We Don't Want This Moment to Die

It's been a very long road for me from seeing the audition notice for Jerry Springer the Opera on New Line's Web site, preparing for the audition and getting up the courage to do it, rehearsing, and performing it these past few weekends with such an incredibly talented, uninhibited, and brave cast and crew.  I'll be honest:

It's exhausting.

And I'm spent!

• It's trying to everyone's voice - the ranges for all vocal parts run the gamut, it's nonstop singing for the audience members, and characters belt, sing in falsetto and shout.

• It's mentally taxing - several of us in the "audience" are on stage nearly the entire time.  When I'm not on, I'm doing a quick change and a change back.

• I have a semi-permanent red patch on my scalp from my ill-conceived plan to make myself look a little edgier by streaking my hair with crimson temporary hair color spray. All my stuff and my boyfriend's stuff is also pink as a result.

I was going for "Demonic."

  ...And it's absolutely wonderful and a delight each and every time. I don't want it to be over.

I haven't been doing theater very long, and I hope to continue doing it, but I can honestly say that I probably won't ever again be doing anything quite as naughty, as bold, clever or controversial as this.  It's an honor to say all those F-bombs, to pretend to gag at a man relieving his bowels onstage, to choke on my disintegrating glittery lips and do hideously lascivious and suggestive things just a spitting distance away from our audience members.

Working with the fellow actors and crew at New Line is always a joy - an absolute clinic for me - as I marvel at their talent and consummate professionalism - but not ever at the expense of fun and creativity.  Just total competence.

Not to tempt fate, but I'm somewhat pleased that whatever protestations this production received were nearly limited to feeble, mostly copied letters from a group who had clearly never seen the opera, and one or two "walkouts," which we expected.  I'm so incredibly proud of the St. Louis theater-going community of which I am a member.  It's evident in the wonderful engagement we have in the performing arts in St. Louis that my hometown, albeit humbled and troubled, is special.  It's great to put something totally insane and offensive out there and to be fully embraced.

So as we close the doors on Jerry, his guests, his audience, and wave goodbye to him one last time, I'm very grateful to have been part of this filthy, wild, bizarre, operatic moment.  If you'll excuse me, I think the lesbians will see me now.

...No, I cannot.

Hot Enough For Ya?

As we enter "hell week," which may be especially appropriately named given the plot of Jerry Springer: The Opera, New Line Theatre has been getting some very good attention from the local press, such as our NPR affiliate KWMU, as well as the flagship newspaper, the Post-Dispatch.  With that, it means we're also attracting the attention of a few folks who are already upset this is being staged.  A couple of letters of complaint to our director call the choice to stage the show "gauche" (a word that I feel better describes wearing jeans to a wedding, not the damnation-worthy acts the letter-writer describes), while another self-professed Catholic says it offends God and his faith.  I get it - there's plenty for my fellow cast members, crew, audience and I to be a bit appalled by, but there are things like tone, context and satire that the complainers don't know about.

"Jerry Springer" and "offensive" go together like Klan members and well-timed bitch slaps.

Upon seeing these letters, I say, okay, well - I think the entire cast and crew expected ruffled feathers - that's what the point is, in a way, but not at the encouragement of censorship.  However, like the anticipation of an orchard after you plant the seeds, until our little ribald and satirical production-tree has started to bear the fruit of not only ticket sales, but angry, offended Christians, we weren't sure - and still aren't certain how crazy things might get.

In light of these letters, the cast has been sharing more (amongst our group) about their own feelings surrounding this opera.  For my part, I'm an agnosticized (I just made that word up, do you like it?) protestant, a Baptist who grew up in a very liberal church that accepts openly gay couples, transgender people, and welcomes questions of belief and faith.  Having said that, I still have a tight relationship with its religious community. I'm the granddaughter of a minister.  I went to Sunday School weekly growing up.  I have been taking voice lessons from the insanely talented Cecelia Stearman, our pastor's wife, for several years, and have a great relationship with our (now former) pastor, Scott Stearman.  I volunteer with the church regularly to do hands-on community events, went to Serbia with the group and even on a few youth group missions as a chaperone, sang in choir for years, and often perform solo works during worship services - it's still my church.

