Cal Performances brought Austin, Texas’s zany theater collective Rude Mechs to Berkeley for a weekend of their 2014 New York hit. And a hit it was, hitting me, at first silly, then awake, with its brainy provocations, savage wit, and the cruel tickle of truth.
The show is an inspired combination of a classic Hollywood musical, a pithy allegory on contemporary mores, sudden outbreaks of wacked-out dance routines, witty seductions into audience participation, moments of unexpected confessions by the cast, and a fable on the inner conflict, at the heart of American life, between today’s brutal culture of narcissism, rapacity and greed and ancient ideals of selfless love, kindness to neighbors, the sanctity of nature and the basic decency of the common man and woman.
Yes, I admit it! All my previous girlfriends were right. It was, in fact, all my fault.
I reach this conclusion with the deepest reluctance, even embarrassment. It’s a horrible responsibility to have to confess to. It came as a surprise, even a shock. But one day I stumbled on it, staring me in the face. And ever since, it has never left me in peace.
I had always believed my sins were, at the worst, venial—I mean, I’ve never stolen, or robbed, or knowingly cheated anybody. I don’t do drugs, I drink in moderation, I stopped smoking ages ago.
I’ve never killed anything bigger than a mouse, and even that I mourned as, unable to save it, I watched it die miserably in a roach trap.
My lies are the innocent kind (“Doing great. How about you?” “No, it does not make you look fat”).
It’s true I have an occasional fit of uncharitableness, but as a rule I bend over backward to be fair-minded and I don’t discriminate against people based on race, sex, gender identity, mental health, financial status (well, I have problems with the super-rich, but I don’t think I’m alone in that), nationality, religion—whatever.
The Unheard of World. Joan Howard pictured center. Photo by Robbie Sweeny
(IN)COMPLETELY ABSURD
The Unheard of World
By Fabrice Melquiot
Translated by Michelle Haner
Exit Theater
San Francisco
A review by Christopher Bernard
Even with the best of intentions, to say nothing of energy, intelligence and talent, world premieres can be treacherous things. The premiere of an English translation of a modern French play can be more treacherous than most, given the great differences of premises and expectations between French and American audiences—including such things as their different senses of humor and attitudes toward philosophy, which can quickly become awkward in a philosophical comedy.
The latest production by one of San Francisco’s most audacious companies, foolsFURY, which in October premiered, as part of its Contemporary French Plays Project, Michelle Haner’s translation of Fabrice Melquiot’s magical realist Le Monde inouï is a textbook case. (Melquiot is a prominent contemporary French playwright; foolsFURY produced The Devil on All Sides, in artistic director Ben Yalom’s translation, to much acclaim in 2006.)
“…‘our Sister, Mother Earth’ … now cries out to us, … burdened and laid waste …”— Pope Francis, Laudato Si’
You throned us in your belly
down countless generations,
unfolded us to the light, fed at your breast
the children in us that grew to be women and men.
You taught us wonders:
each star in the night, each flower in the morning,
singing and beauty, each word, each thought,
the rites of courtesy, discipline of goodness;
praised us, scolded us, comforted us, held us.
All thanks to you, Mother Earth, all thanks to you.
The sun strides across the sky.
The birds pierce the air.
The rain startles the ground.
The seas are renewed without end.
The mountains dream in the morning.
The flowers are boundless.
All thanks to you, Mother Earth, all thanks to you.
And in return, what have we done?
We have cut out the heart of the world,
in man’s mad cunning, and burned it.
We have ransacked your home and fouled it,
and we have set your house on fire,
destroying the loom of the earth that made us,
the seed we grew from, the withered blossoms.
We are like a drunken man driving fast toward midnight,
intent on destruction out of a nameless resentment.
Forgive us, Mother Earth. Forgive us.
Free us.
Free us from our darkness,
the fear and need that drive us,
the cowardice and greediness of desire,
our craven weakness before brutality;
cast out the insanity of mankind,
past the crimes that strew our lives,
our refusal to see
the evils that are ours alone.
Save us, Mother Earth. Save us.
Show us the way—remember when we were children?—
of holy life.
Teach us how to walk again
lightly upon the earth.
Teach us to heal when you are ailing,
to comfort when you grieve
and no longer make you weep in the trammels of the night.
Free mankind from itself, Mother Earth,
and teach us to be loving to you forever.
All thanks to you. Forgive us. Save us.
_____
Christopher Bernard is the author of the forthcoming novel Voyage to a Phantom City, to be published by Regent Press in 2016. He lives in San Francisco.
A Little Talk Between Brain and Soul (Laudato Si’, Pope Francis)
By Christopher Bernard
The Brain and the Soul are meeting at Philz. The Brain is dressed in computer geek togs: leopard-style TV glasses, a shaved head, a tee-shirt reading Code Earth, leatherette flip-flops, and ragged but expensive-looking jeans. He has an iPad in one hand loaded with a document he is making sure Soul doesn’t see, and the latest iPhone in the other, which he consults every so often to fact check. The Soul is dressed simply in a white shift and sandals, and wears a warm smile. The only possession she brings with her is a ring on her left hand. She is near-sighted and occasionally squints.
We find them already in mid-conversation. The Brain is doing what he does best: talking nonstop.
The Brain:
(Thinking: Got to speak in antiquated tropes,
pre-memes and metalanguages
and undeconstructed syntagms,
but that’s the only
parole and langue coding that
my ol’ prefrontal-cortex-challenged friend Soul
gets.)
Toward an Ecological Civilization: A Manifesto for the 21st Century
By Christopher Bernard
I am no moral authority—am neither a rabbi nor an imam, a minister nor a pope. But, as an average straight older European American male, I am deeply concerned about a future I may see only the dark, leading edge of, but that will be affected in many small ways by the life I and others like me have lived, to say nothing of our material “afterlife”: our words and actions and their effects, which will last long after our physical existence is over. And so this is as much a personal statement as it is a call to thought and action.
I offer the following as a modest part of a debate we will, all of us, need to have about the long-term future of life, including the life of human beings, on earth. The phrase “ecological civilization” is not a new one; it has become current over the last several years in a number of environmental circles, though its first official use may have been by the Sino-German Environment Partnership, which in 2012 used the phrase to describe the heart of its mission.
That we need to create a way of life in better balance with nature if we as a species hope to have a tolerable future is something most of us, I suspect, would agree on. I will not waste time in describing and trying to justify the sense that we are in a plight that is indeed dire, possibly as great as the human race as a whole has ever faced. The question is how to achieve that new balance. I describe below several basic goals to keep in mind as we take thought on how to act to face a crisis that will drastically affect the future life of the human species, even its survival, and the fate of all of life on earth.
In the following I sometimes take a deliberately provocative tone; I do this to inspire response and engagement, not in mere comments on the internet, but in the analog world where we live, breathe and have our being—and where we will decide how, and if, we will live in the future.
