Whose Freedom is it Anyway?

 

I originally wrote this a few weeks ago for the Palm Beach Post as an Opinion Piece.  The paper published others of mine before, but they chose not to in this case.  Perhaps it is because of the ennui of thoughts and prayers on the subject.

 

Therefore I publish it here as the dreaded date of July 1 approaches, when Florida House Bill (HB) 543 goes into effect. This was advocated by the Republican majority and Governor DeSantis, further expanding the 2^nd amendment to allow permit-less carry of weapons in Florida.

 

It will lead to more gun deaths in the state.  I’ve expressed my views on the subject of gun control numerous times in this space and consider this a summation and further expansion. 

 

The very preamble to the Constitution states it was to “insure domestic tranquility.” The proliferation of modern weaponry instead has facilitated a form of domestic dread.

 

Whose Freedom is it Anyway?

 

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union address articulated four fundamental human rights that should be universally protected.

 

    Freedom of Speech

    Freedom of Worship

    Freedom from Want

    Freedom from Fear

 

In 1943 Norman Rockwell immortalized those Freedoms in paintings which were reproduced in “The Saturday Evening Post.” We saw the originals when visiting the New York Historical Museum in 2018

 

The painting “Freedom from Fear” depicts two children safely sleeping in their beds as their parents look on, the wife tucking them in, and the husband holding a newspaper which partially reveals a headline about the Blitz Bombings in London. 

 

That primary freedom we all want for ourselves and especially for our children, and our grandchildren, has mutated into the “freedom” to own and even carry military style weapons.  We now have two “competing” freedoms and a culture that celebrates weapons.

 

In Texas the sound of gunfire, just for the “fun” is so pervasive it is accepted as the norm in rural areas.  The recent Texas Mall shooting was the 199th Mass shooting of this year in the United States.   Next month it will be lawful to carry a concealed weapon in Florida, without a permit and without training.  Expect more gun violence here.

 

This is not the first time that we’ve had “freedoms” square off against one another.

 

At one time smoking was the accepted norm. It was part of our culture, as firmly entrenched as guns are today.  It took decades to remove the Marlboro Man from the popular American Mind.  The tobacco industry’s relentless ads subliminally communicated tough American independence.  Science proved that the ubiquity of 2^nd hand smoke has a detrimental impact on non-smokers. Living in a smoke free environment transcends the freedom of smokers to deny that fundamental right.  Laws were finally changed.  

 

 

Similarly, we have a gun culture representing so called American independence.  Some of our elected representatives even “celebrate” that “freedom” with social network pictures of themselves posing with weapons of war, even with their young children.  This form of indoctrination is not much different than the wide-spread smoking advertising which permeated the media of the past.  We genuflected to the tobacco industry as we now do to the NRA.

 

The time has come for our representatives to recognize that their constituents’ freedom to live in relative safety transcends the rights of gun owners to embrace AR-15s and to legislate against the deadly mixture of “stand your ground” and “permit-less carry” laws.  Recently we’ve seen anecdotal evidence of the consequences of the former, innocent people being shot because they mistakenly rang a doorbell or drove into the wrong driveway.  The gun owner simply felt “threatened.”

 

Furthermore, “permit-less carry” puts impossible demands on our police who now may have to go into a public place where a shot has been fired and suddenly scores of untrained citizens are there with their guns drawn.

 

The widespread carrying of guns simply leads to more deadly gun consequences.  The United States has more guns than citizens; it also has an exponentially higher rate of gun deaths and accidents.  It is a statistical inevitability.

 

One of the standard arguments against doing anything, even by those who agree that something must be done, is that there are so many weapons “out there” it is hopeless.  In the early 1980s we also thought that regulating smoking was hopeless.  It took years, but a civilized solution finally prevailed.

 

It has to start somewhere, sometime.  We need to change the gun culture; our representatives have to either agree or be voted out.  Weapons of war need to be outlawed. 

 

As in New Zealand, Congress needs to provide meaningful dollars for an amnesty period for turning in such weapons of war, paying fair market price for them.  After that period, anyone who is discovered with one (no door-to-door seizures, another fabricated action gun-mongers caution) would be subject to legal recourse.