I have had to pick and choose who to "invite" to the production, and even beg some well-meaning, dear friends not to go - TRUST ME.  People will laugh and ask how bad it could be, and only when I recite the line, "raped by an angel" do they begin to believe me.  Our director Scott Miller's mother is sitting this one out, in fact.  Even my boyfriend, a non-practicing reform Jew with far less of a frame of reference for this stuff, winced a bit at the 'rape' line.  It's hard to know how open to be about it, and you have to pick and choose which of your friends and family can handle it, and who can't.  I can promote the show only by being open and honest with disclaimers about just how offensive the show can be for those who take their faith seriously.

...And their partying seriously.

The sense of walking on eggshells is even more so for many of my cast-mates whose families work, volunteer and/or school their children in religiously affiliated institutions every day.  I want everyone to know we're people who are also steeped in faith, but we're also able to step outside of that and create art - in this case, art that is dirty, profane, blasphemous even, and in doing so, portray religious icons as individuals with feelings - feelings that the Bible never explored.  For that, it's been fascinating and eye-opening.  Of course Eve and Adam would have questions for the deity that gave them a life of "grief and misery" for eating "one little apple," of course Mary would want to know where not only her God was but her son when she needed him (as many people do), of course Satan would want forgiveness and redemption - the redemption Jesus seems to offer everyone BUT him.

"Well, that sucked."

This is all wonderfully acted and set to amazing music.  This is really brilliant and brave stuff, people!  But the fact that it is still considered so "edgy" to portray religious figures this way tells us a bit about how easily some people take offense rather than seek to understand, or at least come along on a journey that the art is taking them on.  A month from now, after we've closed our season, I'm sure we'll have offended a few more people, some who have actually seen part of the show, and some who have just read or heard a bit about it.  My hope is that even deeply offended folks stick around long enough to hear what "Jerry" has to say about the sacred in this world, even in a show with so much profanity. 

If anything is sacred, it's definitely Batman.

Is that supposed to be me?

Among the profanity and often nasty spectacle in Jerry Springer: the Opera are many moments of surprising, haunting beauty.  One such moment occurs when the character of Baby Jane, played by the extraordinarily talented Taylor Pietz, sings about the rank nastiness of the world in an attempt to prove a point. "Society has an ugly face," say the lyrics. "...Jerry did not make it so; he merely holds a mirror to it," she pleads to Satan to be merciful to Jerry for seemingly making hay (and making light of) human misery, absurdity and ignorance. Seriously, when she sings - quite beautifully - about the common man, the people Jerry features - being "smeared with shit," you don't know whether to laugh or to cry.  The audience on the live performance recording, for their part, do not venture a giggle.

Society's face also has mashed potatoes on it.

Maybe it's true that Jerry Springer held a mirror up to the grossness of human beings, but one of the things I find striking about this work is not only its cleverness (please read some of my fellow JS blogger's posts on the matter), nor its hilarity, but the fact that it was written by Brits looking at us, Americans on the other side of the pond.  Jerry Springer, and our love for it, seemed to them fertile ground for growing some fine art, and they weren't wrong.  It should be noted that one of the writers, Richard Thomas, also wrote the libretto for the Anna Nicole opera, so the lowbrow (and classically American) drama-meets-highbrow-art-form-idea is probably appealing to him.

So, maybe it's not Jerry, but Brits looking at Americans using Jerry Springer, or rather, 'Muricans.  There are points at which the British-ness comes through in the lyrics: for example, when Satan offers Jesus "a little biscuit" (what we'd probably call a cookie), as a sarcastic token of reward, or when Satan says Jesus is "banging on" about something (going on and on) and Jesus tells the others they "didn't give a toss" (but hey, that rhymes with cross)!  Most of the time, however, they're pretty much spot-on with plain-old, ill-bred American dialects...those filthy, filthy dialects.  But go one layer deeper, and you're looking at some even more - I might argue affectionately drawn - outrageous, unhinged American stereotypes that were Jerry's regulars: cheating partners, aspiring poledancers, transgender people, and of course, diaper fetishists.  In America, such people are stars!

