60th anniversary forum approaches, I feel more and more detached from it. Why? Probably because of last night's program at Jack. But more of that in a little later.
WSS opened in 57, the year of my sophmore (first) year at Bronx Science. I don't have many good memories of that year---at the time, Science was overcrowded and the main building (then on 183rd Street and Creston Avenue) could only hold half the Sophmore class. The other 10 classes were sent to an Annex on 183rd Street and Marion Avenue, about 7 blocks east of the real Science. As such, my class traveled like a Junior High School class, in other words, about 30 students traveled from class to class as a group and shared the same teachers and program. Jeff Greenfield, later "famous" as a commentator was in that class, and so was my friend from DC whom I occasionally visit, Bob R. There were about 20 boys and 10 girls, so interaction with the opposite sex (which I desperately needed at that time) and its possibilities were ended early in the year. It was a very sterile social situation--like being locked in to social desert. In the midst of this banality was one really good history teacher, Mr, Karpf, who taught history with great energy and originality. I still remember his "Karpf-toons", and letting us do the minutes of the previous class as short plays. Still it was a kind of oasis--things got much livelier when I moved into the main (no "old" building) the next year. Moving from class to class alone was frenetic, but much more dynamic. At any rate it was in the third month of that school year (November 57) that I went to my first performance of West Side Story. And, well, it blew me away! On stage with the dancers, that is where I wanted to be. What passion, what energy! I had never seen anything like it before, I can see so clearly now the bodies of Hank Brunjes (Riff) and Ken LeRoy (Bernardo) lying on the ground in the dark at the end of Act I, and being so astounded by it.
And so I come to it today, but my mind is elsewhere. Last night I attended the forum about bringing artists on to their community boards at Jack, as I said I would. What was it like? Well I was disappointed in the attitude of all---everything was information oriented, and community Boards and what they are and how to get on them and participate was made clear, but what wasn't was the world that the community boards exist in. Neither the hosts or the panelists seemed to be interested in the current state of the Brooklyn of today--gentrification, displacement, issues that have enraged certain communities, and the Mayor's role in all of this were totally avoided. I was able to ask some questions that I thought might make things a little clearer, but overall nothing remotely serious seemed to be touched on; the world the hosts and panelists talked about seemed strangely removed from Brooklyn's "bloody" present. If I was visiting from somewhere else in the country the image of Brooklyn that I would have gotten was of a "happy" place where black and white live happily next door to each other (and in some cases they do), where the police have no agenda, where apartments not too expensive were readily available to all, and smiles were on everyone's faces. Two more of these forums will be later in the month; I will try to attend the next one which is at the Bushwick Starr but I feel angry that no one is discussing the Mayor's role in all of this---he is about to be re-elected with no real opposition, and probably with the lowest amount of voter participation in the city's history. And the attempt to really educate the artists who attend these forums seems superficial---there is so much coherent information to be distributed.
So where do we go from here? Don't know, I actually asked the co-artistic director of Jack, if she would give me an evening to discuss the Mayor's achievements and problems in front of an audience, but she seemed to feel that this should come from my other group, BAN. Maybe So here I am with all this information and a set of feelings that are different from my fellow "artists" but no real forum to present these ideas. Should there be?
The next three work days will be at Friends (at last!) where my energies will be pushed elsewhere---that is probably good. No shortage of events to attend in the evenings of the next two weeks, we will see how it all plays out>
No comments:
Post a Comment