Tangent Theatre Company -

“Oleanna” first opened in 1992, barely six months after Clarence Thomas, a nominee for a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States, was accused of sexual harassment by law professor Anita Hill, who had once been his employee. Millions watched live coverage of the U.S. Senate Judiciary hearing during which Thomas denied Hill’s charges, and his sworn denial prevailed over her sworn testimony; he is currently the longest serving Associate Justice on the Court.

[This space is left open as a safe space in which to experience reactions to this reminder.]

Tangent’s pub reading of “Oleanna” takes place less than three months after Brett Kavanaugh, a nominee for a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States, was accused of sexual assault by psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford, who had once been his teenaged neighbor. Millions watched live coverage of the U.S. Senate Judiciary hearing during which Kavanaugh denied Blasey Ford’s charges and his sworn denial prevailed over her sworn testimony; he took the oath of Associate Justice this past October 10.

[This space is left open as a temporary sanctuary from pain.]

In the intervening 26 years, “Oleanna” has only become more combustible, a theatrical experience more uncomfortable and more galvanizing than even playwright David Mamet, a cold-blooded master of words-as-weapons, could have imagined. And in the intervening 24 months since the elections of 2016, the subjects of sexual consent and coercement, gender and power (or lack of it), truth and lies, sexual crime and fitting punishment has demanded attention of a kind that is uniquely urgent. #MeToo is new—and so, too, is our age where the lyrics to the song “Baby It’s Cold Outside” are on trial for sex crimes. This play was designed over a quarter of a century ago to make a thinking person cringe. Reasons to cringe have only multiplied.

Named, with biting precision, after a satirical folk song about a 19^th-century American Utopian community, “Oleanna” consists of 80 minutes of relentless verbal thrust-and-parry between a female student and her male professor over the course of three meetings in the professor’s office. The first meeting is at her request--the female student needs something from the male teacher, a balance of power as dangerous (to playwrights, and, as #MeToo continues to uncover, to regular humans) as lit dynamite. What is said is said; what happens happens—we hear it all as shifts in dominance are played out with reverberating consequences. The man is awful. The woman is awful. How each becomes more and more awful to each other in the course of the play is awful. Who is awful-er is a question to ruin the rest of your night. Good.

(For good measure, the ongoing interruptions by a ringing telephone that contribute mightily to the theatrical agita are infuriating—and this play was written long before addiction-to-smartphone has become a communicable disease. Good.)

It lessens nothing of the play’s stinging power to say that as a playwright, Mamet is a specialist in male rat-a-tat dialogue of a certain “F--- you Charlie” terseness, while his female characters tend to be more problematic—the causer of problems, the extra girl in the room. Those who care to can throw that aspect of Mamet’s sensibility into the mix while arguing afterwards. Because you are going to argue, possibly even with others in the pub you didn’t know before the reading began. Good.

Tangent's pub reading of "Oleanna" is Sunday, December 16, 2018 at Traghaven Whiskey Pub in Tivoli @ 6pm.

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