In this play, one Ignis Bird (of ambiguous gender, perhaps a pseudonym, perhaps a chimera) is a war tax resister in a running battle with the IRS that he or she decides to take as an opportunity for literature, sniggling, and confusion.
Ignis invents dozens of personalities, and corresponds with the IRS agents assigned to his or her case through them — posting letters from all over the world (and even from within the IRS field office in Utah) from characters like attorney Bedelia Burbot, Beaut Sinewrelli, Baron Bueno Scampo, Rajan Rajan, Sgt. Dodge Bullet, pedagogue Walnut Bean, and Dooly Daffodilt.
The play used some forty actors to bring these characters, and the besieged (and eventually bemused) IRS agents, to life.
Ignis Bird sniggles his or her way in this amusing fashion through the Reagan and Bush Ⅰ administrations, paying none of the taxes or penalties that accumulate, and even gets a parting tip-of-the-hat in a postscript from the IRS case manager who retires, having never been able to locate the mysterious Ignis or his or her assets.
The play’s director, Randall Stuart, hints that this is all based on a true story:
Tonight’s theatrical version represents only some of the “canon” — as there are over 200 letters and 77 personalities tapped-out from one typewriter.
We hope you will enjoy this edited version, knowing that there are even more letters to be unsealed.
I recently learned of a one-act/one-man play, a monologue really, on the theme of tax resistance that was developed and performed in : The Man Who Stopped Paying.
(It has also been recently put out as a novelization.)
On a first, quick read, it seems to be a graceful (if a bit didactic in parts), strange, dream-worldish meditation on the Sword of Damocles anxiety of the nuclear-armed cold war and on personal responsibility.
It cannot be demonstrated that the German State had a policy to exterminate the Jews of Europe, or anyone else, by putting them to death in gas chambers or by killing them through abuse or neglect.
It cannot be demonstrated that 6 million Jews were “exterminated” during WWⅡ.
It cannot be demonstrated that homicidal gas chambers existed in any camp in Europe which was under German control.
It cannot be demonstrated that the awful scenes of the dead and emaciated inmates captured on newsreel footage at Dachau, Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen—were the victims of intentional killing and intentional starvation.
The play itself refers to the Holocaust in a couple of places, but not in any particularly controversial way.
Either Smith still accepted the mainstream Holocaust history at the time he wrote the play, or he wisely decided to keep his crackpot opinions out of it.
I mentioned a play about war tax resistance that had been written by Holocaust-denier Bradley R. Smith.
Here’s a follow-up in which Smith explains how the play came to be, and how it fits in with his Holocaust denial falderol.
