A Poet's Heart

James Baldwin was inducted into the Poets Corner this week, only the 44th writer so honored in the space at Cathedral of Saint John the Divine (NYC).  Fitting as this was also the site of his memorial service which spilled out into the streets of the Upper West Side of Manhattan in 1987.

I remember standing outside with hundreds of others, milling around straining to hear any small thing, watching the notables who entered and being furious at the welcome accorded those who'd been so rude to Baldwin because he was gay and therefor 'unworthy' of carrying the torch for Black civil rights.  But nevertheless it was thrilling to know that Baldwin was so memorialized in that place...much as Black lesbian poet laureate Audre Lorde was less than a decade later.

Although Baldwin wrote only one book of poetry, JIMMY'S BLUES, the truth is that most of his work was poetry.  His heart was infused with the metaphor and magic of poetry; his view of humankind was similarly imbued with a confidence that only a poet can have...that is a belief in the power of what is not there.  What is not on the page is part of what makes poetry brilliant.  Baldwin believed in the things that human being had not yet achieved.  

Baldwin had belief, despite his unblinking eye, and complex understanding of human frailty and our capacity for evil.  The spaces between the words that define who we are were quite clear to him and are what kept him from bitterness and what kept him writing.

His poet's heart made life worth living...for all of us.

You dare not disobey!

Following the end of the production I collapsed in a heap of both physical and emotional exhaustion.  It was as if I had been up on stage every night myself rather than simply sitting in the audience.  But taking in the performances and thinking and feeling through what each actor was doing did engage me more than anything else in my life. 

I'm not sure how the actors move from one intense experience like this on to the next.  They are all younger but still it amazes me.  I'm looking forward to seeing the next shows they do.  Fred Pitts (Richard), Chris Nelson (William) and William Giammona (Luc) are each in upcoming productions.  Lonnie Haley (David) is doing a piece in the Fringe Festival and still performing as Mercedes Monroe at The Look Out!  Liam Hughes (Giovanni) is in London studying.

Wm Hunter (Jimmy) just performed one of the monologues for a group in the East Bay, Desiree Rogers (Lorraine) recorded some new music with her band. Check them all out on Facebook!

I also posted some pictures from the production on my FB page.

Today I'm going to Stanford to talk to a class studying Black women playwrights and am using the experience to launch me into the rewrites.  Here's Lorraine's final monolgue which I have to keep in mind as a cut and paste and start to look out to the world to see who wants to embrace my little baby.  I dare not disobey!

ACT II Scene 8

LORRAINE

“When the mystery is too overwhelming, you dare not disobey.”

Remember that from 'The Little Prince'? You were saying exactly this

with Luc and in the new book.

The mystery of desire draws you to both Luc and to this novel. 

Jimmy, we each suck our words from the breath the dead leave behind;

don’t lose sight of that.  Emmett Till’s bones will long be dust before

anyone understands how we need to speak of love.

If we don’t start listening to each other Armageddon might come

quietly like a whisper of gossip, weakening us until we no longer

believe in each other.

And if things are not working out with you and Luc I am so sorry. 

I have to believe there will be other loves. But books, true books do

not pull up to our stoops in taxi cabs!

It’s the beginning of a new world, Jimmy.  Damn the critics!

Lights down on Lorraine.

A contest for cast and those who saw the play...

Okay, what word was totally out of place in the previous post but is totally relevant to the play!  Was it a Freudian slip?  A typographical error?  Or a secret code between us?  You tell me!

Maybe everything lasts...

