The cast of Politiko
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Big Secret Theatre
Thursday, May 8 - Saturday, May 17
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In 1991, Anita Hill set off a political firestorm with her allegations that Clarence Thomas, her boss and, at that time, a nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, had made sexually suggestive comments during his tenure as chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, including: “Who has put pubic hair on my Coke?” In the aftermath of the revelation, Hill became an icon for sexual harassment whistle-blowing and a target for the smearing attacks of conservative pundits.
It might be overreaching to say that a scandal over sexual harassment is practically nostalgic in light of the war in Iraq, looming recession and a myriad of other domestic and international American blunders, but it is clear that the same personal, partisan attacks seen in the Anita Hill scandal live on in contemporary American politics.
Ghost River Theatre is staging a work written by its newly appointed artistic director, Jason Patrick Rothery, and directed by Stephen Drover, that takes aim at the halcyon days of smear with an eye to tracing one flashpoint in partisan mudslinging. In Politiko, the smear’s the thing.
“I think this was the point at which that type of politicking really exploded, where politics went from the parties looking at each other as opponents to looking at them as enemies,” he says of the play’s 1990s setting. “Post-Reagan, post-Cold War, conservatism lost its organizing principle: the Russians. Once that disappeared, it’s, ‘Who’s our enemy now?’ And, in many ways that became the Democrats. And the Democrats are saying, ‘We’re not the enemy,’ and the Republicans are training their weapons going: ‘Yes, you are.’”
Politiko begins as up-and-coming conservative ideologue Brock Oliphant (Geoffrey Ewert) earns himself a place in the limelight with a shocking exposé called Exposing Anita Hill. However, as the “facts” in his book begin to unwind in a Byzantine series of revealed lies and convenient political ends, he finds an unlikely ally in left-wing pundit Merreck Stewart (Andy Curtis). While Brock tries to maintain his facade of normalcy to associates like Internet muckraker Chet Trawl (Jordan Schartner), Merreck is a willing ear for revelations about, among others, an implicit conservative plot to unseat then-president Bill Clinton.
Melding fictionalized political allegory — Oliphant and Exposing Anita Hill, for one, are clear analogues for conservative author David Brock and his book The Real Anita Hill — with an Aaron Sorkin-fuelled sense of mania, the play is a politically charged potboiler about an increasingly aggressive game. The production is also a relative rarity — a small Canadian company taking on an explicitly American political scandal. Why not Jean Chretien’s golf balls or Stockwell Day’s wetsuit? “I hate Canada,” responds Rothery, po-faced.
“To be perfectly honest, I think that Canadian politics are kind of boring, which is probably a good thing,” he adds. “It’s a testament to our system that it’s not as interesting as what’s going on in the U.S.”
Cutting to the heart of smear, the polarizing condition missing from Canadian politics is what Rothery calls “seeing truth and reality almost exclusively though the prism of ideology.” In what Stephen Colbert famously described as “truthiness,” attacks as ideologically driven as those in Politiko allow candidates to shape debates on the basis of feeling that can easily steamroll even the most articulate rebuttals.
“The debate over Iraq became essentially a debate of moral righteousness based on what people believe, and not just that but what party you’re affiliated with,” notes Rothery, drawing a parallel between contemporary American politics and the Anita Hill scandal. “I think the real disaster is having debates not on facts, but on beliefs.”
For Brock, the moments of contrast between belief and fact, between his colleagues’ political ends and the failings of his book, provide his character-changing moments. While these same conflicts ultimately steer him to the left, his allies and their political investments are able to effortlessly ignore the same contradictions. In the absence of guilt, there’s nothing to deny.
What is clear, is that in charged debates between political opponents, symbols are powerful tools. Whether the metaphor is of enemy combatants, waging a partisan, political war against one another, or of simple mudslinging, the truth is that images are evocative. Stripped of gender politics and Republican-Democratic divisions, in the Anita Hill scandal it all came down to pubic hair on a Coke can.
“It could have been this abstract debate about sexual harassment,” says Rothery. “But to give them that benign object and the sexual object, that’s something everyone can grasp onto. What would have been that theoretical thing became real and tangible, and that’s when the scandal exploded. It’s one thing to accuse. It’s another to have this very real piece of evidence, attached to it.
“Or smeared onto it,” he adds.
