‘Two Trains Running’

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SOCIALIST ACTION SEPTEMBER 2015 11

Theatre

“Two Trains Running,” staged by The Multi Ethnic Theatre in association with Custom Made Theatre as part of an August in August event in San Francisco.

“Two Trains Running,” which premiered in 1990, is set in the 1960s. It is one in a series of plays by the internationally known, Pulitzer Prize-winning play­ wright, August Wilson, who died in October 2005.

He had written what he called his “Pittsburgh Cycle,”

plays about Black lives in the United States, for each decade from the 1900s through the 1990s.

“Trains,” takes place over a few days in 1969 in the “Hill District” of Pittsburgh, Pa.—a once thriving Black neighborhood that was demolished through the mis­ guided policies of the city’s Urban Redevelopment Au­ thority. This production was directed by Lewis Camp­ bell (who also designed the set).

Wilson, like other 20th-century playwrights, such as Eugene O’Neill, wrote plays that unfold slowly, asking the audience’s patience as the characters take their time telling their stories. The dialogue throughout concerns the relationship of Black people to whites, and much of it tracks with the current issue of white cops shooting innocent-Blacks.

In this theatre, the audience sat on three sides of a realistic set, depicting a typical diner complete with booths, a jukebox, and pass-through window to the kitchen. Memphis Lee (an excellent Bennie Lewis, whose scowl almost outdoes the late Toshiro Mifu­ ... Climate (continued from page 4: “Northern California climate activists set sights on COP21”) layer absorbs sunlight, which makes the stratosphere warmer, but now that the ozone is damaged and depleted, it makes the stratosphere colder and the area be­ low as well.

The real problem facing the continent is the steady and rapid disintegration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). Its two largest glaciers—the Pine Island and the Thwaite—are in trouble because the grounding lines that pin the ice shelves to the bedrock are below sea level. Warm seawater has been steadily eating away at the floating ice and its underpinnings. As the ice shelves lose mass and their buttresses erode, their ability to hold back the land-based glaciers, which are the source of sea-level rise, is greatly weakened. It is believed that the WAIS glaciers are past the point of no return since they have been speeding up for the last 40 years.

Because mountain peaks are warm­ ing faster than valleys and plains, alpine glaciers are in long-term retreat on every continent in every climate—temperate, tropical, and polar—a trend that became apparent in the 20th century. Several hundred of the world’s glaciers are losing between one-half and one meter of thick­ ness per year, two times the average loss of the last century.

Glacier National Park had 150 of its namesake formations in 1850. The num­ ber has been reduced to 25, and Alaska is losing ice at the rate of 75 billion tons annually. The disappearance of moun­ tain glaciers, which feed many of the ma­ jor rivers of the world, has undermined the storage and timed release of water, threatening freshwater and food sup­ plies. Moreover, the thawing of these land-based glaciers adds to sea level and accounts for one-third of its rise.

From paleo evidence, Hansen et al. con­ clude that sea-level rise came in pulses and occurred quickly and that ice sheets can melt at a non-linear rate—that is, exponentially, not incrementally—shed­ ding enormous amounts of mass in de­ cades rather than millennia, as the more conservative IPCC holds.

The UN panel has said that sea levels will rise three feet by 2100, a gross un­ derestimation in comparison and a view long held in suspicion by others because existing climate models are underesti­ mating the impacts of ice sheet melt. In contrast, Hansen believes that Greenland and Antarctica will melt 10 times faster than currently predicted.

The time of relatively stable climate since the last Ice Age is known as the Ho­ locene, but because of powerful human influences on the climate, it has been la­ beled the Anthropocene by some. With the birth of agriculture and the clearing of forests for crops, humans were already influencing the climate 10,000 years ago. With the intensification of capitalist in­ dustrialization and mechanized warfare at the beginning of the 20th century, that process became even more intense. That is why Hansen now refers to the pres­ ent as the Hyper-Anthropocene, and he believes that the very fabric of civiliza­ tion will be torn to pieces if a serious and ne’s) owns and runs the diner. A blackboard lists pric­ es of the era for fried chicken with dumplings, beans and corn bread, and steak and potatoes that range from 65 cents to $2.35; coffee is a nickel.

