A few weeks ago I introduced everyone to one of America’s finest playwrites and producers, George Larkin.
George’s newest project, the Baghdad Prom, a play which taps into Iraqi writers explores how the Iraqi intelligentsia and literature community see their daily lives. Certainly not a piece to simply “Bash Bash for bashing Bush’s sake,” the varied view of the people, from supportive to frustrated shows that there are not just black and white or red vs. blue issues at work, but large social implications and problems that have no easy answer, but certainly can be overcome by lifting the human spirit. “There isn’t as much rage as there is curiousity as to why we’re still there” Larkin writes.
So far, response in L.A. has been tepid, but between the writers’ strike and December-January being a natural downtime for the entertainment industry anyway, for the moment the response is understandable. However, there is a reading in Boston tomorow and sources say an NYC reading might be considered. From the Boston Press:
Playwright George Larkin laughs when he’s asked, as a joke, how long he’s hated America. He’s heard comments like this before. In these politically polarized times, any writer dealing even tangentially with international or homeland security issues who is not sufficiently patriotic, not solidly positioned in the God-Bless-America camp, leaves himself open for attack — even in Los Angeles, supposedly the land of limousine liberals and America-lasters, where Larkin has been developing “The Baghdad Prom” for the past five years. The play, which gets a reading this weekend at the North Shore Readers Theatre Collaborative, is an account of life in Iraq, based on original works and e-mails and letters of artists in Baghdad. But, despite the occasional screed accusing the playwright and filmmaker of being a left-wing dupe (one of which earned an anonymous e-mailer a brief place in “Baghdad Prom,” where he is called The Jackass) the response from LA’s beautiful people has been a deafening silence.
Larkin put out a general call on the main Yahoo bulletin board for Los Angeles-based actors, which has 1,200 active members, asking for help with the project. You might think it would be a no-brainer. The project is, after all, about artists helping artists. But, no, that’s not the way it worked out. Here’s what he wrote: “For the past three years, I’ve been getting in touch with writers and artists in Baghdad and getting their stories about what’s going on now. We’ve heard from our media, government, pundits and even soldiers, but we’ve heard almost nothing from the Iraqis themselves. I’ve gotten amazing stories of life there, both fiction and nonfiction, of kidnapping, robbery, murder and forbidden love. They’ve also written to me what it was and what it is now like to be an artist there, and how dangerous that was and still is. I think we have a real chance to have our artists working with theirs. If you’re interested in helping, or think your theater group would be, let me know.”
First, no, Larkin does not hate America. I know George personally and have discussed his goals in this project and they are as apolitical as it gets. Just because occasionally the subject matter may be political, it does not necessarily folow that the producer is political or seeking to grind a political axe. Larkin is pursuing this as an exercise in literature and sociology. His project is a chance for Americans to see into the hearts and minds of Iraqis, however they may feel about America and Americans. So far the response has been tepid, but hopefully the reading in Boston will raise awareness for the project. The article continues:
It is essentially a note from the underground; an extended conversation with Iraqi artists and first-hand stories about what’s actually happening there, what it’s like to be an artist there. It is not meant to be a one-sided conversation, an agit-prop piece, but an outlet to give voice to people who cannot, or have not, been heard — despite endless media blather. “The strength of their piece is their stories, the authenticity of their voices,” he says. “In some ways, it’s a very innocent project. We’re just listening to what people are saying …. In the end, it’s a piece about conversations…. “Baghdad Prom” includes contributions from 70 people, including Majid, who inadvertently gave the piece its name. The playwright spoke to him on the phone one night, just when he was getting back from his prom. He got thrown out. He’s “an emotional Baghdad teenager well versed in American culture and language,” Larkin says. “He’s funny and angry.” At one point, he wonders aloud why he doesn’t “join my other schoolmates who dropped out and joined the armed resistance?” But the show focuses on Majid and three other characters:
o Jacob, a composite character obviously based on the author, is an American writer with a deepening desire to reach out to writers in Iraq as his parents go through increasing health woes.
o Safa Saad, a man in his late 40s who “has a sad sense of poetry to him,” says Larkin. He is a former high school teacher (he taught English) who currently runs a bureau making reports to the Coalition government for Iraqi citizens on damages caused by the war. As he also reports on things done to Iraqis by other Iraqis, he has gotten a number of death threats, and his son was kidnapped and tortured.
o Saad Saeed, roughly the same age as Safa, but far more angry. He lost his job as a cabdriver when the war started. His wife, a doctor, supported the family. After suffering through many attacks, he took his family to Syria, where his lifelong dream of publishing a novel was fulfilled.
“It’s not a play about the war, per se, but it is most compelling,” says Marc Clopton, one of the founders of The North Shore Readers Theatre Collaborative, which stages new works once a month at the Tannery in Newburyport.”
The reading will be held tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. in Boston at the North Shore Readers Theatre Collaborative. Larkin’s work and bio are at www.asalark.com. Pay special attention to two of his pieces: “Dead Lawyers,” a hilarious send-up of both pettifoggers and Agatha Christie novels and “Stuporfriends,” a laugh-a-minute spoof of the Superfriends cartoon we all endured on Saturday mornings as kids because there was nothing good on TV between The Bugs Bunny Hour and Land of the Lost.
Personally…once Baghdad Prom is done, I hope George turns his attention to Land of the Lost because everyone loves the Sleestaks…
OK…Literature Rant over (for the moment), back to sports…
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