5.002 (late)

Sunday 12/03/2023

Usual Sunday morning stuff, plus a little guitar work.After lunch I joined a multi-car pool of people going to the Pear theater. It was quite ridiculous how many people in the audience of about 60 people, were from CH, at least 15. This play was District Merchants, a play derived from The Merchant of Venice, with most of the same plot elements but set in the 1870s, when black people were only newly enfranchised as full citizens of the US. It ends up with a trial over whether Shylock can enforce his contract for a pound of Antonio’s flesh. Portia, instead of using the “no drop of blood” argument from Shakespeare, instead argues that as the 13 Amendment has made slavery illegal, to take a pound of Antonio’s (a black man) body would be to enslave at least that much of him, so the contract is unconstitutional on that basis. There was a lot of other stuff in the play including lots of drama and talk about discrimination in all directions, including against the Irish.