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."
"An Aggie was down on his luck so he decided to go out and kidnap a child to get the ransom. He went to the park and snuck up on one of the kids. He grabbed him and took him behind a tree. He told the kid that he was kidnapped and pinned a note on the kid's shirt that read, "I have kidnapped your child. If you want to see him again, put $20,000 in a sack and leave it in front of the tree at the park. Signed, An Aggie."
He told the child to make sure his parents saw the note and sent the child home."
The next day the Aggie went to the tree to find the sack. He looked inside and found the money he had asked for and a note that read, "How could one Aggie do this to another Aggie"?"
______________________________________________
" The teachers at A&M were having their weekly staff meeting when one teacher spoke up and said "Do you people realize we have a student here who has been attending classes for over nine years and he still hasn't receiced a degree???"
Why no we didn't know that . What can we do? We don't want A&M to get a bad name. I know, one teacher said, "Let's gather all the students at Kyle field and give this guy a pop test. Something simple he can't possibly miss, and then we will hand him his diploma."
The next day everyone was gathered in the stadium. The teacher announced over the PA system, now son if you can answer this question, you will become a graduate of Texas A&M. Okay?
Okay he said.
Now take your time and answer this. How much is 3 plus 4? The student became deep in thought for a long period of time. Finally he spoke. The answer is 7!
The crowd went into an uproar and started hollering, whooping, and chanting, GIVE HIM ANOTHER CHANCE, GIVE HIM ANOTHER CHANCE !"
Here's one that Ronald Reagan reportedly told once:
Q: You go to a cockfight. How do you know if a [Polish person] is there?
A: Someone enters a duck.
Q: How do you know if an Irishman is there?
A: Someone bets on the duck.
Q: How do you know if an Italian is there?
A: The duck wins.
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(don't flame me...my last name ends in "-ski")
I lived near Hamtramck, Michigan at one time. It used to be a beautiful, immaculate middle class community in the middle of Detroit, around 90% or more Polish. It is sad to see it now, having become a muslim population center.
Non-Jews of Polish descent suffered over 100,000 deaths at Auschwitz. The Germans forcibly deported approximately 2,000,000 Polish gentiles into labor for the Third Reich. The Russians deported almost 1,700,000 Polish non-Jews to Siberia.
http://www.remember.org/forgotten/
On August 22, 1939, a few days before the official start of World War II, Hitler authorized his commanders, with these infamous words, to kill "without pity or mercy, all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language. Only in this way can we obtain the living space [lebensraum] we need".
Heinrich Himmler echoed Hitler's decree: "All Poles will disappear from the world.... It is essential that the great German people should consider it as its major task to destroy all Poles."
Non-Jews of Polish descent suffered over 100,000 deaths at Auschwitz. The Germans forcibly deported approximately 2,000,000 Polish gentiles into labor for the Third Reich. The Russians deported almost 1,700,000 Polish non-Jews to Siberia.
http://www.remember.org/forgotten/
On August 22, 1939, a few days before the official start of World War II, Hitler authorized his commanders, with these infamous words, to kill "without pity or mercy, all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language. Only in this way can we obtain the living space [lebensraum] we need".
Heinrich Himmler echoed Hitler's decree: "All Poles will disappear from the world.... It is essential that the great German people should consider it as its major task to destroy all Poles."
"How could one Aggie do this to another Aggie"?"
LOL, that's a pretty funny joke!
A: A Six pack of Beer and a Potato
utahguy = 100% Irish
I enjoy the BlondeStar joke, the blonde calls up panicky that she's locked herself on the inside of the car.
It's always best to first remain calm in these emergencies.
Do you see that little plunger thingy on top of the door?
I want you to pull it.
Oh you're amAZing!
That's what we're here for, and thank you for using BlondeStar.
haha!Aggie joke:
How do you drive an Aggie crazy?
Put him in a round room and tell him to pee in the corner.
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