playing with politics and prejudice

What I love about Brecht’s plays is that he simplifies politics to their basest level: one-on-one human interactions. He shows us how complex political issues affect the common man. With just a ten actor cast, it makes it easier to see how the decisions of a select few in power can quickly become rhetoric and ideology for the common man to live by.

For example, not a day after Iberin’s declaration that the land should be split into two (Roundheads and Peakheads), violence commences against a Peakhead shop owner when he is “outed” by a competing grocer down the street. The people immediately use the government’s outlandish new laws to their own personal benefit, and turn neighbors into enemies at the drop of a dime.

The other thing that has struck me is how the government of Yahoo uses the politics of fear to encourage separatism. Iberin tries to make Zaks afraid of Ziks, by blaming Ziks for stealing their land, their pride, their daughters—in short, anything they are afraid of losing. Wherever a Zak finds themselves inadequate, they are to blame it on a nearby Zik.

Some of my lines as Iberin:

A fearsome foe lurks in our pleasant land,
Silently working his evil ways: the Zik!
‘Tis he who bears the blame for all your ills
‘Tis his who you must fight with all your strength…

The other thing on my mind this morning and when I first read the play was the simplicity of the racial distinction that the play is based on: you either have a rounded head or a pointed head. In modern day context, it just helps to make the segregation in the play more absurd, as no one can really tell by looking at someone what shape their head is in (unless of course aided by costume hats with points, which we will be).

It really is funny to think that people once believed you could tell character traits by the shape of one’s skull—i.e. the science of Phrenology—but it’s not so unbelievable when you consider what assumptions people once made about race in this country not 50 years ago. And here we are in Washington two days from having our first African-American president.

Ok enough intellectualizing: off to dance rehearsal! Oh yea, you didn’t know there was dance in this play huh?

dc: land of theatrical opportunity

Erica McLaughlin is an actor in the cast of Catalyst’s Roundheads and Peakheads, now in rehearsals.

A year and a half ago, I fled my safe, sound nest in the Baltimore/Washington area to head to the Big apple, with nothing in hand except big debts and big dreams of making it, well you know… big. There I experienced some successes, most impressively finding an apartment I could afford, or even better finding a job that paid me while at the same time giving me the weeks off needed to perform.

For me, in New York, there are shows here and there, lots of class work, and plenty of auditioning involved. Now, if you have told me that all that would land me back in DC to begin 2009 working on a little-known Brecht play, I would have never believed you. As much as I try to keep pulse with what is going on with theatre in other cities, particularly here in my home of the district, it is always a difficult task to make it to auditions in far away places.

And as we psuedo-New Yorkers are so Big Apple-centric, we usually just wait for the auditions to come to a studio near us. But as the economy suffers, Broadway shows continue to close, and long standing regional theatres shut their doors, actors are searching all over to find more meaningful employment, and theatre patrons must look away from the Great White Way to more cost-effective entertainment. So when I was called for a quick audition 230 miles away for the rarely produced Roundheads and Peakheads with the Catalyst Theater Company, the answer was a resounding, “Yes!”  I ran to Drama bookshop, snagged the play, hopped on a Bolt Bus, auditioned in the afternoon and was back to work in NYC that very night.

I want to be clear that it was not just economic woes that landed me back in DC though. I could certainly make it through a few months by slinging beers at my busy sports bar in Times Square. What drew me here, is what has caused me to make many of the drastic moves in my career-in fact, the same desire that drove me to New York City in the first place-the desire to do a certain kind of challenging, socially conscious, thought-provoking work: indeed to be a part of a catalytic theatre.

Now certainly there are companies who are producing this kind of work in New York-notably my recent experience with The Amoralists Theatre Company–but a glance of professional auditions from today’s  New York casting notices offer few opportunities for African American actresses with an appetite for experimental theatre. Which is what, I think, makes DC so special.

Indeed, I believe that when money woes come, penny pinching executive producers in the big city tend to go for what works for them: mainstream musicals, white-washed family dramas, old so-called “classics”,  standbys of American theatre that they think subscriber bases will still pay for during hard times. Not to say it doesn’t happen here in the district as well, but what seems to dominate the theatre scene here are plays reflective of Washington’s diverse, tight knit, politically active community. I believe these theatres will flourish during the economic crisis not because of so-called “cultured” subscriber-dictated play seasons that need a Ph.D to decipher, but because the work they portray reflects the human needs of the community. People want to see themselves on stage, and right now, pardon my slang: We all broke an’ po’ ya’ll. And so I am honored to be a part of Roundheads and Peakheads because it documents the poor man’s experience, as he is manipulated by the powers-that-be in a time of financial crisis.

And as a poor actress traveling from NY to DC to find work, I can relate.