ArtsBeat
Absurd drama erupts over staging of ‘Polish Joke’
Published: June 21, 2009, 12:30 am
Story tools:
Share this story:
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A small theater company decides to mount a play containing ethnic stereotypes. Members of an ethnic community, enraged at the prospect, begin a campaign to shut down the theater company’s production. Many letters and irate phone calls later, the theater company’s collegiate landlord tells it to finish out the production and then hit the road for good.
If you’re waiting for the punch line, there isn’t one. This particular joke, in which the Kaleidoscope Theatre company has fallen victim to the worst sort of reactionary thinking from members of Western New York’s Polish community and its custodian, Canisius College, is about as callous and unamusing as they get.
Kaleidoscope, a small company known for mounting good-hearted and largely innocuous comedies and dramas, decided to mount David Ives’ oft-produced play “Polish Joke” as its season closer.
The show is about a man deeply disenchanted with his own Polish heritage, a conflicted character wrapped up in his own misguided prejudices. So much so, in fact, that he has frequent hallucinations in which those prejudices and stereotypes receive an exaggerated theatrical treatment. Through the course of the show, the man learns to conquer his wrongly ingrained ideas and finally to embrace and take pride in his Polish identity.
Ives’ comedy, in its neurotic and quasi-absurdist approach, dares to show us a character’s transition from self-loathing Polish-American to fully realized Polish citizen. In the process, the playwright employs stock Polish jokes for the purpose of critiquing anti-Polish stereotypes and flipping them on their heads.
This play’s reactionary detractors, writing at length in the Am-Pol Eagle and the local blogosphere, take issue with the use of ethnic stereotypes, even in this self-critical context.
That’s fine for some, but for cultural consumers who have found wisdom as well as humor in the work of Mel Brooks (“The Producers”), Trey Parker and Matt Stone (“South Park”), and Sacha Baron
Cohen (“Borat,” “Bruno”), the idea of employing outsized ethnic stereotypes in the service of a wider understanding has become a powerful cultural tool.
In essence, the point of these artists –the controversial chutzpah of which “Polish Joke” doesn’t even approach –is simple: The more we critique ethnic stereotypes, the less they ring true. But they are impossible to critique if we don’t acknowledge them at all.
But for some, who have found commentaries online to support their gut reactions to the play’s title and others who have reinforced those reactions with jaundiced readings of the script, Ives is somehow perpetuating stereotypes rather than critiquing them.
“I did not see the show, so I cannot really be that objective, but from the commentaries, it was clear to me that the play does not show Poles in a good, positive, balanced light,” said the Rev. Matt M. Nycz, an outspoken opponent of the play and pastor of Most Precious Blood Catholic Church in Angola. “It kind of perpetuates some of the former jokes and prejudices, so from that perspective, I wrote a letter to people who are in charge of Canisius basically telling them that I’m not supporting it. I don’t see it as a productive play.”
As for Canisius College, a completely separate but no less serious issue is at hand. In a word: spinelessness.
The college claims to have no official relationship with Kaleidoscope, which rents its Marie Maday Theatre and works with the college’s student theater troupe (sounds like a relationship to me). But the college was well within its rights to terminate its longstanding rental agreement with the company.
John Hurley, executive vice president at the college, gave a boilerplate public relations explanation for the college’s decision to give Kaleidoscope the boot.
“We feel as though we’re caught in the middle of this,” Hurley said. “We are sitting here simply as someone that is allowing them to use our theater facilities and then we’re getting bombarded by people saying, ‘Why are you letting this happen?’ So, I look at it and say, look, why are we in the middle of this?”
For one, because as a respected institution of higher learning, Canisius is ostensibly in the interest of supporting balanced, reasoned and progressive thinking. Its decision not to renew Kaleidoscope’s contract is tantamount to endorsing the seriously regressive and misguided views of the play’s loud detractors. Here’s hoping they reconsider.
In the end, if their decision stands, the joke will be on them.
cdabkowski@buffnews.com
Newsletters
Sign up now for daily and weekly newsletters from BuffaloNews.com and get quick links to the info you want delivered directly to your inbox.Reader comments
Log into MyBuffalo to post a comment
MyBuffalo is the new social network from Buffalo.com. Your MyBuffalo account lets you comment on and rate stories at buffalonews.com. You can also head over to mybuffalo.com to share your blog posts, stories, photos, and videos with the community. Join now or learn more.
Comments have been disabled.
Due to a high volume of submissions that violate The News’ guidelines, commenting is no longer available on this story. If you’d like to share your thoughts on this story, click here to get information on contributing to The News’ opinion pages.