How About Those Tigers

Most people know that the University of Memphis lost the national championship basketball game to Kansas last week in overtime. It was a devastating loss for the team, the university, and frankly the entire city. I encourage you to read this description from another Memphian about the game. In response to this post, I'd like to recount the events in my own life that helped me realize the potential good that could have come from a win in this game.

First, I was in Kroger on Poplar Avenue shopping for potatoes. I was picking them up, looking for bad spots and such when the man stocking the shelves looked up at me, and making eye contact said, "How about those Tigers?" His face beamed and he couldn't get rid of the smile on his face. Now I'm a Vol fan, and so I'm usually not a Memphis fan in any sport, but because I live here I had been following the events of Coach Cal, CDR, Joey Dorsey, and the rest. So this Kroger employee and I chatted about basketball for a while and then I went on with my shopping. This man could not wait to share his excitement about his city and his team. Finally something for his town to be proud of.

The second example came from a couple that I attend church with. Jim and Jackie are longtime residents of Memphis, living near Rhodes College, where they are alumni. They were telling me about their daughter, who grew up in Memphis but now lives in another city. Jackie told me that their daughter desparately wanted Memphis to win the championship because it would give people something else to talk to her about when she says she's originally from Memphis. The two questions she currently hears are 1) Have you been to Graceland and 2) Where were you when Dr. King was assassinated? One is a tourist trap the second a constant reminder of racism and violence, two continual struggles for this river town. This woman, who no longer even lives in Memphis, needs something to feel proud about, about her town.

This has been my experience of the city. Folks here have low self-esteem and even lower expectations of their leaders and their city's life. People talk about how they can't wait to "get out of Memphis," or as the clerk at Rite-Aid told me recently, "Memphis is a vortex of karma, once you come here you can never escape." What a negative and hopeless view of a town.

And no one was surprised when the Tigers "blew it" in the end. It was almost as if they'd previewed the script before tip off. So many times this has been the case. So if sports aren't a reliable source of hope for a community and a city, where does it come from? It could come from the arts. It could come through people like John Weeden who has taken over the leadership of the UrbanArt Commission to bring more art into the ragged and worn out downtown.

It's in redeveloping Midtown, as Jackie Nichols continues to do with his new Playhouse on the Square, outdoor music venues in Overton Park, and the redevelopment of abandoned buildings in the area. I applaud those who refuse to accept a defeatist attitude about their city but instead take active roles in reversing stereotypes and healing old wounds.

Lysistrata and the Death of Cupid

For the past several years, Rhodes alumnus Kyle Hatley has been working on a project of giant proportions, and his dream was realized Friday night when his original work Lysistrata and the Death of Cupid opened at the McCoy Theatre. With a cast of thirty-four, Hatley presented a visually stunning show which mixed humor with poignancy, the vulgar with the humane, and the divine with the worldly. Combining songs from the blues, gospel, spiritual, and folk traditions, his play took the audience through two wars, one between men and another between human beings and the power of the gods.

Hatley's work is unique because it combines the basic plot of Aristophanes' Lysistrata with aspects of other Greek mythological characters, expressly gods like Hera, Apollo, and Cupid. Through these innovations, this is no longer an "anti-war" play but a play about the nature of our humanity. While Lysistrata does lead a female revolution to deny sex to the men of Athens as a means of ending a long war, she also asserts her power to make individual choices. With Athena watching her, Lysistrata seeks to end the "gods' war," denying the power of divine fate to govern all of humanity.

Lysistrata's revolt threatens Aphrodite, whose entire existence relies on the pleasures of the flesh between men and women. In an effort to save his mother, Cupid decides to challenge Lysistrata's ability to reject those fated passions of war and lust. The play, then, centers around the power of fate verses the power of individual choice, a conversation we continue to have to this day.

It is a very interesting choice that Hatley would choose to create a piece around this theme (which ultimately sides with freedom of choice over the power of fate) using a Greek play. Greeks were known for their religious acceptance of fate, and that they could not defeat their own destiny. This work re-interprets a Greek play of this variety to assert the opposite belief.
The play is well-constructed, though it runs a little long toward the end (think the last forty minutes of the third Lord of the Rings film). It is visually stunning in sound, lighting, and spectacle (they have a sand pit in the middle of the stage). Their are great comedic scenes, including a cameo appearance by Hades and a very funny temptation scene between Myrrhine and Cinesias. Hatley effectively combines elements of humor with a serious philosophical question.

Sometimes the language of the play seems contrived, and the over-use of expletives causes even of the more powerful language to gain its full potential. Because of the "shock" value of vulgar, language, the curse word often receives the emphasis of the line and sticks with the audience instead of what the character is actually saying. The theme of fate verses choice is also a little over-emphasized. The audience understands that they are being presented with this question, and they should be trusted to respond in their own way.

And that brings me to my final point. I do not know if we do have that ability to overcome fate, and the assertive "We Are Climbing Our Own Ladder" which closes the show seems to reject any possibility that their is some higher force controlling and governing it all. I would have liked to have been left in a more ambiguous state, one where the earthly war is ended and human beings have shown that they can act on their own decisions, but also one where the gods still are revered and maintain power and respect but in a new relationship. What would this say about fate verses choice?