Guest post by Thomas Bona, Saturday night audience member.
When I first saw "Marisol" 10 years ago, it was the most important piece of theater I had ever seen.
It still is.
Jose Rivera stirs together conflicts of class, religion, race, gender and power/powerlessness into an incendiary melting pot that speaks to more of us than you might think. Yes, even those of us who are white, who are middle-class, who are male (hey, even me!).
Because, as the play clearly shows, when all hell starts to break lose and the structures of the world fail under their own weight, those who thought they were immune to the misery aren't. Marisol thought she could rise above it all because she was an educated professional, but she hedged her bet every night with a crucifix and a knife. At the start of the play, she's escaping the homeless man incoherently raving with a golf club; near the end, she herself is homeless, incoherently raving with a golf club. The "woman in furs" and the homeless "scar
tissue" man were "contributing members of society" when they were caught in the apocalyptic upheaval and literally tortured by those with more power.
The "WAKE UP" scrawled in graffiti isn't just to the poor, it's to anybody watching. Because we can all be victimized by the imbalances in society.
I admit, I'm biased in that this play hits closer to home for me than probably many in the audience in Goshen. I grew up in the Bronx in a working-class area, with the threat of poverty and violence always looming. The characters are real to me - Marisol is the local girl trying to make good, but also being clung to by the neighborhood. June is the would-be yuppie who seems to love the idea of working in the city more than the city itself. Lenny is somebody's crazy conspiracy theory brother, who may not be totally crazy after all. (I can't vouch
for the veracity of the Neonazis or the homeless people, but I did once see a suspicious fire in Van Cortlandt Park. Does that count?)
But this play isn't just about poverty and violence in the city. The apocalypse that's happening is also environmental (fires raging in Ohio), political (wildly expensive ideas to tow the moon back to its orbit, while a police state ensues) and ... well ... galactic.
Here's the trickiest part of the play for me, and I suspect many of the audience members: The idea that God has grown senile and must be killed in order to stave off the end of the universe.
Ten years ago, as a Bible/religion major at Goshen College, I had a hard time with that. I still do, in the sense that I can't blame God for human-made problems. I don't believe it's God's "job" to protect us from ourselves, it's *our* job.
But seeing the play now, I see "God" as more a symbol for "the order of things", meaning that the angels - and later the huddled masses on earth - aren't necessarily killing the God that I believe in, but the symbolic "powers that be" that run things. Of course, Rivera is likely
far more humanist than I am in this, but as a Christian, I can take that symbolism because I agree with its deeper meaning.
Don't rush to assume, by the way, that this play is an ode to violent revolution. It offers a chilling look at what happens when such "revolutions" happen. "Scar tissue" says, profoundly, "Heaven erupts but who pays the price? The fucking innocent do!" And, ultimately, the play isn't about destruction but rebirth. They're creating a new world, a new reality, from the bottom up, where the lowest are made high. Instead of a typical revolution, where the winners lord it over their enemies, Marisol asks the "woman in furs" to join them, reaching her hand out.
She declined, sharply, but we shouldn't. This play should urge us to look at where we are in the "order of things" and see what things we're putting our faith in. Because today is a tenuous time, with the credit crunch sending "contributing members of society" into bankruptcy, with talk of a recession, with wars and rumors of wars.
Some day, we might be asked to make a choice too.
Heavy stuff, I admit, but the beauty of this play is that it does it with a dollop of, er, dulce de leche. There's biting humor, sometimes gallows humor here.
Lenny, as played by Derek Bontreger, is straightfaced in his crackpot enthusiasm, but so over the top that he steals his scenes. His accent is mighty good for a Midwesterner. Amy Stutsman plays the guardian angel with the swagger and sensuality that, I think, we all really really want in our guardian angels. Jessica Hage plays June's unhinged moments with the right kind of emotion. The rest of the cast also does well with difficult parts.
But it's Cassie Greer's Marisol who brings it home. Armed with a slight Nuyorican accent and a sort of world-weary innocence, she descends into the apocalypse, and ultimately out of it, with the realness of any average person ... if one of us could actually pull that off. She's not a conquering action-movie hero, and the play is much the better for it.
I could say tons more, but here's my final point: go see this play. If you've seen it already, see it again. You may or may not agree with all of it, you may or may not understand all of it, but it will get inside your head and keep you thinking for a long time after.
Ten years later, I'm still thinking.
When I first saw "Marisol" 10 years ago, it was the most important piece of theater I had ever seen.
