REBEL VOICES

A Culture Project presentation, in association with Anthony Arnove, of a play in one act by Rob Urbinati, adapted from "Voices of a People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn and Arnove. Directed by Will Pomerantz, Urbinati.
With: Opal Alladin, Morgan Hallett, Lenelle Moise, Allison Moorer, Thom Rivera, Tim Cain, Staceyann Chin.

Rob Urbinati may be preaching to the choir with his unembellished adaptation of the cries of political dissent collected by Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove in "Voices of a People's History of the United States.” But the rebel choristers who faithfully flock to Culture Project will find ideological comfort and camaraderie in the anguished voices of angry Americans who have found themselves politically disenfranchised in what Zinn calls a “topsy-turvy” world where “the wrong people are in power and the wrong people are out of power.”

…Even more than the themes of dissent and rebellion, the call for political change is what unifies the impassioned contributions that make up this program of readings. In the opening words of Zinn (Tim Cain), the issue is not so much civil disobedience as “civil obedience,” the mindless acquiescence of American citizens in the criminal misadventures of their government. “It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners,” Zinn admonishes.

Rousing the faithful are exhortations from the historical likes of Douglass (Cain), petitioning the nation to liberate its slaves in 1852; Susan B. Anthony (Morgan Hallett), demanding rights for women in 1871; and Chief Joseph (Opal Alladin), pleading for the freedom of the Indian nations in 1879.

There is inspiration, as well, in those rare moments when the protestors could savor a political triumph: a sober Daniel Ellsberg (Thom Rivera) articulating the anti-war convictions that led to his exposure of the Pentagon Papers in 1974; an exultant Martin Duberman (Rivera) flush with gay pride during the Stonewall Rebellion of 1969.

The most moving voices, though, are the unknown ones. There is a special poignancy to Depression era voices -- so many of them belonging to women -- who fought for the rights of overworked and underpaid factory workers by organizing unions. “When you worked in the auto factory, no one cared what your name was,” according to one labor organizer. “We were wage slaves.”

Lenelle Moise, who gives vivid life to one of these embattled unionists, also brings her intensity to two portraits of modest militants from later eras: Anne Moody, who participated in a particularly ugly civil rights sit-in at a Mississippi lunch counter in 1960, and Patricia Thompson, who has a chilling story to tell about racial politics during Hurricane Katrina in 2006. Opening another vein, Cain is quietly devastating as Larry Colburn, a Vietnam veteran testifying to the atrocities he witnessed at My Lai in 1968.

Aside from the heart-stopping treatment singer-musician Allison Moorer gives to Sam Cooke’s “Change Gonna Come,” the most electrifying moment in the show comes when guest performer Staceyann Chin delivers Sheehan’s anti-war manifesto. Moving from the dignified grieving of a mother who has lost her son in Iraq to the furious outrage of a woman who has made up her mind to challenge the powers that be, Chin gives clear and passionate voice to the show’s ultimate message: “It’s up to us, as moral people, to break immoral laws.”

Marilyn Stasio, Variety
Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Historian Howard Zinn is well known for championing marginalized perspectives, including those of Native Americans, slaves, and union workers. In Voices of A People's History of the United States, edited with Anthony Arnove, he collected first person essays, court transcripts, and speeches by a wide range of individuals that provide a different way of looking at U.S. history than what is often taught in schools. Playwright Rob Urbinati's stage adaptation, Rebel Voices, now being presented by The Culture Project, brings these voices to vibrant life thanks to a committed cast.

The various historical and contemporary personages are enacted by a permanent cast of six performers -- Opal Alladin, Tim Cain, Morgan Hallett, Lenelle Moise, Allison Moorer, and Thom Rivera -- plus a special featured guest performer. Performance poet Staceyann Chin was the guest at the preview performance I attended, with future guests to include actors such as Steve Earle, Danny Glover, Larry Pine, Wallace Shawn, Ally Sheedy, Lili Taylor, and Harris Yulin. Cain is the clear standout in the permanent cast, delivering powerful speeches by Malcolm X, Frederick Douglass, and even Zinn himself. One of the most moving moments in the production is his enactment of Vietnam War veteran Larry Colburn's emotionally-charged account of the war atrocities that American soldiers committed during that conflict.

Moise also excels in her roles, particularly when she embodies Sojourner Truth. She joins with Hallett and Alladin for an interlocked series of speeches about unions and rent control that nicely demonstrates how a number of the voices included here were involved in the same fight, from different vantage points. Curiously, Rivera doesn't say anything for the first half of the show, but does a fine job with his pieces, such as Martin Duberman's account of the Stonewall Riots and a Spanish-language testament by Orlando Rodriguez (translated onstage by Alladin), whose son was killed in the World Trade Center attacks, but who argues against war and revenge.

