Shakespeare Two Ways

Patrick Stewart as Macbeth and Kate Fleetwood
as Lady Macbeth in the recent England-to-Broadway
production.

Stephen Greenblatt has a very interesting essay in the new New York Review of Books about the celebrated production of Shakespeare's Macbeth starring Patrick Stewart, and secondarily the Verdi opera based on Macbeth which was also produced recently in NYC.

What impresses me about this essay is that Greenblatt presents his reading of the play along with a description of the interpretation by director Rupert Goold in the production that began in England before moving to New York this spring. It's a twofer, basically. But it also represents two different philosophies in approaching Shakespeare: the more currently popular one, of making the plays more politically or culturally relevant, even if it means shaping the text to fit the concept, or of finding new ways to express what the director sees in the text that illuminates the play as Shakespeare wrote it. While Greenblatt is of the second school, he finds a lot to admire in the Goold production, which uses the Stalinist period to suggest current excesses.

Greenblatt's reading of Macbeth is pretty intriguing. Particularly with today's lighting capabilities, a production based on it could be fascinating.

This North Coast Weekend (and coming attractions)

Dell'Arte's Korbel IV finishes its run this weekend, July 3-6. My Journal review is here. Jennifer Savage posts her Arcata Eye review here. The Festival’s adult cabaret, Red Light in Blue Lake, is after the July 5 Korbel performance, at 10:30 pm.

Ferndale Rep has its annual July 4th show, and will open its senior show, “Make Mine Metamucil” by local newsie and playwright Dave Silverbrand on the July 11th weekend in Ferndale, before moving it to the Eureka Theater July 26th.

North Coast Rep opens its next show, “Lend Me A Tenor” on July 17. Eureka Theater has summer classes in improvisation, commedia, acting and movement for adults, teens and children. Info at www.sanctuarystage.com.

This North Coast Weekend

Korbel IV, the latest episode in Dell'Arte's
ongoing North Coast soap opera, opens
the Mad River Festival this weekend.

Korbel: The Story So Far...

The new show opening tonight at Dell'Arte is Korbel IV:The Accident on the amphitheatre stage. The saga of the Dugan family in the mythical (but strangely similar to Blue Lake) North Coast town of Korbel began in 1994. So before describing the new play, here’s a primer on the story so far, based on Michael Fields’ recollections:

“Korbel I: The Funeral” was centered on the funeral of the Dugan clan’s matriarch, Dorothy, who in financial despair, had committed suicide. Flashbacks revealed the truth about her son Terry, a transsexual Lesbian. Her other son, Tommy, was a logger “who was missing many of his body parts due to logging accidents, and was incapable of doing certain things,” though evidently that didn’t include fathering a child, because…

In “Korbel II: The Wedding,” Tommy had to get married in order to keep his child, but elsewhere in the Court House the Southern Korbel Unorganized Militia (SKUM) was planning a disruption. Meanwhile there was a fight at the wedding, and agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms invaded (“We had people rappelling off the roof at Dell’Arte.”) “Where’s Tommy Dugan?” the ATF demanded, and in a response that Fields says was stolen from the Spanish Baroque playwright Lope de Vega, but which most of us remember from “Spartacus,” several members of the cast—beginning with a 7 year old boy—proclaimed: “I’m Tommy Dugan! I’m from Korbel!” Then, Fields recalls, members of the audience spontaneously repeated it themselves: “I’m Tommy Dugan! I’m from Korbel!”

In “Kobel III: The Birth” the only industry left in the town was a company that dug a deep hole in the ground, and dumped stuff into it. “Nobody knew what was going into the hole, but it was a business, and it was in Korbel” so it was accepted. Until people noticed that no babies had been born since the company came to town. But Dorothy Dugan returned from the dead (as she had in Korbel II), to miraculously cause people to give birth. “We gave little water balloons to people in the audience, and everybody was giving birth—including her son.”

That was nearly a decade ago, and the series seemed to have run its course with what Fields admits was its weakest script. But several factors converged to bring Korbel back this summer. For one thing, there were local events that begged to become part of the saga, like the ongoing drama of Blue Lake’s disgraced police chief, the continuing transformations associated with the Blue Lake casino, and the rise of the marijuana grow house economy. “Kevin Hoover wrote a long article about grow houses in the Arcata Eye awhile back, and suggested in it that Dell’Arte should do a play about it,” Fields said. “The last line of the article was: ‘Are you reading, Michael?’”

But another impetus came from an unlikely source: the Campaign for Love and Forgiveness by the Fetzer Institute, and a series of local forums on the subject sponsored by KEET. The Dell’Arte School was to be one of the locations, so Fields attended. Eventually he went to all of them, and realized there was dramatic material there. “It seemed fitting to do it as a Korbel piece, because it has a past, and forgiveness is a lot about holding onto something or letting it go. You can’t change what happened, but how do you move on? There’s a great quote—I think it was Confucius: ‘Forgiveness doesn’t change the past, but it enlarges the future.’”

(Actually, Dutch botanist Paul Boese said that, but Confucius does have a great quote on the subject: “Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it forgoes revenge and dares to forgive an injury.”)

The question now, as Fields recognizes is, “if comedy and the theme of forgiveness can exist at the same time” in the same play. We’ll all get a chance to find out, starting June 26, the premiere of “Korbel IV: The Accident”… The emergency room of Korbel’s new for-profit hospital and casino, St. Mo’s (she’s the patron saint of gamblers) is suddenly filled with victims of an accident, when a mysterious taco truck driven by the police chief and filled with machine guns runs over several people. But since every second home in Korbel is now a grow house and uses seven times the power a normal home uses, there’s a blackout—only enough power at St. Mo’s to run three life support systems (and of course the slot machines)—but there are four criticals: so somebody has to die!

