2013-05-22T08:14:24-04:00 Dylan Brody http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=dylan-brody Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Dylan Brody Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2468189 2013-01-13T14:06:47-05:00 2013-03-15T05:12:01-04:00

Dylan Brody http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dylan-brody/
I understand that people get very nervous when it comes to discussing gun control. The people on both sides of the argument feel threatened. Those who want guns feel threatened by new laws. Those who want stricter gun control feel threatened by guns. And by the people who own them. Which includes most of the people on the other side of the discussion.

I don't like being bullied, though, and the jingoistic arguments against gun control are generally so patently ridiculous that, were we not afraid of the well-armed opposition, debating them would be like shooting fish in a barrel. Which we would not do, because that would involve the casual use of guns to which we are opposed.

Firearms advocates say that if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. While this is technically true, it is also rhetorically null. Since murder is a criminal act, only criminals commit murder. This is not a valid argument for legalizing homicide. It does, however, give us insight into the underlying pathology that makes gun owners so certain that gun ownership is good.

The NRA points the finger at movies and video games as the culprits in gun deaths, but it continues to propagate the cinematic fantasy that gun violence can best be stopped with additional gun violence. In the imaginations of gun owners, a mass murderer opens fire in a crowded theater or a grade school and in heroic fashion, diving sideways in a slow-motion John Woo sequence, a civilian with a properly licensed, legally purchased concealed weapon could fire one shot, stopping the catastrophe as quickly as it started. The myth perpetuated in our entertainments supports this fantasy. Heroes act surely and quickly, harming only villains; it is the nature of art and entertainment that we all put ourselves into the role of the hero.

Gun owners speak of home invasions and their ability to protect themselves and their families, but statistics show that gun ownership increases the chances of injury to those who live in the home with the weapons and home invasion is a fairly rare occurrence. A sense of safety is not the same thing as actual safety. Simple statistics show that people in a room with two guns become more likely to be shot than people in a room with one. People in a room with no guns in it are significantly less likely to be shot than people in a room with one gun in it. Believing that owning a gun makes one less likely to be shot is like saying that owning a car makes one less likely to be in an accident. Not only does it makes no sense, it suggests that one's assessment of reality is so poor that ownership of either a gun OR a car should be summarily contraindicated.

A paranoid world view and a fantasy of vigilantism is not a valid argument against enacting laws that protect the safety of the public. Gun owners, by definition, own guns. I, for one, refuse to let my fear of them silence me.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1838407 2012-08-29T12:29:44-04:00 2012-10-29T05:12:04-04:00

Dylan Brody http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dylan-brody/
Here's what I've noticed. Most politicians operating at the national level have a lot of money. I do not have a lot of money. For the record, I am not a politician operating at the national level, either. Is there a record? If there is, that was for it. I digress.

These national level politicians tend to tell those of us in the middle class that the reason for our problems lies with the poor and the disenfranchised. Illegal aliens, they tell us, eat up social resources in a time of deprivation using emergency health care and school lunches that cost millions of dollars. Apparently there are a great many accident prone undocumented immigrants with really hungry kids. We are told that having a safety net creates a lazy, government-dependent class that seeks only to live off our tax dollars in rat-infested hovels and that the best way to discourage people from being poor is to take away their money.

These same national level politicians spend millions and millions of dollars on advertising to convince the poorest voters that the reason we cannot afford a safety net is that the unions - those who actively represent the middle-class - demand too much for their workers. According to the very wealthy of this country, the so-called "job creators," an interest in working together to get the best deal for everyone on the work-force is anti-capitalist. Being willing to sell one's time on the planet at a rate that undercuts the other guy and allows for maximum corporate profits, that's just being a good, old-fashioned team player.

So, a group of people with a lot of money who mostly associate with people with a lot of money, spend a lot of money telling those with less money whom to blame for their privation. Let me put this, as best I understand it into the form of a simple school-style word problem.

Lexington Park Madison the Fifth has sixty-five apples in a big bucket. Lawrence Workharder has two apples. Michael Undernostril has none. Lexington Park Madison the Fifth stands up on his bucket and says, "Michael! Lawrence has two apples. You have none! How is that fair?"

Lawrence says, "Wait a minute. I worked hard for these apples. Why don't you give him some of yours?"

Lexington says, "Hey, you two fight it out. I have all these apples, obviously I am the provider of apples so those two must have come from me to begin with."

Lexington sits and eats some apples while he watches them argue and, at last, Lawrence agrees to give Michael an apple because the poor guy looks hungry, at which point Lexington says, "Oh! Did an apple just change hands? Then you each have to give me half an apple."

This confuses Michael and Lawrence. They say, "why?"

Lexington then says, "This is very complicated stuff. You couldn't understand it. But if you apply yourself, there's a chance that some day you could have enough apples for me to explain it to you. Now get off my Orchard. This is private property."

Did I mention that I don't really know much about economics?]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1830917 2012-08-27T17:38:43-04:00 2012-10-27T05:12:03-04:00

Dylan Brody http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dylan-brody/
Now, as the mainstream media involve themselves in discussions of fifty shades of rape, Republican pundits say this is all a distraction from the important issues that need to be discussed. They know better. The distinction between a legitimate distraction and a forcible misdirection is not lost on them.

Like the disingenuous, oil-industry invested climate change deniers who muddy environmental issues with non-scientific proclamations of solar cycles and the creationists who build museums to miseducate America's youth about the history of the planet and the origins of humanity, Todd Akin has taken a nonsensical bit of folklore convenient to his political position and introduced it to the zeitgeist.

While we on the left take umbrage -- and rightly so -- at the idea that only forcible rape is considered "legitimate," and are drawn into a re-arguing of women's right to be legally protected from date-rape, drug-rape, sexual coercion and the myriad other abuses, indignities and invasions to which they have been subjected over the centuries, Mr. Akin with his one "wrong word" has given traction to the idea that in a traumatic sexual assault, pregnancy cannot be induced. That idea, that single, fallacious, rapist-enabling seed of an idea need only find a fertile environment in the minds of zealots to have a devastating effect on women's rights. If ministers, preachers, politicians, law enforcement officials come to believe this nonsense, there ceases to be a need for abortion rights in the case of rape because rape, according to someone they heard on TV, cannot cause pregnancy. What's worse, the simple fact of pregnancy can be used as proof that no rape occurred. This is not some half-formed, slippery-slope argument. Already, the Republican Party has put forth a platform that includes the revocation of a woman's right to choose even in cases of rape and incest.

