Rockefeller and I — Part 1 is a solo performance presented on the sidewalk in front of the theater, La MaMa, NYC. The actor is John Maria Gutierrez and he’s directed by Uwe Mengel. Both take credit for writing the script.
The script is 20 minutes long. Mr. Gutierrez repeats it twice — verbatim — to create an hour-long performance.
Mr. Gutierrez has a relaxed presence. It’s not commanding; it invites us to examine what this strange man is doing, pacing back and forth on the sidewalk along a 12-foot white line. He makes eye contact with us only occasionally, but he never leaves us by retreating into his own reverie.
“Two billion plus two billion is four billion,” he begins, and chalks “Rockefeller and I” on the wall.
He continues: “I have no problem with white people. Some of my best friends are white people.” His mother says that Jesus had blue eyes and blond hair. He tells us that he’s lucky because he has light skin. These comments are ruminations, not expressions of resentment.
He riffs on the wealthy and on his background. He repeats “I’m tired” several times, sounding like James Tyrone in O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey or like George in Albee’s ...Virginia Woolf. It seems to be characteristically American, this weariness. But for a moment the actor is too young for us to believe him.
Sometimes Mr. Gutierrez sort of dances along his possessive white line; sometimes he sort of sings. At one point he seems to be speaking in free verse. He does a cartwheel and stands on his head and lies on the sidewalk lithely.
He recites the net financial worth of billionaires. It would take an Amazon employee four-and-a-half-million years to earn the worth of Jeff Besos — 7.2 billion dollars. “Better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick,” he tells us.
He identifies himself: “John Rafael Maria Gutierrez. 1992.” And he names the hospital where he was born. He does this without commenting on himself, as if he were curious about this tiny biography.
The script often quotes Rockefeller, ascribing the quotes to John D. Rockefeller Junior: “Let every thought be subject to profitable motives,” and “The road to hell is paved with kindness.” Good heavens! This would make Ayn Rand blush!
There seems to be some confusion, however, about to whom these aphorisms should be credited. One website credits the second aphorism to a letter from Rockefeller Senior to his son, and both are likely properly credited to him.
Rockefeller is an American icon, a bête noire of progressives. But Messrs. Gutierrez and Mengel refer to him without rancor. Indeed, they let him speak for himself. I was reminded of the references to J.R. in pop culture, from “The Sunny Side of the Street” and the blues song “I will Turn your Money Green” to Bette Midler’s “Mr. Rockefeller”: “Please won’t you answer me?… Mr. Rockefeller, won’t you please pick up the phone?”
The obsessiveness of Rockefeller and I implies a futility, like Beckett’s play Play, in which characters, deceased, obsess about their relationships, talking to no one in particular. The Play script is repeated, and begins to repeat a second time.
Rockefeller and I is terrific street theater, a sort I’ve never seen before. It’s not like The Theater for the New City’s street theater — “controlled anarchy.” with a large cast on a stage. Nor is it like The Living Theater’s direct, focused street theater — in one play we shook hands with individuals in the crowd. By contract, Rockefeller and I is a sort of natural urban phenomenon, like a public sculpture, casual and ruminative. It reflects life artistically in the way a glass building reflects the city literally — as a matter of urban course. I’m looking forward to Rockefeller and I — Part 2.
