Springsteen, circa 1979

"Big corporations influence the government in their fashion. You have labor unions that influence the government in their fashion. You have farmers; they influence the government in their fashion. Well, artists write and sing and think. This is the way that we do it."

There's a nice quote on the interaction between arts and politics from a minorly successful working-class musician by the name of Bruce Springsteen; he's telling the New Jersey Star-Ledger about his decision to mobilize a concert series to tour swing states in the fall. ArtsLine recently gave you the lowdown on a variety of anti-Bush musicianship going on, from the PunkVoter.com initiative to Linda Ronstadt's rowdy praise of Michael Moore.

And Springsteen isn't just singing his feelings anymore—the rock and roll icon has taken to a more respectable forum, the editorial page of the New York Times, to vent his frustration with the Bush administration. In the Aug. 5 edition of that paper, The Boss wrote that, "Personally, for the last 25 years I have always stayed one step away from partisan politics…This year, however, for many of us the stakes have risen too high to sit this election out."

Bruce's Op-Ed was an apologia of sorts for the Vote for Change tour, the goal of which "is to change the direction of the government and change the current administration come November." In a phone interview with his hometown rag, the New Jersey Star-Ledger a couple days earlier, Springsteen said that besides changing the administration, he and his fellow artists are interested in "voter mobilization and some education. It's going to be a lot of fun, and entertaining for people – and inspirational, hopefully." The Star-Ledger's interviewer, Jay Lustig, then asked Bruce if his conservative fans might be turned off by such forthright progressivism. "The artist-audience relationship is more complicated than that," said Springsteen. "I always give the example of, I've gotten more inspiration and soul from, say, the movies of John Wayne, throughout my life ... I found them consistently inspirational. But I was never a fan of John Wayne's politics, you know?"

One Times reader is no fan of Springsteen's politics, and sent in a letter to say as much: "While Mr. Springsteen was considerably more evolved than the Dixie Chicks in the way he expressed his disgust, he still made the same mistake. Exploiting your entertainment fan base to achieve political gain will bring you failure in both arenas."

Hm. If there's one thing that seems reasonable secure in these complex times, it's Bruce Springsteen's fan base.

The Way Not to Do It

In the pages of the Pioneer Press on Aug. 4, Craig Westover made a stirring appeal to his fellow Minnesotans to go check out a play called The Last Minstrel Show—and then detailed all the reasons they probably wouldn't go. The show, Westover writes, is "a self-billed 'musical tragedy' about the 1920 Duluth lynching of three black circus workers for the fabricated rape of a white woman." Audiences have remained unswayed; by press time the show will likely have closed its run at the Great American History Theater in St. Paul.

The white liberals who might otherwise make up the bulk of the audience, Westover notes, will be shocked by the show's "irreverence toward American self-image and the liberal use of the 'F' word, the 'MF' word, the 'S' word, the 'D' word, a couple of 'P' words, plus a song repeatedly using the 'N' word." And, he adds, "Although the director, choreographer, music director and much of the cast is black, drawing a black audience would require overcoming the stigma of theater as 'white' culture." 

From Westover's description – and from a positive review from Rohan Preston in the Star Tribune – Minstrel Show sounds like a powerful show, but one that faced some substantial obstacles in becoming a hit.

Dominic Papatola, the Pioneer Press's regular theatre critic, laid out some other obstacles the play seems to have created for itself before even opening—like "announcing a jaw-droppingly long run of 10 weeks" in a town where the Guthrie, one of the largest and most well-regarded theaters in the Midwest, "runs its main stage shows for about a month." Plus the show had a 17-person cast (11 Equity) and a 12-piece onstage orchestra; Papatola says the show's producer "puts the production costs of Minstrel Show at about $400,000."

Note to potential producers: You can't heal the wounds of history if you're hemorrhaging thousands of dollars a week.

Acting in the Opera and Acting Like A Jerk

Soprano and actress Natalie Dessay

One of the stars of the Santa Fe Opera's summer season earning praise for bringing something to the opera world that's supposed to stay in theatre where it belongs: acting ability. "It's the hardest job," French Soprano Natalie Dessay told Kyle Macmillan of the Denver Post. "You have to be able to sing, of course. But the other half of the job is to be able to act. Even if the libretto is not so interesting, it's our job to make it interesting." Macmillan writes that Dessay's focus on acting chops "reflects a huge transformation underway in recent decades in the opera world—achieving dramatic impact."

Later in the piece, Dessay adds that the piece she's doing in Santa Fe, La Sonnambula, has "the worst libretto in the world." Of course, it's easier to criticize the writer's of operas than playwrights, since so many of them are dead.

Meanwhile, David Segal at the Washington Post should get some sort of award for pithy insight for his piece on the Concert Fool, that heedless shmuck who hangs out at every rock show, "either unglued by music, or drunk, or unaware of the invisible line that separates civilization from anarchy. Or aware of the line but past caring about it." Segal's best line is about the different rules governing behavior at various artistic events: "At a typical rock concert, you get far more leash than you do at, say, the theater or the symphony. The Concert Fool, however, misconstrues limited license for an excuse to vomit on your girlfriend's pants."

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