The Los Angeles Poverty Department Dramatizes 1998 Congressional Hearing at De Vrede van Utrecht Festival in the Netherlands. Nov. 30 and Dec. 1 and 2, 2005
Location: Leeuwenbergh, Servaasbolwerk 1a, Utrecht
In a unique theatrical event combining cutting-edge performance with a community conversation on social policy, Artistic Director John Malpede and the Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD) present Agents & Assets, designed to highlight the complex relationships and consequences of the U.S. government’s “war on drugs”.
As the name clearly states, the “war on drugs” imposes a military
solution on a public health and social problem. It turns our own
citizens into 'the enemy' and victimizes them and their communities. —John Malpede
Performances will be followed by a public discussion of current drug policy issues in The Netherlands. Discussion topics will include:
Nov. 30; Panel: John Leerdam (Pvd) and Bart Swiert (defense
laywer 'mulas'), moderator Jan Langendijk (director Social Development
Facility, Utrecht): zero tolerance “mini war on drugs” against drug
swallowing arrivals (mulas) from former Dutch colonies, Netherlands
Antilles and Surinam.
Dec. 1; Riet van Denderen (GOUD), Han (ex homeless) and Marry
(Green Party, Utrecht): an examination of the current policy in Utrecht
of providing housing and drugs to addicted hard drug users and homeless
people, and tensions within the European Union arising from Dutch drug
policy.
Dec. 2; Panel: Martin Jeltsma (Trans-National Institute, a drug
policy institute based in Amsterdam) and Fawat (film maker and Afghan
refugee), moderator Jan Langendijk (director Social Development
Facility, Utrecht): Dutch participation in the US led “War on Drugs” in
Afghanistan, where troops from the Netherlands are deployed.
November 23, 2005 THEATER LA TIMES
For this LAPD, the weapons are words
Los Angeles Poverty Department takes a conversation-starter to the Netherlands.
By Christopher Reynolds, Times Staff Writer
Rick Mantley, a veteran of high times and hard living in downtown Los Angeles, leads a mostly modest, stable life these days. He edits a newsletter for the Los Angeles Community Action Network. He sleeps in an apartment next to skid row. But he's about to see Europe for the first time, and it's all thanks to his part-time job as inspector general of the CIA.
Mantley, 52, is an actor with the Los Angeles Poverty Department, a 20-year-old theater troupe that draws its performers from the homeless and formerly homeless residents of downtown Los Angeles. Every time the troupe performs its piece "Agents & Assets," he plays CIA inspector general Fred Hitz, a veteran spy-agency official testifying before a congressional committee about the CIA's alleged role in the California crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s.
And "Agents & Assets" keeps coming back.
Created in 2001 by LAPD founder and director John Malpede, the show took the LAPD's players to Detroit in 2002 and Cleveland in 2004. In late November, Malpede, Mantley and 12 other LAPD members will fly to Utrecht, in the Netherlands, to be part of an arts festival there. The troupe will perform the 70-minute piece in English on Nov. 30, Dec. 1 and Dec. 2, each performance followed by a discussion (in English and Dutch) of international drug policies. (The festival organizers are paying for the troupe's travel, which for most of the actors entails applying for their first passports.)
"I have to refresh myself every time we reprise the play, but it comes back," said Mantley.
Since its premiere, "Agents & Assets" has won attention for the star-crossed way it brings content and performers together. The starting idea, Malpede said, was to have murky workings of the federal government explored by actors who have seen policies translated into street-level experience. And given the last few months' headlines, Malpede added, this seemed an opportune time to think about how U.S. administrations use their intelligence-gathering agencies.
All 31 pages of the script are gleaned from testimony by Hitz and questioning by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) and others. The full Hitz report, prompted by reporter Gary Webb's 1996 investigative series in the San Jose Mercury News, filled two volumes and hundreds of pages.
It found that CIA officials, eager to back the Nicaraguan Contras, kept mum about their drug dealing to raise money. But Hitz stopped short of endorsing Webb's thesis that the CIA was complicit in the explosion of the crack cocaine trade in the 1980s. Webb committed suicide in 2004.
The LAPD's play is simpler than all that.