There are plenty of local references, Dorothy’s obligatory return from the dead and especially, lots of songs by a trio of nurses played by three of the best-known singers around: Joyce Hough, Jayse Lecyour and Lila Nelson. The cast features original Dell’Arte ensemble members Joan Schirle, Michael Fields and Donald Forrest, and local all-stars Jackie Dandeneau and David Ferney, Bob and Lynne Wells, as well as Jane Hill, Lynnie Horrigan, Soren Olsen, Josh Salas and Calder Johnson. Fields promises a spectacular stage set, designed by HSU’s Jody Sekas: “It’s what Vegas would look like if it came to your hospital.”

Deborah Clasquin Benefit Saturday

This North Coast Weekend: Deborah Clasquin Celebration

I don't usually do music events here, but maybe I should. Anyway, there's an important one this weekend, and since the story in Northern Lights unfortunately provides the wrong date, here it is: a benefit concert for pianist Deborah Clasquin begins at 7 PM on SATURDAY, June 21 in the Fulkerson Recital Hall on the HSU campus.

“The main theme of this event will be to rally around Deborah, to make sure she knows how important she is to so many people in our community and the music world, and to give everyone a chance to celebrate herrole in our lives,” said Linda Anderson, one of the organizers of the event. “The other priority will be to try and raise money for her expensive treatments which are not being reimbursed by her insurance.”

As a concert pianist, Deborah is a well-known performer on North Coast stages as well as in prestigious venues around the world, and on television, radio and recordings. As a teacher at Humboldt State, she has trained prize-winning keyboard artists. She has been an activist and advocate for music education. Now some of her North Coast friends have organized a celebration of Deborah Clasquin’s achievements and a benefit concert to help her defray medical costs as she continues treatments for cancer.

Performers for the concert include pianists Ryan MacEvoy McCullough and Emily Loeffler, clarinetist Armand Ambrosini, and violinists Terrie Baune and Signe Nicklas, who is Deborah Clasquin’s daughter. Also featured are The Babes Women’s Chorus directed by Carol Ryder, a quintet of Sequoia faculty members, and Barbara Davenport, Jill Petricca and Shao Way Wu playing a movement from the Claude Bolling Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano.

Tickets for the benefit concert beginning at 7 PM are $20, from the HSU Ticket Office (826-3928) or at the door. The reception with Deborah Clasquin, family and friends will be held in the lobby outside Fulkerson Hall at approximately 8 PM, and is a free event. Refreshments will be served.

Those who cannot attend or wish to make an additional contribution can send checks to the HSU Music Department, payable to Deborah Clasquin. Additional information at HSUMusic.

Update: This turned out to be a very successful event, with lots of good music and a full house, despite the absence of students and vacationing faculty members. I'm told however that the proceeds will probably pay for most of one of the three treatments Deborah will require. So contributions will continue to be needed, and will be accepted by the HSU Music Department.

This North Coast Weekend: Tim Robbins and More

Also on Saturday, Dell'Arte's Mad River Festival gets started with an appearance by Hollywood’s Tim Robbins and several other members of The Actors’ Gang, an LA-based theatre group, to receive the international Prize of Hope. Denmark’s Institute of Popular Theatre has been giving this award since 1987, mostly to European ensembles, but in 2005 it was presented to Dell’Arte. This year the Denmark organization asked Dell’Arte to select another U.S. winner and present the award here.

The award recognizes a person or theatre working “for human hope in a daring, loving, vulgar, serious, poetic manner with sparkling energy. It is given to those who encourage people to use their own eyes, ears and voice.” Dell’Arte selected The Actors’ Gang for its “powerful combination of contemporary immediacy, public engagement and great theatrical craft,” (said Dell’Arte’s Producing Artistic Director Michael Fields in a formal statement.) Plans are for the award to alternate annually between Denmark and Blue Lake.

The event Saturday begins at 6 pm with a catered dinner in the street and a speech by Tim Robbins in the Carlo Theatre. Seats are limited and admission is pricey ($75 to $150, since it partly a fundraiser.) But beginning at 8:30 pm, the event moves out back to the amphitheatre where the Joyce Hough band will perform and the award will actually be presented. Admission to the outdoor component is $15.

Most of us know Tim Robbins as an actor in such popular films as The Shawshank Redemption and Bull Durham, but he’s also directed two of the more intriguing political films to come out of Hollywood in the 90s or since: the all-too-prophetic Bob Roberts (1992) and The Cradle Will Rock, (1999) about a forgotten moment in 1930s America when art and social awareness came together, and were quickly forced to go their separate ways.

Robbins and friends started The Actors’ Gang in 1981, and have adapted, created and performed some 70 plays since, including their current production based on George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” Let’s hope they enjoy their visit enough to bring a production up here.

Also this weekend: Humboldt Pride presents The Laramie Project as a benefit for the 2008 Pride Parade and Festival, at the Arcata Playhouse June 18th-21st and again next weekend, the 25th through the 28th. Benefit tickets are sliding scale from $20-$30, students $15, from the Arcata Playhouse at 822-1575.

The Limitations of Tragedy

The OSF production of The Clay
Cart suggests that western forms
of theatre, such as tragedy, don't
say everything that can be said about
the human condition. Chārudatta (Cristofer Jean, left)
with his son Rohasena (Kaj Pandey).
Photo: David Cooper.

