Peter and the Starcatcher (Empty Space 2024)

The Empty Space has sure been through it the last few years. After 20 years at their old location, the area became unsafe for patrons and cast and crew, so they moved to a new spot, which was promising. 

 

Unfortunately, they have had to deal with a seemingly never-ending series of permitting issues. The former tenant failed to get permits, the blueprints went missing when the City annexed the former County land, inspectors have required contradictory or impossible changes to the plans, and so on. 

 

This led to an extended shutdown of the theater, with performances off-site, ridiculous additional expenses, and general headache for all the dedicated people involved. 

 

Finally, at long last, The Empty Space is back in business, doing what they do. 

 

I figured I would probably go see Peter and the Starcatcher, but ended up deciding at the last minute to go on a Thursday night. Veteran actor and friend, Claire Rock, who was in the role of Black Stache (the future Captain Hook) was unable to perform, and her understudy, our longtime family friend Selah Gradowitz stepped into the role. This was a big deal for her as a young actor, so my wife and I decided to go cheer her on. 

 

Peter and the Starcatcher is loosely based on the novel by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, Peter and the Starcatchers. (Vanilla Ice would approve of the little bitty change of one letter…) The kids and I listened to the audiobook version of the original back in 2016, and then the sequel, Peter and the Shadow Thieves, while traveling to view the eclipse. 

 

As I noted, the connection between the book and the play is pretty loose. In the play, the character of the nanny is added, the number of lost boys reduced, and significant plot elements modified. Some of this is the need to shorten a book that takes 14 hours on audiobook to fit a 2 hour stage play. But some of it seems weird and unnecessary, and some of what I consider essential explanation gets lost as well. In this sense, I think familiarity with the book both helps fill in the gaps, and raises the issue of why the changes were made. 

 

But enough of my book pureism. The play is its own art form, and a good crowd pleaser. 

 

I already mentioned in my review of the book that it is a sort of prequel to the Peter Pan story. I won’t rehash the plot in this post, but feel free to read my previous post, and if you like, the Wikipedia plot summaries of both. 

 

The play version is riddled with puns and jokes and wordplay, which is fun, but a bit different from the book, which is more of a straight-forward action adventure. I’ll also note my appreciation of the line, “Harder to find than the melody in a John Cage opera…”

 

The Empty Space has long held a particular niche in local theater. A small intimate space, flexible pricing so everyone can afford to come, low budgets matched with incredible creativity, high artistic values, and usually the use of younger actors who may not be able to break into the same roles at other venues. 

 

This does mean that some of the cast will have a bit more enthusiasm than polish, but also that it is possible to see actors grow from green teenagers to skilled veterans over time. 

 

Cast in the role of Molly is Sofie Fruguglietti, last seen in The Secret Garden at Stars. She actually matches the age of the character, but is clearly a rising star, with clear diction, excellent stage presence, and unflappable poise. 

 

Opposite her is Carter Friedman as the future Peter Pan. He too matches the character age, and did a good job of getting the goofy and naive nature of the character. Because of the nature of the play, the character never really gets to grow into the future like it does in the book. We never really get to see Peter as the fearless leader he becomes. But that is the fault of the script, not the acting. Friedman did well. 

Molly (Sofie Fruguglietti) and Peter (Carter Friedman)

 

Other highlights to me were Juan Carlos Arellano as Smee, who had to be both comic relief, and sinister enough to be Black Stache’s henchman. Good acting in this case, for sure. 

 Smee (Juan Carlos Arellano) and Black Stache (Clair Rock)

Edgar Moreno did double duty as Slank, the true villain of the story - he swaggered and bellowed and strutted and chewed the scenery like the character should - and also Fighting Prawn, who is a tough one given the original colonialist crap. I felt the book had more space to try to develop this character, which wasn’t really possible in the small space of the play. The use of Italian food words for the “native language” was pretty funny, though. 

