This is Drama Masks, a Bay Area performing arts column from a born San Franciscan and longtime theatre artist in an N95 mask. I talk venue safety and dramatic substance, or the lack thereof.
Nothing exemplifies our existence in the shittiest timeline than an announcement for an SF “March For Billionaires” needing to be scrutinized for potential satire. It comes off as the sort of subversive act one would expect from the original Cacophony Society, which created both Burning Man and Santacon. Unfortunately, both of those events now exist as corporate-sponsored debauchery, far removed from their creators’ anti-establishment intentions. Listen, when the mayor of San Jose and the governor of California (the latter the former SF mayor) take a hardline stance against a proposed billionaire tax, it’s not hard to imagine someone sincerely walking in support oligarchs with Epstein ties. I hope the march is a joke, but…
As if that weren’t enough, rumors have been swirling as to the potential of anti-immigration assassins touching down in the Bay Area ahead of the Super Bowl, wherein the halftime show will feature a Puerto Rican superstar hated by the White House (though official sources say that’s unlikely). Add in the fact that the world’s richest idiot is using one of his companies to buy his other company, and that robotaxis are hitting kids as they expand into offering SFO trips, and we’re clearly in the bad video game ending where it becomes clear that we didn’t finish enough side quests.
I’ve said before how much I despise the term “post-satire” to describe modern events, but I admit that the term becomes more apt with each passing day. Ours is the sort of cartoonish reality one would expect to see in The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd, but there’s no feel-good moment to be found; they just continue to change the rules of a already-rigged game.
This may, indeed, be the reality where Skynet succeeded in killing John Connor, but one benefit to being a student of narrative fiction and live drama is that it inspires one to imagine how these dark days could end. Neither Macbeth, Richard III, or even Claudius lived long after claiming their ill-gotten thrones; Star Wars has spent nearly 50 years showing how an empire with endless resources is no match for a determined band of rebels; and even The Hobbit shows us that a single man with an arrow can take down a dragon. Now, all of that means very little to someone watching their fellow citizens be shot dead on the streets by federal troops. Yet, it says a lot about the evil bastards who absorbed all the same stories we did, but chose to side with the villains. It means that the villains we see in the news think they won’t suffer the same fate because they’re oh-so-much smarter.
The way that conservatives are always waving the Bible around, you’d think they’d have learned Proverbs 16:18. No doubt, that’s one lesson they’re on course to learn the hard way. We have every right to laugh at them when they finally do learn it.
Now that I’ve alluded to Shakespeare, I should probably mention I saw a play last week.
How Shakespeare Saved My Life world premiere at Berkeley Rep
I can’t speak for all Black theatre-lovers, but if there’s any one turn of phrase I’ve always hated, it’s got to be “Shakespeare was the original rapper”. There’s no way someone Black came up with that. It reeks of white-savior pretension and condescension, the sort of thing a dorky adult says in a half-assed attempt to sound cool to kids.
Sure, Shakespeare is now considered one the most important wordsmiths in the history of the English language and his bon mots are quoted centuries later, but the guy didn’t even invent the iambic pentameter for which he’s famous. Trying to pin him as the progenitor of rap may be the second-most over-used example of ignorance about hip-hop (the first being “My name is [], and I’m here to say…”).
There’s a lot of that cringe energy in Jacob Ming-Trent’s How Shakespeare Saved My Life (world premiere runs through March 1 at the Berkeley Rep). The actor-playwright takes us through his broken-family upbringing to spin a tale of how Stratford-upon-Avon’s favorite son was there for young Jacob in the darkest times. The young brotha’s affinity for The Bard was matched only for his love of hip-hop. Unfortunately, his attempts to highlight the correlation fail to show any real causation.
We meet young Jacob as an eighth grader in 1992, when his mother has just kicked his addict father out of the house. Jacob will spend most of his life getting the cold shoulder from the former and trying not to enable the latter. Soon after the event, he happens upon “Shakespeare class” at school and is challenged to do the St. Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V. The lad instantly falls in love with the prose, which will later be his go-to tool for everything from school reports to picking up girls. As he ping-pongs between his hot-mess parents and a deadly life of gang activity, he tries to make a living as an actor. Needless to say, it’s easier said than done.
There are several things working against the show. The first is that it’s way too long—official materials say 95 minutes, but it felt a lot longer, with the final-third that could easily jettison 20 minutes without losing any narrative. The second thing against it is a failure to show any real love for rap, let alone present its connection to Shakespeare. I realize the latter is public domain, but one would think the Rep would spring for the rights of a few recognizable classics.
What’s more, you’d think show director/former Rep AD Tony Taccone would have a better handle on the genre, given his son Jorma’s talents. (So bereft is the show of any real hip-hop knowledge that the program features a photo credited as The Notorious B.I.G, but is actually actor Jamaal Woolard from the Biggie bio-pic Notorious.) The third problem is that it doesn’t actually present what the title promises. Jacob uses Shakespeare as a balm during the trying times of his life (which mash into one another due to jagged storytelling). That’s all fine and well, but escapism is hardly lifesaving. By story’s end, Ming-Trent has only illustrated that he likes Shakespeare, something he made clear from the opening lines.
Unfortunately, there weren’t many masks to be seen, even if that revealed more Black faces than usual at the Rep. The HVAC of the Peet’s Theatre did a pretty good job, with CO² levels peaking around 1,023ppm on my Aranet4 before dropping around 992ppm by the final bow. The final masked-required show will be the Feb 8 matinée.
There are good things to be found within the show (particularly, Takeshi Kata’s intriguing set design), but it’s more of a rough idea than a captivating play. With further refinement, it could be brilliant. As it stands, it’s just lost.
HOW SHAKESPEARE SAVED MY LIFE world premiere runs through March 1. Berkeley Rep. Tickets and more info here.
