Ruffly Speaking
By Tom Wachunas
“I thought it would be very interesting, if somebody came back to
life as the dog of their worst enemy. I got very excited when I realized I
could kill my protagonist at the act break.”
- playwright Lee Blessing, commenting on his play, Chesapeake
Considering the societal bad blood so
profusely flowing in America of late, Canton’s Seat of the Pants Productions
designed its Summer season of plays, under the collective name of ACTS OF
DISSENT, to, in the words of Craig Joseph,
“…dramatize and "storify" some of the conflicts that exist in America
today in an effort to move hearts and open minds, thereby creating an avenue
for increased understanding and potential dialogue.” Joseph stars in the current production of Chesapeake, a one-man show written by
Lee Blessing in 1999.
The setting for Chesapeake harkens to the tumultuous
“culture wars” that began during the late 1980s (and raged through the 1990s),
when vitriolic conservatives, including North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms and
his dour cronies, sought to diminish or dismantle the National Endowment for
the Arts (NEA) for its perceived promulgation of “indecent” art.
Here we meet Kerr,
a bisexual artist whose NEA-supported performance piece draws the ire of one
Therm Pooley, a blustery Southern conservative. After winning his Senate seat
largely by stirring up public furor over Kerr’s “obscene” art, Pooley campaigns
to shut down the NEA. The outraged Kerr in turn concocts an elaborate act of
revenge – which he considers a performance art work in itself - and steals the
Senator’s beloved Chesapeake Bay Retriever, Lord Ratliff of Luckymore,
nicknamed ‘Lucky,’ and affectionately called ‘Rat’ by Pooley. But before Kerr
can fully consummate his nefarious invasion of Pooley’s life, things go
terribly wrong, taking a simultaneously bizarre and utterly hilarious turn when
Lucky literally inhabits the body of Kerr. Or is it that Kerr inhabits Lucky? This
entire performance is surely a metaphysical monologue.
As Kerr, Craig
Joseph is brilliantly commanding. He immerses himself in a seemingly
inexhaustible reservoir of performing stamina to sustain an astonishing range
of postures and vocal nuances. Something of a neurotic anarchist at heart, Kerr
struggles through his pride and vulnerability to define and perhaps breach the
shifting boundaries between art and life. He wags his shaggy tale with an
incessant alacrity as endearing as it is quick and startling. So there’s a
staccato intensity in the way Joseph pours out the confessional cascade of
Kerr’s childhood memories, recollections
of the other characters (including Pooley’s alluring personal assistant, and
Pooley’s domineering wife), and the fiery allocutions of his aesthetic philosophy,
however confused it may be. As viewers, we become witnesses to an increasingly funny
but ironic and complex transformation. It’s an extraordinary morphing wherein
Joseph’s most riveting sleight–of-personality is his portrayal of the
self-aware Lucky. While seeing life from Pooley’s perspective, Lucky/Kerr also
temporarily poses as God, hoping to direct Pooley’s NEA policy decisions.
In a future time and place, maybe this play
will be regarded simply as a curious, sardonic caricature that skewered the self-righteous
sloganeering and misguided visions of myopic politicians and artists alike. But
as it is now, and beyond considering potential elimination of the NEA (always
an easy target in the panoply of Federal budget expenditures), Blessing’s play (a
blessing of a play) still speaks with palpable urgency and thought-provoking
wit to our acrimonious times.
At the end I was
reminded that now more than ever before, we need to start seeing each other not
as adversarial agendas, but rather as faithful retrievers, so to speak, of
cultural dignity and peace. These days, maybe America is like that old joke
about the dyslexic agnostic insomniac who stayed up all night, thumbing through
the Bible, looking for Dog.
Chesapeake, at the Black Box Theatre,
located in GlenOak High School, 1801 Schneider Street Northeast, Canton, OH /
Performances are Friday and Saturday at 8 PM, Sunday at 2PM, June 16 -18
Tickets are $15, and can be
purchased at www.chesapeakecanton.eventbrite.com
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