We shouldn't have pundits on the air discussing whether the word "legitimate" is more offensive than the word "forcible." We should have Department of Health and Human Services representatives on every news show on every major network and cable channel saying, "What Mr. Akin said is inaccurate and unscientific. These are the facts about rape and rape-pregnancy statistics." Close the book on that idea before the ink is dry on the first lines of its misogynist introduction.

Only then can we free ourselves of the misdirection that has us discussing what modifiers should go before the noun and get down to the real issue at hand. Why does the right wing of the Republican Party actively seek to support and enable rape?]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1629066 2012-06-27T17:43:31-04:00 2012-08-27T05:12:06-04:00

Dylan Brody http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dylan-brody/
A friend of mine is a Republican and when I mentioned that I thought the idea that corporations are people was absurd, he said that corporations are made up of people and should therefore be treated as people. I wouldn't have a problem with that if -- you know -- it made any sense at all. A lot of things are made up of people. Chess clubs are made up of people. The Ku Klux Klan is made up of people. Soylent Green is people. It's people! I don't think anyone is arguing that the Society for Creative Anachronism should have a say in the workings of our national government just because it is made up of people.

If corporations are people, all groups of people should be treated as people, and yet the same judiciary and legislative organizations that wish to give personhood to corporations are perfectly willing to disenfranchise groups that are less likely be valuable allies in elections. Forgive me for seeking consistency in our definitions. But wait. If corporations have personhood, does that personhood begin at the moment that a corporation is conceived? Can the abortion of a business plan that seems unprofitable be seen as murder or does it not become murder until the corporation is fully funded? Wouldn't personhood of corporations make Bain Capital a serial murderer and, as such, subject to incarceration? Or are corporate people subject to different laws from corporeal people?

Ultimately, the question of personhood is a clever misdirection when it comes to Citizens United. The real point of the ruling is that money equals speech. The unspoken but dangerous corollary to this idea is this: Poverty is silence. Corporations are very, very wealthy. They have great resources at their command and therefore they can buy a place at the table. Individuals who do not have deep coffers should shut up and mind their own business, which, obviously, they don't do very well or they would have bigger businesses to mind and therefore be prepared to buy a voice. Who would have thought the trick to free speech would be the ability to afford it?

Maybe I don't understand what free means.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1371292 2012-03-21T22:27:21-04:00 2012-05-21T05:12:01-04:00

Dylan Brody http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dylan-brody/ claims he shot in self defense.

In several states, laws have been passed requiring that, even in cases of rape, women seeking abortions go through medically unnecessary procedures before being allowed the treatment they choose. One male politician suggested that if a woman does not want to see the image from the trans-vaginal ultrasound, she can "just close her eyes." So if, say, a rape victim doesn't want a child from the act of violence perpetrated against her, Tom Corbett, gracious Governor of Pennsylvania, suggests she close her eyes while she is again violated for no medically justifiable reason. Elsewhere, a law passed saying that doctors must inform women of a link between abortion and breast cancer even though no such link has ever been established. When Sandra Fluke spoke out about the expense of birth control for women, she was publicly pilloried by Rush Limbaugh, called names and her honor besmirched.

In those cases, as in the case of the Occupy Protesters who have been tear gassed and pepper sprayed, bludgeoned and shot with non-lethal but painful ammo, the message is the same. Whether it is a message sent to the black, women or anti-corruption demonstrators, the message is this: "Dissent at your own peril. We can shame you, humiliate you, violate you, kill you if we choose. Be quiet. Comply. Know your place. You have the right to remain silent and that is all."

There has been a push in the past several months for anyone who sees bullying taking place to speak up. Well I see it and I am saying something. Trayvon Martin did nothing wrong and citizens of all races should be able to walk the streets unafraid. People, regardless of gender, must be allowed their own reproductive, medical and recreational choices regardless of the religious beliefs of politicians. Freedoms of speech and peaceful demonstration are the people's right. As a white male and a tax-paying citizen, if I do not speak up, I am a conspirator.

I will not be cowed into playing the role of collaborator. If we want our kids to behave decently toward one another, to stand up on behalf of one another, we must set the example. The bullying must stop.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1261428 2012-02-08T11:52:17-05:00 2012-04-09T05:12:01-04:00

Dylan Brody http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dylan-brody/ reaction to the Clint Eastwood Chrysler commercial during the Super Bowl on Sunday. This led to a great many on air conversations about whether or not the commercial was, in fact, political -- not to mention excuses to run bits of the Chrysler commercial over and over again. Now, I would contend that all commercials carry underlying political messages. Commercials for easy-to-make dinners and the most absorbent paper towels carry messages about the roles we expect women to play in the household. Commercials for anti-depressants and allergy medications deliver messages about the nature of happiness and the ways in which we relate to our world and our environment, not to mention messages about our relationship to and dependence on the pharmaceutical industry. All commercials in general carry underlying messages about the importance of consumerism and serve as pro-capitalist propaganda. These political messages come through all the time, slipping under our radar.

The question we need to ask is not whether this ad was deliberately more political in content than other ads that we see every day. The question that must be addressed is why this ad so affected Karl Rove that he felt he must speak out against it; the answer to this question reveals more about Rove and the Republican party than it does about Chrysler or its two minutes of heart-warming, pro-industry salesmanship. The text of the commercial that so offended Mr. Rove's delicate sensibilities was about coming together as a nation. It referenced the rebirth of Detroit and the auto industry as a microcosm of the nation, as proof that people working together can accomplish great things.

