SMASH

I know I'm being totally saccharine but I was terribly sad when I watched the final episode of the TV series, SMASH.  Of course, the two-year run was full of ridiculous, unlikely things about play production...not the part about the director sleeping with his leading ladies, though.  But there was something else there that really touched me.

Despite the drama of backstabbing, envy and hard edged economic realities any production faces, (can we actually get more financial support for theatre from the Mob?) especially when it hopes to go to Broadway, SMASH was also able to embody the sparks of creativity that make a play, the team work it takes to realize a dream and the relentless hard work theatre demands.  It's especially heart rending when you understand that for each play that does 'make it,' (even if you define making it as only getting a critical review published in the paper. And I remember when plays were reviewed on the TV news!) there are hundreds more that may make it to one production only and thousands more which never make it that far.

It's especially difficult when you see that theatres are facing such economic challenges they often fall back on familiar writers, familiar plays to try and ensure they have full houses.  I was a stage manager in New York City's Off and Off Off Broadway for a decade so know how companies make those ends meet.  I once worked a show in the West Village where I called the light cues, sewed the costumes, found all the props and took phone reservations for a sum not even high enough to call a salary! I was like a theatrical Swiss Army knife. But the passion for the play and for each other brought us all back every day and night.  Live theatre is like nothing else in the arts.

I'm also feeling nostalgic about SMASH, I guess, because I've been sending out the script to "Waiting for Giovanni" in hopes of finding a new venue and it feels suddenly like a futile exercise.  Too many playwrights, too few slots!  I also used to read scripts for the Public Theatre in NYC and really really do know how many playwrights there are!  And combine that with the fact that I'm NOT in NYC which makes playwrights practically invisible, I wonder less and less why playwrights have a reputation for being drinkers--numbing the pain of invisibility!

The experience of working on the production of  W4G at New Conservatory Theatre Center was such an amazing example of team work overcoming economic and other obstacles I have to keep carrying the experience with me as I crank out the inquiry letters, synopses and scripts to anonymous literary departments at theatres across the country.  The memory of that team..actors, crew, staff...makes me keep going because they thought the play was worth it so I have to too. 

SMASH did a wonderful rendition of the Carrie Underwood song, 'Crazy Dreams,' that I loved. The words help as much as the picture of my W4G cast: 

'Hello you long shots/You dark horse runners/Hairbrush singers, dashboard drummers/Hello you wild magnolias/Just waiting to bloom.../...even crazy dreams come true...

 

Last year was the centennial of the birth of civil rights activist, Bayard Rustin.  He was the man who brought Gandhi’s notion of non-violence to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and was the architect of the historic March on Washington in 1963.  This year will see a number of celebrations of his life and because it’s 2013 not 1963 he can be celebrated, in addition, as a pacifist and a gay man. 

I’m working with a group of scholars at Emory University to look at the convergences and divergences between the Black Civil Rights Movement and the Gay (or LGBT, if you will) Movement.  We’re planning a conference at Emory in 2014 and to that end I’ve been reading a lot about African American activists who straddle both identities.  People such as Audre Lorde, James Baldwin and Bayard Rustin were aware that they saw more than one thing when they looked in a mirror.  It’s exciting to finally have a discussion out loud about this idea of connection and begin to dispel the hard-held belief that somehow being African American is a universe away from being gay.

And it’s lovely to examine the life of Bayard Rustin who was such an inspiration to James Baldwin.  See “Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin” (Cleis Books) edited by Donald Weise and Devon Carbado (one of my confreres on the Emory project) or the documentary film, “Brother Outsider (http://rustin.org/).”

Rustin was one of the leaders in Dr. King’s inner circle with whom Baldwin felt most comfortable.  He didn’t experience the disapproval from Rustin for his queerness or for the queerness in his fiction.  They were not of the same generation (Rustin was born in 1912 and Baldwin in 1924) but they were both from generations for whom the concept of a Gay Movement was almost impossible to imagine.  Being Gay meant being quiet about it, so while neither was in the closet they couldn’t imagine carrying a banner.

For an African American, who watched friends and relatives being raped, lynched, denied the right to vote or go into stores; who saw them being attached by police dogs and fire hoses, nothing seemed equally as important as the fight to stop these atrocities.  There seemed no parallel.  Yet, of course, there are parallels in the virulence of the fear people have for both groups. 

And to some degree the consistent effort to remain hidden had kept attacks against gay people from the public eye.  And when an indignity was revealed—such as being dragged from a public drinking establishment—too many people, especially Blacks trying to achieve middle class respectability, thought it was only what they deserved.  Everyone was so afraid of discussion of sexuality there could only be shame not pride.

