Othello on Film: Welles

Orson Welles as Othello in the
1952 film version he directed.

Othello on Film: Welles

The first of these Othellos to be filmed, but one of the last to be seen, was directed by Orson Welles, who also played Othello. This film's history is an epic journey. It started in the late 1940s, when Welles--a Hollywood outcast at the time--was filming his vision of Othello in bits and pieces, between paying film work and when he had the money. He filmed it in various locations throughout Europe, wherever he happened to be.

The film was finished in 1952, and released in the U.S. in 1955, to very mixed reviews. After being shown in only three theatres, the film essentially disappeared for the next three decades. Thought completely lost, a print was found in 1981, but still it was not really seen until the film was restored in 1992: exactly forty years after Welles completed it.

And "completed" is a relative word. The restoration was far from perfect, and the shoestring budget shows up in some bad dubbing and a few awkward effects. But apart from all that, it is very close to magnificent.

At least as a piece of moviemaking. This is the most cinematic of Othellos on film. The words are Shakespeare's but the editor is Welles--he tells the whole story in about 90 minutes. It begins with a montage of the funerals of Othello and Desdemona, while Iago is hoisted to his punishment. These opening scenes, the black and white cinematography, the framing, askew camera angles and silhouettes are reminiscent of Bergman, and later of Kurosawa and even Fellini.

Welles started out directing theatre, including Shakespeare--he created the famous Federal Theatre Project production of an all-black Macbeth during the Depression. He knew the plays, and by this time he knew moviemaking, too. So he could re-imagine the text as a film script--for example, by showing Othello's epileptic fit from Othello's point of view, as he wakes.

Iago is played by Micheal MacLiammoir, an accomplished Irish actor, who later wrote that Welles instructed him to play Iago as a repressed homosexual, fixated on Othello but in an impotent rage--once again, a variation of the Freudian via Ernest Jones theory. It doesn't clarify the play, nor does Welles performance, but the movie does--and it is striking, even amazing to look at.

Suzanne Cloutier played Desdemona--blond, lovely and so young she's growing up on screen, over the four years it took to make the film. She probably looks more the age imputed to Desdemona in the play, and has the beauty to bewitch Othello, but I didn't sense any sparks between them. That's something lacking, it seems to me, in all these films. Maggie Smith was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in the Olivier version (as was Olivier), and Irene Jacob and Penelope Wilton give fine performances in their films, perhaps even true to Elizabethan mores, but the central romance remains a convention and Desdemona's part in all these films is too much as a cipher to be satisfying.

This North Coast Weekend

"Hunting of the Snark" is this year's
holiday show from Dell'Arte.

This North Coast Weekend

It’s a Lewis Carroll Christmas! Both Dell'Arte and Ferndale Rep have Lewis Carroll themed Christmas shows. First up this weekend is Dell’Arte with The Hunting of the Snark, an adaptation of the famous Lewis verses. It premieres Friday and Saturday at the Carlo Theatre and moves to various locales for free shows, beginning at the Van Duzer at HSU on Sunday. Schedule and details: dellarte.com. Betti Trauth previews it at the T-S.

NCRT's ongoing production of the classic musical Fiddler on the Roof got its round of reviews: mine in the NCJ, Betti Trauth's at the T-S and Willi Welton's in the ER are all quite positive.

Also in the ER, Wendy Butler reviews the ongoing Charlotte's Web at Ferndale Rep, and offers some observations on reviewing community theatre. Betti Trauth reviews it at T-S.

Willi Welton reviews the Shake the Bard production of Othello, in it's final weekend at the Arcata Playhouse.

I'm running a little behind here, but I hope to post soon on the film versions of Othello and about an intriguing theory about the play I found. Then more on Fiddler on the Roof.

David Hamilton collage of Othello at Arcata
Playhouse.

Othello in Arcata

When Venice was a great power, its most trusted military leader was Othello, a Moor. In secret, Othello wooed the daughter of a Venetian noble, Brabantio, and as the play opens their secret marriage is about to be revealed. Iago, a trusted officer who may or may not be seriously aggrieved at being passed over as Othello’s second in command, and who may or may not really believe that Othello seduced his wife, is certainly out to get Othello from the play’s first beat.

When Iago’s first attempt—turning Brabantio against Othello—isn’t enough, he devises a plan to convince Othello that his new wife, Desdemonia, has been unfaithful with Michael Cassio, who conveniently is the officer who got the job as Othello’s lieutenant that Iago covets. It works, all too well.

Much of this story was found in the Italian tale that Shakespeare adapted, but besides the histrionic themes of jealousy, envy and carnal passion, the play is riddled and beset with questions. What is Iago’s problem? Why is Othello so easily convinced and moved to violence? Some of the most famous productions in Shakespearian history have tried to address these and other vexing questions in a play that continues to fascinate audiences.

The production of Shakespeare’s Othello, Moor of Venice by Shake the Bard Theatre Company currently at the Arcata Playhouse makes good use of this intimate space to focus on the dynamics of the play itself. A traditional but minimal set (conceived, designed and created by David Hamilton, Jack Freeman and Sam Neuwirth respectively) is complemented by Pat Hamilton’s handsome and evocative costumes, and Gabe Groom’s suggestive sound design. Director David Hamilton has employed some cunning stagecraft to keep the action on track and to focus particular moments. The result is a clear and creditable production, with solid performances, including a brilliant, thrilling one—and a virtual clinic on acting Shakespeare-- by Jabari Morgan as Othello.

Morgan’s interpretation is well-considered and creative, and its skillful expression rivets your attention. From his first entrance and his first calmly, warmly resonating words, his Othello is every inch a general, until this shock unhinges him, and he struggles against a kind of madness. Morgan’s masterful physical (including vocal) effects in the second half of the play are dazzling, but I was just as impressed by his precision in the first half, when he is alive to every moment. Too many actors, especially in Shakespeare, feel the need to indicate with gestures the meaning of the words. Jabari Morgan acts the words, and every actor should watch his performance to see the difference.

Iago presents his “honest” face to others, but exposes his malevolent intentions to us in soliloquies that poet and critic W. H. Auden thought should be played “slightly mad and with terrific gaiety,” which aptly describes how a cavorting A.J. Stewart performed them. He indulged in a bit too much indicating for my taste (is it really necessary to mime heart on a sleeve?) and his lighting accented an evil brow a bit too obviously. He was most effective and disconcerting playing the calm and solicitous public Iago, and his creepy grin in the final scene chillingly illuminated both sides of the character. He also matched Morgan’s power in some key scenes together.

Erik “Rez” Peterson is efficient in the mostly functional role of Cassio, a self-consciously upright aristocrat with a weakness for arrogance and wine. Rich Chase plays the pawn Roderigo with a trusting dimness that makes him Iago’s effective tool, yet with the sense of wrong that leads to Iago’s undoing. Abe Green has one of the better voices, and as a younger than usual Brabantio, he can stand toe to toe confronting Othello. Darcy Daughtry has a small but winning role as the reputed strumpet, Bianca.

Jennifer Trustem is a fiery Emilia, Iago’s wife as well as Desdemona’s lady-in-waiting and staunchest defender. As Desdemona, Jay Shepherd emphasizes her naiveté, and together she and Trustem create a very effective (at least when audible) scene on what would soon be Desdemona’s deathbed, employing dialogue that has Shakespeare sounding like an Elizabethan feminist, with the gender equivalent of his more famous “has not a Jew eyes?” aria in The Merchant of Venice.

