Reviewing the play (A Conceptual Narrative)
by R John & P Henry
Recently there was a short run of a play about discrimination. The dramatised story Fire the Next Time was allowed to have a week’s run at a theatre in Libertanio[1]. The play argued issues of scapegoating, racism and inequalities.
Its short run was due to the self-acclaimed right-wing libertarians[2] running the island, who decided it was more humanitarian than capitalist. The actors and theatrical group were quickly escorted outside its boundary lines.
Fire the Next Time follows many previous political themes. The title recalls Baldwin’s essay[3] describing extents of USA racism and refers to Selma James’ work[4] identifying women’s exploitation and unpaid labours. Thirdly it refers to our destructive world[5].
The authors of this play M Garvey and E Malatesta, who have long histories of involvement in rights movements, satirise the comprehensive racism against people of colour. They suggest that if a person committing a racist act was financially penalised for their attack, such discrimination might cease.
The play uses characters from different ethnic, belief, gender and class groups. They involve themselves in how to weight or scale the offence. Different charges range from disparaging looks, direct comments and actions ranging from individual attacks to genocide. ‘Doing wrong’ and ‘paying for it’ by item. Issues of who should pay and whom should be paid were prominent. Should the recipient be an injured individual or a group’s trust fund?
Their debates on these subjects highlight whether money alone could solve the age-old issues of power, rulership, slavery, and judgments controlled by private wealth and insecurity, which act as foundations for such misdeeds.
Act Two addresses the old conundrum of whether society creates individuals’ actions or individuals create social values. It attempts to focus responsibility on a unified person or the manipulative society.
It is an interesting didactic dramatisation. It offers a quality experience to peoples of all persuasions. Yet it is far too ambitious in its attempt to offer sensibility in an often-chaotic destructive world. This society, a fractured-culture civilisation passed its zenith, as one character describes it as a “downward spiral creating dismay, anomie and ennui”.
Act Three ties together issues of personal attachment, such as in the love between Ashmal and Rosey, of Peter to this world and Walter to only money. It highlights the superficiality of possession and property in the world of a Hello![6] Culture. There the natural is rejected and the image replaces a future.
It may be this last act which is too threatening to Libertanio residents. They idolise beliefs that their money, property and power over others, gets them their freedom. Their conceptualisation ignores the whole intertwined world, its people and that entire environment from which they extract their ill-gotten gains.
They ignore that freedom is part of a process, only to be really achieved when all living creatures are part of it. Not by a greedy few wealthy buying space.
It will be good to see this avant-garde production, straining to combine threads of Brecht, Artaud, Grotowski and Boal, performed in its fullness. The small loft-production in Toronto that we saw, after the production was evicted from that tyrannical micro-country, offered a sweet temptation.
[1] Over 60 micronations exist https://youtu.be/_yQIDT5Rj40?si=BbTWJnDsy71J7aS4. They have been created from historical evidence, by idealistic groups, many self-acclaimed individuals, or profit-making conclaves as Libertanio (a misnomer to protect from legal suits) is supported by tec billionaires’ intent on making a profit and a haven for their rich colleagues. It is a right-wing libertarian created country, which practically resembles tyrannical dictatorships, power based in wealth purchased credits, controlling others.
[2] There are substantial differences between Libertarians. Generally, Left wing libertarians promote cooperation, respect of others and are anti-authoritarians who sustain their control through having private property and manipulating the state. Right wing libertarians support their right to dominate others while they accumulate wealth and property. The former tends to be most popular in Europe while the latter in the USA. A basic explanation: Left-Libertarianism vs. Right-Libertarianism – What’s the Difference? | This vs. That
[3] The plays title has three references: James Baldwin. (1963) Fire the Next Time. The-Fire-Next-Time.pdf purposefully shows how extensive black racism was and how the white audience was unaware. Also a biblical reference to the destruction next time which is highly evident now in the current catastrophises caused by climate change and our lack of will to comprehensively deal with it.
[4] Selma James (wife of Marxist revolutionary C L R James) and Mariarosa Dalla Costa with others started a Wages for Housework movement to outline the discrimination, mark the value and enumerate the unpaid labour done by women. Webpage: home – Global Women’s Strike/ Wages for Housework/ Selma James and article: https://syllabus.pirate.care/library/Mariarosa%20Dalla%20Costa/The%20Power%20of%20Women%20and%20the%20Subversion%20of%20the%20Community%20(314)/The%20Power%20of%20Women%20and%20the%20Subversion%20of%20t%20-%20Mariarosa%20Dalla%20Costa.pdf
[5] Similarly, its refers to human indifference to this planet, others, and the protentional sacred. The prophecy of destruction by fire runs through many cultures: What Does the Bible Say About God Will Destroy Earth By Fire? Fire of destruction: Significance and symbolism أحباب محمد: The Great Fire of the End Times in Islamic Eschatology Fire Beliefs Across Cultures | TOTA
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