Life Imitates Art: Musicals and Marriage Equality

 culture, Stage  No Responses »
Jul 302012
 

Life imitates art.  But art also imitates life.  It’s certainly true that artists of any genre are commonly out on the fringe of society, pushing it forward in ways that often aren’t understood until the artist is long dead.  However, it is equally true that the art that is accepted by a society either critically or financially is a marker of that society’s current values, trends, and beliefs.  What people support with their dollars indicates what they support in their hearts.

It’s an election year, and, as they do every four years, politicians are again fighting over the issue of marriage equality.  The fight of the GLBTQ community to secure equal rights in all 50 states never went away after the 2008 election.  Opponents of California’s Prop 8, for example, have successfully fought the measure through the appeals process.  But between election bombast and one fast food chain’s proud acknowledgement of their support for bigotry, the issue has resurfaced in the popular mindset.

Sometimes the religious right is so vocal and so well-funded that it can seem like all Christians hate gays and spend their entire lives downing sandwiches and sodas at Chick-Fil-A.  Sometimes it can seem like the hateful views of Pat Robertson and those like him represent those who share his religion.  I’m not sure that’s true.  I think a better indication of what people believe in can be found in the actions of the many rather than the loud words of a few.

That brings me back to art.  As a theater person, I believe that the most popular plays and musicals represent to some degree what people agree with or at least are not offended by.  There was a time when it was difficult to have a gay character onstage, now it is quite common.  We used to like our musicals light and fluffy, but they have evolved into very powerful works of art with insightful, sometimes radical themes.   And some of the most popular musicals of the past 25 years either question rabid religious dogma or openly support the full equality of all races, religions, and sexual orientations.  Let’s look at just a few of them.

 

Into the Woods made its Broadway premiere in the Reagan era (1987).  I have written about this one a few times, so I won’t belabor it.  It’s a about fairy tales who find what they are looking for in the first act and live happily ever after…until their lives are destroyed in act two.  One of its most poignant scenes involves Jack (of the Beanstalk) and Little Red Riding Hood suffering after the loss of deaths of his mother and her grandmother.  The Baker and Cinderella, their new parent figures, break the disturbing but important lesson to them you must rely on yourself, not others, to find what is right:

Witches can be right

Giants can be good

You decide what’s right

You decide what’s good.

The classic evil fairy tale witch may in fact be right and good.  Sometimes what is right is not what you have always been taught to fear or hate.

 

Around the same time that Into the Woods was popular, Les Miserables was playing to packed crowds.  Les Miz is a powerful, epic production based on Victor Hugo’s novel of the same name.  The center of the story is the policeman Javert’s search for the parole-breaking ex-con Jean Valjean.  However, Valjean has turned his life around and become wealthy, kind, pious, and extremely philanthropic.  One character even says to him, “You come from God, you are a saint.” Still, this new saint must constantly run from Javert.

In a television crime drama, Javert would be the good guy.  He is the law; Valjean has knowingly broken the law.  Thus, Les Miz is the battle of good vs. good.  Unfortunately, Javert’s style of good is rigid and unyielding, blind to different definitions and subtleties of what is right.  He sees only black and white in a world full of vibrant color.  His rigidity is so extreme that when he finally bends, he shatters.  Les Miz presents us once again with the dangers of thinking in rigid dogma, presenting us with a sympathetic character who begins his life of good by breaking the law.  It forces us to think outside the pretty little box society has painted for us while encouraging peace and independence of thought, even as its lyrics work within a Christian context:

They will live again in freedom in the Garden of the Lord

They will walk behind the ploughshare; they will put away the sword

The chain will be broken and all men will have their reward…

 

Rent was once a breakthrough musical, but it has become dated rather quickly.  The story is a modern rock adaptation of La Boheme, set against the backdrop of the AIDS epidemic.  Amidst the death and drug addiction, however, is a sweet and honest love story between two men.  Tom and Angel are perhaps the most positive and loving couple in the musical.  They are completely devoted to each other and as such fight the unfair stereotypes of promiscuity and licentiousness within the gay community, a stereotype often believed by those who argue against marriage equality.