Karl Rove, a powerful figure in the architecture of the modern Republican strategy, depends on polarization and animosity. The very thought that people can come together, can unify as a nation is anathema to the Rove doctrine. Rove and his cohorts do not believe in coming together, in compromise, in cooperation. They thrive on conflict. This political philosophy shows in every aspect of their discourse.

When non-Christians seek inclusion, the Republican politicos frame any conversation in terms of a war on religion. When gays seek equal rights, the right wing sees it as an attack on marriage. Multi-cultural studies become an assault on traditional American values. If one's base philosophy demands that any disagreement must be seen in terms of combative opposition, the very idea of coming together becomes not just distasteful but a direct attack on an ideological level.

Thus, it makes perfect sense that, in this case, Mr. Rove sees the political underpinnings of this particular advertisement very, very clearly. These political underpinnings sting. They strike him as powerfully as the sexist underpinnings of a Victoria's Secret ad strike a feminist, as powerfully as the underpinnings of the "Beef -- It's What's For Dinner" ads strike a committed vegan.

This leads me to the next questions we ought to be asking ourselves. Do we want to live in a nation whose critical thinking skills are so eroded that we are shocked to realize that the messages we receive every day actually contain messages? Do we want to live in a nation in which we are so inured to the messages with which we are inundated that it makes sense to vilify an advertisement simply for having a message that might be perceived and not just absorbed unconsciously? Do we want to live in a nation that sees the idea of cooperation and unity as inherently dangerous to the status quo?

Let's say it is halftime in America. How about this? When we get out there on the field, let's play the rest of this game with our eyes open.
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1180530 2012-01-03T05:01:03-05:00 2012-03-03T05:12:01-05:00

Dylan Brody http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dylan-brody/ Bradley Manning is currently imprisoned. He is imprisoned, as you probably know, for providing classified documents to WikiLeaks for global release via the Internet. Some of what he released was embarrassing to the State Department. Some of what he released revealed war crimes committed by the U.S. military, breaches of the Geneva Convention. The revelation of these documents is being called treason. I call it an act of conscience and bravery and I call acts of conscience and bravery carried out at great personal risk heroism.


The tribal nature of humanity makes us value group safety. Members of mobs behave in ways that individuals within the mob would see as obviously reprehensible under other circumstances. People who abhor violence, who believe in principles of decency and tolerance, support killing in the name of national security or preemptive defense. Ultimately, though, when one person within the group sees the hypocrisy that can be invisible as part of the fabric of a cultural experience, that single person can remind us all of our responsibility to stand against injustice, even injustice that it is easier to ignore, to obscure, to forget.


Yes, Bradley Manning's release of classified documents reveals wrongs perpetrated by the American military in the Middle East; but what the documents really reveal runs far deeper and holds far more importance than the specifics of the released data. It reminds us that the very act of war is inherently criminal, that once killing is presented as a valid solution to human differences, the value of humanity itself becomes diminished. Bradley Manning's courageous action reminds us not that people do bad things to one another in war, but that we allow it to happen in our names as long as we let our leaders hide from us the atrocities committed on our behalf.


It would be easy to point at those implicated in the documents and say, "That soldier should be punished for killing civilians. That general should be fired for helping to cover it up." What Bradley Manning did, though, was not the easy thing and we should honor his heroism by taking the hard route ourselves. As long as we allow our government to tell us that sending troops to kill people is right and just, as long as we allow our leaders to support war and punish those who speak the truth about the horror they have seen, we all stand complicit in the crimes committed, the killing, maiming and terrorizing of vast civilian populations half-way around the globe.


War cannot be waged decently. War cannot be waged or supported with clean hands or with a clean conscience.


As long as we perpetuate the lies that shroud our history of violence in deceptive tapestries of glory and grandiosity, we believe that violence is grand and glorious and we continue to act badly and lie well. The shine of manifest destiny wears thin when we acknowledge that we mistreated the people who lived on our land, committed genocide against the Native Americans and then polished over the mass murder with comforting tales of savages against peaceful settlers. The half-century of undeclared wars since World War II and the current "war on terror" have all resulted in mass killings of innumerable civilians and enemy soldiers as we carefully tally up the military losses we suffer and find ways to frame the horror as victory for our side. The very premise is a lie.


The world is round. There are no sides. There is no victory.


If the truth really is the first casualty of war, then perhaps reviving the truth is the first step toward ending it. The only heroes in war are those who strive to end it. Bradley Manning, imprisoned for treason, reminds us that true heroism is non-violent. True heroism is a whisper of truth in a carefully orchestrated chorus.
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.994437 2011-10-05T18:45:26-04:00 2011-12-05T05:12:01-05:00

Dylan Brody http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dylan-brody/ HERE to catch up) In the second portion of the conversation I moved beyond questions of content and inspiration and was able to really begin learning about her creative process. Read on, lovely peeps. Read on.

DB: All right, let's get specific here. Everybody in the world of art has his or her own way of getting to the final product. Tell me about your process as a writer and as a performer.

JMS: Every project reveals its own process. As a performer, I started out doing it because I came from a musical family and my mother was from the theatre and it was natural to do it. Right away I became very interested in the research level of theatre -- playing people who lived other places and in other times and historical characters were always fun for me for that reason. I'm a research junkie. I considered myself a "Method" actor when it was in style, and I didn't when it wasn't and I just wrangled my way through -- still do, really. Acting is a very organic process and it's awkward and awful at first and then something happens. I'll stumble into something that takes me down a magic breadcrumb trail and it feels ecstatic and I know I'm onto something and then I can usually find satisfaction to some degree -- not entirely, ever, of course -- I'll know I've put my every corpuscle into it and I don't regret having done it.

A couple of times, the text just never really worked for me, and when it's another author's work, especially a living author's, it can't be changed. So I was stuck with it. Those are the times I wanted to disappear -- to crawl behind the scenery and disintegrate. But I have been lucky and have played hundreds of wonderful parts. My years as a "leading lady" garnered me a lot of praise and I had the opportunity to say some of the most beautiful words ever written -- Shakespeare and Marsha Norman and Thornton Wilder, Tennessee Williams and people you've never heard of. Vern Theissen wrote a glorious one-woman show called Shakespeare's Will, and I was fortunate to perform in the American premier, produced by Leonard Nimoy. I still don't understand why that one hasn't played on Broadway. I can't believe Helen Mirren didn't snap it up. But it's a weird field out there nowadays. So different from the '70s when there wasn't a single musical playing on Broadway at one point.

