Yesterday morning I was lucky enough to have been at a presentation by a Prescott College Student regarding Theatre and Dissent. It was shades of the old days at the Tucson Center when Esther would have two or three would be "subversives" in her office and I was being subpoenaed by the FBI to testify.
This particular student that did the presentation is a hardworking all around good person who takes on his education with full stride. He hasn't just joined a cause and gone to work. He has spent a multitude of time researching, comparing, gaging and trying to understand the complexities of this world, including the injustices and the atrocities.
Led by a powerful mentor, Mr. Howard Allen, for this course, this student took on the study of some difficult plays - Antigone, A View From the Bridge, The Mad Woman of Challiot, Julius Ceasar among them - all plays with "dissent" from moral or political or personal standards, but not your overt and obvious ones really, Antigone aside. In other words there was no "Waiting For Lefty" (although he may go one to explore Odets Paradise Lost as part of his follow-up).
Patrick, who was also present to hear, and I drank some espresso (mediocre we decided, although we do not claim the abilities to distinguish the finer aspects of espresso. Our measurement was that he said it was like the espresso he drank in Orvieto at a cafe where he was advised "not to be seen" if he wanted to to be considered a person of refined tastes) and settled in to listen. I might have made a mistake giving Howard Allen espresso. Has anyone ever known Howard not to be at full alert at any given time? No telling what he accomplished later that morning. In any case, the presentation prompted a good amount of discussion in the little available time we had so we agreed on an informal meeting over beer at a later date to finish it off.
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