Plan-B Theatre: Amerigo

Playwright Eric Samuelson came to the frightening realization that he agreed with Glenn Beck’s assertion that America was founded on the two pillars of Christianity and free-market economy when writing his latest play “Amerigo”. The play takes on the question of who discovered America and for what purpose. The seemingly easily answered question is hashed out and debated eternally (literally) between Christopher Columbus (Mark Fossen) and Amerigo Vespucci (Matthew Ivan Bennett). The debate takes place in purgatory and is moderated by philospher/proto-capitalist Niccolo Machiavelli (Kirt Bateman) and arbitrated by Mexican nun/writer Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (Deena Marie Manzanares) who take it upon themselves to end the bickering between the two explorers.

Playing on a minimal set, bathed in ethereal blue light in front of a billowing, back-lit white sheet, the Black-Box theater was dressed convincingly as a half-way point between heaven and earth. This ephemeral nowhere-place is where the four historical figures have been residing since their death, all serving indefinite sentences for sins they deny committing. Samuelson uses the setting of purgatory as both a courtroom and supernatural confession booth. Machiavelli acts as the officiator, overseeing the court proceedings, interjecting when things get too heated, offering his counsel to whoever will listen. Machiavelli is the only one who seems to see through the absurdity of the question of the authenticity of discovery, often halting the meeting to make homage to Euripides Comedy “The Frogs”. Sor Juana de la Cruz, on the other hand, has an ax to grind with the two stalwart explorers. Acting more as a prosecutor than an arbitrator, she starts by reading off the litany of crimes committed by the two men in their attempts to colonize and exploit the new world.

As a Mormon, Chirstopher Columbus has always been a troublesome character for me. The Columbus who is praised in scripture and revered as “God-inspired” is not the Columbus I read about in contemporary history. After reading “A Peoples History of The United States” it was hard to get the Columbus of the cartoon videotapes I used to watch as a kid out of my head. From his own hand he wrote about the rape and pillage of the natives of Hispaniola with a detached austerity. Samuelson, as he delineates his crimes, often reading from his own journal, makes no attempt to unmask Columbus. Columbus does not hide behind Christian dogma to justify his actions; he fully invests himself in them believes himself to be the true manifestation of the Church Militant. He retains his fierce piety through out the entire play, sternly asserting that he was doing God’s will and conquering the new world to expand the Catholic Empire. Samuelson casts Columbus as the most frightening character, a zealot who believes his own in his own cause.

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