Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Joan La Pucelle de Llanas

In 1999 the Llanas family had a gigantic family reunion in Lubbock, Texas. For three days we ate barbecue and danced the two-step while listening to stories about the three Llanas brothers Bibiano, Marcos and Amador who left Mexico after Pancho Villa was assassinated. On Sunday morning we went to mass in a church that the women of the Llanas family helped build. My little cousin, Ali, who must have been two at the time, ran up to the altar in the middle of the mass. The priest said: “Keep an eye on her, she looks like she wants to be the first female Pope.”

I have 3 sisters, 3 stepsisters, a mom, a stepmom, a grandmother who was raised in a lighthouse, and another grandma who keeps my grandfather alive by the sheer force of her love.

Oh, for the strong female protagonist! The Pippi Longstockings, Harriet the Spies, Stargirls and Norma Raes. When I read Anna Karenina, I had to quit a hundred pages from the end because I could no longer bear to see her too brilliant individuality melt and resolve itself into a silly dew because of the wandering affection of Vronsky (that rogue!).

That Joan of Arc is a fascinating historical personage is a ridiculous understatement, but I make it nonetheless. I may have first learned who she was when I saw Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure in 4th grade, but I think I never really understood that what she did was real until I read the scenes in Henry VI Part 1 where her deeds and French character are utterly assassinated by the English playwright.

She is called Joan La Pucelle and she appears to rally the French against the occupying British forces. Obviously, she is a villain to the English and therefore a villain in Shakespeare’s play, but there are peculiar deviations from actual history in this play that are downright un-Shakespearean. Meaning they serve to over-simplify characters and flatten the impact of important moments instead of his usual tricks of shrinking time and re-sequencing events for heightened dramatic impact.

The problem is that the trial of Joan of Arc is unbelievably well-documented. The transcript was used in the movie The Passion of Joan of Arc and it demonstrates almost exactly the questions that were asked of Joan and what her answers were. Thirty years after her execution (and 130 years before Shakespeare penned the play) these documents were used to demonstrate her absolute innocence, the corruption of the Catholic officials who sentenced her to death, and establish the case for canonization.

In the play Joan convinces the Dauphin to accept her leadership by fighting him. Charles yields:


Stay, Stay thy hands! Thou art an Amazon,

And fightest with the sword of Deborah. (1:2)


According to the records of the Trial of Joan of Arc, she convinced the Dauphin of her mission by disclosing to him the three private requests he had made in prayer to God. And during the trial she said: “she herself bore her standard during an attack, in order to avoid killing anyone. And she added that she had never killed anyone at all.” (The Trial of Joan of Arc, p. 82, trans. W.S. Scott) She was an adviser and a military strategist. She was the rallying cry for France. She may never have swung her sword in assault at all.

There’s a scene late in the play, when Joan’s capture seems imminent and she conjures fiends from hell, and asks for their help to defeat the English.


You speedy helpers, that are substitutes

Under the lordly monarch of the north

Appear, and aid me in this enterprise.

ENTER FIENDS

This speed and quick appearance argues proof

Of your accustomed diligence to me. (5:3)


What the hell are demons doing in a historical play? The only historically accurate thing about their appearance is that they don't actually help her defeat the English.

It’s not the only time in this particular series of plays that demons are conjured. The ambitious Duchess of Gloucester conjures a demon in Henry VI Part 2 to ask him about the future. Silly women, always conjuring demons.

But it gets worse for Joan of Arc. Her father shows up before she's executed and she denies him:


Decrepit miser, base ignoble wretch!

I am descended of a gentler blood.

Thou art no father nor no friend of mine. (5:4)


But according to the transcript of the trial: “She answered her father was named Jacques Tart and her mother Ysabeau.” (The Trial of Joan of Arc, p. 64 trans. W.S. Scott).

Then, according to Shakespeare, she claims to be pregnant by the Dauphin in order to avoid execution and when that tenders no mercies, she claims it was actually Alanson who loved her. So it turns out the English were right in accusing her of witchcraft and whorishness. But according to records in The Trial, she was examined during her imprisonment and found to be a virgin, which alone should have disqualified her from being convicted of witchcraft according to the laws of the 15th century church.

