Word: terkel
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Armstrong says, "Ability and intelligence have nothing to do with gender. For an old blue-collar Polack [on his mother's side] like me, that's a hell of an admission." Workers in Chicago bars accepted Jane Byrne as mayor without any sense of trauma or endangered masculinity. Studs Terkel, anthropologist of the working class, explains: "The issue is dead. The guys in the bar have been conditioned by idols like Barbara Stanwyck. Now they're ready for a Gerri Ferraro or a Pat Schroeder...
...label conveys an aura of individualism, and many freelancers approach getting published less as a job than as a spiritual quest. But last week a fledgling National Writers Union framed a constitution and elected officers from among 1,500 dues-paying members, including Novelist Kurt Vonnegut and Journalist Studs Terkel. Said President Andrea Eagan, a feminist writer: "Without top names we would be like a baseball union without Reggie Jackson...
Instead, this exploration of the ambitions and frustrations of 26 working men and women--adapted from the 1978 Studs Terkel book, which was based in turn on copious interviews--moves ahead with unerring confidence. Director Jonathan Magaril focuses on simplicity, on mining all the emotion possible out of the script's surprisingly rich words. Though the play breaks some traditional rules of structure--building tension and plot through a series of tangentially linked cameos--and thus requires some unconventional tricks of production, Magaril cannot strictly be said to be experimenting. He knows exactly what he is about...
...Working which is sober and reflective. Briefly alone under the light, each secretary and steelworker and schoolteacher talks about life and the job, awkwardly philosophizes, and turns back to obscurity. Some evoke the original interview clearly, while others flower into song and acute, desperate commentary on their lives. Terkel evidently found articulate and thoughtful subjects for his research; instead of rambling "life's rough" sagas, he has documented startling flashes of insight...
...result successfully steers clear of a cliche ridden things-are-bad philosophy. Avoiding the didacticism of hammering home a single point--the misery of the downtrodden--Terkel instead has culled enough of a range of happiness and unhappiness from his interviewees to stir the emotions without demanding any clear reaction. For every openly frustrated speech--like the steelworker (Michael Rapposelli) who wants desperately to get out of work and "go tell some guy fuck you," because he can't tell his boss--there is a dreamer like Anthony Calnek's stonemason, who notices the crooked bricks in every house...