Tonight was the final performance in this run of "Waiting for Giovanni" at the New Conservatory Theatre Center. It was a bitter sweet afternoon to watch the 24th show and see how each of the actors had settled into their roles, to remember all of the paths we took, thinking about who James Baldwin really might have been,who his literary colleagues were and what their legacy to us is.
The humanity that Baldwin believed in is the humanity that the actors of wildly varied backgrounds bring to a theatre project. They come together, read material that may or may not have immediate meaning for them and the. They study,rehearse, open themselves, find new ways, learn new things and dredge up old. All in service to words some one else wrote.
I missed only three rehearsals in the seven weeks of rehearsal and did not miss any of the performances

Yes I am obsessed with listening to my own words...of course...that's why so many people go to therapy...just kidding. But mostly it was because I was mesmerized by the actors and the team they created back stage and on stage. Each night they inhabited the characters and mad the ideas about humanity and love that James Baldwin preached about come alive.

Now this phase of the W4G project is complete I will take the vision of this production back to my computer, do a little nip & tuck to make it tighter and honor Baldwin and the cast who helped brought him to the stage and back into the minds of many who' forgotten what a genius he was. I'll start bugging my collaborator, Harry Waters Jr again to help me thong my way through re-writes then we' star looking for another theatre to bring it alive again.
Several characters say in W4G: "Nothing lasts forever."
Giovanni's response is: "Maybe everything lasts. We just can't be around to see it."

I plan for W4G to last forever and I want a lot of us to be around to see it again more than once. Next week I'll post some excerpts from the script as I'm editing and keep you up on the news about where the show might go next.

“Books. Best weapons in the world. Arm yourself!” Dr. Who

 

Well, we opened the show on time which is evidenced by the absence of new blogs recently here at W4G!  So I guess that’s the good news….and most of the news is good so far.

Remember those old movies where the writer or director of a new play refused to come inside the theatre, but instead paced outside the box office smoking and mumbling nervously to (always) himself?  Until now I thought that was an overblown depiction of artist anxiety…until now.  On opening night, even after going to every rehearsal and all the preview performances I was more nervous than I’ve been since I heard the FBI ringing my door bell in 1972 (that’s another story). 

I focused my energy on what to wear (1950s cocktail dress) and how I might be helpful to the cast (deliver food and stay out of the way).  But internally I realized what a huge leap I’d taken in trying to depict what might be happening inside one of the greatest minds in 20^th century American literature.  And then to ask 7 actors to walk around naked on stage (6 metaphorically speaking and one practically) and say my words?  Suddenly I wondered if maybe I’d lost my mind; escape to the sidewalk seemed not so outlandish. Fortunately I haven’t smoked since 1988 and I had on cute but cruel shoes so couldn’t actually pace.

For the second time in this process, though, I felt I did understand what might have been going on in Baldwin’s mind.  I did know what it meant to have people think my work was not good for a political movement.  And the moment before I decided to persist with creating Black lesbian vampire stories was a yawning abyss…until it wasn’t.

Then having done the deed—to now let the world look at it, to think about it, to judge it?  That does make one question one’s sanity.

I know I still have work to do on the piece but audiences have made it clear I’m on the right track. However, one of the puzzling responses has been the reviewers’ difficulty dealing with the words.  Seems simple…I wrote a play about a writer who was extremely articulate.  Baldwin’s use of language was legendary; his circle of literary friends was almost his verbal equal. 

A play about Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry & company would naturally have more well-crafted sentences than most.  But that seemed to confound some reviewers.  It was as if being faced with an articulate Black voice…either mine or Baldwin’s it’s hard to say…the reviewer didn’t know how to respond. 

The play is not as long as a James Joyce novel…or even Henry James.  But it does contain a lot of words.  And the words are delivered extremely well by the company: Wm. Hunter, Liam Hughes, Christopher Nelson, William Giammona, Desiree Rogers, Fred Pits and Lonnie Haley.

Harry Waters Jr., with whom I collaborated and who directed the production, worked really hard to make sure the words were fully realized.  So it’s a bit disheartening to have professional wordsmiths be overwhelmed by them.  Not so much a blow to my ego but it raises a concern about the future of cultural criticism.  It makes me wonder: if a critic in a city newspaper expects to hear dialogue that is the equivalent of ‘tweets’ is this the end of civilization as we know it?

