Abu Ghraib onstage: Multimedia theatrical piece tries to make sense of prison abuse
Check this out. Heard about it on the radio, barely believed, but I found it on the web and its for real. Luckily, you guys get to read the article with my comments inserted, to make deeper sense of what the liberal dump-on-the-hill-in-Cambridge Harvard is trying to do.
On May 12, the Loeb Experimental Theatre will premier a work by a Harvard undergraduate that carries on that tradition. Abu Ghraib," written and directed by sophomore Currun Singh through music and dance.
Oh this is great. Just great. Abu Ghraib the musical! I wanted Julie Andrews to play the singing, dancing, chain-yanking Lynndie England, but Andrews just had her voice-box surgically removed. Damn! By the way, the radio said Mr. Singh is from Singapore, so hes likely a Moslem.
Singh soon found a team of collaborators to join him in this risk-taking venture, among them fellow sophomore Xin Wei Ngiam, also a social studies concentrator, who agreed to produce the play. Like Singh, Ngiam found the revelations about events at Abu Ghraib extremely disturbing.
Collaborators! Good word! These preppy bolshevik fuckers cant help but use a revolutionary term.
"On one level I was just appalled. I was just feeling pure shock and horror. But on another level, I was wondering, how could people do those things?" Ngiam said.
Xin Wei Ngiam was appalled. So am I. There isnt a single American in this moronic production, is there? Mr. Ngiam is either from Vietnam or Red China. In either case, his governments have about made brutal torture and prison a course for middle-school children. He of all people should know the difference between the Abu Ghraib photo ops for Cosmopolitan magazine, and being strangled by piano wire in the Hanoi Hilton!
The question of how ordinary people can commit unspeakable acts became one of the central issues not only for Singh and Ngiam but for all the students working on the production. Through group discussions and rehearsals, the play developed and changed, propelling the participants through a rollercoaster ride of feelings.
Rollercoaster ride of boring hippy bullshit, they mean. The only feelings that Abu Ghraib gave me was hilarity! A dogpile of naked Iraqi mass-murderers is ball-bouncingly funny!
"In rehearsal we tried to simulate what had happened, and sometimes it just ended up being funny, obviously because this wasn't the real thing, it was just a play. The experience could be very confusing and disturbing," Singh said.
Its very confusing and disturbing that theyre anti-American swine and are attempting to subvert this country. Free speech for Americans, but a washcloth in the mouth for these non-Citizens, please. Let em bitch in Hanoi or Pyongyang, for Gods sake.
In the play, characters based on real Abu Ghraib military personnel whose names have since become well known - people like Spc. Charles Graner, Pvt. Lynndie England, and Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski - talk casually amongst themselves and intimidate and humiliate the Iraqi prisoners.
Heroes, every freakin one of them. President Milano, Medals of Honour for everyone!
But the play does what neither the leaked photos, the media reports, nor the military trial have been able to do - namely, to apply invented but plausible identities to the anonymous Iraqi torture victims whose naked bodies have become all-too-familiar over the past year.
Torture victims? Those assholes werent in prison for stealing hubcaps off the Hum-Vees, damn it! I'm sure those marxist bastards made our sweet victims to be stock-boys at the Umm-Qibayn Wal-Mart or postmen or Amway reps or some shit like that. Not brutal interrogators, enforcers, grave-filling executioners. Hell no! Can't have that on Broadway!
In key scenes, the prisoners talk about their past lives, how and why they were captured, and how their consciousness has been changed by the treatment they have received. In some respects, these are the most moving and revelatory scenes in the play because they remind us that these unfortunate individuals have families, friends, careers, personal histories, and, above all, human feelings.
Makes me wonder if these poor victims discuss how they used to run the prison instead of being the prisoners. Yeah, that would be an eye-opener for these preppy punks. A little electrocution to the testicles, a light beating with a rubber baseball bat, a slight dousing into a cold bathtub, followed by sawing the index finger off with a pen-knife. Sounds like a fucking day-spa at the Holiday Inn, doesnt it?
Another element that engages the audience emotionally as well as providing a narrative thread is the gradual moral awakening of Specialist Joseph Darby, the soldier responsible for leaking the incriminating photos to military investigators.
Moral awakening? He needed the cash so he sold the pics to the Enquirer. Shit!
Singh and his colleagues made a decision that even the most honest and explicit dialogue could not do justice to the emotions aroused by Abu Ghraib. This is why they have incorporated the element of dance into the production.
No comment on Abu Ghraib dancing. Lord have mercy.
"We thought that dance might be the most effective way of expressing feelings about these events. Dance can bring out visceral emotions that words can't," said Singh.
It can make us bloody well vomit, too.
Singh, a first-time director and playwright, acknowledges that the production could not have reached its present state without the help of the Denver-based group Show-Up Productions, dedicated to fostering political theater among youth communities.
Show-Up Productions sounds like a hippy bolshevik brainwashing machine to me. Add some propaganda with their dirty laundry and put their minds on the spin-cycle!
"They've been terrific at raising money, giving us advice, helping us mold the characters, and mentoring me in my first effort at script writing and directing," said Singh.
Terrific at the money. Of course. First thing to mention.
How will Singh know if he's succeeded? He has a pretty good idea of the effect he wants his production to have on the audience. "If they come out slightly uncomfortable, shocked, and motivated to action, that will be what we're aiming for."
Hey, thats just what Mao used to say as subversives were sent to the reeducation camps
ken_gewertz@harvard.edu
Tickets, by the way, are free. Even these yuppies realise nobodys gonna pay to see this pile of dogshit.
