“I have emphasized the importance of face-to-face experience with the stranger as we form and nurture democratic habits of the heart. While experience can change the way we look at the world, the converse is also true: the way we look at the world can change the meaning of our experience.” – Parker J. Palmer, Healing the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Create Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit, 2011.
“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.” – Maya Angelou
Masterful playwrights David Henry Hwang and Jeanine Tesori crafted “Soft Power” with brilliant and smart dialogue about the current state of America, its last 2016 presidential elections, its democracy in contradistinction with China’s communism, and the rise of China’s soft power, and its formed alliances around the silk road, a metaphor for how China is extending its influence throughout other nations, by building railroads. It opened on May 16 at the Ahmanson Theatre and will run till June 10, 2018.
Yet, it is not a metaphor, it is fast becoming a reality as China forges its ASEAN relationships with East Asia and has extended loans for building trains in the Philippines. China has made its plans known, a railway stretching across the continent of Nigeria, and Ethiopia opened its newly built railroad linking Ababa to the sea in 10 hours in Jan. 2018. Recall that America’s railroads were built by Chinese immigrants who came to America.
Soft Power is a play and a musical whose setting is Los Angeles early 21st century; and Shanghai, China, early 22nd century. It takes us to Hollywood and Vine, once the mecca of drug dealers, prostitutes, and gang bangers. Recall the graffiti-laced walls of former Hollywood?But we also know that Councilperson Jackie Goldberg undertook the difficult work of remodeling the Hollywood Bowl and Ford Amphitheater.
Soft Power is more than a play, it is a critique of both America and China and how their citizens are affected by a primary cultural conditioning of duty and saving face upon their native Chinese citizens and the cultural affinity of Americans with guns and their strong need to be always #1 amongst nations.
It makes for Chinese citizens, in the play, with muted hearts that even if faced with a love interest, Zoe/Hillary (played by Alyse Alan Louis), Xue Xing (adeptly portrayed by Conrad Ricamora) could not muster the courage of his heart to make the relationship happen. It also presents a challenge to American citizens – are they worthy to lift up this country now and make a change?
The challenge comes from the lyrics of the song sung by America’s Hillary (played so effectively by Alyse Alan Louis): “So many times it [elections] has left me so battered and bruised/It is just a big big show/I dream of what it could be/I believe/I believe in democracy/until America regains soft power/That dream is everything I am/I can’t give you [Xue Xing]what you need.”It was a very effective portrayal of American Hillary that we [the audience] could believe, as with her, that the 2016 elections were one big, big show. Yet, I could feel, from this play’s portrayal, that her love for America is so real.
This is one brilliant play with lyrics sung by Xue Xing’s character, brilliantly performed by Conrad Ricamora,showed the hollowed-out core of America: “Who do we borrow from?/Maybe we [China] can forgive your debt/We want you [America] to join in the family of nations/We seek your happiness/You fill your emptiness with alcohol/Your selfishness is your downfall/Some call you barbarians/Cease the wars to have peace/Join us in the Future/The new Silk Road/One that Connects the Whole Family of Nations.”
It challenges the citizens of American democracy – using musical lyrics – “are we worthy enough for this American democracy – do we have the capacity to lift up this country and change it from being a barbarian nation in love with guns, wars, to lay these guns down to join the family of nations for a bold future of peacemaking?” Are we Americans? Hillary is further challenged by Xue Xing, played by Conrad Ricamora, who sings with gusto: “Other nations have joined the silk road/Lay down your fears/Lay down your pride/Lay down your need to be #1/Lay down your guns/Lay down your guns.”
The song made me recall a Smithsonian’s exhibit that I saw called,The Price of Freedom: Americans at War, displaying America’s military might from the French and Indian Wars to the present conflict in Iraq, about 13+ wars, from the 1750s to the present. Today’s claim on the federal budget for the military is at $700 billion for 2018, $300 billion short of a trillion.
Imagine if that budget of close to a trillion were spent for building highways, schools, potable drinking water, power resumption in Puerto Rico, and research laboratories to stop EBOLA, HIV, and HPV (two viruses that Bill Gates had to explain to our current #45th President)?
Imagine if that close to a trillion dollars were spent to find new wells and new sources of water around the world. Imagine what America’s soft power would be around the world in 195 countries in the world? Would we have sustained peace-making and ensured the end of war-related violence? It would mean a partial solution to the world’s issues, and it just might make us more sensitive to everyone’s sufferings worldwide, an example that Pope Francis showed in the recent documentary “A Man of His Word” by Wim Wenders. It opened on May 18 in US theaters. It showed Pope Francis on a personal journey witnessing sufferings around the world. It was such a powerful documentary that 50 folks I watched with at the Landmark on Thursday night stayed still to watch the rolling credits and simply soak in the Pope’s message while some cried. It was so powerful to see him inside Auschwitz, sit inside the gas chamber, and see the dome that carried the photos of 6 million Jews who perished during the Holocaust with an interfaith circle of rabbis, priests, and Imam of the Muslim faith, about 20 in all, with Pope Francis in the center, humbly leading, yet humbly sharing space with all.
Back to the musical Soft Power, it was awesome to watch Broadway’s dance moves, reminiscent of The King and I and the graceful era of Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire, as part of the love story between Hillary and Xue Xing. Equally amusing were the lessons on Chinese language tones, four of them, which got the audience hysterically laughing. It is quite empowering to watch a predominantly Asian American cast act, sing, dance, and portray the scenes in this play effectively. It illustrates effectively that folks of color, as Whites, are as adept in any role we choose to play.
The lyrics by David Henry Hwang and music and additional lyrics by Jeanine Tesori affected one’s beliefs about where is the heart of America’s democracy, as much as where are the hearts of duty-bound native Chinese citizens in Shanghai.
It was thought-provoking to see America’s love for guns such that the Guardian newspaper estimates 88 guns for every 100 people in America and 265 million guns are now owned by Americans.
Art imitates life, but with this play, we hope life today imitates the aspirations of this play about the heart of American democracy and how perhaps we can get it beating more robustly by caring for those around us. Perhaps by considering their points of view and going a bit further than China and the United States, as David Henry Hwang suggests in his brilliant creation, Soft Power, the musical and as Pope Francis’ A Man of His Word, a documentary shows us by his personal journey? Can we, America?
Can we heal the heart of America’s democracy, as Parker J. Palmer asks? Can we change America from gun-toting lovers of the Wild Wild West era of the 1950s to become responsible citizens of the family of nations loving peace?
Though we may not unlive history, we can perhaps create a silk road, much like China’s building of the railroads in Africa, the Philippines, and Asia.