Bards of America
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MONTAGE instruments and then layering them with overdubs and complicated effects. This ap- Ensemble members reminisce in Party People, proach is evident in the band’s easy chemis- about the Black Panthers try: these are familiar, welcome recordings of and Young Lords. simple, well-written songs. Wilson’s unclut- tered arrangements complement both his in- tuitive grasp of melody and the earnestness and clarity of his vocal delivery. Where the chart-topping studio versions of these songs sound carefully calibrated, processed, and polished (often quite pleasantly so), Wilson’s versions sound more suited to a house party or a crowded bar than a stadium. Indeed, Re-Covered often feels so lived-in it’s easy to forget that these songs are “covers.” Wilson’s folk and country influences imbue “Not Ready to Make Nice” with a gentle sad- ness that avoids saccharine nostalgia; his ver- sion of Adele’s “Someone Like You” pairs able guitar work with a lush string arrangement by the Kronos Quartet and shows off his im- pressive vocal range. But Re-Covered is not all mournful blues. Its distortion-laden versions of “Home” (written with Dierks Bentley) and “Landing” (a collaboration with his brother) GRAHAM JENNY draw from the driving, exuberant energies of hometown punk acts like Hüsker Dü and The Replacements. And Taylor Swift’s “Treacher- Bards of America ous” is sped up and stripped of its epic chorus, transformed from whispery country-pop into Historical plays for a nation “stuck in the middle” elegant, angular alt-rock. For many listeners, however, the stand- by lydialyle gibson out track will be the quietly urgent piano version of “Closing Time” that closes the al- hirty years ago, when Alison and fundamental forces had shaped their bum. “I still love that song,” he says, and it’s Carey ’82 and Bill Rauch ’84 were grandparents and parents and, by exten- easy to see why. Perfect pop songs—like the traveling the country with Cor- sion, themselves. Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back,” or Katy Per- T nerstone Theater Company, the Carey, a history concentrator at Harvard, ry’s “Firework”—braid together the familiar ensemble they co-founded after graduat- thinks back to those conversations now and with the novel. The genius of “Closing Time” ing, they would set up shop for months sees a pretty clear through-line to her cur- is to stack that contradiction on top of the at a time in churches and storefronts and rent work: overseeing the development of bittersweet melancholy of endings. As the abandoned gymnasiums. In small-town new history plays as director of the Ore- lyrics put it: “Every new beginning comes West Virginia or Nevada or North Dako- gon Shakespeare Festival’s (OSF) American from some other beginning’s end.” ta, they worked with local Talking about the process of re-working residents to produce clas- songs from his repertoire, Wilson compares sic plays adapted to the par- songs to jewels: different arrangements ac- ticularities of their commu- centuate or dull certain characteristics, but nities. In town after town, a the gem itself remains unchanged, a kernel of similar thing kept happening: insight whose essential structure is durable the plays were almost always and timeless. Re-Covered plays like a state- set in the present, but invari- ment of this philosophy rather than just a ably, Carey says, “You’d bump compilation of recognizable singles. Indeed, into the past.” A story circle in it opens with what could well be considered the Central Valley of Califor- a statement of method—some of Wilson’s nia or a storefront in Missis- most memorable lines, from his collabora- sippi would turn into a con- tion with Gabe Dixon, “All Will Be Well”: versation about how people’s “The new day dawns, / And I am practicing families had ended up there, Alison Carey my purpose once again.” what traumas and triumphs FESTIVAL SHAKESPEARE OREGON Harvard Magazine 55 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 MONTAGE (From left) Stephen Michael Spencer, Jack Willis, and Tramell Tillman in Sweat, a potent portrait of working-class frustra- tion and fear in a Pennsylvania steel town mental ensemble anchored by Bronx-reared playwrights Steven Sapp, Mildred Ruiz-Sapp, and William Ruiz, Party People incorporates hip-hop, salsa, and jazz into what Carey calls a “beautiful, intentional, thorough piece” about “maintaining one’s integrity in the face of assault, maintaining one’s sense of self and sense of purpose.” During their research, the playwrights (now OSF’s ensemble-in-resi- dence) interviewed former members of the Black Panthers and the Young Lords, hearing their stories, but also asking permission to tell them. These were people whom the writers had