But Baldwin frequently defended Rustin when other Black politicians and activists attacked him.  Rustin was what we used to call ‘flamboyant,’ he carried an ornamental walking stick  and was once arrested for having public sex.  That could have ended his activist career.  But he stood proud; and he and Baldwin stood together as “bastard black queers,’ to quote Rustin.

When doing research on “Waiting for Giovanni” one of the most moving moments was reading about Baldwin’s understandable trepidations about going south where Freedom Riders had been bombed and other activists had been murdered.  I came across a wonderful photo of Baldwin looking youthful and intense standing beside the imperial Rustin.  The photo captures a snapshot of the dynamism of a movement as well as the deliberately obscured participation of Black gay people in the Civil rights Movement of the 1960s.

My hope is that the play, “Waiting for Giovanni” and the upcoming celebrations of Rustin’s life, as well as the Emory Conference, entitled Whose Beloved Community (more info to come), will ignite people’s curiosity enough so they learn more and no longer accept the half-truths of history but insist on knowing how we got as far as we have.  We need to know these things if we expect to go any further.

W4G At New York Theatre Workshop

This year, 2013, is the 60^th anniversary of the publication of James Baldwin’s first novel, “Go Tell It On The Mountain.”  Semi-autobiographical, it is a searing document that lays bare the souls of Black folks who have committed themselves to the Christian church yet live hypocritical lies.  In 1953 such a novel from an African American author was unheard of…actually almost any novel from an African American author was unheard of! 

There was the legendary Gwendolyn Brooks’ “Maud Martha” which remains underappreciated. Ann Petry, known for her earlier novel “The Street,” also published “The Narrows” in the same year.  Surely there are others that don’t immediately come to mind.  But the Baldwin book opened up a new world of thinking about Black literature in part because of its frankness about the complex (not completely positive) spirituality of the African American community.  Another reason is because of the novel’s subtext of homosexual attraction the main character, John, has for his friend Elisha. 

Near the end of the novel they have a Pinteresque conversation about sin and salvation in which John asks: “That song they sing…if it costs my life—is that the price?”

Elisha answers, “Yes…” and in a single word he pulls the rug out from beneath John’s affection.  The song is one of faith and faithlessness and one John must decide if he will sing or turn away from.

In many ways that moment is similar to many in Baldwin’s life…moments where he must face the need to be true to himself or turn away.  His novel, “Giovanni’s Room,” represents that same struggle.  One man, underprivileged and despised clings to love, while his privileged lover rejects their relationship and walks away from his lover’s death. 

In Baldwin’s civil rights activism he repeatedly confronted his belief not just in the righteousness of the cause but also a belief that humanity as a whole could be better than it was.  It was a humanitarianism that didn’t quite fit with the times.  But Baldwin was not a bitter man which comes through in John’s final words of self-assertion: “I’m ready…I’m coming…I’m on my way.” It’s there even in the tragic ending of Giovanni’s room.

Recently New York Theatre Workshop did a reading of “Waiting for Giovanni” and as I watched the rehearsal, then the public reading I was vividly reminded of that hopeful quality Baldwin’s writing has, even when he’s angry.  The actors who participated each had an openness they brought to the material, even though they were squeezing the reading in between other professional commitments, including one actor who was performing in Broadway’s “Book of Mormon.” The director, Patricia McGregor, who’d been a part of the magnificent production of “Fela,” also brought that quality as she swept the actors up in her enthusiasm and curiosity.

It was encouraging to feel that kind of elemental openness to inspiration in the young actors.  I haven’t worked in theatre in New York for more than 25 years and that was one of the things that fed me (since the salaries certainly didn’t).  This openness often there in actors, I guess, but NYC is a hard place to keep it going.  I admired the way they dug into the words, asked questions and embraced the idea of love being important to life.

I'm returning to the script to incorporate some of the ideas they came through the expertly moderated post-reading discussion.  The focus and intent of the theatre staff made the comments shart and constructive, so I have a lot to work with now that I've recovered from the holidaze!

“Waiting for Giovanni” like “Go Tell It On The Mountain” is about how crucial faith is: faith in humanity and faith in love.  Spiritual quests have little soil in which to take root if those other faiths are not respected and practiced.