There's definitely a diaper in the onesie somewhere.  Also, good luck sleeping soundly tonight.

The most telling part of this "Brits'-eye view" for me comes with the sung "ads" during the opera as the first act unfolds much like the eponymous show.  Some are utterly ridiculous - ads for Novocaine or intestinal parasites, but some - like ads for health insurance, finding Jesus, plastic surgery or guns...are completely on the nose and hilarious.  The audience that The Jerry Springer Show was aimed at would have very likely been shown ads for supplemental health insurance and for joining a church/proselytizing, and though firearms advertising laws vary from state to state, no country loves its guns more than America - I mean, 'Murica. 

Ads for Viagra, Prozac, etc., round out the selection - common fare here, but we have to keep in mind that in other countries, direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising is considered profiteering on illness and is banned, as are most privately-owned firearms in general, and our healthcare system appears shockingly misguided, dysfunctional, expensive and just immoral to other countries who see it as a right. Not to get all political, I love many, many things about this country, but no wonder we're such easy targets.  

Am I the only one particularly insulted that this dude wore a Cardinals shirt?

So maybe we do sometimes have a collectively ugly, shit-smeared face.  Thank goodness for art, particularly satire and humor, to hold a mirror to it.  I see this opera both celebrating and condemning the sometimes ridiculous circus of humanity - especially America - and then leaving us with an admonition to "take care of yourselves...and each other."

Jer-nalism in the new Millennium

Jer-ry! Jer-ry! We just finished the first rehearsal for Jerry Springer: The Opera. My stomach was in knots, my head felt like I was underwater, but dang - it's going to be awesome.  What a cast - every single voice is on-point, and I have my work cut out for me.  Still, it's surreal and amazing.  I remember reading about the show when it came out in London over 10 years ago.  Dad, knowing I loved musical theater, brought the New York Times over to me in the kitchen and pointed out and article about this opera - not musical theater but actual opera - of the lowest-brow entertainment available at the time, short of donkey shows.  Brilliant! 

It's been awhile, and we've had time to reflect on the Jerry Springer show.  All throughout the first rehearsal, as these gorgeous voices of Luke, Zak, Taylor, Lindsay and the cast, all saying gloriously dirty things, I kept having flashbacks to being in middle and high school. It was 1995 again, and I was checking out the latest redneck fight on Jerry as I finished some homework.  While I wasn't a dedicated watcher, my favorite episodes were the ones with the Klan, though.  I mean, at least I could pity the trashy cheaters, the purported white supremacists, however?  Delicious disdain - and even if you changed the channel, you could STILL feel superior as you sighed and rolled your eyes at the modern-day freak show.  It was before many folks had taken their kinks and niche interests to the Internet, and before the age of the "reality TV" show.  So really, a simpler time.  A time when we had a live studio audience to hoot at the Mama Junes and Honey Boo Boos of the world.

Remember her name.

Honestly, though - if you think about it, all throughout recorded history, literature and entertainment, we've enjoyed the schadenfreude (yeah, thanks, auto correct, you had my back just now) of watching people we consider weird, outlandish, exotic, just freaks, strange acts, odd bodies, faces, lifestyles, interests...far-out stuff.  That was one of my favorite numbers we rehearsed yesterday - "bring on the losers!" As much as we like to pretend we don't go for stuff like that, never underestimate the power of prurient interest and morbid curiosity to grab the imagination of the masses.  The tradition of the palace fool or jester, the fascination with extremes - dwarfs, giants, etc., the raucous and bloody circus of Roman times, the freak show or side show, talk shows, and now...TLC?

The L stands for Learning.  LEARNING.

