#maryeileenodonnell

Our #fargonzo free press squad is having direct impact. You wouldn’t know it because main$tream media has nothing to gain by pointing out the obvious, but we are aware. Our efforts are being documented by East Coast scholars, podcasters, high school students and college coeds, who are writing papers on #freepress and how corporate controlled media hasn’t been a keen purveyor of truth for many moon$.

So why did I spend Thursday morning weeping on behalf of humanity? Because I’ve been told I can’t save it. You can’t save something that doesn’t want to be saved.

By that I mean, as my heart was leaping with joy at the outing of #BIGNEW$ #AnchorHack$ for the pervy Toadie$ they are, I was told by the smartest man I know, it simply doesn’t matter.

I said, “But why doesn’t it matter? #AnchorHack$ are known to be bad for humanity. They stir shite up in the name of greed to $ell fear, divisiveness, phony patrioti$m and religiou$ bigotry, defiling the good and loving name of God, who doesn’t hate anyone.” 

“But Heidi, it doesn’t matter,” said the smartest man I know. “Rating$ are through the roof.”

My heart was Gilloolyed. Just gutted.

Stop the Pre$$es: Truth hurts.

All this incredible work by Citizen Activists of the Resistance, and it’s allegedly meaningless, because #BIGNEW$ Rating$ Pimping Pageant Guy & Hi$ Faux Religiou$ Toadie$ are “through the roof.”

Maybe it wouldn’t have slayed me so bad if our team hadn’t just gotten a #BIGNEW$ offer to investigate phony baloney stuff that would only provoke lies, fear, bigotry, and more lies, fear and bigotry.

Needless to say, we all gotta eat, but clearly my mellow was harshed.

So I did what any #freepress activist would do when she’s feeling low, I called my besties in order of who was willing to pick up the phone, and each helped reboot my head. 

And then later in the evening, I lost myself in that magical place known as theatre and lived to fight another day.

In the good and kind and capable hands of Tim Robbins, a subversive’s subversive, my heart was resurrected. 

Robbins’ “Harlequino: On to Freedom,” a musical at his Actors’ Gang Theatre in Culver City, reveals Robbins’ brilliance as a writer and director, and it also reveals the talents of the actors in his company. All I can say to Pierre, Mary Eileen, Joshua, Will, Adam, Lee Margaret, Sabra is wow. As a Jack Barrymore devotee, I know what they’re purveying at the Actors’ Gang: Real Genuine Theatre, the kind that transforms lives. The live music, the hand-crafted masks, the perfection of the costumes, all the stuff of dreams.

I’ve been loitering in the rafters of the Actors’ Gang for a few years, because my daughter is a poet and Robbins offers his stage to poets. The Actors’ Gang staff also offers their directing expertise to the poets, so youth writers are now becoming formidable actors. (As witnessed by those who witnessed the sold-out performance of Get Lit-Actors’ Gang “Dante” at the Wallis at the Annenberg.)

“Harlequino: On to Freedom,” is gutsy, revolutionary, sexy, punk rock theatre. There’s no boundary that’s not being pushed, there’s no pulling of any punches. Robbins revives Commedia dell’Arte, an Italian form of theatre so honest actors were hanged for their accuracy, hanged because they were the writers. Utilizing this Italian canvas of passion, Robbins creates a musical celebration of the “rebel slave.”

By the time you’re taken on a near three-hour journey, it’s clear we are all slaves in one form or another to a con$ume and obey society that’s really got us in a twist.

As the central character of Harlequino stands up to his Brioni-suited oppressor deep into the second act and asks the existential question of who’s zoomin who, you realize you’ve just witnessed so many layers of subversion, you’re going to have go back and see the musical a third time to fully grasp the enormity of what you’ve just witnessed.

In the end, however, the message Robbins puts forth is clear: we just need love to see our way clearly past the greed.

I was too overcome with emotion to tell Robbins what I thought, so I just threw him the goat through tears on my way out of the theatre. 

My soul had been cleansed with truth, in an authentic house of the holy: The Theatre.

No, I can’t save the world. But yes, I can keep actively doing good and encouraging others to do the same. My weekend plans include spending time at a soup kitchen hosted weekly by members of the Resistance, donating what little I have to do some good.

What else can we do.

******

Author Heidi Siegmund Cuda used to stare at a picture of the Commedia dell’Arte character, Pantalone, on one of her #BIGNEW$ desks for odd comfort. Below, Pantalone postcard by artist Wayne DeSelle.