Theater and evolution, or why the Roc is no Dodo
For some of us, Shakespeare’s observation that all the world’s a
stage and all the men and women merely players (from As You like It), is triumphal.
That’s because we have something to say that is truthful and universal.
To be sure, our flesh, blood and bones go through changes, morph-ing
from supple youth to saggard decrepitude. It is this physical
transformation which Shakespeare
had in mind. But the image of people as actors touches upon the spirit of
humanity, upon a something that transcends a single, mortal
life. To say there are actors
is to presume an audience. To presume an audience is to acknowledge there
is listening and the possibility of an effect occasioned by
that listening. At its
most sublime, performance fulfills a sacred rite prompting purposeful social
change.
In his thin but meaty text, The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis
describes something which distinguishes the human being from
all other life. Whereas other beings
are, people, at their best, are becoming. To illustrate: a particular species
of plant or animal is in its daily living utterly fulfilling what it is
to be itself. In contrast is the human being whose behavior
constantly stirs
the sensibilities
of others to speak in moral terms. We speak of fairness, of justice, and
of equity, meaning that some human behavior is more acceptable than other.
We
seek to adjust
others’ and our own behavior to the end of eliminating all or some measure
of of what we call unjust behavior in social relationships.
Theater sometimes assumes the task of officiant in stirring human
beings to change their behavior such that they become more
just. In short, we
human beings labor
to become better human beings. Dogs are dogs and elephants are elephants,
but humans become more humane.
Because some of us assert that ceremony, performance and art
surpass mere exposition in guiding human spirit, the Henry
George School of Northern
California maintains
an active commitment to performance programming.
Art can touch the imagination in a way that linear argument finds
difficult. Consider the Roc and the Dodo, for instance. Let
the mythical Roc,
a huge bird of fierce character, an archetype of winged power, stand
for
art.
And against
this place the Dodo, representing rational thought, a slow, unwitting,
flightless bird that actually passed into oblivion on account of
man’s rapacity.
The former funded a story in The Arabian Nights, while the latter
serves (undeservedly, perhaps) as a butt of mean humor.
To launch friends, neighbors and fellow citizens upon a georgist
quest for justice, expect that employing the Roc rather than
the Dodo, art
rather than
mere words,
will prove more eventful.
And so, what follows is the briefest of introductions to two
scripts written as georgist art. The scripts became plays at
a k-8 school in
San Francisco
that has served as a workshop for developing georgist curriculum.
First let’s take a peek at Wonders never cease, performed by 5th graders
(and one other) for an audience of 190.
The story concerns four historical European explorers from before
the 19th century uniting to lead a walking tour of the Arctic.
Sir Francis Drake, Henry Hudson, Vitus Bering, and James Cook
each spent time in northern polar waters looking for an ice-free
passage
over North
America
to Asia from Europe. No such passage existed during the years they
were afloat, but these men made extraordinary sightings, nevertheless.
Though
there was
scant
overlap in their careers, the renown and prestige sure to redound
to whomever found the shortcut to Asiatic markets generated a rivalry
between these
men, and it is the craving after fame that drives the play’s plot. . . but
from an unexpected quarter.
When Drake introduces his fellow mariners to the native peoples
of the Puget Sound region he hardly expects that his undoing
is at hand.
Before
he can
object he’s been stripped of all clothing but his knickers by Indians who believe
he’s throwing a potlatch. Amongst the leading families of the Northwest
tribes it was customary to periodically give all one’s wealth away in an
ostentatious party atmosphere. These potlatches proved one’s high status,
but were possible because of a convention unique to the totemic peoples, namely
private title to land and fishing waters! It helped that all leading families
were expected to return the party favor orgy and feed the landless at their
own carnivals, but at bottom these blow-out festivals occurred because of Rent-gotten
gain.
But let’s let the characters spell it out.
Native man #1
The local custom, young one, is for those who have lots of stuff
to prove it by giving it away.
Hudson’s son
Everything?
Native man #1
Everything we’ve made or been given or, a-hem, taken.
Vitus Bering
Very interesting. But how do you replenish your own stuff again?
Native man #2
Well, there is one thing we can’t make more of.
Native man #1
One thing we can’t reproduce.
