a) I love Halloween-time. Please join me in my enjoyment.

b) I've been spending a lot of time today listening to ABBA. Strange?

c) I'm having a good time. How about you?

Evening - Williamsburg

I have seen just about as many peasant blouses and skinny jeans as I need to see. Though I did, at one point tonight, find myself in a too-well-lit neighborhood bar where everyone, including the bartender, had a Russian accent, the experience was almost negated by having to wade through the sea of awkwardly dressed, cigarette smoking twenty somethings. I'm sorry to be so damning, but I'm all pissy from getting irony spilled on me all night.

At the Intersection of Stupidity and Alarmism

First, watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTgvCVGxmsI

So... Star Simpson. 19-year-old MIT student. Walks into Logan Airport in Boston wearing a sweatshirt with a circuit board glued onto the front of it. The back of sweatshirt reads "Socket to me Course VI." She goes up to an information desk and asks about a flight. She walks away. The information desk lady thinks the circuit board might be a bomb and she calls the state police who arrest Simpson at gunpoint. "She was lucky," they later comment, "that we didn't shoot her."

A couple of things:

1) Star Simpson. It was, perhaps, not the smartest idea to wear that particular sweatshirt to an airport where one of the September 11th planes took off. That's really the only thing I have to say to Star Simpson, because her only crime in this situation is wearing a sweatshirt with a circuit board on it. Not a sweatshirt with a bomb on it. Not even a sweatshirt with a fake bomb on it. A sweatshirt with something that is in no way a bomb glued to the front. A circuit board is not a bomb. A circuit board is not a bomb. A million times a circuit board is not a bomb. This will be important later.

2) For the second time in a year, the city of Boston has to scramble to assign blame for their own underinformed overreaction (see The Great "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" Debacle of Ought-Seven). It must be embarassing to find out only too late that you've shut down a major airport and held an innocent young woman at gunpoint for no good reason. So, what do you do? You hold that bad reason up in front of the world and say "Isn't this a good reason?"

Quoth Major Scott Pare of the Massachusetts State Police: "I'm shocked and appalled that somebody'd wear this type of device to an airport in this time. We're currently under orange. The threat is there against aviation."

Allow me to break that down and add referents where he has used pronouns or vagueries.

Ahem: "I'm shocked and appalled that [a 19-year-old college student] would wear [a circuit board glued to a sweatshirt] to an airport [in a time when a 19-year-old college student can get arrested for wearing a circuit board]. We're currently under [a terrorist activity designation that is totally arbitrary and which no one seems to understand]. The threat [from people who aren't Star Simpson] is there against aviation."

It's an insidious rhetorical device that I notice more and more these days. You take an authority figure, put him in front of camera and have him gravely rattle off five or six buzz words and phrases, and people believe him because, after all, he is an authority figure and he is standing in front of a camera.

And suddenly it doesn't seem like the Massachusetts State Police arrested a girl who had done nothing wrong.

I just wanted to take a second to point out the fact that the entire CNN news story more or less covers the Mass State Police's efforts to cover their own asses.

3) And don't think that CNN is getting off the hook that easy.

There have been books written about the need for 24-hour cable news networks to sensationalize the news, simply to fill up their cycles. Still, one would hope that CNN might be able to do a little better than to demonize an innocent student. To hear CNN cover the story, you would think that Star Simpson was either a) a moron or b) a terrorist. Or c) both.

From Dan Lothian. "...she had been wearing this sweatshirt -- believe this or not -- she was wearing this sweatshirt to help her stand out at a career fair at MIT where she is an engineering student." [the italics are mine]. Believe this or not? That would suggest that it was somehow unbelievable to think that she would be wearing an outlandish piece of clothing to a career fair. Which is not at all unbelievable.

Carol Costello. "Yeah, that's an understatement [that this is a serious incident]. What kind of punishment should--could she get for this?" One, is it an understatement? I think it's actually a massive overstatement. And if it is a serious incident, it's a serious incident because so many people overreacted to it. And as far as "what kind of punishment should she get for this?" Well... that's really up to you to say, isn't it, Carol?

