Press enter after choosing selection

Leftist satire offers inflation remedies

Leftist satire offers inflation remedies image
Parent Issue
Day
28
Month
January
Year
1982
Copyright
Copyright Protected
Rights Held By
Donated by the Ann Arbor News. © The Ann Arbor News.
OCR Text

The Ann Arbor News, Thursday, January 28, 1982

Entertainment

Leftist satire offers inflation remedies

By Rachelle Urist

NEWS DRAMA REVIEWER

This weekend and next The Performance Network, 408 W. Washington, will present Dario Fo's "We Won't Pay, We Won't Pay," a satire that proposes home remedies for inflation.

It is directed by R. G. Davis, founder of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, founder of the Berkeley-based center for the study of Brecht writer, teacher and translator.  Davis uses his own translation for this play.

The Performance Network is the brainchild of David Bernstein and Jim Moran both of whom appear in this production.  They are among the founders of the Attic Theatre in Detroit, which also began as a small, politically minded arena.  Bernstein is a founder of Ann Arbor's Medieval Festival, and Moran runs the Young People's Theatre Repertory Company of Ann Arbor.

THE MARRIAGE of Dario Fo and The Performance Network is made possible, in part, by a grant from the UAW.  The Ann Arbor performances of "We Won't Pay, We Won't Pay" are previews to a tour of labor unions in southeastern Michigan.  It was for workers in labor unions that Fo himself began performing in 1968 when he broke with commercial theater and television.

It is an audience that Sylvia Tucker, assistant director of this production, explored when she did this play at The Open Circle Theatre in Toronto, a theater dedicated to finding new contingencies among the theatre-going public.  Her production of "We Won't Pay" enjoyed a five-month run in Toronto, playing to a cross-section of the population.

Dario Fo is an Italian actor and author of some 30 plays.  He was-and is-a popular performer with his wife, Franca Rame, comparable to Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca of the 1950s.  He is committed, independent Marxist whose notions about theater generated enthusiasm in Berlin, London, and, more recently in Toronto and San Francisco.

TUCKER AND DAVIS are ardent promoters of this work.  They are currently translating another of Fo's plays, "Mother Marijuana is the Best."  Two years ago Davis directed Fo's "Accidental Death of an Anarchist" at Tucker's Open Circle Theatre.  They are probably the North American authorities on the work of Fo.  They are also-with Bernstein and Moran-committed to political theater.

What is political theater?  According to David-who is in accord with Fo on both politics and theater-theater is "a way of looking at things.  What you can expect from political theater is that audiences will begin to think a certain way that will develop a certain kind of action...protest art is not politics.  That was easy in the '60s.  Now thing are more complicated."

"The objective of a play," said Heine Mueller of the Berliner Ensemble, "is to exacerbate the class relationships of an audience."  This play, says Davis, has done that.  It does it not with pedantic teachings, but through comedy.  "Nothing gets down as deeply into the mind and intelligence as satire," said Fo.  Ultimately, political theater must be good theatre with a separate appeal equal to it politics.

WHY IS THIS play important to do here?  "Because it's a good play and it talks about things in a Marxist way," says Davis.  Davis is a stickler for setting out with the right point of view.  His studies of Brecht, for example, lead him to wonder why he has never done very well in the U.S., and why "everybody thought he was a genius but nobody did him."  Davis talks of the "devastating handling of Brecht by Bentley and Esselin, one of whom is an anti-communist and the other... and Edwardian scholar."

This production in Ann Arbor promises to be an authoritative if not definitive performance of this Fo play.  When you go looking for 408 W. Washington, know that it is behind the Breast Cancer Detection Clinic, west of campus, past the railroad underpass, and just beyond the big sign painted on cinderblock:  Bonavia Bedding, Inc.  The performance dates are Jan. 28, 29, 30; and Feb. 4, 5 and 6 at 8 p.m.

Charles Greenia and Jim Moran are part of the 'We Won't Pay' cast that is determined to find ways to whip inflation