Posted on 01/29/2005 10:45:20 AM PST by lizol
'Polish Joke' plays up stereotypes at SLAC
By Brandon Griggs The Salt Lake Tribune
Some of the most widespread and tasteless American jokes have long made fun of ethnic groups, and perhaps no minority has suffered more than the Poles.
For reasons that remain unclear, people from Poland have been the brunt of countless jokes that play off cruel stereotypes of "Polacks" as stupid blunderers. How do you sink a Polish battleship? Put it in water. Ha, ha.
Now comes "Polish Joke," a comedy by David Ives that opens in previews Tuesday at the Salt Lake Acting Company. By focusing on a Polish-American man who adopts a series of other ethnic identities to escape his heritage, Ives deftly lampoons the societal prejudices that can arise from ignorance.
"It's an irreverent look at the way we stereotype people," says actor Michael Todd Behrens, who plays Jasiu, the young Pole. "And it shows the ridiculousness of that in a way that only comedy can."
Utah theatergoers may remember Ives' work from his previous comedy hit, "All In the Timing," which SLAC staged 10 years ago. Like his earlier play, "Polish Joke" - which premiered in Seattle in 2001 before opening in New York - is an episodic series of sketches built around a theme. Unlike that work, "Polish Joke" has a loose narrative thread.
The play opens with 9-year-old Jasiu hanging out in a Polish working-class neighborhood of Chicago with his uncle Roman, who tells him that all Polish jokes are, in fact, true and that being Polish is a sorrowful fate. This sends Jasiu on a decades-long comic odyssey to assume another ethnic origin, much in the way that a shopper tries on suits until he finds one that fits.
Along the way Jasiu interviews for a job with a snooty, WASPish corporate personnel manager, has a comically ill-fated romance with a Jewish woman and encounters a family-run travel agency stocked with blarney-filled Irish stereotypes. In these scenes and others, Jasiu serves as sort of a straight man reacting to the wacky caricatures and absurd situations around him.
"I really see him as an everyman," says Behrens, who is onstage for the entire play. "He's almost like a blank canvas. His character manifests itself in the way he perceives other people."
The increasingly confused Jasiu even moves to Ireland in a desperate attempt to take on a more acceptable nationality. By the end of the play, he has found an identity that is true to himself - although not one that an audience might expect. Some of the play's scenes unfold realistically while others are surreal products of Jasiu's imagination. In a few scenes, his lack of an authentic identity makes him invisible to those around him. "It's almost like he's in a dream," says Behrens, whose previous SLAC credits include "Lobby Hero" and "Saturday's Voyeur." "There are a lot of bizarre things that happen."
Rounding out the cast are SLAC veterans Daisy Blake, Kevin Doyle, Morgan Lund and Arika Schockmel, all of whom play multiple parts. Director Kirstie Gulick-Rosenfield, who has helmed four previous SLAC productions, sees "Polish Joke" as an examination of ethnic identity in America and what that means. Ethnic classifications expand people's identities by giving them cultural heritage but also confine them inside harmful stereotypes, she says. Gulick-Rosenfield believes the humor in "Polish Joke" satirizes without being mean-spirited or offensive. "There are a lot of ethnic jokes," she says. "But there are no ethnic slurs."
The Polish were branded as stupid because the French were in the bathroom at "stereotyping label" time.
Sounds good!
Maybe to you.
Okay. Enough of the Polish jokes.
Here's an Irish joke:
Brenda O'Malley is home making dinner, as usual, when Tim
Finnegan arrives at her door. "Brenda, may I come in?" he asks. "I've somethin' to tell ya".
"Of course you can come in, you're always welcome, Tim. But where's my husband?"
"That's what I'm here to be telling ya, Brenda." There was an accident down at the Guinness brewery..."
"Oh, God no!" cries Brenda. "Please don't tell me."
"I must, Brenda. Your husband Shamus is dead and gone. I'm sorry."
Finally, she looked up at Tim. "How did it happen, Tim?"
"It was terrible, Brenda. He fell into a vat of Guinness Stout and drowned."
"Oh my dear Jesus! But you must tell me true, Tim. Did he at least go quickly?"
"Well, Brenda... no. In fact, he got out three times to pee."
Polish jokes were actually created by the third reich.
LOL
It's getting harder and harder to tell jokes that make fun of people. But have a heart, rednecks and fat people are still fair game.
Speaking of Polish battleships, did you hear about the Polish submarine with a screen door? Don't laugh, it keeps the fish out.
I'm pretty certain they were around well before that during the big immigration from Eastern Europe 1890-1910 or so, particularly in the coal regions.
BWAHAHAHAHA! Bad choice ya dumb pol......
Don't flame me please, I'm from Polish/Irish/Lithuanian stock. I just find it hilarious.
FMCDH(BITS)
Q. Why do liberals carry crap in their pockets?
A. For identification!
Who was Alexander Graham Zdanowicz?
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The first telephone Pole.
It's gonna take some time getting used to.
When we can't accept humor directed at ourselves this will become a very sad society. Humor is the best health food in life. If you do away with it you shorten life.
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