Desdemona, Othello, and the Vigilantes of Texas

The last two days of news from Texas have Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" on many a woman's minds.

First, restrict the vote, in particular to ensure the 3 million unregistered voters of color do not have access to the ballot.

Then pass a law encouraging citizens to turn women and health care providers (and Uber drivers!) in for abortion.

Finally, pass another law allowing same citizens to carry guns without permits.

Can you say "white male vigilantes" are in charge in Texas?!

With deep implications for democracy in the rest of this nation.

"The Handmaid's Tale" is, of course, not the only art work depicting the horrors of patriarchy out-of-control -- or the ways misogyny and racism intersect to maintain white male power structures.

Shakespeare had his eye on these dynamics 400 years ago when he wrote "Othello." Paula Vogel amplified this story and gave it even deeper meaning in her 1993 take on it from the women's perspective, "Desdemona, the story of a handkerchief." Most recently and certainly not least, in 2011 eminent author Toni Morrison took on Desdemona's relationship with the African nurse who raised her.

Opera House Arts in Stonington was therefore rather prescient, really, in booking a double bill of "Othello" and "Desdemona, a play about a handkerchief" as part of their 2021 outdoor/pandemic summer season.

Since "Othello" is read in many a high school English Language Arts class, I hope you are familiar with its story of an embittered, resentful White man, Iago, lying and scheming to bring down his heroic Moorish/Black general, Othello, by falsely enraging his jealousy to the point of murdering his own beloved wife, Desdemona.

From left, Ellis Greer as Desdemona, Imani Youngblood as Bianca,
and Esther Williamson as Emilia in  Opera House Arts' 2021
production of Paula Vogel's "Desdemona, a play
about a handkerchief," directed by Julia Sears.
Photo courtesy Opera House Arts.

It's an all-too-classic story, unfortunately, of how the power struggles between men often lead to domestic and sexual violence and the murder of women.

Vogel, an award-winning playwright, correctly determined 30 years ago that the female characters voices needed to be centered and heard: not only Desdemona's, but her servant Emilia's, wife to Iago; and Bianca's, the courtesan lover of competing soldier Cassio. As the play gives them place and power, I was unsurprised to find that play's white male reviewers pretty much universally loathed it.

Yet what Vogel achieves, with excellent direction at OHA by multidisciplinary feminist theater maker Julia Sears, is a searing, funny, and yes, painful expose of women's experiences, relationships, and conversations, unseen by the male gaze in the kitchens and laundry rooms that remain a far cry away from legislative halls.

Vogel portrays youthful love interest Desdemona (Ellis Greer) as the spoiled and entitled princess she historically most likely was -- but also an entrapped woman seeking rebellion by controlling her own sexuality. She is anchored by her working class servant, Emilia (Esther Williamson), who in Vogel's world is able to well and humorously articulate the patriarchal vise in which all three women find themselves. Williamson is particularly masterful in her delivery of her disgust with Desdemona's class-based entitlement, and her analysis of the danger her lady's behavior is creating for them both. As Bianca, Sears' choice of Imani Youngblood to return to OHA in this small but vital role also opened up live musical opportunities that deepened the overall emotional impact of the production.

Vogel, Sears, and these three women provided, for three weeks of August in the woods of Nervous Nellie's on Deer Isle, a sharp and too hidden window into women's experiences behind the scenes of the male dominant culture -- one we desperately need to experience, understand, and listen to if we hope to fight off the violent, controlling, and armed Texas rangers in their wish to remain ascendant.

#maine

#liveperformance

#shakespeare

#othello

#texas

#desdemona

#paulavogel

#abortionrights

The Many Mysteries of Mary

Mary Urban Endrich holding
Linda Louise Nelson
on her first day home.

I've spent a lot of time lately staring at family photos.

Many of these photos are more than 100 years old, taken at the turn of the 20th century. Some pre-date that and traveled here from Bohemia in the late 19th century, or were taken in New York City studios during that same period as boats landed from Bremen and other European ports.

I've started with my grandmother Mary Urban Endrich whom, as you may remember from previous posts, was of great import to me. My parents built their house next door to hers, on a portion of the 15+ acres of Endrich land purchased by her husband, Richard, in 1919 and which she deeded to them.

She was 63 years old in this photo on the day I was first brought to my adopted home from Catholic Charities. This photo, from October 1961, was taken on the back steps -- forever unfinished -- of the house my parents built.

