America First: Made in Hong Kong
Space 55 Theater Company
Soul Invictus, Phoenix
(602) 614-4154
August 10th - 19th, 2006
$7.00
Reviewed 8/11/06
Discount tickets may be available at

America First: Made in Hong Kong is the kind of dance concert only a blue-stater like me could love. I know that in this blindingly red state there are a few others out there like me; many of them were in the audience at Soul Invictus of Space 55 Theater Ensemble’s (under the nom du guerre of The Overambitious School for Underdeveloped Dancers) two-left-feet-in-cheek dance concert. The ensemble features Meghan Melcher, Corey Porter, Beth Froehlich, Chelsea Monty, Joel Dauten, Heather Harper, David Ojala, Steve Wilcox, Jonothon Howard, and T Ketchum as the Little Boy. Daniel Brodie is the director (thanks to Chelsea Monty, Daniel Brodie, Ron May, and the anonymously named “glmrgrl” for answering my call for a cast list!). They are a a group of former ASU theater students with two things in common: They are all slightly to the left of Trotsky, and they are not classically trained dancers. These facts give rise to such sketches as an incredibly inventive and lively dance number set to the tune of a 50s-sounding “National Anthem,” an interpretive dance of the fight between a recently fired Everyman and his unhappy pregnant wife, and suggestive choreography by three women representing evening news reporters. Not all of the pieces work, but what can you expect from liberal-leaning political comedy as reinterpreted by Martha Graham, Bob Fosse, and Twyla Tharp being performed by intensely earnest non-dancers?

Characters include a blue-and-red divided map of the United States, a talking Bible, two repressive and repressed cops, a feminist comedian, a henpecked husband, a gay man coming to terms with an America that will accept him only as long as he resembles Jack from Will and Grace and stays away from wedding chapels, a hooker and a hobo preached at by various sects of Christianity, and a self-involved millionaire businessman. Subtlety is in short supply, but the references are varied and pointed, which tickles anyone who hasn’t been brainwashed into believing that “liberal” is a four-letter word. It also includes a limited multimedia element with video bits in between some of the dances.

Here’s the rub: yes, it’s hilarious at times; yes, it has some prescient comments to make about our era; yes, it’s the kind of subversive theatre of which we need more in our community; but who besides liberals will ever go to see it? It’s the type of proselytizing that makes us members of the current minority feel self-righteous and high-minded in the same way that my conservative friend listens to her commentators and Fox News to hear the familiarity of similarly-themed rhetoric. Preaching to the converted is one thing, but kidnapping conservatives, wrapping them in duct tape, and forcing them to see this 75 minute attack on all senses is what we should endeavor to do here. At least, that’s my plan for my conservative friend this coming Friday night.