Review of RANDOM ACTS by Renata Hinrichs

Haven't blogged in a while, but RANDOM ACTS made me do it. Happy to tell you about something you should see!

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While waiting to watch the newest iteration of RANDOM ACTS, Renata Hinrichs' moving, funny and more relevant by the minute one-woman show, I was struck by Renata's program note in which she credited the inspiration for this show being her experience living downtown during 9/11 when "memories from my childhood started to surface. The sirens and searchlight that erupted near St. Vincent's Hospital were reminiscent of the chaos, confusion, and terror I experienced as a child in the midst of the struggle for Civil Rights in the South Side of Chicago in the 1960s…" These memories, along with subsequent interviews with her parents to fill in the blanks of her memory as a young child, form the basis of her show.

Renata Hinrichs in Random Acts photo by Mitch Traphagen

As someone who also lived through 9/11 in NYC and had my own work transformed by that experience, I recognize the impact of traumatic experience on opening up new/old zones of the self. I mention this now because I think this part of the show, which is never mentioned within the production itself, may have some relationship to its emotional resonance now. In a talkback Renata spoke about her desire for this show to be authentic. This aligns with an unnamed movement I have watched develop in which many of us who directly experienced 9/11 have spent a lot of time since then working to create performances that embody complex levels of reality, while grounded in experience.

I don't want to give away the show, because there are many twists and turns in Renata's expert story telling that are best left to discover while watching. However, her instinct to tell this story from herself-as-a-child's point of view is a good one. We are accustomed to seeing the events of the Civil Rights era from the adult point of view with conscious actors, people with honed sensibilities who have decided what side they are on and for whom or what they are fighting. While these stories are moving and necessary, to witness these events from the point of view of a five and six year old girl, who herself is living in between so many worlds, gives a new and valuable window into these events. 

Renata was the child of a young and idealistic Lutheran pastor of a primarily white church on Ashland Avenue—a long boulevard that divided the white and African-American sections of the Southside. Her father tried to integrate the church much to the dismay of some of his own congregation and other neighbors, especially during the riots that ensued in response to Martin Luther King's assassination. Racist white men responded to her father's tolerance by hurling rocks in their window. 

Renata attended a primarily black kindergarten, walking on her own to school (as someone raised during the same period of time, I can assure you, this level of: oh, kids can take care of themselves, was normal, though was interesting to hear the audible gasps in the audience when Renata recounted her mother's conversation with her father about this—times have changed!). She encountered hostility on the street for being white, that as a little girl she did not understand, but the person who looked out for her was a young African-American man whose face she never saw. Her father told her that was her guardian angel, which as a five year old she took to heart.

Her questions about the violence against African-Americans intensified in the crack down after the riots—especially the killing of a young man like the one who had helped her—are heartbreaking, and become a kind of Black Lives Matter rallying cry, though not as a political movement, but instead from a little girl's ingenuous questions about unfairness. In the show, Renata embodies childhood without sentimentality, but also without losing the reality of the fantasy life of a little girl who wants to dance (and indeed becomes a dancer as an adult) and who believes she has a fairy godmother (and a guardian angel). Suffice to say at the end of seeing this show for the second time, I was sobbing (as I did the first time). This is not a normal response for me, and I attribute it to Renata's clear gifts and the impact of her—yes authentic—story.

Renata as an actor has an uncanny ability to transform into all the people who she is telling us about, including her own older, teen, and young child self. She does this with simplicity and humor, aided by the expert staging of director Jessi Hill, who also helped Renata expand this piece into a full-length evening that feels embodied and immersive, thanks in no small part to Matt Otto's excellent sound design. I also appreciated the simplicity and effectiveness of Daisy Long's lighting design, that added depth and definition to a small stage, which worked in sync with Chika Shimizu's adaptable set that shifted with the mood and place of the moment. If you can, you should this show.

RANDOM ACTS is running at the Barrow Group through March 2, 2019, Tuesday-Sunday.

gorgeous day here in Inwood

It was beautiful today so went apartment hunting, had to fill out another teaching application but in between walked to the water.  The tide was going out so bay area turned into mudflats with rivulets.  Birds walking and swimming, including seagulls, ducks, Canadian geese and a beautiful heron.  There was a moment watching the water shimmer across the flats when a breeze made it looked like a translucent blanket of diamonds that was breathtaking.  Then watching the millions of little ovals of light from the setting sun on one area...walking back from a point, each path of a bird in the water was lit, so there were lines darting out behind each white gull.  There were at least 20 or so birds in the bay, so it made a pattern of indescribably beauty and asymmetry.  In these moments, it's hard to believe anything ever bothers me...ever.  Especially bullshit about status and accomplishments.  When the heron spreads out to its full wingspan and it lands again on those impossibly thin legs, what is there to do precisely?  What could possibly top that?

