 2018.
Thurber's drama puts two low-income students of color attending Danvers Community College through the interview process for an extremely generous scholarship from Herrell University, an elite liberal arts institution in western Massachusetts with the educational and economic power to change their lives.
Clarence Matthews (Victor D. Ragsdale) is an openly gay African American who loves to read as a way of gaining a better understanding of the world around him (prior to his interview, he carefully researched the history of Herrell and the area of New England in which it is located). The social skills and quiet charm he's acquired since coming out at age 14 make it easy for him to calmly listen to people and confidently tailor his responses to what they want to hear. Though Clarence studies hard, is highly disciplined, and naturally inquisitive, his scores on the SAT exam were not as high as those achieved by other students being considered for Herrell's generous inclusion scholarships.
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| Victor D. Ragsdale (Clarence Matthews) and Michael Wayne Rice (Geoffrey Dean) in a scene from Transfers (Photo by: Adam Tolbert) |
By contrast, Christofer Rodriguez (Caleb Cabrera) is a high school wrestling champion who took second place in New York State's regionals and was beginning to attract national attention when he suddenly disappeared from the scene. As he carefully explains, he was raised by his grandmother and, when she fell ill, he dropped out of school to become her caregiver. After she died, he went into a period of mourning and is once again eager to wrestle. However, he wants the people interviewing him to understand that he is also interested in getting a solid education.
Since Clarence is being considered for an academic scholarship and Christofer is practically a shoo-in for an athletic scholarship, the two young men are not in any danger of competing against one another. However, because they grew up in the same neighborhood of the South Bronx, they share some dark secrets.
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| Caleb Cabrera as Christofer Rodriguez in a scene from Transfers (Photo by: Adam Tolbert) |
As Thurber's play begins, the two young men arrive at a motel near Herrell the night before their interviews. That evening they will be prepped by David DeSantos (David Everett Moore), a harried college recruiter employed by the Work for Democracy Foundation. As the play begins, David is on the phone, trying to control his emotions while being yanked around by his manipulative girlfriend.
When Clarence goes to the bathroom to get cleaned up and take a shower, Christofer's homophobia rises to the surface (he wastes no time informing the recruiter that Clarence was a notorious cocksucker in high school). As intensely as David tries to prepare the two men for what they will face the next morning, his emotional lability and earnest assurances that he "knows" what their lives have been like simply don't ring true. Clarence and Christofer can sense David's weaknesses like sharks smelling blood in the water.
The two faculty members who will be interviewing the applicants are:
- Geoffrey Dean (Michael Wayne Rice), an ingratiating African American professor who takes great pride in his passion for Russian literature but has a tendency to keep talking about himself rather than interviewing Clarence.
- Rosie McNulty (Alison Whismore), the school's rugby coach who grew up in Maine where, like Christofer, she was surrounded by people overdosing on drugs.
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| Alison Whismore (Coach McNulty) and Caleb Cabrera (Christofer Rodriguez) in a scene from Transfers (Photo by: Adam Tolbert) |
While Clarence seems comfortable chatting about his literary favorites and what he hopes to achieve if accepted by Harrell, Christofer's physical skills and strategies as a wrestler don't translate well into words. As Coach McNulty tries to pierce his emotional armor, he becomes increasingly petulant and defensive. After the interviews, as David argues with the two professors, he reveals himself to be much too emotionally invested in the success of his applicants and dangerously close to burnout. The two professors unwittingly reveal their own weaknesses as they argue about what metrics should be used to assess any applicant's worthiness.
Directed by Ken Savage (with lighting by Chris Lundahl, costumes by Jackquelin Pedota, and sound design by Madeleine Oldham), the action plays out in front of an exquisite yet simple paper sculpture designed by Kate Boyd. By the end of Thurber's drama, the audience is acutely aware of the difference in the life experiences claimed by the adults enjoying comfortable lives in academia versus the experiences of a younger generation that has spent more time on the street. The final scene, in which Clarence and Christofer chat at a local coffee shop, delivers quiet testimony to how much Americans might benefit if their teenagers were guaranteed free college tuition.
In her program note, artistic director Mina Morita explains why Transfers is such a natural fit for CFT's audiences.
“Being poor in America is often misconstrued as being lazy, lacking in intellectual rigor, or simply unlucky. The myth of the American Dream (as it relates to the belief in meritocracy) discounts the overwhelming dysfunction of a system that is privileging a select few. Class is not something we talk about as Americans because it is so deeply connected to moral judgment. So if we are not good at talking about class in America, how do we capture its complexity onstage?”
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| Victor D. Ragsdale (Clarence Matthews) and Caleb Cabrera (Christofer Rodriguez) in a scene from Transfers (Photo by: Adam Tolbert) |
“As we seek to build inclusion, are we acknowledging the shape of the room into which people are being invited? What expectations are built into the exchange? When our audiences come into the equation, what gaze are they bringing? Does their viewpoint transform a powerful story into ‘poverty porn’? What happens when these stories are consumed by institutions in exchange for opportunity and access? Are we re-injuring those who are less privileged, thereby furthering a cycle of injury in the goal of supporting the education of those who are privileged? Lucy Thurber has been wrestling with these questions all her life.”Performances of Transfers continue through March 23 at the Potrero Stage (click here for tickets). Here's the trailer.
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