Interspersed between the various monologues are songs that Moorer sings to the accompaniment of her acoustic guitar. Her rendition of Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come" is absolutely sublime, and her interpretation of Woodie Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" is also quite strong…

Dan Bacalzo, Theatremania.com
Nov 19, 2007

This 90-minute piece has its heart in the right place. Unfortunately, it still has its head in a book. That may be somewhat understandable, because the play is based on Voices of a People's History of the United States, a compendium edited by Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove, who assisted Rob Urbinati in adapting the book to the stage. Urbinati and Will Pomerantz direct.

The voices — excerpts from orations, letters, poems, and reports — are heavily from the antiwar, women's, and civil rights movements. Though worthy choices, too many are predictable: Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, Allen Ginsberg, Cindy Sheehan, and Malcolm X. Some selections seem shoehorned into the collective stage title: Survivors of Hiroshima and Hurricane Katrina aren't necessarily rebels, however justifiably angry they may be. In addition, these excerpts are not inherently theatrical, and no effort has been made to memorize the speeches. Stools and music stands accentuate the fact that all of the actors in a seemingly fluid cast are on book.

There is a cast of six with a rotating guest artist. The order of readings and who reads them apparently changes with each performance, depending on the guest on a particular evening. This makes it hard to evaluate individual performances. However, one character stands vividly out: Sojourner Truth. Her 1850s outcry against white men keeping women and "Negroes" in their place leaps off both page and stage and bores into a current sensibility.

The creators and directors attempt a bit of interaction, such as Susan B. Anthony's scene with an 1873 judge who fines her $100 for the crime of voting. This works even less well than the solo speakers. Gisele Parson's projections of period photos are too small and dark to be seen from much of the theatre. Only the songs truly engage: They're well spaced out and ably sung and played on guitar by Allison Moorer. Woody Guthrie, Yip Harburg, Patti Smith, Sam Cooke, and Bob Dylan come to the rescue.

Robert Windeler, Backstage
November 20, 2007

Howard Zinn's Rebel Voices: A Call for Civil Disobedience

What does civil disobedience sound like? It sounds like Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglas, Bob Dylan and Woodie Guthrie, parents who've lost their children in war and Gulf Coast residents betrayed by their country. It sounds like a history that many of us have forgotten ... until now.

Rebel Voices, opening this week at The Culture Project in New York, provides a full course in the struggles that have shaped America from its inception to the present day. Through staged dramatic readings, the show unites the full humor and depth of iconic figures we celebrate but don't bother to read, and those individuals on the margins whose voices drove movements for change.

Rebel Voices is the dramatic counterpart to Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove's Voice of a People's History of the United States. The show, written by Rob Urbinati, brings together American voices pulled from speeches, articles, memoirs and interviews to highlight a national tradition in short supply in recent years: civil disobedience.

Performed by a permanent cast of actors with Danny Glover, Eve Ensler, Lili Taylor and Staceyann Chin rotating in to bring additional star-power, the show blends the words of our most celebrated orators with the powerful voices of everyday women and men who fought against impossible odds to change their lives and their country.

The show presents these voices, moving chronologically across the expanse of American history. There are familiar echoes here like Sojourner Truth's famous "Ain't I A Woman" and Frederick Douglas,' "What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?"

But the show reminds us that these great speeches weren't always Black history month clichés. In fact, the words still burn; Douglas' elegant excoriation of white liberalism and Truth's pioneering understanding of the intersection between the abolition of slavery and women's suffrage are presented here to great effect. It is political language at its best, beautiful, alive and inspiring.

Rebel Voices also features an intriguing selection of other texts and characters that you'll be shocked you don't know. Of particular note are the U.S. Strategic Bombing Report's secrets of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Anne Moody's first-hand account of a lunch-counter sit-in, and a trio of labor and housing activists from the 1930s whose radicalism will remind us how many of our grandmothers got to be so tough. While not every voice rings as clearly as it might have in its historical moment, many have aged well and offer both inspiration and insight into our present political predicament.

The production allows the unique opportunity to enjoy some of the greatest speeches ever delivered as if you were in the original audience. Through a simple but active staging the actors succeed in walking you through the decades with a steady pace, alternating between fist pounding rhetoric and the most private confessions. The show also features the rebel voices found in the songs of protest by Woodie Guthrie, Bob Dylan and Roy Ayers, performed by Allison Moorer…

The audience becomes a part of intimate conversation with parents whose son was lost at war or a woman convinced her inability to leave pre-Katrina New Orleans was anything but a mistake. It is the power of language to change our minds and reshape our ideas that we are reminded of in these exchanges -- the simple but civilly disobedient act of telling the unofficial truth as we've lived it, despite the consequences.