On the Way Home

I ended my most recent Journal column perhaps a little more cryptically than I meant to. I reviewed a Dell' Arte School's MFA Ensemble production, Between Two Winters, which was the outcome of their study of classic tragedy, as I described in this previous column. I also reviewed a production currently at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, called The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler. While it isn't itself a tragedy, it had a lot to say about tragedy as a necessary reflection of the human condition. I also referred back to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival production of the Sanskrit play, The Clay Cart, which I reviewed here. And so I ended this way:

In the end, the play [ The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler] also seems to come down on the side of tragedy as an essential expression and reflection of the human condition. But at other times on this same stage, The Clay Cart and the Sanskrit theatre's aim of dramatizing virtue offers a different reading of both art and human potential. As editor and scholar van Buitenen suggests, "Why not argue that Greek tragedy constitutes the exception, not the rule, and that it presupposes a very specific notion of moira (fate) ...?" And perhaps our arts as well as our science and politics have ignored other possibilities, including those qualities in the world and in ourselves that contribute to more fully accurate images and assessments. Which might provide a balance, even an emphasis necessary for the future of the human enterprise, and the world we tragically threaten? Something to think about, on the way home.

I'm hoping that was provocative and interesting enough to suggest your own musings, but here's a little more of what I was thinking... Tragedy is often considered the apex and greatest form of our drama, and in a sense of our culture. The idea of the hero with a tragic flaw, undone by hubris, fated to fall from the heights, does seem to express or at least fit well with many other central notions of western culture. The fatal flaw is like original sin, hubris is offending the jealous God. There's perhaps a bit of Social Darwinism--even the mighty fall because the fatal flaw makes them unfit in the continual struggle for survival.

But what if--as van Buitenen suggests--Greek tragedy is not the consummate form against which every other theatrical form from every other culture is measured? What if it really expressed a particular culture--western culture--or even more particularly, the cultural beliefs of ancient Greece? And so it may not be humanity's best expression of the universal human condition: the way things are. Maybe just the way the Greeks thought things are. Maybe just one way things can be. And maybe the ideas that seem to fit so comfortably with tragedy--like humanity as innately sinful (as some western religions say) or humanity as predominantly selfish (dominated by selfish genes) as some western science emphasizes--maybe they are culture-bound as well, and not the whole human story?

Because we do get the sense from our culture that human nature is either damned by Divine design or evolution to accentuate cruelty, ambition, selfishness and violence. Of which humankind certainly provides many examples, which our dramas emphasize in form and content.

But Sanskrit drama doesn't do Greek tragedy, nor does it emphasize the survival of the most selfish, nor does it find drama only in people being cruel to each other. As I wrote in the earlier review: "The Clay Cart is not a religious play; the OSF program describes it as a social comedy. But comparing this play to western dramas and comedies, the most revealing and ultimately inspiring difference to me was the kind of conflict that creates the dramatic action. Yes, there is a villain (though he’s played as a ridiculous figure from the start) and human foibles that lead to complications, but the overall motives are most often generosity, loyalty, empathy and love."

I am certainly no expert on Sanskrit drama, but I wrote about my experience of that play, and found scholarly support. The (Little) Clay Cart, wrote one of its translators, is about "a man of heart" representing India's "classical aesthetic culture." The essence of his character is in how he expresses "moral duty" and "sympathetic generosity." The outcome: "The righteous man may suffer, but in the end he is stronger than the wicked, who is really a fool." He represents virtue, because "he loves his friends and forgives his enemies."

In this sense, it is exemplary drama, which can be soporific, and is certainly not the whole human story. But then, neither is tragedy. Wouldn't we be better off with a little more balance in our drama-- new interpretations of what how virtue is expressed, what it means, what it costs but what its rewards can be--in our own culture?

For after all, our science is showing that altruism is just as natural as selfishness, that animals exhibit cooperation and sharing as well as competition--if we only allow ourselves to see it. And at least in practice, our religious traditions include encouraging compassion, and modelling it. So can't our theatre produce drama (and not just the bipolar of tragedy and comedy) to reflect this? Because we're going to have to achieve a balance--to face our flaws but emphasize our ability to get beyond them, to keep trying--if we're going to be up to the challenges of the future.

To be fair, this is not precisely van Buitenen's point, in his introduction to the translation that OSF uses of The Little Clay Cart. For example, he sets the Greek idea of fate against the Hindu idea of transmigration of the soul into the next generation, making "any single life an episode in a far longer chain. No single life makes ultimate sense in itself; the chain of life does."

Still, his basic point about the culture-bound concept of tragedy allows for mine. Here's more of that passage: "This 'absense of tragedy' [in Sanskrit drama] is sometimes pointed to with a mildly accusing finger, as though any theatre worth the name should have it. Apologists then point out that India was 'prevented' from developing true tragedy by the underlying climate of its thought. This argument takes for granted that tragedy is an almost natural expression of any culture. But why not argue that Greek tragedy constitutes the exception, not the rule, and that it presupposes a very specific notion of moira (fate) that was peculiarly Greek?"

I also must confess that my point was also influenced by Daniel Mendelsohn's lovely essay in the New York Review of Books on the revival of the Philip Glass opera Satyagraha, which not entirely coincidentally, is largely about the hero of 20th century India, Gandhi (although it covers mostly his earlier years in South Africa, where he developed his methods of passive resistance.) The essay begins:

Good people do not, generally speaking, make good subjects for operas. Like the Greek tragedies that the sixteenth-century Venetian inventors of opera sought to recreate, Western musical drama has tended to be preoccupied with the darker extremes of human emotions: excessive passion and wild jealousy, smoldering resentment and implacable rage. These, after all, are the emotions that spark the kinds of actions—adultery, betrayal, revenge, murder—that make for gripping drama. Unpleasant as they may be in real life, such actions are essential to the Western idea of theater itself, in which the very notion of plot is deeply connected to difficulties, problems, disasters...[So] When we go to the theater, we want to see characters doing things. Bad things, preferably."