 

Weapons would have to be registered, just like motor vehicles (the unregulated use of which would make them even be more dangerous).  As with automobiles, those with more than a certain number would be considered a dealer and subjected to another level of registration and scrutiny.

 

“Stand your ground” “permit-less carry” laws must be changed. The freedom to live in relative safety must prevail over the freedom to own (and carry) military style weapons

 

Topdog / Underdog Encapsulates Brotherly Love, Rivalry and Despair

 

Palm Beach Dramaworks concludes its outstanding 2022/23 season with Suzan-Lori Parks’ Pulitzer Prize-Winning Topdog / Underdog.  When it premiered some twenty years ago it had an absurdist slant, but it has now moved closer to stark realism.  Director Be Boyd further bends this stunning new PBD production toward the dystopian reality of today.  It is a tragic-comedy, an ode to black men and their estrangement from the American Dream.  The three-card Monte leitmotif of the play is steeped in metaphor and symbolism characterizing the America of today, a zero-sum game of being either a winner or loser, frequently merely by the nature of one’s birth.

 

This production evokes a deep emotional resonance on many different thematic levels, a family drama, a cautionary tale of racially based economic inequality, and the consequences of dealing with mental illness, guns and violence.  It is a perfect two-hander play that nonetheless comes across as big drama in the hands of Director Be Boyd and the Palm Beach Dramaworks team.

 

The rhythmic street language of the play is mesmerizing, an incantation drawing you into the lives of two black brothers who were given the names of “Lincoln” and “Booth” a great cosmic joke perpetrated by their boozy, philandering father who, along with their mother, long ago abandoned both when they were just youngsters, both boys unformed and uneducated.

 

Now in their 30s, they share Booth’s rundown cramped boarding room, a place where brotherly love and rivalry abound as well as the hardships of being dealt a bad hand in life. 

 

Director Be Boyd and the PBD technical crew bring the outside chaos inside the brothers’ lives where mere survival is the bottom line.  The toilet is down the hall.  Lincoln even pees into a cup on stage.

 

George Anthony Richardson and Jovon Jacobs Photo by Alicia Donelan

 

Lincoln was once a highly successful three-card-Monte hustler which he walked away from after his partner was shot.  He now has a “real” job, as honest Abe Lincoln, wearing a stovepipe hat and whiteface, at an arcade attraction.  Like Franz Kafka’s “Hunger Artist,” he now strives for perfection playing his namesake so customers can line up to “assassinate” him.  He is always working on his skills as a performance artist (or during slow moments, composing songs in his head), Booth even making suggestions for his improvement on the one hand while really wanting him to go back to “the game.”

 

Booth is ferociously performed by Jovon Jacobs who is appearing in his third PBD production.  He just gets better as an actor each time and now is at the top of his game.  Booth can only dream of being a three-card Monte hustler as he lacks the artistry of his older brother.  His are dreams of money and women, obsessed with making his girlfriend Grace love and have sex with him.  His expertise is being a crook, a shoplifter.

  

Jacobs’ internal energy seems infinite, explosive, attacking the words, seething from within.  His character’s fantasies drive the physicality of his performance, his magnetism frenetic, with exuberant mannerisms.  It is a bravura performance.  The striptease of his stolen goods shows great comic chops. 

 

George Anthony Richardson and Jovon Jacobs Photo by Alicia Donelan

 

Lincoln is played with a quiet dignity, befitting his namesake, by George Anthony Richardson (PBD debut), remarkably a last-minute replacement for the actor originally cast.  Serendipitously Richardson was the understudy for the recent Tony Nominated revival of the play, so he hits the ground running, although future performances will build upon the chemistry between these two fine actors who have had so little time together.

 

Richardson’s role as the sometimes more than tolerant, submissive older brother, resigned to his job and performance, does finally give in to the draw of “the game”...…..like the alcoholism that runs in his family, a compulsive generational hopelessness.  Richardson effectively portrays his character with docile resignation, but transforms into an animated actor with smooth hands and mesmerizing voice when he deals the cards.  This is his milieu.   