What past ages called passions, and attributed to temperament, culture, class and race, we may reflexively consider psychological or mental illnesses. In our culture Iago may remind us of psychopaths and sociopathic serial killers, Othello perhaps as psychotic or even schizophrenic; Desdemona as abuse victim. There is scholarly support for the idea that both Othello and Iago were victims of physical maladies known to have mental effects (Othello’s epilepsy being long associated with satanic possession, demoted in Shakespeare’s time to obsession.)

But even so, as David Hamilton claims in his program note, these characters all represent aspects of ourselves. Many will recognize some misguided Othello in authority, or the Iago of the office, complete with cascades of malignant consequences. All of the main characters—including Desdemona, Emilia and Cassio— are flawed and make small mistakes that conspire to the tragic end. As Desdemona muses, “How foolish are our minds.”

This show wasn’t an unqualified triumph the night I saw it—there were some weak moments, diction problems, and unhelpful lighting, especially in the final revelation scene. But it’s well worth seeing, and Jabari Morgan’s performance is not to be missed. This Othello plays one more weekend.

This North Coast Weekend

Denim Ohmit as Wilbur and
Nicole Cowan as Charlotte in
Ferndale Rep's production of
Charlotte's Web, opening this
weekend. Photo: H.R. La Bue.

This North Coast Weekend

Ferndale Rep begins the holiday season tonight (Thursday, Nov. 15) with its production of Charlotte's Web, the classic story by E. B. White (in paperback, it is the best-selling children's book of all time), written for the stage by the veteran children's story adapter and playwright, Joseph Robinette. The Rep has assembled a cast of 27, directed by Carol Martinez, with scenery and lights by Gary Franklin and costumes by Vikki Young. Though the play brings barnyard animals alive to the delight of children, its themes of friendship, active affiliation and courage in the face of the unchangeable cycles of life make this a story for families to share. The play runs through Dec. 16. Betti Trauth previews it at the T-S.

Also opening Thursday is the North Coast Rep production of the classic musical Fiddler on the Roof, which plays through Dec. 15. More on this next week.

Thursday is the second of two midweek performances of Evita by the touring company, presented by CenterArts at the Van Duzer Theatre. You're going to have to really like Andrew L. Webber for this one.

Last but not least, the Shake the Bard production of Shakespeare's Othello continues at the Arcata Playhouse. I reviewed it at the Journal, and Betti Trauth reviewed it at the T-S. Both of us praised Jabari Morgan's exceptional performance as Othello, and suggested theatregoers not miss it, just for that. I hope to have much more here on this show and on the play, especially the movie versions, as the week goes on.

Critic vs. Playwright vs. Critic

It's an old story, but always interesting when it's revived. It's also usually a New York story, as it mostly is this time. First the Critic--Charles Isherwood of the New York Times--wrote a piece urging playwrights who'd gone to Hollywood to write for TV to use their downtime during the current Writer's Guild strike to return to writing plays for the theatre.

He probably meant it as a "light" and clever, gently chiding little piece, but writers on strike don't find much humor in it, and one playwright--Jon Robin Baitz--took umbrage on other accounts as well. In the process, he goes after the New York Times critics with some precise criticism of his own.

Both pieces are very interesting reading, especially Baitz's. He calls for critics to have some humility, and I can't argue with that. But I don't read these New York Times critics much so I don't know about his specific characterizations of them. I was interested, however, that among the "good" critics he names by contrast he includes former NY Times critic Frank Rich (someone I did and do read, someone in fact I knew and worked with, and about whom there will be more here very soon). Because when playwrights complained about critics a couple of cycles ago, they were often complaining the most about Frank Rich, who they dubbed the Butcher of Broadway. Those castigations were mostly unjustifed then; I have no idea if Baitz is right about the critics there now.

But what Baitz says about the real lives of playwrights is important, and important for those interested in American theatre to know, including (if not especially) critics and writers about theatre. Check it out.

This North Coast Weekend

On DeMark, Get Set--

Go to the HSU Studio Theatre for two performances of Jeff DeMark's show about the wonderful world of crap jobs, Went To Lunch, Never Returned. The shows start at 7:30 pm on Thursday and Friday (Nov. 8-9). Tickets are $7, $5 students/seniors, benefitting HSU technical theatre students. The Arcata Eye has a brief preview.

Opening this week is a production of Shakespeare's Othello by Shake the Bard at the Arcata Playhouse. Preview Thursday, and opening weekend Friday and Saturday, beginning at 8pm. Jonathan Glen previews it at the T-S.

George Bernard Shaw. How many
of his plays would have survived
"development"?

First Principles

Let Playwrights Be Playwrights

In general, "play development" is work done on the text of a play before it is produced, so it has to do principally with the playwright and the writing. There are two kinds of play development that make sense to me: in an academic setting, where students works on the plays they're writing with a teacher or mentor, and when the playwright refines the script in the course of getting it ready for a production. And even these require some caveats.

These days, play development has also come to mean a torturous path with many pitfalls for the playwright and the play, as the process becomes more concerned with money, and is increasingly often prolonged to produce income for the people or entity in charge of "developing."

Playwright Richard Nelson spoke about this process, and excerpts were published in American Theatre magazine. He goes at the primary assumption first: "what a playwright writes, no matter how much he or she works on it...the play will always be not right--will always need help. In other words, writing a play is too big of a job for just the playwright to achieve. This, I believe, is now a prevalent attitude in the American theatre. And this mindset is devastating."

As a result, Nelson said, playwrights who want to be produced know they have to submit to this process, and so "why finish anything?" He says that young playwrights tell him they purposely include badly written sections so that the "help" will be directed there, and not the parts of the play they care about.

The "help" by theatres comes about sometimes in commissions, which pay the playwright for the first draft and then for the rewrite, but basically the "help" is done to earn "participation"--that is, the piece of the play's profits in subsequent productions. This has become a new feature of the nonprofit theatre--a theatre that invests its time in "helping" gets some of the playwright's money if the play goes on to, say, Broadway. So if playwrights want their new play produced, they must go through this process of being helped, whether they want it or not, and then they pay for it, and keep on paying for it. Nelson thinks this stinks.

But that's not Nelson's only objection--he feels the process makes mediocre plays. A script is subjected to so many judgments--from producers, literary managers, dramaturgs, etc.--usually applying conventional wisdom about the rules for a good play. "Rules for writing plays. My god! One hears young playwrights being told what a play 'must do' or 'how a play works.' One hears writers being told that a character's 'journey' isn't clear enough, or that the writer needs to determine a character's 'motivation.' One hears how a play has to 'build' in a certain way, or how 'the conflict' isn't strong enough. These are terms that seem to suggest a deep understanding of what a play is and how it is put together, but in fact they tell us very little."

They're too general, for one thing, and they don't always apply. "To see how silly this prescription is, one has only to ask: What is the clear motivation of Lear?"

"The playwright doesn't write out of motivations but rather out of truth and reality, out of people and story and worlds he or she wishes or needs to create for us," Nelson counters. Plays can be written to formula, but they are formula plays. Sooner or later, plays are shaped by these conventional wisdoms, and they begin to all be alike. Even the process of play development itself has a leveling effect: Nelson says that since new plays are routinely subjected to mandatory readings first, but some plays--especially plays with lots of characters interacting but not always talking--don't come alive in readings. So playwrights write plays that do, for their own survival.

