January 22-28, 2004

art

Getting and Spending

Money matters: The casts of Nickel and Dimed (above) and Abundance (below) are the faces of the working poor in these two Philadelphia premieres.

Two new plays about money (and the lack of it) open on Philadelphia stages.

by Toby Zinman

Nickel and Dimed and Abundance, two shows about money, open in the coming days. Both plays are based on real people and real experiences, and both plays hope to cause their audiences to think about the ever-worsening economic inequities in our society. Each show has five actors in multiple roles in multiple stories, and each seeks to raise our consciousness about getting and spending.

In order to write the book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America (which has been on The New York Times best-seller list for 72 weeks), Barbara Ehrenreich went undercover on a commissioned journalistic investigation -- and ultimately an indictment -- of the non-living wage called "minimum." She left her comfortable life, her house and her boyfriend and moved to a city where she knew no one, multiple times, each for a one-month stint. She had to find a place to live, a job and some way to survive. This was not one of those jump-into-a-tank-of-shark-infested-goo Survivor gimmicks, but a plunge into the life lived by too many Americans, 32 million of them, to be exact: 32 million working people who live below the poverty line (ludicrously designated as $18,000 for a family of four), most of them women with children, many of them living in cars, unable to afford housing. Joan Holden, a fiercely political playwright, has adapted the book for the stage.

My reaction to Ehrenreich's book was complicated -- horror at the facts, generalized guilt about my privileged life, frustration and a sense of helplessness about solutions beyond "starting a dialogue," irritation at the journalist's naivete and elitism: She is shocked that people take pride in doing even stupid jobs well. Nor did I believe for a minute her contention that her co-workers didn't perceive the difference between themselves and this fake co-worker, a gym-fit Ph.D. with a good haircut. PTC dramaturg Michele Volansky told me the discussion in the rehearsal room focused on the actors' own experiences in minimum-wage jobs, acknowledging that it's one thing to be a retail clerk temporarily, and another to be a retail clerk. On the other hand, Ehrenreich had the skills to write the book and the high-powered connections to get it published, thereby letting readers know about the outrageous situation of many of their fellow Americans.

The cast of Abundance

My reaction to PTC's producing this show was first a foolish one: I instantly thought that not a single person the show is about could afford a theater ticket. My second thought was that they don't need to see this show, they already know how hard it is to be "nickel and dimed," and that the people who could afford the tickets are the very people who need to see it. In fact, PTC's outreach program was way ahead of me and is providing 20 free tickets for each of 34 performances to organizations like Welfare-to-Work and Career Wardrobe. These people will also bring information about their organizations for the rest of the audience.

Kathy Black, head of the Philadelphia Coalition of Labor Union Women, is very pleased that the word is being spread. As she pointed out, heatedly, to me, "The way to get by in this world is to unionize," and the de-unionization of America has widened inequities. Wal-Mart, where Ehrenreich got her last job in Minneapolis, is the world's biggest corporation and the most egregious offender in the depressed-wages/low-prices syndrome.

Marty Pottenger was a carpenter for 20 years before she decided in 1998 to "throw my weight, my full energy at theater," and then she won an Obie. On the phone just before her show, Abundance, opened in New York -- it opens in Philly at the Painted Bride next week -- I was struck by Pottenger's husky laugh and unpretentious speech, free of the highfalutin malarkey so frequent in interviews. When I asked her if she made enough money from the theater to live on, she replied: "Enough. I make enough money to live modestly, but I'm happy. But I have no health insurance. It helps to match your intention to something you care about, something you think is important, when things get scary."

In order to write Abundance, Pottenger has been leading free community workshops for four years as part of "a national conversation" about money; more specifically, she held "dialogue workshops" in New York City where 12 people, ranging from the very rich to the homeless, met monthly to talk economics, which Pottenger feels has the "exciting, painful, breakthrough energy" that we heard in the talk at the start of the civil rights and women's movements. The participants in the workshop become one of three narrative strands of the show, intertwined with another narrative line about two garbage men who provide a lot of the necessary statistics (example: Americans spend $62 million on carbonated soft drinks a year), as well as a third story about a billionaire collector of historical paintings (whereby we get U.S. history) and his servant.

As Pottenger told me, "Theater is a place of listening; society is organized around talking, not listening. Listening is like yoga -- you keep getting better at it and it keeps getting harder."

Nickel and Dimed runs Jan. 23-Feb. 22, $30-$45, Philadelphia Theatre Co. at Plays & Players Theater, 1714 Delancey St., 215-569-9700.

Abundance runs Jan. 29-31, $15-$20, Painted Bride, 230 Vine St., 215-925-9914. For information on special events related to Nickel and Dimed and Philadelphia Theater Co.’s free post-show discussions with the playwright and others, call 215-985-1400 or visit www.phillytheatreco.com.