It’s possible Shakespeare had purely slanderous sources for his historical information. It’s also a popular theory that Shakespeare wrote only the portions of Henry VI that are good, and that other playwrights wrote the unfair and problematic passages. I think it likely that as a young playwright, Shakespeare was still making mistakes and accepting the direction of his patrons or the audience, who would have wanted Joan to be demonized. For God is British and could not possibly have been on the side of the French.

The slander against Joan, reminds me of the sometimes slander against Pancho Villa. I watched an A&E Biography on Villa once and although factually accurate, he was painted with a villainous brush. A tempestuous, egotistical murderer.

To my great grandfather and his brothers, Villa was a hero. He gave them cause to fight and to hope for lives better than those dealt campesinos. It's true he was greatly flawed and not nearly as cool as Zapata, but what do you want? Not every revolutionary leader can be a saint.

After the revolution, the fight he inspired in my ancestors brought them to Texas. That fight lingered in my grandfather, who raised his family in Wisconsin, where he would have good work for almost forty years. The fight sent my uncles and aunts and my father to college. It teaches and serves and leads and creates. It's sending my little sister to medical school. A strong female protagonist. It might not be the papacy, but these days papal dreams hardly seem the hallmark of virtuous ambition. I guess some villains never change.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Henry VI Part 1: Fathers, Sons and Soccer Practice

There’s a story my dad used to love to tell. He coached my first soccer team when I was six years-old. In the middle of a game the ball rolled up to me and I kicked it as hard as I could. It went sailing into the air and down the field, over other kids’ heads. I ran straight to the sidelines and said: “Dad! Did you see THAT?!”

When we were young it was impossible to go to a place in Kenosha where my dad was unrecognized. The grocery store, restaurants, the gas station, if we all went as a family to the high school track to run around or hit tennis balls off the backboard there was always some adult I’d never met who would say: “Hey, Ernie!” and my dad would say, hey Rick or Mike or Rusty or Booker. He was a firefighter and a softball player and such accomplishments are enough to cement a father’s heroism in his young son’s hopeful mind.

George Bush and George W. Will Smith and Jayden Smith. Henry V and Henry VI. Fathers often cast long shadows from which their sons struggle to escape. Check out this eulogizing by the Duke of Gloucester to the late great Henry V that opens Henry VI Part 1:


England ne’er had a king until his time.

Virtue he had, deserving to command;

His brandished sword did blind men with his beams;

His arms spread wider than dragon’s wings;

His sparkling eyes, replete with wrathful fire,

More dazzled and drove back his enemies

Than midday sun fierce bent against their faces.

What should I say? His deeds excel all speech.

He ne’er lift up his hand but conqueréd. (1:1)


A mere 20 lines later, Gloucester describes the young Henry VI: “an effeminate prince whom like a schoolboy you may overawe.” (1:1) Granted, Joan of Arc is one of the major characters in this play, so describing someone as effeminate might not carry the same derogatory meaning that such knights normally ascribe to it, but it ain’t like he’s talking dragon’s wings about the heir to the throne.

Shortly into the play the French rebel, the houses of York and Lancaster argue and pluck red and white roses to start the War of the Roses, and the great military hero of England, Talbot, is abandoned in battle because of the civil discord.

Talbot is the scourge of the French. And while fighting Joan la Pucelle (of Arc) he and his son, John Talbot, are killed. They had been separated for 7 years by war, but Talbot called his son to the battle to teach him the family business:


O young John Talbot, I did send for thee

To tutor thee in stratagems of war (4:5)


When he sees that they are badly outnumbered, he tries to send his son away, but John refuses to fly:


Is my name Talbot? And am I your son?

And shall I fly? O, if you love my mother,

Dishonor not her honorable name

To make a bastard and a slave of me! (4:5)


Before Talbot dies, his son’s body is brought to him:


And in that sea of blood, my boy did drench

His over-mounting spirit; and there died

My Icarus, my blossom, in his pride. (4:7)


Icarus is, of course, the average son of Daedalus from Greek mythology. They flew on waxen wings to escape Crete and foolish Icarus flew too close to the sun and fell into the sea where he drowned. A cautious tale of venturing from beneath your father’s shadow.