A certain style of play development has always been part of the American commercial theatre, but the route from nonprofit to larger commercial productions hasn't always been to the play's benefit. In Hot Seat, his collection of theatre reviews for the New York Times, Frank Rich remarks that "almost every play" that was transferred to Broadway from regional or Off Broadway theatres "was the worse for wear." Often this had to do with losing key actors or glitzing up the set, but sometimes it was the rewriting.

The exceptions he notes are plays by Tom Stoppard and August Wilson. How each of these playwrights approaches "development" is well documented. Though August Wilson took his plays through the O'Neill Center process (and later did say he felt pressured from time to time to be more conventional) he also always remained in charge of his own process, and the result. Later in his career, he rewrote solely on the basis of what he saw in rehearsals. Tom Stoppard does the same. In both cases, they rewrite not on the basis of "help"--though they both gratefully took suggestions from actors, directors and even onlookers--but on the basis of how the play was working as it was being brought alive, for that's the difference in playwrighting: it isn't just on the page. It has to work on the stage.

But what works on stage is also measured by what the world the playwright is creating. That may be a very eccentric world, and in this there is resemblance to other creative writing. Writing in the New Yorker about a new series of abridged classics, Adam Gopnik found the abridged version of Moby Dick was a perfectly serviceable novel--- "by conventional contemporary standards of good editing and critical judgment, improved," which means "a clean story, inhabited by plausible characters--the 'taut, spare driving' narrative beloved of Sunday reviewers."

The problem is, he writes, it's not Moby Dick. Melville didn't write "just a thrilling adventure with unforgettable characters but a great book. The subtraction does not turn good work into hackwork; it turns a hysterical, half-mad masterpiece into a sound, sane book."

There are lots of non-masterpieces that are only crazy, of course. But Gopnik concludes that "masterpieces are inherently a little loony." Can a masterpiece survive development? It's a question well worth asking.

This North Coast Weekend

URINETOWN: THE MUSICAL in its final weekend
at HSU.

This North Coast Weekend

URINETOWN: THE MUSICAL is in its final weekend at HSU, escorted by rave reviews by Betti Trauth at the T-S and Wendy Butler in the ER. The show starts at 7:30 tonight (not 8, which one review said) tomorrow and closing night, Saturday in the Van Duzer.

Productions of the HSU Department of Theatre, Film and Dance began starting shows at 7:30 last year instead of the standard 8 pm, and lately other theatres have been adopting it, though not consistently. So as experience shows (I missed a 7:30 curtain recently myself) it's best to double-check.

Speaking of which, Eureka High School is performing Larry Shue's The Foreigner tonight, tomorrow and Saturday at 7:30 at the school. It continues next weekend. Wendy Butler previews it in the ER.

On the other hand, the Dell'Arte Youth Academy performs at 8 pm tonight, outside the ongoing Dell'Arte Horror Experiment which continues this weekend in the Carlo Theatre. Ron Thunman has a preview at the T-S.

As part of the HSU campus Dialogue on Race, a production of The Colored Museum is in the Studio Theatre on Friday and Saturday at 8 pm. There is no admission charge.

Halloween 2007

courtesy Alix Metcalfe.

This North Coast Halloween

There are a couple of pretty interesting theatrical events this Halloween on the North Coast. Dell'Arte is presenting "The Horror Experiment," three one-act plays in the Grand Guignol manner, on Halloween (Wednesday) at 8pm, and also on Thursday and Friday, November 1st (All Saints Day) and 2nd (All Soul's Day, unless they changed those since the nuns drilled the dates into me.) Betti Trauth has a preview in the T-S, as does Wendy Butler in the E-R. (There's also a T-S feature by Sharon Letts on the Dell'Arte International School.)

Ferndale Rep is doing something very intriguing--an on-stage re-creation of a radio play--the Mercury Theatre's production of "Dracula." It was another of Orson Welles' Halloween productions, the most famous being "War of the Worlds" (though the fact that it was a Halloween show isn't so often remembered), which Ferndale did on the 50th anniversary of that particular Martian invasion. "Dracula" is performed at the Ferndale Rep theatre on Wednesday at 7:30, for the special price of just five bucks. But you can also listen to it on the actual radio--KHUM is broadcasting it live. Betti Trauth previews this one, too, for the T-S.

Of course, a little theatre will likely be coming to your front porch on Wednesday evening. I like the commercial that says the real horror of Halloween is having to give away your chocolate. I must get around to replacing the bulb in the porchlight...at least by Thursday.

This North Coast Weekend

Urinetown: The Musical opens
at HSU.

This North Coast Weekend

Opening tonight for two weekends is the HSU production of URINETOWN: THE MUSICAL, in the Van Duzer Theatre on the HSU campus in Arcata, Thursday through Saturday beginning at 7:30, with a matinee this Sunday at 2 pm. The local press was all over this, with photos and previews by Melinda Spencer in the Lumberjack, Ron Thunman in the T-S Northern Lights, an unsigned preview in the E-R, a preview in the Arcata Eye with an endorsement by Scene Editor Jennifer Savage, and a preview graph and photo in the Calendar section of the North Coast Journal. There's more photos and info at Urinetown HSU.

My Name is Rachel Corrie has moved to the Arcata Playhouse for this weekend, Thursday through Saturday at 8 pm. Jennifer Savage reviews it in the Eye, as does Willi Welton in the E-R.

Jessica Kanpp as Henry IV, Sazi Bhakti as Prince
Hall in the North Coast Prep production, Mortal Men,
Mortal Men.

Henry W

If you care about homegrown theatre, Friday was a great day on the HSU campus. In addition to ongoing rehearsals in the Van Duzer for the HSU Theatre/Music production of Urinetown: The Musical, opening this coming Thursday, and production meetings elsewhere on campus for the next HSU show, Relative Captivity by Margaret Thomas Kelso, there were two shows in Gist Hall Theatre--a matinee and the evening performance of North Coast Prep's Mortal Men, Mortal Men, and in the Studio Theatre, an evening performance of My Name is Rachel Corrie, an independent production.

I saw Mortal Men, Mortal Men that evening--it was kind of another opening night for the production, as major roles were rotated for the first time. Suzi Bhakti was an energetic Prince Hal, with fire in her eyes, and Jessica Knapp a stately King Henry IV. (Jeffrey Venturino and Connor Alston plays those roles on alternate nights.) I believe the Hotspur I saw as Keenan Hilton (alternating with Reed Benoit)--he was fiery and mercurial, as that character should be.

The play is, as previously indicated, Jean Bazemore's adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry IV and V plays. The first act covered both parts of Henry IV, though with emphasis on the first part, and the shorter second act zipped through Henry V. Because these productions have an educational function first (this one performed by freshmen and sophomores), the adaptations favor getting as many roles as possible on stage. But the emphasis was also on the costs of wars and their often dubious justifications, rather than the putative glory. So key moments were Falstaff's speech on honor ( "What is honor? A word. What is that word honor? Air.") delivered with intelligent and effective subtlety by Alexander Johnson (unless it was Jesse Drucker), and in particular, a moment not normally emphasized but given a riveting reading by Dillon Arevalo: as Williams, one of the common soldiers the disguised Henry V talks with on the eve of battle. Williams tells Henry "But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day..."

