"Honk if You Agree"

 Honk If You Agree

— On October 8, 2022 Kanye West tweeted to his 30 million followers “I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.” The following Saturday, members of a White Supremacist hate group stood on an overpass above the 405 Freeway in California, performing Nazi salutes behind a banner that read "Kanye was right about the Jews. Honk if you agree.”

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Just as an ancient house, demolished
    liberates the vermin
    so we see them now
    in all their flagrance
    and undisguised monstrosity.

Honk if you agree.

Many rats
    are killed in falling mansions
    but some find other houses.  

Hate—it turns out— is not dark.
It blazes with the cruelest light
and rings to petulant music—
    the rage of car horns on the highway.
    the ear-splitting silence of indifference.

Hate is born with you
    it howls in your first howl.
Impatient loathing
    coiled behind our tongues like a python.
    
This hate is ancient.  
And my People’s pain is insignificant, some say.
Our victim card, expired
Our terror, irrelevant.

So I shall exit the 405 for today—
Knowing it is a road I cannot ignore.
I shall without a doubt read its signs again
and again
and drive across its bloodied highways.

But tonight is Friday
so I exit to light candles
    that pierce into this darkness.
I shall be a good ancestor—
one that paves better highways for the generations yet to come.

To see with clarity
but also with hope
For hath I not eyes?

Honk if you agree.

End of LEND ME A SOPRANO

What a magnificent experience from top to tail. One never knows how an away-from-home experience will go— personally or creatively, but from the downbeat Soprano has been nothing but joy.
Ken Ludwig was collaborative and generous.

Our director Eleanor Holdridge created THE safest, most loving, most creative and playful playground to ask any question and try any idea.

Our Stage Managers were above and beyond. And our very generous first laughs!

The actors. Oh the actors. This was was one of those remarkable sets of conditions where every single actor was drama and ego free— no one fought for “their” laughs or “their” moments. Everyone fought hard for “OUR” laughs and the PLAY’s moments. I can’t recall an experience like it. Where everyone was so devoted to making the play everything it could be, concerned only with how they might best serve it.

Creating a role is a rare experience, and it was my honor to chisel Elena Firenze for Ken Ludwig, for our company, our audiences; for MY soul, for every actor to play Elena in the future long after I am gone, and above all for Elena herself.

Actors— ask not what characters can serve for you, but what we may do to serve our characters. Elena could not sing without me, and it was my honor to provide her very first voice.

Addio e addio, Elena.
Never to be forgotten.
Until we meet again.

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