Rollence Patugan
The Billionaires rock the house: Clifford Tasner (in top hat), Wil B., backup singers and go-go dancers at Atwater Village Theatre for ARULA's “Transparency, Taxes & Tweets.”
The day after November’s presidential election, L.A. theater director and acting teacher Sue Hamilton decided to take her emotions and her art and put it onstage and give the proceeds to progressive groups. Artists Rise Up Los Angeles was born.
The theme of ARULA’s spirited April 18 live all-comedy show on Tax Day at Atwater Village Theatre was “Transparency, Taxes & Tweets.” The program of parody songs, skits and stand-up comedy, was headlined by Trae Crowder, a.k.a. “The Liberal Redneck.” Comedian/actor Paul Elia (ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) opened the show, calling his family’s emigrating from Iraq to Detroit “a lateral move.” Identifying himself as an Iraqi Catholic, Elia quipped: “I’m like a white running back—not a lot of us around.”
The Billionaires rocked the sold out 99-seat playhouse with the first of several performances throughout the show. Led by the faux ritzy, black suit-clad “50 Billion” (rapper Wil B.) and “Felonius Ax” (Clifford Tasner, president of the Americans for Democratic Action’s SoCal chapter), who also wore a top hat and tie emblazoned with a $100 bill motif, accompanied by a trio of Supremes-like gown-garbed backup singers, The Billionaires belted out the hiphop number “The Billionaires Are In The House” with the lyrics: “We won’t stop till the middle class is gone, We’re waging class war like Genghis Khan.”
Rollence Patugan
Mackenzie Kyle takes on Kellyanne Conway.
Pakistani-born standup comic Mona Shaikh returned for her second ARULA stint. Kvetching about tight TSA security at airports, where alarmed officers confronted her saying, “There’s a ticking sound coming from you,” the 30-something shot back, “That’s just my biological clock.” Shaikh derided Trump as a “bully” and the “Orange Hitler,” whose anti-Islamic stance “even has me scared of Muslims!” The fearless funnywoman mercilessly mimicked and mocked Melania’s speaking voice, adding that her GOP convention plagiarism of Michelle Obama’s speech “proves that the immigrants Trump brings in steal from Americans.” Shaikh also criticized the “Nutcracker” getup Kellyanne Conway wore to the inauguration, insisting the presidential counselor needs gay friends to counsel her about Conway’s fashion sense (or lack of).
Mackenzie Kyle also lampooned the Con-woman. To the tune of “Little Girls” from Annie, the Kellyanne impersonator dripped venom, with a parody song voicing contempt for “Liberals.”
Trae Crowder, shared droll observations about life South of the Mason-Dixon Line. Growing up poor in rural Tennessee, the so-called “Liberal Redneck,” who has appeared on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher and ABC’s The View, has a unique take on Red State reactionaries.
“Black guys get picked on by police. But rednecks get picked up by space aliens.” In a post-show interview with The Progressive, Crowder described himself as having “socialist-leanings.”
The first member of his family to attend university (the 31-year-old said he earned an MBA), a particular object of Trae’s wry ire is the Stars and Bars. In his Tennessee twang Crowder verbally assaulted know-nothings who defend displaying “the Confederate flag because it’s their rights as Americans.” Reminding the audience that the Confederacy literally attempted to leave the U.S.A., Crowder asserted, “There are very few symbols that are more fucking un-American than a Confederate flag.” Crowder also announced a “bulletproof” plan that would “get rid of the Confederate flag: Have the LGBT movement formally adopt it.”
A bulletproof plan to get rid of the Confederate flag: Have the LGBT movement formally adopt it.
His star on the rise, Crowder is touring comedy clubs and theaters across the country (including the South!). Crowder also has a development deal with Warners for a TV series and co-authored the Simon & Schuster book The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin’ Dixie Outta the Dark. He has moved to Burbank and took time out of his busy schedule to perform at the ARULA benefit because “I believe in what they’re doing.” Ticket sales to the April 18 production were donated to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based nonprofit civil rights organization and watchdog of hate groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan. (Proceeds from ARULA’s January 31 sold out debut, “E Pluribus Unum,” in a 300-seat theater, were donated to the ACLU, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Human Rights Campaign, NARAL Pro-Choice America, Natural Resources Defense Council.
I asked Crowder if Southerners scorned him. Crowder confessed some of the good ol’ boys he grew up with feel he’s betrayed his roots and is “exploiting them,” while other Tennesseans “are proud of me and what I’ve accomplished - even if they disagree with me.”
The ARULA program ended with The Billionaires, joined by a bluegrass band and the entire cast, singing a parody of Woody Guthrie’s beloved lefty anthem “This Land is Your Land”, with the satirical refrain: “This Land is Our Land! This Land is Our Land! It is not your land, because it’s our land! Because we bought it. That’s why it’s our land! This land belongs to him and me! ”
Artists Rise Up Los Angeles now has counterparts in New York and Chicago, while Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright/screenwriter Robert Schenkkan’s anti-Trump drama Building the Wall is being staged nationwide and overseas. According to executive producer and director Sue Hamilton, ARULA is planning a summer production. Trump-era audiences may be witnessing the birth of a “Theatre of Resistance” in the tradition of the 1930s’ “Proletarian Theatre.”
For more info: www.artistsriseupla.com.
L.A.-based critic and film historian Ed Rampell is the presenter and programmer of “10 Films That Shook the World”, a monthly cinematic centennial celebration of the Russian Revolution taking place through Nov. 7. On April 28 Esther Shub’s 1927 Soviet documentary “The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty” is being presented 7:30 p.m. at the Los Angeles Workers Center.