He finds in the work of Philip Glass another approach, which is not tragedy and probably to many people isn't even drama, or opera. But it is drama of a sort, it is theatre, and Mendelsohn finds it beautiful. And in beauty, is there not something of truth? In the end, tragedy may cause pity and terror. But it doesn't exactly inspire hope. Not only do we need that, but there is plenty in the world and in human nature that's good. To show how people can accentuate that, to show those possibilities, is as human and can be as artful as pushing the easier buttons of fight-or-flight--the reactions that could well be the fatal flaw of tragedy.

The Clay Cart at OSF

Vasantasenā, (Miriam A. Laube, left) dances for Chārudatta (Cristofer Jean, right) as Maitreya (Michael J. Hume) looks on, in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival production of The Clay Cart. Photo: David Cooper.

The Clay Cart Review

With clouds of incense rising above them, the large cast in colorful costumes is arrayed in a circle. They sit on cushions and stand under lanterns, chanting and singing in a golden light. The opening of The Clay Cart, now in repertory at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, promises an exotic experience from ancient India.

But once the play begins, and those long difficult character names in the program are transformed into recognizable musical sound, audiences are quickly caught up in a story filled with elements familiar from western drama, particularly Shakespeare: star-crossed lovers, a hero down on his luck, political intrigue and revolution, a sardonic fool, a dangerous villain, high-born hypocrites and noble-spirited scamps, an articulate criminal with professional pride. There are mistaken identities, sudden transformations, reversals of fortune, coincidence, violence, melodrama and farce. The plot involves stolen jewels, a pearl necklace, gamblers, a murder trial, and incidentally, a little clay cart.

There’s wit that contemporary Americans can appreciate in this 1960s translation and abridgement of a play that’s something like two thousand year old. The audience I saw it with particularly liked this one: “Wisdom comes naturally to women, but men have to be taught with books.”

The OSF production emphasizes these shared elements. Though Miriam Laube in the major role of the courtesan Vastantasena incorporates some ritual movements from Sanskrit theatre, the acting styles are largely familiar, and delightfully accomplished. Fluid staging, a simple but impressive set (built around and within that circle), gorgeous lighting—from that symbolic golden glow to the pale dawn and the turquoise sky before a storm—all have the signature OSF quality. If the show errs, it’s towards a little too much Broadway gloss. Still, this play comes from a theatrical tradition that is largely unknown today, even in India.

On April 5, 1965 the Beatles were filming an Indian restaurant scene for their second feature film, Help! Between takes, George Harrison picked up a strange stringed instrument used by one of the musicians supposedly playing for customers. It was a sitar. Within a few years, Harrison’s relationship with Ravi Shankar, and the Beatles’ trip to learn meditation in India brought traditional Indian music and ideas into western popular culture in a very big way. After many more inroads since, American audiences can more comfortably explore the cultural differences and similarities.

Of course there had been forays before. Writers like Somerset Maugham described Hindu ideas, and Sanskrit drama influenced western playwrights like Brecht and Thorton Wilder. Probably the first U.S. production of The Little Clay Cart (as this play is usually called) was the 1924 season-opener at the famed Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. That production, and most of the few since, tried to honor the strictures of Sanskrit drama, including the 1994 staging at Pomona College in southern California. Around that time, Bill Rauch created a looser adaptation with his Cornerstone Theatre Company in Los Angeles (called The Toy Truck.) Now OSF’s new Artistic Director, Rauch has directed a production that’s somewhere in between: pretty faithful to the text, and arguably to the spirit of Sanskrit drama, as well as to at least some of the style.

That style is codified in one of the holy books of the Hindu religion and philosophy: the fifth Veda, devoted entirely to all aspects of drama. That’s how important drama was, to all segments of society. Vocabularies of movement and expression, types of dramas and how plays were to unfold, etc. were all proscribed, though as a living art, Sanskrit theatre continued to invent and change. But remnants in Bollywood films are mostly what remains in Indian popular culture.

The OSF production uses music, dance, masks and movement, and the staging suggests the settings rather than depicting them—all consistent with Sanskrit styles. The story reveals some social structures ostensibly different from ours, notably concerning marriage (but that’s also true of Shakespeare to some extent.) Still, audiences will find relevance to our current class divides, political struggles, and even relationship complications.

The Clay Cart is not a religious play; the OSF program describes it as a social comedy. But comparing this play to western dramas and comedies, the most revealing and ultimately inspiring difference to me was the kind of conflict that creates the dramatic action. Yes, there is a villain (though he’s played as a ridiculous figure from the start) and human foibles that lead to complications, but the overall motives are most often generosity, loyalty, empathy and love. As one character proclaims: “If a man sets his mind on virtue,/There is nothing he may not dare.”

It was an inspired idea to bring The Clay Cart to OSF, and this funny, moving, vibrant production has to be among the highlights of the season.

Encore

Encore presentation of Dell Arte MFA Ensemble's
self-created tragedy, Between Two Winters,
Friday and Saturday at the Carlo Theatre.

This North Coast Weekend

An encore performance of the Dell'Arte MFA Ensemble's Between Two Winters at the Carlo Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., before its run the following weekend at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco. The puppets of the Shoe Box Variety Show perform at the Arcata Playhouse Friday at 7 p.m., and Saturday at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Ferndale Rep performs a staged reading of Shaw's Don Juan in Hell on Sunday afternoon only, at 2 p.m. Little Shop of Horrors continues at North Coast Rep.