But there are also accounts within this play of the sons who outdo their fathers. Standing watch at Orleance is the Master Gunner, who leaves his son on the watch in his stead. And when the opportunity arises, the son fires on Talbot and Salisbury, and he kills Salisbury.

Later on in the battle of Roan, the dying Duke of Bedford mentions Pendragon:


Not to be gone from hence, for once I read

That stout Pendragon, in his litter sick,

Came to the field and vanquishéd his foes. (3:2)


If you don’t know who Pendragon is, that’s okay. It’s only really important that you know that his son was King Arthur. Another son who outshone his father.

The opportunity is there, but Henry VI’s cards have been dealt. The evil of the early imagery of the play bodes poorly for the young king. “Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!” (1:1) Day and night, like York and Lancaster, the warring factions of heaven.

What’s interesting is that this trio of plays was written before Henry IV parts 1 and 2 and Henry V. So, it's possible that for the audiences attending Henry VI that the legend of Henry V is as perfect in their minds as Richard the Lionheart and King Arthur. His father was not a human. He was a myth, a folk hero. A giant among kings.

Eventually, Shakespeare humanizes Henry V in those other histories. He shows his flirtations with criminals and drunkards in Henry IV parts 1 and 2. And even in Henry V after he conquers France, there’s the courtship of Catherine, when he bumbles through the French language in declaring his poor, soldier's love. It’s important that the legend of the father dissolve so that the son may achieve a unique success in life.

For my part, my father was humanized to me in two parts. The first of which relates to soccer.

My dad coached a soccer team with another woman before my parents got divorced. I was in college and I would sometimes come to practices and run little clinics on heading or shooting. There was a moment I observed between my dad and this woman when we were working on trapping. He was throwing the ball to her and she was trapping it while sixteen nine year-old girls ran around doing the same thing. Amidst all that giggling and the flying soccer balls. I saw my dad throwing the ball… but it wasn’t like watching my dad. It was like watching me. He was awkward and stumbling exactly the way I was around a girl I like, having no idea what to do. It was chemistry. I saw that connection and felt pangs of confusion. A strong want to combat the momentum of events. But I'm a midwestern boy, and despite my mother, I buried that confusion. Cause we hope ignoring such things makes them go away. But they don't. Eventually my parents got divorced and this woman became my stepmom.

My dad became a person entirely in my eyes soon after my parents were divorced. One day he had this weary look on his face. There was some superficial stressful thing that froze him for a moment. And he rubbed his eyes and scratched his head with both hands and said, “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing.” He wasn't really saying it to me. And he wasn't really saying it about this stressful thing that had happened. He was saying it about everything in the world. 

You can forgive a person for almost anything when they admit that. Because even though they don't know what they're doing, at least they're trying.

Fathers can overreach. They wrongfully conquer sovereign nations and leave the mess to their sons. They fall in love with other women. They believe they can fly. Sometimes their sons suffer for it. But sometimes they do the right thing and sacrifice their mythological legacy for mere humanity, and it's okay. We're still going to run to them on the sidelines after we send that ball flying through the air. They're still our fathers, even if they’re only men.

Monday, March 15, 2010

"Titus Andronicus" at Theatre of Note

I went to see Titus Andronicus Saturday night at Theatre Of Note in Hollywood.

I am going to say a lot of critical things about this show, but a foreword: I REALLY LIKED IT. It must be a hard play to land tonally, and they did it effectively if not very originally.

It was derivative of Julie Taymor’s movie Titus. From the unfit anachronisms in costuming and staging, to the Alan Cummings-esque Saturninus. Although, despite the similarity between this Saturninus and Mr. Cumming’s (clear sexual deviousness, spineless whining, and George W. Bush-like entitlement) he turned in one of the best performances of the cast.