 

He has one steady customer who whispers in his ear, does the show go on when no one is looking?  The monologue leading up to this frequent visitor has particular relevance in today’s times, where everyday violence and shootings are endemic to our lives.  What might have been unimaginable not long ago, a carnival attraction for the mock assassination of a President such as Lincoln, impersonated not only by someone named Lincoln, but a black man as well, could be ordinary in today’s sideshow.

 

He says he can see his arcade customers in the reflection of a silver metal fuse box in the partial darkness, the image being upside down, remarking about his usual customer:  And there he is.  Standing behind me.  Standing in position.  Standing upside down.  Theres some feet shapes on the floor so he knows just where he oughta stand.  So he wont miss.  Thuh gun is always cold…..And when the gun touches me he can feel that Im warm and he knows Im alive.  And if Im alive then he can shoot me dead.  And for a minute, with him hanging back there behind me, its real.  Me looking at him upside down and him looking at me looking like Lincoln.  Then he shoots I slump down and close my eyes.  And he goes out thuh other way.  More come in.  Uh whole day full.  Bunches of kids, little good for nothings, in they school uniforms.  Businessmen smelling like two for one martinis.  Tourists in they theme park t-shirts to catch it all on film.  Housewives with they mouths closed tight, shooting more than once.  They all get so into it.  I do my best for them.  And now they talking bout cutting me, replacing me with uh wax dummy.

 

Booth wants his brother to return to “the game,” being hustlers together.  BOOTH: It was you and me against the world, Link.  It could be that way again.  Lincoln though doubts Booth would even have the skills to be the “sideman” playing along with the dealer, suckering people in.  LINCOLN: First thing you learn is what is.  Next thing you learn is what aint.  You don’t know what is you don’t know what aint, you don’t know shit.  Dark humor abounds in the play.

 

Offstage characters of Lincoln’s former wife Cookie, and Booth’s fixation on his on and off girlfriend Grace, give rise to anther central theme, masculinity and sexuality, a story of domination of women, or more pathetically, not having one, certainly not like their father who use to have them, leaving leftovers for Lincoln when he was just a young boy.  These relationships give further rise to their rivalry and trash talking.

 

Given their names and their love/enmity relationship, we all know this is going to end badly, but in leading to the how, why, and when, Director Be Boyd builds on the intrinsic conflict and tension.

 

 

As important as the text, is the look and feel of the production which starts with the scenic design by Seth Howard, his PBD debut, depicting their small claustrophobic room, built on a cold concrete slab, elevated at an angle, the squalor and chaos of the outside discernible.  It is like a price fighting ring, but without the ropes, where blood will be split as the rivalry for “topdog” is never ending. 

 

Kirk Bookman, lighting designer, floods the dingy dark space with light from the outside, and during transitional moments projects images of the black experience bringing in an element of their world in the form of a documentary.  This is well done from a lighting perspective but was a directorial choice and I wonder whether just the musical rap transitions would have sufficed.

 

The sound design by Roger Arnold contributes to the pulse of the play, with those of the city noises rising to a roar at times like an incoming freight train underscoring their victimization.

 

Brian O’Keefe’s costume designs reinforce their disheveled, poverty plagued world, interpreting their personalities without creating archetypical characters.  Booth’s stolen suits, ties and shoes are redolent of off the rack circa Target.  Lincoln’s “work attire” which we only fully see at the beginning of the play captures the absurdist quality of the play, his hand-me-down clothes from the previous performer, stovepipe hat, dime store beard, and his white face, a triumph for both O’Keefe’s clothing design and Bookman’s lighting. This creepy image of honest Abe will stay with you long after you leave the theater.

 

The final con brings out the ultimate fury of Booth, returning us to the futility of their lives, their lost sense of purpose and the ultimate price of mental illness.  The tragic ending is gut-wrenching.  This production is yet another testament to Palm Beach Dramaworks’ commitment to "theatre to think about."