Gerald Beck's set of slanting platforms, the excellent costumes, the live student band, and the staging by director Jean Bazemore and Assistant Director Gretha Omey (who directed Henry IV Part 1 at North Coast Rep) provided these students superior support. I am impressed each time with their vocal performances in particular--they all speak clearly, within the range that's best heard from the stage, and in this case they speak Shakespeare's lines intelligently and expressively. There are more performances Saturday and Sunday evening at 7:30.

Henry V is one of the more familiar of Shakespeare's history plays mostly because of two movie versions. Laurence Olivier's portrayed Henry V as a hero forging a nation from nobles and common people with their own local and personal concerns, and rallying them in battle. The film was made in large part to rally England to fight the Nazis in World War II. Parts of the play that cast Hal in less than an heroic light were excised or downplayed (with the editing help of Winston Churchill.)

Then at the end of the 1980s, Kenneth Branagh portrayed Henry V as more introspective and doubting, but finally, also as a hero. With battle scenes that owe more to Orson Welles' The Chimes of Midnight (which centered on Falstaff in the action of the Henry IV and V plays) than to Olivier's version, the hellishness of war was better portrayed, but Henry's cause again justified.

Was his cause just? There's plenty in the plays to suggest otherwise. There's treachery--messages not conveyed, etc--and bad judgment (Hotspur, for example) and the supposed justification by the Archbishop of Canterbury (played as a pious warmonger in the NC Prep version), but there's also the clear motive from Henry IV to V that the best way to unify the nation and avoid civil war is to pick a foreign enemy, demonize it and rally the nation. Henry IV wanted to do that by means of the Crusades, while Henry V picked France. The result was more than 10,000 dead, Henry got little more than he was offered before the battle, and France and England were at war again within another generation.

Olivier and Branagh both directed and starred in their versions, so while they staged the movies visually, it seems they interpreted the character of Hal as actors, giving themselves strong parts to play. Others aren't so kind to Hal or the reasons for his war. Some critics see Shakespeare's Hal as an empty suit of armor, capable of charming anyone and playing any part, but without a moral center.

So it seems to me it would be fascinating to do Henry V as a kind of George W. Bush--a man with a complicated relationship to his father, the President, with a youthful record of carousing and avoiding responsibilities, whose main gift seems to be projecting an image of leadership. Who then uses rhetoric to unify a nation in a war that is more disastrous than dubious, and who even pretends to go down among the people, although his minions carefully make sure he doesn't hear anyone as forthright as Williams. The motives of the Iraq war can be seen as similiar, although the nation was unified for perhaps even less justifiable reasons. And in this war, the putative king has a very heavy reckoning.

This North Coast Weekend

from the R. A. B. production at the
Arcata Playhouse, one night only,
this Sunday.

This North Coast Weekend

In times like these that try the soul, public crises lead to private cries of conscience, and to the inquiries numbered among the obsessions of art. Theatre, arguably the most public and the most intimate of arts, inevitably responds. There are several examples this coming week on North Coast stages, each addressing a different (though not necessarily unrelated) public issue in a different way.

My Name is Rachel Corrie is a one-person play, adapted from the diaries, emails and stories of this young activist who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer when she stood in front of it to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian home. It was created by Katharine Viner, a journalist for the British newspaper The Guardian, and British stage and screen actor, Alan Rickman. It's been very controversial--when I was in Ashland last month, one of the weekly newspapers had an account of a production there (not at the OSF) that had been cancelled because some prominent Jews in the community protested it as anti-Semitic. The production was rescheduled, but with "the other side" of the story somehow added.

But it's getting a production here, Thursday through Saturday (Oct.18-20) in the Studio Theatre on the HSU campus, and it then moves to the Arcata Playhouse on October 25-27. Kelly Nixon plays Rachel Corrie; Tisha Sloan, now at Dell'Arte, directs. Betti Trauth writes about it at the T-S., Susie Stein in the Arcata Eye, there's an unsigned story in the ER and Heidi Walters previews it in the calendar section of the NCJ. If you're wondering why I didn't write about it in my NCJ column this week, the answer is that I didn't know about it. People may assume that when they send information about stage productions to the Journal that it is then forwarded on to me. I wish.

Newly minted Nobel Laureate Al Gore calls it a “planetary emergency.” Scientists and government leaders say it is a mortal threat to human civilization and life as we know it. But the climate crisis is just beginning as a subject for theatre. It’s a difficult one, because it is only now becoming real to us — it’s our first anticipated catastrophe, without cultural memory or direct personal experience to guide us. The subject is being approached obliquely so far and, as at the Arcata Playhouse this Sunday, through the lens of laughter.

The Tip of the Iceberg: a globally warmed comedy is written and directed by Ed Holmes of the San Francisco Mime Troupe and performed by Theater R.A.B., a mask and movement ensemble based in Germany. (The initials stand for Random Acts of Beauty.) One of its founders and performers is HSU grad Len Shirts. The company’s mission is to speak “to the themes of the times through movement, music and the spoken word.” The story involves two arguing environmentalists in 2040, trapped on the last glacier on Earth as it floats out to sea, and their experiences and visions.

The one-night stop for this show’s tour is hosted by our own Four on the Floor Theater (which will hold its latest outdoor spectacle, Elemental, in Blue Lake the night before). “The global warming content of the show is very appealing to us, “ said Jacqueline Dandeneau, Four’s co-director. “Part of our goal with the Playhouse is to present smaller companies that don’t show up on the large arts presenters’ radar and to be part of a regional touring network for smaller touring artists. Also, the opportunity to have an interchange between smaller actor-creator driven companies is really great - to chat with them about how they run their company, touring, the European theater scene, the hows, what and whofors..”

Dandenau notes that The Tip of the Iceberg is a new show. "It premiered in the Bay area, at Rhythmix cultural Works in Alameda, the Mime Troupe Studio in SF and Valhalla Boathouse Theater in Tahoe." R.A.B.participants are also doing a workshop on Monday, and writer/director Ed Holmes is doing one on Tuesday night. More information: 822-1575.

In presenting Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change with the Peace Prize last week, the Nobel committee recognized that climate crisis could easily lead to war over resources, if it hasn’t already. This week’s production by students of the North Coast Preparatory Academy approaches the recurrent issue of war and questions of leadership, purpose and honor through classic dramatic texts: Shakespeare’s Henry plays. This is the second appearance from the cycle on local stages this year: North Coast Rep staged Henry IV Part 1 last spring, and now North Coast Prep will present a work based on the two Henry IV plays and the famous Henry V. It’s an adaptation by director Jean Bazemore called Mortal Men, Mortal Men.

At the heart of the Henry plays is the question of leadership, its legitimacy and its exercise. But this version also appears to sharpen the contrasting views of war held by the young Henry V, who inspires his men to heroics, and his erstwhile companion, Falstaff, who sees little honor in war, and views the sacrifice of common men as “food for [gun] powder” to promote the ends and vanities of kings.

This show is acted and produced by members of the freshmen and sophomore classes. Gerald Beck, the self-described “hardcore minimalist,” again designs the abstract sets, which may tend to focus attention on the words and their applications to today. It begins on Thursday, Oct. 18, at 7:30 at Gist Hall on the HSU campus, and continues through the weekend, with an additional matinee on Saturday at 2 p.m. More information: 845-4772.

