One of the newsgroups I recently joined over at Yahoo! is the Polish American Forum. There has been quite a discussion going on around the play Polish Joke by David Ives.

The play is currently being staged by the University of Detroit Mercy (a Jesuit university) and the University’s Theater Company to protests from many in the Polish-American community.

The play has been out for a while and the Polish-American community has frequently commented on it in the negative (see the American Council for Polish Culture’s response by Marek Czarnecki for an example).

The problem with the play, and its current staging, as I see it is threefold:

A Failure in Plot and Development

It is an attempt to examine a serious issue —“ self identity and the affect nativist thinking and philosophy has had on intercultural relationships in the United States —“ done poorly. Cheap humor that buys into nativist stereotypes, while effective as a foil (how many cringed when we recently heard about Michael ‘Kramer’ Richards outburst at two black men) is useless as comedic cover for a poorly developed plot.

The Village Voice reviewer Michael Feingold covers that well in Partial Births: Parks Faces Tragedy; Ives Masks Comedy

David Ives … [s]triving to write a full-evening comedy … has fallen victim to the defensive impulse to make it funny. As a result, he’s filled Polish Joke with skits to the point where you hardly notice the play he’s trying to write. As staged by John Rando, with a quartet of able comedians gleefully headed by Nancy Opel and Walter Bobbie, the skits are often extremely funny indeed. The Irish skit, which runs on a little too long for me, is most people’s favorite; as a Smith & Dale fan, I prefer the doctor sketch. But what I’d really prefer most would be the play Ives apparently intended to write, on the American dilemma of ethnicity versus assimilation, which is centered on his fifth character, a Polish American who doesn’t want to be a Polish joke. Not only interesting in himself, this character is played by Malcolm Gets with touching sincerity and grace, as a human being living a nightmare rather than a straight man in sketch comedy. This is unfair; either Ives should build a play around the character or Rando should show the actor how to walk this way. (If he could walk that way, he wouldn’t need the talcum powder.)

Instead, Ives’s hero proceeds from sketch to sketch, the punchline of his joke life being that he marries the only utterly unhumorous person in the play and settles down with her in Poland. Which may be a handy way to wind things up, but says little about how Ives feels we should live in this nation of immigrants. Like Parks, Ives lets his inner preoccupations usurp, rather than interact with, external reality. But where Parks has at least pushed the outer doors open, Ives farcically slams them shut.

A Failure of Ideals

The play is being put on by a nominally Catholic University, not that I should expect anything different. The R.C. Church in the United States grew up under clerics who heavily bought into nativist stereotyping. In addition, allegedly Catholic universities, such as Notre Dame, regularly sponsor plays like the Vagina Monologues and have a tendency to discipline students who exhibit Catholic witness —“ perhaps out of fear of their own weak witness. Even so, when I hear the word Catholic and think of the faith of the Poles who have contributed time, talent, and treasure to build up the R.C. Church in the United States, I do expect different. To some extent, that is why I am a member on the PNCC, I couldn’t take the regular doses of cognitive dissonance. The R.C. Church in the United States has a long track record of relegating Polish-Americans to third class status —“ and it continues to this day. Pray, pay, and obey everyone because you know, we have a pope.

A Failure to Examine

The play fails to examine the pain that nativist stereotyping has caused. Economic deprivation, leaving many Polish-Americans a generation behind their peers, families turning their ethic identity into a closely guarded secret through a series of name changes and other assimilation techniques, self-hated, glass ceilings, and I could go on. The age old question of identity and its relationship to culture is lost for those from whom their very identity has been hidden by their parents and grandparents. If Mr. Ives has pain, he should explore it more seriously.

The affect of nativist stereotypes on Polish-Americans has been either negative assimilation (a complete washing out of any historical-cultural connection) or abject defensiveness. Join a Polish-American society, and as in the play, be regaled by stories of Kościuszko, Pułaski, Pope John Paul, Marie Curie, and a list of names and events miles long. Polish-Americans of that stripe are so busy defending themselves, their history and culture; they’ve lost sight of the future.

The arts should explore the full gamut of human emotions and relationships. Some of it, like nativism and stereotyping are dark corners of this nation’s psyche, little explored. Mr. Ives and the University of Detroit Mercy would do better to explore these areas in a way that challenges our complacency, our latent discrimination, and our identity politics rather than buying into them*.

*NOTE: Leaders within the Polish-American community took the initiative to confront the University and they ‘agreed’ to open a public forum on the issues raised. Ref. Deal Made On “Polish Joke” At University from the Polish Falcons website.