 

 

Clayton Riley 1935-2008

This isn’t one of those blogs where I bemoan the fate of civilization because of the dominance of technology.  I’m only observing our uneasy evolution because of it.  The internet and social networking sites are continually upgrading ways for people to connect. (Yes, I know it’s ultimately about making money.)  And it seems to be working.  But sometimes I notice that what may seem like connection is such an awkward, discomforting thing as to be un-nameable. It’s the difference between shaking hands with an old friend and shaking hands with Robbie the Robot.  Still…

What brings me to this is death…and James Baldwin, of course.  I recently tried to track down an old friend, Clayton Riley, a playwright, director, cultural critic, biographer, radio personality.  Clayton was a one person cheering squad for African American culture, a walking history book of theatre, jazz and baseball.  But what I discovered was that he’d died in 2008. If I still lived in New York City I imagine I would have known when it happened; although despite his pre-eminence I can’t yet find a NY Times obit.  But surely I would have bumped into a friend on the street who would have known.

Like the last time I saw Clayton…we bumped into each other on West 12^th Street and 6^th Avenue.  We stood for close to two hours talking about, well, theatre, jazz and baseball.  I told him then I was starting work on a play about James Baldwin with our mutual friend Harry Waters Jr.  He was ecstatic…but he was an ecstatic as a person, made highly emotional by any bits of discovery.  He said how long overdue such a piece was and he thought I was just the one to do it because he felt I was respectful of Baldwin’s brilliance, not afraid of his gayness nor cowed by his international reputation. 

In the same conversation he told me about some new recording artist he loved, asked me about sales figures for my vampire novel, told me how Long Island had changed in the previous decade, reported on the Yankees and the Mets and wanted to know the last time I’d seen Morgan Freeman.

Back when I still lived in NYC I used to get up early and trek down to WBAI to sit in on the radio show he hosted.  It was always the most erudite moment in my day.  I’d bring in an album I thought he may not know (Joan Armatrading or Alive) and we’d talk about the music, the culture from which it sprang (British/Caribbean or feminist/jazz).  There was no topic for which he did not have a background story (tangential or not) which illuminated or expanded what you thought.

He was one of the first of my friends to read my vampire novel, The Gilda Stories.  He started his response with: “I don’t know much about vampires or lesbians.”  Then chuckled as he said, “Except you, of course.”  He proceeded to give me extensive feedback on the historical context of my book, the places where the mythology worked or didn’t, how to better shape the ending and then asked if there would be more sex.

We spent so many hours together in theatres I can’t walk into one without thinking of him even now.  I toiled away at the Frank Silvera Writers Workshop to which he'd invited me, where I met my first playwrights. I worked on a production of his epic play, “Gilbeau,” (featuring the magnificent singer/actor, Novella Nelson) as well as on a fantastic chamber piece, “On the Lock In,” by one of his friends,  David Langston Smyrl, which we staged at the Public Theatre and in clubs around NYC.  I began my theatre training with him in those intense and fulfilling moments of rehearsal and production, critique and commentary.

One imagines friends like this are just there, in the world always. Clayton was a prodigious thinker and talker, rhythmic, funny, righteous, who affected the lives and careers of a coterie of theatre folk (including Morgan Freeman) who were haunting the boards in the late 1970s and early 1980s.  The heyday of Black theatre was waning but the energy and talent remained, in part because people like Clayton were there to keep stoking the fire and encouraging us to believe in our talent and worth.

So I discovered he’d passed on--four years late and am left with a very empty space.  There’s really no way to connect with his family that has meaning for them; they have no reason to remember me from among the dozens of people who followed him around to listen to his wild words and share his ecstaticism.  (Although I think of his beloved daughters and wonder if I'll bump into them one day.)

So I’m using the internet to mourn.  I’ve made Clayton a research project, looking for articles by and about him, photos, anything to help me think about who he was and honour our friendship.  Sort of like a memorial service without the overrun of homemade baked goods. 

It’s difficult to imagine the upcoming reading of “Waiting for Giovanni” without Clayton.  I was so excited to have him finally hear what had come of that long ago conversation on the West Village street corner.  But the reading will happen, actually close to the anniversary of his passing. I’ll imagine Clayton standing at the back of the theatre, his elegant, lyrical posture, one of his ubiquitous caps, a darting gaze and glittering smile, eager to give me notes.

His family created a fund in his name for students: Donations can be sent to the Clayton Riley Theater Fund at Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY 10708. Attn: Carmen Ashhurst. Susan, Norman & Mark Riley

W4G on the road

On December 8,1987 I stood outside of St. John the Divine on the upper west side of Manhattan with hundreds of others who could never fit inside the church.  We waited to hear the final words of praise offered over the body of James Baldwin at his going home ceremony.  I remember being heartbroken that his voice was silenced by death and at the same time feeling inordinately proud that so many people had come to be part of his send off even though we knew we'd be not in the pews but out on the sidewalk.  I also remember being annoyed at some of the voices of praise coming from those who'd bad mouthed Baldwin in his life time because they thought his being gay meant he was not 'black enough.'  All of those feelings have lived inside of me since that time and as I wrote "Waiting for Giovanni."

