WAKING UP FROM THE AMERICAN DREAM
The title of Oracle Theatre’s typically invigorating offering, THIS HOUSE BELIEVES THE AMERICAN DREAM IS AT THE EXPENSE OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO, is actually a proposition by the Cambridge Union Debating Chamber (called the “Arena of Ambition”) in February 1965 at England’s famed Cambridge University. Broadcast by National Educational Television (predecessor of PBS), this forensic showdown was argued by American polar opposites: The affirmative was upheld by famed 40-year-old James Baldwin (African-American author of The Fire Next Time, Giovanni’s Room, Another Country), the negative by epicene conservative columnist William F. Buckley (editor of The National Review and nemesis to Gore Vidal and other “minority” writers).
With free admission as “public access” theater, THIS HOUSE BELIEVES is now a 70-minute, town-hall recreation of that prescient polemical confrontation, currently playing at the theater’s Lakeview venue (collaborating with the Chicago Park District, it already ran at Theater on the Lake, the Washington Park Refectory and the Austin Town Hall). At each performance audience members will be able to vote for or against the declaration, both before and at the end of the great debate. Marking the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, the 150th anniversary of the 13th Amendment, the 50th anniversary of The Voting Rights Act, and the 50th anniversary of the Baldwin/Buckley debate itself, this blast from the past seems particularly appropriate, considering how damn little has changed.
Playing the distinguished guests, Union Society members, and cantankerously interrupting undergraduates, the ten Oracle actors, smoothly coached by adaptor Zachary Baker-Salmon and impeccably garbed in period preppy wear, create a decorous meeting of minds (and finally of hearts). It takes us back to the future with a vengeance.
Bearing a remarkable resemblance to the elegantly intense Baldwin, Johnard Washington delivers achingly personal testimony. His accusation: The American dream is built on the unrewarded toil of millions to whom it has always been denied. Black Americans feel unwelcome strangers in their own land–a toxic birthright–while, equally divided and conquered, white Americans conveniently console themselves for their unearned entitlement and occasional exploitation by cooing “At least we’re not black.”
Disaffection, alienation, distrust–these are the wary watchwords of the “American Negro.” In deeply affecting anecdotes, Baldwin delivers that daily dread, the curse of being taken at face value in the worst way. “Four hundred years are not enough” to cleanse these contradictions, but changes in law may eventually alter hearts and minds. Christianity reflects, not Jesus’s all-embracing tolerance and humanity, but St. Paul, a bigoted persecutor who believed that justice has no place in this world but in the very hypothetical next one.
Perfectly aping Buckley’s smooth-to-snide style, his purring declamation like a cat that swallowed too much cream, Jeremy Clark tries to shame Baldwin down to his non-existent great-grandchildren (a snarky allusion to his homosexuality). How dare he think that skin is relevant to success in the Land of Opportunity? We must not sneer at the sense of fair play and decency that made Americans fight for the German people even as they vanquished the Third Reich. (His allusion to the Irish rebellion doesn’t sit well with the vociferous Brits in the audience.)
As for voting rights, considering the intelligence and ignorance of most Americans, it’s better if fewer exercise that right than more (66 percent less!). All but alluding to bootstraps, the bilious Buckley maintains that blacks must free themselves from whatever keeps them down–and he’s not talking revolution, just self-reform. Civilization is the answer, upward mobility the means; you throw away those babies with the bathwater at your peril.
Obviously, Baldwin and Buckley are at an ideological impasse that, given America’s kneejerk discrimination and police executions, seems even more intractable today. For what it’s worth the opening night audience, predictably enough, finally voted (anonymously) 30 to 1 for the proposition that doubts the Dream. So, yes, there’s preaching to the choir here–but, who knows?, the vote may change elsewhere in Chicago. A hit-and-run visit to Ferguson, MO might be worth considering as well.
Each Oracle offering is dynamically different from every other. Eschewing the agit-prop proletariat fury of The Mother, Waiting for Lefty, and The Jungle, this historical reclamation is more like the calmer backwaters of Romulus and The America Play. What makes it Oracular is the trademark commitment to shaking up the 44 folks who see each show. For all the openness of this communal stage, there are also unseen barricades a la Les Miz. You’re engaged the instant you enter.
photos by Joe Mazza, brave lux
This House Believes the American Dream
is at the Expense of the American Negro
Oracle Productions and Theater on the Lake
3809 N. Broadway
Fri, Sat and Mon at 8; Sun at 7
ends on September 19, 2015
for tickets, call 773.935.6875
or visit www.publicaccesstheatre.org
for more info on Chicago Theater,
visit www.TheatreinChicago.com