Wednesday, March 26, 2008

CERES. The Next Factory Theater Show (Good Press Already Coming In...)






Here's what the critics are saying about Ceres!

"...here's the rare anticorporate play that offers more than just the vantage point of the disgruntled, unappreciated workers on the bottom rung." **** (FOUR STARS) Time Out Chicago

"...high-octane energy..allows theatergoers to feel like privileged voyeurs in the lions' den of high-volatility investment brokers... leaves us with the message to question the beast even if it's lavishly feeding the cow." Centerstage Chicago

"...a solid cast...I was very impressed with several of the actors and the characters they brought to life." Steadstyle Chicago

Directed by: Angelina Martinez
Written by: Heather Tyler
Featuring: Rob Biesenbach, Gretchen Carter, Ruta James, Jen LaForte, Christopher Marcum, Alex Moore, Chelsea Paice, Missy Styles, & Chas Vrba
Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 7pm through Saturday April 26th
Tickets: $20.00
Factory Theater at the Prop Thtr 3502 N. Elston Ave.
Ordering Tickets: call 866.811.4111 or order online by clicking here.

Set against the backdrop of Chicago's Financial District and one broker's surreal subconscious, Ceres takes us into the lions' den of hot-shot investment insurance brokers, sneaking a glimpse into the dubious actions of clandestine Unit 57 and its Board of Directors. Inspired by the demise of one of our nation's oldest industries and those caught in the middle of a scandal that continues today, Ceres exposes moments of truth and volatility, camaraderie and outright betrayal, where the world of corporate governance permeates individual beliefs of what is ethical - and desirable - in business and in life.

I'm so proud of our little company. This is a show with a lot of fine work in writing, directing, production design, and acting. I love the distortions the play exposes in the business world and the story of one woman's struggles with identity while trying in that same cutthroat world. Don't take my word for it. Get your tickets & go see for yourself.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Baseball's "Opening" Day

The BoSox defeat the A's in ten innings. In Japan. That's cool & all, but I feel bad for anyone who had to start watching baseball early in the morning. It's also going to be a lot of jet lag for the teams involved. Yes, bringing the international flavor to baseball is all well and good, but I'm going to feel more excited when the season starts here in a few days. It can't be here soon enough, especially since we got four inches of snow in Chicago on the first day of Spring.

Mad Cap Socialist Self Analysis! ("Mi Casa") Continues. Part Five: This Is More Than Just a Test

Continuing a piece about my home town, it's odd military history, and my position within.

PREVIOUSLY ON "Mi Casa":
PART ONE: History. A timeline of important dates in this project.
PART TWO: Introductions. In which the players of this one-act socialist analysis first pop up.
PART THREE: Flash Back-Flash Forward. Work on the top-secret project begins.
PART FOUR: Start Your Engines. The people start building the bomb (in more than one place).

GREETER
Back in America, work proceeded on the atomic bomb. Los Alamos was a fortress city and the work was protected with the highest levels of secrecy. Uranium was processed and supplied from a Manhattan Engineer District laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. There was only enough uranium to build three bombs. The first was finally tested at Trinity, near Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945 at 5:29.45 AM. The deadly force of atomic energy was finally on display, in more ways than one. The explosion turned the desert sand into green glass, blasted dust and smoke thousands of feet into the air. People as far as fifty miles from the detonation sight suddenly were bathed in light brighter than sunlight. Some called it, “the day the sun rose twice.”

(Some of the Witnesses to the Bomb appear. JOHN R. LUGO, DOLLY ONSRUD, ROWENA BACA, EVELYN FITE TUNE, WILLIAM WRYE and HELEN WRYE all enter and stand in a line on stage. As each individual speaks, their placard is held up by an actor on the side of the stage. When the individual exits, their placard is dropped.)

JOHN R. LUGO (Placard reads, “U.S. Navy Aviator flying transport plane at 10,000 feet going to West Coast at time of detonation.”)
I saw this tremendous explosion to the south of me, roughly 55 miles from my position. My first impression was, like, the sun coming up in the south. What a ball of fire! It was so bright it lit up the cockpit of the plane. I radioed Albuquerque and got no explanation but was told to not fly south. (Exit.)