Mary had a large garden that formed the buffer between our house and hers. In this second photo you can see her standing tall amongst zinnias and sunflowers with our 1950's pink ranch in the background. In addition to the flowers, bouquets of which she sold with my toddler "assistance" from a roadside table along the main route running up the Connecticut River between Old Saybrook and Middletown, where I was born; New Britain, where my dad was from; and Hartford, the state capital, Mary also grew squash, cucumbers, corn and tomatoes which fed us all summer and into the fall.

Mary in her garden, Old Saybrook, CT

I am trying to write the myth of who I am. Birthed by a French speaking, 18-year-old daughter of rural Quebecois immigrants, raised by Swedes and Bohemians.

Mary was my primary Bohemian.

"Send the little girl over!" she'd bellow to my mother in her everyday stage voice across the garden and away I'd go down the small hill and along the mowed path on my stubby legs. Especially after the arrival of my brother, also adopted, when I was two and a half, it seems I was at Mary's every day: learning to read, to write, to play her made up game of Stars with paper, pencils, and a breadcrumb, to explore the attic with her, to problem solve, learning to phone home and unlock the door when she went into one of her "states."

Her father, Frantisek, took work as a butcher in the East Village when they first landed in NYC in 1892 but between 1900 and 1910 he was able to buy a farm in Killingworth, CT, and was thereafter recorded in census documents as a self-employed farmer. Mary came by her gardening honestly. You can see that one of the early photos of her in the collage below is posed with two other girls in a cabbage patch!

I was unaware that cameras were popularly available beginning in 1900 when the first Brownie was invented. Every snapshot taken of us as kids was taken on my Mom's Eastman Kodak Brownie, a far cry in the 1960's from the humble box camera my grandmother's family obviously owned once they got to Connecticut.

A Brownie 2 Camera
circa 1910.

And still. These cardboard box cameras, which churned out photos of my young, beautiful, charismatic, energetic grandmother from age 18 through her marriage at 22, cost around $3, the equivalent of $82 today.

Not bad for farmers.

In addition to their existence, the photos expose a sense of prosperity one no longer assumes belongs to farmers at the beginning of the 20th century. In these photos, Mary is decked out in numerous stylish hats, dresses, and lace. Her brothers in high collars and ties, lace curtains as their backdrop.

Who is this Mary? I never saw her in all these hats, never saw her in anything more than simple farm house dresses. Where did the money come from for the Urban's to "buy the farm"? How did she meet my grandfather, Richard, who on his 1917 WWI draft registration card described himself as a ship fitter and seems to have come to Essex, CT from the Bronx to work at the Dauntless Shipyard? Who, in July of 1919, purchased the 15+ acres on the Essex/Old Saybrook town line on which my mother, aunt, and uncle were born and on which I grew up? They married the next year, on November 24, 1920. Richard was 31, 10 years older than Mary.

Richard was gone, of colon cancer, by the time of my arrival. But my uncle Richie, and several of Richard's siblings, all worked at the Pratt-Reed piano works in Ivoryton. No more shipyards.

The many mysteries continue.

The many mysteries of Mary.

First Principles: Do No Harm

Cute dog photo: the look of love.

Here is how we're living these days. Everywhere, in every village across the U.S.

In a public meeting and again in an OpEd to our local weekly newspaper, our neighbor Mr. Freeman felt justified in throwing the partisan term "cancel culture" at those who have asked him and elected officials to stop harming others with their public speech.

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of such divisiveness. I want us to remember that to enter the polis, or public realm, we do so to find common ground amongst our differences, and to be kind toward and compassionate of our imperfect selves.

When we enter the public realm either as elected officials or participating citizens, we are required to be self-aware, to understand how our personal beliefs and the ways we express them cause harm to others, and to vow to reduce and limit that harm.

Participating in the public realm requires intentionality, welcome, listening, generosity, the ability to ask for as well as to give forgiveness, and, most importantly, a conscious understanding of how harm happens and the desire to do no harm. 

There can be no single holders of "truth" in the public realm: as the German-Jewish philosopher of the Holocaust Hannah Arendt noted, "truth" is something we build between each other and our differences.

Those who believe they are holders of a single "truth" are playing god in a way that lacks humility and causes harm to those not like themselves. It is no one's place to judge in a way that holds anyone else in a less equal place.

We are united and graced by the same animating spirit of this world. This shared spirit is the foundation on which our public speech and actions must rest. All humans, regardless of the color of their skin, their gender, or whom they love are sacred and worthy of sacrament and justice.

As a proud and lifelong queer person, I've personally experienced the deep and lasting harm caused by speech that dehumanizes me by saying I am not worthy of certain basic rights. For my survival, I've learned to question whether my and others' humanity is equitably served by those who proudly profess beliefs that discriminate against us.

