Follow Us
Drama Around the Globe
  • Home
  • About
  • Maerten van Heemskerck
  • Contact
  • Articles
  • Books
    • Academic >
      • Barrymore Handbook
      • Distortions
      • Germans in English Short Stories
      • How to develop professionalism among student writers
      • Literary Exile in the Twentieth Century >
        • Stefan Heym
        • Hans Henny Jahnn
        • Hermann Kesten
        • Else Lasker-Schüler
        • Heinrich Mann
        • Stefan Zweig
      • Writer Perception, Writer Projection
      • Wuppertal- Bethel Exchange Program
    • Creative >
      • Iran, Iran: Secret Poetry--an introduction
      • Iran, Iran: Secret Poetry samples
      • Who's Afraid of Noam Chomsky?
      • WriteWriteRewrite
      • Workbook Poetry
      • Kreative Schocks, Creative Shocks
    • Educational >
      • Aristotle's Word Processor
  • Drama
    • Plays >
      • A Doll's Confession
      • Alan Lost in Boston
      • "Beat me, Beat me!"
      • Canterbury Tales
      • Encounters
      • Happy Shalom
      • Mah Own Constitution
      • Mendelssohn Does Not Live Here Anymore
      • Metronome Ticking
      • Private Moments
      • Rent-controlled Apartment in the Village
      • The Americans are Coming
      • The Astrologer
      • The Funeral: A comedy
      • The Girl on the Other Side of the Fence
      • The Rehearsal
      • Van Gogh's Jewish Daughter
      • Victorian Holiday
      • Vow of Silence
    • Rescued Jewish Theater
    • Videos
  • Essays
    • Education Essays >
      • How to develop professionalism
    • Language Essays >
      • Language
    • Literature Essays >
      • Literature
  • Film
    • Private Moments
    • The Americans are Coming
    • Victorian Holiday
  • German
    • Artikel
    • Biographie
    • Bücher
    • Gedichte
    • Geschichten
    • Schauspiele
  • Interviews
  • Poetry
    • Poem Blog
    • America
    • Friends
    • Humor
    • Passion
    • Tributes
    • War Zones
  • Reviews
  • Satires
    • Satire Blog
  • Stories
    • Stories Blog
    • Stories: Europe
    • Black Shoe Polish
    • Santa Claus on an Overcrowded Train
    • Stories: America
    • A stained-glass window that no longer allows light to come through
    • Free Italian chandelier
    • Old Tibetan carpet dealer visiting the U.S.
    • Stories: Asia
  • Translations
    • Translations: Dramas >
      • La Ronde, Henrik Eger translation
    • Translations: Stories >
      • The Message of the Christmas Night
      • Spoerl, Waiting. Warten.
  • Translations: Misc.
  • Workshops
  • Individual Reviews
  • Editor's Desk

Breaking some of America’s most sensitive taboos: “THE SUBMISSION" by Jeff Talbot

5/12/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
(L-R) Andy Shaw, Shamus Hunter McCarty, and Hilary Asare in The Submission. Photo by John Donges
Around the world, each society licks its taboo wounds. On the day before the new academic year started at Kerman University in Iran, in the late summer of 1977, the head of the Foreign Language Department called all American and European faculty members for an introductory meeting. After a pleasant welcome, Mr. Tajali told us, “We trust your professionalism.  Just one warning:  There are three subjects you must never talk about: 
(1) Religion; (2) His Imperial Highness, the Shah; and (3) Women’s Liberation.”  

To make sure we took the situation seriously, he gave an example of a young American faculty member at Pahlavi University, the Oxford of Iran. “Last year, a student asked him about SAVAK,” and here Mr. Tajali lowered his voice—after all, SAVAK was the feared secret police that controlled everything—“and the new professor did not know that every class has at least one informant .” He paused.  “And the young American talked openly about that taboo subject.” We looked shocked, but grateful for the information—an informant in every class room! “The American lucked out,” Mr. Tajali assured us. “He was not sent to jail.” We all sighed with relief. “He was given 24 hours to leave the country.” We were shocked.
Picture
Andy Shaw & Hilary Asare, Quince Philadelphia, Photo by John Donges
I thought of that young colleague who lost his job, his income, and the damage to his career, simply because he had spoken honestly. And I thought of those professors in the US who, over the years, were fired for inadvertently touching on taboo subjects when I saw THE SUBMISSION by Jeff Talbott, with a great cast (Hilary Asare, Doug Cashell, Shamus Hunter McCarty, and Andy Shaw), directed by Rich Rubin, producing artistic director of Quince Productions—a show that spares you nothing.

The controversial drama starts out as an entertaining, almost cartoonish play and had the audience in stitches. And then it hit hard. As a full professor (tenured 'n all) who taught at four universities and one college in the US, and who served on numerous committees—a world ruled by PC (political correctness)—I realized quickly that THE SUBMISSION is one of the few American plays that tackles taboo subjects like racism, homophobia, and selfishness with a brutal volley of insults, with “Fag” and “Nigger” being spit in each other’s face like a slimy hock a loogie. Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Edward Albee come to mind. In a way, Talbott’s verbal fights in THE SUBMISSION could be seen as an offspring of Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, at least when it comes to blatant racism and homophobia.

Michael Kelly, in his Phindie review, puts his finger right on it: The play "delivers a galvanizing punch to the head, activating the brain, and reaching for something well beyond a stereotype. [. . .] THE SUBMISSION unashamedly takes such matters dead in its sights and blows them wide open. It doesn’t necessarily put them back together, but hopefully will serve as a good starting point on the long road to healing the dangerous assumptions we are capable of carrying inside of us—it certainly has for me.”

It was afterwards that I realized that the taboo breaking in THE SUBMISSION, however cardboard-ish it might appear in parts, was the dramatic equivalent to a surgeon opening up a brain, or at least looking at it via an MRI. And what we saw was a slice of our subconscious that we might not know about and certainly would have trouble to acknowledge.
Picture
(L-R) Aina Adler, Victor Shopov, Diego Buscaglia, Matthew Fagerberg in Zeitgeist,
Photo by Richard Hall, Silverline Images
You can’t see the play in its Quince production in Philadelphia any longer, but you can see THE SUBMISSION at the Zeitgeist Stage Company in Boston (May 8 - May 30, 2015). You can also see it in Ft. Lauderdale, FL at the Empire Stage (April 7 - May 8, 2016).

If you can’t make either of those productions, you can still laugh and cringe and cry and look at yourself and the world differently, when reading the script from Samuel French, the oldest and most respected script publishing company in Britain and the US.

*This article was originally published by Theatre World Internet Magazine in London, UK. 
Back to EDITOR'S DESK
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Archives

    December 2020
    November 2020
    September 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    September 2013
    June 2011
    January 2011
    November 2009
    July 2008
    June 2008
    January 2002
    January 1992

    RSS Feed

​Click below for a translation into your own language 
from Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, and  Azerbaijani to Vietnamese, Welsh, Xhosa, Yiddish, Yoruba, and  Zulu—​thanks to the latest version of Google Translate.
Picture
Tower Of Babel
by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1563).
Click here to contact the Editor
Copyright Henrik Eger, 2014-2020.
Update: December 30, 2020.
All images are credited to the best of our knowledge. We believe known sources should  be shown and great work promoted. If there is a problem with the rights to any image, please contact us, and we will check it right away. 
​