Craig Barnes is a former trial lawyer who spent more than a decade as a negotiator dealing with international issues and ethnic and environmental conflicts in and around the former Soviet Union. He is a co-founder of and the dramaturge for the Santa Fe-based theater group Red Thread Collective.
His play,
The Last Tudor,
plays June 6-22 at El Museo Cultural.
SFR: Your new play, The Last Tudor, suggests that the notoriously single-minded-and single-Queen Elizabeth I, may have had a child. You base the premise on a painting.***image1***
CB:
This picture, hanging in Hampton Court Palace, was done by a noted painter, the court painter to Elizabeth. It depicts a young, red-haired woman in full body, wearing an ornate brocade robe, decorated with royal Tudor roses, a quite distinctive insignia. She is gently placing a crown upon a stag. And she appears to be pregnant. For many years, the picture was labeled as Elizabeth but was recently changed to 'unknown woman' for, well, unknown reasons.
But it's through seeing the painting that you dreamed up this play?
Actually, no. I had come across a story about a young man in Spain who claimed to be Elizabeth's son. And it got me thinking about how much of her humanity she surrendered in order to hold absolute power, to be the voice of God. So the play raises questions of power and succession of power. And, of course, abuse of power.
This is a theme in your projects and books.
I'm working on a book called
Democracy at the Crossroads
that traces the history that led to the United States Constitution, beginning with the Magna Carta. It is about the demise of monarchies and the rise of democracy, but also about how much we are in danger of losing what democracy has given us. In Elizabeth's time, the only criticism of the monarchy was through poetry and theater and, only then of past monarchies. In that tradition, I am writing about the attraction to power then and the attraction today. I'm writing about the corrupting influence of power to the spirit and the being.
And this is something you're intimate with from personal experience?
For 15 years, I went back and forth between here and the Soviet Union, negotiating treaties related to weapons, ethnic cleansing, water issues, you name it. I had been an attorney and seen that in this country of laws it was possible to try a lawsuit against General Motors or Procter & Gamble, on behalf of a single carpenter in a small town and to win. In the Soviet Union, everything was decided by the relationships between the people who already held power. If we negotiated a treaty, it wasn't about anyone's rights, it was about the amount of vodka and tomatoes and whatever else that were exchanged in the hallway. It really showed me what a check to power due process and trial by jury can be. But now the principle of the rule of law is under such stress that it could go wrong, go bad, we could really lose it.
How do we save it?
Another experience I had in the Soviet Union was to see that the only influential and meaningful moral leadership came from the arts. So, for myself, when I stopped practicing law, I thought, 'What can I do?' I'm not an artist and I can't dance or sing, so I thought I'd try writing.
You're also an active citizen: From Railyard planning to proposed ordinances to economic development input, I've seen you there. Has that been a fruitful use of your time?
Ha! Absolutely. When the people sleep, somebody is always awake and busy accumulating power, property, etc., and generally not to the benefit of the people. So staying awake is a way of life. To be engaged is more satisfying than to ignore the truth. The outcome is not always the issue-did we win this one or that one? The first step to my own spiritual wellbeing is just to maintain the participation, to do what I can do to keep the conversation going.
Do you find the arts to provide moral leadership in this country?
As the government gets worse, the arts become more important. As power becomes concentrated through wealth, the vehicle for raising real awareness becomes more and more the arts, rather than TV and mainstream media. When hundreds of theaters in Santa Fe, Palo Alto, Boise, Albany, Atlanta express a respect for beauty and thoughtfulness and a skepticism for warrioring, we're not being led by political doctrine, we're being compelled by our humanity to do what I think of as putting the 'civil' back in civilization.
So why do the arts lack support? Why do people choose to pay a cable TV bill rather than go to a play?
The arts are dangerous. They are like a solvent on the cement, which binds the concrete structures of culture. The arts are challenging. People would rather love their king and be fond of their president than to hear about his flaws. Those who have power generally don't approve of the arts and of raising questions about wealth, about the church, about the status quo. If I suggest publicly that the president's military concern has more to do with election results in the United States than with any real concern over Iran, the reaction can be quite furious. People don't want to hear it.
Which is more difficult: facilitating a cease-fire between Armenia and Azerbaijan or doing nonprofit arts work in Santa Fe?
Ha ha! The latter. Ha ha! Yeah, I had an easier time putting four countries together than putting money together for a production here. That's the truth.