Little Shop of Horrors

Kathleen Marshall as Ronnette, Christopher Hatcher
as Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors at North Coast Rep.

QED

Randy Wayne as Richard Feynman in
QED at the Arcata Playhouse.

This North Coast Weekend

North Coast Rep continues the musical Little Shop of Horrors, and Redwood Curtain's production of QED has its final performances Thursday through Saturday at the Arcata Playhouse. I reviewed both in my Journal column. "Horrors" is a well-done confection and QED seems directionless but its subject, Richard Feynman ("as though Groucho Marx was suddenly standing in for a great scientist") is a fascinating figure whose point of view on science and life is well worth knowing. This play offers only a taste, dressed up in a dramatic moment, but if it introduces Feynman to those who haven't read his books (especially Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman) or seen him on video, then it's well worth it. Plus Randy Wayne holds the stage impressively. Barry Blake reviews "Horrors" at the T-S, a good complement to my review. Betti Trauth reviews QED there, too.

Also up this weekend, the annual "The Finals" at Dell'Arte: this year, five ten minute plays by D.A. students, Thursday through Saturday at 8 PM in the Carlo Theatre.

This North Coast Weekend

North Coast Repertory opens Little Shop of Horrors tonight (Thursday, May 15) at 8PM.

Redwood Curtain presents QED, a mostly one-genius play about the brilliant and eccentric physicist Richard Feynman at the Arcata Playhouse for two weekends, Thursday through Saturday, beginning tonight at 8 PM.

I'll be writing about both shows in the Journal next week.

"Fences" in Ashland

Charles Robinson as Troy Maxson and Cameron
Knight as his son, Cory, in the OSF production of
"Fences" by August Wilson. It runs through July 20.

More on "Fences"

Before I saw August Wilson's play, Fences at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival earlier this month, I hadn't seen a production of it nor read it for around a decade. So with other Wilson plays I'd seen and read in recent years more in the forefront of my mind, I experienced this production with a certain innocence. I remembered some parts of the story, but not others. But in most ways, it was a first-time kind of experience. That turned out to be a big part of the experience for me.

So in my Journal column (in print today; I'll add the link here when its posted on the Journal website) I wrote about it without giving away much of the story, so others could also experience it that way. Deciding how much of the play's story to tell is always a problem. Some people read reviews before they see a play--perhaps to help them decide whether to see it or not. But a lot of people who won't see the play (or at least this production) read the review anyway. So how do you not spoil the story for those who are going, while telling enough of the story to make it an interesting reading experience for those who aren't going? The answer varies according to circumstances, but it's almost always a problem.

A couple of other comments about that column. Doing a cost-benefit analysis on writing columns and reviews is always depressing, but sometimes more than others. Getting review tickets for Oregon Shakespeare Festival productions is one of the perks of this job, and a necessary one, because it offers some perspective on the North Coast theatre I usually see. But otherwise, it's a long (and increasingly costly) drive, it's a couple of nights in a motel, meals and four plays in three days (we usually arrive Thursday for the evening show, see two on Friday and one on Saturday before driving back.) And for all that, the paper pays zilch.

For many columns (which may include reviews/previews of two plays or more) there's time-consuming research. And then of course the job of writing, which often involves being as concise as possible. I thought of all this when I re-read the first paragraph of the Fences review, and realized that it alone represented at least eight hours of reading. There were three facts from three separate sources in one sentence.

In that review, I write about the muscular but not physically large lead actor, and how Wilson noted that Troy Maxson (the lead character) is a large man, and then I speculate on the importance of that largeness. But it was only after I wrote that, that this piece from NPR was brought to my attention. It makes a big point out of the character's largeness. It also contains the one video clip of James Earl Jones' performance that I recall seeing before. I wish I'd seen him do this play, as well as a subsequent touring production with John Henry Redwood as Troy Maxson. I met John Henry and saw him in other roles (and he was a big man, and a very generous and lovely man, who, like August, died way before his time), as I saw the great Mary Alice, who originated the role of Rose in Fences, in a different play with John Henry. (Courtney Vance, who was the first Cory, is now familiar to just about everybody from his television roles, particularly as the D.A. on Law and Order: Criminal Intent.)

I suppose it's not too much of a tip-off to say that this play is about "love, honor, duty, betrayal," especially since August Wilson said that's what all his plays are about. But from here on, there are SPOILERS, so if you haven't seen Fences and you intend to, maybe this is the place to stop reading.

Troy Maxson reveals a major element of his biography late in the first act, including a crime he committed and the fact that he was imprisoned for it. It's said that August Wilson based this character partly on his stepfather, David Bedford, who married his mother in 1957, the year this play takes place. It was only after Bedford's death that Wilson learned he had been a high school football star, but black players didn't get scholarships in 1930s Pittsburgh, so he tried to rob a store to get money to go to school. But during the robbery he killed a man, and spent 23 years in prison. The only job he could get when he got out was with the Pittsburgh sewage department. Troy Maxson's story is similar.

August Wilson's relationship with Bedford was difficult, and one area of conflict, as in the play, was over high school football. But while in the play, Troy's conflict with his son Cory is over Cory playing football (and being recruited by a North Carolina college), Wilson's was that he quit his high school team. (I'm not sure his Pittsburgh Central Catholic High School team played my Greensburg Central Catholic High School team when we were both in high school, but if so we might have passed in the night way back then.)

Troy Maxson goes off on the Pittsburgh Pirates for not playing Roberto Clemente because he was Puerto Rican, and this was August's view as well, as he expressed it when we talked about the Pirates of that era. It's true that the now revered Clemente had a tough time his first several years in the 1950s. He complained of various injuries and got a reputation as lazy, which was clearly a racial byproduct. Ironically or not, the Pittsburgh Pirates--in a city that always had a complex attitude towards its black athletes--in 1971 became the first to field an all-black team (including the pitcher) in a World Series. The star of that team and that Series was Roberto Clemente.