known since childhood, not as abstract figures, but as neighborhood elders—“older JENNY GRAHAM JENNY warriors,” Carey says. Some former Lords and Revolutions cycle. Rauch, now OSF artis- year, convenes everyone to talk and think Panthers came to see the show. So did gold tic director, proposed the project a decade through their works-in-progress together. medalist Tommie Smith, one of the American ago, to comprise 37 plays in total—the same Part of the cycle’s intent is to bring many athletes who raised his fist on the Olympic number in Shakespeare’s canon. Of the 32 perspectives to the fore—and to as many platform in 1968. During the play, he raised commissions so far, 10 dramas have been places as possible: a few American Revolu- his fist again. brought to the stage. (The last five play- tions plays are co-commissions with other Carey and Rauch decided from the be- wrights will be announced this year; it’ll theater companies (Steppenwolf, Arena ginning against putting many restrictions take another 15 years or so for the whole Stage, Yale Repertory Theatre) and several on the commissions’ subject or time peri- cycle to be produced.) Exploring subjects have premiered on other stages around the od—the only requirement was that each ad- like immigration, slavery, Roe v. Wade, presi- country. The cycle’s first play,American Night: dential elections, political assassinations, The Ballad of Juan José, a sprawling look at 170 years of history, was adapted by playwright “Whatever that Richard Montoya into a version for second- Explore More ary-school drama troupes to perform. revolutionary moment One of the most successful entries in the For more online-only articles on cycle is Robert Schenkkan’s Tony Award- the arts and creativity, see: was,” Carey says, winning All the Way, which follows Lyndon B. Johnson’s ascendance during the year after A London “it’s still sitting in the John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Schenk- Fellowship for kan’s play is consciously Shakespearean: a Urban Design American psyche.” grand-scale narrative of leadership and cri- The Graduate of sis, with LBJ at the center as a flawed, char- School of Design and Sherman’s “March to the Sea,” the plays ismatic protagonist, plotting and battling opens its renovated have attracted Tony nominations (and two and spouting soliloquies. Schenkkan fol- Wimbledon House. awards), a Pulitzer Prize, and a few trips to lowed up that American Revolutions proj- harvardmag.com/ukgsd-17 Broadway. (“Hamilton,” Carey told an inter- ect with a sequel, Great Society. It chronicles BAAN IWAN viewer last year, was the one that got away.) the hero’s moral downfall as the country de- With Friends Like These Describing the process, Carey says, “We scended into Vietnam and racial conflict, The Netflix series Friends from College read and see a lot of plays and find the voice and his dreams of ending poverty evaporat- explores college nostalgia among the that sparks us.” She and Rauch follow play- ed. “Robert had to get the rest of the story Ivy League set. wrights from year to year, “and when we are out,” Carey says, “the triumph and the trag- harvardmag.com/tvfriends-17 moved by someone’s work and they seem edy.” That’s Shakespearean too. to bring something new, we call them up.” When All the Way premiered at OSF in 2012, A Life of Adventure and Delight Some arrive with ideas, though not with it played opposite (in more ways than one) There’s a new short-story cycle by fixed plans or written scripts (“We want another American Revolutions production, Akhil Sharma, J.D. ’98, one of the most them to start from scratch”) and then the Party People, which explores the legacy of the inventive fiction writers working today. real work begins. Carey works with play- Black Panthers and the Puerto Rican Young harvardmag.com/sharma-17 wrights to develop their ideas, and once a Lords. Written by UNIVERSES, an experi- 56 September - October 2017 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 MONTAGE dress a moment of change in American his- sitting in the American psyche as either a tory—and many of the cycle’s plays ended time of great success or a time of great fail- up revolving around the 1960s and ’70s. At ure, or something stuck in the middle.” first Carey worried that meant they’d done In a divided country, Carey says, “I think something wrong, failed to ask the right these plays can be a path to understanding.” question. But playwright Lynn Nottage She thinks back to her Cornerstone days: (whose Pulitzer-winning play for the cycle, how much the ensemble members learned Sweat, about Pennsylvania factory workers about the specific, individual histories of the in the aftermath of industrial decline, went towns they visited, and how the townspeo- to Broadway this year) said no.