But no, I won’t be an alarmist!  The audiences have been completely engaged with the words.  And it's an audience that spans the full spectrum of San Francisco humanity. Many audience members have been so enraptured they’ve come back a second time.  At a recent post-show talk back session folks wanted to know more about the words.  Sale of Baldwin’s book in the lobby is steady, so clearly, regular people aren’t afraid of words.

I love the above quote from Dr. Who, one of my favorite TV shows, because it captures the world that Baldwin lived in and the way that most progressive activists I know live today.  We still believe that knowledge is power; and changing how we think and how we talk helps change the world.   

Tickets still available: http://www.nctcsf.org/press_room/waiting_for_giovanni.htm

More updates to come!

Lorraine Looks Good in a Tight Sweater

I didn’t start out to write a play with Lorraine Hansberry in it, let alone Hansberry in a tight sweater and Capri pants! My friend Harry, from my old theatre days in NYC asked me to write something about James Baldwin. Five years later we’re about to open ‘Waiting For Giovanni, ’ a two act play with a cast of seven.’

In 1957 when Baldwin was told publishing a 'gay' novel would ruin his career in literature and that Martin Luther King, Jr. would probably never invite him onto another march he wrote it anyway. Writing the piece has reminded me of the courage it sometimes takes to speak.  And who has as much courage as the actors who speak the words that bring Baldwin to life?

But soon I found I was writing a play with all men and I wondered who were the women in his world?  Lorraine Hansberry jumped right out at me. She was a contemporary and an actual friend of his—not that I couldn’t include her if she had not been since it’s a ‘dream play.’

Hansberry was the first African American woman to have a play on Broadway, “A Raisin in the Sun” (1959). (Please see the film with Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee and Diana Sands and burn any copies you can find of the Sean Combs travesty…or maybe just wipe him off the tape and keep Sanaa Lathan and Audra MacDonald). At 29, she was the youngest and only the 5th woman to win the New York Drama Critics Circle Award.

She was an amazing thinker and activist who, before she died, reached out to the lesbian community. She is fabled to have died at home with her long time female lover—something that we hope will be confirmed now that her private papers have been opened up for research.

Hansberry has been a personal inspiration for me as much as Baldwin has. She too was told she was ‘writing off topic’ when her second play featured white characters. It was echoed for me in the 1990s when some people told me that writing a Black Lesbian vampire novel was a bad idea!

I admire Hansberry’s ability to look at the world through a big lens, to be able to see herself in the context of all that was around her not just the narrow life being lived just in front of her. Figuring out who we are can really be aided when we can look at others and see their effort too; that’s why people go to plays after all.


Most critical discussion of “A Raisin in the Sun” focuses on the battle between the older son and his mother over how he should spend the late father’s insurance money. Critics almost uniformly underplay the daughter’s role in the piece. She’s a great stand in for Hansberry: brash, smart, independent and ambitious. She refuses to be subject to her African boyfriend’s insistence on the ‘female’ role or her brother’s dismissal of her career aspirations. Her play also raises the issue of a woman’s right to abortion along with the other ideas few were talking about any where much less on a Broadway stage

A more intimate look at Hansberry’s life is sure to be exciting and illuminating. In the mean time her fans have subsisted on whispers and the brilliance of her writing. Putting her in my play meant I reread her work and essays about her as I constructed her dialogue. It was like getting to have long conversations with one of my heroes. Her genius did not fail.

The actress playing Lorraine, Desiree Rogers, is an amazing embodiment of Hansberry’s spirit and smarts…and she wears a sweater well!

Some rewards for writing can not be predicted.

Happy Birthday Jimmy!

"I know that what I'm asking is impossible. But in our time, as in every time, the impossible is least that one can demand—and one is, after all, emboldened by the spectacle of human history in general, and American Negro history in particular, for it testifies to nothing less than the perpetual achievement of the impossible." 

