The 2022-2023 season, marking 45years of professional theater at American Stage, is titled This is America for a reason. The theme intentionally describes bold storytelling designed to come right at the idea of what it means to live an American life from a wide variety of perspectives – one no less American than another.
Of course, it goes without saying that the focus on superior entertainment is always the goal. But no one said you can’t learn something or expand your perspective along the way.
Opening the season with Green Day’s American Idiot, a dual Tony winning musical in 2011, is the perfect start in making that point. The raucous rock opera, based on the hit Green Day album of the same name, gives us the music of a generation while navigating themes that can be as intense as the score.
First, a bit of background. Green Day, heavily influenced by the British punk rock movement, became a pioneer of the US incarnation of the genre in the late 80s, when founders Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Drint were just teens. The name, Green Day, sprang from California East-Bay slang for a day basically spent smoking weed. Though hardly fitting for a band that became synonymous with political activism and protest, most long-time fans will tell you that what they love about Green Day is the band’s often up-tempo, irreverent, and humorous music and lyrics.
American Idiot, the album, was released in 2004. The musical opened in 2010.
The plot follows Johnny, a lower middle-class anti-hero and self-proclaimed “Jesus of Suburbia,” and his friends Will and Tunny, as they follow diverging paths on their journey to find meaning and purpose in their American lives. Disillusionment inevitably punctuates their story, making way for the songs – some humorous, some angry, some heart-wrenching. The score left an indelible mark on a generation (or two), coming of age over three decades. And now, another two decades after the album’s original release, new generations (including some of us Boomers), are finding the very same music and lyrics just as stirring and relevant today.
Don’t want to be an American idiot
Don’t want a nation under the new media
And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
Welcome to a new kind of tension
All across the alien nation.
These lyrics from the title song, album, and musical were written just after 9/11 and U.S. involvement in Iraq. The era of the 24/7 news cycle is reaching its zenith, with journalists embedded in the war, for the first time, giving Americans a bird’s eye view of the conflict – blasting it into our homes. Billie Joe Armstrong, Green Day’s lead singer, lyricist, and originator of the role of Johnny, sings about his frustration with xenophobia, fear, and propaganda. He lays the blame at the feet of politicians who use fear as a sort of controlling device. Armstrong also accuses mass media of aiding in inducing that fear, increasing sensationalism, and moving away from unbiased journalism and toward the partisan tone dictated by the bottom line and the agenda of media outlet ownership. Essentially, an “American Idiot” is a citizen easily whipped into a frenzy who has lost the ability to think for themselves, creating a population of pawns that threaten the self-governing fulcrum of a constitutional democracy.
Apparently, history does have a nasty habit of repeating itself when lessons go unlearned. Pretty insightful for a bunch of punk rock stoners - and highly, uncomfortably, prophetic.
Since the 2016 election, American Idiot has experienced a resurgence in both popularity and relevance. Television and radio have now been eclipsed by high-speed internet and social media responsible for an exponential rise in public influence and disinformation. The debates of the early 2000s have been effectively dwarfed by the divides of today.
As a result, just weeks ago, Billie Joe Armstrong officially announced his plans to renounce his American citizenship and has declared that he will live permanently in England. The music will continue. American Idiot will be timeless in its relevance - and for Armstrong, a new and dramatic chapter in his American life.
About Green Day's American Idiot
Sept 7 - Oct 2, 2022
The two-time Tony Award-winning hit musical “Green Day's American Idiot" boldly goes where the American musical has never gone before. Three friends struggling to find meaning in a post-9/11 world find themselves on drastically different paths. They must choose between duty, family, love, addiction, and brotherhood.
