One for all?
When I was a ute (see: My Cousin Vinnie), I enjoyed some moderate success as an actor in bucolic Ashland at the internationally renowned Oregon Shakespeare Festival. I just got a new adjective book, can you tell? It was there I honed my craft (and my javelin spear, but that’s another story) before sharing (or affronting, depending on your view) my artistic prowess with the world. Being a young lad with wanderlust in my eyes, I longed to see what other parts of the world offered in the way of world-class theatre. I also desperately needed to find an ophthalmologist who could treat that wanderlust.
One pine scented day, two tempting temptations to leave this northwest paradise came a knocking. One was from San Jose Repertory Theatre in … damn, where is that theatre located? Ah, it’ll come to me. It was a four-month contract for a couple of plays that I do not recall at this time. You see, I would have been an excellent politician. The other was from something called the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. I do remember that one was located in Alabama. Still is, for that matter. The offer was to act in four productions in a six-month season.
To many, “Alabama Shakespeare Festival” is an oxymoron. Interestingly the word “oxymoron” is itself an oxymoron. Google away. Indeed folks outside the theatre world (and Montgomery, Alabama) usually said something pithy like, “Shakespeare in Alabama? What do they say, “To be or not to be, y’all?” These individuals always found that immensely amusing and were still guffawing as I walked away. Fact is, the theatre is a beautiful state of the art facility with a gorgeous 750 seat main stage and an intimate and versatile black box theatre space, and draws talent from all over the country, producing 10-12 shows a year playing to enthusiastic sell-out crowds.
But I digress. Slightly.
I was on the horns of a dilemma. I know; ouch, right? Stay on the comfortable west coast or travel across the country to a region I not only had never visited but also never wanted to visit; such was my disdain for all things southern. Except Ellie May Clampett.
My Arkansas-born parents urged me not to go. “You’re a California boy, Steve,” my mom said in her soft, slow drawl. You’ll hate it there.” That, of course, made up my mind. In a nifty 180 from the song, “I was goin’ to Alabama!”(sans banjo on knee).
I did have concerns. I spoke to the artistic director of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival and expressed my angst about heading into what I believed to be the hotbed of racism. What he said forever stayed with me and I have recalled it many times:
“Steve, I grew up in Beverly Hills. I grew up a liberal, privileged white guy who abhorred racism. But it was easy because there were no blacks where I lived. But I noticed that, on the rare occasions my friends encountered people of different colors, they treated them fairly poorly or, worse, condescendingly. When I moved to Alabama for this job I had the same fears as you, but Montgomery is almost 50-50 white and black so whites and blacks literally work together, they go to school together, they play together, they get pissed at each other but not because they are white or black. My experience has been that, because it is an integrated society, it seems to be easier to treat each other as equals, no matter the color of their skin.”
It struck a chord. Remember I was in Ashland, Oregon; not exactly the diversity capitol of the west. In fact, Ashland was about as white as a Debby Boone concert.
I relate this story because it strikes me that this may be the affliction that has infected the current White House resident. This man spouts the most hateful doggerel I have heard since the days of George Wallace and Spiro Agnew, yet I can’t help wonder that when he actually meets, talks to and (this seems to be the hard part for him) listens to blacks, women, Latinos, gays, Muslims, transgenders, and even, gulp, liberals, he may be able to access some humanity beneath the bluster and see each one for what he or she is: an individual who deserves respect, who deserves compassion, who deserves a seat on our large, messy, chaotic but ultimately humane table of democracy.
This man, who swore to represent us all but has shown so far to be only capable of representing himself and his “brand,” may well discover that underneath his convenient generalities and glib labels, he has much more in common with those he routinely belittles than he may have thought.
Hey, a guy can hope, can’t he?