 

And of course, there was our friend Selah, who filled in admirably at the last minute. She also had the difficult task of playing a formidable villain while being the shortest member of the cast. She did play up the laughs - the overly literary pirate who just wants to be the greatest villain ever, and needs a hero for an archenemy. 

 Selah Gradowitz as a pirate (Center)

Kudos to the rest of the cast and crew, of course, including the shadow puppeteers. TES is always doing more with less, doubling roles as needed, scrounging props and sets from wherever they can, maximizing the return on a very limited costume budget, and generally doing the loveable underdog things. 

 

This isn’t a big budget big city professional theater, but your local kids (I’m old, so I get to call them that…) out making art with what they have. I’ve missed that, and I hope TES can finally see the end of their bureaucratic drama and get back to doing what they do best. 

 

Peter and the Starcatcher runs this weekend and next, and is a great show to bring the kids to, particularly if they already like the book. 

Estrangement and Authoritarian Parenting

 

It seems like estrangement has been in the news and the op-ed columns a lot since the pandemic - specifically, the estrangement of adult children from their parents. It seems at least plausible that this has increased a significant amount in the last generation. 

 

However, the news coverage always seems to focus on a perceived cultural shift among the young people. At its most generous, it is some variation on “Younger generations are less likely to tolerate abusive behavior from their parents.” At its worst, it is some variation on “Young people just don’t value family like they used to” or “young people are so entitled and ungrateful these days.”

 

This is puzzling to me. Social changes don’t just come out of nowhere - they are reactions to what has happened before. 

 

Failing to ask what changed in parents before this supposed estrangement epidemic would seem to be crucial to understand the reactions of adult children. 

 

It would be like blaming lower home ownership rates for Millennials on a change in beliefs rather than looking at housing costs, wages, and student debt. 

 

Oh wait. That’s exactly what older people do, isn’t it?

 

Or like looking for an explanation for the protests of the 1960s without mentioning the Vietnam war. 

 

Oh yeah, that’s what older people do for that too - it was all that hippie culture and philosophy (damn Kerouac!) - it couldn’t possibly be that we started a morally indefensible war that was unwinnable and sent your men to die for that cause, could it? 

 

Actually, this has a history going back hundreds of years. Note how many tried to blame the French Revolution on Voltaire’s writings, rather than the obscene inequality leading to the starvation of the poor. 

 

Anyway, it is deeply puzzling to me that I have yet to see the mainstream media ask the basic question:

 

What happened in the 1970s through 1990s that might explain this?

 

As someone who both grew up during those years and who is estranged from his parents, I have a pretty good idea what the hell happened.

 

Starting in the 1970s, there was a widespread cultural phenomenon that swept religious circles: Religious Authoritarian Parenting.

 

If you grew up in Evangelical circles - or even within a few degrees of them - you undoubtedly have heard some of these names:

 

James Dobson (and Focus on the Family)

Bill Gothard 

John MacArthur

Gary Ezzo

Ted Tripp

Michael and Debi Pearl

 

There are more, of course, but those are the big ones. 

 

They taught a form of parenting (that they told parents was “God’s Way”) that had the goal of creating children who were instantly obedient, without talking back, without questioning. It was Authoritarianism on the family scale. 

 

This wasn’t done just with corporal punishment (although of course there was that) - there was also a heavy use of manipulative psychological tools: the teaching that God speaks to children through their parents, that the authority structure was God’s will for the family and society, that disobedience (including talking back) opened a child’s soul to Satan, that children were inherently sinful (aka evil) and were in a constant battle for power with their parents, and so on. 

 

I may write a post or three on the specifics of some of this, later, we’ll see. The goal of all of this, unsurprisingly, was to pave the way for authoritarian right wing government - which is why all these people endorsed Trump and are now openly in favor of white Christian nationalism. (They were before too - but didn’t advertise that to the outside world before Trump.) The goal of obedience was closely tied to the goal of acceptance of one’s role in a patriarchal, white supremacist society. 