 

I’ve longed to discover

Something as true as this is

So with a thousand sweet kisses,

I’ll cover you

 

If you want to dispel stereotypes, anything by Mel Brooks is probably not the type of work you want to see.  Still, Brooks’ smash hit musical The Producers does what Brooks does best: exaggerate cultural norms to a place where they are so absurd we laugh at ourselves.  In the song “Keep it Gay,” Brooks ridicules all of society’s gay stereotypes to a place where even the most conservative viewers laugh – and when you laugh, you become more comfortable. Just this one number from the movie breaks through a lot of taboos with humor:

Besides, there’s something disarming about  watching a flamboyant Adolf Hitler singing about being “The German Ethel Merman.”

 

Ragtime opened on Broadway in 1998.  I have to admit, I don’t know how it did as well as it did in that time period.  It was at its peak and beginning to tour right around 2001, a time when you couldn’t have had more pro-American audiences.  Yet Ragtime blends historical American characters with fictional ones to tell a story that essentially presents as the hero a terrorist who blows up firehouses around New York City.  Further, it skewers American capitalism and questions the very idea of America as the melting pot of full of unlimited opportunity.

Ragtime exposes all our prejudices.  It unflinchingly tackles anti-immigrant sentiment, American greed, the shallowness of the rich, and endemic racism.  And when Coalhouse Walker Jr., a victim of that racism, fights back, we cheer for him despite his violent tactics.  The fact that Ragtime was successful at a time when “U.S.A Love it or Leave it” flags were all over the country points toward a recognition that most of us are actually willing to question the status quo, despite how the media portrays us.

And when you’re trapped and failure seems imminent

Think of Houdini, that fabulous immigrant

Break those chains with all you possess…

 

Wicked is another musical that has been discussed at length on The Juggler.  The important theme with this huge hit is the questioning of what is good and what is evil.  Like Les Miz and Ragtime, Wicked blurs the lines and makes a traditional villain the protagonist.  Not only is the heroine a witch, and a traditional green-skinned-black-pointy-hat-witch at that, she is a well-known pop culture bad guy.  The entire message of Wicked can be summed up on one line, said by the Wizard (who, in case you somehow don’t know, is from Kansas).  Trying to win the witch to his side, he says: “Where I come from we believe all sorts of things that aren’t true. We call it history.”

 

2009’s Avenue Q is another question-the-American-Dream type musical, this time a comedy done with a healthy dose of television nostalgia and puppet porn.  It has its sentimental moments, though.  One of the sad portions of the story is Rod the puppet/Republican/investment banker who can’t admit he’s gay.  Act one ends with Rod throwing out his best friend roommate, and love interest, Nicky, for outing him.  Rob spends the second act sad and alone because he simply can’t admit who he is, despite the fact that his friends completely support him.  Although it’s a comedy, Avenue Q shows the devastating effects that being forced to stay in the closet can have, and its popularity again demonstrates that America is warming up to the LGBTQ community.

 

Finally, there’s Spring Awakening.  Not much to say here.  The popular musical completely eviscerates conservative Christian morality and exposes the damage to mind, body, and soul that dogmatic thought can inflict.

 

These are some of the most popular musicals of the last 30 years.  Sure, they don’t all tackle the marriage equality question head on.  In fact, none of them do.  If they did, only those in agreement would listen.  The rest would still be hanging out at Chick-Fil-A. Instead, they blur the lines between right and wrong, and cause people to think about their own definitions of those concepts.  They question rigidity of thought.

Like all good art, they present their somewhat subversive themes in packaging that is palpable to mainstream America and then allow those ideas to ferment.  It’s a slow process, but very fact that these musicals have been financially successful is evidence that there is a strong taste in the American market for ideas that move us toward a more equal society.  There is fertile ground for today’s equality activism.

 

In Ragtime, Coalhouse pleads “Make them hear you!”

The success of these musicals shows that they are listening.

