plays Archives - Galactic Journey

by Victoria Lucas

On Class and Murder

This review is late. The performance of "The Exception and the Rule" happened on May 7, 1965, produced by Bill Graham at the Gate Theater. However, I was too stunned to write earlier. Not only did the San Francisco Mime Troupe appear in one of Bertolt Brecht's Lehrstücke or dramatic exercises, but journalist and publisher Robert Scheer was featured after intermission. Also, as you can see from the program, Pauline Oliveros of the San Francisco Tape Music Center provided the music, so that was an attraction for me.

Program for "The Exception and the Rule"

In the play, the "exception" was a "coolie" who tried to give his master a drink of water. The rule was the master's fear of his abused underling that led him to see the flask as a "stone" and believe the coolie was trying to kill him. The results were the death of the coolie, shot by his master, the absolution by a judge of the master's actions (which were underlain by his need for "self defense"), and the protest of those who saw things otherwise.

No Exceptions to the Rule of White Masters

In the Mime Troupe's version, of course, the actors wore masks (in the tradition of the commedia del' arte in which they place themselves) and updated the 1929 work by Brecht, whom they outed as a "Communist." Whereas the results could be expected, the conclusions were disturbingly thought provoking. Here are some bits of dialog I wrote down: "The police fire out of pure fear." "One must go by the rule [the master's fear], not the exception [the coolie acts on fear of his master's dying of thirst while he was dehydrated]." "Dehumanized humanity" is a description of the coolie-master relationship that creates fear on both sides. "Sick men die but strong men fight" is the war cry of social Darwinism (not invented by Darwin). "He [the coolie] can't make us believe that he'll put up with it all," therefore he is "dangerous."

Scheer Opinion

After this disturbing performance with its comments on "class" and murder, Robert Scheer gave what the program called "a morality talk" on "The U.S. War in Vietnam." Scheer is now managing editor and editor-in-chief of Ramparts Magazine, a new left voice since 1962, produced here in San Francisco. He is also their Vietnam War correspondent.

Report from the Front

So how is the war going, you ask? Badly, my friend, badly, for both sides. It's like reporting on a journey that is uphill both ways. While that is a common trajectory in San Diego, which is all mesas and canyons, it's usually thought that if a war is going badly for one side it's going well for the other. Not so this war.

Violation of Geneva Accords

Scheer points out that the Geneva Accords of 1954 that ended the French war in Indochina mandated elections within 2 years to reunite Vietnam, with the present border meant to be temporary until elections could be held. In Vietnam, though, political battles have been fought on a literal battlefield rather than via the ballot box, and the US has been obstructing holding such elections precisely because the belief among US government officials is that Ho Chi Minh would win. Scheer compares and contrasts the situation of Negros in the South, whose voting rights have been interfered with, to the "n*gg*rs" of Southeast Asia, who are not allowed to vote at all in the present conflict.

Voting Rights and Human Rights

Deeper than that political comment, Scheer calls President Johnson's "voting rights" bill window dressing, and the lack of elections in Vietnam an avoidance of obstructing what he calls the "colonial ambitions" of the US in Asia. Scheer does not share the fear of Communist takeover as a form of political suppression of democracy, defining American "democracy" as suppressive in itself. According to him, in the US "white makes right," and in Vietnam "might makes right." He makes the point that as we slowly wake up to Negro rights in the US, we should also wake up to human rights in other parts of the world, particularly now in Vietnam, where both sides are clearly losing.

Suppressed Reporting

I've been listening to National Public Radio (NPR), reporting mainly by Christian Science Monitor correspondents, since NPR has little to no foreign-correspondent budget. They actually visit American troops and talk with the leaders, and their home editorial desks do not suppress their stories. So instead of publishing the US government press releases as the mainstream press does, the Monitor and NPR report what they see to the public. Scheer's commentary is in line with what I've been hearing. In March the US began systematic bombing of North Vietnam and the so-called Ho Chi Minh Trail–the supply route from North to South Vietnam. This began with the first landing of US Marines at Da Nang. Stories of atrocities persist but are not reported by the mainstream news.

As the World Turns

In short, I think I hear the noise of the world whizzing by, but I'm usually too scared or tired to lift my head, get up, and look over the ramparts of our middle-class consciousness. The Mime Troupe always provides such a view (while being raucous and funny), but what I saw this time was uncommonly scary. If you want to take a peek over the ramparts, buy the June edition of Scheer's magazine, at newsstands in the larger urban environments.

If it hasn't been suppressed.

