Lisa Cordes stands between a chalkboard and an audience; a writer, a performer, a professor. Chalk dust flies as she writes the word "miscegenation" on the barren black wall before turning to the audience to define it. "Miscegenation," she says, enunciating each syllable. "Interbreeding between whites and non-whites." And so boldly begins the play, American Alphabet. With each new screech of white chalk on the black background (metaphor, anyone?), she garrulously narrates the timeline of race in America through her own genealogy and trademark dialectical approach.
This particular story begins on an August day in 1863 when her great-grandfather joined Quantrill's pro-confederate forces to raid Lawrence, Kansas, and spans five years and seven score later to the birth of her own mixed race grand-daughter born the day after Barack Obama (himself a product of miscegenation) was elected President of the United States of America in 2008. Here, Cordes successfully intermeshes the themes of politics and family in poignant context--a classic trademark of her work as a playwright and performer.
Politics is a constant and relevant muse providing Cordes with ongoing material that presents itself as newly as a fresh headline. Hers is a living newspaper approach to theatre--be it in the live epic reading of Sarah Palin's book, Going Rogue in the "We-Read-It-So-You-Don't-Have-To" series at the Fishtank or on her blog, Ticket to the Zeitgeist, where she punctuates the "performance of politics, the politics of performance."* (*See The Never-Ending Palin Show.)
Though politics are the ignition of her creativity, she has no political ambitions herself. "Politics are about public service and I think I serve the public just fine. Besides, politics is irony-free. To me, irony is like oxygen. I'd die without it. And I'd die if I couldn't actually speak what was on my mind."
During her 25 year career in the arts, she has fearlessly spoken her mind. "The theatre is about language. I string words together in some way that creates new meaning and that's what I lead with. I take on subjects that have resonance in our lives."
Her subjects run the political gamut from the national to the interpersonal. A professional highlight was a play she was commissioned to write for a suburban high school.
"It was about the ruptured relationships between fathers and sons...It was very empowering for them. I remember sitting in the audience and I had never experienced an audience that was hanging on every word. The audience was feeling recognized, validated and feeling like their story and their reality was put up there. It was just so moving. It doesn't get better than that. Like any good performance, the audience was having a conversation back and forth with the actors and with themselves. I felt that it was efficacious."
Prop 8 on Trial is her newest descant. Cordes followed the trial coverage fervently, winnowing the cogent facts from fear-based fiction, for her new play based off of the transcripts of California's Proposition 8 Trial in the ongoing battle for gay marriage rights. This show "captures the arguments of the trial, the humanity of the participants, and the size of this historical moment," says Cordes.
Prop 8 on Trial will be produced thanks to a Rocket Grant from the Warhol Foundation and the Charlotte Street Foundation. As former grant-writer for multiple arts organizations, she advises: "You make a case, you make the argument and you tell the story. Some projects might be a great idea, but it might not fit the grant. It's about framing the proposal. It's a product and you're selling it. You've got to make the pitch."
But first things first: process before pitch.
"There are times when you're fallow, when you're doing other things. It's all part of your process, your store of information and ideas. I don't know how to do the process without being overcome and overwhelmed by doubt and fear. And it doesn't get any easier or better—except now, I don't know, it's like a batting average. It's that my batting average is high enough that I think, okay, I'll try it one more time."
Lisa is a Spring 2010 Artist INC Fellow and the Artist INC Marketing Expert.
Written by David Wayne Reed, 2010