The Shadows of Spring Awakening

 culture, Stage  No Responses »
Jul 092012
 

My very first post on The Juggler was on the musical Spring Awakening.  It was Beltane, and the unabashedly sexual nature of the show was very appropriate.  So was its message about the dangers of not teaching healthy sexuality to our children.  One of the difficulties with the show, however, is that is so easy to focus on the sex when there is much more to the show.  This deeper interpretation is where the new production at Mysterium Theater really shines.

Yes, the show still includes in-your-face sexuality that would shock many.  Yes, it’s still about a budding teenage sex drive conflicting with strict and oppressively naïve Church doctrine. Yes, it still contains frank depictions of intercourse, masturbation, BDSM, atheism, child molestation, abuse, addiction, and suicide.  But Mysterium’s production uses those things as a backdrop to the greater story of innocence lost and regained, stressing that the shadows of childhood do shape us, but we are in control of what they make of us.

We all have shadows.  Spring Awakening takes us deep into the shadows of a group of schoolchildren to remind us how difficult it is to be a teenager.  The differences in how each child handles “The Dark they Know Well” makes up the story and teaches us that we can rise above our past despite how difficult it seems.

Taking the lead in this are the three central characters of Melchior (Drew Olvey), Wendla (Taylor Courtney), and Moritz (Lance Smith).  All three in incredibly honest actors who choose to touch the hearts of their audience with sincere emotions ranging from confusion to lust to rage, all of which feel perfectly natural from each of them.  Olvey’s Melchior is less of an angry intellectual than usual.  His portrayal stresses the young man’s fascination with all there is to learn about the world around him, the “hunger that a child feels for everything they’re shown.”  When his ideals and school rules come in conflict, the tragedy on his innocent face is quite touching.

Courtney’s Wendla is similar, matching Melchior’s youthful innocence note for note, but without his intellect to buffer her.  This is a pure, emotional Wendla, and Courtney’s beautiful voice brings a very loving touch.  Smith brings notes of true desperation to Moritz, the saddest character in the play.  As confusion leads to panic, Smith ushers Moritz through his tragic arc, letting us inside his heart with each step.  The last strains of his “And Then There Were None” are truly haunting.

Aaron Lyons is excellent, devious, and full of hubris as the seductive schoolboy Hanschen.  Where his classmates stammer, Lyons radiates Hancshen’s strength and confidence in a wonderfully sensual way that whispers, “Why wouldn’t you want to fuck me?”  The rest of the cast does a great job hitting those notes of youth and inexperience.  Ashley Nelson’s disturbed Martha and Kallie Downing’s lost-looking Ilse remind us what happen when parenthood goes wrong.  The two adults do well in their multiple roles, particularly Sam Kostka who, while young for the role, deftly provides strong distinctions among his many characters.

Spring Awakening, especially this production, is about Melchior’s journey.  Along the way he creates shadows.  His actions, sometimes loving and sometimes rash, have horrible consequences that even his impressive mind could never have foreseen.  At this point he can give in to the darkness and become another casualty of childhood, another bright mind destroyed by the school system, or he use that mind and his heart to learn, grow, and perhaps make change in the world.  The true lesson of Spring Awakening comes from his choice.

Many in our community actively search for our shadow instead of running from it.  When we find it, we can learn from it.  We learn how it shapes our lives.  We learn how to identify when it is controlling us.  Melchior is forced to do the same, to be defeated or empowered by the demons of childhood.  Like him, our decisions can drag us down into the colorless darkness or up into the light of Purple Summer.

 

 

The Underside of Spring

 culture  2 Responses »
May 022010
 

Mama who bore me
Mama who gave me
No way to handle things
Who made me so sad

The opening is simple, yet powerful.  Young Wendla, dressed only in her slightly enticing cotton shift, climbs onto a chair, turns a sullen and confused face to the audience, and sings these quiet, melodic lines. A perplexed and pubescent girl trying to understand her growing sexuality, Wendla explores her body with her hands – hips, thighs, face, breasts – as if searching for something she knows is there but just can’t understand.  It is at once sensual and tragic.