Twenty-Four Ten in Eureka

Cate Blanchett, who will direct The Year of Magical
Thinking and star in The War of the Roses at the
Sydney Theatre Company. What does this have to
do with the 24 Hour Ten Minute Play event in Eureka?
Nothing. I just don't have any photos in a usable
format from this event and this is quite long so
I'm going to insert photos with theatre news,
or something slightly relevant, to break up the text.
If it bothers you, see the manager for your money back.
This is a great photo by the way--click on it.

24/10: A Gathering of the Insane

You lay it all out there, for everyone to see. That’s what every theatre artist does, every time: every performer, director, designer, writer—including everyone up in the booth and backstage. It’s not something that can be acknowledged in every review or article, but it’s never far from my thoughts when I write one.

Though there’s exposure in writing about theatre, I shared a different risk earlier this month by putting myself in a different place in the theatre process: as a playwright for the 24 Hour Ten Minute Play event conducted by Sanctuary Stage at their new headquarters, the august Eureka Theater.

On the first Friday of October, Sanctuary’s artistic directors, Tinamarie Ivey and Dan Stone gathered seven playwrights, seven directors and enough actors to give each play at least three characters in the upstairs lobby of the Eureka Theater. The mood was buoyant, partly because it was exciting, and partly I suspect because we knew we all had to be crazy to be doing this.

Of course, the whole thing was insane. Even the smallest production takes weeks or even months for directors to refine and express their visions, for the actors to find their roles, for the designers and the tech people to put the physical elements of the show together. And that’s after the playwright worked over the script for months or years. And then chances are they don't get it right even then. Sometimes the play isn't discovered for months of performances.

But when we gathered at 7:30 on that Friday evening, we had no scripts, no roles, not even props. Those of us writing had about twelve hours to come up with ten pages on a particular theme, which we didn’t yet know. And it wouldn’t be until after 9 the next morning that the directors would have any idea what they were directing, or the actors what they were acting in. Nobody got to choose who they would work with, and it seemed a lot of the people involved hadn't worked together before. But the bedrock fact was that the shows would be in front of the public at 7:30 Saturday evening. Welcome to the madness called the 24 Hour Ten Minute Plays.

First an important caveat: I participated in this process as a playwright, not a journalist. I took no notes or even photos, and I did no interviews. People who talked to me didn’t expect to read about it in the newspaper, so I’m going to be general about conversations, except for the kind of things I’d tell friends and acquaintances.

Mikhail Baryshnikov will appear in a staging
of Beckett shorts directed by JoAnne Akalaitis
at the New York Theatre Workshop.

24/10: The Opportunity

As far as why I thought I was a playwright—maybe the willingness to write all night was enough of a qualification. But I had written for the “stage” since the second grade. I had my own rep company in the fourth grade—my Cub Scouts den. We put on a play for every monthly “pack” meeting contest, and usually beat the crap out of the other dens who showed us all the knots they’d tied.

Several of my plays were done at college, and the one I wrote and directed (called—and this was pre-J.S. Superstar—“What’s Happening, Baby Jesus?”) was apparently the stuff of legend for a few years afterwards. I got back into the game in the 90s in Pittsburgh, where I wrote for more traditional ten minute play festivals, had some full length play readings, won a local award for a one act script, and had the wonderful experience of seeing one of my short plays performed by two terrific actors from the famous Carnegie Mellon Drama program (one of whom was seen shortly afterwards on the silver screen), and directed by a new acquaintance named Margaret Thomas Kelso, who eventually I followed to the North Coast when she became director of the dramatic writing program at HSU. I’ve written some scripts here but this was going to be the first time my playwriting—that is, what I was yet to write-- would be brought alive on a North Coast stage.

I was there partly for what I suspect was a common reason, though the specifics were different for each person: we were there to take the opportunity. Actors (I came to learn over the years) take almost any opportunity to act, and in my experience, the better the actors the more willing they are to take these chances, especially on new scripts. An additional motivation was expressed by one of the actors who said that he simply can’t spare the time to attend weeks of rehearsals to do a play, and something like this was his only opportunity. I suspect some of the directors felt the same way. Or, like the actors, they simply want the opportunity to direct, and the challenge of making something of a script very quickly.

There were several young writers (as well as a self-contained high school unit, with their own writer, director and actors who worked together—otherwise I believe they followed the rules the rest of us did.) The experience, the production and the feedback were valuable to them. One of the more experienced writers who gets his plays produced—Ken Gray Scolari, who came up from southern California, and who I knew from his year at HSU—was there partly to help out, and as a gesture of support. I got the sense from another non-younger writer that he hadn’t written for awhile, and wanted to try something different in his writing.

So for awhile Friday evening we talked and munched and drank a little, marveling at the turnout, lamenting that new work wasn’t done much here anymore. Then the games began.

Patrick Stewart is getting the kind of praise for
his Mac Beth in London that used to be given to
Oliver, Richardson and Gielgud, or O'Toole, Burton
and McKellen.

24/10: All the Kitchen's A Stage

The first order of business was to draw out of a hat the theme we were all to write about—one of four possibilities. What we got was “Destiny.” (The other possibilities, we learned after it was all over, were Addiction, Revenge and ? I’ve forgotten the fourth.)

Then each of the playwrights drew a card out of the hat that randomly distributed the characters by gender. I drew a cast of two males, one female.

That’s what I had to go on: a play about Destiny, for two males and one female. I didn’t know who would play the parts, not even their ages. I didn’t know who would direct. My head was already spinning (and not from the champagne, which I prudently only sampled) and I now had less than 12 hours to write the play. And that's only if I didn't sleep.

Before I left I did one more thing that turned out to give me something else: I went down to the theatre and took a good look at the stage. It was very wide, and looked deep (it turns out I was wrong about that.) Then I turned and faced the auditorium itself: it is immense. While I was there, an actor got up on the stage and tested the resonant acoustics. This was a place for full voice—which would make certain plays more fun (like Shakespeare), and others more difficult.

For the next few hours my head swirled with possibilities that resolved basically to two. The first was a kind of comedy sketch, an elaboration on a particular situation (I’m not going to say what, I may still use it!) I knew that it had a good chance of working on stage, given the constraints and circumstances. I also knew I could write it, because I’ve written pieces like it before.

But there was another idea forming, more elaborate, more risky, more of a challenge to me and to the director and actors. The first thing I thought of when I heard the theme was that I’d once written a song lyric with that title: “Destiny” for my first (and longest-lasting) musical group, which began at the end of high school and continued for a few years after that. Though I wrote lyrics and music both, the three of us collaborated in various combinations. One of these friends (they are still my closest if now physically distant friends), who turned out to be my most fruitful writing partner, composed the music to this lyric. It was one of our last collaborations and oddly, I never learned to play it.

But I remembered what it was about, and I used something in that lyric to get me started. Of course the two men, one woman cast suggested a triangle.