As a writer, it's entirely different.

With A Single Woman (the first name of my Jeannette Rankin play) I started with her speeches and then worked my way into her personal life with the help of a dramaturg (the great Rick Foster). When it's someone so historically interesting as Jeannette Rankin, there's a ton of material on the NY Times website -- their archive goes back to 1871 or something like that -- and I learned a lot about what she was doing, what the world thought of her and how she responded to inquiry from journalists. And I used as a clothesline a story from her childhood -- about a wagon train that met a group of Indians -- and it's a cliff-hanger that is a startling parallel to Jeannette's life as a peace activist. One day in rehearsal I was just sick of the whole thing and decided to go backwards with the script. But I kept the Indian story moving chronologically, because it really wouldn't have made sense otherwise. So I started with Jeannette at age 92 and went backwards in time and when she was 10 she first heard the Indian story and the two lines of the text collided and BAM! We had a show.

I approached Coming In Hot very differently, of course, because it's an adaptation. Once again, I used a clothesline -- the first piece in the book is called Hymn and it is written by the amazing Charlotte Brock, a Marine who worked in Mortuary Affairs for a time when she was deployed. I split it into 10 sections and then I actually worked in a very linear fashion -- went through and identified the essays and poems that I found most performable and then passed to Shannon the "script," which was still at around 25,000 words -- WAY too many for a theatre piece -- and Shannon whittled it down to about 13,000. Then I started reading it aloud and that revealed the awkward bits and the places where the words became mush in my mouth, and where it felt didactic, or tedious or whatever. Once we got into rehearsal, the book's other co-editor, Lisa Bowden, was the director, and she started slashing as she watched me squirming, trying to commit to stuff that just didn't work but I didn't know if it was me or the text or what -- and then the magnificent Vicki Brown, our composer/sound artist joined us and she was very helpful and it was the most grueling and satisfying collaboration of my life.

Mary's Joy seemed to write itself -- I think end of life monologues are always interesting, and when it's a woman with six living children, a colonial grandmother who is about to be executed -- it's pretty compelling stuff. I love the etymology of the 17th century, combined with the fact that Mary Dyer was a Quaker and used Thee and Thou which make for a kind of elevated elegance, even when we're talking about dysentery. So it was great fun researching her life and also the language. Every word in that play was in common usage by the time Mary came along, and she was one of the first Quakers and they evolved as a response to the brutality of Puritanism in England and the American colonies first, then the surrounding countries and now, of course, they're worldwide. They are all about radical non-violence, and there is nothing more compelling or worth talking about, in my view.

DB: There's a certain egolessness in letting other people perform your writing. You will notice, it is something I almost never do because I am -- as is widely known -- a tremendous narcissist. How do you decide which pieces to do yourself and which ones to cast with other performers?

JMS: I always want someone else to play the character first -- I always think I'll serve the project better as a director or even just as the author. But somehow I always end up doing them myself. Probably economics and practicality. It's pretty damned simple to call a rehearsal when I'm the only one who needs to show up.

DB: It's been great talking to you, and I do hope whenever you're in L.A. you'll be in touch so we can get together. Is there anything I can have on hand for you when that happens?

JMS: Yes, I really do love single malt scotch. And the more, the merrier. ]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.985669 2011-10-03T18:15:05-04:00 2011-12-03T05:12:02-05:00

Dylan Brody http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dylan-brody/ Jeanmarie Simpson and I have become fans of one another's work. I have read some of her latest work in progress and have had the privilege of introducing her at a performance of her wonderful show Coming in Hot, a one-person play in which she handles several different roles, presenting the writings of women who have served in combat.

She is a terrific writer, a riveting performer and an artistic activist of the sort all too rarely seen in America today.

I had hoped to write a review of her work and may yet do that at some point, but it occurred to me that a good place to start would be to get her to answer some questions. What she said seemed clear enough, profound enough, insightful enough to get out to the world as a printable interview. Here, therefore, is that interview for your reading pleasure.

DB: Hi, Jeanmarie. Here in Hollywood a great many people put together one-person shows as a way of showcasing their talents, breaking into the mainstream entertainment industry. It's very clear that the agenda is very, very different for you. Tell me how you started putting together these one-person shows.

JMS: I was founding artistic director of the Nevada Shakespeare Company (NSC). We opened Romeo and Juliet on September 13, 2001. The World Trade Centers had fallen and with them my friend from high school and thousands of others.

I had recently been to NYC with someone who had never been and we did all kinds of touristy things like going up to the top of the Twin Towers and the Empire State Building and took the ferry to the Statue of Liberty and went to Ellis Island. We touched my uncle's name on the World War II memorial at Battery Park and drove out to Queens and saw the site of the 1964 World's Fair that I so indelibly remember. My mother grew up in Brooklyn and I spent a lot of vacation time in the city, and I was a theatre person and New York is our Mecca in the 'New World.'

The morning of September 11th, I turned on my radio and heard NPR's report and the whole world changed. The trajectory of my life's work changed. Suddenly, doing mainstream theatre felt silly. From that day forward, I began finding human rights non-profits with which to partner. I redefined NSC as an activist company. We joined Theatres Against War. In 2002, after we'd been bombing Afghanistan for a year and my son was in the military, and I knew he was gonna go to war because the fucking sabers were rattling like crazy and everybody was all fired up about going to war with Iraq (or, as Chris Rock more aptly put it, we were gonna JUMP Iraq). And I thought I was going to lose my mind and when I was on the verge of doing something desperate (immolation? hunger strike? Shave my head, move to the mountains??!), I found, on Carnegie Hall's website, the delicious, delectable, irascible, articulate and magnificent Jeannette Rankin. I knew within minutes that this was my new work, and I set about writing a solo work about her. It became unwieldy and I added an actor who played 57 other parts. We went all over the place with it, and during the 2004 election it really caught fire and we couldn't keep up with the demand -- we closed the play and made a (horrible) film of it. That's probably the biggest disappointment of my life. I have recently created an audio of the play with images and a tiny bit of video footage -- just to get it documented once and for all. It's called Flight of the Dove.

