Anonyma, A Woman in Berlin

Anonymna, A Woman in Berlin, is Russian-German collaborative film made with the help of Poles, since the film was shot in Poland. It focus is on the tense interactions between the conquering Soviet army forces and the women, children, some older men, just before and after Hiter ends the defense of Berlin by committing suicide. Thereafter, a high ranking German officer formally surrenders and orders any remaining Nazi soldiers to lay down their arms and surrender. (There fate was a stint at a labor camp in Siberia, where many perished.) The Russians are all enthusiasm, buoyed by their victory, ready to play with the defeated Germans left behind--women, children, old men--like a cat with a mouse---sometimes indeed just play, at other times torment, that is, rape, and even kill. A few of the Russians are eager to personally prolong the war, exacting vengeance on whomever happens to be caught in their grasp.

In defense, the German women try to latch on to one Russian soldier, often an officer, who offers protection to the woman, not allowing any other men access to touch her. The hero of the movie is one such woman who after being raped several times seeks out a protector. Her first one proves a lady's man, a Don Juan, who preoccupies himself with pursuing all the women who catch his eye. The second one, however, the Lieutenant proves to be a thinker, an idealist, a beleiver in the Soviet cause, who plays piano, speaks Russian, and actually stations a guard, a burly Mongol soldier to prevent any other suitors from approaching his woman.

Others around the lietenant are troubled: the nurse who treated his wound in the firefight in the street and building feels displaced and jealous by the attention the lietenant gives the enemy woman. The second lieutenant looks askance at his superior officer's dalliance. These two officers are true believers, completely given to the communist cause--neither cheers or dances or cavorts like wild as news of Berlin's surrender by the Nazi's sets off a party. The nurse and second lieutenant sense there is something more, too intimate, in the exchanges. Loving the enemy or the enemy's wives--that's unthinkable, but that's what happens to the lieutenant.

Thus the true believer, who also seems like his mind is somewhere else, gazing into the future, making plans for groups, for others, for the nation, but not himself meets the former journalist who lived in European capitals and uncritically accepted and then supported Hitler's grand plans of conquests.

Another strand of the story is how the woman cope with their loss of integrity and self-respect. They greet one another or a man asks--How Often? and the unmentioned word here is "rape." The best coping strategy that develops is to attach oneself to one man, usually an office, and then all other men will be off limits you.

He/She & Me: A Love Story: the other side of the transgender story

He/She & Me: A Love Story
Academy Theatre, Avondale Estates, Georgia
http://www.academytheatre.org/

Saturday, September 5, 2009: Visiting the Atlanta, Georgia area, with a friend, I've taken some time out to see a theatre production here, a one person show performed by Sharon Mathis, a psychologist and actor, and directed by Robert Drake. Whatever skepticism I had about just how effective a 40-minute long show could be was dispelled by this production. For I thought the performer did justice to selecting and distilling the most essential bits of dialogue and re-enactment of scenes that ensue from the seemingly stable life of a woman, Pat, in her fifties whose husband, Sam, decides to transition into a woman and become Sheila. Sam-Sheila never appears on stage; only a symbol of him, a bright red shirt that Pat clutches, wears, and tosses aside. The play is about the universal theme of coping with loss, in this instance of an intimate, life partner, a spouse. The form of the loss is unusual--the spouse suddenly changes into a different person--name, gender, physical body.

After the performance, there was an informative discussion, which was about as long as the performance. We learned that the performer, Sharon Mathis, wrote the dialogue and selected scenes to re-enact from her own experiences as a psychologist, who counsels transgender clients and their wives. She also drew on a book written by Virginia Erhardt, Head over Heels: Wives who stay with Crossdressers and Transsexuals (2006). This book presents interviews the author had with women who stayed in relationships with their husbands.

Gogol Bordello, Congress Theatre, Chicago, May 31, 2009

Gogol Bordello, Congress Theatre, Chicago, Sunday, May 31, 2009

Before the doors opened to the Congress Theatre, there was already a long line that stretched for a few blocks, but the line moved quite quickly as soon as the doors did open. Eventually, this enormous, former movie palace-theatre built in the 1920s, was virtually full by the time the main act started. The crowd was predominantly in their late teens and twenties, with a fair number of middle-aged and older audience members, most of whom appeared as if they were like several of the Gogol Bordello band members, immigrants from Eastern Europe.

Man Man, the opening band, played for an hour. Their music is intense and raucous, with many a primal scream and growl; it is a passionate, original, percussion-heavy with xylophone, rock-jazz style. The lead singer, a sturdy looking wild man, with long, touseled hair and a full beard, energetically thrashed around, inspired and responding to the spirit of the music of his band. Like Gogol Bordello, Man Man entertains with its performers and moves the audience to become one with and lose themselves in their music. However, aside from the audience towards the very front of the stage, the rest of the crowd did not seem to engage in a noticeably passionate way with Man Man's unique music.