                                   James Baldwin b. August 2, 1924

Most of us (Negro and not) have a few moments in our histories and our lives for which this Baldwin quote is appropriate.  I dear friend and sister playwright, Marty Pottenger, sent it to me.  She teaches Maine municipal works--police officers, fire fighters, clerks--how to write, to have creative lives and keep their humanity in the face of both danger and boredom.  Her own plays/performances have highlighted the lives of construction workers and the building of the largest capital construction in New York State history, City Water Tunnel No. 3 (http://www.albany.edu/history/pottenger.html).  She knows hard work when she sees it; so I feel touched that she keeps encouraging me and my work.

The quote comes at a perfect moment in the play production process...we're halfway between that first day and opening night!  YIKES! As I sit in the theatre seats watching rehearsal, I recognize how much of it now lands on the shoulders of the actors.

Acting has had a varied place in culture through the ages.  If someone says Sir Laurence Olivier, the ultimate in craft and class is meant to be evoked. He was Shakespearean performance royalty.  But in colonial Boston Shakespeare's plays and those hoping to act in them were chased out of town by angry mobs who thought actors were disciples of the devil.

Ironically denizens of the "wild west" loved theatre--from the bawdy to 'high falutin' opera. One of the enduring landmarks here in San Francisco is Lotta's Fountain, erected by actor, Lotta Crabtree, in gratitude to the love she felt from SF audiences.  The fountain was the prime reunion site for refugees from the devastation of the 1906 earthquake and fire; and I think of art and safety every time I go past it on Market St.

In undergraduate school I minored in theatre and took an acting class  because the world fascinated me even back then.  When I did my first scene in the class...from Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun"... the professor asked what I wanted to be. 

"A writer," I answered.

"Good," was his retort.

 And there went any vague aspiration that might have been buried inside my unformed heart. So when I work with actors I'm in perpetual amazement...they have to live in bravery constantly...anticipating rejection like that of my professor.  But when it's coming from a casting director, audiences, or  their peers it's not only hurt feelings but their livelihood.

Working with the cast of W4G lets me back into that brave world, where I haven't been since my last play, "Bones & Ash," toured the US in 1996.  As soon as we started doing readings of the play a couple of years ago I could tell immediately how much I missed that world.  The first day of sitting in a rehearsal room with almost total strangers who have little in common except their mutual passion for their art is, for me, like opening a door in a SciFi movie where a huge magical world bathed in sunlight lies on the other side. (Think 'Contact' Jodie Foster 1997.)

 In those first moments it's hard to know for sure that six weeks later the group will know a lot about each other...from allergies (peanuts we know so far) to vulnerabilities (we keep those between us).

The actors in W4G have entered through that magic door from all over the world!   Fairfield, Eureka and Redwood City, Ca, Lynchburg, Va., Germany,Connecticut, Dayton, Dundee, Scotland, Kalamazoo (or Kalabama as I'm told it's known!), Manhattan, and San Francisco.  And that's before we add in the other artists--the tech crew and house staff who all come from universes of their own as well. This is not a lavish Hollywood set so it's only the art that holds them together in the same room.

It's never as simple as that old movie where Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney decide to put on a show in the barn and a full orchestra is heard in the background.  But one week the actors are sitting around a table trying to remember each others names and the next they're helping each other with pronunciations, by the third they're sharing their favorite music.

I brought in copies of the classic book, "The Little Prince" because some themes from the book are threaded through our play. It was a wonderful moment to see the book handed around from Denver to Fairfield to Kalamazoo. These are moments that consultants are paid thousands of dollars to create in staff retreats; artists do it every time they enter a rehearsal room.  Audiences do it every time they sit in the darkened theatre.

Whatever happens with W4G after opening night, I'll never read Baldwin or Saint-Exupery again without thinking of this cast and their expectations of the impossible.  Art carries so much more than whatever the artist intended. When the ingredients are combined just so the potion does become magic and accomplishes the impossible. 

Yes, my dear friend Marty knows hard work when she sees it.