Great Theater by Good Theater

The good theater company at St Lawrence Art Center has a run of Frost/Nixon through November 22nd. It was a full house last night, so get your tickets ahead. The performance was fantastic. Tony Reilly gave a beautifully controlled and steady Richard Nixon. Nixon has become such a caricature of himself that it would have been easy to go over the top with his portrayal. Reilly kept the energy that really sums up Nixon consistent throughout the show, which was quite a feat given there was no intermission.

One of the most telling lines was in the opening monolog given by the unidentified character, Jim Reston. He references Greek poet Aeschylus and the belief in 450 B.C. that man is struck down by the Gods when his hubris is too much. Reston says that we believe more now in man's self-destructive nature and give less credit to the God's. We see the pattern again and again in politics, economics and everyday dynamics. Does power corrupt or does a corrupt nature seek power?

Most of you know the story of Watergate and the fall out, which in today's current events seems almost benign. I found myself thinking about the actual history of that period and how would we compare George W. Bush's legacy to Nixon's? Have we learned anything from our own history? Is it inevitable that as humans we default to a neutral position of believing and trusting in our leaders and institutions without thinking and researching on our own? How many people formulate their own opinion on the ever increasingly complex world we live in?

I often argue that there will always be war, because there will always be humans who want to dominate and control others. We need the impartial structures that governments, at their best, can write and adhere to, in order to protect the freedom of all its citizens. Frost/Nixon brings my attention back to the failure of our own government to protect the rights of the given minority of homosexuals, lesbian, bisexuals, and transgendered in our country. We need the federal government to step in to uphold the separation of church and state, making all unions in the eyes of the law civil unions. Religious views have no place in our government if we are to protect the smallest minority from the tyranny of the majority.

I know I have digressed from the Frost/Nixon play, but when theater is at its best it communicates something powerfully and directly, opening my mind for the connections between everything.

Separating the art from the Artist

I find myself contemplating a question that seems to appear every so often, "Can we separate the artist from the art?" I watched a documentary this week on Picasso and Michael Jackson is playing on the Bose. I have plans to see the movie that is out in the theaters now of Jackson's last show he was about to embark on before his death. When Michael Jackson died suddenly I did not weep; I did not even feel that bad. My first reaction was astonishment that their could be so much adulation for a man who was if not guilty of pederasty, certainly took advantage of his position of power to take advantage of some children.

Michael Jackson had more fame than was good for him at a young age. This fact among others does not excuse behavior; it just explains it. We are a society driven by the fantasy of fame and fortune, yet those who achieve that goal often fail on the basic humanity issues. Both Jackson and Picasso were geniuses in their artistic vehicle.

I have been a huge fan of Picasso's work, while acknowledging the conflict between the creative force of such an artist and his treatment of the women in his life. Was he a misogamist? From everything I have read and seen I think he was at best a quintessential selfish egotistical artist. The bottom line is the work needs to be able to stand up on its own. Any historical facts about an artist's life add a different dimension to experiencing the work, bringing it into cultural and political context.

We cannot ignore the behavior of any person, regardless of their creative genius. It seems that we need to take it all in in life: good, bad, ugly and beautiful. On that note I hope to enjoy the music of Jackson that made me jump up and dance in childhood while staying clear on the score of the fully complicated human being he was. And for Picasso, he will always be at the top of my list of all time great visual artists. Who the others are will have to wait for another post.