Feel free to ignore this post.  It consists mainly of me trying to organize my thoughts as to why I am equal parts annoyed and bored by what I’ve seen so far of B St. Theatre’s season (full disclosure: the materfamilias bought season tickets).

As far as I can tell, the theme of this season is “heartwarming moral comedies for middle-class white people.”  The plays so far have consisted of:

- Sarah, Sarah

- The Book of Liz, and

- A Skull in Connemara.

Now let me say at the outset that all of the performances have been sold out — or nearly so.  So obviously they knew their market.  And that’s a good thing, right?

I suppose…

The first play simply bored me.  As far as I can recall — and I should stress that it has been some months –  it was “an inter-generational tear-jerker” about (a) a son with an overbearing mother who (I think) strenuously objected to his choice in a wife, and (b) said son and his daughter going to China to find an (of course) preciously mal-treated little baby for the (unmarried) daughter to adopt.  There was something in there about either the daughter being named for the overbearing (grand)mother, or the Chinese baby being named for the overbearing (great-grand)mother. 

That’s about all I remember, since there was essentially no character arc, and very little in the way of plot development.  It had the feel of a barely-dressed-up piece of authorial therapy/autobiography. 

Now the second play wasn’t boring so much as crashingly predictable. 

Anyone with half a brain could see the “big surprise” coming from, oh, the first 30 seconds (I wish I were lying).  The rest consisted of rather plodding send-ups of deliberately archaic Protestant sects, homosexuals, and the cult of A.A.. 

“Hilarity,” in other words, did not ensue.

Please, Amy Sedaris, give us something better.  We like you, we really, really, like you.  I swear.  Quite apart from your brother.  And we know you can produce good work.

The third play annoyed the bejazus out of me. 

Problem #1: accents.  As Ms. Sonya Renee Memmering (who, whatever her faults, knew her theatre theory down f*cking cold) so wisely put it: you aren’t fooling anybody, so don’t even try. 

Problem #2: this is a play that involves cursing, blasphemy, alcoholism, grave desecration, and attempted murder.  And yet, and yet, people brought their children to see it (to be fair, the children they brought were generally in their teens).  Whatever — at least it wasn’t portraying (hushed tones, please!) 

homoseck-shualitay!!! 

That would, of course, be intolerable. 

This brings me to Problem #3: the play obviously, and painfully, appeals to people with last names that begin with vowels and who have first names like “Maureen” and “Danny.”  I guess that the people who brought their kids to the play wanted to show them (the kids, I mean) their “heritage.”  Or something.  

As a subset of this problem (call it problem 3A), there were four — count them, four — people of color in the audience.  I counted.  Because, you know, that’s what sociologists do.  If I had to guess, one of these brave non-white audience members was Chinese-American.  One (an usher, actually) was Japanese-American.  Two might have been either Hispanic or Filipino.  

Now I will be the first to admit that the theatre, like most of the performing arts, is a segregated space.  And I will freely confess that, after living in Texas, my visceral reaction to being in a room full of white people is to think to myself “f*ck.  Ya get too many crackers in one place and you can bet your bottom dollar some evil shit is about to go down.”  But PLEASE, people.  This is Sacramento — we are supposed to be better than that. 

This brings me to Problem #4: this play, quite obviously, consists of self-referential therapy (hmmmm… I descry a theme here…) written by an Irishman living in England.  Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with that, of course — I love’s me my G.B. Shaw, after all.  However, the particular form which said self-referential therapy takes consists of displaying on stage — and thus appealing to — every last stereotype held by Brits about their former papish subjects.  To wit: a bunch of superstitious, lazy, violent, stupid, boozehound Micks (this being, in point of fact, one character’s name) with nothing better to do but die, drowned in buckets of their own urine.

Now this wouldn’t be so much of a problem if I were, in point of fact, an Englishman, watching this play, in England.  Then the whole complex post-colonial position might actually be, you know, interesting.  You know of what I speak, don’t you?  Don’t you?  The position of audient-as-subject paying good money to see a play.  Said money having been derived, ultimately, from the brutal expropriation of the labor-power of the playwright’s ancestors, by the forbears of the audience members. This whole transferral of intergenerationally-derived assets/poverty thus forming a symbolic, and thus pathetic, kind of reparations.

Or, if you want to refine the point, this theatrical experience WOULD have been interesting, IF my “actual” forbears had “actually” been engaged in in the bodily exploitation of the ancestors of the playwright. To say the same thing differently, this would have been an interesting play if, and only if, I could have been placed in the position, as audience member, of spending two hours delectating in the portrayal of my erstwhile oppressive-objects displaying the excessive, and thus worst, results of centuries of exploitation by “me” and “my” ancestors.  The end result of which is that “you,” as actor, act like a drunken shambling fool so that I, as audience, can laugh at your antics. 

In sum, shuck and jive, bitch.  I pays good money to laugh at you, motherf*cker.

However, I am not now an Englishman.  I am an American — or to be precise about the matter, an American who can “credibly” claim, on both sides, to be descended from “Scots-Irish.” That is to say, the Murrays and Thompsons who bestrew my family tree like so much underwatered and underripe fruit, were the Protestant po-white trash of Eire. 

The problem here, of course, lies in the fact that when I, from my specific point of subjectivity, watch this play, my immediate reaction is to say “Goddamn I’m glad my ancestors fled that horror.  Thank God we’re better/smarter/etc. than that.”

My immediate reaction, in other words, is basically of a piece with the “heart-warming,” easy moral lessons of the other two plays I’ve seen so far.  Be nice.  Don’t be mean.  Religious extremism is bad.  Alcohol is a dangerous drug. Etc., etc.

