The Disciple

 The Disciple

Written and directed by Rachel Carey

Seen July 25, 2021 closing night at The Wild Project in Manhattan, NYC. Produced by Third Wing LTD

This one act, two-character, play tells a story of the relationship between Ayn Rand and her disciple Ayn Rand
Rand is played by Maja Wampuszyc, Branden by Cameron Darwin Bossert.

The play, even though it runs about an hour, takes us through a 25 year timeline that focuses on critical points in the relationship between master and follower.

They meet when he approaches her as a nervous starstruck 19 year old admirer of her work including the novel The Fountainhead (1943). His physical presence, as performed by Bossert in the role, is appropriately tense and apologetic in contrast to Wampuszyc's forceful, direct, and chain-smoking, Rand. In that first scene she accepts him as a disciple.

There is a well constructed scene in which Rand makes her move on the attractive young disciple. She was 15 years older. She even frames and uses her philosophy and tops him from the bottom in a sense that she tells him that he needs to be a forceful man and have what he wants regardless of the fact that she is married and he is deeply involved with a young woman. This is the liberterian free-love justification with fake male dominance thrown in. She tells him that they will tell their other partners about it and it will be fine, which it is at least between Rand and her husband.  And she tells him how to physically do it. She wants him to be forceful and rape her.

This sets up the main question that the piece explores. Which is: What happens when the person of intellectual social ideals is put in a situation in which her emotions do not cooperate.
As usual, when that person is a charismatic cult leader the disciple gets excommunicated and blamed for everything.
Rachel Carey has constructed an interesting and entertaining example in her play by putting Ayn Rand in this situation.
Any exposure of the nastiness of Rand and her ideals is welcome since unfortunately her reactionary notions had been so widely embraced in the ruggedly individualistic USA.

The show could be viewed just as an indictment of Rand, an accusation of gross inconsistency. 
Perhaps it is more useful to the audience as an invitation to look into one’s own ideals and what would happen if they were challenged by real-life emotions arising from real-life situations.

https://www.thirdwing.info/the-disciple-page

Get Me Roger Stone (2017)

Get Me Roger Stone (2017)
Written and Directed by Dylan Bank, Daniel DiMauro, Morgan Pehme


“Get Me”? The thing is, Roger Stone doesn’t need to be call on, he is one of these people, like his mentor Roy Cohn, that hang around on the sidelines of mainstream politics for decades, he can’t be got rid of.

This Netflix documentary film does a fine job at illustrating is troubling side of political influence which arose in the mass media age. Roger Stone is shown to have connections to one of the progenitors of the Dirty Tricks, Cohn, and the win at all costs, type of lying manipulation of the public mind that is plugged into the lowest common denominator electronic media outlets.

When I say he and his type won’t go away, I mean that he is simply a feature of the individualism that has arisen to the controlling position of the national and global dialog. I believe this is a feature of 100 years of multi-generational conditioning by commercial mass media culture. Stone knows how to manipulate electronic media.  This type of media manipulation is why reality TV host Donald Trump managed to become president. Sorry to say, these trends will continue and we will see more of this in perhaps even more bizarre manifestations than the election of Trump, if you can imagine that.

Is this a change from the past even the recent past of 100 years ago? It might very well be. The social structure as far as I know was quite a bit different back then. Religious institutions, for what they are worth, had more influence on people’s behaviour. Now is seems, the bottom line is the bottom line. Money is power. The control of it by individuals, the family, and the gang-like corporate syndicates are what is influencing the day with accompanying philosophical underpinnings which are an odd reaction to any other form of collectivism as generated by the likes of emotionally damaged Ayn Rand and the divide and sell influence of Madison Avenue advertising psychology.

Stone is shown to have no particular ax to grind personally other than a strange attraction to Republican power. He calms libertarianism while pimping himself out to any thug dictator willing the drop cash on his lobbying company Black, Manafort, Stone, and Kelly. (Will we hear move about this from the investigations of Trump campaign manager Manafort getting pay-off of Russian money? Stay tuned folks.)

The documentary is a “give him enough enough rope” sort of thing. Stone has never met an camera or a mic that he doesn’t like. Although he might be hanging himself in the eyes of some, he is wise enough to know that others will be attracted to his self-aggrandized bravado and see him as a type of trickster superhero. He is a flashy old dude, with his lovely hats and his clownish pin stripped suits. There is a fascinating array of hairpieces on display over the years in the archival clips shown.

While Get Me Roger Stone is instructive in showing what he is and why he and his type have the influence that they do. The power of his media distortion manipulation, will likely attracted a certain type to him. The type who are wannabe wiseguys. A comic book powerful villain  will be attractive to some at the same time that others will be repulsed.