Now, it's been just over a year since W4G premiered at New Conservatory Theatre Center in San Francisco...hard to believe.  The experience of working with the company of actors, designers and staff has spoiled me. They too honored Baldwin's life and set a really high barre for a collaborative, theatre experience!

So I feel fully prepared to move into a new arena, but can I contain my excitement??? New York Theatre Workshop (http://www.nytw.org/) has accepted my play for their staged reading series that supports the development of new work!   I'm not going to get ahead of myself, it is simply a reading...actors with script in hand...done explicitly to help me re-envision the piece and hear what my most recent rewrites sound like.  BUT I am thrilled!!!  This is the theatre that has nurtured work by Tony Kushner, Kate Moira Ryan and Paula Vogel and it gave birth to "Rent!" AND it did win 13 Tony awards this year for "Peter and the Star Catcher" and "Once."

Knowing the company's history of supporting important work and pushing boundaries I'm being ALMOST totally chill.  So when I was told who would direct the reading I nearly lost my ice cubes.  Pulling it all together will be Patricia McGregor, highlighted among the up and coming theatre talent in a recent NY Times piece (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/02/26/theater/20120226-faces.html/).  And most exciting she worked on one of my favorite theatre pieces: FELA!

This is, of course, kind of like a blind date.  Who knows if what she sees will be what I see but her enthusiasm feels warm and genuine and I can barely maintain my sophisticated cool until I see what she does with the piece in October.  In the meantime I'll busy myself with re-reading the script to see if the story is being told in the strongest way so she has the best material to work with.

James Baldwin is so beloved and iconic in New York City...I promised not to fail him. I'm hoping that some of those folks who stood in the cold outside that church in December 25 years ago will some day soon have the opportunity to stand and praise him again when they see W4G on stage in full production.

Stella!!!!

 

The serendipity of life is sometimes overwhelming…could be a tidal wave or a wave of applause!  This time it was attending the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival in New Orleans.< http://www.tennesseewilliams.net/>   It’s a unique way to experience the arts…relaxing in the metaphorical arms of the Crescent City and feeling the mood and emotions of Tennessee Williams' writing embracing you as well. I’d always felt a kinship with TW since I took a class in college, Williams-Miller-Albee, and realized that TW was gay and could see that the teacher was working overtime to keep students from noticing!  (Albee didn’t peek out until much later.)

At the Festival I participated in a reading of lesser performed Williams work along with a sky full of stellar performers. Somewhere there’s now a recording of me playing Zelda Fitzgerald in a Williams play…not something one would ever imagine coming across in an archives!  I managed not to act like a complete rube when I met Piper Laurie (The Hustler) and Cristine McMurdo-Wallis who I’d seen in “Angels in America.”  She proved to be an angel in person too!  (Sorry couldn’t stop myself and it’s true.)  Meeting iconic actors is like stepping backstage and seeing the magical process of the art form curled up waiting to unfold.

Even more fortuitous for me was serving on a panel about contemporary playwriting and  meeting three playwrights: John Biguenet, a nationally known New Orleans writer who’s plays (including “Shot Gun”) have explored the complex culture of the city and its people post-Katrina.  Now I have a set of new plays to read.

Also on my panel was John Guare, whose “House of Blue Leaves” turned American theatre on its ear.  And after seeing Susan Sarandon’s sensual clean up routine in the film “Atlantic City” (which he wrote) I’ve never looked at a lemon the same way. 

But sitting next to Martin Sherman, the author of “Bent,” proved to be a turning point in my theatre life last month just as viewing his play on Broadway (w/Richard Gere) was in 1980.  When I saw the play (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bent) I was devastated by the gay ‘almost’ love story in a concentration camp and thrilled by the writing so I bought a copy.  When I started working on W4G I dug it out of my boxes so I could remember what had moved me and try to figure out how the writer did it!

Meeting Martin Sherman, who had unwittingly (along with Lorraine Hansberry) been my theatre guru was life-changing for a couple of reasons.  It wasn’t just because he agreed to read my play then praised it…though that would have been plenty!  What made my day was that he was able to talk about his experience of playwriting still as a practice.  His work was living inside him as well as on the page.  He was doing work that he wasn’t sure was good!  He was finding his way through work that needed seasoning and sometimes suffered from overly critical responses.  I didn’t expect that.

