“The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity: Everyone's A Little Bit Racist - Broadway World” plus 2 more |
- The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity: Everyone's A Little Bit Racist - Broadway World
- End the reefer madness - Anniston Star
- Urban ag facts, fable topic of Detroit discussion - MLive.com
| The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity: Everyone's A Little Bit Racist - Broadway World Posted: 20 Jun 2010 02:31 PM PDT | The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity: Everyone's A Little Bit Racist
"You can't kick a guy's ass without the help of the person whose ass you're kicking." Thus says a credo of professional wrestling that has meaning both inside and outside the ring in Kristoffer Diaz's immensely enjoyable comedic social commentary, The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity.
The one being lifted into public adoration is the handsome, gorgeously muscular and sexily charismatic Chad Deity - whose persona plays off the image of a black man breaking through racial boundaries and living the American dream of quick wealth and fame through pro sports - played to the hilariously narcissistic hilt by Terence Archie. (Though Deity is the title character, it's a supporting role. Just another example of how Mace, who is on stage for most of the evening, does the heavy lifting for the sake of another guy's glory.) Wrestling fans will recognize Michael T. Weiss' portrayal of the ruthlessly commercial and devilishly plastic-looking CEO of THE Wrestling, Everett K. Olson, as a spot-on spoof of WWE head honcho, Vince McMahon. When Mace gets word of a Brooklyn kid of East Indian heritage nicknamed V.P. (Usman Ally), who ain't much of an athlete but is drawing crowds at pick-up basketball games with his star quality antics, he sees a chance to break out of his supporting role by having the two of them team up as grapplers who celebrate their outer-borough personalities. But Olson insists on using the standard proven formula by fashioning V.P. as a Muslim terrorist ("The Fundamentalist") and having Mace do the heavy lifting as his Cuban cigar smoking, illegal immigrant supporting Mexican manager, Che Chavez Castro. To make the fans hate them even more, their back-story also includes some oblique alliance with France. Wrestling fans, whose knowledge that they're watching fiction allows them to lustily play their roles as patriotic Americans, go nuts over despising the duo, leaving Mace and V.P. to consider how their rising fame comes from promoting racial stereotypes, even on this obviously phony level. And while they're thinking about that, the theatre audience is left to ponder how the silly cartoon antics of pro wrestling might mirror fictions that are more subtly feed to the public from the nation's more important arenas.
Fans knowledgeable in the history of pro wrestling will appreciate Diaz's attention to detail in Mace's continual referencing of the famous characters of his profession. And his step-by-step explanation of how a loser controls the action to keep from getting hurt clues us in on what to look for during the play's depiction of actual matches. Any wrestling fan will tell you that some of the funniest and most memorable moments come when the performers are doing interviews or giving speeches to promote their upcoming matches. Diaz gives his title character a doozey, having him grab a microphone after a win and sternly remind the crowd of what an accomplished man he is by lecturing them on the number of crispers he has in his refrigerator. The totally out-there monologue is beautifully delivered by Archie with the utmost deadpan seriousness. As the title suggests, you can tell how popular a wrestler is by how much flash and dazzle is used for his entrance, and though director Edward Torres' raucous production is not on a large scale, set designer Brian Sidney Bembridge's mini area, Christine Pascual's garish costumes and the perfectly over-the-top fun of Jesse Klug's lights, Mikhail Fiksel's sound design and Peter Nigrini's projections mimic the nutty atmosphere of pro wrestling. Special praise goes to fight director David Woolley, who effectively handles the tricky business of presenting both fake violence that's supposed to look real and instances of actual violence. On the surface, The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity may not seem like the kind of play you'd expect to be a Pulitzer Prize finalist, as it was this year. But under the spandex and sparkle, particularly in the more sincere final moments, the author smacks you with a sobering little message. And as Mace will tell you, in wrestling, the most dangerous move is the one you don't expect. Photos by Joan Marcus: Top: Desmin Borges; Bottom: Christian Litke and Terence Archie. Click here to follow Michael Dale on Twitter.
Posted on May 26, 2010 - by
About the Author:After 20-odd years singing, dancing and acting in dinner theatres, summer stocks and the ever-popular audience participation murder mysteries (try improvising with audiences after they?ve had two hours of open bar), Michael Dale segued his theatrical ambitions into playwriting. The buildings which once housed the 5 Off-Off Broadway plays he penned have all been destroyed or turned into a Starbucks, but his name remains the answer to the trivia question, "Who wrote the official play of Babe Ruth's 100th Birthday?" He served as Artistic Director for The Play's The Thing Theatre Company, helping to bring free live theatre to underserved communities, and dabbled a bit in stage managing and in directing cabaret shows before answering the call (it was an email, actually) to become BroadwayWorld.com's first Chief Theatre Critic. While not attending shows Michael can be seen at Shea Stadium pleading for the Mets to stop imploding. Likes: Strong book musicals and ambitious new works. Dislikes: Unprepared celebrities making their stage acting debuts by starring on Broadway and weak bullpens.
Five Filters featured article: Headshot - Propaganda, State Religion and the Attack On the Gaza Peace Flotilla. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| End the reefer madness - Anniston Star Posted: 11 Jun 2010 04:58 PM PDT Re "Evils of marijuana?" (Speak Out, May 23): Marijuana wasn't outlawed because of any evidence of harm. The pot laws were the result of outrageous and (now) racist lies that have been used as U.S. government propaganda to outlaw marijuana. Odious fictions have been used to throw millions of people into prison and to waste more than a trillion dollars in tax money. It's time to end reefer madness so society can experience the benefits of cannabis sativa. After we get past the lies, marijuana can be used for a myriad of medical uses and is far less harmful as a recreational drug than alcohol. Ralph Givens Daly City, Calif. Five Filters featured article: Headshot - Propaganda, State Religion and the Attack On the Gaza Peace Flotilla. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. | |
| Urban ag facts, fable topic of Detroit discussion - MLive.com Posted: 17 Jun 2010 02:10 AM PDT • Farmer, 52, killed in Bay County tractor rollover 6/20/2010, 5:58 p.m. EDT • Repair crews work after storms black out 239,000 6/20/2010, 3:17 p.m. EDT • Girl, 12, found dead in Oak Park apartment pool 6/20/2010, 2:45 p.m. EDT Five Filters featured article: Headshot - Propaganda, State Religion and the Attack On the Gaza Peace Flotilla. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
Our narrator for the evening, Macedonio "The Mace" Guerra, makes his living by that credo. Played with rapid-fire, pop culture-packed, infectiously likeable hip-hop rhythm by Desmin Borges, Bronx-born Puerto Rican Mace is a career professional wrestler who lacks the looks and physique to make it big, but who is well-respected in his profession for an ability to make athletically-limited superstars look good while allowing them to appear to be kicking his ass. ("Don't dismiss my art form for being predetermined unless you go to the ballet ready to dismiss the swan for already knowing he's going to be dead.") In the lingo of the play, he's there to do the heavy lifting.
Rounding out the terrific cast is Christian Litke, who appears as a pair of stooges assigned to lose to The Fundamentalist. As rebel Billy Heartland from Hope, Arkansas, he makes his rowdy entrance to a recording of "Sweet Home, Alabama." As a masked wrestler named Old Glory (masks are frequently used so wrestlers can play multiple characters), he hands an audience member a star-spangled banner to proudly wave. As still another wrestler, he takes a woman from the audience horizontally in his arms and does curls with her body.| You are subscribed to email updates from fictions - Bing News To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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