Julius Caesar Protest "Assassination Porn" : Shut it Down.

Protest "Julius Caesar" -  Delacorte Theater  - Central Park (and thoughts as I pass from "Julius Caesar" to "1984".)

First - Fri - June 16.  The action this night was outside the theatre. Protesting the assassination porn while a counter protest, by a few UWS lefties, supported the violence. Found some pictures on twitter.

Next - Sat, June 17, 2017 - Central Park - 6:30 pm.  

There was no counter-protest this evening (rain was forecast) but that did not keep the patriots away. Their numbers grew.

Watching people interact with the protesters was interesting. They garnered a few man-on-the-street giggles - and side eye glances - attempting to register their disapproval as they walked by.

Amusingly, the NYPD officers arrived long after the protesters had stood quietly holding their signs and chatting with anyone who wished to ask questions. SO.... the need to place the barricades seemed odd and unnecessary.

Meanwhile, the passersby also took many pictures.

And selfies. There were lots of selfies.

Also, the predictable verbal challenges, "Have you heard of the First Amendment?" and "Why ruin our evening?" While others worked to dissuade the protestors with courteous discourse.

Some passersby showed welcomed support with thumbs up and a smile and/or mouthing a quiet thank you.  Others wound up joining the protest, like this fellow below, who responded confidently to the aggressive query, "Have you read the play? "

  
Flickr Slide show from Saturday evening



8 pm and the curtain went up.  The protestors outside left, not knowing that, tonight, the main event INSIDE the theatre would be Laura Loomer storming the stage.

(a Face Book eyewitness account)  June 17 ·  Delacorte Theater. 

"I have to describe what happened tonight at Shakespeare in the Park. The play starts. Julius Caesar is Trump. We know that already. Enter stage left from the audience a young woman dressed all in black protesting Caesar. Cool. About thirty minutes in, Caesar is brutally stabbed to death over and over by the senators. It's really graphic and disturbing. 

Enter stage right from the audience a young woman dressed all in black yelling at the senators and the audience "Stop violence against conservatives!" Slowly the crowd realizes she isn't an actor like the first woman, she's a real protestor. 

A man stands up in his seat and starts yelling at the crowd, and now the audience is booing and hissing and people are standing up out of their seats to yell at the protestors (someone near me yells, "I hope you didn't wait all morning for this!"), and the stage manager comes on the god mic to pause the show, and security come on stage to drag the woman off. 

The commotion settles, and the SM comes on again and announces, "actors, pick up from 'Liberty! Freedom!'" (that was literally the line) and the crowd goes wild. Standing ovation. The scene picks up and ends, and the real police, in full regalia with bullet proof vests, cross back into the theater in front of the stage as the senators exit the stage through the audience and have to weave around the police, as actors dressed as police in riot gear enter the stage (I can't even describe how wild this image was), and the scene shifts to Brutus's speech to the Romans, during which a dozen planted actors throughout the theater jump out of their seats and begin yelling at the stage, and audience members, now not knowing what to believe begin heckling the "protestors" again! Madness! Long live art imitating life imitating art imitating life. 

The point of the play remains clear- it is not a promotion of assassination. After the stabbing, there's still an hour and a half left of the show, during which the conspirators suffer and die for their crime and Rome (or America) falls into civil war and chaos. It made me think actually about the risk of impeachment. We are so divided and so passionate and seemingly unchangeable, and that dystopia on stage might not be far off if we continue not to be able to sit down for a couple hours, even the horribly offensive detail thirty minutes in, and listen to one another."

The last night to protest, Sunday, June 18. Julius Caesar is closing.  A small protest gathered pre-show. Each night, passersby would grab a sign and join the protest. (unfortunately no pictures surfaced from this last evening) But I was told of a young Hispanic girl who said she felt really good having protested the porn inside the Delacourt.

8 pm .The last performance of this abomination was closed with a protest-punch: TWO Proud Boys hit the stage mid-show. (Video clips from Twitter)
First, Jovi Val stormed the stage.

Exercising their the First Amendment right to protest - to interrupt an event, JUST LIKE THE LEFT has done and continues to do . [Alinsky "Protest Rules 101"].

Followed by Sal Cipolla

Twitter clip from  McGINNES interview

All three patriots were arrested for trespassing (on public property) . Gavin McGinnis interviewed  all three: Laura Loomer, Jovi Val and Sal Cipolla

"Anti-Trump and anti-white violence is escalating in the United States of America. From eggs, to fists, to bike locks, and now knives, everyday Trump supporters seem to be in real danger in their own country. Only leftists are allowed to be angry."

