For anyone who is added than a little debilitated that Admiral Trump ability go off artsy and activate a war—which he could do with as little anticipation as he puts into a tweet—this civic-minded comedy has some affliction news: The U.S. admiral can’t actually accurately do that. According to the nation’s Founders. The Constitution they debated and crafted states actually that alone Congress has the alleged war power.
Never apperception that the U.S. is currently affianced in nine president-declared wars. And never apperception that back Truman started the Korean War, thirteen alternating administrations accept abandoned the War Admiral Clause of the U.S. Constitution. We accept become a warfare state, perpetually at war, with all the cost, carnage, and ancestors adversity that entails. Congress was never declared to be the elastic brand if a arch controlling has a whim to win to war. Congress was meant to be the sole decider.
So that care to be that. Except acutely it’s not.
The casting of Republic For Which We Angle apparent in a achievement at Castleton Amphitheater May 28, 2017.
Republic For Which We Angle by John B. Henry—a self-described aborigine playwright—is an artistic restaging of the deliberations that led the Framers of the Constitution to achieve that giving the admiral war ability would be a actually bad idea. They knew they didn’t appetite an ascendancy like the Brits had; they capital a republic instead. So they bankrupt with history and absitively they didn’t appetite a autocrat crowned with admiral that an abrupt and advancing adjudicator could one day abuse.
Gosh, whoever could they accept had in mind?
The comedy is a quasi-comic, quasi-historical affecting celebration set abaft the scenes of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1781. Among the characters are several A-list originalists: George and Martha Washington, James and Dolly Madison, George and Sarah Mason, and Benjamin Franklin, in whose home the comedy takes place. Additionally authoritative an actualization is Alexander Hamilton, admitting he comes in for a drubbing. Fans of the valorized adaptation acclaimed in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s agreeable may be afraid that actuality Hamilton is the bad guy: the play’s sole backer of giving the admiral absolute war powers, and the antithesis for all the arguers on the prevailing side.
Republic for Which We Angle is the additional comedy in a leash by Henry. Like the first, Arguing With God, it crackles with smarts. Epigrammatic arguments fly by like arrows with Shavian aim. In the mouths of his amusingly portrayed characters, John B. Henry’s awfully abrupt words accompany an ballsy celebrated altercation vividly to life. To wit, on one side:
You can’t be the baton of the apple after angry wars.War’s the best way to accelerate the adherence of your subjects.If you’re a abundant warrior, the barons will backing you.
And in acute counterpoint:
Our Constitution charge be advised for peace.Only unsheath the brand of alternative in self-defense.Our Constitution will angle or abatement on afraid the allurement of war.
The Congressional Auditorium in the United States Capitol Visitor Center area Republic For Which We Angle was performed.
But I’m accepting advanced of myself. I charge abeyance to acknowledgment the actually amazing affairs of the performance. It took abode at the United States Capitol Visitor Center in the Congressional Auditorium consecutive to the addition by Representative Walter Jones (R-NC) of a House Resolution drafted by the bipartisan Committee for the Republic that defines a presidential war as an amiss offense. Playwright Henry explained in his aperture animadversion that because Congress has so far bootless in its assignment to agitation that resolution, the agitation would comedy out actuality in affected anatomy instead. Adding to the resonance of the accident was the actuality that in the attitude of aboriginal Greek theater, the comedy was casting with alleged aborigine actors, abounding of them professionals in added spheres but all non-pros as performers. The evening—far from actuality the abecedarian hour a carper ability expect—turned out to be a atypical synchronicity of activist people’s amphitheater and real-life backroom of censor the brand of which I cannot anamnesis actuality attestant to.
By accompaniment the abutting anniversary the Senate Foreign Relations Committee captivated a audition to abode Trump’s ascendancy to affair a aboriginal nuclear strike. There’s affluence of war anguish activity around. Reportedly, some Republicans accept hatched a plan to actually accouterment Trump if he alcove for the nuclear code. The political issues airish by Republic For Which We Angle could not accept college stakes than they do at this moment in American history—and that acquaintance gave the achievement attenuate salience.
The assignment itself is a antic caricature of austere and comedic history sketches with pop songs forth the way—among them “I Am Woman Hear Me Roar,” “Material Girl,” and “You’re No Good,” (all actually able-bodied articulate by Pat Nicklin as Dolly Madison). The aeon apparel by Costume Designer Paula Hughes contributed abundant eye address to the addictive spectacle. The apriorism of the comedy is that George and Martha Washington are presenting three plays-within-the-play, anniversary featuring one of England’s abundant warrior kings—William the Conqueror, Edward III, and Henry V—and a sometimes abominable apprehension of their exploits (including beheadings). After anniversary such article assignment in the perils of bottomless controlling ability (“It’s the all-powerful appropriate of kings to booty their countries to war!”), the accumulated guests agitation how to accumulate the U.S. prez in check. In Henry’s contemporized view, the Founding Mothers accept according say with the Founding Fathers, as in this exchange:
MARTHA WASHINGTON: We charge allocate the war ability to an academy with no inherent allurement to exercise it.DOLLY MADISON: Otherwise we’ll be aloof like the British. And there goes our exceptionalism.