Native man #2
One thing no number of slaves nor of our renters can fashion.
Drake
Something no one can make?
Cook
AS HE STEPS FROM BEHIND AN ICEBERG Ah!
Vitus
Who’s there?
Cook
I’ve got it!
Drake
Who is this?
Native man #2
Who are any of us -spirits without a home- without what we’re
speaking of?
Cook
Exactly! Land!
As Drake grows bellicose in demanding his clothes back,
the natives direct him to leave their land free from
European claim, return
to England,
and start collecting
his own rent other Englishman.
When the Europeans object that their exertions are
merely to nobly serve science and discover new lands,
the natives
retort
sarcastically.
Native man #1
Call up the historians! Write up a press release! Hold
the presses! Captain Cook has found Australia!
Native man #2
Utterly lost without him. And what about North America?
Native man #1
Missing, missing. Like the buffalo. No one would ever
have known that buffalo existed unless one lay splayed,
deboned
and gutless
on the
cool stone floor
of a mighty mansion. A rug in the marble foyer.
No glorious georgist denouement brings a warm glow
to the cyclorama in the drama. Instead, the explorers
disappear
into the frigid arctic fog
of the
realm called
history. And rather than a politically correct bashing
of the explorers ringing down the curtain, a triste,
lilting
song
celebrates the
adventurous spirit
of humanity that has us want to know all about this
world we inhabit:
Over the water to where I don’t know
Like a duck on the wing I blow.
No place in partic’lar I care to call home
For the world, the whole world, the round world takes
me back,
Yet it’s now, it’s now I can’t
return
To the tropics where fruit falls
Like stars spin towards dawn
And it’s gone, it’s gone where I’m from.
Seven 10 and 11 year old boys learned those lines
and that song. In the rest of their lives, the
world remaining
the
same, what’s the likelihood that
they’ll get a dose of hard-nosed land economics and, what’s
more, have it served up as anything more than one
of a dozen risible Laffer Curves?
But those costumes and those words! They wore them
and spoke them before a full house. They moved
kids and grownups
to
smile and
guffaw and
gasp and to ask what
did it mean?
The thrill of performing brought those young
thespians back to the boards this past March.
This time the
scene was a
circus. Yet a strange
circus!
Filled
with giraffes, lions and elephants, to be sure,
but also a T-Rex,
a sabre-tooth cat
and an orca. The theme seemed to be evolution,
which is to say the changing shape of lifeforms
on our
planet but,
much
more,
the play’s sublime theme was “it
takes acting like a good human to change social affairs.”
For its first twenty minutes Circus is a torrent
of species succeeding, displacing, and pursuing
one another.
The
actors snatch up animal
masks and predate one
another. But then a curious
clown enters from Stage Left. He gropes for
speech, for food, for meaning, and, as he
seizes Center
Stage, he
gropes for
control of land.
MAN: It’s right about here that I’ll
plant a crop and build a village and raise a family.
DEER: See! That used to be my neck of the
woods.
MAN: And now it’s Deer Creek Crossing Estates. A subdivision
with homes starting in the low 400s.
CIRCUS MASTER: Laddies and mothers, we have reached
the highlight of tonight’s
show. Sit back. Relax, Stay on the
edge of your seat. And watch how,
for since the dawn of agriculture
and cities, human beings gave determined
who will
get
to use habitat!
Then there follows a military tattoo
capped by one soldier slapping on
a judge’s
wig and exclaiming,
JUDGE: Property rights! The earth belongs
to IN A WHISPER who’s paying
my salary? ALL RAISE THEIR HAND BUT
ONLY ONE HAS A WALLET. Him!
The lines were spoken with experiential
vigor by boys who relish playing the
game of RISK
where the winner
takes
all. And yet,
inside the vaudevillian
fun
of territorial emperium, were more words
CIRCUS MASTER: Children of the earth!
Adults, yourselves former children!
Call that yours
which you have
made, but call that
ours which no
man made and which,
in its entirety, is home to each and
all.
And then more pratfalls. Still, those
words of righteousness were learned
and spoken
aloud before
an audience.
How else but in the
arts and in
performance can we hope to have the
public meet truths which calculating
reason
and misreason would eschew?