Unfortunately, the choice to play Saturninus as a whiny punk makes Titus’s handing over the empery of Rome to him the first act of madness in the play. Clearly, Saturninus is a moron and a crybaby and in contrast to the cool and professional-looking Bassianus, he is unfit to hold the rule of Rome. But despite the action being crazy, Titus isn’t played as crazy in the first scene. In this production he hardly seemed affected by the horrors of war from whence he came. He was cool, clean and concise in his action. And he doesn’t go insane until after he chops off his own hand (a terrifically acted scene by Dan Mailley).

I wouldn’t feel bad with Titus seeming together in the first scene, except that I made the mistake of reading the director’s notes before the show started. Thomas Craig Elliot, the director, wrote:


“Every time the action of the play seems too far-fetched, too implausible, I once again read stories about genocide in the Balkans, of hacked limbs in Rwanda and Sierra Leone, of rape used as a weapon of war. I read stories of veterans who have failed to reintegrate into society – stories of former comrades killing each other over twenty dollars, of husbands strangling wives in their sleep, of unprovoked brutal rape and murder.”

Come on. Seriously? The violence and horrors of this play are so over the top and intermingled with Aaron’s playful malevolence as he executes his plans against the Andronici, that it’s frankly an insult to veterans of actual warfare to draw any parallels between your little production and the theater of combat. Not to mention that now instead of enjoying your play, I was made to feel guilty for enjoying it. As a former Catholic, I have a particular aversion to this strategy. A note to directors: try not to make your audience feel bad about having fun at your play before the house lights come down.

Not that it wouldn’t have been interesting to make a choice to have Titus actually dealing with the issues of PTSD and reintegration, but he bore no characteristics of PTSD that could be detected by a layman, and the Taymor-inspired anachronisms in costume and design defeated any potential linkage to serious issues of modern times.

I’m really tired of anachronisms. Sometimes you need to be consistent onto yourself. I really get nothing out of seeing the servants of Saturninus don a Third Reich armband, hunt with machetes and then see the Goth army rallied via text message. I'm not joking. A blackberry. Shoot me in the face.

That being said, I was still able to laugh at Aaron’s unbelievable ability to manufacture villainy upon villainy and to care for nothing but furthering the cause of evil. And like I said, overall, I liked the play a lot.

It doesn’t sound like I did, does it? I have that problem. I’ve never been one to heed Thumper’s advice: “If you can’t say something nice. Don’t say nothing at all.” I like bunnies.

85% of the performances were outstanding, and theater being the actors’ medium, I’m happy to forgive any directorially folly in favor of the sweat and efforts put forth by the cast. Aaron, Saturninus, Titus, Tamora, Demetrius, Lavinia, Marcus… they were strong, at times frightening and dangerous, and appropriately moving.

I would recommend that you go see it, but sadly Saturday was closing night.

