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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us June 7, 2005 Camelot’s play is more than entertainment By William Hughes Ashland Livia Genise has provided the Rogue Valley with some of it’s best moments in community theatre. With her Camelot Theatre production of “Judgment at Nuremberg,” Genise continues both her usually high standards of production excellence and a commitment to a social idealism many find refreshing, even inspiring, in an age of shallow emotionalism, hypocritical moralizing and carefully scripted “reality” programming. The Abby Mann script for “Judgment” is compelling but often brittle and self-important. Nor is public rumination on the “fever” of Nazi Germany particularly thought-provoking by contemporary standards. What makes Genise’s production not only good theatre but necessary socio-political commentary is her explicit linkage of the ominous subtext of “Judgment” with the “interesting times” in which we now find ourselves. Through recorded narration, “Judgment” invokes the current Bush Administration’s historically unprecedented withdrawal from the treaty creating the International Criminal Court, which itself was based upon the institutional precedents of Nuremberg. The motivation, as summarized by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: “defending our people, defending our interests, defending our way of life.” This, presumably, is the motivation behind the administration’s current efforts to withhold United Nations dues until that nominally international body aligns itself with our notions of appropriate conduct and procedure. While certainly not Hitlarian, this exclusivity of interest and lifestyle is striking for its assumption that somehow our interests, people, and “way of life” can be so easily segregated from our membership, and so our survival, within the community of nation-states. Is it, then, in “our interest,” a defense of “our way of life” to claim for ourselves a peculiar, even unique immunity from those laws, values, and sanctions by which most of the rest of the world declares its humanity? “Judgment” also echoes the observation of Eric Hoffer in his 1951 classic “The True Believer.” “Though hatred is a convenient instrument for mobilizing a community for defense,” Hoffer wrote, “it does not, in the long run, come cheap. We pay for it by losing all or many of the values we have set out to defend.” When we are told, as were the German people under Hitler, that all must either align with us or cower to await obliteration with the rest of the enemy, when our “adversary” is stripped of all motive or meaning except evil, do we not ourselves succumb to the same, ultimately motiveless evil? No, we are not Nazi Germany. But, in declaring a worldwide war, a crusade to vanquish evil-doers, can we long remain the people of tolerance, wisdom and reason that we so comfortably believe ourselves to be? As captured in Genise’s ongoing production of “Judgment at Nuremberg,” this cautionary rumination is important enough that I have offered course credit to students in my political science classes if they will attend a performance of “Judgment” and write a reflection on its meaning. Thus, beyond merely entertaining us, as she certainly never fails to do, does Livia Genise use drama to remind us of our own humanity and the narrow fulcrum of passion and reason upon which it so precariously rests. Losing touch with nature By Patti Morey Ashland When I was a little child, you didn’t need an alarm clock. In the predawn, hundreds and thousands of birds thronged and sang from the trees. I’m so thankful to have experienced their song and to have its precious memory. Looking back, I wonder if perhaps those birds were scolding us — for turning their native trees into homes and not at least offering them birdhouses in return. Thankfully, my parents did plant hedgerows that gave the small birds refuge from the big predator birds of the tall non-native trees. You could also drink water fresh from the creeks and rivers when I was young, and melted mountain snow water was considered the purest water of all. Today, we live right next to a snowcovered mountain and have to buy bottled water. The wild salmon have gone the way of the buffalo. Is there shelter for the bear, and what will the bear eat? Bullets, like the wolves? Like the cougars? What about the wild horses? We see deer lying dead by the side of the road every day. Even the American honeybee is extinct. And, when’s the last time you saw a “common” housefly? Where’s the milkweed for the butterflies? I’ve lived in the “beaver state” for 15 years and have yet to see a beaver. No wonder we’re getting depressed. We are losing our spiritual icons. We know that someday, maybe already, terms like, “Proud as an eagle,” can have no meaning — how an eagle be proud as a “protected species?” “Strong as a lion” is already passe; It makes me feel sad. What are we turning into? It’s hard to believe that in just some 200 years this country could be so changed by human hands. Four 50-year-olds ago, this country was a magnificent beautiful place. I want this country to go back to the way it was. Let’s just break it all up and send it to Mars and move back to England. Everybody has to stay indoors all the time, anyways, because there’s not enough ozone left to protect us from the sun. You genetically modified youngins don’t know any different and that is a heartbreak. You probably think these are just the laments of an old fogie. It’d just be so awesome, so reassuring and comforting to know that somewhere, part of us still lives true, fierce and free. 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