The Arts Fuse Newsletter, April 16
Coming Attractions, reviews of Jason Isbell's new album and a bio of Americana icon Doc Watson, Translation Spotlight, and an interview about a great American Children's Theater
From The Editor's Desk:
Wonderful to see the 1958 drama The Swamp Dwellers, by the great living playwright Wole Soyinka, so well received in its off-Broadway premiere (running through April 20). Another extraordinary living dramatist, Adrienne Kennedy, recommended the script to Theater for a New Audience. I learned that in an interview the 90 year-old Nigerian writer, winner of the 1986 Novel prize for literature, had with the NYTimes. The focus was on his disappointment with what was happening in the world, from MAGA America and Gaza, not on his career as a dramatist. There is scant mention of his finest stage works, which to my mind would include The Strong Breed (1964), The Road (1965), The Bacchae of Euripides (1973), and Death and the King’s Horseman (1975).
To my knowledge, there have been no professional productions of these plays in New England. It is an embarrassment, though our record is not entirely shameful. In 1984, Yale Rep staged the world premiere of A Play of Giants, Soyinka’s satiric expose of the inanity of autocracy via a gathering of African heads of state (including Idi Amin) and their cadres of sycophants. The drama uses absurdist humor to savage how delusions of grandeur — entwined with an insatiable will-to-power — undercut civilized values, including democracy. Soyinka is prescience about how egomania, paranoia, messianic fantasy, and unpredictability drive authoritarian repression. His romp resonates with particularly stinging force in the era of Trump.
The NYTimes’s Frank Rich did not like Soyinka’s direction of his own play, but the critic’s opening rings true after four decades: “Political satire hardly exists in the American theater anymore, and when it does, it's so mild that audiences need never run for cover. That's why it's uncommonly bracing to encounter A Play of Giants .. [which] spares no one in this farcical fantasy about African dictators at loose in New York.”
This script is one of a number of theatrical takedowns of megalomaniacal leaders Soyinka has written, including From Zia, With Love (1992), and King Baabu (2002), the latter a lively spoof inspired by Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi. Over the past two decades, Nigeria has been classified by its critics as a purported democracy, its corrupt rulers exploiting ethnic bigotry, governmental impunity, a flagrant disregard of the rule of law, and extrajudicial executions. Just this month, Soyinka protested the most recent example of presidential overreach. Given current reality, our fearful and silent stages might consider turning to — or at least being inspired by — the plays of a world-class dramatist who has diagnosed and scathingly lambasted the temperaments of anti-democratic despots.
—Bill Marx, Editor-in-Chief
Archive: From the Editor's Desk
Coming Attractions: Through April 28 — What Will Light Your Fire
Compiled by Arts Fuse Editor
Our expert critics supply a guide to film, visual art, theater, author readings, television, and music. More offerings will be added as they come in.
Album Review: Jason Isbell’s Ruminative “Foxes in the Snow”
By Matt Hanson
One thing, among others, that sets Jason Isbell apart from his country scene contemporaries is that he isn’t afraid to break the all-American code of manly stoicism.
Author Interview: Joan Lancourt on Junior Programs — Pioneers of Theater for Young Audiences
By Bill Marx
Junior Programs undertook “a visionary rethinking of the potential relationship between the performing arts and the lives of the nation’s children, with specific artistic innovations emerging organically from that rethinking.”
Translation Spotlight: The Philosopher on the Threshold
By Tess Lewis
In three books of oblique self-reflection Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben explores and exposes the artistic and intellectual thresholds that have been central to his life and to the life of his mind.
Musician Interview: Rick Berlin Talks about his New Album “WTF!?,” his Upcoming Show, and Turning 80
By Ed Symkus
Rick Berlin is about to triple dip in the area of major achievements. April 19 marks the release of the Nickel & Dime Band album WTF!?, it is the date of their performance at Brighton Music Hall, and it also marks Berlin’s 80th birthday.
Book Review: “Doc Watson: A Life in Music” — An Inspiring Story
By Gerald Peary
Check out the book to absorb the trajectory of Doc Watson’s career from impoverished guitar player to becoming an icon of Americana and a repeat winner of Grammy Awards.
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Questions, comments, concerns?
Editor-in-Chief
Bill Marx
wmarx103@gmail.com