In 2008, end of the year, I met Shannon Cain, co-editor of the book, Powder: Writing by Women in the Ranks From Vietnam to Iraq, and I knew right away that it would be a great theater piece. I didn't intend for it to be a solo work, but the reality set in of the cost of producing an ensemble work and we realized that I should just do it myself, and we couldn't find a theatre company to produce it, so Kore Press courageously took it on. We titled it Coming In Hot and took it to high schools and colleges and did it in Hollywood, Seattle and Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Reno and it was very well received. We're trying to get a reasonable video of it, but dammit, theatre is so goddamn difficult to translate to film! So it's a struggle. But we haven't given up.

DB: I've seen that piece and it's absolutely beautiful. In the interest of full disclosure, I suppose I should mention that you had me speak a bit before a performance of that show and introduce you when you brought it out to L.A. for a fundraiser with Frank Dorrel. What came after that piece?

JMS: My newest work, Mary's Joy - The Anatomy of a Martyr, came from I don't know where. I don't remember -- weird, huh? But I was doing some reading about the great Mary Dyer, first colonial woman executed in the "New World," and I found out that she was imprisoned in solitary and that she was hanged at 9 in the morning on June 1, 1660. It simply felt natural to write a solo work about her last hour and a half or so and to expose the issues that emerge when one researches her life - feminism, civil rights, freedom of speech, religious freedom, mental illness, etc...

DB: So, do you conceive these pieces with the intention of making them inherently activist, or is that just a byproduct of the subject matter you choose?

JMS: I do intend for them to be activist projects. I don't see the point otherwise.
I have created original work since I was 12, in 1972. But my work didn't really become became activism-based until after the 11th of September 2001.

DB: Do you think of yourself more as a writer or a performer? Actor or performance artist?

JMS: I'm an artivist. Started out as a singer-actor, then evolved to an actor-singer, then got into directing and producing by the time I was 30 I called myself a "Theatre Artist," because it was not accurate to call myself any one of those things (and I always feel especially strange when people refer to me as an "actress"). Now I'm an artivist.

DB: It seems that the entertainment industry continues to expand while the artworld shrinks. So, as an artivist, I have to ask, where does art really fit into the current cultural landscape?

JMS: Hell if I know. I can't appreciate art anymore, when it's entombed in an institution or underwritten by corporations or rich people who feel all warm and fuzzy and important because they "support art." I don't give a shit if you're Hockney or Alice Neel or Bob Who Paints Watercolors Down on the Corner, if you're making art you need support. ARTISTS need support. "The Arts" are a wonderful industry for administrators. They make six figures while the Van Gogh's of today (and yesterday and tomorrow) make diddly doo dah. I love what the young artists are doing, the street stuff, the amazing video stuff they're self-generating. I love the work of a young woman named Lucy who produces her own videos and releases them through youtube, she goes by the name lucyinabucket She just turned 18 and she knocks my socks off.



And there's an absolutely beautiful piece called "Retarded" by a young woman named ReganB that's stunning!



I think American culture is lost because we, Americans are lost. Culture?!! TV is and has been American culture for decades. And it's sickening. Not the shows so much, although many (most) of them are, just because they are so busy making money and having a great time while people all over this planet are suffering as a result of our foreign policy, but the ADVERTISING makes me want to smash the screen. The obscene Macy's commercials and the Home Depot and the blahdiddyblahblah selling their fucking widgets while American kids are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan and we're killing civilians all over the world (to protect "our way of life") and we have 800 BASES in more than 150 COUNTRIES!!!! That is so beyond diabolical and disgusting. So I return to my first answer to this question. Hell if I know where art fits into the current cultural landscape. If it's diversion, it appalls me. If it's confrontational, everyone is tired of it. I just don't know.

DB: So, I take it you are not hoping to find your way into television and film.

JMS: HA!

{Part two of this interview will be posted within a few days}
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.932516 2011-08-23T15:18:49-04:00 2011-10-24T05:12:01-04:00

Dylan Brody http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dylan-brody/
When kids in grade school told me that I was going to Hell because I did not believe in God, my parents admonished me not to fight over it, not to argue the point. They told me that Christians find that offensive and there was no reason to actively offend people. I was not to use curse words in public as they offend some people. I was not to talk about politics because some people could be offended. I carried a lot of this sensitivity into adulthood. I have striven over the years to express my opinions gently, to couch them in good humor and have taken care, whenever possible to maintain the high ground. I have put effort into voicing my ideas without ruffling anyone's feathers.

Those with whom I disagree have never shown me the same courtesy. Telling a child that he will be punished eternally for his thoughts is cruel. Eliminating words from the common vocabulary, regardless of the social mores that prompt the action, is censorship unmitigated. I am offended by the basic precepts of religion, the idea that those who believe a certain thing will achieve a reward after death and those who believe otherwise will be punished. The premise that what happens after life is somehow more important than what happens during life strikes me as so absurd as to be laughable. That what we think or what mystic incantations we perform might hold more significance than the actions we take seems a way of dodging personal responsibility, not instilling it. That what invisible power we worship could outweigh our basic behavior toward one another I find so deeply offensive a concept that I am outraged to know that anyone believes it, much less passes it on to innocent children.