Once again, I recommit to staying up in this neighborhood, because it never fails to blow my mind as I'm waxing poetic about nature that I am standing at the top tip of Manhattan.

Another viewpoint that cannot be topped is standing beneath the Henry Hudson Bridge - seeing the perfect geometry of diamond-shaped squares receding behind one another.

I have taken photos of all of this but somehow enjoy the challenge right now of describing these sights.

The green of the leaves is lush, no tree is yet in full bloom but they are all ripe with green and yellow, dark and light, life bursting out of every corner of the park, the air smelling sweet and then when the tide goes out like a mud flat, but even that smell I like because it's natural, not toxic.  However a rat running out from between the rocks and into the water reminded me once again of the city.

I brought another friend on the walk through the woods the other day, and the familiar response: I didn't know this was here.  It doesn't even feel like a city.  Look at that light.  Oh my God it is so beautiful.  Is that the Bronx?  Yes.  Is that New Jersey?  Yes.  This is what?  Where the Harlem River and Hudson River meet.  Then the apocryphal tale of the Native Americans 'selling' Manhattan at that stone right there...then the awe: wait these trees were here then?  Yes. Why hasn't it been developed?  I don't know but I am glad.  In the case of this friend: it reminds me of my hometown in Germany, the trees and the smell...an old steel town where the Rhine meets the Ruhr (I think...can't remember the name but that's my best guess)...it's a place, this place, on the edge of meaning as well as place somehow.  And the light...oh my God/dess, the light.  You cannot believe it.

The conversation then turning to the vagaries of being on the edge of careers, artistic ideas, teaching jobs...the ways in which we think that does not fit into boxes and forms...wondering again if it is a generational thing.  Perhaps this is why I am always happy on the edges of places...where land turns to water turns to mud turns to water turns into another river into another state under a bridge where the train whistles to another borough to another town...to another century if you turn around fast enough.

So, wish me luck with finding another apartment up here...was taken around earlier today by a real estate agent, which is always a weird experience, because you know you're being hustled and at a certain point they know you know, but they can't seem to stop themselves.  So weird.  Hope I can find something on my own through a management company or owner because I feel somehow just too old or whatever it is to play along.  Today, the tired song of "if you like this place, you need to act now because someone could snap it up tomorrow" and me saying, with the superintendent present, yeah and then something else will open up, which made the super laugh and nod his head in agreement.  No one can keep a straight face anymore.  I mean, come on.  I'm sitting there looking at a long list of vacant apartments and it's obvious the masses are not moving in on any of them.  These are the benefits of getting older and - dare I say it - a little wiser.  False urgency appears as what it is: false.  Plus the hilarious-sad moment of me telling them - gringo that I am - I'm OK with living East of Broadway - gasp.  All the real estate agents, and I mean ALL of them, assume I have to live West of Broadway.  He even tried to scare me by leaving me out on the street by myself - which like didn't scare me.  He was surprised when I was joking with people on the street.  The racism here is just unfuckingbelievable.  Even when I said: yeah, I know what East of Broadway looks like, I walk to Bronx Community College (through the dreaded East of Broadway), he still didn't believe me.

Oh and speaking of racism, it turns out one of my students, as I suspected at least one of them would, knew the 18 year old boy who was shot dead in the Bronx by a policeman a couple months ago.  Not on the street, in this boy's own bathroom.  He was unarmed and the police chased him into his own house because they suspected he might have pot.  Which he may have had and may have been trying to flush down the toilet.  So now he's dead, feloniously black in the Bronx.  The weirdest thing about it is how little uproar there has been.  There should be riots, instead there is just despair and a few marches here and there.  She is going to speak about police brutality, this student, for her oral presentation.  I look forward to it.  I had to stop myself from crying when she told me the story.  When I saw the news report, I did cry.  I saw the photo of the young man and knew he could have been one of my students.  To put this in perspective: just imagine if this had been a middle-class or rich white college student who had been chased into his dorm room by cops and shot to death.  You can't even imagine that can you?  Right, so there you go.

So, like, of course I would love to live west of Broadway to be next to the water and park with a view, who wouldn't?  But this is not about that.

The teaching application I sent out today was to teach full time at BCC.  If I got that job, I could probably afford to live where I want.  But who knows where I will end up in the autumn?  I certainly don't.