Daniel Greenfield addresses  The Left's Anger Privilege

"The angry left demands that everyone recognize the absolute righteousness of its anger as the basis for its power. This anger privilege, like tone policing, is often cast in terms of oppressed groups. But its anger isn’t in defiance of oppression, but in pursuit of oppression.

Anger privilege is used to silence opposition, to enforce illegal policies and to seize power. But the left’s monopolies on anger are cultural, not political. The entertainment industry and the media can enforce anger privilege norms through public shaming, but their smears can’t stop the consequences of the collapse of civility in public life. There are no monopolies on emotion.

When anger becomes the basis for political power, then it won’t stop with Howard Dean or Bernie Sanders. That’s what the left found out in the last election. Its phony pearl clutching was a reaction to the consequences of its destruction of civility. Its reaction to that show of anger by conservatives and independents was to escalate the conflict. Instead of being the opposition, the left became the “resistance”. Trump was simultaneously Hitler and a traitor. Republicans were evil beasts.

James Hodgkinson absorbed all this. The left fed his anger. And eventually he snapped."

No doubt remains, the Communist infiltration, requiring the dumbing down of America, is bearing motley fruit: Mission Accomplished.  

A new generation now thinks Orwell wrote "1984" as a warning of  TRUMP FASCISM. Incredible. But, true ... with a  stunning misunderstanding of "1984" found in a theatre review by Michael Portantiere

 
June 22, 2017 Theatre: Hudson Theatre,  Broadway

"The dystopia depicted by George Orwell (real name, Eric Arthur Blair) in his chillingly prescient novel 1984 has not come true in all of its nightmarish particulars, at least not to the extent that Orwell envisioned. But, needless to say, the current sociopolitical condition of the world has enough striking similarities to the totalitarian hell of the novel as to make one's blood run cold—all the more so since the shocking rise of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States.

Just how far off are we from the horrors of 1984?

We the populace do not yet have government-installed telescreens in our private domiciles, scrutinizing our every action and utterance so that we may be arrested at any moment if we don't toe the party line, but most of us have "smart phones" that pinpoint our whereabouts. Also, a great deal of our personal information is available in the ether somewhere, and rare today is the public space that isn't under video camera surveillance. While probably not even the most rabid conspiracy theorists among us believe that people are employed by the government to censor or destroy historical documents and news archives, as the central character Winston Smith does in the Orwell novel, examples of one or another person or organization attempting to literally rewrite history are not uncommon.

Perhaps most terrifying of all, the Orwellian concept of "doublespeak" and the maxim that "Ignorance is Strength" are hallmarks of the Trump administration (and, some would say, the present-day Republican party in general).

These frightening facts and others have lifted 1984 back onto the best-seller lists, and are no doubt the impetus for a group of producers headed by Sonia Friedman and Scott Rudin having now brought a stage adaptation of the property to Broadway. Some people consider the novel unstageable and unfilmable, but I disagree. Although a 1956 movie version is not well regarded, the 1984 film of 1984 (neat) starring John Hurt is excellent, and I was lucky enough to see a minimalist but powerful adaptation by Alan Lyddiard that was presented in a fine production by the Godlight Theatre Company at 59E59 theaters in 2009.

The current, high profile production at the Hudson Theatre is not quite so minimalist, incorporating as it does some major effects in terms of scenery (designed by Chloe Lamford), lighting (Natasha Chivers), and sound effects (Tom Gibbons), even if the cast is relatively small—nine people plus one alternate, three understudies, and two other actors who appear only on film. This is the Broadway transfer from England of a co-production by Headlong Theatre, the Nottingham Playhouse, and the Almeida Theatre Company. In 101 minutes, adapters/directors Robert Icke & Duncan Macmillan and company retell the story of Winston's and his beloved Julia's failed rebellion against Big Brother and the Party that attempts to control every facet of all citizens' lives, including their very thoughts.

To get the negative out of the way first, it must be said that a few elements of this adaptation and production seem ill considered. A framing device has been added, which is not a bad idea in itself and does allow for the retention of more of Orwell's voice in the play, but the concept of this particular device is confusing at the start and doesn't fully make sense in the end. Also, the setting of the story has been fudged. The events of the novel are all the more disturbing because they occur mostly in a future landscape that remains recognizable as London, but while some British references (such as a recurring nursery rhyme) remain in the stage version, the "where is this happening" question is confused in that a few U.S. locales are mentioned, and all of the actors speak in American accents—including Tom Sturridge, the Brit who plays Winston. If resetting the story in an ill-defined, non-specific place was done with a view towards making the tale more universal, it actually has the opposite effect in undercutting one of the novel's greatest strengths.