Musing on the topic of destiny, I thought first that it was something that occurs over time, and so that should be part of the story. But could you do a two-act play in ten minutes? Plus I had recently been thinking about fate and destiny—pretty natural for my age, as the third act of life begins. I’d been re-reading James Hillman’s The Soul’s Code, and listening to the audio version, in his voice. I was becoming a fan of his “acorn” theory, which posits that the essence of who we become is in us from the beginning: the tree grows from the acorn. There’s more to it than that, but that simplification became the guiding notion of destiny I used in my play, which I titled “Acorns.”

All of this was still fairly abstract, but I had another idea to anchor it in a place, based on that first impression of the auditorium of the Eureka Theater itself. What if the actors facing that huge echoing space were playing characters facing another huge echoing space—like a gorge? I immediately thought of an actual one, near the campus in central Pennsylvania where Margaret taught before coming here. (A couple of people later noted that there were gorges near other campuses—Cornell, for example.) And what if this was a special place to these characters, and one thing they did there was to shout out phrases—lines from plays or commercials, and so on—that sounded good echoing there?

The idea of characters sending out their feelings echoing into the gorge was the starting point for the actual writing, which began well after 11 pm. After I had a few lines, I found myself doing what I’d forgotten I’d done the last few times I’d written for the stage—I walked through the play I was going to write (this time, in the half-dark kitchen), hearing approximately what the characters would say according to where they stood, especially in relation to each other.

I knew already that the structure of the play would be one scene when the three characters revisited the gorge years after their youth, followed by a scene of their last visit to the gorge when young. As the play evolved, it became their college graduation day, preceded by a reunion visit, thirty (though probably it should have been forty) years later. In other words, in revere chronological order, so you see the trees before the acorns.

I started with the two sets of shouted quotations, one for each time period. But soon the characters were talking, and I experienced that amazing phenomenon of listening to these characters speak, and taking down what they were saying. And they were characters—not based on real people (how could they be? They had to be completely defined in ten minutes!)

There were however a few snippets of dialogue in the first section that came very close to words from a real conversation I'd had, and it was then that I realized that I was using the experience and perspective of my age. Another opportunity! Because there aren’t many counterparts to the contests for “Playwrights Under Thirty.”

Fortunately, by the time I got to the end, I had something like a play. If I hadn't--and of course I realized this risk from the start--there wasn't time to start all over again with another one.

I had my script at around five in the morning. I was due back at the theatre at 9, although I was supposed to arrive with copies for the director, actors, adjudicators and the administrators, which meant an extra drive (Sanctuary had a deal with Staples so we didn’t have to pay to get them copied there.) So even if I had been able to sleep, which I couldn’t, it wouldn’t have been for long. I may have managed to doze for part of an hour before I was on the road again, sleepless in Eureka.

Walter Koenig, no relation to Joshua.

24/10: Sleepless in Eureka

I thought I’d forgo the extra drivetime and pay for the copies at the Kinko’s nearby in Arcata, but it was Saturday and it didn’t open until 9. I suspected the same would be true of Staples, but if I had to wait, I may as well get the copies free. So I drove out there and parked, as it turned out, next to Ken Gray Scolari. We caught up on news of our lives, but I still felt pretty weird, groggily standing and waiting for the Staples’ doors to slide open.

Back at the theatre, some playwrights were still out getting their copies, so I drank coffee, devoured Danish and got into a couple of conversations, one of which suggested another theme: feedback. People who put on shows get reactions from audiences, but often they don’t get much in the way of articulated response. They were looking forward to working with different people and getting different feedback, as well as the responses of others in the “talk back” session after the performance that night. I also got the feeling that the responses I articulate in my columns have some value for them. (And I also heard some give clear-eyed assessments of productions that would bring down an avalanche of letters on me if I’d written in those terms—but I knew that already, that theatre people have to realistically assess the work they’re part of and the work they see, in order to get better.)

When everyone was there in the main lobby, the next round of random drawings determining our destiny began. Each of the playwrights drew for a director. I held back—there was a director I felt really didn’t want to work with me, and I wanted to wait until that name was called. Finally, it was. (Later we had a brief but hopeful conversation, so maybe I was wrong. In any case, I wouldn’t feel that trepidation now. ) I picked next.

I drew someone I didn’t know, a young man named Joshua Koenig. I think he earlier had asked me if the cap I was wearing bore the Star Trek emblem. (It did.) So now I asked him if he was related to Chekhov (not the playwright—the Star Trek character played by Walter Koenig.) He said he wasn’t. This actually could have been a much funnier coincidence if I had gone with that first comedy sketch idea.

Josh had a few minutes to glance at the script before he and the other directors drew for the names of actors. Josh got in there early, and drew three actors who were more the ages of my characters in the first scene. He was delighted.

He and I went upstairs to that lobby as he read the play through. I noted where he laughed. He had one question, easily answered. He talked about the script in a way that told me he grasped its essentials immediately. It was pretty astounding.

Then our three actors joined us for a couple of read-throughs. After that, Josh and I talked about the script some more and about the actors. Again, I was gratefully surprised at how quickly he caught on to the dynamics of the script—of who was really talking to who, what they were really saying, and so on. And he knew where the jokes were.

I was also gratefully relieved. It looked to me that all he had to do was work with the actors until they shared his vision, discovering and contributing more (including stuff I didn’t know was in there) as they went along. They would have from then—roughly noon—until about 6pm to rehearse and get it together.

They also had to figure out how to accomplish the main structural challenge—how they would indicate that in the blink of an eye, the characters would drop 30 years and return to their college graduation day for the second half of the story. (My imagined solution had involved the actors moving far upstage before turning to come back--which turned out to be impossible, because the stage just wasn't that deep.)

Josh had an additional challenge. There had been one more hat drawing before we went upstairs—every director would be required to use one of three props. They all had to use the same one, but they could use it—even alter it—in any way they chose. The prop was selected by a drawing, and the prop we all got was a big slab of cardboard. (It could have been an inflatable raft.)

I left them to get to their work, and thought I should go home and get some sleep. I did drive home to Arcata, but I did not sleep, which didn’t surprise me. I’d probably be president of the world by now if I had only learned to nap.

Novelist Steven King, no relation to playwright
Steven King

24/10: Showtime

I returned to the theatre a bit after five. My first impression was that everyone I saw looked bleary with fatigue, and also high on the process. Josh and I talked about how rehearsals had gone, and he showed me how the cardboard would figure in their solution for the thirty-year switch: part of it would be a sign (“thirty years earlier”) and part of it was cut up into mortarboards, which the characters would throw into the gorge to signal their graduation—a very theatrical moment, as they floated above us.

Everyone assembled in the theatre auditorium at 6 pm for the last drawing, to establishing the order of the seven plays being presented. Mine was going to be the opening act. We had about 40 minutes before it all started, and I walked down to Old Town to get a big Café Americano, and was amazed at all the people out for Arts Alive. I hadn’t been over to the Eureka version for awhile—it had become quite a trendy activity.

By game time, I sensed that the event had changed a bit. There was no more mention of any competition, and the judges (teacher/director Jyl Hewston and actor/director/teacher James Floss) were now going to lead a play-by-play talk-back. Both Tinamarie and Dan spoke, and I believe it was Tinamarie who stressed that this event was about the process—it was essentially for us.

Maybe they had also begun to wonder if we would get an audience. By the time it started I wasn’t in much shape to observe the audience, but we did seem to have one. The problem would be that theoretically, seven ten minute plays would equal a 70 to 90 minute show. But ten pages doesn’t always translate into ten minutes, and it sure didn’t that night. We started at 7:30 and were still going strong at 10. So by the end, there was mostly just us.