The neo-Christian agenda, that of Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, Christine O'Donnell and the fundamentalist wing of the Republican party, seeks to take this country in a horrific direction. They believe so strongly in their particular brand of biblical law and sectarian governance that casually throwing around the expression "Christian Nation" feels to them like an affirmation of their commitment to the Constitution. Their facility for rewriting history allows them to believe that deists like Thomas Jefferson expressed the same warped interpretation of Christianity that guides their own actions. Genocide committed against Native Americans simply reflects a just and righteous aspect of the dominion given them by God. America's ugly history of slavery becomes a beautiful step on the sanctified path from African savagery to Christianized civility. Bigotry against homosexuals -- and make no mistake, homophobia is nothing more than a form of bigotry -- justifies denial of equal rights under the law because their big book of antiquated rules and stories includes a line or two in which their deity says he's put off by the thought of two men lying together. These deluded, demented believers have so thoroughly embraced a combative and activist sectarian mindset that when anybody asks for another belief system to be recognized they genuinely believe that war has been declared on their traditions. Under attack as they feel themselves to be, they defend themselves against the imaginary offensive by any means at their disposal. A multi-cultural spiritual center in a major metropolitan area resonates as a threat to the security of their Christ-loving homeland. A holiday greeting card that does not mention their deity by name enrages them as a blow struck in an imaginary war on Christmas. A scientific community that says the universe is older than their book does seeks to undermine the morality of their children by contradicting the literal word of God.

I, for one, am finished being polite. I am done trying not to offend people who offend me constantly and imagine they are justified in doing so because it is their duty to push their deity's agenda on the world at large. When a rabbi says, "How about putting up a menorah near that big cross?" they pull down the cross and say, "There's a war on Christianity." I will now call bullshit every time at the top of my voice. This is not a Christian nation and it never was. America is a secular, politically structured nation with no religious affiliation and complete religious freedom. It includes and welcomes Jews, Muslims, atheists, Hindus, Taoists, Shintoists, Pagans and whomever I'm forgetting to mention.

The truth has greater value than any individual's comfort. This applies to history, to economics and to scientific exploration. For decades America allowed slavery, which is morally objectionable. Homosexuality is a fact, not a condition or an illness or a lifestyle choice. Science has value and if someone wants to pretend that proven facts are wrong because those facts contradict their faith-based insanity, they are allowed to do so. But they are not allowed to foist their nonsense on society at large, not allowed to mis-educate children in the public sector. Nobody has any right to tell anyone else who to love or what rights should be denied to another person. All people are of equal inherent value regardless of race, preference, religion, nationality or personal wealth. To say otherwise on any of these subjects offends me. I will not say those in the neo-Christian movement have no right to say them because censorship also offends me and people are allowed to disagree. There is room in the world for a lot of ideas.

I will not stop saying these things for fear of offending neo-Christians because to remain quiet is to allow my beloved country to continue down the path of religious fascism.

I do not believe in Christ. I do not believe in God. If you do, I hope you will think about the precepts I have put forth here and recognize the possibility that your Christian beliefs are not really at odds with my atheist beliefs. It is possible that the neo-Christians have been using your own belief system to justify behavior that your prophet or your deity or your conscience would find objectionable.

I urge everyone to listen to his or her own inner voices. Check in with your own moral compass. When the reprehensible is suggested, no matter how well supported it seems to be by scripture, speak up against that which you know to be wrong. If a more decent and beautiful world, a world accepting of all people and all ideas, is offensive to some, that is a price I'm willing to pay. I'm pretty sure that a willingness to pay exactly that price for exactly that outcome is the underlying moral of the whole Jesus myth to begin with.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.831913 2011-03-07T14:19:54-05:00 2011-05-25T18:35:25-04:00

Dylan Brody http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dylan-brody/ Lee Camp brings art back to the stand-up stage. His full length CD, Chaos for the Weary, rife with startling juxtapositions and keen cultural insight shines a light on social injustice, economic disparity and rampant consumerism, as Camp keeps the laughs coming with machine gun delivery and sports-tuned timing.

This is stand up the way I loved it when I was a kid. This is the art form that gave us Lenny Bruce and George Carlin (whose daughter Kelly introduces Camp on the CD), Lord Buckley and Bill Hicks. Only Camp is the new generation, building on what came before and filtering it through the hyperactive mind of a child of the MTV generation. Each new thought leads him to an attention-deficient verbal montage of images and ideas that would seem to be pure stream-of-consciousness were it not so elegantly constructed.

On this CD, Camp delivers a series of roller coaster sentences, or perhaps a single, breathless prose poem of human outrage, whose stanzas are punctuated by slightly demented one-liners that serve as Sergio Aragones margin sketches to an oversized mad magazine of high-caliber comedic ammunition. He may seem to be shooting from the hip, but this young man takes careful aim and his sights are set on all the right targets.

The performer uses a great deal of casual vulgarity that may be off-putting to the tight-assed, but one has the sense that it all comes organically from his natural conversational style. In his exploration of American history and the way it is taught, Camp talks about how the truth is more interesting than fabrication and he proves it on this CD. It's not just more interesting. It is, as Ms. Carlin says in his introduction, really fucking funny.

Lee Camp performs all over the country, on late night talk shows, and can be seen in video blogs right here on Huffington Post.
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.798927 2010-12-20T12:42:08-05:00 2011-05-25T18:20:30-04:00

Dylan Brody http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dylan-brody/ should pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Sometimes, the man behind the curtain gets paraded before us in hopes of distracting us from whatever the hell should be in the glare of the spotlight.

The mainstream media focus* all of our attention on Julian Assange, speculating wildly on the voracity of sexual assault accusations and the possibility of ulterior extradition motives for the leveling of said charges. The mainstream media happily grouse about the mansion in which he gets to live while awaiting further decisions of the court. The mainstream media love to tell whatever story is easiest to tell, easiest to show outrage about, easiest to use in riling the ire of the viewing, listening and reading public.

If the people who work in the mainstream media were doing their job, though, they would be using this time to go through all of those documents released through WikiLeaks, Assange's website. They would be airing and printing the material that is now available to them, material they should have been striving to uncover on their own. The documents are where the real stories lie, not the court case that will decide one man's fate.

Those documents reveal that much more goes on behind the scenes in diplomatic circles than name-calling and back-biting. Apparently, governments make it common practice to deceive those they govern. They conspire with one another to deceive entire populations as to who is responsible for military attacks, to disguise power plays at the leadership level and to arrange and conceal exchanges of both goods and live fire. People who, when it suits their political motives loudly proclaim that sunlight is the best cleanser, suddenly demand that the shades be pulled tightly closed, lest national security be undone by the revelation of their actions.