Lee and his customers, each of whom slowly reveals their soul, seem to find it hard to escape the confined world of the diner. Although they complain about the events that are shaping their community, they are steeped in lethargy, and need prodding in order to try to take control of their lives.

Sleek, catlike, well-dressed Fabian Herd plays a 40ssomething Wolf, a numbers-runner. Old man owner Memphis Lee, who comes off angry most of the time and rails at cook/waitress Risa (played with quiet introspection by Beverly McGriff), warns Wolf about using the diner’s payphone for his business. The city wants to buy his building cheap and tear it down, part of the city’s misguided “urban-renewal” and gentrifi­ cation policies, which would force out Black and poor residents.

A heavy-set, older man, Holloway (Stuart Elwyn Hall), is sprawled in his booth, doing crossword puzzles, or studying racing forms. He often interjects meaningful philosophical comments into the conver­ sations, but does nothing to defend Risa from the con­ stant criticism by Memphis Lee.

For most of the first act, we hear about West, the undertaker- black suit, black hat, black gloves. When we finally meet him (Vernan Medearis), he looks like he had once been a much larger man. Sporting a gray goatee, he comes in for his cuppa, always reminding Risa to bring the sugar packets, which he stashes in This pockets, thinking no one will notice.

On opening night at this theatre, An­ thony Pride replaced Geoffrey Grier as the believable, pathetic character of Hambone, who is obviously mentally ill. Seems that a decade earlier he was duped by a white butcher into paint­ ing a fence in return for a ham, but he never got paid what was promised.

Regulars want him to shut up, but Risa is sympathetic.

At one point, Lee goes into a long, physical rant about the white man’s exploitation of “niggahs” (a word used prolifically throughout the play), us­ ing the metaphor of comparing their actions to stacking cordwood, keeping Black people down and thus increasing The Man’s wealth.

Sterling (a stocky, handsome Keita concerted effort is not made to meet this planetary crisis head on.

Unfortunately, Hansen’s solutions are still on the weak side, demanding the mild reform of a carbon fee or tax, al­ though we would not object to taxing polluters clean out of existence if it were possible. His call for nuclear reactors powered by thorium are completely un­ acceptable as well.

The only way to stop further environ­ mental devastation by a greedy capital­ ist class that refuses to give up its fossilfuel-based economy is to nationalize the entire energy industry and put it under democratic workers’ control. At the same time, we must ensure a just tran­ sition with retraining, union wages, and full benefits for all workers making the shift from the production of dirty fuels to clean, renewable energy.

There is not one capitalist politician who supports such sweeping change.

In fact, every short-sighted, self-serving (Above) August Wilson.

(Left) A waitress at Crawford’s Cafe in 1945 in Pittsburgh’s old Hill District.

Jones), a newcomer, shows up halfway through the play as the harbinger of revolutionary action. He is a young, idealistic, ex-con who has been influenced by the work of Malcolm X. He brings to the diner the cur­ rent events of the time about which the others seem uninterested or cynical, and a stack of flyers for a Black Power rally building up outside.

The play ends with the noise of shouting outside and Sterling rushing in with Hambone’s payment. Offstage, there’s an unexplained explosion and sirens, possibly police action directed at the Black Power demonstrators.

August Wilson’s plays are always relevant, especially now in the time of Black Lives Matter. His plays are often staged in the United States—in fact, throughout the world. I encourage readers to find one playing in your area and make a point to see it.

“Radio Golf,” Wilson’s final play in the Cycle, will be staged by this company in August 2016. n vote hustler running in the elections this year is for maintenance of the status quo because their interests are tied hand and foot to the Energy Giants. That is why cli­ mate crisis activists and those struggling against environmental racism in their communities and on tribal lands must take their protests to the streets.

We must create a powerful movement for ecological and social change, and one of the best ways to do that is to build on the momentum of the People’s Climate March of last year and organize huge mass demonstrations demanding real action to cut greenhouse gas emissions from all sources to zero as soon as pos­ sible.

Plans for protests are already underway in many parts of the world leading up to the November-December climate talks, and we encourage all those wanting to save Mother Earth for human habitation and future generations to dedicate them­ selves to that effort. n

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SOCIALIST ACTION