As if we cared! I have no idea what my show was like (the wisdom of the process at the O’Neill Center came back to me—all of their new plays have two performances, because the playwrights commonly blank out for the first one.) But going first meant I could enjoy the other shows, and I did. At times they were surprisingly polished, and there was always something funny or poignant or otherwise delightful in all of them. Seeing them and hearing them discussed by those concerned during the talkback (which began in the auditorium but eventually adjourned to the lobby upstairs, where the wine, beer and food was) revealed the intelligence, care and creativity brought to bear by everyone involved; the individuality of the talent, and yet, the warm collaborative atmosphere.

My play and hence my talkback went first, and I learned more about it from comments by Jyl and James, and by Josh and the one of the actors who participated. I can only recall snippets from the rest of the evening. Like… Alton San Giovanni--the “teen playwright”-- describing how he concentrated on the rhythm of the dialogue in his dramatization of an Internet conversation between teenagers and an online predator.

And JM Wilkerson (a recent addition to the North Coast and its theatre community—he’s the spouse of HSU theatre’s Rae Robison and acted in last year’s HSU production, The School for Scandal) revealed that his piece was more autobiographically based than anything he’d previously written for the stage. He acknowledged that he’d drawn the perfect cast and director to bring it to life in so short a time. (I was really excited about his piece, and started babbling at him about it when we ran into each other after the show—just as he was babbling at me about elements he liked in my piece. I suspect this sort of thing was happening a lot that night.)

I recall Ken remarking on the consistently nurturing atmosphere. Gretha Omey talked about how she came up with a simple staging device (directors had only a few pieces and platforms to work with) that served the script she directed remarkably well, brought out its comedy and pathos while giving the actors the physical grounding they needed to elaborate their parts.

I think it was Joshua Stanfield Switzer who talked about the crucial decision all the directors had to make: should they do the play with the actors carrying their scripts and referring to them, or should they take the time for the actors to try to memorize their parts? He decided to try memorization for one hour, to see if it would work. I recall one actor talking about the freedom to improvise, especially in rehearsal, without carrying the script. But eventually many if not most of the actors in most of the plays wound up carrying scripts, or needed to.

I personally am a big fan of script-in-hand, as it’s called. I’ve seen it used in new play productions where there is much more time for rehearsal. Even at the O’Neill. Except in certain circumstances, where physical theatre is called for, I think it should be standard for situations like this. I’ve found that audiences quickly adapt to seeing scripts, and actors adept at using them make you absolutely forget that they are carrying them. Script-in-hand as the standard saves a lot of time that can be used to work on the other aspects of the production, especially characterization and movement. Plus more of the playwright’s actual lines get delivered.

On the overall process: the 24 hour part of it is clearly a gimmick, and this all was mostly a game—fun and productive, but limited and, as I may have pointed out, insane. It may be that Tina and Dan expected the short writing time would result in skeleton scripts that mandated more improvizational acting, but that's not what seems to have happened. It just made it really crazed. I also can see the potential for a new niche in contemporary theatre: the 24 Hour Playwright, adept at just the right combination of elements in a simple, “actor-proof” script to dazzle judges and audiences. No harm in that, I suppose. But I’m glad that most of us appeared to take the opportunity we had to push ourselves creatively.

This kind of event, so compressed and concentrated on process, often creates bonds that outlast the event itself. It would be an important but additional payoff of this experience if it happens. We’ll see. Maybe it will also lead to more new work being done here. As for now, I'll remember it as a lot of fun.

Once again, the organizers and administrators of this insanity, who worked themselves silly, were Tinamarie Ivey and Dan Stone (he also directed JM Wilkerson’s piece.) I don’t have a list of the actors, but here are the other participating playwrights: Morgan Beck, Steven King, Craig Klapman, Alton San Giovanni, Ken Gray Scolari and JM Wilkerson. Besides Joshua Koenig, the other directors were Gretha Omey, Rhy Corral-Ribordy, Zachary Rouse, Dan Stone, Joshua Stanfield Switzer and Laurene Thorpe. My thanks to everyone involved, including Margaret, who showed up to watch.

If any of the other participants (including audience) would like to comment on their experience, it'd be great if you did so hereabouts.

Elsewhere

As I hoped would happen, the entire cycle of August Wilson's ten plays is going to be performed in order in the spring, fittingly at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC: from Gem of the Ocean, set in the first decade of the 20th century (March 4-8) to Radio Golf set in the last (March 28-29.)

I'm excited, though it doesn't seem practical for me to go. But I'm thinking about it!

Theatre Communications Group Books has just published a boxed set of the plays called The August Wilson Century Cycle (I think I liked it better as the Pittsburgh Cycle) with new prefaces by John Lahr, Phylicia Rashad, Frank Rich, Toni Morrison, Tony Kushner, Samuel G. Freedman, Laurence Fishburne, Ishmael Reed, Marion McClinton and Suzan-Lori Parks.

This North Coast Weekend

HOMO EXPO completes its run at HSU this weekend.

This North Coast Weekend

Camera Shrapnel, an LA based group with roots in North Coast theatre (Dell'Arte and HSU) performs ISM one night only--tonight, Thursday Oct. 11--at Ferndale Repertory Theatre. Barry Blake does an extensive preview at the T-S, and there's a brief preview with photo in the ER.


HOMO EXPO is in its last weekend at HSU's Gist Hall Theatre. It was reviewed by Wendy Butler in the E-R and by Melinda Spencer in the Lumberjack. Excerpts from the reviews and previews as well as other information and photos are at HSU Stage.

"The Madwoman of Chaillot" continues at North Coast Rep.

This North Coast Weekend

Gender and sexuality explored in 5 short pieces
for HOMO EXPO at HSU this weekend.

This North Coast Weekend

The big opening this weekend is HOMO EXPO: A Queer Theatre Extravanza at HSU. It came close to running the table in the local press (as publicity person for HSU Theatre it does my heart good), with a cover story preview in Northern Lights of the Times-Standard, and previews in the Arcata Eye, NC Journal, and a big photo in the ER.

My legions of readers may have noticed that somebody else did the Journal preview (and a good job Emily Hobelmann--who I don't know--did), which is fitting and proper, considering my involvement with the show as department publicist. But it appeared under the banner of my column, Stage Matters. Apparently this is now the theatre section title for the Journal, and no longer the title I conceived for my column. It has to be that way, I'm told, because placing a different banner on pieces written by other people is "too labor-intensive." As a former editor from the Dark Ages, I had no idea what's involved in this computerized age: it seems that to create each banner, several editors (who aren't getting any younger) and staff must locate, mine and carry back huge chunks of a certain kind of stone, then hew the letters out with chisels. Though the stone required is very large, the chisels are unbelievably tiny, and the smallest slip means the stone is ruined and has to be thrown away, so the whole process begins again. And this is just the first step. After the stone is carved, it is pressed into molten metal to create type. The metal must be heated with a very pure flame, created with a mixture of fuels that can become explosive if off by a tiny percentage. And then the ink--well, I couldn't even follow the description of that process, but suffice it to say that it requires the capture in the wild of a very rare species of Soy.