Check this out. Heard about it on the radio, barely believed, but I found it on the web and its for real. Luckily, you guys get to read the article with my comments inserted, to make deeper sense of what the liberal dump-on-the-hill-in-Cambridge Harvard is trying to do.
On May 12, the Loeb Experimental Theatre will premier a work by a Harvard undergraduate that carries on that tradition. Abu Ghraib," written and directed by sophomore Currun Singh through music and dance.
Oh this is great. Just great. Abu Ghraib the musical! I wanted Julie Andrews to play the singing, dancing, chain-yanking Lynndie England, but Andrews just had her voice-box surgically removed. Damn! By the way, the radio said Mr. Singh is from Singapore, so hes likely a Moslem.
Singh soon found a team of collaborators to join him in this risk-taking venture, among them fellow sophomore Xin Wei Ngiam, also a social studies concentrator, who agreed to produce the play. Like Singh, Ngiam found the revelations about events at Abu Ghraib extremely disturbing.
Collaborators! Good word! These preppy bolshevik fuckers cant help but use a revolutionary term.
"On one level I was just appalled. I was just feeling pure shock and horror. But on another level, I was wondering, how could people do those things?" Ngiam said.
Xin Wei Ngiam was appalled. So am I. There isnt a single American in this moronic production, is there? Mr. Ngiam is either from Vietnam or Red China. In either case, his governments have about made brutal torture and prison a course for middle-school children. He of all people should know the difference between the Abu Ghraib photo ops for Cosmopolitan magazine, and being strangled by piano wire in the Hanoi Hilton!
The question of how ordinary people can commit unspeakable acts became one of the central issues not only for Singh and Ngiam but for all the students working on the production. Through group discussions and rehearsals, the play developed and changed, propelling the participants through a rollercoaster ride of feelings.
Rollercoaster ride of boring hippy bullshit, they mean. The only feelings that Abu Ghraib gave me was hilarity! A dogpile of naked Iraqi mass-murderers is ball-bouncingly funny!
"In rehearsal we tried to simulate what had happened, and sometimes it just ended up being funny, obviously because this wasn't the real thing, it was just a play. The experience could be very confusing and disturbing," Singh said.
Its very confusing and disturbing that theyre anti-American swine and are attempting to subvert this country. Free speech for Americans, but a washcloth in the mouth for these non-Citizens, please. Let em bitch in Hanoi or Pyongyang, for Gods sake.
In the play, characters based on real Abu Ghraib military personnel whose names have since become well known - people like Spc. Charles Graner, Pvt. Lynndie England, and Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski - talk casually amongst themselves and intimidate and humiliate the Iraqi prisoners.
Heroes, every freakin one of them. President Milano, Medals of Honour for everyone!
But the play does what neither the leaked photos, the media reports, nor the military trial have been able to do - namely, to apply invented but plausible identities to the anonymous Iraqi torture victims whose naked bodies have become all-too-familiar over the past year.
Torture victims? Those assholes werent in prison for stealing hubcaps off the Hum-Vees, damn it! I'm sure those marxist bastards made our sweet victims to be stock-boys at the Umm-Qibayn Wal-Mart or postmen or Amway reps or some shit like that. Not brutal interrogators, enforcers, grave-filling executioners. Hell no! Can't have that on Broadway!
In key scenes, the prisoners talk about their past lives, how and why they were captured, and how their consciousness has been changed by the treatment they have received. In some respects, these are the most moving and revelatory scenes in the play because they remind us that these unfortunate individuals have families, friends, careers, personal histories, and, above all, human feelings.
Makes me wonder if these poor victims discuss how they used to run the prison instead of being the prisoners. Yeah, that would be an eye-opener for these preppy punks. A little electrocution to the testicles, a light beating with a rubber baseball bat, a slight dousing into a cold bathtub, followed by sawing the index finger off with a pen-knife. Sounds like a fucking day-spa at the Holiday Inn, doesnt it?
Another element that engages the audience emotionally as well as providing a narrative thread is the gradual moral awakening of Specialist Joseph Darby, the soldier responsible for leaking the incriminating photos to military investigators.
Moral awakening? He needed the cash so he sold the pics to the Enquirer. Shit!
Singh and his colleagues made a decision that even the most honest and explicit dialogue could not do justice to the emotions aroused by Abu Ghraib. This is why they have incorporated the element of dance into the production.
No comment on Abu Ghraib dancing. Lord have mercy.
"We thought that dance might be the most effective way of expressing feelings about these events. Dance can bring out visceral emotions that words can't," said Singh.
It can make us bloody well vomit, too.
Singh, a first-time director and playwright, acknowledges that the production could not have reached its present state without the help of the Denver-based group Show-Up Productions, dedicated to fostering political theater among youth communities.
Show-Up Productions sounds like a hippy bolshevik brainwashing machine to me. Add some propaganda with their dirty laundry and put their minds on the spin-cycle!
"They've been terrific at raising money, giving us advice, helping us mold the characters, and mentoring me in my first effort at script writing and directing," said Singh.
Terrific at the money. Of course. First thing to mention.
How will Singh know if he's succeeded? He has a pretty good idea of the effect he wants his production to have on the audience. "If they come out slightly uncomfortable, shocked, and motivated to action, that will be what we're aiming for."
Hey, thats just what Mao used to say as subversives were sent to the reeducation camps
ken_gewertz@harvard.edu
Tickets, by the way, are free. Even these yuppies realise nobodys gonna pay to see this pile of dogshit.
