“It’s just awful what they are doing to Sheriff Arpaio...He is so brave for standing up to the criminals. So what if he makes his prisoners wear pink underwear? Don’t come to this country illegally, if you don’t like it.”
This quote is guaranteed to have much more resonance in the post-Trump world than it had in the first few years it was ever performed. Many theatergoers may well have believed that Sheriff Arpaio was a fictional figure before the summer of 2017. It was in late August of that year that Joe Arpaio, former Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, was granted a pardon overriding his conviction on charges of criminal contempt of court. As the quote here suggests, Arpaio was famous—well, infamous—for a long time before that in in Arizona for being just plain contemptible. And yet, even convicted lawbreakers can be overlooked by the most self-righteous of “law & order” types like Thelma. Or even others like Thelma.
“Good morning Phoenix! This KRZT 1070. Welcome to Take Back America. My fellow Arizonans I am so proud of us for finally taking the correct measures to keep all the illegals out. Our lousy government and the Bozo in office has been too weak to get the job done, so it was up to us to do it…and for that, many hate us.”
The name of the character who says this onstage is Lou Becker, but turn on any right-wing radio station in any city on any random day, replace the call letters and the name of the state and it is typical boilerplate patter. The thing about Lou Becker is that he is supposed to remind people of a certain right-wing talk radio host, but with the winking understanding between the playwright and certain other people that it really doesn’t matter which particular radio personality comes to mind since they are utterly faceless and interchangeable.
Sadly, of course, this is an observation which is not just limited to those flooding the airwaves with fact-needy ultra-conservative talking points, hot buttons and dog whistles, but all of radio. Many today are not even aware that a time actually did exist when radio personalities possessed actual individual personalities. The wasteland under fire here is intellectual engagement with fact-absent critical thinking, but beneath that is commentary on another wasteland: that which radio has become since its heyday began to end in the 1970’s.
“I don’t know.... I don’t know why this happened to me. I can’t explain what has happened.... I was on a bus to Nogales last night when the driver lost control of the bus, and then I heard gun shots, and people ran. It was so dark I couldn’t see what was happening.... I just ran as far as I could from the gunshots and the screams, and I don’t know.... Am I alive? Am I in hell? Where am I?”
Sandi is the woman who was formerly known as Sandra Sanchez before becoming just plain Sandi. She is a darkly complexioned Latina who is not bilingual, speaking only English. It is at this point that path crosses with the racist talk radio show host Becker in the worst of all possible circumstances. Both are isolated and lost in the Arizona desert near the Mexican border after separate conflicts with criminal behavior. Sandi’s story is told above.
Lou Becker finds himself stranded and lost after being kidnapped held hostage, doused with barbecue sauce, forced to wear pink underwear and set loose in the wrong direction by three mysterious figures whose faces are hidden beneath ski masks. This is the point at which the two meet and have to decide how to work together to find their way out of a seemingly hopeless situation.
