socialist poetry reading -- wait, I'm doing whaaaaat???

[WitchyOoman]

I was reminded of "my roots" this past weekend. Abruptly. Harshly.

Probably only Blugiant here (on J'com) will be unsurprised to read this tale, yet it is nonetheless true.

Let's step back, first, with the fact that Mr Witchy and I have been Ovation or Premiere members (depending upon finances for that year) of Castillo Theater in NYC for decades. I was on the committee of the first "Otto Awards" back in 1999... named - like our developmental & political theater on 42nd Street - for Otto René Castillo. We have never missed a year, not even the 18 months that Mr Witchy was unemployed - we still managed to pay for our Ovation memberships for those 2 years, somehow. Castillo Theater and The All-Stars Project are that important to us and are that intrinsic to our life. In fact, Mr Witchy goes waaaaaaaaay back to the 1984 beginning of Castillo Theater, long before he and I met.

So moving forward in time, this past Saturday afternoon, someone asked me if I would please repeat a long-ago last-minute completely impromptu performance of mine done in a pinch when someone else got the flu one night and was too sick to go onstage. I didn't even know the lines! I mean, I'd heard the poem to be recited during several rehearsals, and I knew how the director wanted them spoken... but I hadn't actually learned - memorized - the lines... and I definitely hadn't really studied them! I was the costume mistress! But, of course, cliché though it might be: the show must go on, no matter what! So I did the lines that night in a memorable performance. Memorable for several reasons: (1) I damn near wet myself due to a very severe case of stage fright, coz I knew that I didn't know my lines (the poem), and (2) apparently me extreme fear gave much emotion to the poem, and that somehow translated to the proper disdain in the ears of the audience, (3) my shaking voice (people thought I was intentionally doing that to show extremis of disdain - dwl) caused people to weep, literally to weep. They thought I was great. I thought they were quite mad. lol That night, on 42 Street, in NYC, a star was born - the stuff of dreams - a wannabe actress working as a costume mistress metamorphed into an instant hit star on stage! Don't worry. It never happened again. *snickering at myself*

For years and years, we have all laughed about that night ^. Many very well known actors and actresses have all found it supremely amusing that I have never understood that there is no difference between "my big break" and theirs - other than that they carry union cards and wanted a big break, and I don't and never did. dwl It's all a matter of whether or not you have any talent and a matter of lucky timing. (you either are in the right place at the right time, or you aren't)

So, fast forward to the day before yesterday, this past Saturday... someone phoned me to ask me to please, please, please "reprise my role", and read the socialist poem again.

I haven't read this particular poem - or any of the poet's other works - in a very long time. But these particular poems are known by all of us Castillo old-timers.
They are the poems of Otto René Castillo.
And the poem that I once read onstage, and have been asked to do again is Apolitical Intellectuals.


The original play back when had me in the role of Otto René Castillo, sitting in prison, penning the poem. Of course, that's not when he actually wrote the poem, but the political play took liberties with Castillo's life anyhow, and the character is his ghost, "René", and he is musing about his life and death and whether or not he feels that his death was "worth it"... and that is the point at which he is writing his poem... he is sitting on an upturned box crate, and is supposed to be verbalizing his poem - but because I did not have it memorized, at the last second, we changed it and had me sitting with pencil and paper on my knee, and of course, the paper already has the damn poem written in large font on it for me. dwl Talk about last-second props! That friggin' thing was handed to me a split second before the damn curtain went up, I swear it, hand to God! And nobody could find a freakin' pencil... the ushers had to ask some of our older members in the audience if they had pencils in their pockets and handbags; someone did and we borrowed it! whew A pen wasn't gonna look right.
And never you mind that I'm female. Since when did a simple matter of cross-dressing ever stop playactors?! Come now!! Up my hair went into the cap that was part of the costume... and we got me into the damn costume, somehow. I managed to suck it in and not split any seams. (Thank God)

Just re-reading Apolitical Intellectuals makes me really stop and think all over again. I'd forgotten how powerful it was...

Am I really up to such a performance?

[WitchyOoman]

.
Apolitical Intellectuals

One day
the apolitical
intellectuals
of my country
will be interrogated
by the simplest
of our people.

They will be asked
what they did
when their nation died out
slowly,
like a sweet fire
small and alone.

No one will ask them
about their dress,
their long siestas
after lunch,
no one will want to know
about their sterile combats
with "the idea
of the nothing"
no one will care about
their higher financial learning.

They won't be questioned
on Greek mythology,
or regarding their self-disgust
when someone within them
begins to die
the coward's death.

They'll be asked nothing
about their absurd
justifications,
born in the shadow
of the total life.

On that day
the simple men will come.

Those who had no place
in the books and poems
of the apolitical intellectuals,
but daily delivered
their bread and milk,
their tortillas and eggs,
those who drove their cars,
who cared for their dogs and gardens
and worked for them,
and they'll ask:

"What did you do when the poor
suffered, when tenderness
and life
burned out of them?"

Apolitical intellectuals
of my sweet country,
you will not be able to answer.

A vulture of silence
will eat your gut.

Your own misery
will pick at your soul.

And you will be mute in your shame.