Start

Today is Start.

We begin rehearsals for Animal Farm. Finally. Preparations, when producing a play, seem infinite. I can obsess & OCD & micromanage with the best of them, but eventually the preparations become a white noise loop and it feels damn fine to just drop the first shoe.

Serendipity: this is Banned Book Week. Other than an excellent way to get young people excited about reading "subversive" material, Banned Book Week is a nice time to remember how wonderful it is to live in a place where we have the freedom to disseminate thoughts and ideas (and books).

George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984 both have a rich history on banned books lists around the world. Orwell wrote Animal Farm after his experiences fighting in the Spanish Civil War. He intended it to be an allegorical criticism of Stalinist corruption of the original Socialist ideals. (Orwell considered himself a "democratic socialist.") But he encountered difficulty trying to publish the book in Britain near the end of WWII, largely because publishers and government advisers recognized the book as anti-Soviet propaganda and, at the time, the Soviets were involved in a delicate partnership with the Allied forces, fighting Hitler's stomp across Europe. Orwell originally wrote a preface which complains about British government's suppression of his book, self-imposed British self-censorship and how the British people were suppressing criticism of the USSR, but somewhat ironically, Orwell's preface was censored and is not published in most editions of the book.

The Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm, published in 1947, was printed to be distributed among the numerous displaced Soviet citizens of Ukraine who were scattered across Europe. The American occupation forces assumed the edition to be propaganda printed on illegal presses, and handed 1,500 confiscated copies of Animal Farm over to the Soviet authorities.

And now (please forgive the clunky transition) we have a Vice Presidential candidate of the US in the year 2008 who, during her time as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, asked the town librarian how she could censor library books that some voters thought contained inappropriate language. The librarian, Mary Ellen Baker, "was aghast," according to the local press at the time. Palin later threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor. Now despite the fervor of blog content on this subject, there remains NO evidence of what books Palin wanted censored, or even whether or not her threat to fire Baker was related to Baker's refusal to comply with the censorship. AND she never succeeded in censoring any books. But I don't really care. That's just plain nuts.

I've reached a point now on this blog where my political opinions are less than subtle. And I've said that I don't want our production of Animal Farm to be a partisan or protest statement. That's still true. But as far as this blog goes, I think part of my self-imposed job is to address examples of hypocrisy in current events as they relate to Animal Farm. I WOULD LOVE SOME COUNTERPOINTS if you've got them.