My immediate reaction, in other words, is to listen to the throbbing rythms (god love a word that looks Welsh, with its “y” and its thoth, but is actually Greek in origin) of drums and harps, and to start clapping my hands and getting jiggy with the bard.

Saints preserve us, this is not the lesson “we” as Americans, or Californians, or Sacramentans, need to learn from this play. 

The lesson that should be taught involves calling into question our own position as Americans vis-a-vis the exploitation we visit upon the bodies of “others” every day and every way of our current lives.  This would, almost certainly, involve instituting some version of “race-blind” casting, the end result of which is that either the alcoholc grave digger, or the sub-clinical imbecilic grave-digger’s assistant, is cast as mexican, or black or — heavan forfend – arab.  Were the web of post-colonial subjectivities portrayed in the text actually, you know, relevant to a white American upper middle-class audience, then the interpretive superstructure of the play might actually be, oh say, interesting to a descendant of the colonial ubermensch.

Who is, after all, paying the fucking bill. 

Let me say it again, for the simple minded: if you want my attention, punch me in the fuckin’ nuts, asshole.  I only respond to pain. 

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When your boss pulls you aside and says the following:

“Don’t defer so much.  People will take it as weakness.  Trust me, I know.  I’m from New Jersey.”

Specifically, the lesson was in regards to whom to refer to by their title (basically the person who was appointed by Governor, and everyone whom he in turn directly appoints) and to whom I should address by their first name (pretty much everyone else).  In other words: whom, specifically, should I flatter?  And to whom, specifically, should I condescend?

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So I drove by Sac High the other day — not on my own, mind you.  Rather because one of my colleagues was dropping off her son for athletic practice.  I would have preferred to maintain my illusions about the good that I should think was being accomplished on that site.

I was… kind of saddened by what I saw. 

Now mind you, I am under no illusions as to the state of the surrounding neighborhood when we went there, nor am I under any illusions regarding my actual experience of the neighborhood at that time, since if memory serves I generally was scooped up and delivered from thence as soon as either school or rehearshal was done.  And never mind that while there this past Friday I witnessed a rather dramatic hit-and-run accident (non-injury, thankfully), perpetrated by a quite obviously screamingly high gentleman, that necessitated my invoking white privilege and calling the CHP.

Yes, never mind all that.  See, here’s what I don’t get: I distinctly do not recall the school being surrounded by both a cordon sanitaire of chain-link as well as a 6-foot cast-iron bar fence.  The good hausfrauen of East Sac did not, to my recollection, demand the building of a bloody wall to defend their precious white children from the menacing hordes of Oak Park.

I also distinctingly recall there being tennis courts.  Those do not exist, having been covered over by temporary buildings.

I also recall the existence of bike cages in what otherwise would have been deep center field for the baseball diamond.  Those too are gone and replaced by temporary buildings.

I seem to remember there being a rather wide parking lot for the students.  Now there is a narrow asphalt drive leading up to what was once known as the Pavilion.  An entire line of parking spaces is now covered over by a rank of container storage units (contents unknown).

Finally, I distinctly recall the existence of a rather pleasing, if functional, aspect when one approached the front entrance: tall, narrow panes of glass that formed a 1.5 story curtain wall of light, a good fifty feet wide — an open invitation to enter in and examine the interior of the school.  A befitting metaphor, I should think, for any institution of public education (also, it was an architectural motif which perhaps unconciously echoed the tall, narrow, quasi-Craftsman buildings of Sac City College). 

Gone, all gone. 

Replaced by an overhanging curtain of cheap tin gimcrackery that completely obscures the windows of the Commons Area and gives the entire place the rather malodorous air of a mid-range rehab clinic.

I am… well, to be quite honest, I am kind of puzzled and confused. 

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I received on Wednesday that rarest of joys, a phone call from the lovely and talented Miss TLCNYC.  She pitched what I think is a capital idea. 

Would ya’ll be interested in a wine-tasting chez RBL the evening after the Administrator’s fete?  (meaning, I assume, that Friday).  We’ll provide a baseline lineup of the major varietals; if you can make this, your task is to bring either (a) an appetizer, or (b) a bottle of your favorite wine.  This will be a full-on bourgiefied blind-taste marathon.  Depending on how many people come, a spitoon will be provided for those lacking wooden legs and/or cast-iron livers.

Administrator, I should defer to you as to timing.  If Saturday works best for your crowd, please say the word — I’m flexible.

UPDATE: Friday night festivities will occur at the Administrator’s manse.  However, it will (I believe) still be a wine-and-munchies event.  Stay tuned for deets from the host.

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So I had my first mid-term today.  As my students were filing out, I asked a few, sotto voce what they thought of the test.  Five out of six said some version of the following:

“Oh, it was fine.  But it concentrated more on the lectures.  I was expecting to be tested on the reading.”

Translation: we did the reading, bitch.  Why ain’t you tested us on that?  (note: I did test on the reading, just not on all of it).

Say what you will about the public schools of California.  They produce students who actually do the work.

In other words, they produce young adults with what most people would call good character, not to mention a fine work ethic.

My former students?  I made them read Weber’s “Protestant Ethic” and they fairly rebelled, giving me the lowest evaluations of all my four years in that, AHEM, Christian university.

Needless to say, I am loving this shit.

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Moment one: you’re driving down 10th st. at 9 p.m. on a Monday night — let me repeat, a Monday night — and a coffee joint is packed with salonistes, a “Euro” bar has (some) patrons, and one of the best Japanese restaurants in the city has its doors open for business.

Moment two: you stop in a burger joint at the corner of Arden and Fair Oaks — deep, deep in suburban hell — and order fries.  The fries come slathered in garliciousness so strong it burns the tongue.

Yes, it is a fact: there is a little frisson of joy that goes down my neck each and every day.  Joy at the simple fact of living here.  This is a good place, full of good people.

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