This opening moment encapsulates the story and the controversial themes of “Spring Awakening,” a rock opera adapted for the stage by Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater, which is currently on a tour stop in Detroit.  The musical, adapted from a German play by Franz Wedekind, published in 1891, explores the extraordinary complications faced by a group of teenagers coming to terms with their own sexuality within a puritanically repressive atmosphere.  With their hormones screaming at them, the only answer these children can get from their parents is something akin to “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

This edgy musical uses humor, guts, and pain to explore the inner conflict of growing up in a world of conservative strictures that constantly battle with your body’s screaming needs.  In their teenage way, the boys in the show describe this conflict quite succinctly as  “the bitch of living as someone you can’t stand.”

As Pagans, and especially on Beltane, we celebrate sexuality as a natural expression of life.  We dance around Maypoles, with all of their phallic symbolism, and many of us celebrate the sexual union of the Goddess and God.  Yet, like the young seekers in “Spring Awakening,” we do this within a larger culture that still has a very tenuous relationship with sex.

Take the character of Wendla, a role originated by “Glee” actress Lea Michele.  Her opening complaints that her mother gave her no way to understand the changes exploding within her are backed up immediately when she begs to be told where babies come from.

Her mother, mortified by the question, stammers bashfully and ultimately lies to her daughter in order to escape the situation.  Sex is embarrassing, after all, and what is more important than delaying this necessary conversation?

Her mother’s paralyzing embarrassment leads to Wendla’s tragic,  painful death.

Like Wendla, we still live in a culture that is afraid to teach its children about sexuality.  Many states and school districts have laws that prevent schools from teaching basic sex education.  Yet films and television constantly push sex on them.

As they grow into adulthood within a culture that both pushes and reviles sexual expression, our teens are, like those in the musical, “trapped in the bones of a man and a child.”  With their hormones tearing them apart inside, teens are trapped in a world that is too embarrassed to give them accurate information.  Many, like Wendla, make ignorant sexual choices and pay the unnecessary price.

Then there’s Moritz.  This poor boy, completely unable to handle the tempest within his body, finds himself likewise unable to focus on his dreary schoolwork.  With no one but his cold and violent father to turn to, Moritz is lost.

His parents don’t understand the consequences of their callousness until it’s too late.  They lose their son on a much deeper level than if they had merely listened to and cared for him in his time of trouble.

As an educator, I see this happen all the time.  Teenagers want to get laid.  We want them to learn all about calculus and Shakespeare while their bodies are screaming at them to find a date and seal the deal. Telling them that the first two pages of “Romeo and Juliet” are filled with sexual innuendo doesn’t seem to abate their desires.

Is it any wonder they’re distracted?  Our reaction when they can’t pay attention?  Detention.  Standardized tests.  Lectures on responsibility.  That’s exactly what Moritz got.  It didn’t help him, and it doesn’t help today’s teens.

The Pagan perspective offers a much healthier way to deal with the very real, very pressing, issues explored in “Spring Awakening.”  Viewing sex as a natural part of life rather than a source of sin and mark of evil, we have the tools to freely discuss the topic with our children.  The frustration and ignorance that comes from being embarrassed to discuss the topic or damned to hell if you do is not a part of our belief systems.

Especially at this time of year, sex should be discussed openly and honestly.  Talk to your partner about it.  Talk to your mom.  Take some time this Beltane and talk to your children about this very important piece of their development.

Anyone who has known a teenager knows that they will figure it out for themselves anyway, and wouldn’t you rather they figured it out safely, with your guidance?

One option for Pagan parents is to visit their local Unitarian Universalist church.  The UUs welcome all belief systems, including ours,  into their congregations and warmly accept members of the GLBTQ community.  Their Religious Education program includes a component called Our Whole Lives (OWL).  OWL, which starts at the K-1 level and progresses to adulthood,  teaches frank and age-appropriate lessons on sexuality.

If even Pagans can’t be healthy and honest about the topic of sexuality, then the misery and pain that victimizes the children in “Spring Awakening” will do the same will continue 120 years after the original play was written.  Pagans are in a unique position to change this trend.  Otherwise, all that has changed is the costumes.