DOLLY ONSRUD (Placard reads, “Rancher living roughly 20 miles from Trinity, ground zero of test-site.”)
I woke up, looked out my window and saw a mushroom cloud rising from the other side of the mountains, right where my cattle used to graze before the U.S. Army took over my land three years earlier. They just blew it up. I never got any land returned to me, and I never got compensated for giving up my ranch out of patriotic duty. (Exit.)

ROWENA BACA (Placard reads, “Grandfather José Miera owned the Owl Bar, 35 miles from Trinity site)
The Owl Bar was a popular hangout for the area’s scientists and soldiers. The night of the test, friendly MPs went to my grandfather’s house, woke him up, and told him to stand in the street out front because he was going to see something he had never seen before. The sky suddenly turned red. It illuminated the inside of the house I was in, reflecting red off the walls and ceiling. My grandmother shoved me and my cousin under a bed because she thought it was the end of the world. (Exit.)

EVELYN FITE TUNE (Placard reads, “Lives on ranch 24 miles from Trinity.”)
My husband and I were away in Nevada when the blast went off. No one knew what was going on out there, and of course none of us ever heard of Los Alamos or the atomic bomb. Finally, on the way back we went to a movie house in Denver and watched the newsreel. When they showed the hills around the blast area, my husband said, “Hell, that’s our ranch!” My friends and I visited the test site soon after. We found the hole, we picked up the glass, we climbed the twisted and melted parts of the tower. All those people grew up and married and had kids. Nobody that I know of ever turned up sterile. (Exit.)

WILLIAM WRYE (Placard reads, “Lives in house 20 miles northeast of Trinity.”)
My wife and I were returning from Amarillo the night before the explosion. We got to Bingham and there were eight or ten vehicles and all kinds of lights shining up on the clouds. We were stopped by an MP and a flashing red light. After we told them who we were, they let us go on to the ranch. We were so tired we must have slept right through the blast. Next morning, we were eating breakfast when we saw a couple of soldiers with a little black box out by the stock tank. I went out there and asked what they were doing, and they said they were looking for radioactivity. Well, we had no idea what radioactivity was back then. I told them we didn’t even have the radio on. For four or five days after that, a white substance like flour settled on everything. It got on the posts of the corral and you couldn’t see it real well in the daylight, but at night it would glow. Before long, my whiskers stopped growing. Three or four months later, they came back, but they were white, then later, black. The cattle in the area grew white hair along the side that had been exposed to the blast and half the coat on my black cat turned white. (Exit.)

HELEN WRYE (Placard reads, “Lives in house 20 miles northeast of Trinity.”)
People weren’t afraid of the government then. It was a time of innocence. People were trusting. We had never heard of an atomic bomb. (Exit.)

GREETER
People directly involved with the project also have thoughts to share.

(BERLYN BRIXNER and RAEMER SCHREIBER enter.)

BERLYN BRIXNER (Placard reads, “Chief Photographer of Trinity test.”)
I was to shoot 16-millimeter black-and-white movies from every angle and distance and at every speed. There were bunkers at 10,000 meters or 6.2 miles north, east, south and west from the site. I was stationed at the bunker north of
the test site. I was one of the few people given permission to look directly at the bomb at the time. I had calculated for a ten-sun brightness like the theoretical people told me. When the bomb went off, the whole filter seemed to light up as bright as the sun. I was temporarily blinded. I looked to the side. The Oscura Mountains were as bright as day. I saw this tremendous ball of fire, and it was rising. I was just spellbound! I followed it as it rose. Then it dawned on me. I’m the photographer! I’ve gotta get that ball of fire. There was no sound. It all took place in absolute silence. (Exit.)

GREETER
The bomb proved amazingly effective at destruction. The effects of radiation would soon become known not only to people like William Wrye, but to a much fuller extent for the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If we flash forward in time for a brief moment, we can hear another inside perspective. This on the effects of radiation for a later bomb test.

