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I found it heartening to read this article in today's NYTimes. It also occurred to me that it allows for some hope that the kinds of changes I have been talking about in recent posts are not impossible. To that effect, please note the words and work of Pete Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary about spending all of his time going into schools to "reach for nonviolent solutions through the social and emotional growth of children" because the parent are unable to change. That, by itself, is certainly not going to change our institutional structure, but maybe, over time, a little here, a little there. Selma [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mobilizing a Theater of Protest. Again. February 6, 2003 By JULIE SALAMON When Sam Hamill, a poet and founder of Copper Canyon Press in Port Townsend, Wash., was invited to a poetry symposium by Laura Bush last month, his response was to send e-mail messages to 50 friends and colleagues asking them for antiwar poems to send to Mrs. Bush. In four days he received 1,500 responses. "I didn't know there were 1,500 poets in America," he said. After learning of the protest, the White House postponed the symposium on the works of Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman. Noelia Rodriguez, Ms. Bush's press secretary, said: "While Mrs. Bush respects and believes in the right of all Americans to express their opinions, she, too, has opinions and believes that it would be inappropriate to turn what is intended to be a literary event into a political forum." For those opposing war with Iraq, the cancellation of the poetry symposium symbolizes the part the arts can play in politics. Hearing the drumbeat of a new war, through readings, concerts, art exhibitions and theater, artists are trying to recapture their place as catalysts for public debate and dissent. If the immediate artistic response to the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington was the theater of grief, some of the nation's poets, musicians, writers, actors and playwrights have moved on to the theater of protest. The prospect of an imminent military confrontation with Iraq has incited a new sense of creative urgency. "I don't think it's an accident that in totalitarian societies they always arrest the artists first, though we don't seem particularly dangerous," said André Gregory, the theater director and actor. "I think the responsibility of the artist, each of us in our way, is to tell the truth. And the truth generally involves a great deal of ambiguity, and in times of war ambiguity and paradox are the first things to go. People want simple black and white answers." With Wallace Shawn, his collaborator in "My Dinner With André," Mr. Gregory presented a theater piece at Cooper Union in October called "An Evening of Conscience," along with a variety show of well-known performers including Edward Asner, Eve Ensler, Tony Kushner, Danny Glover and Pete Seeger. That event was sponsored by Not in Our Name, a nonprofit group formed by writers, artists and academics in May to organize opposition to the war. Among those who have endorsed the group's "statement of conscience" are Alice Walker, Barbara Kingsolver and the artistic directors of the Goodman Theater and the Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago. Grace Paley, a writer of short stories and a lifelong political activist, was one of those who responded to Mr. Hamill's call for poems. Ms. Paley, one of the founders of the Greenwich Village Peace Center in 1961, said she was impressed by how fast writers responded. "Some of us were in the street about the Vietnam War in 1961, but there were no big demonstrations for four years," she said. "This is moving much faster, but so is Bush." Ms. Paley and her husband, Robert Nichols, also a writer, for the last several weeks have been attending weekly vigils against the war on the bridge between New Hampshire and Vermont, where the couple lives. On the bridge someone placed a sign that said, "A million bitter enemies will be born out of this war." For those like Ms. Paley, this protest is part of a life spent speaking out against the direction of American politics. But for many artists and performers of the post-Vietnam generation, the threat of military action has focused inchoate feelings of distress. "We oppose this war for slightly different reasons and slightly different politics and philosophies, but we have come together to say we oppose this war and the attack on civil liberties since Sept. 11," said Anne de Mare, a playwright and a founder of Theaters Against War, or THAW. This group, which began meeting about two months ago, includes the actress Kathleen Chalfant, best know for her performance in "Wit," and Linda Chapman, associate artistic director of the New York Theater Workshop. Theaters Against War has signed on 43 theaters to participate in a day of protest on March 2, which will include staged readings and performances, as well as street theater events around New York City. The artistic response has spread beyond New York. The Asian Arts Initiative, a nonprofit organization in Philadelphia, for example, is accepting proposals for a performance series called "Everywhere Is War: An Artists Exchange," scheduled for June 20, featuring dance, music, spoken word and theater. The Zilkha Gallery at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., is presenting "Good Morning, America" through March 2, an exhibition of artistic responses to life and politics in the United States after Sept. 11. Among the works is a video piece called "America's Army" by Barbara Pollack. It is a videotaped portrait of Ms. Pollack's son, Max, playing an interactive game produced by the United States Army for teenage boys. Within 10 minutes Max's digital character on the screen goes through basic training, enters a war zone and is killed in action. In Berkeley, Calif., on