 

This is, I believe, the elephant in the room when it comes to a discussion of estrangement. 

 

Decades of problematic and harmful teachings about parent-child relationships have naturally led to toxic results. 

 

My intention here is to give an introduction to what I hope to write more about later. The single biggest reason for my estrangement from my parents is conflict directly stemming from authoritarian parenting. By viewing the parent-child relationship as a battle for power - one that the parents must win - authoritarian parenting sets the stage for lifelong conflict, and prevents the transition of the relationship to one of emotionally healthy equal adults. It also makes a parent’s identity lie in their success in raising their children to be political and cultural clones of their parents - to take their place in that idealized patriarchal and white supremacist society. 

 

When children explain their estrangement in terms of violation of boundaries, this is what they mean. Authoritarian parents are unable (or unwilling) to surrender that power they were able to exercise over their children, and thus feel entitled to obedience (without talking back!) from adult children. And, of course, their children’s spouses and children, who are expected to obey as well. 

 

So, when you see intergenerational conflict, the least productive way to look at it is to go searching for some outside influence that “corrupted” the kids - whether Voltaire or music by black people or the existence of LGBTQ people. 

 

Instead, look at what was going on with the parents that the kids are reacting to. 

 

The 1960s protests were in reaction to Vietnam, just like the Civil Rights Movement was a reaction to Jim Crow. The French Revolution was a reaction to economic injustice and the greed of the wealthy and powerful. These reactions were entirely predictable, and easy to understand. 

 

Likewise, it was entirely predictable that a generation of children who were subjected to authoritarian control, and treated as a means of preventing social change that made parents uncomfortable, might resent the continued attempts at control and decide to reduce or end contact. 

 

I am hoping to write more about this, but I think this is a good start: the rise in parent-child estrangement is directly correlated and caused by the Religious Authoritarian Movement of the decades prior. 

***

 

Good reading from StrongWilled:

 

Casualties of the Culture

 

Flamingo Watching by Kay Ryan

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

 

One of those random books out on display that I grabbed. Kay Ryan was Poet Laureate from 2008 to 2010, and won a MacArthur Grant and a Pulitzer. The book I found is an anthology, but, as I usually do, I selected a single collection and went with that. In this case, I chose Flamingo Watching from 1994. 

 

Ryan was also the first openly lesbian US poet laureate. 

 

I found the poems to be intriguing, and often creative and witty. They are short, and compressed. I didn’t always feel like they were the most musical, but engaged more at the level of a puzzle to be solved than music. This isn’t a criticism - poetry comes in many forms, and meaning is never limited to the form or feel. 

 

The strength of Ryan’s writing is the quirky internal rhymes, the unexpected metaphor, and the wry wit that often takes a second or third reading to appreciate. 

 

I did find a number that I liked. 

 

This Life

 

It’s a pickle, this life. 

Even shut down to a trickle

it carries every kind of particle

that causes strife on a grander scale:

to be miniature is to be swallowed

by a miniature whale. Zeno knew 

the law that we know: no matter

how carefully diminished, a race

can only be half finished with success:

then comes the endless halving of the rest - 

the ribbon’s stalled approach, the helpless

red-faced urgings of the coach. 

 

A bit too much truth there, perhaps. We strive, yet we never arrive. Hey, that’s an internal rhyme too…

 

Every Painting by Chagall

 

Every twined groom and bride,

every air fish, smudged Russian,

red horse, yellow chicken, assumes

its position not actually beside

but in some friendly distribution

with a predictable companion.

Every canvas insists on a 

similar looseness, each neck

put to at least two uses. And wings

from some bottomless wing source.

They are pleasure wings of course

since any horse or violinist

may mount the blue 

simply by wanting to.

(In freedom, dear things

repeat without tedium.)

 

I do like Chagall, at a visceral level - and this is one of the best distillations of how his paintings often work. And also why we remain fascinated by Chagall. 

 

This next one is related, and also, in my opinion, one of the deepest poems in this collection. 

 

Leaving Spaces

 

It takes a courageous

person to leave spaces

empty. Certainly any

artist in the Middle Ages

felt this timor, and quickly

covered space over 

with griffins, sea serpents,

herbs and brilliant carpets

of flowers - things pleasant

or unpleasant, no matter.

Of course they were cowards

and patronized by cowards

who liked their swards as 

filled with birds as leaves.

All of them believed in

sudden edges and completely

barren patches in the mind, 

and they didn’t want to 

think about them all the time. 

 

This speaks to me about my Fundie upbringing as well. So much fear of leaving empty spaces - of acknowledging the unknown, the uncontrollable, the secret. And then there is this one:

 

Emptiness

 

Emptiness cannot be 

compressed. Nor can it

fight abuse. Nor is there

an endless West hosting

elk, antelope, and the 

tough cayuse. This is

true also of the mind:

it can get used. 

 

This next one is also good. 

 

A Certain Kind of Eden

 

It seems like you could, but

you can’t go back and pull

the roots and runners and replant.

It’s all too deep for that.

You’ve overprized intention,

have mistaken any bent you’re given

for control. You thought you chose

the bean and chose the soil.

You even thought you abandoned

one or two gardens. But those things

keep growing where we put them - 

if we put them at all.

A certain kind of Eden holds us thrall.

Even the one vine that tendrils out alone

in time turns on its own impulse,

twisting back down its upward course

a strong and then a stronger rope,

the greenest saddest strongest 

kind of hope. 

 

Nature in general is a significant source of metaphor to Ryan - both plant an animal. Here is another plant-based one. 

 

So Different

 

A tree is lightly connected 

to its blossoms.

For a tree it is is

a pleasant sensation

to be stripped

of what’s white and winsome.

If a big wind comes,

any nascent interest in fruit

scatters. This is so different 

from humans, for whom 

what is un-set matters 

so oddly - as though

only what is lost held possibility. 

 

That last last line is so good. 

 

Force

 

Nothing forced works.

The Gordian knot just worsens

if it’s jerked at by a person.

One of the main stations

of the cross is patience.

Another, of course, is impatience.

There is such a thing as

too much tolerance

for unpleasant situations,

a time when the gentle 

teasing out of threads

ceases to be pleasing 

to a woman born for conquest.

Instead she must assault

the knot or alp or everest

with something sharp

and take upon herself

the moral warp of sudden progress. 

 

I’ll end with one of a few poems about snakes. Ryan clearly shares my love for slithery reptiles. 

 

Snake Charm

 

Oh for even a fingerling snake,

a three-inch inspiration full of 

genetic information about length,

the making of venom, and the start

of muscles later on used for compression.

A snake, say, in a Moorish pattern, abstract,

ornamental, repeatable over a whole Toledo

without tedium. Yes, a snake the sun stretches,

a snake that improves everything it catches:

the adventitious mouse converted to stripes

or diamond patches. This snake is reckless,

with no concern for balance. It can

slide over any surface, a silent line,

an endless pattern, a generative rhyme. 

 

Well, that’s a good taste of Kay Ryan, and a fun contrast with some of the other poems I have been reading lately. And also a good reminder to me to avoid stagnating with the old guys from long ago, and read something from my own lifetime now and again. 

 

Luster by Raven Leilani

 Source of book: Borrowed from the library

 

My wife and I have an annual tradition of going through the NPR book recommendations and finding a few we want to read. While we rarely end up reading the same books, it is fun to read through the descriptions and snark about the ones that are definitely not our thing, and make lists of ones that might be. 

 

For me, I try every year to find at least one book that is a stretch compared to my usual reading. Not something genre exactly, but something not aimed at my demographic and that I might hate. Because you never know. 

 

Luster is one of those books. And, I actually liked it, even though it is definitely not the sort of book I would gravitate toward. 

 

The book is a bit dark, and the humor (of which there is plenty) is really dark. The ending is ambiguous, and, more than anything, is an end of the particular episode for the protagonist, which is just a few months of her life. 

 

Edie, a 20-something African American woman, is hardly the most sympathetic character. She makes terrible choices when it comes to sex - sleeping around with people at work, some of who can (and eventually do) get her fired, cutting her hand on a sword and bleeding on the office floor, getting pregnant at the worst time, sabotaging her own job interviews. 

 

And one more that is the central event of the book: showing up at her lover’s house and getting discovered by his wife. 

 

But before that, I should back up. Edie ends up as a paramour to Eric, an upper-middle class man in an open marriage. (At least, that’s what he says, although the actions of the characters seem to make this somewhat more murky.) There are rules about the relationship, and his wife Rebecca supposedly knows about Edie. 

 

Eric breaks the rules, though, when he takes Edie home with him while Rebecca is at work. (As a medical examiner for the coroner's office, of all things.) Later, Edie comes to his home without his knowledge, and runs into Rebecca, who figures out who she is. 

 

But there is more: After Edie leaves, and loses her job, she is invited to live with Eric and Rebecca - but it is Rebecca who gives the invite, without telling Eric. 

 

And one more thing: Eric and Rebecca have a tween foster daughter, who is also black, Akila, who they flounder in raising like any naive white couple would. So, on another level, Edie is useful to them.

 

I won’t spoil any more of what goes on, except to say that if you expect a torrid lesbian affair, you will be disappointed. While there is sex between Edie and Eric, it isn’t particularly sexy, and in fact serves the function of furthering the dark and uncomfortable dynamics that exist between the characters. 

 

For some reason or another, polyamory has become trendy with the media these days - my own cynical theory is that aging middle-class journalists with boring sex lives find it titillating the way they found Hollywood romantic shenanigans so fascinating when I was a kid. But in this book, it isn’t a trend thing - the plot device serves the characters and the author’s exploration of power dynamics related to class and race. 

 

I would also say that this book hardly makes polyamory or an open marriage sound appealing. The whole setup feels a lot like the more “traditional” version: “guy with money finds a hot young mistress, and abuses the power differential.” 

 

But there is so much more going on than sex in this book. In a lot of ways, Eric is the least interesting character, and the author leaves him as more of an outline than a full emotional participant. Far more interesting is the dynamic between Edie and Rebecca, and their relationship which defies categorization. One can perhaps sense some erotic frisson, but it is so far below the surface that it has to be felt rather than seen. 

 

 The interaction between Akila and Edie is also quite interesting, and believable. Don’t expect a warm, mushy, happy ending - this one is what you might expect when an angsty 13 year old who has been through a lot of trauma is involved. 

 

For me, I think the best part of the book is the way the author carefully avoids anything tidy. Everything is a mess, and there are no answers. Because of this, even though I can’t imagine myself as any of the characters, and the situations are on the ragged edge of over-the-top, they feel real and believable. 

 

I’ll also warn my fellow Gen-X sorts that this book is definitely Millennial. Expect a certain level of snark, and a refusal to make older folks feel cozy and satisfied. 

 

As usual, there are some great lines worth quoting. I love this one, from the description of the first in-person meeting of Edie and Eric, after they have had enough alcohol to loosen up a bit. 

 

It gets us loose enough to talk about politics, but as he talks, I hold my breath. I know we are in agreement on the most general, least controversial ideological points - women are people, racism is bad, Florida will be underwater in fifty years - but there is still ample time for him to bring up how much he enjoyed Atlas Shrugged. Even with good men, you are always waiting for the surprise. 

 

Frustratingly for me, I find it isn’t universal to agree on those three points - with too many of my former friends and family on the right wing, all of these are debatable. But yes, the Atlas Shrugged line is gold. 