If we lived proudly under a totalitarian regime, this might reek slightly less of sheer hypocrisy. Given that we think of ourselves as a democratic republic, though, the very idea stinks to the top of the domed rotundas. A democracy depends on a well-informed public choosing leaders and representatives. If those leaders and representatives feel free to deceive the electorate or simply to keep them in the dark as to what actions are taken on their behalf, the electorate cannot properly choose its leadership. To make well-informed decisions, one must, by definition, have information.

Now, we point at Julian Assange and speculate as to whether he is getting what he deserves under house arrest in a very nice house. This fuels outrage and feels like reportage because it allows for on-air discussions with legal analysts and puts journalists beyond the confines of the studio, on the lawn of the man's manse, but it does nothing to better inform the public.

This is how disinformation works in the modern age. It disguises itself as human interest stories or it creates a riveting sideshow to misdirect our attention. Perhaps you don't believe me. Let me give you an example.

A couple of years ago, John Kerry spoke at the University of Florida. A young man was given a microphone to ask a question. He had concerns about the idea that Kerry and his political opponent George W. Bush belonged to the same secret fraternal society and wanted to know if this explained why Kerry had so readily conceded when the electoral results were inconclusive. Before he could finish his question he was assaulted
by police and put under arrest. He was dragged physically from the room while asking what he had done that was worthy of arrest. All he had done was ask a question. He had posed no threat. He had launched no attack. He had asked a question. For his college-appropriate inquisitive nature, he was beaten, dragged away and shot with a taser.

Almost nobody remembers any details of this event, save one. We all remember the young man's final words just before he was shocked into submission. "Don't tase me, bro!" Those last moments of the encounter were shown repeatedly on television. The young man appeared again and again pleading, "Don't tase me, bro!" and then the news anchors chuckled and joshed, repeating the words as the student fell to the electrical charge fired through his body. "Don't tase me, bro'," became as meaningless a punchline refrain as "where's the beef?" The young man's pain became entertainment of the sort seen in America's Funniest Hit In The Testes By An Errant Baseball Videos.

The sideshow of infotainment distracted us from an horrific stifling of free speech that had taken place in a public forum with cameras rolling. The young man became the victim of our collective sadistic voyeurism; any public airing of the question he had about back-room deals and secrets shared between public opponents was forgotten. With the question edited from the start of the tape, there was certainly no need to do any investigative journalism into the answers to the question.

Sure, it may be entertaining to show footage of the lush lawns before a mansion and complain that an accused rapist who has revealed secret documents is allowed to live there while awaiting a court date. Outrage keeps people watching and repetition of the salacious accusations holds them riveted. And, yes, millions of pages of documents may be boring to sift through. But you can bet your well-entertained ass that somewhere in all that text, many more bits of valuable information await discovery and disclosure. If there were nothing of interest in there, why would the men behind the cameras be so insistent that we should be looking at the man behind the curtain and not at the material that man brought to light?

* "Media" is plural, It refers to the delivery mechanisms of information such as newspapers, television, radio, the internet and so on. Each of these is a medium -- the singular. Only because of monopolization and lazy homogeneity of our information sources have we come to think of "the media" as a singular, monolithic entity. This strikes me as a dangerous trend and one worthy of a whole other article which I will have to write at another time.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.778701 2010-11-04T14:31:17-04:00 2011-05-25T18:10:25-04:00

Dylan Brody http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dylan-brody/ Free Range Thinking, Robert Dubac presents wisdom disguised as wit and high art in the guise of mass-appeal entertainment. This is no easy feat. Audiences that grew up on the televised stand-up showcase programs of the eighties and nineties have been systematically conditioned to respond to the most generic premises and to reject out of hand anything that smacks of messaging. Older audiences who can remember the comedy heyday of Carlin and Pryor, Saul and Bruce shy away from anything that feels empty or pandering.

Dubac's solution to this issue is as elegant as the script he has written to explore the value of critical thinking in a world that encourages purely Pavlovian behavior. Packaging his show as a theatrical event rather than a stand-up act, he sets a tone that allows a demanding audience to take an interest in what he does. Making the humorous nature of his work apparent in the marketing, he draws in the audience that seeks joyous laughter but never tips his hand, never acknowledges the important undertones of his creation.

Using a delightful array of theatrical devices -- magic tricks, basic neuro-linguistic programming, word play, a blackboard that reveals hidden truth and then becomes a doorway to a less-than-comforting experience of enlightenment -- he delivers all the laughs a person could hope for and a great deal more as well. He offers real insight into the human condition, the struggle to find meaning in a modern world, the quest for one's own identity, the complex structure of belief.
From the moment Dubac takes the stage claiming to have lost his memory it is clear that he is a master of his craft, that he controls the moment and that we, the eager audience are in good hands. Dubac embraces his responsibility as a tour guide to the psyche. Chock full of wonderful laughter, joyful surprises and unexpected applause-break moments, Free Range Thinking is a show that is well worth seeing. Seriously.

Free Range Thinking is currently playing at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. For more information about the show and to be apprised of future engagements go to The Facebook page for Free Range Thinking]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.772040 2010-10-22T17:43:47-04:00 2011-05-25T18:05:23-04:00

Dylan Brody http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dylan-brody/
Sharon Angle, running for Senate in Nevada, runs racist ads talking about immigration policies while exclusively exhibiting images of dangerous looking Latino thugs and dark, lurking figures. Speaking to a Latino students' organization, she says these ads were not about Latinos at all, but rather about protecting the border with Canada. You know. That long stretch of unprotected boundary between Nevada and Canada. She also said that this was not about the Latino students in her audience, many of whom, she said, looked more Asian to her. Was she suggesting that they were lying about their ethnicity? Or was she suggesting that she only wants to protect America from those Latinos who look Latino? But wait. She's not fully off the rails yet! She went on to say that she has been described as Nevada's first Asian-American legislator. As far as anyone can tell, this is not true. Not that she is Asian-American. We know that's not true. No, what we can't find is anyone ever even describing her that way. Once, apparently, a reporter told her that she looked sort of Asian. I can see the campaign ads now, "I'm Sharon Angle. I'm not racist. I've been told that I look sort of Asian."

