The curtain-less stage, set for Talley’s Folly (by Jeff Cowie) is impossible to ignore. The southern weathered boathouse littered with rusted and discarded objects begs for the arrival of Miss Havisham. The small apron of the Laura Pel’s stage is festooned in large cartoon-like flowers, setting the stage if you will for this realistic play that knows it’s a play.
Lanford Wilson’s 1979 Pulitzer Prize play begins with eliminating the fourth wall. Matt Friedman (Danny Burstein) walks through the house and onto the stage and announces how long the play will be and why he’s there. He repeats his opening speech (at a higher speed) for latecomers. For audience members who cling affectionately to the fourth wall, this is somewhat terrifying. But before we have time to rethink our choices, a halting and delicate story unfolds and we are immersed, enthralled and utterly smitten. We meet Sally Talley (Sarah Paulson) whom Matt has traveled to woo. Theirs is not an easy courtship. In fact at times it would seem that whatever courtship there is only exists in Matt’s mind. Sally is a lovely blonde woman from a wealthy family that is less than thrilled with the existence of the obviously Jewish and vaguely European Matt. That the play takes place during World War II is interesting but not all that relevant. The family’s attitude is timeless as is the story of Matt and Sally. To outline what occurs between them in the course of 90 minutes would deny potential audiences the real pleasure of this play.
Mr. Burstein who if truth be told, owns any role he plays, is Matt Friedman. True the role will always conjure its creation by Judd Hirsch’s (in 1979), but Mr. Burstein is not in anyone’s shadow. He is larger than his physical self yet not in anyway overblown. He plumbs the humor while swallowing the pain. Matt Friedman could easily become pitiable, but Burstein never allows that to occur. Ms. Paulson could easily become set dressing in his presence but under Michael Wilson’s direction they shine equally upon the stage. While we at times we become frustrated by Sally, we never once doubt her. The actors capture the realism and the poetry of Matt and Sally; we ache for them and we cheer for them.
The Roundabout Theatre’s Talley’s Folly opens on March 5th
Tags: Brenda Tobias, Broadway, Danny Burstein, Jeff Cowie, Judd Hirsch, Lanford Wilson, Laura Pels, Michael Wilson, Miss Havisham, Pulitzer Prize, Review, Roundabout Theatre, Sarah Paulson, Talley's Folly, Theatre
So a book publicist and an agent walk into a bar (okay not a bar, a reception area of a media conglomerate) and discover they represent the same issue du jour. “Bring it on,” says one in a clumsy attempt to appear secure (if not woefully out of date with her slang.) “This will be fun” says the other in what can only be called utter insincerity. They were clearly uncomfortable with confrontation and/or competition and poetically the issue du jour with which they’d been charged was women in the workplace.
The issue of work/life balance is not new, it’s been bandied about since women were told they could “have it all” (cue Veruka Salt) which would’ve been somewhere around the mid-to-late 1990s. There has been a push by women (that has buy-in from some men) to tailor the workplace to the personal needs of employees. There have been talking heads and studies supporting the edict that ‘happy employees are productive employees.” For the record you can always find a study to support your own position (e.g., divorce? happy parents make happy children. drinking while pregnant? a glass of wine makes the woman happy & calms her uterus. childfree? people without children are happier…) The fact that workplace balance is almost always a veiled reference to ‘women in the workplace’ is not a coincidence. Not since the industrial revolution has the workplace changed as dramatically as it has with the inclusion of women in real numbers and positions. But to somehow suggest that these employees work differently or need allowances to be productive is offensive.
Women (particularly post 1970s) do not need to be told how to conduct themselves in the workplace or boardroom. We’ve been doing it for decades thank you. The fact that some women are doing it in software (or other male-dominated fields) doesn’t make it uncharted territory. There was a time when everything (save teaching and nursing) was a male dominated field. So please don’t tell me to lean in and/or work harder. It’s called ‘work’ after all isn’t it? It’s really not all that complicated to get to the top (which isn’t to say it’s easy to do.) Please don’t suggest that those women who’ve made it to the corporate top can sprinkle their success fairy dust on the cubicles below. I don’t need special dust or treatment; I just need for you to be a good boss/leader. And while we’re at it, please keep my personal life out of the workplace. What I choose to do outside of work is just that; outside of work. I will choose a job and/or career that suit my personal needs. These needs will change over my lifetime, as will my work choices. I do not need or want the world of work to alter its nature to honor my personal life. It’s called work after all.
