Tackling the Bronx, 1964

I wanted to try to set the Bronx into some context in 1964. We would assume that it would be a time of some racial tension. But what else was going on?

Well, a lot. It seems like life was approaching a larger change. People were looking towards the future. I would guess that a lot of people alive at the time would be starting to realize that life was not going to be as simple as the nuclear family of the fifties.

Check out this video about the 1964 World's Fair, which was held in Queens, New York. Most of the images/things created for the Worlds Fair were about reinventing daily life, and giving a new shape to what everyone thought of as "the future".

Another interesting bit of Americana which I scrounged up was this video about an amusement park in the Bronx, open from (I believe) 1961-1964. The whole point of FreedomLand was to remember the good old fashioned American values that had gotten us to that point- Indian Raids, the good old west, etc. It seems like this may have been an opposing force to the kind of ideology that we were faced with at the World's Fair, which was all about progression and looking forward.

This dichotomy between progression and regression is a really interesting thing to consider when we look at the play. How is the character of Sister Aloysius' ideology very much different from that of Father Flynn's? Or is it actually the same? And where does Sister James fit in?

More to come later. Love to all. Hope to be at rehearsal tonight.