"It's set up as a hearing room. Everyone wears suits. There are a lot of American flags, suits and briefcases," said Malpede. The dialogue "sort of speaks for itself…. It seemed like there was such a big gap between how policy gets made and the people who have to suffer the policy," he said.
After performances, said Mantley, "people come at me, and they're outraged. They believe that the CIA is responsible for the drug epidemic that has plagued this country, and they think I'm exonerating them." It's easier to believe all of an accusation or none it, Mantley said, than it is to see "shades of gray."
Mantley, a balding African American who stands about 5 feet 8, first won the central role because he'd been a reliable performer in previous shows, and because — despite his own admitted cocaine troubles in the old days — he has a memory sharp enough to handle a five-page monologue thick with the argot of government.
"In theatrical dialogue, you can't do a lot of hemming and hawing. It can't be like normal conversation," said Mantley. For the European audience, he noted, the cast will speak more slowly, and some tangential references have been dropped.
Meanwhile, if the show endures much longer, Mantley may outlast the original Fred Hitz in the job. Hitz, who started as CIA inspector general in 1990, left less than a year after the 1998 hearings to take a teaching job at his alma mater, Princeton University.
"He did his job," said Mantley. "He wasn't a stooge or a patsy."
PRESS RELEASE:
LAPD CONSIDERS NETHERLANDS DRUG POLICY
LOS ANGELES POVERTY DEPARTMENT to perform “AGENTS & ASSETS” in Vrede van Utrecht Festival in The Netherlands.
Nov. 30 and Dec. 1 and 2 2005
Agents and Assets dramatizes a 1998 Congressional Hearing on crack cocaine. The occasion of the hearing is the CIA Inspector General's report about allegations of CIA involvement in cocaine trafficking to fund the Nicaraguan Contras-at a time when Congress had expressly forbid such activities. At the heart of the issues addressed by Agents and Assets is the misuse of U.S. intelligence agencies by the executive branch of the government.
The entire Agents and Assets script is taken from the hearing transcript. Congressmen / women and the CIA Inspector General are played by on-the-ground veterans of the war on drugs. The lives of the cast members have been radically impacted by drug use, either because they were formerly addicted, or simply because they live in communities that have been devastated by drugs and the war against drugs.
Having the lawmakers played by people who have probably suffered from the policies enacted by the characters that they're portraying is a brilliant coup de theatre; but more striking are the words themselves, which are reportedly quoted verbatim from the congressional record. What these words make clear regardless of who's speaking them-is that the failures of the War on Drugs (committed by multiple administrations of both parties) are woefully being repeated today in the War on Terror.
James C. Taylor, Theater Talk, KCRW-FM 2005
The Los Angeles Poverty Department, despite the homeless status of many of its members, has thrived for years from its downtown outpost and continues to offer theater that's often stunning in its honesty and lack of pretension. Constance Monaghan, LA Weekly, 1997
14 LAPD cast members will travel to The Netherlands for three performances. The performances are produced by the Vrede van Utrecht Festival, a multi-year Arts and Civic Affairs celebration of the signing of the Peace Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.
Performances will be followed by a public discussion of current drug policy issues in The Netherlands. Discussion topics will include:
Nov. 30; Panel: John Leerdam (Pvd) and Bart Swiert (defense laywer 'mulas'), moderator Jan Langendijk (director Social Development Facility, Utrecht): zero tolerance “mini war on drugs” against drug swallowing arrivals (mulas) from former Dutch colonies, Netherlands Antilles and Surinam.
Dec. 1; Riet van Denderen (GOUD), Han (ex homeless) and Marry (Green Party, Utrecht): an examination of the current policy in Utrecht of providing housing and drugs to addicted hard drug users and homeless people, and tensions within the European Union arising from Dutch drug policy.
Dec. 2; Panel: Martin Jeltsma (Trans-National Institute, a drug policy institute based in Amsterdam) and Fawat (film maker and Afghan refugee), moderator Jan Langendijk (director Social Development Facility, Utrecht): Dutch participation in the US led “War on Drugs” in Afghanistan, where troops from the Netherlands are deployed.
LAPD 's mission is to create performance work that connects lived experience to the social forces that shape the lives and communities of people living in poverty.
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