It still is.
Jose Rivera stirs together conflicts of class, religion, race, gender and power/powerlessness into an incendiary melting pot that speaks to more of us than you might think. Yes, even those of us who are white, who are middle-class, who are male (hey, even me!).
Because, as the play clearly shows, when all hell starts to break lose and the structures of the world fail under their own weight, those who thought they were immune to the misery aren't. Marisol thought she could rise above it all because she was an educated professional, but she hedged her bet every night with a crucifix and a knife. At the start of the play, she's escaping the homeless man incoherently raving with a golf club; near the end, she herself is homeless, incoherently raving with a golf club. The "woman in furs" and the homeless "scar
tissue" man were "contributing members of society" when they were caught in the apocalyptic upheaval and literally tortured by those with more power.
The "WAKE UP" scrawled in graffiti isn't just to the poor, it's to anybody watching. Because we can all be victimized by the imbalances in society.
I admit, I'm biased in that this play hits closer to home for me than probably many in the audience in Goshen. I grew up in the Bronx in a working-class area, with the threat of poverty and violence always looming. The characters are real to me - Marisol is the local girl trying to make good, but also being clung to by the neighborhood. June is the would-be yuppie who seems to love the idea of working in the city more than the city itself. Lenny is somebody's crazy conspiracy theory brother, who may not be totally crazy after all. (I can't vouch
for the veracity of the Neonazis or the homeless people, but I did once see a suspicious fire in Van Cortlandt Park. Does that count?)
But this play isn't just about poverty and violence in the city. The apocalypse that's happening is also environmental (fires raging in Ohio), political (wildly expensive ideas to tow the moon back to its orbit, while a police state ensues) and ... well ... galactic.
Here's the trickiest part of the play for me, and I suspect many of the audience members: The idea that God has grown senile and must be killed in order to stave off the end of the universe.
Ten years ago, as a Bible/religion major at Goshen College, I had a hard time with that. I still do, in the sense that I can't blame God for human-made problems. I don't believe it's God's "job" to protect us from ourselves, it's *our* job.
But seeing the play now, I see "God" as more a symbol for "the order of things", meaning that the angels - and later the huddled masses on earth - aren't necessarily killing the God that I believe in, but the symbolic "powers that be" that run things. Of course, Rivera is likely
far more humanist than I am in this, but as a Christian, I can take that symbolism because I agree with its deeper meaning.
Don't rush to assume, by the way, that this play is an ode to violent revolution. It offers a chilling look at what happens when such "revolutions" happen. "Scar tissue" says, profoundly, "Heaven erupts but who pays the price? The fucking innocent do!" And, ultimately, the play isn't about destruction but rebirth. They're creating a new world, a new reality, from the bottom up, where the lowest are made high. Instead of a typical revolution, where the winners lord it over their enemies, Marisol asks the "woman in furs" to join them, reaching her hand out.
She declined, sharply, but we shouldn't. This play should urge us to look at where we are in the "order of things" and see what things we're putting our faith in. Because today is a tenuous time, with the credit crunch sending "contributing members of society" into bankruptcy, with talk of a recession, with wars and rumors of wars.
Some day, we might be asked to make a choice too.
Heavy stuff, I admit, but the beauty of this play is that it does it with a dollop of, er, dulce de leche. There's biting humor, sometimes gallows humor here.
Lenny, as played by Derek Bontreger, is straightfaced in his crackpot enthusiasm, but so over the top that he steals his scenes. His accent is mighty good for a Midwesterner. Amy Stutsman plays the guardian angel with the swagger and sensuality that, I think, we all really really want in our guardian angels. Jessica Hage plays June's unhinged moments with the right kind of emotion. The rest of the cast also does well with difficult parts.
But it's Cassie Greer's Marisol who brings it home. Armed with a slight Nuyorican accent and a sort of world-weary innocence, she descends into the apocalypse, and ultimately out of it, with the realness of any average person ... if one of us could actually pull that off. She's not a conquering action-movie hero, and the play is much the better for it.
I could say tons more, but here's my final point: go see this play. If you've seen it already, see it again. You may or may not agree with all of it, you may or may not understand all of it, but it will get inside your head and keep you thinking for a long time after.
Ten years later, I'm still thinking.
Thomas V. Bona is a newspaper reporter in Rockford, Ill., and a former resident of Goshen. He's written for New World Arts' 24/7 Theater Festivals, acted occasionally and is known for laughing at appropriate - and inappropriate - times during shows.
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