Troy Maxson was a Negro League player, and Pittsburgh had two of the best Negro League teams, the Homestead Grays and the Pittsburgh Crawfords, with Satchel Paige pitching.

Wilson said this play began with an image, of a black man holding a baby, in a collage by the artist whose work inspired several of his plays, Romare Bearden. Wilson wanted to portray a black man who felt the responsibility to stay with his family, and who did. He wanted to provide a counter-image to the prevalent stereotype of black men who are absent from their families, and black families without fathers.

The play demonstrates the cost of that, and the personal cost of thwarted ambition and self-expression, not only in Troy but in his wife, Rose, and both of his sons. Troy attributes his infidelity to the need to get beyond his fences of family and failure, though he is otherwise clueless about his projections onto his sons and the costs of thwarting the sports and college ambitions of Cory, or not supporting the musical ambitions of his eldest son, Lyons.

When he began writing Fences, Wilson hadn't quite conceived the idea of writing a cycle of plays set in all the decades of the 20th century. But in what is probably his most personal play in that it reflects his own childhood, he was already being true to the history of the African American family. Troy Maxson stands at the midpoint of the century, and in the middle of so much else.

But though this was August Wilson's most popular play--and the one that assured his career as a playwright--it was not his favorite. As he said in interviews and as he told me, his favorite was the next one he wrote, Joe Turner's Come and Gone. I'm still searching for the interview later in his life when he talked about all his plays. I seem to recall he ranked Gem of the Ocean pretty highly, too.

I haven't mentioned Troy's brother, Gabriel, and I don't say much about him in my review. He is certainly a key figure in the play, as the wounded and addled often are in Wilson's plays. G. Valmont Thomas does a fine job portraying him. But his size and big voice make me wonder what this production might have been like if he had played Troy and Robinson had played Gabriel. That might not have fit the director's vision (or the actors' schedules), but I would have liked to see it. Robinson was quite compelling in the role, and he fit with other stylistic elements of this production. His interactions with Cory in particular felt real and nuanced, though contemporary audiences might have been more disturbed by the way that James Earl Jones seemed to deliberately humiliate Cory. But his key speech explaining his infidelity didn't have the visceral power it might have had. Nor really did the scene announcing the death of his mistress, or his bringing the baby to Rose. They worked for that audience--including me--mostly because of Wilson's words, I think. But as I wrote in my review, it was an emotional theatrical experience anyway, and I certainly recommend it.

"Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter" at OSF

Gwendolyn Mulamba as Jenny Sutter at OSF

Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter Reviewed

My Journal column this week contains a review written by playwright, director, teacher and now drama critic (and also my partner) Margaret Thomas Kelso, of the current Oregon Shakespeare Festival production of Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter. I had to edit it for space in print, but not for cyberspace. So here is her full review:

Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter, written by Julie Marie Myatt and directed by Jessica Thebus, joins a long line of stories about soldiers returning from war that date back to Homer’s Odyssey. And like Ulysses, Jenny Sutter does not take a direct path home. But instead of Calypso’s island, Iraq war veteran Jenny detours by way of Slab City, California, in her own odyssey to find herself before reconnecting with her family. Unlike Ulysses, she is coming home injured: she suffers from PTSD, survivor’s guilt and an amputated leg. And as a woman, she faces greater expectations to emotionally reunite with her children. The play asks can she heal herself enough to be able to face the rest of the journey home?

Approximately 200,000 women have served in the Iraq so far and more of them have faced hostile fire and resulting injuries than women in the military ever before. How the ravages of war will impact servicewomen (in contrast to civilian women who suffer collateral damage) is still unknown.

The director Jessica Thebus has discovered the perfect tone for the piece: amusing, gritty and without a trace of sentimentality. The performances are all strong with Gwendolyn Mulamba playing an acerbic and ironic Jenny, who grounds the play with her pain and dignity. The rest of the cast are mostly odd ball inhabitants of Slab City, a real location, the remnants of a WWII Marine base at the foot of the Chocolate Mountains where a community of retirees and misfits squat in domiciles ranging from tarps to classic Airstreams. It’s a perfect location for the likes of Jenny and offers the playwright plenty of material for a supporting cast of quirky characters who infuse humor and warmth into the play and Jenny’s life.

Lou, a professional itinerant trying to give up her many addictions , calls Slab City her home base. Kate Mulligan plays Lou with energy and sizzle, becoming an upbeat foil for the laconic Jenny. Other residents of the slabs are Buddy, Lou’s sometimes boyfriend/preacher, skillfully played by David Kelly; Cheryl, Lou’s hairdresser/therapist, believably performed by K.T. Vogt; and Donald, an emotionally damaged cipher whose deft performance by Gregory Linington prevents these characters from sliding into romanticism. Cameron Knight plays Hugo, the bus station’s night shift employee who is the first civilian Jenny meets after discharge.

Richard Hay created a simple set that serves flawlessly while maintaining a bit of magic in the scene transitions that Oregon Shakespeare does so well.. Lynn Jeffries designed costumes that anchor the realistic tone of the play while supporting the character development of the actors. Allen Lee Hughes’s lighting not only supports the action and mood of the play but creates locales, especially the hospital setting at the opening of the play.

The only shortcoming of the production were several extended lifeless scenes. The first was very early in the play when Jenny changes from her marine fatigues into civilian clothes, an important sequence which reveals to the audience not only her transition out of military life, but also her struggle with her artificial leg. Important but lasting far too long without suspense or other drama. Another lifeless scene is when Jenny collapses and “Oh, Happy Days,” plays ironically in the background for many minutes too long.