L

Thursday, March 11, 2010

8th Grade Gabe: Much Ado About Extra Credit

Gabe Llanas
Mrs. Duda
8th Grade English
March 11, 1992
Extra Credit Play Review

Much Ado About Nothing

The Racine Theater Guild's performance of William Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing was a fine performance indeed. It bore all the hallmarks of excellent and educational theater and was very funny also. In this extra credit essay, that I was asked to write to make up for the C that I was unjustly given because of the analysis of a very short poem that I did in class, which was every bit as good and meaningful as Mike Matteucci's analysis of "Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me Too," I will talk about my thesis of the play in some supporting paragraphs, and then a conclusion.
The play is a very good play. In it some soldiers come home from war and Leonato throws them a big party. Benedick and Beatrice argue with each other. They are very smart and witty. But it was hard to understand what they were talking about. Then after a few minutes, it was like someone dropped a babelfish in my ear, and I was able to understand the language of the Bard.
Benedick's friend Count Claudio falls in love with a girl named Hero and wants to marry her, but he's a chicken. So Don Pedro makes a very smart plan to wear a disguise and talk to Hero for Claudio and woe her for him. The plan works even though Don Pedro's wicked brother, the evil Don John the Bastard, tries to make mischief on everyone. Then everyone tricks Beatrice and Benedick to fall in love with each other, which was obvious that that was going to happen, because Benedick talks about women at the beginning of the play: "I will live a bachelor" (1:1) which is obviously foreshadowing that he will eventually get married. But then Don John tricks Claudio into thinking that Hero had intercourse with another guy so he doesn't want to marry her. And the friar comes up with a great plan to pretend that she died of grief, and after she is fake dead they find out everything was a lie.
Most of the people feel bad, Benedick and Beatrice really do fall in love, and then everyone gets married and is happy. As you can see there are a lot of plot things that happen throughout this play, which make it very good.
My brother, Ian, told me that if I was going to go to a play that I should ask a girl if she would like to go to the play with me, because girls like culture and arts. So I called seven girls. Nicole said no, Jenny had a basketball game. Marian had a basketball game too, Laura wasn't allowed to go on dates (even though I told her we would just be going as friends), Jessica thought I said Dave when I called, so she thought I was Dave Ruffalo and I was really confused because apparently she and Dave Ruffalo went out for five days last year and then he kissed Erika in a game of spin the bottle and they broke up and I never kissed Erika or even played spin the bottle, so it was really confusing. Michelle said she was going to her grandma's, and when I asked her how come she wasn't going to the basketball game, she said they didn't have a basketball game that night, which was curious. Finally, I went next door and asked Molly if she wanted to go and she wasn't home, so I asked her mom, and her mom said yes, Molly would go to the play with me.
I wore a tie and some slacks and my grandpa's Navy trenchcoat, and Molly wore a nice coat and a plaid dress that sort of looked like our school uniform, but wasn't. My sister Katie made me buy her flowers, which cost 4.99. I did not want to buy flowers because new comics come out on Tuesday and the new X-Factor has part 5 of the X-tinction Agenda and I have to buy two copies of it.
My palms were very sweaty and all Molly and I talked about was Weird Al Yankovich. She thinks he's dumb and I disagree. I thought taking a girl to the play was a bad idea. But then the play started and it was pretty good. especially the part with Dogberry the police officer who kept telling everyone to remember that he had been called an "ass."
My mom picked us up after the play, and I let Molly ride in the front seat and I sat in the back next to Cassie's car seat. I don't think it was a date because we didn't hold hands or kiss or hug goodnight and plus I don't even like Molly except as a friend.
Now I will talk about Benedick. He changed during the play from thinking he would never get married, to falling in love with Beatrice and getting married to her. He says something at the end of the play:

In brief, since I do purpose to marry, I will think nothing to any purpose that the world can say against it, and therefore never flout at me for what I have said against it; for man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion. (5:4)

The footnote says giddy means changeable. Man is a changeable thing. Which means that people can change. I don't know that I ever want to change. I kind of like things like they are now. School is very easy and summer vacation is fun. I'm afraid about going to high school next year. I don't know if people will be all grown up. I don't want to have to ask girls to dances or go to parties where people are drinking alcohol. I like to be friends with the kids in the neighborhood, who are mostly younger than me. We play Nintendo and Ghost in the Graveyard, and it's sad to think that you won't always have the same friends.
Mrs. Duda, you gave me a C when I did my poem analysis in class, which was by Robert Frost and was called "Precaution" and went like this:

I never dared be radical when young, for fear it would make me conservative when old.

You said it wasn't long enough, but I think it's deep enough. I think no matter what we start out as when we're young, we're going to go out there and live and be some different thing. In science when we studied cells, we learned that all of the cells in our body are regenerated every seven years. So in seven years not a single part of me will be the same as it is now. And then in seven years after that, I'll be all new again. Even cooler than that, I read in some book about the police that people's memories aren't even real memories. You recreate your memories every time you think about them. So the more you think about something the more and more imaginary it becomes. because you keep changing it a little bit every time you remember it. So not only are you a different person with different cells in the future, but your memories are different too.
Benedick was right, man is a giddy thing. It doesn't take long to be totally changeable and totally different than what you were before. And I think this is how you know that William Shakespeare was very wise when he wrote Much Ado About Nothing. Because Benedick says something deep like that, but also you get to laugh at Dogberry, when he talks about everyone remembering to write down that he was called "an ass."