Metropolitan Playhouse
Virtual Playhouse
Presents
Evening One of East Side Stories: Arrivals

A Screened Reading
of

FULLTIME ACTIVE
Written by BILL RUSSELL
Based on Four Oral Histories Compiled by ARTHUR TOBIER

Directed by MARK HARBOTH

Featuring
AKO, MICHAEL BASILE, RANDY CORDERO, & SUZANNE TOREN

www.metropolitanplayhouse.org/virtualplayhouse

June 26, 2020, 8 p.m.

In its annual celebration of Lower East Side history, Metropolitan Playhouse hits the target dead-center with these memoirs of longtime residents.
Four viewpoints: The elderly Russian refugee, the 1930’s fight promoter, the 1940’s Japanese-American, and the 1960’s Puerto Rican immigrant. America was the gold standard. Prosperity, excitement, a sense of personal freedom that they had only dreamed of awaited them here.

Sarah Plotkin, a child when she came from Russia, worked from the day she arrived. Gifted with a sly wit and a strong mind, she first demanded from her mother a pair of shoes! She had no shoes. Oh, she loved those shoes. As the years went on, she joined the Union Movement and was beaten and insulted for her activism, but she was an unstoppable force for workers’ rights. The older she got, the stronger and more determined she became.

Cus D’Amato, born in New York, took up the task of taming and training street-fighters, molding them into boxers. Remove few death-blows, show them a little strategy, and they could have some success in the ring. His big message: Being afraid is natural.

Yuri, daughter of Japanese immigrants, loves her life. Everyone gets along, Caucasian or Asian. Until December 7, 1941. Pearl Harbor changes everything. Her father was taken away by the FBI that very day. Soon all the Japanese were rounded-up and relocated. After the war they returned to their previous lives, finding that everything they had worked for had been stolen and looted.

Carlos, the youngest of the group, immigrated with his family from Puerto Rico in the 1960s. Instead of a land full of toys and candy and rainbows, he found out he couldn’t even cross the street. He lived on the Puerto Rican side. African-Americans lived on the other side. High school was similarly divided by invisible walls. Race stayed with race. U.S.-born Puerto Ricans mocked him because he didn’t speak English well. His dreams fell into dirt. But he vowed to be strong and find his way.

The “arrival” here, the dream, the voyage, are only starting points for actually achieving that new, better, life.

Fine acting and enlightening insights for us all.

-Karen D’Onofrio-