It’s not easy to stand in front of an audience and talk about your own work whether it’s successful or not.  In his words I found the inspiration to go back to the W4G script and re-enter it.  I need to bring the life I still feel about the work back to it and not feel so anxious about it failing in New York or Los Angeles or Chicago that I can’t really do the re-writing it needs.  I hope to be accepted into a play development program in NYC this fall and we’ll see how deep I can go.  On the trip I’ll be carrying my aged copy of “Bent” as well as some photos I always like to have nearby—the historic figures my characters portray.   

I’ll be adding to the pictures: Martin Sherman and, of course, Tennessee Williams!

W4G peeks into the Apple

 

Playwright Doric Wilson was born in Washington State and grew up amid the opulent greenery of the Pacific Northwest. His move to the grittiness of New York City in 1958 might have been a disaster…but it wasn’t. That was also the same year that James Baldwin was becoming the toast of the town even though his second novel, Giovanni’s Room, had had such a difficult time finding an US publisher. It was also the period in which the West Village was bursting with an interracial art scene that was sparking all kinds of creativity.

Baldwin, Richard Wright, Maya Angelou and others mingled with the newly hip generation of artists listening to bebop and solving the problems of the world over bottles of Chianti. Doric Wilson landed in NYC and helped turn Café Cino, a small, somewhat shabby space into a theatre venue known around the world. His plays (And He Made Her, Now She Dances) entered the lexicon of downtown theatre. He was also a social activist and a member of the Gay Activist Alliance, the precursor to the current LGBT movement organizations today.

I’ve no idea if Wilson and Baldwin ever met in those fertile years of the Villages, both East and West. The differing focuses of their activism probably would not have landed them at the same cocktail parties. But they met this past January in mid-town Manhattan when the gay theatre organization Doric Wilson co-founded, produced a reading of Waiting for Giovanni.

TOSOS, which stands for The Other Side of Silence, is part of Doric Wilson’s legacy. When Mark Finley and Kathleen Warnock of TOSOS invited me to have W4G read in January to kick off their 2012 reading season my answer was an enthusiastic yes!  New York is the natural home for W4G since Baldwin was a ‘native son’ and that had been my theatre home for so many years.

But it is a weird thing to see a reading of your play that’s already had a full production. I almost felt like I was cheating on a lover. Or I could say a full cast and crew of lovers!  I had done some rewrites…nothing to totally remake the piece…but I was eager to hear if they worked. During the reading Diane, my spouse, nudged me through out the reading if she heard a new line…or sometimes it felt like a new line because of the different delivery.

Having seen the play so many times it was difficult not to think of the lines in my head exactly as the New Conservatory cast had said them. Wm Hunter, Liam Hughes, Will Giammona, Chris Nelson, Desiree Rogers, Fred Pitts, and Lonnie Haley took the lines and shaped them to their tongues, histories, bodies; at the end of the run word and actor became one. And that was comforting; the play was wearing a suit and it looked good. This new experience was like stripping the play bare so it was standing on stage in its boxers, shivering.

But that’s what’s needed sometimes, especially when you know you don’t have it all exactly as it should be. The shape is still off kilter, some lines (even when the SF cast made them sound good) are not quite right. I know as a writer of other genres that there’s a period in the process when my own ear is not to be trusted. I need another shirt thrown over the form to see if what fits.

So the intrepid actors walked into a small rehearsal room at ART/NY on 9^th Avenue and waded through the dense imagery and vast vocabulary I’ve put down on the pages of two dramatic acts to simulate the styles of some of the greatest writers of the 20^th century. With less than three hours of rehearsal one can not expect a full on performance with nuance and familiarity. Only hope there’s not too much stumbling and dead air.

Nothing is like the TV show “Smash!” The cast doesn’t come together and burst into song, know all the lyrics and dance routines after one day of rehearsal. And certainly not after only a three hour read through.

However the TOSOS cast were like the burst of sun in the morning illuminating all around them. K. Todd Freeman, Russell Jordan, Nicholas Wuehrmann, Dudley F. Findlay, Jr., Desiree Burch, Anthony Johnston and Lee Kaplan each tasted the words like a new flavor of ice cream and sang them into the air delivering a new interpretation. Their work was both weighty and playful, just what I needed to hear. I tried to take notes on what I wanted to rewrite but it is difficult to stop watching actors work. It’s a magical thing. No wonder  ‘The Dramatist,’ the periodical of the Dramatists Guild, just devoted a full issue to actors!

Doric Wilson had a wonderful idea when he started TOSOS…theatre is a collaborative art and we need ways to find each other.  I am pursuing ways to have structured time and attention on the script which can bring it to the next level. Then I’ll be looking forward to seeing who we get to come on board again to collaborate in the next phase as magicians…I mean actors.