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The 2019 Paul Robeson Theatre Festival took place Aug. 23 - 25 with the theme of Awakening the Past, Present and Future: A Retrospective. This third biennial event was presented in Theatre Four at L.A. Theatre Center in Downtown Los Angeles by actor Ben Guillory, co-founder and producing artistic director of the Robey Theatre Company, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary. Actor Danny Glover is also a Robey co-founder. As Guillory reminded the audience in the sold out intimate space, both the festival and company are named after Paul Robeson.

August 27, 2019, remarks, Chicago

By David Swanson

Happy Kellogg-Briand Pact Day! As you all know, but most people do not, the Peace Pact was signed 91 years ago today. And, as you all probably know, but most people do not, the inspiration and vision and endless labor behind it came from a mass movement begun and led, not by Mr. Kellogg or Monsieur Briand but by a lawyer from Chicago named Salmon Oliver Levinson. You could point that out to Minnesotans from Frank Kellogg’s Twin Cities if, of course, any of them had ever heard of Frank Kellogg.

Imagine a dystopian future in which every person in the United States is given free and total and preventative heath care from whatever doctors and nurses they want, but CNN talking heads pine sorrowfully for their beloved insurance companies.

Imagine that top-quality education from preschool through college is available free to anyone who wants it, but your elderly neighbor is furious because he had to pay for his education, and your local military recruiter is outraged because business is bad.

Imagine full employment with a universal living wage and the right to organize, including for all immigrants, but a billionaire on TV is spitting mad because workers are being “coddled.”

Imagine an economy converted to peaceful industries, with every worker aided in the transition, and no more of these catastrophic wars, but a weapons company CEO is on NPR describing the suffering involved in selling off a beloved yacht.

Imagine life becoming easier, less anxious, more enjoyable — as you un-plug your Tesla from your free solar power and three seconds later pass a gas-burning sports car with a bumper sticker that reads “Socialism sucks!”

What I loved about director/co-writer Hari Sama’s This is Not Berlin is that it immersed me (and I suspect most grinning Gringos and other non-Mexicans) into a world I’d never encountered before. Set in Mexico City in the mid-1980s, Sama depicts the punk rock scene, counterculture and gay “subculture” of the Mexican capital of that era. It reminded me of the ultra-cool Andy Warhol “Factory” world in Manhattan during the 1960s and 1970s, with the kind of wild parties that Rico Salvatore Rizzo, aka Ratso (Dustin Hoffman), walked out of in 1969’s Midnight Cowboy, denouncing the revelers as “wackos, they’re all wackos.”

Something is causing the worlds glaciers and mountain ice fields to melt. And, despite your first thought, it is not the ongoing climate catastrophe.

It does not matter where on Earth the glaciers and mountain ice fields are located, they are all melting. Moreover, the projected timeframe for some of them to disappear altogether is ‘imminently’; that is, within years. And for the rest: a few decades (although that projection is being routinely revised downwards, depending on the glacier).

The big black pickup truck plunged into the protesters blocking the parking lot and I cringed, viscerally, as though I could feel it myself — this merciless crush of steel against flesh.

When corporations in capitalism-run-amok societies like the United States are run primarily for financial gain and achieving ever-increasing shareholder value, ethical considerations and the spiritual and environmental costs to society are disregarded. In such societies, it is considered normal for corporations to regard profits, especially short-term profits, as the main criterion for decision-making - and NOT the well-being of the workers or the environment.

As long as they can “get away with it”, sociopathic corporations, just like their cunning, human counterparts, can be expected to use lies, cheating and stealing as acceptable business tactics in their day-to-day operations as they seek to fatten the “bottom line” for their shareholders.

A Noise Within’s Frankenstein is one of the most unique plays I’ve ever seen. Using British playwright Nick Dear’s adaptation, the drama opens with one of the best “jump cuts” I’ve seen since that ape-like being in 2001: A Space Odyssey tossed his bony weapon into the air, which transitions to a spacecraft in the heavens. Dispensing with lots of exposition this stage production cuts right to the chase, presumably because most theatergoers are already familiar with the world famous story, as related in Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s immortal (no pun intended) 1816 Gothic novel, and in countless retellings, most notably in the still unsurpassed 1931 James Whale movie of the same name starring Boris Karloff.

It is astonishing to observe some Americans twisting themselves into pretzels so they can continue to make excuses to explain the bizarre behavior of President Donald Trump on the world stage. The line most commonly heard is that he has “kept us out of new wars.” The reality is somewhat different. He has kept us in old wars in Afghanistan and Syria that he could have ended while also needlessly ratcheting up tension with countries like Russia, Venezuela, Iran and China that could easily escalate into armed conflict. The situation with Moscow is particularly dangerous as President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly warned that his country’s defense doctrine includes going nuclear if there is an attack on Russia by a superior force.