What I would like is affordable childcare (not for women or for men but for children.) I’d like reasonable family and medical leave time (for maternity, parenting or other personal needs.) I’d like flexible working arrangements when they either do not impede the work or in fact advance the work. I would like equitable medical and dental benefits and have people pay for the amount of coverage they need. I would like a workplace free of harassment and hazard. I would like fair compensation for the work done not the position held. And if I may borrow some fairy dust for a moment; I would like hiring and promotion tactics to occur on merit alone.
A little advice to that anxious publicist and agent; relax there’s enough 15 minutes of fame to go around.
Tags: benefits, Brenda Tobias, childcare, family leave, Feminism, flextime, hiring, Lean In, Sandberg, women in the workplace, work life balance, Workplace
Times Square is all about sensory overload. Even during daylight the cacophony of lights and video are enough to give a person vertigo. Thousands of disoriented and staggering people whip their heads up & down and to & fro taking in any and everything. Advertisements flash and beckon from the sidewalk up to the sky. Spotting themselves on the jumbotron, visitors wave frantically to big brother. They squeal and scream in disharmony with ticket hawkers and coupon dealers. Underneath their sound is the white noise of traffic, preaching and ranting.
Yesterday the chaos of sound was silenced and the sight was undistracted for several minutes when a couple of hundred of us raised our hands in synchronicity and protest of gun violence. We held up our hands for 26 seconds, each second representing a victim in Newtown. Instantly the crowd was silenced. We slowly sank to the ground as our ‘partners’ held their hand over our hearts for 26 seconds, and then outlined our bodies in chalk. Lying on the ground, and hearing nothing, absolutely nothing was more realism than most of us bargained for. It was the subway rumbling underneath that reminded us to get up and chalk our partners’ body. We wrote inside the body outlines.; “Crisis” “Boy” “Joseph” “Glock” “Emilie age 6” and quickly dispersed. Making our way through the tour groups and Elmos we looked back. The ground was covered with chalk outlines in a chilling and strangely beautiful tableau. On the perimeter of the ‘performance space’ the assigned police officers still solemnly stood. Moments before the start time they had asked for their friend’s name to be chalked into an outline.
Thank you to ART=AMMO for organizing this event.
Tags: ART=AMMO, Brenda Tobias, flash mob, gun control, Newtown, NYPD, police, Times Square
Procreation has changed an awful lot in the past few decades. Do you remember Louise Brown? She was the very first ‘test tube’ baby (aka known as the result of the first successful in vitro fertilization.) Her mother’s story (splattered on every British tabloid) was an international shock. Would the child be normal? Should we be making people in a laboratory? Were eugenics far behind? What kind of person goes to such sci-fi lengths to replicate themselves? Even the Pope weighted in. Well, little Louise is 34 years old now and my have times changed. Medical advances have redefined not just how we make babies but when mothers can be made as well.
Thirty plus years ago a pregnant woman over the age of 35 raised eyebrows. The elevated eyebrows were less about impropriety and more about biology. “Geriatric pregnancy” is an actual medical term and has nothing to do with walkers or graying hair. The human body is designed to be at peak fertility and health before age 35. Specific gestational and delivery risks are more probable after this age. Medical advances have made it safer (through early detection methods) for older women to carry and deliver, but the risks still exist. Historically women over 40 have had children, often quite by surprise. It is not unusual for a woman to develop a (false) sense of infertility security at the start of menopause. But it is only in the last decade or so that women over 40, trying to become pregnant has become normative. It was as recent as 1995 that (actress) Jane Seymour made magazine covers and evoked national gasps by becoming pregnant (with twins) at 44. Public judgments were made about her vanity and sense of entitlement. “She’ll be over 60 when they graduate!” It’s rather unlikely that today such an endeavor would warrant mention let alone prompt a national discussion.
