Potpourri - 10/13/05

Dunkirk, NY - A collection of random news and thoughts in no particular order.

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I learned of the passing yesterday of another Buffalo theatre colleague and friend, Bess Brown Kregal. Bess played Mistress Quickly for me in 1999 in Shakespeare in Delaware Park's production of Henry IV Part 2, and I also was Boyet to her Princess of France in Love's Labour's Lost way back in 1994 (pictured to the right). She appeared in many Buffalo theatres and was always a delight to watch on stage. She brought to her roles not only beauty, but sincerity and deep emotions. She was a kind, gentle and wonderful person with not a harsh word for anyone. She leaves behind her husband Jesse, who is a member of the Buffalo Philharmonic, and her young daughter Ariel. Her passing saddens me deeply and is a tragic loss to the Buffalo theatre community. She will be greatly missed.

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Earlier this month August Wilson passed away as well. I loved his work. His style, to me, was in the grand tradition of a theatre now gone, a theatre where the trials and tribulations of the ordinary people in life - the poor, the downtrodden, the struggling - found their voice on the American stage. From Odetts to Williams to Miller to Wilson, these playwrights found universal truths in the lives of working folks. Their style was lyrical and poetical, and Wilson was one of the best. No one in the past 30 years in American theatre sought to do the type of work he did, with his 10-play sweep of the African-American experience in 20th century America. He thought on a grand, epic scale, and wrote accordingly. And you have to admire a man who faced his death with such reality. No special treatment, no "I'll beat this liver cancer" phoniness; just a calm and assured acceptance that he had accomplished what he set out to do and would let life take its natural course. His passing truly marks an end to an era, for no one will write like that again in my lifetime and see their works produced on the Broadway stage.

When Fences was running on Broadway I managed to get a ticket, and I was so looking forward to seeing that production, which originally starred James Earl Jones in the title role of Troy Maxon. However, when I got to see the show, three days earlier they had replaced JEJ with Billy Dee "F$%&ing" Williams, who sucked so hard he practically created a vacuum on the stage. He was fed his lines on stage more than once by his fellow actors, and clearly was not ready to go on. One of the major diappointments in my playgoing experience.

Fortunately I did get to see a fine production of Joe Turner's Come and Gone at Studio Arena in Buffalo, featuring Stephen Henderson, who teaches at UB and has performed in many of Wilson's plays, among them Jitney on Broadway in 2000. A most powerful experience to be sure.

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This morning comes news that Harold Pinter has won this year's Nobel Prize for Literature. Congratulation to him. Well-deserved. He's turning more to poetry these days, and according to the Time article he's quite an outspoken critic of Tony Blair and the Iraq war. Maybe they should add the Peace Prize to the Literature prize as well.

Trivia - only one American playwright has ever won the Nobel Prize for literature. Name that person.

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Recuperating is a drag, but I hope it's almost over. I go to the gastro guy tomorrow for a check-up and to decide when the ERCP will happen. I've rented a car for Sunday and hope to be driving to Burlington VT to join Atomic Fission that evening and get back to touring. Yay!

I've also received three get-well cards; two from AF and one from the Resident troupe back in Staunton. They were very welcome and very funny.

With all my idle time I've finally managed to post some more videos I shot while on tour, and I think I have a few more to go. I've sort of given up on the idea of vodcasts, and for now am just resorting to putting up some raw footage. You can take a look at them here, but please be sure to have intalled Quicktime for either Mac or PC. It will just make it easier on you and your computer.

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The Yankees suck. Mel Stottlemyre is already gone, and I suspect many others will leave as well before the month is out. Torre is a mystery, but in my gut I think he's had it. This season may finally have convinced him that he's not going to win the WS with this group of guys, and he might just be ready to pass it on to the next iteration of the Yankees. Cashman will surely go, as will Girardi. I'd be surprised to see Bernie return, but not surprised to see him sign with some other team. My prediction/ideal scenario: Cashman becomes GM of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, signs Joe Girardi as manager, and signs Bernie to a two-year contract to DH and help out with the young guys. D-Rays win the AL East in two years. You heard it here first.

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When I first considered blogging, I recalled a small scene from The Time of Your Life by William Saroyan written in 1939. It's a play about a collection of individuals - ordinary working people - who inhabit a small dive along the San Francisco waterfront. The scene takes place between Krupp, a beat cop, and his friend McCarthy, an intellectual working as a longshoreman. McCarthy has a monologue about writers which goes like this:

They all wanted to be writers. Every maniac in the world that ever brought about the murder of people through war started out in an attic or basement writing poetry. It stank. So they got even by becoming important heels. And it's still going on. Right now on Telegraph Hill is some punk who is trying to be Shakespeare. Ten years from now he'll be a Senator. Or a communist.

The thing to do is to have more magazines. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Print everything they write, so they'll believe they're immortal. That will keep them from going haywire.

And here we are in the early part of the 21st century, with hundreds of blogs. Thousands of them. I thought I saw a headline somewhere that claimed a new blog was created every second of the day. Saroyan's prediction and McCarthy's hope has finally come true.

A final quote from Saroyan, who wrote in the foreshadow of WW2:

In a time of war, if art abandons its labor, war wins its victory, and cheap history tells the fable of the world. If it is impossible for art to reach the soldier who is on the verge of killing or being killed, it can get ready for the soldier's son. If art cannot improve the tone and meaning of the statesman's radio speech, it can anticipate his burial and be ready for his successor. If the world is amuck and there is no one for art to talk to, it can prepare itself for the next generation. War is tentative. Aberration is tentative. Art is not tentative.

It is true that as long as there are poets in the world, war can kill nothing.

The world now provides art new and more difficult material. Art has no alternative but to accept this material and to remove from it all foolishness, all feebleness, and all foolish and feeble fantasy.

Let's get cracking. -TWL