RAEMER SCHREIBER (Placard reads, “Head of Core Assembly team for Operation Crossroads in May 1946.”)
Operation Crossroads was a postwar Navy show that destroyed a fleet of surplus warships by two atomic bombs at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. In May, the cores of the bombs for Operation Crossroads were being checked out in a Los Alamos testing lab. Ted Perlman and I were taking readings from the initiators at one side of the room, and Louis Slotin, who assembled the core of the Trinity bomb, was seated at a table twenty feet away with a plutonium assembly. All of a sudden, there was this flash and a clatter and Louis says, “Well, that does it.” He probably knew that he was a dead man. The core sat among a nested set of spheres of beryllium, a neutron reflector. What he did was to lower one of the hemispheres of beryllium over the core sitting in the bottom half and hold it open with a screwdriver. The idea was to lower it down to where there was just a small gap and, if it gets critical, then you could just stop it at that point. You could waggle the screwdriver and make it multiply or quit. But the screwdriver slipped. The thing dropped completely closed, and that made it super critical, prompt critical. It was stopped by the expansion of the core and beryllium, but it was enough to put out a lethal shot of radioactivity. Slotin opened the assembly with his bare hands. It stopped it from sitting there and cooking, which would have been a pretty sad mess. So it got Louis, and it didn’t do Al Graves any good. He was a little farther away. All that happened to him was that he lost his hair. We all got the hell out of there. We went back up around the corner in back of the shielding wall and Slotin and Graves proceeded to write down the events, to make a record of it. Slotin began to get nauseated and a little crazy. We were all taken to the hospital. We were all OK except Slotin, who died in agony nine days later. (Exit.)

END OF PART FIVE. TO BE CONTINUED...

Go to PART SIX: Remember, New Perspective

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Returning to My Roots While Writing About My History

Forgive the long, extended posts of the Mad Cap Socialist Self Analysis. Once everything's up, I'll create better organization on the sidebar.

I'm returning to New Mexico this weekend for a visit. It's been over two years since I've been to my home state. I don't know if Los Alamos will be on the agenda since my family now lives in Santa Fe and the driving distance between towns in New Mexico is at least 45 minutes. New Mexico is a BIG state, where it's 45 minutes between every town, and it'll take a full eight hours to go from one end of the state to the other. Yet, New Mexico has as many people in the entire state as the population of Chicago. This is a hard reality for people from the east and midwest US to grasp.

It's also a strange difference to go from a place like Chicago where there is an large fresh water source right by the city to New Mexico, where there is no water. My family has to buy their water if their well doesn't get enough run-off from snowfall or the sparse rainfall. No leaving the sinks or showers running to wait for hot water, keep the toilet flushes down, and be prepared for chapped lips. In Chicago, there's never an issue of too many flushes or water being left on.

Since I'm writing my history and about to physically re-visit it, I wonder how it will look and feel having been away so long. Even if Los Alamos isn't a part of our visit, I can't help but wonder if the barbed wire fences put in to prevent a Nazi invasion in 1944 are still up in the canyons surrounding the city. I'll have to drive past the guard tower at the front of town to find out.

Mad Cap Socialist Self Analysis! ("Mi Casa") Continues. Part Four: Start Your Engines

Continuing a piece about my home town, it's odd military history, and my position within.

PREVIOUSLY ON "Mi Casa":
PART ONE: History. A timeline of important dates in this project.
PART TWO: Introductions. In which the players of this one-act socialist analysis first pop up.
PART THREE: Flash Back-Flash Forward. Work on the top-secret project begins.

------


GREETER
By January, 1943, the population of Los Alamos had risen to 1,500. By January, 1944, the population was 3,500. Work began immediately.

(SERBER enters with a notepad, working on his lecture.)

ROBERT SERBER (Placard reads, “Oppenheimer’s assistant. Delivered lectures to scientific staff members about design of nuclear weapons.)
“The object of the project is to produce a practical military weapon in the form of a bomb in which the energy is released by a fast-neutron chain reaction in one or more of the materials known to show nuclear fission.”

OPPENHEIMER
(Leans in from off-stage.) Psst! Don’t say “bomb.” The workmen might overhear the lectures. Say, “gadget.”

SERBER
“We are working on a ‘gadget.’” (Exits.)

GREETER
By October, 1943, the Special Engineer Detachment, or SED, which was part of the Manhattan Engineer District, began to staff the Laboratory. The SED was made up of scientists who had been drafted into the army. The SEDs were comprised of electrical, mechanical, and chemical engineers. Twenty nine percent held college degrees. By the end of 1943, 475 SEDs were working and by 1945, there were 1,823 SEDs working at the Laboratory. These were military scientists who had to wear uniforms. During the course of the Manhattan Project, forty-two percent of the Lab wore uniforms. Nevertheless, the SED were permitted to be non-commissioned officers, and many never had to attend basic training and were exempted from drills, unlike most of their military counterparts. Their place of privilege was resented by some.