Andre Banks, AlterNet
November 20, 2007

Based on Howard Zinn's bestselling Voices of a People's History of the United States, Rebel Voices is less a play than a collection of songs and speeches outlining America's constant struggle to do the right thing. With a roster of guest appearances including the likes of Patti Smith, Eve Ensler, and Danny Glover, Voices weaves together first-person accounts of American activism throughout history, from Frederick Douglass to Cindy Sheehan. Whether exposing the hypocrisy of Independence Day or the fallacy of an "all-volunteer" army in an economically polarized society, these voices of dissent share a uniquely American urge for self-improvement — making today's noticeable lack of civil disobedience all the more troublesome.

Kiwa Iyobe, Flavorpill

Dissents, Strongly Issued

The singer Allison Moorer performing in “Rebel Voices.”

…Lenelle Moïse brings fierce passion to Sojourner Truth’s plea for equality, “Ain’t I a woman?,” which resonates with every racial and sexual inequality today. And the singer Allison Moorer, the liveliest and most illuminating of the performers, adds a bluesy depth to the songs that are interspersed throughout the piece. She even makes “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” sound new.

Caryn James, The New York Times
November 21, 2007

… Inspired by the work of populist historian Howard Zinn, the evening consists of script-in-hand readings from his Voices of a People's History of the United States, a collection of testimonials against America's injustices-from colonization to Katrina....

The selections favor already legendary rebels like Sojourner Truth and Allen Ginsberg, but tales about average Joes and Janes emerge as more moving-like the New Orleans evacuee denied entry into a neighboring town by racist authorities…

…When Tim Cain and Def Poetry Jam-alum Staceyann Chin (alternating with other guest readers) give full force to the frighteningly fiery rhetoric of Malcolm X and Cindy Sheehan, the accumulation of outrages finally pays off. By the end, as the focus came full circle to the present day, I can't deny my own dissident soul was stirred.

Garrett Eisler, Time Out New York

A history of rebellion

MANY RADICALS credit Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States as one, if not the, book that opened their eyes to the rich tradition of progressive grassroots struggle in this country.

In 2004, Zinn and co-editor Anthony Arnove released Voices of a People's History of the United States, a companion edition that collects thousands of primary documents that give life to the story of A People's History through the speeches, articles, songs, posters and writings of the men and women who shaped the movements.

Now the legacy continues with Rebel Voices, written by Rob Urbinati and directed by Urbinati and Will Pomerantz. The new stage play moves chronologically through U.S. history with readings from famous and unknown organizers, and is framed with songs that express the same spirit of rebellion, opening with Patti Smith's "People Have the Power" sung by Allison Moorer.

Zinn himself is the first reading, and sets the tone that this is not an objective look at U.S. history, but a very biased one: "The history of any country conceals fierce conflicts of interest--sometimes exploding, most often repressed--between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners."

What follows is a who's who of resistance, from the well-known favorites like Malcolm X, to modern fighters like Katrina survivor Patricia Thompson, war resister Camilo Mejía and Gold Star Families for Peace founder Cindy Sheehan. Urbanati's choice of texts is satisfying as individual pieces, but also because of their interaction.

The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey Summary Report that describes the effects of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima is a tally of disinterested scientific data, but chaffing up against Yamaoka Michiko's personal account of the carnage, it becomes the stuff of nightmares.

One of the show's highlights is three contemporary working-class women's accounts of how they became activists in the Depression-era wave of struggle. Stella Nowicki, Rose Chernin and Genora Dollinger (performed by Morgan Hallett, Opal Alladin and Lenelle Moise) tell their tales of glory, overlapping and weaving in and out of each other's monologues.

The effect elevates their inspirational stories and gives a picture of a generation of women fighters emboldened by their own daring and quick thinking. And of course the favorites are all there: Frederick Douglass's fiery "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" speech and Susan B. Anthony's acid arguments against her sentence for the "crime" of voting.

The tone of the readings is not always fever pitch: the statement of Orlando and Phyllis Rodriguez, whose son died on September 11, is quietly defiant, and Cindy Sheehan piece reminds the audience that people find the strength for dissent even in moments of greatest pain.

Minimally staged, the entire cast, which takes on multiple voices through the show, remains visible during the production. The stage is muted, with small risers that allow the cast members to move and interact, and black and white projections depict the authors or images from the historical moment. But the main attraction is clearly the words and voices of the players, inciting, defying, testifying and inspiring.

Like many threads, the voices join together in the final piece, Douglass' famous passage on the need for struggle, culminating in his declaration"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." Rebel Voices is a rousing reminder of the generations of women and men who have pioneered the path of resistance, and fuel for the current generation to keep the fight alive.

Amy Muldoon, Socialist Worker
December 7, 2007