Gogol Bordello's performance began with a large stage curtain with the image of slingshot shooting a star from their 2007 recording Gypsy Punk being lowered. Shortly afterwards, in the role of dj, lead singer-guitarist, Eugene Hutz, appeared with a woman dancer in a military jumpsuit. Several tracks of Muslim inspired dance music were played with accompanying dancing. With the anti-Arab, Muslim, Middle Eastern rhetoric and attitude still strong in America, this struck me as Hutz's appeal for cultural inclusion and diversity.

The rest of the group then came on stage and Hutz energetically led his band to work the crowd into a frenzy. I've never seen a performer like Hutz seemingly glide around the stage as he played his guitar. Hutz's own love and passion for music irradiates his entire performance and stage presence, which is infectious. Later in the performance, he ceded center stage to band member, Pedro Erazo, who worked the crowd. Of course, after the group took a breather, there were requisite and lengthy encores, starting with Hutz alone playing acoustic guitar. One new song was introduced which Hutz explained was about a parking lot being paved that was displacing gypsies in Turkey.

A few days after the performance, I can stay that I'm still energized and inspired it. Personally, it was quite an incredible experience for me to see such a big crowd of American youth enjoying the sort of Eastern European folk melodies that I grew up listening to. I never imagined seeing this sort of music reworked and presented to a wider audience; it took someone like Hutz to come along and do it.

A final note, the staff at the Congress seemed a lot friendlier, smiling and saying enjoy the show, than during a previous concert that I attended a few years ago when they seemed brusque and surly.

Corneille's Illusion, Promethean Theatre Ensemble

Pierre Corneille's comic play "Illusion" (L'Illusion Comique, 1636), adapted by Tony Kushner, staged at the City Lit Theatre by the Promethean Theatre Ensemble, at 1020 W. Bryn Mawr, Chicago.

Watching this play, similarities came to mind in terms of its witty, playful, elaborate use of language, which is a characteristic feature of Baroque literature. Presumably, this language in its translated form has been somewhat modernized in the adaptation by Tony Kushner. Aside from using such language, the play's theme is universal--distance and estrangement of parent from a child. In this case, a son has run off from a father, who over time grows concerned about his missing son's fate, so he consults a magician to try to discover the whereabouts of his son with whom he has lost contact.

The set of the play is kept spare and simple in this production, limited to three large, triangular blocks, which are moved about a bit in each act and illuminated with different lighting.

One theme in the play is the father's revaluation of his son whom he regarded as a flighty, wild rebel; this attitude is what causes the son to run away from home. The larger issue here is how a parent reacts to a child whose temperament provokes disapproval. In the context of the time, there was certainly much less understanding for a son to oppose a father, for in France, a father could legally have even an adult child imprisoned for disobeying his orders. In effect, the self-righteous parent could always feel in the right, and the father in the play struggles with his sense of moral entitlement.

The magician obliges the father's desire to show him what his son has been doing in life, showing him three phases of his life, notably different phases of love. First, he shows his son in the initial throes of boundless enthusiasm of love, but for an aristocratic woman, which causes a conflict, since the son is a commoner--his father is a lawyer. The son tries to solicit the help of a woman servant and literally brushes off a rival. Seemingly, despite the barrier of social class that separates the wild son from the aristocratic woman he loves, all seems to be turning out for the best, but this seeming success proves to be only that.

In the second act, the pursuit of love has led the son to compromise his principles and himself become a lackey, a yes-man to a self-absorbed lord with a swollen ego. This lord speaks in what sounded like to me with an Andrei Codrescu, a one time NPR writer and wry commentato and immigrant from Romania.) The wild son compromises his ideals in the name of love, to be closer to his beloved.

In the third act, the son is shown as having fallen out of love, unable to live up to any of his fervently made principles of sacrificing all in the name of love.

The audience, along with the father, is the observer of the staged scenes; the play, is thus a play within a play. The play is fairly light, entertaining fare, except towards its end, when a tragic conclusion seems to end it. Is love itself an illusion the magician asks at the end of the play, or is it the only reality of life?

This production was quite well acted by the actors playing the son and servant woman, and it had some timely sound effects and music. The third act, however, was somewhat difficult to follow, in part, perhaps it is because it may have been shortened to make the play fit into a less than 2-hour running time.

If there was any other problem, it was seeing some empty seats, which is not that unusual in a production of a foreign language theatre classic that people may be wary of seeing. Though it cannot boast a Broadway theatre scene like New York's, Chicago has its niche virtue in theatre--the city offers a plethora of small and amateur theatre companies that are willing to risk staging theatre classics.