Just hope wherever it is can be as drop dead gorgeous as corners of Inwood and that I will be able to experience another year as close to the changing seasons...and also the edge of reason, which is the poverty and inequality.  Not because I enjoy it, because I do not, but as a reminder always, that the human construction: global capitalism + nationalism + racism kinda sucks.

Scary Newt and the wit and wisdom o' Inwood

So, to start...here's the weird sign I saw on the street leaning against a lamppost on 207th Street walking from the 1 train.  Wisdom?  Google Translate? Inwood Confucianism? You decide:

I am really not sure what to make of this, is a bad lie one that works or does not work?  Is a fast cart something that gets you somewhere or refer to the people who sell things off carts on the street?  In any case, I could not help but stoop down and get a blurry photo with my half-smart phone.


After the relative calm of seeing this and spending time with friends today, one at a local cafe, from where you can see the below body of tidal water...(I can't help myself taking photos of it, especially as the seasons change...something so gorgeous about this area in January - stark but lovely...again, sorry for the phone photo but gives you an idea...one of the many things on my to do list is to get a better camera for these photos and video work I'm starting to do...)

But so...after this calm, I managed to shatter it by watching the Republicans debate in South Carolina.  I haven't managed to sit my sorry ass down and watch one of these things all the way through until now.  Whatever hope I've had about Occupy Wall Street was severely threatened by the whoopin' and hollerin' for Newt Gingrich speaking in blatantly racist terms about the economy to the African American reporter asking him a question...then watching the African American female anchor on FoxNews Live Stream pretend she had not written the word 'condescending' to refer to Gingrich by half giggling saying "I don't why I wrote that" followed by Ed - I'm such a racist and wish I was Dick Cheney - Rollins snorting "Oh you meant the reporters!"  She laughed a little too loudly - all the years she must have taken of god knows what abuse to have her anchor position at Fox news live stream flashing before her eyes - uh yes, that must be it, she said.  Bull shit.

I swear to God I was waiting for the pan out to that audience to suddenly include white pointy hats.  But no, they've got 'em stored away in the basement or attic somewhere...you could just see the Aura of it - all that pent up resentment at having to have an African-American president bursting out the sides, a barely contained riot of approval for the fake-academic Gingrich tut tutting all those people on food stamps.  I thought I was gonna hurl.  So instead I started tweeting madly - the modern version of pathetic protest.  I did have a good tweetversation (is that a word yet?) with a fellow in Memphis about all this - someone else who had moved back from Europe and is still reeling with the raw horror of these very scary men - and their even scarier supporters (mobs).

If you think I am exaggerating, by the way, just go to the Fox News channel website and I'm sure you can watch the whole thing again - if you can bear it, and I warn you: it's ugly.

The only tiny consolation I have is that Romney will most likely be their nominee and attacking his idiotic record will be like shooting fish in a barrel, and he does not have the horrifying populist demagogic power of Gingrich or the weird Cameron-like smoothness of Santorum or the righteous Texan religious thing of Perry or the racist anti-semitic dressed up as radical thing of Ron Paul.  Who are all these people?

I say that and yet I know....I grew up among them, I was an Evangelical Baptist at one point when a teen.  The world is so black and white.  White is Jesus and the Church, black is both racial and the Godless Government, etc., etc.  The belief system is incredibly insular and totalizing, which in these days of anxiety and economic meltdown ironically is more comforting to these folks than oh say an actual social safety net.  Nietzsche was right about this: Christianity does valorize suffering as the entry fee, which can cause a weird idea of what the social should be.  We reap what we sow.  He also said, and I agree with him on this one: Christ was the only Christian.  Amen that brother Friedrich.  Yeah, yeah I know he hated women - hold the comments.  Still he got some stuff right.  And it was his sister that was the anti-Semite, not him...he hated everyone.  Kind of like Lenny Bruce except he was a 19th century philosopher.

In summary, for today: friends: good.  Republican presidential candidates: bad.  So, there you go, I am now oversimplifying with the rest of 'em.  Reminds me it's Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and I should be better than that.  He is right that you can only get rid of darkness with light and hate with love, but tonight I cannot find any love for Newt Gingrich.  No, actually, weirdly that's not true.  On some deeper level I can, even for him, which is kind of fucked up, but I can...but on the level of presidential politics and the real world, no, never.  He is my enemy in that world.  Yes, I would like to have a dialogue and yes I'm aware we are all too polarized, but a dialogue can only be had in good faith and  stirring up white resentment and fear under the guise of rational policy is horrendous.  It needs to be called out for what it is not lauded like the idiot commentators on Fox News were doing oohing and aahing over his 'passion' and how excited people in the audience were.

Dear God/Higher Power/Whomever, please help us all...It looks like we aren't doing a bang up job ourselves right now.