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Friday, 06 November 2009
I am disappointed that my friend Bill Talen did not garner more votes in the mayoral
election this week, but Bill works on the margins — not a bad place
to be at all, for it is at the margins where the most subversive and
radical work is done. In the final blog post of his campaign, the Rev keeps it
coming, reminding us in a way of what theatre can
and should be, whether
it's a rally in Union Square or a 50-seat black-box theatre in
the East Village. This one is for some Australian friends — Cynthia,
Margaret, Caroline and Sarah — who were in town tonight, who
witnessed the election on Tuesday and may be gratified by an alternative
perspective. Quoth Rev. Billy:
I'm ending our campaign today by walking through the three
downtown
parks, Washington Square, Union Square and Tompkins Square. I'll carry my
small electronic bullhorn without a permit, as I have throughout the
campaign. I'll talk to small groups of folks about how our voices carry,
and how our voices don't carry, in this strange $100 million playstation
that Bloomberg's turned our city into. And I'm glad I ran because I've
been
reminded that I'm not the only one still talking. There is a coalition of
immigrants and artists, students and bloggers and parents in the boroughs
— talking back against this expensive media wind. There is a radical
freedom in the most ordinary sounding conversations on the corner. Our
voices are carrying enough when [we] walk together, when we talk across a
subway car.
One part of our city is at war with the rest of us, and
tries to normalize this violence with thousands of hours of
family-friendly images of happy leaders. But we still have the basics
of free speech, the immanence of gestures and language in our bodies.
That's why the police study us so hard — we are considered
incendiary in our flesh. We could do anything. And in fact, gatherings of
people in their physical form in public space — that is how
history's change has always arrived.
It is from our bodies that our voices carry. If they try to
shut down our public air, well, we haven't stopped loving the acoustics in
our public places, the American sound of our rising voice.
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Superfluities
Redux home page
George Hunka
home page
theatre
minima home page
Theory and polemic
95 Sentences About Theatre (2007)
Organum I (2006-2007)
Organum
II (2008-2009)
Critique of
Tragedy (2010-continuing)
Notes
Howard Barker
1
Howard
Barker 2
Samuel
Beckett 1
Samuel
Beckett 2
Bertolt
Brecht
Richard
Foreman 1
Richard
Foreman 2
Je Suis
Sang
Sarah
Kane
Music
Marilyn
Nonken
Saint Oedipus
Contact
geh@panix.com
Copyright © 2003-2010
by George
Hunka
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