[Galactic Journey is not the only San Diego organization that specializes in time travel. Read on and learn about a most extraordinary endeavour happening downtown…]

by Victoria Lucas

As I had hoped in my last message, I made it to San Francisco and now live and here at the end of the "J" streetcar line, at Church and 30th. At first the streetcar woke me up every morning sometime before 6 am, when it makes the "J" figure to turn around at the top on 30th and then squeals down Church to begin its run downtown, where I work. Eventually I got used to it. The only things that wake me up now are the fights the managing couple stages many nights in which she tends to yell out a window into the inner courtyard at 3 am when they are both drunk, and he mutters in the background.

I didn't drive directly here–I really had to stop in San Diego to see a friend of mine in the Shakespeare play I've messed with in my title. I had never been to the San Diego Old Globe Theatre in Balboa Park (one of a number of "Globe Theatres" around the world). More important, I wanted to be sure to see my friend Alan Fudge one last time. Oh, and Alan got me a complimentary ticket (known in the biz as a "comp"). All I had to do was get there, park, and not get lost.

ground view Old Globe — Walking to the Old Globe Theatre

I was first exposed to Shakespeare in high school, and was interested in his language and how he had invented many of the words we take for granted today. We studied his tragedies: I never will understand why teenagers, who have such strong emotions and who often dramatize their lives in tragic terms, as if tempted to try to fit into universal clichés, are made to study tragedy and trauma in literature, instead of biography, humor, politics, and satire.

Nevertheless, I am always fascinated to watch the plays, set as they are in strange surroundings–not on other planets, because it wouldn't have occurred to authors in the 16th and 17th centuries to use such settings–but in other countries so far away and so foreign that the typical person in Shakespeare's audience would have been as likely to journey to the moon as to Denmark (the scene of "Hamlet") or Italy (where the play I saw, "Much Ado About Nothing," is set). Like science fiction, Shakespeare's plays were always located in barely imaginable places, with happenings both close to and removed from the everyday lives of audience members, sometimes for political reasons.

actress as Queen Elizabeth — Queen Elizabeth and subject (actors at a festival) —*courtesy of San Diego State University Special Collections*

Although "Much Ado About Nothing" depicts rather ordinary humans with ordinary passions, some of Shakespeare's fantasies, such as "Midsummer Night's Dream," imagined very implausible creatures, such as these from an earlier production at the Old Globe.

Titania with donkey-headed man — The queen of the fairies kisses a donkey —*courtesy of San Diego State University Special Collections*

The San Diego Old Globe was built to evoke Elizabethan times just by its architecture. Because it is modeled after the original London theater, entering the building is like climbing out of a time machine. It is hard not to hesitate at the door as if unsure how to behave in the year 1609, when this play, for instance, was first performed.

As in Shakespeare's time, the area below the stage is open to the weather, this part of the theater (now with benches) being called "The Pit", where I could almost see an unruly crowd heckling the players. But the time-machine like quality even extends to the festival performances outside, where people from another era are likely to erupt from buildings or from behind trees.

men and women dance out a door — Actors run onto the festival green —*courtesy of San Diego State University Special Collections*

So it is a shock to recognize a familiar person under the greasepaint and in costume. Alan was a student in the University of Arizona Drama Department when I worked there, which for me was only last month! As departmental secretary I was only three years older than he, and he was friendly, funny, and hung around the office just enough so that I saw a lot of him and we became good friends. I saw Alan in a lot of plays, too, since after I ran the box office and stashed the cash I went into the theater and acted as a clacker–someone who laughs and/or claps on cue to encourage the rest of the audience to do so.

During the Shakespeare Quadricentennial this year Alan played Conrade, "Friend to Borachio" in "Much Ado About Nothing."

program for Much Ado About Nothing — Shakespeare Festival program

I was enchanted. I had been to only amateur theater the past two years, and this professional production was something to see on the Balboa Park stage. I could almost feel myself in the very first Globe Theatre in London, as The Bard Himself trod the boards.

Alan was a bit too whimsical as a student to take himself and the theater very seriously. In this play he had to be a minor villain helping with a foul deed, and he did it well. I concluded that I had seen him in bud form and now he was blossoming beautifully. He didn't have any publicity photos of himself in costume, so he slipped me this one as we sat in the Falstaff Tavern next door to the theater. He didn't autograph it, and I didn't ask him to. After all, I'm not a fan, just a proud friend.

Alan Fudge in a sweater — Alan Fudge —*courtesy of San Diego State University Special Collections*

I came away convinced that Alan is indeed headed for Broadway and even the movies or TV when not on the Shakespearean stage. Look for him! And if you find yourself in San Diego for any reason, I strongly urge that you not miss out on your chance to time travel, in the Elizabethan manner…at the Old Globe.

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]

55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction

Galactic Journey

Tag Archives: plays

[June 4, 1965] Below the Ramparts

[July 24, 1964] Much Ado About Something (Time Travel, San Diego-style)

55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction