Playwright: Group created
At: The Neo-Futurists
Phone: ( 773 ) 275-5255; $15
Runs through: May 14
Patriots left me wanting more, or, more accurately, wanting different. It didn't fulfill its mandate, although one may argue who determines the mandate in theater, audience or artists?
The show promises to examine patriotism through the lives of Northern poet ( and gay icon ) Walt Whitman and Southern politician Strom Thurmond, whose fascinating lives spanned an incredible 184 years of American history. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were alive when Whitman was born, and Dubya was president by the time Thurman died at 100, with only 10 years separating Whitman's death ( 1892 ) from Thurmond's birth.
The Civil War was central for both. It was a crucible for Whitman, his ardent pantheism, robust embrace of humanity, lusty sexuality and anti-slavery sentiment forged by his service as a volunteer nurse. Thurman's South was still shaped by the Civil War politically and economically, yet it maintained pre-War social customs such as sexual privileges for wealthy white sons. Thurmond fathered a daughter by a 16-year-old African-American housekeeper. He hid his daughter, but supported her all his life, even as his national political career defended segregation and miscegenation laws.
Certainly, there are depths to be plumbed in the political and spiritual choices made by Whitman and Thurmond, but Patriots fails to delve. The one-hour show is presented with great theatrical flash, much of it appealing, but the congruities between the two men—such as their wartime experiences or common belief that Blacks and whites 'could never amalgamate'—scarcely are addressed, and their more substantial contrasts are drawn only passively.
The show—ahem—segregates their lives and times, with Whitman's outlined first, and then Thurmond's. Neither is placed within a larger American historical context—except through the principal visual device, a kinetic map of the development of the United States—and no continuum between the two is established, such as the aforementioned influence of the Civil War. They are equal, but separate.
Almost immediately, Patriots diverts from its promised mandate. Instead of examining patriotism head-on, the seven-member cast of this group-created work ( along with director Chloe Johnston ) examines 'romance as a metaphor for patriotism.' Much time is spent exploring whether or not Thurmond loved his mixed-race daughter, a fine idea that's only indirectly related to patriotism ( World War II veteran Thurmond certainly regarded himself as patriotic ) . Whitman's Civil War journals come closer to the mark, as his love of country merges with his love of men who suffer and die for country.
'Poets and politicians,' the cast intones early in Patriots. 'One word describes the world, the other imagines it. But which word is which?' The pursuit of an answer via Whitman and Thurmond would make a helluva show, but Patriots—its focus misdirected in my opinion—isn't it.