Conflicts crisscross like the string game cat’s cradle. Who can maneuver the takeover without undoing the entire setup? What’s pushing the cell phone buttons? When is honesty a family value? Where does corruption begin or end? How are we all complicit? Why does ‘Post-Democracy-the stage play’ matter?
Is it despicable behavior to get irked by and do something about, or is it something to sigh over and go about my own business to do my best to grow a cohesive, caring community, find nourishing food and pay the utility bills?
I’ve been unnerved by Canadian playwright Hannah Moscovitch before as she goes about depicting a post-WWII world. Now she’s unsettled me with a searing set of questions: How have we become obsessed with being super-rich? Why is it ok to be morally impaired? This play’s title totally put me off-balance. I am familiar with a textbook under the same name: “Post-Democracy” by Colin Crouch, published in 2004, which exposes the potholes on our roadway to democracy and explores why we fail to build better in the first place. We’ve been in a deep social and economic funk for a very long time. Why? What’s not quite right with us?
Crouch defined a post-democratic society as “one that continues to have and to use all the institutions of democracy, but in which they increasingly become a formal shell. The energy and innovative drive pass away from the democratic arena and into small circles of a politico-economic elite.”
He details the workings of “The Global Firm.” On The Storefront Theatre stage, it’s in my face as four characters are in search of —or dismissive of —morality.
Alongside Crouch’s book is “Post-Intellectualism and the Decline of Democracy: The Failure of Reason and Responsibility in the Twentieth Century” by Donald N. Wood. In 1996, Wood posited, “Our society's institutional infrastructures--our democratic political system, economic structures, legal practices, and educational establishment--were all created as intellectual outgrowths of the Enlightenment.” He takes us through the stories I inhabited growing up in the mid-1930s forward: “All our cultural institutions are based on the intellectual idea that an enlightened citizenry could govern its affairs with reason and responsibility.”
What matters? When and why did we stop caring? Our constitutional forefathers AND foremothers were always in the thick of political and economic goings-on because what was happening mattered to them.
Crouch argues that the decline of those social classes which had made possible active and critical mass politics has combined with the rise of global capitalism to produce a self-referential political class more concerned with forging links with wealthy business interests than with pursuing political programs which meet the concerns of ordinary people. Seems that now, “We the People” do not matter except for being the purchasers of the goods and services meted out to us by the elite 1%. Who are they?
Onstage, I am witnessing the unraveling of the better parts of ourselves in “a society characterized by a loss of critical thinking, the substitution of information for knowledge, mediated reality, increasing illiteracy, loss of privacy, specialization, psychological isolation, hyper-urbanization, moral anarchy, and political debilitation,” according to Wood. “These post-intellectual realities are all triggered by three underlying determinants: the failure of linear growth and expansion to sustain our economic system; the runaway information overload; and technological determinism.”
“Post-Democracy,” the play by Hannah Moscovitch, is described as a “searing look at upper-class privilege, [that] asks, what does it take to confront corruption?” It is available for purchase as a book and as a play script as of April 2023. Indy’s Storefront Theatre is presenting the US premiere.
Entering the theatre space is a disorienting experience. We’re seated on risers looking down at an outlined space; a high-back easy chair, a liquor-filled trolley, a settee, behind which hang four paintings in a range of oeuvres. ‘Where’ is up to me. If I owned a smartphone, I could pull up a program. I feel I’m in a cabin on an ocean liner—at sea.
The play opens with one man on his cell phone; I’m catching a deep sense of concern. A younger man is in a state of agitation. They speak at each other in monosyllables. I catch the drift; a global matter is getting unhinged by a company member's indiscretion. And then what’s ‘just the news that's going to get old’ shifts gears into high behind-the-scenes drama. CEO Bill [the unflappable Ronan Marra, Sr.] and COO Lee [the in-overdrive Alex Oberheide] are joined by Justine [an agitated Tracy Herring], and following her stormy exit we’re in the company of Shannon [a deeply concerned Carly Wagers]. Exactly what is happening? And how are all affected by a possible not-planned outcome?
We’re witness to the art of the international takeover in a setting adrift alongside a global media report. Corporation and corruption are interchanging words spit out as if they’re twinned and twined. One goes with the other, as do mergers and marriage or lack of honesty or lack of humility.
“Leadership is really what makes the world go round,” asserts Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., in the concluding chapter of "The Cycles of American History." “
Love no doubt smoothes the passage, but love is a private transaction between consenting adults," he reminds us, adding, "Leadership—the capacity to inspire and mobilize masses of people—is a public transaction.”
We each have a responsibility to be attentive. The question of who matters is part of our story. We each matter; if we abdicate our responsibility to be involved, we indeed will not matter, and we’ll have no mention of the significance of breathing the air. When Edgar Lee Masters wrote “Spoon River Anthology,” he showed us exactly why/how we, the ordinary people, matter in our lifetimes and for succeeding generations.
If you don’t mind being unsettled, or if you do care about being undervalued, attend this one-hour expose’ by Canadian-based playwright Hannah Moscovitch, who writes across borders. She came upon the scene in 2005 with a bruising series of scripts that remind us we have choices—pay attention or live/die with the consequences of not being cared about. Who among us wants to be 'unremembered'?
Noble thoughts so easily are undermined by ignoble activity.
What is our crucial role as ordinary citizens in a democracy? What lures us to play our part in this noblest of all ideals that kicked off in 1775? When The British Colonies separated, Canada remained loyal to the Crown. To whom - for what - do we Americans remain loyal?
===
Coming up:
January 28th, 2023, 7:30 p.m., Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, A Winter Playlist.
Schrott Center for the Arts: 610 W. 46th St., Indianapolis, IN 46208
Tickets and information at: www.icomusic.org or call us at 317-940-9607
This concert features conductor and Indiana native Kazem Abdullah, whose family has called Indiana home for generations.
Concert Program
Premiere of Cold Mountain Suite, by Jennifer Higdon, Pulitzer Prize, and three-time Grammy winner;
Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2, Op. 63 in g minor; featuring Bella Hristova, a 2006 laureate of the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. She received her Artist Diploma with Jaime Laredo at Indiana University; and
Symphony No. 3 by Louise Farrenc, who was born May 31, 1804, in Paris. “Composer, pianist, researcher, editor and educator, she was praised by Berlioz and Schumann; she became the Paris Conservatoire's only 19th-century female professor of piano; she fought for equal pay as a woman, and won it,” cites Wikipedia.
February 3, 2023, at 3:30 p.m., Purdue University Parker Hall Commemorative Installation
at Frieda Parker Hall Lobby, 1196 Third Street, West Lafayette, Ind.
RSVP here
“This impressive installation tells the story of Winifred and Frieda Parker, two sisters who challenged the status quo, broke down barriers of segregation, and integrated student housing at Purdue. Their persistence for equality in education is an American legacy that paved the way for all Boilermakers to achieve their highest aspirations,” reads the news release.
African American settlements precede Indiana’s statehood; learn more at these sites:
Indiana Historical Bureau: https://www.in.gov/history/files/7015.pdf
By 1860, there were more than 60 black settlements in Indiana.
Freetown, platted in 1850, is an unincorporated community in Pershing Township, Jackson County, Indiana. The Frank Wheeler Hotel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.
“Freetown Village” is a living history museum with headquarters in Indianapolis. Its mission to educate the public about African American lives, arts, and culture in Indiana through living history, exhibits, allied programs, and the collection and preservation of artifacts. See: https://www.freetown.org/
“Our mission is to teach people about African American history and culture in Indiana,” explains founder Ophelia Wellington. “History is made by real people with feelings, dreams, emotions and desires.”
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