Mr. Freeman wants the right to proclaim his own "Biblical truth" not just in his church or home but in the public square. Yet this highly personal reading of the Bible judges that I and others are not worthy of the human dignity of equal access to the rights, benefits and sacrament of marriage. This speech, repeated again in Mr. Freeman's OpEd, dehumanizes queer people and causes harm: harm he does not intend, but of which he must become aware.

Dehumanizing Black and Indigenous peoples as "animals" and "savages" unworthy of the rights of literacy, marriage, property ownership, etc. is how U.S. white culture has justified and implemented centuries of genocide, enslavement, and mass incarceration.

Dehumanizing speech includes that some are “sinners” to be saved by others, and leads to bullying, harassment, and sometimes death. Queer people are followed, bullied, beaten up, thrown off bridges, tied to fences. We've been kept from our sick and dying loved ones because we cannot marry. We've been kept from jobs or the health care we need because of how we look or who we love.

The division of church and state structured into our public realm is crucial in a world in which some religions encourage their participants to be the judge and jury over others, rather than to live in the fullness of a grace that unites the living world.

Public officials are asked to resign when the people they represent no longer trust they can uphold the common good.

Simply saying "I'm sorry" for patterns of behavior are not enough for those who have been harmed to believe we will not continue to be harmed. We must hear that the people representing us understand how harm is caused, and clearly state that not only will they discontinue such speech into the future but also evaluate their decisions to be sure they treat everyone equally. 

Requests for resignation could and should prompt opportunities for listening, meaningful dialogue and forgiveness. Unfortunately, too often such calls only generate defensiveness and partisan rhetoric, which in turn limit learning and understanding.

Asking for the resignation of a public official is not "cancelling" or condemning them. It is an action that speaks to the seriousness of the harm, all the past harm, and the potential for future harm; and is made to generate and make visible real understanding of what must be forgiven.

As a practicing Catholic I am fully aware of the serious limitations and imperfections of religious institutions. I am also aware of the power of grace to unite us beyond the individual readings of scripture and actions that are used to divide us.

It seems to me that rather than a single "Biblical truth" we are better served by acting on the larger values embodied by the Christ, Buddha, Allah, and other spiritual teachers.

Love everyone. Actively seek justice and mercy. Ask for forgiveness. Do no harm.

#truth

#religion

#sacraments

#donoharm

Look with the Heart

"One must look with the heart for the eyes are blind."

This is composer Maia Aprahamian's grand finale to her children's opera version of Saint-Exupery's classic novel, "The Little Prince." I hope you had the opportunity to read it in junior high school French class, as did I! This story with its small royalty from a tiny distant star, roses, snake, and endearingly knowing fennec fox is a magical tale that helps us to know there is much more to this world than the grim realities with which we are daily presented.

Bagaduce Music's concert of Maia's music from its archives Thursday night at Edgewood Farm vividly returned Maia's smile and joie de vivre to my heart and mind.

Composer Maia Aprahamian in 2009 in the
Deer Isle-Stonington School.

Her bright blue eyes twinkled as she created a new musical work, glittered in school as she rigorously supported students in crafting lyrics and musical motifs. It was my great pleasure to work with her, accompanying her into our schools for two years during the creation of Opera House Arts' commission of her chamber opera version of Robert McCloskey's island classic, "Burt Dow, Deep Water Man." 

Maia, an active member of the Greek Orthodox Church, exemplified this observation from the writer Julia Cameron:

"We are, each of us, more than we seem, more than the sum of our merely human components. There is a divine spark animating each of us, and that divine spark also animates our art."

It surely animated Maia's art.

Thursday evening's concert of Maia's "Little's" was a presentation of excerpts from three of her full-length works written with and/or for children and their families: The Little Prince, The Little Engine that Could, and The Little Match Girl.

Maia recognized the community power behind each of these three classic tales, from the hard-working optimism of the Little Engine who can do new things not previously tried to the critiques of oppressive adult society painted enchantingly and everlastingly by Saint-Exupery's and Anderson's fables.

A member of Stonington's Whitman family, Maia took back her original Armenian family name of Aprahamian. She, like we as founders of Opera House Arts (OHA), had a strong passion for presenting complex performances to be enjoyed by children alongside the adults in their families; i.e., music and theater and vaudeville and dance complicated enough to be enjoyed by all generations together. Together and with the Whitman family's enduring support, we created the Live for $5 Series at OHA to weekly fulfill this mission and to ensure that children as well as adults had access to the highest quality and most diverse performance forms. I remember the lunch at Lily's Cafe in which we talked through this concept of wanting to give young audiences something greater than the live performances to which they generally had access. Artists such as Avner the Eccentric or the playwright Mike Gorman's absurdist Biffing Mussels or Headlong Dance Theater were just a few of those who have graced the Live for $5 stage. 