I'm not saying without Jerry, there wouldn't be reality TV today, in its endless spinoffs and countless varieties, but there has always been an appetite for this, and Jerry just mainstreamed it quite a bit more, and real or fake, gave it the subtle yet critical spin of these losers WANT this fame - some have always needed the money or means, no matter how dehumanizing things like traveling freak shows have been.  That one element alone has been huge in popularizing shows like Jersey Shore or Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. 

Now, there's also the idea of inviting the viewer into this world.  By giving us the studio audience and inviting freaks and weirdos on as "guests," Jerry seems to have filled our historic void for gazing at odd stuff (while patting ourselves on the back for our normalcy) and embraced and celebrated fully the wacky spectacle of it all.  Now we have Twitter and such to boo and jeer at society's out-there types - but Jerry did it first, and you can't throw a chair on the Web.
 

Snapping Whips at Whipper Snappers




Clint Eastwood really looks like crap these days.

I recently watched a documentary on the rise of the “teenage” demographic on Netflix (called Teenage,  what do you know), which, while being a lot less fun and wild than its chosen subject matter, was informative on how the rise of youth culture came about in the United States.  Hell yes, it touched on the young generation during the depression. We like to think that Gen X and Millennials’ rejection of a lot of Boomer-turned-yuppie promises (get a college education, and you’ll get a good-paying job, among other things)might be new, but it’s not.  Beginning with the sad reaping of World War I in nearly a generation lost to brutal conflict and disease – the old sent the young off the war, essentially, to do their dirty work, to die – youth have been mistrusting the elders for quite some time now.  Nearly a century, in fact.   We should think of something to celebrate 100 years of “teenagers.”  It will - nay, SHOULD - probably be forced, patronizing and so super lame. I’ll get back to you.

I hear the kids love to "jitterbug."

 

When Bonnie and Clyde sing “What was always good enough for you,” it’s that same rejection of the elder generation’s ideals.  I love that moment in the musical, not just because I get to trudge around like one of the downtrodden masses, the suckers, but because it’s really a great summation of what youth culture is all about, doing it differently.  Living differently, charting a new course.  Why shouldn’t they be mistrustful of institutions?  Trust in banks, trust in the church, trust in the law – it all turned out to be a crock for them.  They don’t really trust anyone except the gang and each other.  Can we all agree that in musicals and movies, there's no evil, misguidedness or outrage like institutionalized evil, misguidedness or outrage?  (See the corrupt Beadle and the Judge from Sweeney Todd or the hopelessly lost Javert from Les Miserables). Heck, there's even a running theme of generational disconnect running through the fluffy Bye Bye Birdie.

 

I watched it.  It's still entertaining.  I promise.

 

 There’s really nothing more vital to being human, being American, being a critical thinker than questioning authority.  To be honest, it’s something the young often do far better than their elders.  In the very next scene, we see Clyde call out some of this BS.  When you try to do right, you often get screwed over or played for a fool anyway.  He’s more infuriated for the folks in the bank than even they are – yes, maybe because there’s no money for him to steal, but he’s calling out another level of thievery – corporate and institutional thievery, a type for which there really isn’t any justice.  What he’s doing is kind of small potatoes in comparison.  Not right, not just, but honestly dishonest. I appreciate the way both he and Bonnie are drawn.  We don’t have to root for them (you do, you know you do) – especially as killers – but we can see their desperation and determination and admire them for that.  I’d say the coldest fish in this show character-wise might be some of the law enforcement, including pretty much everyone Kent plays (sorry, Kent), most notably the hard-nosed Hamer. 

You couple their somewhat righteous indignation (“tell ‘em, Clyde”) and their thirst for fame, and you have the same heady blend the kids were high on in the rock n’ roll 1950s and the hippie and civil rights-era 60s. If Bonnie can’t have fame, she can have infamy and still get autographs. Who says this generation is the most self-indulgent and navel-gazing yet?  There’s always been plenty of that. 