Rand Paul, a professional ophthalmologist who has no vision, feels very strongly that the budget should be balanced by not cutting services to anyone and not raising taxes on anyone. He is a strong supporter of universal health care for anyone who can afford it. As a Tea Party activist with an immigration stance that is firmly rooted in xenophobia, he wants to take America back to a simpler time before public education enabled so many people to do simple math and figure out when things just don't add up.

Meg Whitman, candidate for Governor of California, has spent $119,000,000.oo on her campaign, more than three times as much as was raised from actual supporters. Apparently the former CEO of eBay mistakenly believes that she can have the governorship just by being the highest bidder. Her confusing stance on public education suggests that by relying on her experience as a corporate officer, she will be able to get the California school system to begin turning a profit. I think she plans to raise test scores by outsourcing homework to nations in which kids are taught things.

Colorado Senate candidate Ken Buck declared that homosexuality is addictive, like alcoholism or smoking. Offending gays by suggesting that their natural sexual preference is a disease isn't enough for Ken Buck, though. He also offends addicts and alcoholics by saying that he does not see addiction as a disease but rather a "lifestyle choice with limited biological influences." I don't know what the guy is thinking. If he can't get the booze addled to vote for him, I can't imagine who will think he's a good candidate. (For the record, Ken Buck is really his name. It's not something he made up to sound more like a porn star.)

Running as Ohio's Republican candidate for District 9, Rich Iott likes to dress up like a member of the Nazi Wiking Panzer division for war reenactments. Seriously. It's not even a kinky, private sex thing. He actually does this with his buddies in public. Questioned about it, he explains that they weren't really "collaborators." The Wikings just fought for the Nazi army because they were patriots. When it was pointed out that one member of the division was charged with the killing of 58 Jews, he said, "The war on the eastern front was extremely brutal on both sides. Nobody was lily-white, that's for sure. Horrible things happened on both sides." That's right. There's enough blame to go around. Apparently all 58 of those murdered Jews had the audacity to go around being Jewish.

There are others. Carly Fiorina whose personal contribution to outsourcing earned massive profits for herself, now runs on a platform based on her success as a business woman, having run Hewlett Packard briefly before being publicly forced to resign. Jeff Flake of Arizona, a man of limited government and intellect, should be on our radar just for his name for crying out loud. From Mark Miller, the twelve-year-old who asserts that America never encounters violence in its political system (Lincoln, Kennedy, MLK, Ford and Reagan notwithstanding) to the half-dozen or so GOP bigwigs who should be old enough to know better than to circulate racist e-mails, there are plenty of targets out there, people.

This is important. I know, Christine O'Donnell is fun to ridicule. I know she's the comedic gift that just keeps giving. But let's do our work. Let's not lean on her for all of our material, lest others, guilty of equally hilarious and far more dangerous craziness go unridiculed. It's not the tea-baggery that worries me so much as the nut-baggery.

The Republican Party, leaning farther and farther to the right, must not be allowed to look sane by comparison to the craziest. The really dangerous candidates must not be overlooked thanks to clever misdirection. Don't look at the pretty assistant over on the side, undulating oddly. I know, she's cute and she's doing hilarious shtick, wrapping herself in the American flag and offering suggestive peeks at the Wiccan tattoo on her ankle. Still, it would serve you well to keep your eye on the guy who's about to make your money disappear. And your job. And your house. And your public services. And your educational system. And your infrastructure.

They're dressing up as Nazis and building fences, guys. Seriously.
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.761525 2010-10-14T13:44:49-04:00 2011-05-25T18:00:30-04:00

Dylan Brody http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dylan-brody/ Coming in Hot at a live-performance event at the Theater of Arts in Hollywood, CA. In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I was there as host to introduce the evening's event and as moderator of the Q&A session following the show. But this piece is not about me (a rare occurrence in my writing, as many of you already know).

The show, directed and produced by Lisa Bowden derives its text from the book Powder which Ms. Bowden co-edited. Powder is a collection of writings from women in the military, women who have faced conflict with armed enemies, with their male colleagues and within themselves. A woman's perspective on the military experience serves as an intriguing jumping-off point for a theatrical evening that should not be missed.

Weaving disparate tales of a morgue worker, a boot-camp recruit, an air-traffic control officer, the victim of an attempted barracks rape and other women in uniform, Jeanmarie Simpson does not just expose the experience of life in the military, she humanizes it. Ms. Simpson brings all of these people to the stage through the channel of her own considerable talent as an actress.

The truly amazing thing about the presentation lies in the lack of apparent political manipulation of the text. While it would be easy to cherry-pick tales of horror in an attempt to create a shocking anti-war message, this show has the feel of simple, personal narrative. If there is an anti-war message in the work at all, is emerges simply because, as Stephen Colbert so eloquently put it, "The facts have a distinctly liberal bias." This show should be seen by everyone, especially those who are at most risk of enlisting to serve, those who are financially desperate enough or militaristically indoctrinated enough to see military service as an easy route to independence.

Last week's event also served as a fundraiser for No More Victims, a group that arranges for children injured by American military actions to be flown to the US for medical treatment and rehabilitation. The children's visits serve as an opportunity for media coverage that explores and exposes the oft-shrouded effects of our actions on innocent people in far away places. Again, by humanizing those involved and exposing only the facts, a pro-peace subtext comes to be revealed.

The show and the cause make a strong match. If, indeed, the first casualty of war is the truth, then perhaps by simply exposing the truth, war may itself become a casualty and peace may flourish.

In addition to the performance I saw, the show has recently appeared at Pima Community College Recital Hall Center for the Performing Arts, University of Arizona, Gallagher Theater, Veterans in Higher Ed Conference and at the University of Arizona Poetry Center, Performance & Scholar¹s Panel. Keep your eyes open for an appearance near you. You won't want to miss it.
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