Also from Carol Costello: "Yeah, I wouldn't think it was very funny if I saw it at an airport." Nothing like a little us vs. themism. On one side: Carol Costello and upstanding, circuit-board-fearing, terrorism-is-not-funny set. On the other: Star Simpson and her liberal, hippie, unpatriotic, disrespectful, circuit-board-wearing friends. So, you tell me... Did you think it was funny? Whose side are you on?

And just listen to the rhetoric throughout. Especially when they get to her website (lest we forget that many middle Americans probably still view the internet as the unpoliced international electronic waters where pedophiles and terrorists freely mingle) They repeatedly refer to her sweatshirt as a "device," a term which immediately brings to mind the home-made bomb. And they describe her website (which chronicles her many inventions, some of which are pretty fanciful and creative) as though it were some sort of terrorist nexus. "There are other electronics here... There's plenty more online here. Instructions on how to make these gadgets. Some of them been viewed thousands of times by people."

Oh dear God. Don't tell me that they saw the rocket skates plans... Please, Carol. Please don't tell me that literally thousands of people had access to the schematics for a box that tells you whether or not Star Simpsons is in her room!

4) It's things like this and the medias reaction to them that makes me think that there is a real chance (however slight) that fascism might someday have a fighting chance in this country. We should be appalled that a girl was arrested who hadn't done anything wrong. Or we should acknowledge that there is an outer limit to our liberty, and that we aren't free to do or say or wear certain things. Or we should admit that people make mistakes, that Star Simpson is perhaps not the most responsible chicken in the coop, or that when people are scared, the cops can get called out to a place where there's no crime. What we shouldn't do is unequivocally damn the innocent one. We shouldn't laugh at her mistake. We shouldn't smile when we discuss how much jail time she might get. We should shake our heads and say, "Well, isn't that just like those kinds of people."

I thought it was that kind of divisiveness and restriction of freedom that we were supposed to be fighting against.

Cherry Jones and Colm Feore as the First Family on "24"???

[swoon]

IPHIGENIA 2.0

What can I say? Give me a show with dance numbers, acrobatics, plate smashing and a grand filicide and I'm happy.

And that's exactly what I got from IPHIGENIA 2.0 at the Signature. Nobody beats Chuck Mee for delivering to the modern stage the kind of blood, sweat and tears that would have been common fare in Greece 2500 years ago. Did it drag at places? Yes. Were the performances uneven? Yes. Was it a little too on the nose? Definitely. Did I leave the theatre feeling excited and stimulated? Most definitely.

The story of Iphigenia is a compact little gem, as can be said of most of the Greek tragedies. Agamemnon and the Greek troops are laid up in Aulis, waiting to start the Trojan War. In Mee's adaptation, Agamemnon (played by Tom Nelis with the earnestness and manipulative power of a seasoned politician) has received an ultimatum from his troops: before they will march on Troy, before some of them will undoubtedly die in battle, Agamemnon must show them that he understands sacrifice. They demand that he kill his daughter Iphigenia (Louisa Krause). And in the kind of moment of self-manipulation of which only seasoned politicians are capable, Agamemnon resolves to do so, for the greater good of Greece. Agamemnon summons Iphigenia under the pretense that she is to marry the soldier Achilles (the nebbish and charming Seth Numrich). Iphigenia arrives with a wedding train which includes her mother, Clytemnestra (Kate Mulgrew channels Kathleen Turner in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) who, on learning of Agamemnon's plan, threatens to kill her husband if he kills her daughter.

What can I say? Greeks!

The beauty of Mee's adaptation is the deftness with which he translates Euripides' legend to the modern day. Agamemnon is not an unerring patriot, but the kind of leader who is slightly out of touch with real life. In truth, he can ask his men to make the ultimate sacrifice, but cannot make it himself. His brother, the Greek general, Menelaus (Rocco Sisto), by contrast, understands the complexities of life and death and that difficult times call for difficult chocies to be made. In place of a chorus, Mee provides four nameless soldiers (J.D. Goldblatt, Will Fowler, Jimonn Cole and Jesse Hooker), four men who will eventually have to do the fighting and seem motivated mostly be a want to control some small part of their own honor and destiny. The myth is, of course, very timely with its war setting and its questions of the true honor of sacrificing oneself in battle and the danger of trusting the wrong leaders, but it's in the small overlaps, where Mee can slip the modern into the ancient, that make the interpretation so vital and interesting.

