#egopo

This week Katie Rein talks to an old friend, the talented Dane Eissler, who has a plethora of artistic experience as a director, actor, writer, multimedia artist, puppeteer, and much more! They discuss his work and politics, how they intersect, and how they will continue to moving forward.

Katie herself has a loaded history of volunteering and working on campaigns (both of us having quit full time jobs to work on campaigns this past fall), so we talk about that for a little bit at the front.

If you'd like to get involved right now, Katie suggests you call your representatives utilizing the tools and scripts provided at http://5calls.org

As always you can find this episode on iTunes, FeedBurner/RSS, Stitcher, or by clicking here and doing the whole right click > “Save As…” deal.

Each week we will be talking to different artists that we know and/or respect about how they are processing the current state of our nation and how they plan to proceed with their work. This isn’t a call to “Make Punk Great Again,” these are conversations with real artists about how they plan to approach the real challenges they face.

We’ll be doing this through inauguration day at the least, so we hope you’ll continue to join us! If you know anyone we should talk to, or there is anyone that you would personally like to talk to, feel free to submit names, suggestions, or your own recorded interviews to rob at undressingunderground dot com. Also, feel free to leave us a voicemail with your own thoughts and feelings at 260-PUNK-POD (260-786-5763).

In the meantime, do check out Dane Eissler on Instagram! Also, if you’re in the Chicago area, you can check out his production company, A Dead Whale Productions (which is also on Instagram). Or, if you’re in Philly, you still have a few days to see him in EgoPo’s production of Chekhov’s The Seagull. Tickets and more info on that on the EgoPo’s website.

I followed around a theater company as they prepared to open a version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin with black actors playing the masters and white actors playing the slaves and wrote a long-ass story about it.

So: The Awkward is like a spider shown to an arachnophobe in exposure therapy. 

No: The Awkward is really like a festering boil, and it needs to be poked for healing to occur. 

No: The Awkward is actually something that’s been poked by well-meaning white people enough goddamn times, will you please just leave it alone because it’s kind of tired, Jesus Christ.

Which is it? If a theater piece tries to make an audience feel uncomfortable in a new and specific way and it succeeds, does that mean it’s a success? Is there any way to do a race-swapped Uncle Tom’s Cabin that’s not a complete disaster?

EgoPo’s show closes at Plays & Players in Philadelphia tonight[06/09/13]. I finally got to see it at the end of the run. The finale of their American Vaudeville Festival, Uncle Tom’s Cabin: An Unfortunate History is not actually vaudeville. Adapters Lane Salvadore and Glenn Odom have taken ideas and language directly from the vast panorama of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel to produce a theatrical exhibition that serves as a corrective to early versions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which included Minstrel shows and vaudeville.

This production attempts to illuminate the characters on both sides of the antebellum racial divide and to reclaim the authentic image of Tom, which time has hijacked. Stowe’s noble Uncle Tom, misrepresented and maligned for years as the embodiment of a black-on-black insult, just isn’t that simple. Neither a firebrand nor an ass kisser, he lives and dies holding his own as a principled man. Activists may have wanted his character to be more than the non-violent Christian that he was. But the condemnation in the moniker, “Uncle Tom,” is revealed to be misplaced.

Ed Swidey (Uncle Tom) and all of the actors’ heartfelt attention to their difficult parts and their ensemble work pays off in audience empathy. Remarkable and constant scene shifts work like a charm, and music and sound integrate with the acting and scenic concept to create an attractive pageant.

The special twist of race-reversed casting --which has attracted attention to EgoPo’s production-- creates complexities that are both enlightening and, well, not so enlightening.  There are inconsistencies.  A case in point:

Steve Wright does a straight and earnest interpretation of Augustine St. Clair, a well intentioned white slave owner who lacks the courage of his convictions. However, Tiffany Bacon as his unsympathetic and spoiled wife, plays her role for laughs —a sitcom African American mama with ‘tude.  And while this odd portrayal of a 19th century Caucasian woman certainly confuses the race-switch issue, it also generates all the laughs in this serious show. Each flounce in her outsize interpretation produces appreciative chuckles from the audience.

The key scene where Simon Legree chases escaping slaves, Eliza and son, across the frozen Ohio River is done in slo-mo (which had been utilized early on in a lengthy pre-show pantomime). It works here as well, but bales of hay conscripted as ice floes on the Ohio cheat us of the prominence that simple ice and water images could have given this critical dramatic scene. The memorable “Run Eliza run” chase in "The Small House of Uncle Thomas," the play-within-a-play in The King and I, comes to mind. That scene left a lasting imprint.

A niggling, but disconcerting detail is the pronunciation of pivotal character Little Eva’s name as “Ava.” Little Eva (pronounced Eva) has long been an established piece of Americana.