Other than these moments, the direction was skillful and sensitive, honoring the pain, celebrating survival, and finding the humor in a challenging situation. The performance tells a story we all need to consider in an engaging hour thirty-five minutes (without intermission.)

Note: This play runs at OSF in Ashland, Oregon through June 20.

Age Matters

The March/April issue of the Dramatist (publication of the Dramatists Guild) begins with letters that refer back to a column that argues that older playwrights, and not just young ones, might write worthwhile plays. That column said: "Look, no one likes to age, especially the artistic child within you. But with that glorious aging comes more wisdom, more experience with craft, more experience with relationships" etc. Letters responding to it came from people in their forties and even seventies who don't have established playwriting careers but who are writing plays and trying to get them produced anyway.

The editors called the response "overwhelming," which generally means it is responding to a point of view unheard of before. The idea has apparently become gospel that at least among the non-famous (but possibly extending to the formerly famous as well), only the young can write plays. Anyone not young is illegitimate, foolish and should be ashamed of themselves, which probably they are. So a bunch of people wrote in to say, not so fast.

I come at this issue from an older perspective, but also from my own youth in an apparently different time. While I had terrible panics and despair over the possibility that I wouldn't "make it" as a writer until, could it be possible, my 30s, and I believed that my youth gave me a particular perspective on my times, I would still have easily accepted the idea that older writers were legitimate, and could have greater perspective based on experience as people and as writers. It stands to reason.

But apparently it is now a minority argument, because doors are largely closed to older playwrights--meaning 40 and up. There are contests, fellowships, opportunties for young writers. Even if it isn't made explicit by rule, new means under 30 or maybe 35. It's not just in the theatre--I remember a San Francisco Chronicle book critic who shocked the literary world by countering the many annual"best writers under 35" lists with his "best new writers over 50." But he only did it once.

There are reasons why the new stage is dominated by young playwrights. University students are virtually the only subsidized playwrights in America, although they are often subsidizing themselves by means of student loans. They are instructed, coached, mentored and produced. In a community like this one, they are pretty much the only new original plays anyone sees. This happens because the university has turned the arts (and related fields, like journalism) into profit centers, and the university has become the chief employer of writers, including those playwrights who aren't writing movies or TV shows.

Once out of their undergrad and graduate programs, young playwrights have a certain amount of time to devote to the theatre, during which years they either get produced and noticed and become part of the theatre-Hollywood-university system, or they don't, and get on with not being poor anymore.

These days, with many in the huge baby boomer generation retiring on possibly the last dependable pensions there will be for awhile, there are likely to be more writers and playwrights in their 50s, 60s, etc. who can subsidize themselves. Presumably institutions will respond to that, although so far they aren't. The only allowable topic for older writers is being old. As long as they make fun of it.

There is the additional question of audience for theatre, which is generally older, and whether a predominantly young perspective serves them all that well.

But what is really shocking about this debate is that there is a question involved as to the legitimacy of the non-young playwright's perspective. All you have to do is go to student plays and however charming and even insightful they are, it's clear the writers don't have very much to write about, or much perspective on it. The argument for craft is more complicated, but it seems obvious that while young writers can excel by instinct, talent, originality and enthusiasm--as well as the "first thought, best thought" phenomenon--there is something to be said for craft gained by experience crafting.

Of course the theatre needs youth to replenish itself (and to move the sets.) Still, there's institutional prejudice against the not-young in the theatre as well as most everywhere else. But you know, the theatre--and most everything else--is missing something, something important, something it needs.

This North Coast Weekend

HSU Ten Minute Play Festival begins this weekend.

This North Coast Weekend

The Dell'Arte scholars go from the tragic to the ridiculous with first-year students in Flops Popping, the popular spring clown show. Twenty-four students in various combinations cavort on the Carlo stage, Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.

Another popular annual spring event is the HSU Ten Minute Play Festival, which this year celebrates its 10th birthday. Coordinator Margaret Thomas Kelso (who began the festival in 1998) says there are an unusual number of plays this year with social and political themes, including terrorism and interrogation, war and genocide. (Plus the usual comedies and fantasies, of course.) The Festival begins this weekend, Thursday through Saturday at 7:30 in Gist Hall Theatre, and continues next weekend, May 1-3. A lineup of the plays and other info at HSU Stage.

Auditions announcement by Ferndale Rep:

Hey Seniors - ages 55 plus! The Ferndale Repertory Theatre is holding auditions for our second annual all senior show. This season we are auditioning Dave Silverbrand’s original script, Make Mine Metamucil on MONDAY, April 28th and TUESDAY, April 29 from 7pm -9pm at the Carson Block Building, the third floor, 517 Third Street, Old Town, Eureka. Director Denise Ryles is seeking eight ensemble players – four men and four women, age 55 plus.

The theatre is also looking for seniors interested in the technical and backstage positions. Please call the theatre (707) 786-5483 with your contact information and we will get back to you.

PRODUCTION DATES are July 13, 14 & 15 at the Rep and three shows in other venues still to be arranged. – for a total of six shows. Rehearsals will start in May. Actors - Be prepared to read cold from the script; wear comfortable clothes and shoes. Monologues are not required but appreciated. Scripts are available for perusal at the theatre. Note that scripts from the theatre may not be taken home. For more information, please call the Ferndale Rep at (707) 786-5483 and ask for Marilyn.

This North Coast Weekend

Pure Abstractions HSU spring dance concert
Thurs-Saturday at 7:30 at the Van Duzer.
For the Dell'Arte School performances and
Jeff DeMark at the Arcata Playhouse Saturday,
see the column below.

