NO MORE

​​No more giants
Waging war.
Can't we just pursue our lives
With our children and our wives?
Till that happy day arrives,
How do you ignore
All the witches,
All the curses,
All the wolves, all the lies,
The false hopes, the goodbyes,
The reverses,
All the wondering what even worse is
Still in store?

All the children...
All the giants...

No more

Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
​from INTO THE WOODS

Uvalde, Texas, Devastation [MSNBC]

Mariupol, Ukraine, Devastation [Evgeniy Maloletka, AP]

Evil seems to be all around us. Putin has personified Shakepeare's Richard the Third, "And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover / To entertain these fair well-spoken days, /  I am determined to prove a villain / And hate the idle pleasures of these days." Oh, what must his Kremlin/Dachau view be? Determined to prove a villain! And thousands of innocent Ukranians have needlessly died. And millions have left their homes. And what has changed for Putin? The gain of some territory that he has scorched beyond recognition? A giant came to earth and has brought devastation.

And now at home in the US we continue scorching our own earth. We allow crazed humans to be inhumane, to be their own Richard the Thirds. "Cheated of feature by dissembling Nature," these misfits strike out at the other, whomever the other is misperceived to be. Motivations of these evildoers have been well documented. Yes, we must help our troubled souls. But yes, we also must take the deadly weapons out of their hands.

So, what can we do, we theater makers? Certainly we must continue to provide a few hours' haven from the insanity. We need escapism. But not to run and hide, or forget. 

"No More," sung by Rudy Martinez & David Arthur Bachrach, INTO THE WOODS, Theater 2020

​Running away- we'll do it.
Why sit around, resigned?
Trouble is, son,
The farther you run,
The more you feel undefined
For what you've left undone
And, more, what you've left behind.

             - more lyrics from INTO THE WOODS

We must also bang the drum for change, shining lights on what is and also on what can be. Many of the members of NTC are currently engaged in this advocacy for humanity through their own productions and through their teaching. ​​My theater, Theater 2020, certainly will do the same. In these monstrous times we keep moving forward remembering "All the children, all the Giants" and we shout, "NO MORE!"