(Dirty and ragged MILITARY PERSONNEL walk across the stage, carrying equipment. An SED in a sparkling uniform walks on from the opposite side of the stage, working out calculations on a notepad. The MILITARY PERSONNEL watch him cross the stage.)

MILITARY PERSONNEL
I got to get a transfer into that unit. (Exit.)

GREETER
But the civilian scientists enjoyed privileges that their SED peers did not.

(SED comes back on with his WIFE.)

SED WIFE
What you mean I can’t get a job? I can’t even stay in Los Alamos with you?

SED
Major De Silva won’t allow the wives of SEDs to get jobs in Los Alamos and he won’t let us bring in family.

(SCIENTISTS #1, #2, and #3 enter in their white lab coats, their arms around their WIVES, chatting about housing and life in Los Alamos. They cross the stage and exit.)

SED WIFE
What about them? They get to have their families with them.

SED
Those are civilian scientists. They’re higher up. Most of them worked at universities before they came here and got extra perks to come work here.

(MILTARY PERSONNEL come back on, carrying heavier equipment and looking more ragged than before.)

MILITARY PERSONNEL
Hey, could you give us a hand with this? Oh, that’s right. Wouldn’t want your uniform to get dirty.

(MILITARY PERSONNEL exit grumbling. SED and SED WIFE exit bickering. GEORGE KISTIAKOWSKY enters with GEN. GROVES and OPPENHEIMER.)

GEORGE KISTIAKOWSKY (Placard reads, “Headed SED Division in charge of explosives at S-Site, an explosives test site.”)
They’re unhappy. Morale is low. We’re working hard and doing a lot of the same work as the scientists, but we don’t get any of the perks as the civilian scientists.

GEN. GROVES
That’s because they’re your superiors. You’re the junior scientists and technicians. Everyone follows chain of command. The higher up you are, the greater the benefits you receive.

KISTIAKOWSKY
The SEDs are my staff. They work for me and report to me. I understand the chain of command.

OPPENHEIMER
The SEDs are highly respected among the scientists. They should be rewarded. Remember, we don’t want morale to drop.

GEN. GROVES
You civilians don’t get to tell me what to do about Army matters!

KISTIAKOWSKY
Very well, I’ll resign.

OPPENHEIMER
Oh, dear.

(MAJ. T.O. PALMER enters. OPPENHEIMER, GEN. GROVES, and KISTIAKOWSKY all turn to him.)

MAJ. T.O. PALMER (Placard reads, “Replaced Major de Silva as commander of SED in August, 1944.)
Ahem. I think I can help with this.

(GEN. GROVES, OPPENHEIMER, KISTIAKOWSKY, and MAJ. PALMER exit.)

GREETER
Major Palmer developed a system that made promotion recommendations for groups and divisions of the SED. This helped morale, but conflicting military and laboratory duties remained a problem. (As GREETER speaks, bedraggled MILITARY PERSONNEL continue to do their grunt work.) Meanwhile, over in Russia…

(JOSEF STALIN and LAVRENTI BERIA enter.)

STALIN (Placard reads, “Dictator of Russia.”)
Another purge well done, comrade. Now, I have a project for you.

BERIA (Placard reads, “Head of NKVD, which killed millions of Russians during the Great Purges.”)
Yes, comrade.

STALIN
My spies have intercepted this document, the British MAUD Committee Report. It shows plans to build a bomb of incredible power. This may just be an imperialist trick, but the Germans are besieging Stalingrad. We need all the firepower we can get. Molotov and I have decided to put you in charge of building a new weapon that can be developed from these plans. Citizen Kurchatov is Molotov’s choice for the head scientist. (IGOR KURCHATOV enters.) Make sure this research provides useful information.

BERIA
Yes, comrade.

(STALIN exits)

BERIA (to KURCHATOV)
Make yourself useful or you will be shot.

IGOR KURCHATOV (Placard reads, “Developed Russian atomic bomb.”)
Yes, comrade.

(BERIA and KURCHATOV exit.)

END OF PART FOUR. TO BE CONTINUED...

Go to PART FIVE: This Is More Than Just a Test
Go to PART SIX: Remember, New Perspective