Waking the American Dream

Was privileged to see the astounding Sarah Jones in performance two nights ago. For an entire hour, she held a packed auditorium in the palm of her hand - people laughed, people cried, but most importantly, people believed. With a single change of jacket, or headscarf, Jones transformed herself into another, fully realized character. Jones is evidently a great mimic, but she is far more than that; she uses her talent, skill and training like a master swordsman: a teasing, amusing flick here, a feint there and then that piercing thrust of the rapier that hits home with surety and deftness.

The American Dream is both myth and nightmare, Jones tell us, and she says this in different voices, each valid, essential and compellingly honest. Some say it is but one side of the coin. But can the coin of America’s much-vaunted ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ have such an ugly face? This is not just an ugly face. It is perverse, inhuman and utterly obscene. For a land of immigrants to even use the word ‘alien’ is, surely, an abomination of the worst kind.

A better argument, perhaps, is that it is the very freedom that Jones questions that allows her to question it at all; is she, therefore, justified? The answer, sadly, is yes. Jones does not question the freedom that gives her the liberty to stand stall and speak freely. She says that the freedom itself is a charade because it is, today, hollow, severely flawed at its centre, and lends itself to state conduct that, in a country that wears its ‘freedom’ on its sleeve, is itself an unspeakable atrocity. Jones does not question the premise on which the freedoms that built America are founded. She looks askance at the manner of their keeping and their preservation. She questions the guardians of those freedoms, and she finds them wanting. Thank god there are people like her. And thank you, Sarah Jones.