 

One recurring issue is Edie’s compulsion to accept violence from her partners. This is profoundly uncomfortable, and is meant to be. It is clearly rooted in her own trauma - her abandonment by her veteran father who suffered from PTSD, her mother’s addiction and suicide, her abortion as a teen. There is also this line:

 

I didn’t tell him I was a virgin because I could not bear to be treated tenderly. I didn’t want him to be careful. So when it hurt and I was too proud to say stop and so said more, I believed, like a Catholic or a Tortured Artist, that the merit of a commitment correlates directly to the pain you endure in its pursuit. 

 

Near the end of the book, there is a correspondingly devastating assessment of Edie’s relationship with Eric. 

 

He is the most obvious thing that has ever happened to me, and all around the city it is happening to other silly, half-formed women excited by men who’ve simply met the prerequisite of living a little more life, a terribly unspecial thing that is just what happens when you keep on getting up and brushing your teeth and going to work and ignoring the whisper that comes to you at night and tells you it would be easier to be dead. So, sure, an older man is a wonder because he has paid thirty-eight years of Con Ed bills and suffered food poisoning and seen the climate reports and still not killed himself, but somehow, after being a woman for twenty-three years, after the ovarian torsion and student loans and newfangled Nazis in button-downs, I too am still alive, and actually this is the more remarkable feat. Instead, I let myself be awed by his middling command of the wine list. 

 

Throughout the book, there are brief flashbacks to Edie’s family stories, from her ancestors in the Caribbean to her immediate family. The way these are told are pithy and often hilarious, in a really dark way. For example:

 

That is to say, Granddad disappeared. My mother had as good a childhood as one can have with ten brothers and sisters, sleeping three to a bunk, ushering a collection of feral alley cats into hidey-holes Grandma could not hope to find, one link in a massive West Indian brood that year by year was proving to take after my grandfather’s side, meaning they were prone to disastrous dalliances with the arts and the things that make the fiscal wasteland of the arts worth the risk - the sex and drugs. 

 

I also want to mention a line about the complicated relationship between Edie and Rebecca, a conversation which takes place after Edie watches Rebecca dissect a cadaver at work, and Rebecca mentions Akila. 

 

[I]n this moment it becomes clear to me that despite this evening-long conspiracy, she is moving toward her most natural conclusion, which is to engage me not as a person who has just watched her dissect a man, but as a person who is black, and who is, because of that, available for her support. 

 

One final mention is that there is a scene that involves music by Arvo Pärt. In a scene involving raw eggs and tomatoes crushed with bare feet - don’t ask - you probably don’t want to think about it too much. Which was definitely unexpected, because who on earth actually picks that composer to put in a book? I mean, I’m a serious classical music nerd, so I know who he is, but that’s a risk for a wider audience. Leilani gives no explanation either. 

 

That said, I do like Pärt’s compositions, so it was a fun easter egg for me. I recommend listening to his tribute to Gustave Eiffel, which I saw the LA Phil perform a couple years back. 

 

There are other references throughout the book that Leilani simply drops, expecting the reader to either know about, or to look up. These range from Eric’s esoteric taste in music to the video games and anime that Akila loves. For Edie, it is easy to see that she is in a bit over her head with both of these, as she is with Rebecca’s very white bougie tastes. Perhaps the cultural references are made the way they are to reflect this disorientation. 

 

Overall, I thought the book was well written and definitely unusual. Unlike some modern novels I have read, I felt that it wasn’t unfocused or flabby - it was a tight narrative that covered a lot of ground without getting sidetracked. It wasn’t preachy, although it could have been. The plot served the vision, rather than the other way around. 

 

I also love that this is a book, by a black author, at risk for being pigeonholed into “race genre,” which defiantly asserts the right to be messy, to be flawed, to be imperfect, to be human in every respect. It doesn’t care whether a middle-aged white guy (who is probably more like Eric than I prefer to contemplate) likes it or likes its characters. 

 

This is Leilani’s first novel, and I am intrigued to see where she goes next in her career. Luster was not my usual sort of read, but I am glad a gave it a shot - it’s worth checking out.