Biffing Mussels in Live for $5 on stage at
the Stonington Opera House, featuring
community cast with Tommy Piper and
Melody Bates, seated.

Music can help us carry with us in perpetuity our visceral understanding that we are but tiny specks in a grand universe, the mystery of which only our imaginations can conceive and express through art. When we leave the theater humming, or singing together the final refrain, we have taken that mystery and magic into our hearts where, like the little prince's rose, they must be watered and cared for. For as the fox told the prince, "Anything essential is invisible to the eyes."

Or as Maia wrote, and the audience sang along with Thursday's wonderful singers under the direction of music director Peter Szep in full, four-part harmony to close the concert:

One must look with the heart, for the eyes are blind

One must seek with the heart, for the heart to find

For the eyes of the heart give vision to the reason

And the ears of the heart give music to the mind

One must look with the heart, for the eyes are blind.

Live Long and Prosper: the Power of Performance

Dr. Ruth E. Grauert -- otherwise known to her familiars as Reg -- was a choreographer, lighting designer, production stage manager, dance critic and, with her life partner Frances Reid, founder of Bearnstow, a camp on Parker Pond in Mt. Vernon, Maine.

Reg lived to be 101, passing away just a year ago on May 20, 2020.

You can watch and be inspired by her dancing at age 100 here.

Reg and her legacy bear strong witness to the power of performance in our lives.

I'm sad and embarrassed to admit that, despite our firm commitment to contemporary dance for 17 years at Opera House Arts, we were too busy to experience this place, and her, in Reg's lifetime.

Thanks, however, to an invitation from my Maine performing arts colleague Laura Faure, I had the amazing good fortune to visit Bearnstow a week ago. The camp had finished its sessions for area students in July, and was between workshops for adults with two dancers I much admire: Clair Porter on "Writing and Moving" and K.J. Holmes on "Combining Disciplines for Creative Performance."

Of the 17 people at the camp during my visit, several had been engaged with Bearnstow for many years. Two in particular captured my imagination: a woman, first brought to camp by her mother in the 1970's, on her annual stay with her own two kids; and the great human, dancer, and choreographer Bebe Miller, chair of the Bearnstow board -- who had also grown up there beginning in the late 1950's when her mother was the camp nurse from Red Hook, Brooklyn. 

I found the depth of the connections between these two, their families, and Reg and Bearnstow to be very moving. Like the long lives of the loons that proliferate on the camp's lake, the place's long history creates a rich humous, many layers of smells and vitality and creativity that hum with fertility through the buildings and the paths between them.

The place itself is, as one of the generational attendees noted, remarkable for its stillness. Like many traditional Maine sporting camps, as an example of which it is on the National Register of Historic Places, it is a congregation of small wooden cabins along a densely forested lake shore. From the water, the cabins are barely visible through the spruce woods that, as Bebe remembers, once mixed with many birch, the decaying white-skinned remnants of which line the pathways and litter the forest floor.

In contrast to this long steady stillness of purpose and being, the mainstream White U.S. culture that is my own heritage is so much about change, the "melting pot" that is Whiteness: about letting go of connections to one's past, one's language, and even one's ancestors. I've experienced this phenomenon as an adopted child working to piece together family histories of first generation grandparents and parents. So much is lost; the dirt beneath our feet unnecessarily thin.

But this land's native peoples, and those who were brought here as enslaved labor, know and acknowledge the power of ancestors. We gain depth when we know and love our roots, when we pay tribute to all those who made it possible for us to be here to create the newness we each create. We wouldn't be here without these ancestors and places, and how much more delightful to gratefully know and honor their stories and lives that we may, from the layers of accruing soil, create more complex and meaningful art and lives ourselves?

Reg's long life and the legacy she has left make all this visible -- she indeed lived long and prospered -- for those who wish to see with our hearts as well as our eyes.

Laura, Bebe, Molly, Alison, Peter and others are working to build on and to extend this legacy into the future, so we, too, as well as those who follow us may experience the deep, generous creativity that is Bearnstow Camp.

To learn more about Bearnstow and Reg, check out the Bearnstow Journal. Most recently, Maine journalist Bob Keyes wrote a great article on the camp in the Portland Press Herald.

#dance

#liveperformance

#bearnstow

#mainecamps