Green Day's America idiot
Joe Kempkes
Issue date: 10/1/09 Last update: 10/1/09 at 1:59 AM PST
Section: Arts
After seeing the world premier of "American Idiot" at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, I had one big problem: having to wait twenty-three hours to see it again the next night. It's THAT good.
The regular opening night gray-haired season ticket holders had surrendered their tickets to their kids for this production, which was written by Green Day's Billy Joe Armstrong. The following night the audience was back to normal--a mix of older and younger people. A middle-aged woman in a Green Day T-shirt I spoke with in the lobby told me her daughter listened to the Grateful Dead. Anywhere else but Berkeley this would be read as a generational mix-up of musical taste.
The woman told me she played the CD "American Idiot" in her car since it was released in 2004. And what songs did she hear? Songs with titles like "Give me Novocain" and "Letterbomb." Songs like "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" and "Jesus of Suburbia,." No, this is Berkeley: both mother and daughter had it exactly right. Whereas the Grateful Dead fans used peace as an organizing tool Green Day's fans used anger. But they both live in the same part of the forest.
Director Michael Mayer tells how he went about incorporating the songs into the stage production: "There is one narrative in the record "American Idiot": the story of the Jesus of Suburbia who goes to the City, meets St. Jimmy and a girl called Whatsername, and finds himself caught in a struggle between authenticity and fabrication; between emotional connection and the numbing effects of drugs.
"When I began to open the story up, I called the Jesus character Johnny and gave him two close friends: Will and Tunny each with his own story as well. And the show became a three-fold journey of self-discovery. Will, whose girlfriend Heather is pregnant, stays in Suburbia and becomes the victim of his own inertia; Tunny has a television-induced mystical revelation that moves him to enlist in the military, bringing him face to face with his mortality in a senseless war in the Middle East."
It's Mayer's last point that gets to the heart of this monumental production--"American Idiot" is a story that grows out of its time and place and shows (rather than tells) the consequences that war is having on these specific Americans and American culture in general.
It's no coincidence that of the five hundred thirty-four members of Congress that voted to send U.S. troops to Afghanistan, the only one that voted against that war was Barbara Lee, the Berkeley/Oakland U. S. Representative. "American Idiot" reaffirms her courageous, prescient decision.
The regular opening night gray-haired season ticket holders had surrendered their tickets to their kids for this production, which was written by Green Day's Billy Joe Armstrong. The following night the audience was back to normal--a mix of older and younger people. A middle-aged woman in a Green Day T-shirt I spoke with in the lobby told me her daughter listened to the Grateful Dead. Anywhere else but Berkeley this would be read as a generational mix-up of musical taste.
The woman told me she played the CD "American Idiot" in her car since it was released in 2004. And what songs did she hear? Songs with titles like "Give me Novocain" and "Letterbomb." Songs like "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" and "Jesus of Suburbia,." No, this is Berkeley: both mother and daughter had it exactly right. Whereas the Grateful Dead fans used peace as an organizing tool Green Day's fans used anger. But they both live in the same part of the forest.
Director Michael Mayer tells how he went about incorporating the songs into the stage production: "There is one narrative in the record "American Idiot": the story of the Jesus of Suburbia who goes to the City, meets St. Jimmy and a girl called Whatsername, and finds himself caught in a struggle between authenticity and fabrication; between emotional connection and the numbing effects of drugs.
"When I began to open the story up, I called the Jesus character Johnny and gave him two close friends: Will and Tunny each with his own story as well. And the show became a three-fold journey of self-discovery. Will, whose girlfriend Heather is pregnant, stays in Suburbia and becomes the victim of his own inertia; Tunny has a television-induced mystical revelation that moves him to enlist in the military, bringing him face to face with his mortality in a senseless war in the Middle East."
It's Mayer's last point that gets to the heart of this monumental production--"American Idiot" is a story that grows out of its time and place and shows (rather than tells) the consequences that war is having on these specific Americans and American culture in general.
It's no coincidence that of the five hundred thirty-four members of Congress that voted to send U.S. troops to Afghanistan, the only one that voted against that war was Barbara Lee, the Berkeley/Oakland U. S. Representative. "American Idiot" reaffirms her courageous, prescient decision.
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
Me
posted 10/02/09 @ 12:41 PM PST
excuse me. But can you actually spell. i mean you have spent american has an n on the end. and novacaine isnt spelt right either. so im sorry but you need to spell check before you post this article
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