Not that it takes a whole lot to make Mee's work vital or interesting. One of the playwright's trademarks is his fearlessness in using theatricality to rocket his plays out of the realm of intellectualism into the open sky of pure emotion. To that end, IPHIGENIA 2.0 is full of celebratory dances, uninhibited bacchanals, syncronized movement, fighting, acrobatics, and lip syncing. These little theatrical treasures make the play almost unavoidably likable, appealing to something deeper than the critical mind, and creating a sense of revelry, like a carnival celebration. Unfortunately, it must be said that these moments do stop the action of the play, and contribute to some structural problems. On balance, though, its these purely emotional outpourings that make Mee's work so vivid and compelling and stimulating.

Blythe R.D. Quinlan's set is a masterpiece, a representational mish-mash simultaneously representing a Greek village, a battlefield, a barracks, a fox hole and a war room. The structure, which stands three stories tall and stretches from the deck to the top of the proscenium, is constructed of pipes, polls, ladders, steps and platforms, and the actors navigate the space like acrobats, sometimes rocketing from the floor to the top of the proscenium in seconds. Scott Zielinki's lights blast the set like the Middle Eastern sun one minute, and burn up red like fire another. Zielinki's light and Jill BC Duboff's sound design move in lock step, slamming, tearing and cutting through the play, wrenching the audience from scene to scene, moment to moment, emotion to emotion.

All of this under the watchful eye and hand of Tina Landau. I know a lot of people don't like her. This is the first thing of hers that I've seen, and I was bowled over by it. The staging was innovative and effective, and yet simple and refined. In a play which is made up of a thousand moving parts, never did two gears seem to gnash against each other. In the design of the machine and in teaching its operation, Tina Landau has excelled. The only criticism that I will lodge is that the actors performances were inarguably uneven. Kate Mulgrew emoting like a melodrama starlet from the 50s. Louisa Krause's unfocussed and sloppy presence on stage. A little more smoothing is arguably all that Tina Landau could have done to improve my experience.

Here's a newsflash: I'm extremely excited to be back in New York. So excited, in fact, that I think I may have gone just a splash overboard with this review. I'll try to pare it down later. But, for now, take it as evidence of how overjoyed I am to be out of the theatrical hinterlands of Austin, TX, and back into a place where things like this can happen.

I feel like Willy Loman...

...in that I have a job.

And that that job has some bearing on American theatre.

You know, after a year spent in Austin, delivering newspapers and generally feeling out of place, there simply are not words enough to describe how wonderfully strange it is to be back in a place where I'm not only expected to work hard, but where I actually want to work hard. My body wants to reject the hard work. I feel a little bit like a marathon runner coming back from a debilitating injury. I want to complete the run, but my body isn't sure it's capable. But, like the long distance runner in this decidedly long form metaphor, I will push myself until I am comfortable doing the hard work that is necessary.

I'm happy and tired and happy that I'm tired. And, for the first time in a long while, I'm excited to get up tomorrow and go to work. Beat that with a stick...

Troutman

...is the name of street on which I will be living come the first of September. Troutman Street. In lovely Bushwick or maybe Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I'm pretty happy with the place. The apartment is under construction, but should shape up nicely. All of the ingredients are there, if covered in sawdust and scrap wood. The building, however, looks a little bit like something out of Mogadishu in the mid-90s. I have high hopes (including a banister which you can use as a banister).

I'm pretty excited.

For now, my great thanks to Ross Michaels for letting me stay with him and even greater thanks to his roommates for moving out early and leaving an empty bed.

Now, to hit the hay, as I've got real actual work tomorrow. And then I have to come home and blog about it! Hurrah!