Celebrities (and regular folk) routinely become parents at an older age; often through elaborate intervention. A woman can use her eggs (if they are viable) or a donor’s eggs. She can use her own or someone else’s uterus. Sperm is easily and equally transferable. There are many means and methods of now creating people. It’s hard to imagine that any new configurations could possibly be discovered/invented. All of this progress brings its own host of issues. Medical ethicists must smack their lips and rub their hands together every time a surrogate is hired. What does it mean to create a population who may never know to whom they’re related? Will children grow up and marry their siblings? What does it mean when the eggs of a woman with cancer are frozen for future use? Do doctors have a medical (and ethical) imperative to determine any genetic component to her cancer before fertilizing the eggs? And while we have the ethicists in the room: should health insurance cover fertility expenses? Is replicating one’s genes and/or having a birth experience, medically necessary? If not, are only the wealthy then entitled to these means to parenthood?
And what of other means to parenthood? What is the (current state and) future of adoption? International adoption has become a bit trendy as a few celebrities publicize their children’s origins. But limits to these adoptions are imposed everyday. What of domestic adoptions? There was a time that celebrities regularly and publicly adopted locally out of need. Fertility, contractual obligations, marital status or state of marriage necessitated adoption. If celebrities are adopting domestically today they’re doing it quietly behind closed doors (as the surrogate signs over her rights.) There will never be a shortage in this country of children needing parents. Accidents happen, death happens, life happens; and children are left in precarious situations.
There is no one way or even right way to make a family. In fact often it’s the messiest and most complicated households that are the richest. However as we make these incredible medical advances in maternity let us not lose sight of what we want parenthood to be. Nurturing and guiding a human being is an incredibly rewarding endeavor. Giving a child solid roots and the freedom to fly is the greatest of gifts. How that child arrives into your home and life is immaterial.
Tags: adoption, Brenda Tobias, childhood, families, fertility, geriatric pregnancy, insurance, IVF, Jane Seymour, Louise Brown, parenting, surrogacy, test tube baby
A museum when done right should teach, inspire and evoke an emotional response. There are some museums whose content and themes are so inherently powerful they must rely on the absence of stimuli to evoke a response. Often some section of the museum is devoid of audio or descriptive copy. There is a four-story glass sculpture of freedom, or a pile of suitcases or a melted police car. The power of these selected image(s) can be breathtaking and utterly unnerving.
The Newseum (in Washington D.C.) has not a single quiet space. It is like the topic itself, unrelenting, riveting and compelling. Headlines, newsprint, broadcasts, artifacts and photographs form a cacophony of meta and micro information. “Oh right, THAT event! And how was it covered?” No stone is left unturned in answering the question. (Did you know a journalist created the FBI 10 Most Wanted list? See that!) The Pulitzer Prize Photography gallery is an embarrassment of riches. There are 70 years worth of stunning imagery to be admired and absorbed. Factoring in that the prize was offered in two categories beginning in 1968, that’s a lot of photos. It’s easy to become overwhelmed and mentally mutter “Nice” “Well done” in a monotonous tone. But something unexpected happens by the time you reach the 1960s-1970s section. A theme, spanning over 10 years, begins to develop, and a lump in the throat and pit of the stomach forms.
We’ve seen (most of) these photos over the years individually. The image of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald (Robert H. Jackson) has become part of how we talk about Kennedy’s assassination. We’ve all seen, and perhaps turned our heads, from the image of a naked child running from napalm (Huyhn Cong Ut) and of the Saigon execution (Edward T. Adams). We may recall the university campus gun violence (Kent State and Cornell.) But it is the (1967) photo of James Meredith (the first African-American student to attend the segregated University of Mississippi,) shot on a Mississippi road displayed in proximity to a photo of Ted Landsmark being attacked with the United States flag a full ten years later that is horrifying. And that is the point of this startling decade of American history. There was simply so much, so very much violence. Even the uplifting photos are a reminder of violence and sorrow. The unadulterated joy on the faces of Col. Robert L. Stirm’s family upon his return is a reminder of the heartbreak of Viet Nam soldiers Missing In Action. The war, the assassinations, the racism, the plight of the migrant workers and the violence; it’s all there in obscene excess in those 10 years.
Tags: Brenda Tobias, broadcast, Col. Robert L. Stirm, Coretta Scott King, Cornell University, Edward T. Adams, FBI, headlines, Huyhn Cong Ut, Jack Ruby, James Meredith, Kennedy assassination, Kent State, Lee Harvey Oswald, Media, MIA, Missing In Action, news, Newseum, photographs, Pulitzer Prize, Robert H. Jackson, segregation, Ted Landsmark, Viet Nam, Washington D.C.
Here She Is Boys 