Friday night, Ani DiFranco, Ozomatli, and Michael Franti and Spearhead performed at a sold-out concert to raise money for antiwar organizations. Ms. DiFranco's work has always had a political, mainly feminist slant, and Ozomatli, a Latino band, has also performed for a variety of causes, but Mr. Franti's group has specialized in a utopian, feel-good style he has called "hippie hop." The Berkeley concert also featured Saul Williams, the poet-rapper, who wrote the Not in Our Name theme song, which includes this lyric: "It's not about retaliation,/your history of war does nothing more/than scar imagination." And in Pittsburgh a steelworker-turned-troubadour named Mike Stout opened a recent meeting of antiwar protesters. "I would say Joan Baez and Phil Ochs have found many worthy successors," said Staughton Lynd, a retired lawyer now living near Youngstown, Ohio. He said he organized the first march on Washington against the Vietnam War in April 1965 and has been protesting ever since, with a special focus on prisoner's rights. Perhaps surprisingly, some of the artists who were ready to march against the Vietnam War are not as eager to raise their voices now, when the focus is Iraq and Al Qaeda. Peter Yarrow, of Peter, Paul and Mary , is more likely to be singing "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?," once the anthem of the Vietnam protest movement, in elementary-school classes than on the street. Mr. Yarrow has kept a distance from organized rallies against the United States buildup to war in Iraq. For the last four years he has been using familiar protest music in Operation Respect, an educational program intended to teach children what he calls "nonviolent conflict-resolution tools," a project that requires the endorsement of local school boards and national politicians. "I am urgently trying to find common ground on a nonpartisan basis to reach for nonviolent solutions through the social and emotional growth of children," he said. "I do not believe that adults are really capable of changing what is in their hearts. Therefore I believe we should create conditions for peace in the future in the children before they're taught to hate and to fear." Similarly, Edward Sorel, the illustrator and a pacifist, said he cannot get a handle on how to depict the current political situation through his work. "Vietnam was a clear case of us being not only in the wrong place but on the wrong side," he said. "It was much easier than this. Here one group of religious fanatics represented by George Bush and Mr. Ashcroft is pitted against religious fanatics even more despotic than they are. I find the whole thing very confusing. So I take my tranquilizer and go to funny movies." Still, some celebrities have predictably hopped on board, giving antiwar sentiments the kind of theatricality television loves. The pop singer Sheryl Crowe showed up at the American Music Awards wearing a T-shirt proclaiming, "War Is Not the Answer." Actors who routinely speak out on behalf of political causes, like Susan Sarandon, Martin Sheen and Tim Robbins, have taken part in organized rallies; others, like George Clooney, have merely made anti-Bush remarks while promoting their movies and ended up fodder for attack by Bill O'Reilly of Fox News and other conservative commentators. At the televised Sundance awards, the actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, one of the hosts, concluded with an antiwar statement. These forays into politics by Hollywood figures can backfire, and sometimes from their own political naïveté. Sean Penn took a trip to Iraq - what he called a "fact-finding mission" - and wound up in a battle with Mr. O'Reilly, who specializes in his own kind of political theater. For Kathryn Blume, a 35-year-old playwright, actor and occasional yoga instructor, political awakening occurred on Jan. 4. That is when she heard about Theaters Against War and the group's plans to have a series of theatrical protests in March. Ms. Blume had been working on a screenplay adaptation of Aristophanes' "Lysistrata." The play tells the story of women from opposing states who unite to end the Peloponnesian War by withholding sex from their mates until the men agree to lay down their swords. When Ms. Blume learned of the protests planned by Theaters Against War, she said, "it was like setting a match to tinder." Within 24 hours she and a friend, Sharron Bower, casting director for the Mint Theater, decided to organize a day of readings of "Lysistrata" around the world. The two women began sending e-mail messages. Ms. Blume then called a producer at National Public Radio, which did a piece about the project on Jan. 16, and that set off another round of responses. More than 313 readings of the play have been scheduled for March 3 in homes and theaters, and during a live Internet broadcast taking place in New Zealand, Norway and England. People have signed on in 28 countries. One reading will take place in the home of Rita Mills, an office manager for an auto dealer in Tucson. Ms. Mills, 50, had never heard of the play but was intrigued when she heard Ms. Blume discussing it on NPR. "I'm not a huge activist," Ms. Mills said. "I just think the war is atrocious, and it's wrong." Her grown son's girlfriend dug up an old copy of the play she had held onto from high school. After reading the text, Ms. Mills decided this was perfect material for her writers' group.. "We don't sit around and talk about war," Ms. Mills said. "It seems so far away from us in Tucson, in this little neighborhood we live in. But it's everywhere on the television, it's in your face. This play is a way for people to get together and say something for peace, all these people all over the world doing the same thing. This has to have some effect on somebody somewhere." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/arts/06PROT.html?ex=1045543802&ei=1&en=af8effed626e55a9 HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