You guys.  This was totally the autofill Google gave me.  Google, you judgmental bitch!

I’m excited to see how these scenes will come together, with Bonnie and Clyde as the colorful and lively Oz to our beaten-down Kansas.  After all, short as their lives were, they were both very much alive while they lived.  In our own American folklore, we've always been fascinated by the James Deans, the ones who live fast, die young and leave a good looking corpse.  And sadly, it completes their story for them to have flamed out like they did.  Who wants to read a memoir by an elderly, impotent and reformed Clyde or a chastened, tired old Bonnie?  They didn't have to die...but for their legend, sadly, they needed to.  I think that's why we begin and end on their end, but in between we get a bumpy ride - thanks to Bonnie and Clyde.

Gimme That Old Time Religion Pt. 2 - The Church and "Bonnie and Clyde"

Bonnie, Clyde, Blanche and Buck are all disillusioned by the hollow promise that a conventional, religious, “working stiff” lifestyle can bring.  They break out of it.  Reject it.  It’s for suckers – not for special people like them.  Bonnie notes this, insisting to her mother that her and Clyde’s way of life is being truly alive, it’s the others that are “walking around dead.”  What an idea – what an image to keep in mind as we stage the opening of the second act next week.  During the Great Depression, the bread lines, Hoovervilles and mass migration really almost were a version of “The Walking Dead” in many ways – people let down by the system, hard-working people sold the American Dream only to have it pop like a balloon.  People joined a hungry throng for survival, following the work and the food.

Good Old USA?  A migrant mother
in the Depression comforts her children.
Image by photographer Dorothea Lange

The second act opens up with a chorus of these folks and the minister musing over the antics of the Barrow Gang.  Surprisingly, the preacher acknowledges that they’re not entirely to blame for their actions without condoning stealing.  Who gets the crowd’s condemnation?  Why, it’s the ‘good old USA.’

Blaming America is a concept that any good patriotic conservative evangelical might choke on.  So what’s going on?

There was indeed a strain of progressivism – even in Christianity - in the 20^th century that did try to strive for social justice such as the reforms of the Roosevelt presidency and Civil Rights; these were loosely organized threads that placed emphasis on the idea of redemption and serving the greater good.  Of course, competing strains of evangelicalism were often far more conservative, shunning anything that smelled remotely of socialism. 

Nowhere were these divisions more stark than in the national Baptist Church beginning in the Reagan era.  At national conventions and meetings, ministers would vie for voting power on the direction of the church in a decidedly right-wing direction, for example, shunning women from the ministry, which repulsed other longtime leaders and members.  The church finally fractured in 1990 into the large and powerful Southern Baptist Convention and the more progressive Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.  Baptist churches remain a splintered group under many "parent" organizations.



 Except Westboro Baptist. Nobody wants any part of those assholes. They're always hate-farting.

 I was a kid during that time, but you could feel the tension even in individual churches.  I recall my mom grumbling at a pamphlet included in the church’s Sunday morning bulletin.  It seemed innocuous to my young mind: it advertised a book and speaking series claiming to share exciting information about dinosaurs (which I loved) and how they were involved in the creation, and how the minutemen of the Revolution were all ardent Christians.  Mom knew better. “Ugh…conservative propaganda,” she muttered. 

Around the same time, Dad was on the phone, talking in a calm tone to a member of his Sunday School class.  Somehow, this man had become upset with mom and dad when it was discovered that they were not ardently anti-abortion rights (in a church that staged frequent pro-life rallies).  Our family didn’t stay at that church much longer. 

Is there “room for everyone,” as the preacher says?  There’s always been a conflict between judgmental religiosity and what it probably is supposed to be – welcoming love and redemption.  Jesus, after all, might have had a soft spot for the Barrow Gang, if not the robberies and shootings.  After all, he hung out with the freaks, the misfits and the outcasts, and instead attacked corrupt institutions – quite the anarchist in many ways. 