Also this weekend: Dell’Arte hosts the Brazilian ensemble Lume Teatro for a production called Sopro, in the Carlo Theatre, Oct. 4-7 at 8 p.m. Sanctuary Stage presents their 24-hour 10 Minute Play Fest at the Eureka Theatre on Saturday at 7:30 p.m."The Madwoman of Chaillot" continues at NCRT.

One of many kids who gets to play at the field in
Dyersville, Iowa where Field of Dreams was filmed.

Dream Fields

So we toddled down to Ferndale Saturday to see Jeff DeMark's, "Hard as a Diamond, Soft as the Dirt," the only one of his shows I haven't seen before. Thanks in part to the presence of his backing band (Tim Randles on keyboards, Ross Rowley on bass, and his twin brother Paul--who even got a few speaking lines--on drums) and some visual aids, he made good use of that big Ferndale Rep stage.

There's sadness and strife in the show but on the whole it seems sunnier than the others, probably because it's got a lot of baseball in it. Baseball is a secular religion in this country, and as Jeff notes, especially for his generation (and mine) it is a prime source of memory. Memories associated with playing baseball, and with watching baseball, particularly big league baseball. (Also listening to it on the radio.)

He mentions that ours was the last (or one of the last) generations in the old USA for whom baseball was so central. We played it spring to fall, every day. We collected baseball cards, played games with them, kept stats of big leaguers and scored games with the particular code of that activity, watched baseball on TV and listened to games on the radio--those voices now unforgettable. I was so into it that in the winter I watched broadcasts of Cuban baseball (so this was pre-Castro, if anyone still able to see the screen can fathom that)--one camera high above home plate. I still remember names of the teams, though I can't spell them.

There's a special kick for me in Jeff's childhood memories growing up in Racine Wisconsin, following the Milwaukee Braves. Though he doesn't mention it in the show, one of the chief rivals for the Braves in the late 1950s were the Pittsburgh Pirates, the team that played some 30 miles away from where I grew up. At least Pirate fans knew that to get the National League pennant, a team had to be able to beat the Braves and their fearsome pitching duo, Warren Spahn and Lew Burdette, and their great hitters and fielders, Hall of Famers now, like Eddie Matthews and of course, Hank Aaron.

Pittsburgh had great teams in those years, also loaded with Hall of Famers and guys that should be: regular 20 game winning pitchers like Bob Friend and Vern Law, one of the best relief pitchers ever--the fork ball specialist Roy Face; the great left-hander Harvey Haddix, who pitched 12 perfect innings in one game and still lost; clutch scratch hitters like Dick Groat, home run hitter Dick Stuart, hit anything hitters like Smoky Burgess; left fielder Bob Skinner,a hitter with one of the sweetest swings ever who had only one breakout year (he hit .321), one of the best fielding second basemen ever in Bill Mazeroski, the fiery Don Hoak at third, the fleet Bill Virdon in center, and in right field, the Great One: Roberto Clemente.

When the Pirates started to make their move in 1958, they finished just behind the Braves. They slipped back in 1959 but 1960 was their year. Still, it wasn't until a series with the Braves near the end of the season that they had the pennant won. (And then in the 90s, the Atlanta Braves were their nemesis, and...I don't want to talk about it.) So next to the Pirates, I probably knew more about the Braves than any other National League team.

So there were probably some Braves-Pirates games in the late 50s that Jeff and I were both intensely involved in as kids, with opposite emotional responses to what happened in them.

Jeff's encounters with actual big league icons seem to be more numerous and meaningful than mine. Later on, as a reporter, I met many of the players of the 1979 World Champion Pirates team, including Willie Stargell and Dave Parker, who threatened me with bodily harm. But that's another story. As a kid, I did shake hands with Roberto Clemente, on one of those afternoons at that great ballpark, Forbes Field, where kids were allowed down on the field to meet the players. Clemente didn't even glance at me, so I was very surprised when Bill Virdon looked me right in the eye as he shook my hand and called me, "son."

And Jeff is right to emphasize father and sons, because baseball was often a nexus for that relationship, perhaps in its complexities. I don't have a lot of fond memories of my father connected with playing baseball. He did take me to some games at Forbes Field, including a night game I still remember--it went to the tenth inning, somebody got on base and Roberto Clemente went up to the plate. Everybody there knew that Clemente never hits the first pitch--either he takes it, or he swings wildly at it, often so hard that he falls down, and his two hats--his batting helmet on top of his cap--fly off. So I don't think I was alone in leaning back, taking a breath and gathering myself during that first pitch.

The next thing I knew there was a loud crack and smoke in right field. Clemente had hit that first pitch so hard that it hit the fence in right field so fast that I didn't see it, and it hit the chalk line on the right field fence--the border of fair and foul-- so hard that it sent chalk dust up into the air illuminated by the lights--it was like a cannon had been fired in the outfield. And just like that, the ball game was over. Everybody was standing up to leave.

Then around that time I more or less took my father to a World Series game--I sent for the tickets, and won the lottery to buy them. Unfortunately, it was for the 6th game of the 1960 series, which the Yankees won by 14-0 or worse. When Mazeroski hit the shot heard round the world the next day, I was back in school. (I also missed seeing the big spontaneous demonstrations in Pittsburgh, especially in the Oakland section where Forbes Field was, but August Wilson told me about it.)

But related to playing baseball, it was another story for my father and me. The state of that might be revealed by one thing I remember, when I made the Pony League team, even though my father didn't come by the field. He didn't take much of an interest, but fatherly influence had a lot to do with who made that team, and fatherly attention was about the only actual coaching we got--in my case, it was attention and tips from other guys' fathers, including one who would later become the grandfather of one of my niece's (her father was my shortstop.)

But my father did come to the first game I pitched. Being left-handed there were only a few positions I could play, and kids weren't used to seeing left-handed pitchers. I probably came into that game in relief, as I often did (still had a 3-0 record though, a stat that nobody but me kept and certainly nobody else remembers). As I finished my warm-up pitches, I saw my father go stand behind the backstop, directly behind the catcher and umpire, and in my line of sight. I threw my first pitch as hard as I could and unintentionally, over everybody's head, and as it rattled off the backstop my father jumped back. I settled down after that and had a good game, and a pretty good season.

This past summer I rented the video of Field of Dreams, the anniversary edition with all the extras. I remember seeing it when it came out and being a little mystified by it. It was only when I saw it alone at home on video in Pittsburgh that the scene of the father and son playing catch really got to me. In the DVD extras, I learned that this scene is universally remembered as the most powerful in the movie. It's a tear-jerker for guys. Probably for lots of reasons--from either the memory of experiencing it or not experiencing it, or not valuing it at the time--one of those Our Town moments. Now apparently the field in Iowa where the movie was shot has become not only a tourist attraction, but a therapeutic nexus: people go there to heal their families, to heal themselves.

There's a character in Field of Dreams who played in one big league game but never got to bat, but he does on that Iowa field. It seems that a lot of guys measure how close they came, including the guy who coached the actors in batting for that movie (he played only a few games before a career-ending injury) and Jeff's father in the beginning of "Hard as a Diamond." So that's another dream, another yearning, another phantom fulfillment, that baseball measures, and conjures.

Anyway, it's a mostly funny show, with real feeling, and well worth seeing. Now I'm looking forward to seeing it and Jeff's other shows again--I know there's stuff I missed, or will experience in a different way.