mean?
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Give Us Bread
Posted by Gail M. Burns - August 2010
“Man has a right, in this our brief existence
To call some fleeting happiness his own
Partake of worldly pleasures and subsistence
And have bread on his table rather than a stone.
Such are the basic rights of man’s existence
But do we know of anything suggesting
That when a thing’s a right one gets it? No!
To get one’s rights would be most interesting
But in our present state this can’t be so.”
“What keeps mankind alive? The fact that millions
Are daily tortured, stifled, punished, silenced, oppressed.
Mankind can keep alive thanks to its brilliance
In keeping its humanity repressed.”
- Bertolt Brecht, The Threepenny Opera, trans. Ralph Manheim & John Willett
In New York City in February of 1917 food prices skyrocketed and women – mostly lower- and middle-class, many of them recent immigrants – took to the streets with riots, boycotts, and other political action that – at least in the short-term, brought prices back down. This nearly forgotten piece of American history forms the backdrop for Give Us Bread, a full-length theatre piece by the New York-based ensemble The Antropologists.
While I found Give Us Bread interesting theatrically, I was never able to shake the knowledge that this was political theatre, sometimes called propaganda, with a mission and a message. In my playwriting courses in college I had it drummed into my head “If you want to send a message, use Western Union.” You can no longer send messages via Western Union, but you get the gist. Theatre is for entertainment, not for social action.
So I asked myself if I would have enjoyed the show any more, or less, if I had not been aware of its political agenda, and I think the answer is that I would have enjoyed it more. Playwright and director Melissa F. Moschitto and the company – all female – have created fascinating characters, many of them based on the actually words of the women involved in the riots. The bulk of the play was devoted to establishing and developing these characters, and telling their individual stories, which were intriguing and well played.
But while Give Us Bread is billed as a play about the 1917 New York Food Riots, the actual enactment of the riot scenes and explanation of the rapid history of the event felt rushed and tacked awkwardly on to the end. I didn’t want the play to end with the happy news that the women of New York City were able to force the profiteers into lowering (if only temporarily) the food prices, I wanted to see how that success affected the lives of these six women I had come to care about. I wanted to know the human, not the political, story.
As I watched the show the above quotations from The Threepenny Opera sprang to my mind immediately, while I adore that work, I know it works best when it sings rather than speaks (both of these quotations are song lyrics). There is some music, but no singing in Give Us Bread, and its central message – that there was hunger and food insecurity in 1917 and that there still is today – is both too obvious and too overwhelming. I know all about these issues, but what can I do? The story this show needs to focus on is not who our foremothers were, but how they answered that question
American women of all classes were completely dependent on men in 1917. They had no political power and no way to earn a living wage except in the sex trade. The women depicted here are all lower-class and all but one of them is a recent immigrant. Moschitto’s storytelling is at its best when it shows how these Russian, Irish, and Italian women assimilate not only to America, but to each other. We literally get a glimpse into the Melting Pot that was the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the early 20th century when the heat was turned up high.
These poor, hungry, oppressed women and thousands like them actually stood up and spoke truth to power and made a difference. The change they wrought in food prices was momentary in historical terms, but I cannot help but think, or at least wish, that some of the momentum gained in 1917 carried over and helped pass the 19th Amendment three years later.
But I am letting the politics overwhelm the theatre. There are truly delightful moments in this play, and some wonderful performances. The Anthropologists work as an ensemble and of the six actresses I saw two – Jean Goto who played the Asian orphan, Jenny, and Sonja Sweeney who played the Russian Jew, Hannah – are founding artists, along with Moschitto, and one – Katy Rubin who plays the Russian Jew, Rivka – is a core artist. They were joined here by Jennifer Griffee who played the Irish, Elizabeth, Shayna Padovano who played the Italian, Conchetta and Jennifer Moses who played activist and riot organizer, Marie Ganz. As far as I know Ganz, author of Rebels: Into Anarchy – and Out Again, is the only historical figure in the play, although the other characters are all based on contemporary writing and reports.
All six women turned in stellar performances and functioned flawlessly as an ensemble in the brief dance/movement segments, but I was particularly captivated by Rubin, Padovano, and Griffee. Moschitto and her cast have done a masterful job with the myriad of accents (and languages) in which these characters speak, and I was fascinated at how, as these women became more fluent in English, their “foreign” accents came closer and closer to the distinctive dialects and accents of New York City and its environs.
I think the most detrimental aspect of the production I saw as part of the 2010 Berkshire Fringe was the performance space in the Black Box Theatre in the the Daniels Arts Center at Bard College at Simon’s Rock. Looking at photographs of earlier performances I was aware that the space, and particularly the lighting, was quite different and much more effective. This is always an issue when shows travel – some spaces are going to be better suited than others for a particular work.
In creating Give Us Bread The Anthropologists have done excellent research and Web documentation aggregating information on the 1917 New York Food Riots. I encourage you to click through to their blog and learn more. Moschitto was kind enough to share these pertinent links with GailSez readers:
Timeline of events
An account (via a cookbook!) of how the riots started (this is one of the company’s text sources too)
Anti-immigrant sentiment & reaction to high prices for potatoes and onions – ‘let them eat rice’
This entry includes the first photo that the company found of the riots
“The number of people without enough food to eat on a regular basis remains stubbornly high, at over 800 million, and is not falling significantly.”
- United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization, 2003
• Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. (United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization)
• Food security for a household means access by all members at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life. Food security includes at a minimum (1) the ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, and (2) an assured ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways (that is, without resorting to emergency food supplies, scavenging, stealing, or other coping strategies). (United States Department of Agriculture)
A theatrical work like “Give Us Bread” can remind us of these facts and goals, and that is good, but it didn’t bring me any closer to understanding what I, as an individual, could do to make a difference. The company held a community workshop in conjunction with its appearance at the Berkshire Fringe which was to focus on climate change and barriers individuals encounter to making environmentally healthy choices. Acquiring information on individual empowerment is good, but addressing the global issue of food insecurity goes way beyond environmental concerns and individual action. The show was satisfying theatre, but the socio-political questions it raised left me feeling frustrated and powerless.
You can view an excerpt from this show on YouTube.
The Anthropologists’ production of Give Us Bread will be presented at the Berkshire Fringe Festival on Wednesday, August 4 at 8 p.m., Thursday, August 5 at 9 p.m., Friday, August 6 & Saturday, August 7 at 7 p.m., Sunday, August 8 at 4 p.m. A Community Workshop Eco Action Event will be held Saturday, August 7, at 1:30 p.m. The show runs 80 minutes and is suitable for ages 10 and up.
All performances take place at the Daniels Arts Center on the campus of Bard College at Simon’s Rock. All Berkshire Fringe main events are $15. There is a $1 service charge per ticket included for phone and internet orders. Pi¢k your own pri¢e opening nights are available at the door starting 1 hour before curtain. Call (413) 320-4175 or email tix@berkshirefringe.org for more information.