Last night we saw the last night of a good production, Strange Heart Beating at Cloudgate Theatre. This tiny company is new to me—unrelated to Chicago’s well-known Anish Kapoor sculpture that goes by the name “The Bean” but was christened “Cloud Gate” though that may have been an inspiration, and also (presumably) unrelated to Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan which comes to Chicago from time to time.

The play was mounted in Jackalope’s space on Thorndale (near the el) which Jackalope Theatre itself never seems to use, preferring the Broadway Armory a stone’s throw away from that. The space is matchbox size; yet the set filled it well, was perfectly designed to the play, and allowed for an imaginative versatility that was unexpected.

Kristin Idaszak’s play was not flawless—certain plot points passed credibility, yet those transgressions were excused by the medium itself—but held its own as far as showcasing a moral and thematic integrity ripe for our times (the Anthropocene). Upon reflection plot elements did not hold together, but they carried the story forward in the moment and sustained the theme’s high seriousness.

In a sense the script was the weakest link of the performance—that is to say, it lacked the polish of all the other facets of a good production on display (tempered, mind you, with the understanding that this was theater-by-shoestring, making up for a frugal budget with fully-engaged imaginative effects). But more broadly, the play was “the thing” as Shakespeare would have it, and all the polished technique could only have existed to serve such a play.

I haven’t taken an inventory of who we have writing for theater in Chicago today, but at this moment I would have to put Idaszak’s name to the fore of rising talent to watch. My intent is not that of reviewer, so delving into the script as such doesn’t suit my purpose—I, long past any direct involvement in the Chicago theater scene except that of playgoer—but it seemed important enough to take note of.

Yesterday a Facebook post reminded me of something I had posted here—in this “News” section that effectively became a blog—and I sought to find it. The page or pages were no longer registered with Google, though they used to be (for I have searched and found before).

Recently there have been frantic messages from Google about re-certifying my site (or something). I tried to do what I could. But I am not especially web-literate, barely savvy, and I question how much time I want to devote to this.

So, in the process of searching for that page (which pertained to James J.Y. Liu on Chinese poetry), I noticed that next month will be the five-year anniversary of establishing this website. The exact day escapes me, but the blog feature started on the 31st. I was fishing around for content, most of it incidental.
​
Do I want to still bother with it? The url is not due to expire immediately; but my need to “put myself out there” is not what it was to begin with. Gradually the impetus toward self-promotion has died with me; the need for feedback from the world “That never wrote to me”.

This is the Anthropocene.

Poetry notoriously does not change everything. That is not why we speak. (Exceptionally, it can provide a rallying cry, but that is not expected here.)

These times are nothing but a continuation of previous ones, most markedly in my time the invasion and destruction of Iraq. But before that even.

Then I wrote—no small portion of my writing at my peak was directly responding to global events (“my wars/ Were global from the start”)—in order to stake out a claim to uncorrupt territory (if only in the mind) against the onslaught of perceived injustice. We write, not for posterity, but for ourselves in the moment; however, if we are lucky, we created a personal monument or reference point to refer back to. In this environs of centrifugal chaos, I have a map to previously covered ground. (At my site you can read the essay about my efforts against said military, criminal, and tactically obnoxious action, "Introduction to War for Peace”.)

It is not well to live one's life with regrets of “If only I had said…” or “If only I had done…".

I compose (and compile) a lot of bad poetry, in times like these. Not because I can alter the course of events; but so that I might stand apart without getting sucked into the vortex. Ultimately, the body may (and perchance will) succumb to the thresher; one labors in order that the spirit survive, though it too may break.

​
I felt a twinge of joy and glee
    On hearing that you died,
Such execrations hurled at me
    From your lips must subside.

How so much bile, invective, hate
    In one man’s heart took anchor
I could not guess, nor obviate,
    How much uncouth, vile rancor.

The paths behind us we have trod
    Get covered by new grasses,
And you—farewell to meet your God— 
    Commit no more trespasses.

I mourn as much as man may do
    Newly escaping malice:
Surely there was a charm to you
    Beneath the crude and callous.

Rudeness beseemed to you a strength,
    Superb self-estimation
As drove your thoughts in breadth and length,
    Life one long execration.

