PETER L. STEIN
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A Brave and Startling Truth

5/29/2014

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I met Maya Angelou just one time, in 1998; her presence was formidable, her voice, unforgettable. She was on one of her many visits to San Francisco and had stopped by the television station where I worked, KQED, where in the late 1960s she had produced a series of cultural essays called Blacks, Blues, Black!  I asked her to participate in the documentary I was making about the history of The Fillmore, where she had once lived and worked as a performer. She politely declined, declaring herself too busy.

Little did I know what was occupying her, among many projects: that very year my (future) friend Stephanie Rapp had commissioned her to write a poem on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco. I had never seen this poem until today. It is stunning, powerful, more relevant than ever...unmistakably Angelou. She will be missed.

A Brave and Startling Truth

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth

And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms

When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil

When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze

When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse

When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world

When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear

When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.

~Maya Angelou

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Lafee, Lenny & LGBT Movies

5/21/2014

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It’s shaping up to be a varied and busy next few weeks, so here’s a quick update on some activities where you can find me hanging out onstage, backstage, and in character…in a 75-seat black box…at the Berkeley Rep…and back in the Castro Theatre.

Lafee: This coming Sunday evening (May 25), I’ll be performing an excerpt of my (creeping-toward-the-finish-line) solo play The Disappearance of Alfred Lafee. The scenes (about 20 minutes in all) are different from those I performed in February at The Marsh and Stage Werx, though if you saw me at the Berkeley Marsh last year you will recognize them. The rest of the interesting lineup at Solo Sundays will be new, so take a break from the grill this weekend and come down and join the fun.

Lenny: The talented musician/playwright/ performer Hershey Felder—you may have seen his one-man show about George Gershwin last year at the Berkeley Rep—has a new solo piece called Maestro, all about the lives and loves of the inimitable Leonard Bernstein. I’ll get a chance to chat with Hershey Felder in an onstage conversation after his performance on Sunday evening June 15, as part of a benefit evening organized by the great people at Jewish Family Children’s Services of the East Bay. Come out and see an interesting show and support a fantastic organization. Tickets for this special performance are here.

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LGBT Movies: I’ve had a great time this spring working as Senior Programmer for Frameline, the upcoming 38th annual San Francisco International Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Film Festival. We have curated a fabulous collection of 214 films from more than 30 countries. The festival runs June 19-29 – and the program is now online! Tickets go on sale Friday May 23 for members, next Friday (May 30) to the general public. I’ll post another blog entry with some personal favorites and observations, but start browsing the lineup now, it’s pretty hot! Of special pride and interest: a very timely and (I believe) necessary spotlight on new Russian features, documentaries and shorts  with LGBT subject matter, highlighting some especially brave filmmaking in this difficult moment for Russian LGBT artists and citizens.

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