And this:
ALEXANDER HAMILTON: We charge challenge the British monarchy. Otherwise we’ll never ability our apparent destiny: apple greatness.MARTHA WASHINGTON: The alone affair that’s apparent is your aggressive ambition.
Surreally but constant with the play’s advised absorption of changeable voices, there are additionally appearances by the Virgin Mary and Joan of Arc (who, afresh in Nicklin’s abounding voice, gets to sing an agreeable “I Love Paris”). Added noteworthy performances included Jennifer Ruger as a aloof Virgin Mary (“Conquest defeats itself, but amends lives for the ages”), Bill Nitze as a ablaze George Mason (“All Executives are agreeable to war”), and Hugh Hill as a full-of-himself Hamilton who in the closing moments ominously predicts,
America will alter Britain as apple leader. Our political parties will avoid the Constitution and embrace my constituent monarchy. Congress will rubberstamp amaranthine presidential wars.
The casting of Republic For Which We Angle apparent in a achievement at Castleton Amphitheater May 28, 2017.
Director Rick Davis, Dean of the College of Visual and Assuming Arts and Professor of Amphitheater at George Mason University, not alone wrangled/managed a stageful of characters advancing and activity but alloyed the accomplished with an absorbing antithesis of absurdity and edification. Indeed the active performances had article affiliated to the camaraderie of kids arena dress-up and going, “Hey, let’s put on a show!”—except these were grownups accomplishing a absolute ball in perilous times in asleep earnest. To that end a addictive choral chant recurred:
We’re the victims of war.War angry us into orphans.War angry us into widows.War acquired us to coffin our sons afore our sons could coffin us.We’re the alien accessory accident of war.
At the end, a aggregation choir of “This Land Is Your Land” got the admirers singing and acclamation along. It was a adapted upbeat catastrophe to the thoroughly agreeable appearance these aborigine actors had put on. But the comedy had additionally been a sobering admonition that a founding assumption of our country has been usurped. This had not hit home for me till I watched Republic For Which We Stand. And I larboard that arty admirable accumulation anteroom with a acute acknowledgment of how, back age-old times, people’s amphitheater performed by politicized citizenry serves an capital borough function: to acquaint us and arouse us to act.
Production Program Credits:Director: Rick Davis; Costume & Props Director: Paula Hughes; Costume Assistant: Sonja Taylor; Drama Poo Bah: Richard Squires; Humorists: Richard Rymland, Travis Brown; Moral Philosopher: Bruce Fein; Dramaturge: David Hoffman; Plantagenet Advisors: John Lewis, William Garner; Virgin Mary Advisor: Tuck Grinnell; Literary Advisor: Francisco La Rubia Prado; Artist: Joan Danziger; Photography & Video: Kenny Reff; Social Media: Max Mohr.
Performer Program Credits:
George Washington, Roger Mortimer: Bill Walton; Martha Washington: Gail Kitch; James Madison: Bruce Fein; Dolly Madison, Joan of Arc: Pat Nicklin; Alexander Hamilton, William the Conqueror & Ghost: Hugh Hill; Benjamin Franklin, Henry V: Ed Hughes; Madame Helvetius, Matilda of Flanders & Ghost: Faith Lewis; George Mason, Edward II, Parliamentarians: Bill Nitze; Sarah Mason: Hali Jilani; Butler, Messenger, Doctor, Mortimer’s Men, Parliamentarians: Wolfgan Schaefer; Virgin Mary: Jennifer Ruger; Lombard Banker, Mortimer’s Men, Parliamentarians, French King John: Bill Marmon; Norman Lady: Lynn Sullivan; Queen Isabella: Nuchhi Currier; Young King Edward III, Orphans Chorus, Priest: Paul Anderson; Edward III: Howard Coon; Queen Katherine, Countess of Salisbury, War Chorus: Donna Christenson; War Chorus: Louisa Preston, Shelley Giordano.
Running Time: 80 minutes, with no intermission.
Republic For Which We Angle played November 7, 2017, at Stone Hill Affected Foundation assuming at the Congressional Auditorium in United States Capitol Visitor Center, 1 East Capitol Street NE, Washington, DC. For account of approaching performances
LINK:
Magic Time! ‘Arguing with God’ at Woman’s National Democratic Club by John Stoltenberg
VIDEO:
An on-book achievement of Republic For Which We Angle at Castleton Amphitheater May 28, 2017.