We Live On a Political Stage

This is my Stage Matters column I sent in for the North Coast Journal published today. Apparently the email went awry...we're still sorting this out. Apologies are due to the folks at Dell'Arte I interviewed, and to Jeff DeMark, because their shows I write about here are this weekend.

So I'm posting the column in full here today.


The theatre of politics is pretty obvious in this presidential campaign year, but politics in theatre—that is, political and social issues of current concern as subject matter--is also especially evident on North Coast stages in 2008.

Several plays written in another time encouraged reflection on pertinent issues of today—and were likely chosen with that in mind. The year began with “Marat/Sade” at NCRT, which dealt with political violence, totalitarian repression and the gap between rich and poor. “Twelve Angry Men” at Ferndale Rep reminded us of fragile principles in our justice system, and the folly of discarding them. Dell’Arte revived “The Golden State,” which also touches upon economic disparities as well as perennial cultural issues, and North Coast Prep presented “The Crucible,” reminding us of the contagion of fear, especially when it is manipulated for political and economic gain.

Now Ferndale Rep is doing a musical that has the distinction of leading to several Supreme Court decisions concerning censorship and political speech. Today’s younger audiences for “Hair” may be a little baffled by some of the issues of central importance in the story, such as the major plot point of burning a draft card, and all the fuss about…hair. Both had immense symbolic importance in the 1960s, and caused of outrage and violence in the public sphere, and within families. Still, this play’s relevance to current issues of war, protest and repression are obvious, unfortunately.


Other current social and political issues seem clearly on the minds of second year students of the Dell’Arte International School’s MFA Ensemble in the piece they’re creating and presenting for the first time this coming weekend.

“Between Two Winters,” on the Carlo Theatre stage Thursday through Saturday at 8 pm and Sunday at 2, is the result of an eight week process that began with students studying the nature of tragedy (Aristotle’s “Poetics” applied to Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”) But when it came time to create a theatre piece, students were directed to find a subject in the newspaper.

According to Brian Moore, the student directing the piece, the story they selected was about a woman who was approached by the man who had raped her 20 years before. He asked her forgiveness, and she refused. Instead she initiated a prosecution, which caused controversy and criticism.

But in the process of writing the script, “it’s taken on a much different life of its own,” Moore said. “From that starting point, we’ve ended up in a much different place.”

Now the story takes place in Kuwait in the early 1990s, where the mayor of a city in Montana goes to honor the hero who saved lives during the oil field fires set by the retreating Iraqi forces in Gulf War I. The mayor is the woman who was raped 20 years before, the hero was her rapist, who has been in hiding ever since.

There are more moral and plot complications. The mayor is “a pretty notorious figure,” said Ronlin Foreman, the school’s director of pedagogical studies, who supervises the project. “She is a hyper politician with aspirations to the Senate, and has a real quality of vengeance in her life.” She also has a daughter for whom she also has political ambitions—who is the child resulting from that rape.

Where all this leads was still taking shape when I spoke with Moore and Foreman this past weekend. But for Foreman, the rationale for applying the tragic form to contemporary events is clear. “We have a surfeit of tragic occurrences,” he said “but tragedy in our day and age is a hard thing to come by. We think that we’re coming into a time when an admission of tragedy, of tragic flaw, is important.”

“Tragedy is a form that at its root pits the rational and ordered world against the world of terror and chaos,” according to a text these students use. “It deals with the human drive to step out of the chorus, to stand for and proceed into the hero’s journey…”

For this project, the chorus—which in Greek tragedy is the voice of the community that narrates and comments on the story—is represented by the media. “We’re planning to have a television camera onstage, broadcasting to monitors,” Moore said, “because we’re exploring how the media can make one of the characters the protagonist one moment, but suddenly shift to side with a different character.”

But the shifting chorus as well as the moral complexities of the situation challenges the classical definition of tragedy. “It’s hard a lot of the time to see the actions of these characters as sins, in the way that the Greeks did,” Moore explained. “We have a much different understanding of morality. We don’t bend to the will of the gods the same way the ancient Greeks did.”

So when I asked “Who is the tragic hero? What is the tragic flaw?” they both laughed a little uncomfortably. “Well, that’s what we’re working on right now,” Moore said.

Applying the tragic sense to these contemporary events remains an essential part of this exploration. “It’s a time when we say that it is important for someone to step out of the chorus—out of the people,” Foreman said, “as leaders—as people who expect to do something to change things.”

Foreman’s goal is to get the script right, so this weekend’s performances may turn out to be more like staged readings, he said. But the exploration will continue to a scheduled mid-May run of “Between Two Winters” at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco.

There are even some contemporary issues explored in the annual HSU dance concert this weekend (“Pure Abstractions,” Thursday through Saturday at 7:30 in the Van Duzer.) Then beginning next weekend, the 10th annual HSU Ten Minute Play Festival will include an unusual number of plays on social and political themes, including terrorism and interrogation, war and genocide. (Plus the usual comedies and fantasies, of course.) The festival runs April 24-26 and May 1-3.

This Saturday at 8 PM in the Arcata Playhouse, Jeff DeMark reprises his newest show, “They Ate Everything But Their Boots,” about the trials and tribulations of finding and renovating a Humboldt home. This will be only the third time DeMark has done this show since its premiere at the Bayside Grange in late 2006, and he promises some new material as well as an expanded musical presence by the Tiny Tims. Thanks to the mortgage crisis, there’s a new topicality as well to this typically funny, smart and generous DeMark show.

La Bete is on

La Bete at CR this weekend.