Socialist Action /July 2002
Reno: Rebel Social Critic. She's Funny
Too
By GAETANA CALDWELL-SMITH
REBEL WITHOUT A PAUSE.
Written and performed by Reno. June 18-23, BRAVA Center for the
Arts, San Francisco.
Comic monologist Reno opened her first showing on the West Coast of "Rebel
Without a Pause" at BRAVA Theater Center on June 18 for a six-day run.
Reno has the physicality of Harpo Marx, the facial expressions and double-takes
of Eve Arden, and the delivery of Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce.
As the performance began, Reno sat at a small table, listening to a voice-mail
message from a friend, "We are under attack here in Manhattan."
She had been asleep, she said, as she stood up, when the attacks on the
World Trade Centers occurred. The sound woke her for a moment, then she
fell back to sleep, saying to herself, "Suicide bombers."
She ascribed her first thought on not so much prescience but awareness
of how a lot of the rest of the world sees America, especially since the
previous attack on one of the towers in 1993. Reno joked that she must be
on the terrorists' mailing list (no doubt because of her radical views)
and wondered why they didn't call her and clue her in on what was going
on.
It is this radical stance concerning the events on and subsequent to
9-11 that is quickly gaining Reno nationwide recognition. "Rebel"
has been nominated for a Drama Desk Award and is currently being filmed.
Reno had been up all the night before 9-11, working on a new show about
the gentrification of TriBeCa (a district in Lower Manhattan) and the mayoral
race. After the attack, she scrapped that material and immediately began
a writing of the events leading up to, including, and post 9-11.
She first performed "Rebel" in an Off-Broadway theater as early
as Oct. 4, despite the self-imposed shut-down of commentary by most other
entertainers. Leno, Letterman, O'Brien, et al were tiptoeing around for
weeks, afraid of being disrespectful to the U.S. and showing a lack of feeling
and patriotism. After her New York performance, people thanked her for the
cathartic effects her show had on them.
Her friends say she's depressed and angry about what's been going on
since the day of the attack. But she contended that you can't be angry and
depressed at the same time; she proved it by trying to act it out, which
was hilarious.
Yes, she is angry. Angry about a lot of things. She is angry that there
are Christian fundamentalists in the administration, angry at schools that
teach "creation-science" as an alternative to evolution, to name
two. "Creation-science: those two words are like trying to get two
magnets to stick together when their nature is to repel," she said.
"It can't be done."
As for the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan, she asked, "Wasn't bombing
that country and dropping humanitarian aid at the same time like eating
while you're sitting on the toilet?" She talked about the packets of
humanitarian aid being the same bright yellow as some of the bombs. She
did a take on Afghans picking them up, not knowing the difference, of course,
and ... BOOM!.
Reno lapsed into a lecture mode when she spoke of the "rule of law"
and blamed Ashcroft for using the "war on terrorism" as an excuse
to screw up the Bill of Rights. She believes Ashcroft and the administration
whipped up the so-called Patriot Act months before Sept. 11.
She then unleashed her comedic talent on our "appointed" president
and his recent flubs, like not being able to get the words "State of
the Union" out of his mouth in any understandable order; his wonder
at discovering that Brazil has Black people too; and in Japan, reminding
dignitaries that we enjoyed "150 years of peace" with that country,
while Condoleeza Rice fell all over herself to explain what Bush really
meant.
"Unrehearsed, he's like a drunk pretending to be sober." Imagine,
Reno said, pundits were calling Bush's post Sept. 11 speech Churchillian.
"I'm sure they said, 'chinchillian.'"
Reno ended her performance in front of a huge American flag, which suddenly
dropped and unfurled from the flies, with an announcement: John Walker Lindh's
father had come to see her show and liked it. She was moved by him, she
said. She hoped that Lindh would get a fair trial and that his case would
be a benchmark for other terrorist trials.
Reno's show was energizing, entertaining, optimistic, and fall-out-of-your-chair
funny. And, as New York Theatre Wire wrote: "Reno has mined all our
thoughts ... and is now feeding them back to us. And willingly, like some
elixer guaranteed to cure us, we swallow them whole."
Socialist Action /July 2002 |