Eventually, mom and dad found a church where they felt welcome.  I sometimes volunteer there, and have some good friends and mentors who are members.  Divorcees are welcome, as are openly gay couples (and there’s no attempt made to “fix” them) – there are plenty of churches where they’re not, but that’s just the beginning.  It welcomes people of other faiths; it’s where “missions” mean not trying to convert people to Christianity, but physically helping them build or clean up their communities.  As a youth chaperone, I was pleasantly surprised to see that this church unquestioningly celebrated and respected a transgender kid.  The Gateway Men’s Chorus performed as welcome guests.  They host a community gospel choir, a racially and ethnically diverse chorus.  Feminists are welcome and given a forum.  There are actually churches out there like this – they’re just not all that noisy in politics.  But they do suck a lot less.

A great thing to be.

Perhaps the Barrow Gang wasn’t really all that cut out for that sort of existence, however open the church.  There’s always an air of fellowship and “the flock” in a church, which clearly isn’t for most of the folks in the Barrow Gang.  They’re celebrities – one entity that Americans, fickle as we are, worships every bit as fervently as religious deities.  The crowd singing in “Made in America” forgives and almost admires them for making their own way –after all, rugged individualism at any cost is as patriotic as it gets.

Gimme That Old Time Religion Pt. 1 - The Church and "Bonnie and Clyde"

When I was nine years old, my older sister and I were baptized.  Yes, nine, and beforehand, we were obliged to sit down and discuss our faith with the minister at our church at the time – because it was what is known as “believer’s baptism.”  That’s baptism by full immersion in water, not a mere sprinkling on the head of an infant.  It is, as Baptist tradition teaches, the way Jesus himself was drenched in the waters of the Jordan by John the Baptist.  Ideally, it’s supposed to symbolize many things, but most of all, a conscious choice – a death, a burial, a resurrection, a cleansing, and a new life and new covenant with God. 
               

It wasn't this dramatic.  Too bad.

We see a scene like this represented in “Bonnie and Clyde” – the character Buck, Clyde’s brother, is baptized while a preacher sings (in classic gospel style, backed by a choir) that “God’s arms are always open” to welcome sinners – right before Buck gives himself up to the law.  It’s a great scene in which we see Buck trying to make a go of the straight and narrow (and honor his wife’s wishes), while Clyde reaps the benefits of his chosen path until apprehended.  I’d argue that “Bonnie and Clyde” is rife with many more of these musical and dramatic “baptisms,” conscious choices where the characters are awash in reveling in – and committing to – their choices.

Do they, however, have as much agency as they think, though?  In the second act, the preacher sings about how the mixed bag that is American glamour, greed and broken promises gave birth to Bonnie and Clyde – they didn’t happen in a vacuum, the two were natural offspring of the turmoil of the depression and dust bowl.  It’s that push and pull between the characters’ agency and ability to act and their being caught in the jaws of something larger and out of their control, whether it be their passion or their poverty.



Ned and the kids get cleansed by the
Holy Spirit.

I honestly don’t know how much choice I had in my baptism.  While I don’t really regret it, I was just a kid doing what I thought I should do, my parents, my big sis and my grandma thought was the thing to do.  I felt obliged to do it, so I did it, much like Buck.  As he notes bitterly from prison, it didn’t make much of a difference in what came after.   While I’m not disillusioned with what’s at the very heart of wanting to be a good person in the “Christian” sense and a follower of Christ at its best – being the face of Christ and love for others, the idea that God is love, the "last commandment" of loving one another – I later became more interested in the “church” as an institution and a cultural touchstone than I did in the act of unquestioning churchgoing - and I really don't go much any more, though not out of bitterness.   Buck, Bonnie and Clyde sense  the empty promises that religion often offers for themselves (Blanche, Buck's wife, is cut from slightly different cloth, while she follows her husband, she's terribly distraught at living a life of crime) that what they’ve been told growing up ain’t necessarily so, and that in the absence of a caring God’s presence, they’ll have to make their own way any way they can - and they do.