Most of the time, I’m surprised to find out anyone reads anything I write. Other times, I can predict, with great accuracy, who will read it and what their reaction will be. As I was writing my last column, I knew that criticizing establishment Dems would lead some to reach out to me with that classic Oprah POV suggesting, “Just be nice to the Nazis. Then they’ll understand your side.”
Such finger-wagging hypocrites like to evoke Dr. King. This suggests they’ve never read his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, in which he wrote, “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” They want to revision King as a turn-the-other-cheek passive. Wrong.
He may not have carried guns like the Black Panthers or been as flamboyant as Muhammad Ali, but never forget that King was an in-your-face activist who was frequently arrested (hence the letter) and later assassinated for being considered the same kind of “extremist” as the BLM/anti-ICE/pro-Palestinian protestors of today. You think he got on J. Edgar Hoover’s shit list by just sitting around with his hands in his lap?
King knew then what the protestors know now, and what establishment Dems always ignore: you can’t meet fascists halfway. It’s one thing to reach out to the masses and to try and rehabilitate someone deeply indoctrinated, but you still have to draw a line. The place allowing Nazis in for drinks is a Nazi bar. Period.
I know you want to bring your MAGA-pilled relative back from the dark side, but there comes a time to get that person out of your life, the way a surgeon removes a tumor.
CO-FOUNDERS WORLD PREMIERE AT ACT
I pondered all the above as I watched this play. On the one hand, it has an abundance of heart. On the other hand, it has absolutely no bite. In fact, it plays it so safe that one has to wonder if executive meddling had anything to do with it?
I’ll say this for Co-Founders (world premiere runs through July 6 at ACT’s Strand Theater): it knows how to get the audience on its side. Hell, opening night saw the tech-heavy show stopped cold as the crew fixed a digital SNAFU that held up the works for 30 minutes, during which we were entertained by freestyles from ACT regular Phil Wong.
When things got going again, we easily jumped into the story of Black Oaklander Esata (Aneesa Folds from opening through June 22, Angel Adedokun through closing) as she competes in a Bay Area-based Shark Tank-esque show to find the next big idea in tech. Hers is an interactive AI modeled on her late father (Tommy Soulati Shepherd). Her main competition is Conway (Roe Hartrampf), a rich white boy who got in the competition easily, but isn’t nearly as tech-savvy as Esata. When the two are teamed up together, the question of who has claim to their big idea suddenly becomes muddled.
Call this unfair if you like, but it’s impossible to watch Co-Founders without comparing it to Freaky Tales, the recent Too $hort-produced anthology film. Both works are unabashed love letters to Black Oakland, its history, and the residents constantly being pushed out of it. In fact, Co-Founders’ greatest scene is a song in which Esata is trying to convince her mother (the magnificent Adesha Adefela) that selling their home and moving to Antioch won’t fix Oakland’s problems. It’s a rallying cry that will shake the core of every Black Bay Area resident doing our best to cling to our hometown for dear life. This song perfectly showcases why we don’t give up.
At the same time, creators Ryan Nicole Austin, Beau Lewis, and Adelfa herself want us the celebrate the very colonizers trying to push us—and their play’s characters—out. When Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz are spoken with the same reverence as Mary Ellen Pleasant, it insults the memory of the latter. Given ACT’s many corporate sponsors, one has to wonder if this was an appeasement to them, when they’re the very models for Victor (Keith Pinto), the musical’s moustache-twirling tech billionaire villain. The show wants to have it both ways, which never works.
There was so much about Co-Founders that is an absolute joy: the great music; the equally-great performances (including the naturalistic performance by RyanNicole Austin as Esata’s cousin); great visual effects; the celebrated diversity of the cast; and a great HVAC system in the Strand that meant my Aranet4 only read CO² levels as high as 630ppm.
Yet, the show wants us to jeer when a Wanker-Panzer Swasticar appears, yet clap recalling the very DOGE-bags wiping their asses with our constitution. I was reminded of Ashley Smiley’s flawed-but-intriguing Dirty White Teslas Make Me Cry, which covered similar ground. That show wasn’t perfect, but at least it knew better than to put colonizers on a pedestal.
CO-FOUNDERS world premiere runs through July 6. ACT’s Strand Theater, SF. Tickets and more info here.
LA BOHÈME AT SF OPERA
It’s amazing how many people say they “don’t like opera,” only to share their affinity for something clearly influenced by an opera. Puccini’s La Bohème (through Sat/21 at the War Memorial Opera House) has influenced so many subsequent works that it would probably be easier to list the ones it didn’t inspire. Needless to say, if you’ve ever seen a work in the past century that romanticizes starving artists, chances are good that La Bohème was its template. (If you enjoyed even five minutes of Moulin Rouge!, you owe it Puccini’s opera, which is why that film and stage adaptation’s creator Baz Lurhmann has staged the opera several times.)
It’s Christmas Eve in Paris, roughly 1830. Poet Rodolfo (Samoan-Kiwi tenor Pene Pati) lives with fellow starving artists in a shack above the city. So broke are the men that Rodolfo burns his latest manuscript just to generate heat. As the others go out to explore the city, Rodolfo stays behind. A knock on the door reveals Luisa, whom everyone calls Mimì (U.S. soprano Karen Chia-ling Ho), who is lovely-yet-sickly, in the classic opera fashion. She makes faux flowers, dreams of romantic stories, and falls for Rodolfo instantly. He returns that affection.
What follows is a whirlwind romance involving colorful townspeople, former lovers, rich suitors, mixed messages, and the inevitable melodramatic death. See what I mean about this being a story people know even if they haven’t properly seen it?
That doesn’t work against it. What makes works like La Bohème, Tosca (also by Puccini), The Magic Flute, and even Aida great “starter” operas is that their simplistic (sometimes plot-free) stories are much easier to follow than something by Wagner. They’re great at giving newcomers an entryway into to bombast of the format without leaving them in need of a flow chart to track all the personalities on stage. La Bohème is full of characters who are, for all intents and purposes, adults, but are subject to the grand emotional waves more characteristic of folks Romeo and Juliet’s age, when you truly believe your heart is strong enough to shake the world itself.
Director Katherine M. Carter knows this well enough. She and production designer David Farley incorporate subtle-but-welcome dreamlike elements into the show without being noticed. The transition from Rodolfo’s home to the streets of Paris is done with a magician’s skill for misdirection, darkening enough of the stage to the point where the lanterns stand out, yet bringing Michael Clark’s lovely lights up so subtly on the changed set that one is truly amazed at how well the transition works.
As I watched the opera during its sole livestream, I didn’t bother to track CO² levels in my room (though I recall they stayed around 800ppm or so). Which is fine. La Bohème is an opera that commands one’s full attention without having to insist on it. With a century-plus of history behind it, the opera remains a welcoming presence for aficionados and newbies alike.
LA BOHÈME runs through Sat/21. War Memorial Opera House, SF. Tickets and more info here.