Had you but learned to breath a while,
    To lessen the invective— 
To randomly let loose a smile
    Nor seldom nor selective— 

The news which came to me a shock
    Might have produced more grieving,
But I must mourn while taking stock:
    Some pain with you is leaving.

The protest ended after a march past ICE headquarters around 1pm; as it happened, Silk Road Rising, located across from the main protest ground, hosted two play readings (at 3pm and 7pm respectively) as part of a “Staging the Stans” project, which I saw.

The first, titled Uzbek, was a stand-up comedy routine, not a play, focusing on themes Russian bureaucracy. Whatever its merits (the actor did a good job), the piece falls outside my purview—though it raises the question, to what extent may unembellished storytelling be classed as theater?

The second, The Store by Olzhas Zhanaydarov, had more substance to it. A two-hander, two actresses face the audience and alternate telling each character’s experience of “the store” with very little interaction between them, and that both perfunctory and pro forma. There was no drama. There were no “stakes.” There was only a mass of reminiscence. Each character told her story, as it were, in either case a dismal affair. That said, the experience—dealing with a case (based on true life) of modern-day slavery occurring in the heart of Moscow—was compelling enough.

The situation described was bad, with the details, as they piled up, showing it to be worse, and worse, and worse, ending only with the death of one of the protagonists. The subject might have done well as a short story; and I don’t wonder if the play’s author mayn’t have found it in such a format—or at least a first-person account in the tabloid magazine. (I say it that way not to diminish horrendous experience, but to qualify it as literary.)

The chief interest lay in the subject matter—and I wonder, would the play bear repeated viewing, or reading? Would a first viewing have been undermined by revelation of the underlying conceit—or, to say it differently, if so-called spoilers had killed all surprise? (I don’t have an answer for that question, though it may be telling, that, knowing what I know, I would be unlikely to revisit the play even in a fully staged performance.”)

The “action,” such as there were, consisted only of two characters talking, at you, the audience, not to each other, with some minimal stage shenanigans revolving around a children’s playlot swingset. The narrator (of the stage directions) was scarcely audible, but nothing was missed, because nothing happened of import; the interest lay in the monologues, each individually and then some in the way they were made to bounce off of each other in juxtaposition.

Modern day slavery—in all its excruciating detail—deserves attention; and the play was worthy in that respect. It was theater, but was it drama? That is another question I have wrestled with, coming to no firm conclusions—though one of my plays, a four-hander, comes close to merely accounting an individual story sans climacteric.

Alison Croggon, on the difference between reading a play or seeing it staged, writes, “I don’t see how one cancels out the other, or how ‘literary’ and ‘dramatic' qualities are mutually exclusive. (Nor, by the way, is all theatre writing ‘drama’—did Beckett write ‘drama?’).” This speaks to another issue which has exercised my imagination in the past—the difference between theater and drama. I have always posited myself—not without pomp—as a practitioner of “drama” explicitly and not just theater, which rightfully comprises many disparate elements.

When it comes to defining drama I find myself at loose ends, however. Generally, I have relied on the Socratic distinction between Comedy and Tragedy, albeit leaving more room for a mix between these polar opposites—if indeed opposite they are. I cannot be sure, because while I have felt, through my own practice and study, to have gotten a hang of the former, what constitutes the latter leaves me flummoxed and perplexed. (I have not read Aristotle on the matter; and recognize that other traditions exist which owe nothing and do not subscribe to the traditional Western dichotomy.)

With Croggon—upon whose judgement you can rely—I find myself at antipodes a little bit. The first time I ever read Beckett—after I had struck out on my own as a playwright—one thing that shone clearly through the words on the page to me might well be summarized: this man really understands comedy. For me, comedy is part and parcel to drama—ergo, Beckett must be drama. That is what he wrote.

The critic sees things from one perspective; the craftsman from another. The critic might have the broader view, the artist his hard-won myopic confidence. We use the same words but differently—and it behooves one to squint in an attempt to understand what his counterpart across the aisle means.
​
​That said, one thing shone forth from both presentations at Silk Road Rising: the strong accent on immigrants and issues of immigration, regardless the Russian context, made the plays (or “pieces”) feel intensely relevant to the calling for justice which prompted so large a gathering in the Chicago morning. More than a play purporting to auspices of “art for art’s sake” would have done.