There are other issues here. At several points during the evening, the audience is blinded by super-bright lights flashing directly in our faces. This serves the intended purpose of covering the movement of actors and set elements during scene changes, and the effect is arguably all of a piece with the kind of sensory assault that would be practiced by the Party, but it's annoying and painful in the extreme. Also: Though some extended scenes of Winston and Julia conducting their surreptitious affair are ostensibly being acted live offstage and projected for the audience on a large, sectioned screen that spans the width of the stage at a considerable height, these sequences actually seem to have been prerecorded, and therefore come across as even less immediate and less theatrical.

All of the above are minuses for the production, but ultimately the day is won by the power of Orwell's words and the high quality of the acting—and, of course, by the story's eerie relevance to current events. Though Sturridge's American accent (which he shouldn't have been required to adopt in the first place) is not 100 percent convincing, he fully and movingly inhabits Winston in every other respect, and he deserves a Tony Award nomination if only for his gut-wrenching portrayal of the poor man's physical and emotional agony under torture. 

Opposite him as Julia, Olivia Wilde gives a performance of quiet power that only grows in intensity as the plot progresses and the characters' lives go from bad to far worse. The fact that both Sturridge and Wilde are younger and sexier than the actors who played these roles in previous iterations of 1984 lends a new frisson and, arguably, an extra poignancy to the tale.

Having cited the unnecessary and unwise Americanization of 1984 for this production, I'll now admit that it does pay a dividend in regard to the always brilliant Reed Birney's performance as Inner Party member O'Brien. In the 1956 and 1984 film versions, this role was played respectively by Michael Redgrave and Richard Burton, whose plummy accents lent the character an aristocratic air. In contrast, Birney sounds like some nice, middle-class guy from Ohio, and as a result, the evil he perpetrates in the almost unbearable sequence during which O'Brien brutally tortures Winston as a means of controlling his mind is all the more devastating. The rest of the cast is very strong, with Michael Potts, Cara Seymour, and Wayne Duvall as standouts; and the direction of Icke and Macmillan is laudable overall, notwithstanding the reservations noted above.

One of the most telling lines in this adaptation of 1984 is not, I believe, a direct quote or paraphrase from the Orwell novel, but it certainly fits the tenor and spirit of the work. In the midst of the torture scene, O'Brien coldly tells Winston: "The people are not going to revolt. They will not look up from their screens long enough to notice what's really happening." On this point, at least, there would seem to be hope. A gratifyingly large percentage of the U.S. and world population sees clearly that fascism is growing like a cancer, and is vehemently protesting it. Any and all proud members of this group should attend 1984 on Broadway if only to firm their resolve—but of course, this is an example of preaching to the converted. The tragedy is that no one on the side of darkness is likely to take in this extraordinary production—or read the novel, or see either film version—and therefore has zero chance of having his/her mind or heart opened by the harrowing cautionary tale that sprung from the pen of George Orwell nearly 70 years ago."

The Marxist Insurrection, revolution nurtured through the arts and media, is responsible for these current versions of "Julius Caesar" and  "1984" - rewritten - reduced to convenient agitprop.

And as this twitter exchange below reveals, the dis-information era, that agitprop spoon-fed to successively compliant generations, has resulted in mind-NUMBING ignorance.

Little Cay When Dems believe that the 50% of the country that does not want what they're selling are "deplorables" there is no chance for civil discourse.

Johnathon Rhoades You mean the conservatives who want to run people over for protesting? Or did you mean the ones that want to take away the rights of queers? Maybe the ones trying to sell us on abstinence only sex education? What about the ones that want to eradicate Muslims? Gosh I don't know which one you meant it maybe it was all of them, but regardless, that's all deplorable.

Little Cay I mean the Dems who want reduce the entire country to poverty, allow criminals to run free and then take away your means of defense. Imagine, there are people who don't want that future!

Outside and inside the Delacourt Theatre, the LEFT met a future they didn't plan. An awakening. Resistance. A compliant people no more. Finally.

[Where indicated, pictures and videos property of Pamela Hall]