A Day in the Country (one cent)

The 17th annual Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, WV. We have probably been there three or four other times, usually with an overnight stay, so that we can see all four performances. This time, we went down and back the same day, seeing two of the four. We had not been for a few years.

Thoughts:

1. The Drive. I-270 to Frederick, and I-70 west to ALT US 40, then through Middletown to Boonesboro, left on MD 34 through Sharpsburg and over the Potomac into Shepherdstown. It is just over 60 miles, and (once you get beyond Frederick), a very, very pretty drive. Beautiful hill and mountain scenery, attractive and historic towns, the Anteitam battlefields.

2. The Festival. More crowded, more professional in its staging, clearly spending a lot more on the technical aspects of the productions.

3. The Food. A disappointment. Lunch at Stone Soup, where it was hard to find the chicken curry in the chicken curry whole wheat wrap, was mediocre but comfortable. More disappointing was the Yellow Brick Bank, formerly a favorite of ours, but also disappointing at our last visit to Shepherdstown a year or so ago, when we had lunch at the restaurant. it is still a very attractive restaurant, but the food was minor league, while the prices remained in the majors. The salmon (and as I understand it the halibut) was extremely bland, and no one raved about what they had.

4. Play #1 - My Name is Rachel Corrie. Rachel Corrie is the 23 year old American killed by an IDF bulldozer in Gaza in 2003. The play is compiled from her diary and journals and emails. She is an idealistic young girl, not satisfied living her life out in Olympia WA, and who thinks that it is everyone's obligation to fix the world. Without knowing it (perhaps), the personification of tikkun olam. Somehow (not clear how), she joins a group dedicated to helping the Palestinians in Gaza, is trained in non-violence, and with others go to Gaza to work with the people. The Palestinians are very welcoming. Sh e is doing her thing, hoping (wondering) if it will help. She starts thinking, Ann Frank-style, that all people are really good, but at the end (and not surprisingly) begins to think that the Israelis must be a breed apart. This is not surprising, since she had spent several months in the line of fire. There is nothing in the play about politics, per se. Nothing about any political issue, just a social issue, the ranting against people being forced into the situation of the Gaza residents. Or about strategy. The play is about Rachel Corrie, and what goes on in her mind, as she (to her own surprise) does some very brave things.

The play has been very controversial, as being pro-Palestinian, and anti-Israel. I was very surprised at how inaccurate this interpretation was. With the exception of a line or two, the play is only about Corrie, and about the universal problem of suffering during times of trouble. Lisa Traiger in the review of the play in Jewish Week, said much the same thing. Her review was quite accurate. There is nothing for the Jewish world to be upset about here and if it is upset, it is not the problem of the play.

Rachel Corrie is a one woman, one act play. Anne Marie Nest is to be commended for her performance, and for learning all the lines. My question is whether her portrayal of Corrie mirrored Corrie's carriage and demeanor. Before I give my overall impression of her performance, I would like to know that. I know that Corrie's parents were in Shepherdstown to see an early performance; I would like to know what they thought of the production. I also wonder what Corrie herself would think about what is happening in Gaza today, where the Israelis are no longer the ones doing the shooting.

Following the play, there was a talk back with Yonatan Shapira, a former IDF fighter turned peace activist. In a tent on the grounds of the Shepherd U. campus, it drew a surprisingly big crowd. But it did not look like his presentation, nor the Q and A which was to follow, would be fun, and we left.

5. Play #2 - 1001. We were all looking forward to Jason Grote's play, a spoof on Sheherazade and her 1001 tales. It was a mainstage production and technically very complicated, and visually appealing for the most part. The acting was of high caliber. But the play, jumping forward from an old Persian kingdom to New York in 2001, was as cluttered as cluttered can be, none of the characters were at all sympathetic, and the cameo appearances (in the stories) of people like Gustav Flaubert, Jorge Luis Borges, Alan Dershowitz and a singing/dancing Osama bin Laden, were downright bizarre. Many groups (the Moslems, the Persians, the Arabs, the Jews, the Christians) were parodied without mercy. Some were undeserving; others deserve the criticism, but not in a comic fashion. I was in fact embarrassed for the playwright and the cast.

But the large audience seem to have loved it. So perhaps, I am being harsh. Maybe I was just expecting something different. I went with a very positive attitude. What turned me off? It was not the humor; I like humor. I think it was the insulting way that Grote (or the director) dealt with the portrayal of each ethnic/religious group. In part it seemed so mean spirited that it destroyed the humor for me even where I thought that the subject could be treated with humor, and by destroying the humor, it turned me so away from the performance that I could no longer look at it a manner that would enable me to enjoy those facets of it that I would otherwise have appreciated.