More than 1,000 bodies of garment workers have now been recovered from the collapsed Rana Plaza factory…

Women, most of whom are under thirty years old, make up 80% (1.5 million) of Bangladesh’s garment workers. Decades of studies of the ready-to-wear garment industry, which rose up in the 1980s and now accounts for more than three-quarters of Bangladesh’s total exports, find that employers prefer to hire women workers, who are perceived as docile, nimble, and willing to take lower wages; a woman garment worker earns 60% of her male colleague’s salary.

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To many Americans, the fire at Tazreen might have seemed eerily reminiscent of New York’s Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in 1911: more than 100 people, mostly disenfranchised women, dead in a cramped factory with no exit…

We certainly hope so.  Read the full article here:

http://www.policymic.com/articles/39931/bangladesh-building-collapse-why-it-should-scare-americans

The focus of the residency is to develop Triangle further so that this multilayered piece will be compatible with touring to theatres, universities, and international festivals.  Cast members from the successful 2011 run at CPR in Brooklyn who are returning for the residency in Vermont include vocalists Michael Douglas Jones (Anthony Braxton ensemble) and Amy Carrigan (Meredith Monk ensemble), musician/puppeteer Stephanie Richards (trumpet, Asphalt Orchestra), and puppeteer Jamie Moore (Basil Twist).  They will be joined Brattleboro puppeteer Finn Campman (Company of Strangers) and Boston musicians Zoe Christensen (clarinet and accordion, Painted Bird Ensemble) and Joelle Wagner (bassoon, Epistasis).  Scene and light design will be handled by Brattleboro residents Josh Moyse and Josh Goldstein.

Triangle not only conjures the memory of those who perished and survived the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire but again reminds us of where we see (or don’t see) similar events today.  Somewhere these Triangle women are still trapped—just as hundreds of garment workers have been in recent fires and the recent tragic building collapse in Bangladesh, which left 1100 dead. The play continues to ask, How do we understand a system that continues to allow and even encourage such practices?  To what extent are factory owners and corporations that profit from them also trapped by the system?

We look forward to sharing this important American memory with as wide an audience as possible–provoking discussion about contemporary third-world labor conditions and generating excitement around this visceral, multi-sensory style of storytelling.

We also got some great advice on what we could make more clear and how–for example, how during the opening of the Strike scene (scene 2), we can more effectively guide the viewer’s eye as the Blanck puppet builds his factory and the Joan puppet discovers and puts on her red striker’s sash.  People also had a lot of great feedback about how well the text and music work with each other and with the puppetry–and how they could work better.  All in all, the experience was invaluable.  We still have a lot of work to do to get ready for CPR next Thursday, but now we know for sure we’re on the right track.

Art by Dalia Sapon-Shevin, from the 1999 Seattle protests. This was on the back cover of one of my best friend's zines, Jim Straub.

In 2001 I hit a wall while studying music at New England Conservatory.

My friends from Philadelphia had not gone to college right away.  Most of them became activists in West Philadelphia.   It was a part of my life that I could not find in the practice rooms, practicing.  I wanted to work out this difference.   They wrote zines, so why couldn’t I?   But i had nothing to write about.

I also had a guilt – that I just wasn’t doing anything to contribute to the ‘good’.

But writing a song about injustices seemed contrived, meaningless.  And anything in music I’d ever seen – correction… ‘classical’ music – that was political just seemed totally overshadowed by the performers’ egos and their seemingly desperate attempt for stardom.

So, the conflict was that one one hand, I wanted to be political.  On the other-hand, I didn’t want to be an ass doing it.

But I thought – you know what – simply being different is activist, is political.  Playing new music and composing is radical compared to bolstering the ‘conservative’ pillars of the conservatory.   Simply the idea of pushing the boundaries, of fighting complacency.  Maybe that’s what I could write about.  The idea of political radicalization in art, just by being different, and not upholding the canon.

In a desperate attempt to veer away from the standard liberal arts curriculum for one measly credit, and to find guidance in this existential crisis, I turned to NEC liberal arts writing teacher, Patrick Keppel.  I wrote and I wrote.  I didn’t really know what to say, I was 19.  In the end, especially since i never did write that zine, I knew one thing – just that I couldn’t sit around writing stuff. I just had to do stuff.  During that time I composed a setting of Beckett’s “Rockaby” with what would become TRIIIBE. Simply making people feel something… not just something different, or innovative, or ‘challenging’… but just the act of feeling – of becoming vulnerable for an instant I decided was the most powerful and political thing I could do…. that creating something that makes people feel something was the only thing that could create change.   That beauty as a simple, undefinable thing was stronger than anything.  So, basically, I quit my activist dreams, and just wrote music.

Now, ten years later I find myself immersed by a very political work, and not just by myself, but with Patrick.   And you know why this is going to work?  It’s not because I can handle politics now… quite the opposite.   It’s because i still can’t.   This play is about getting inside people’s heads.   About the feeling, about the vulnerability, not only of the seamstresses who suffered, but also the activist whose determination is tested, the factory owner whose guilt is like a prison.   In the end, if you can feel something, then you can empathize… you can stand in someone else’s shoes… and when you do that, when in your own shoes, you suddenly have the ability to actually talk to them, really communicate.  And isn’t that what it’s all about?   Understanding someone else’s suffering – even your enemy’s.  That is where change is really born.

Want to let people know about what we’re doing?  Feel free to share this video on your social networks.

The puppets do not speak or sing so they are consigned to visual language, which despite all of the writing I have done for puppetry, I recognize is really their strength. The libretto, although stylized, does have scenes which are more naturalistic and literal. A temptation would be to have the puppets illustrate the action of what is happening in the scene, but we have decided to focus the puppetry to create a physical manifestation of interior action.

What does that mean? We’ll find out! But it did lead to some classic puppetry phrases like “she leaves her arm behind”. You know you have left the world of the actor and entered the world of the puppet when appendages start dropping!

It is interesting to be reading about the labor disputes in Wisconsin right now and then be working with some of  the same issues in a piece set almost 100 years ago.  Yesterday, I electronically signed a petition at www.workingforchange.com.  This action seems pretty pale compared to these early factory workers striking efforts.