Riddle

Here, for no particular reason at all, is my favorite quip:

The other day upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
Oh how I wish he'd stay away.

Happy Weekend!

Wayne

Coram Boy's Closing is Everyone's Loss

It's just a little more than a week since Coram Boy closed on Broadway, but I can't stop thinking about it. I was at the final peformance, owing to the fact that my friend Ivy Vahanian, was in the cast. I didn't know anything about the show going in. I'd not heard, read, or scene a single ad, and I missed the Isherwood review in the New York Times on May 3.

Turns out, Ivy had one of the leads, floating onstage at the top of the show as an Angel, and then playing the pivotal role of Melissa. She was astonishing in the role, and I don't say that because I adore her personally. The arc of her character takes her from standing frozen as the Angel for 10 minutes, to lightening fast costume changes, and then as Melissa, falling in love, kissing the boy, having a baby onstage (the sounds that came out of her body!), losing the child, regaining the child fifteen years later - it's astonishing.

But that was the thing about Coram Boy. If I had to tell someone what the play was "about", it would not be easy to do in a simple paragraph. Based on a novel by Jamila Gavin, the show had some very dark overtones: murder, abortion, orphans, rape, slavery, women's rights. Yet the story never once felt like a political soapbox.

Although it was a British import (National Theatre production) it was a fine ensemble piece for some great American actors. Particulary good were Uzo Aduba as the boy Toby, and Bill Camp as the creepy/sexy bad guy Otis Gardiner.

The real hero of Coram Boy, however, was the director Melly Still. She managed 20 actors, a chorus of 20 singers, and an orchestra of 7 with such deftness and taste. There was never a moment in the show that lagged, and the staging was fresh, inventive, and carried an emotional wallup. Her eye for composition is impeccable, and she makes the empty stage come alive with more impact than all the flashy Broadway shows in the world could muster. This is a career to watch.

Sadly, though, Coram Boy never had a chance. Too many salaries, not enough shows. Ultimately, it speaks to the tastes of American audiences and the times we're living in. Who wants to sit through a Broadway show that actually says something? Who wants to feel uncomfortable? Who wants to see the ugly side of human nature? I think if Coram Boy had featured a few dance numbers, a half-naked boy swining on a bungee cord, or kids prancing around like they had spring fever, maybe it would've sold more tickets. But as it was - all human emotion and Handel music - this show had no place in a country that doesn't really want to look at truth.

"What Is The Word" by Samuel Beckett

As I look back on the time I spent with Joe Chaikin, I rememer two occaisons on which Joe, having been asked to perform something, chose as his material this poem, written for him, by Samuel Beckett.

No small thing, to have a poem written for you by the man who is arguably the most important playwright of the 20th Century.

Joe would take each line of the text and allow it to rise up from deep inside, releasing it on little more than a whisper. Often his face would contort with effort, his own journey through aphasia literally a struggle to find the word.

This poem is hard to find. I'm not even sure if it's in print. So here for you, Beckett fans, the poem for Joe...

WHAT IS THE WORD
by
Samuel Beckett

(for Joe Chaikin)

folly-

folly for to-

for to-

what is the word-

folly from this-

all this-

folly from all this-

given-

folly given all this-

seeing-

folly seeing all this-

this-

what is the word-

this this-

this this here-

all this this here-

folly given all this-

seeing-

folly seeing all this this here-

for to-

what is the word-

see-

glimpse-

seem to glimpse-

need to seem to glimpse-

folly for to need to seem to glimpse-

what-

what is the word-

and where

folly for to need to seem to glimpse what where-

where-

what is the word-

there-over there-

away over there-

afar-

afar away over there-

afaint-

afaint afar away over there what-

what-

what is the word-

seing all this-

all this this-

all this this here-

folly for to see what-

glimpse-seem to glimpse-

need to seem to glimpse-

afaint afar away over there what-

folly for to need to sem to glimpse afaint afar

away over there what-

what-

what is the word-

what is the word

Rabbit Hole

Today I have an audition for the play Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire. It's being done at Florida Studio Theatre and I'm going in for the role of Howie, the husband. This play, which won the Pulitzer Prize this year, was originally produced by Manhattan Theatre Club and starred Cynthia Nixon (of Sex and the City fame).

I did not see the original production, but I've auditioned for this role before, so this is my third or fourth time reading the play and working on it. It's an astonishing play. Hauntingly beautiful. A painful journey into the lives of one family as they struggle to deal with the loss of their three year old child. The play doesn't offer any pat answers, and each of the characters process loss in their own way. Becca (the Cynthia Nixon role) has a particularly difficult time living with the memories of her son - the clothes, the toys, the photos. Even the house has become a shrine to his death and she feels increasingly more trapped and unable to move beyond anything other than constant guilt and sorrow.

To make things even worse, Becca's younger sisiter, Lizzy, has become pregnant. Never was there a more ill-suited candidate for parenthood than Lizzy. She drinks, parties, swears like a trucker, gets into bar fights, sleeps around, and is perpetually underemployed. But becoming a mother may be Lizzy's salvation. There is a particularly moving scene where Becca attempts to give LIzzy some of her dead sons clothes. It is a well-meaning gesture, but clearly Becca can't see past her own grief to how her actions impact on other people.

In the scene I've been given for the audition, Howie is alone with Lizzy and she confronts him about having an affair. It's unclear whether Howie actually has gone through with it, but the fact that he's been spotted in public with another woman is signal enough that his marriage with Becca is sinking. There is shame, guilt, denial, anger, frustration, rage, and a mounting sense of doom all in the span of a few pages. What a great task as an actor!

David Lindsay-Abaire may be one of the greatest living playwrights today. A great testament to the healing power of shared grief, Rabbit Hole is, in my opinion, the most important, and most perfect play for all of us living in a post-911 world. This is artistry at its finest.

A Decade with Joseph Chaikin

About a week ago I was contacted by a filmmaker named Encke King. He is working on a documentary about the late great director and actor Joseph Chaikin.
I had known Joe and worked with him very closely over the last decade of his life. He was an extraordinary individual whose contributions to the American Theater are many and significant.

Encke met me for a cup of coffee to talk about Joe and tell me a little about his project. There already exist some very good footage of Joe, especially from the 1960's and 70's when he was at the height of his fame. In the early 1990's, however, Joe suffered a stroke after undergoing an open heart surgery, and became aphasic.

Aphasia is a disorder that occurs when the language center of the brain becomes short-circuited. A person knows exactly what it is that they want to say, they just can't find the words to say it. It's a frustrating condition to live with.

Joe was in rehabilitation for a year, and worked with a speech therapist for a long time. He never completely regained his old facility with language, but what emerged was in many ways far more interesting. He became a poet. A walking haiku. He was usually pretty clear and somehow managed to get his thoughts across. But the language he found was often startling. I remember once he was describing the artistic experience. He said this: "Theater is often heaven or... basement."

Joseph Chaikin was a five-time OBIE Award winner, including the first ever Lifetime Achievement Award. In the 1960's he founded a theater company called The Open Theater which created some of the most ground-breaking plays of the day including America Hurrah and The Serpent (both by Jean-Claude van Itallie). In the 1970's he formed another company called The Winter Project, an ensemble whose members include Ronnie Gilbert, Tina Shepard, and Will Patton.

Joe is famous also for a book he wrote called The Presence of the Actor.

He knew Samuel Beckett personally and directed several of his plays, both in Europe and here in the states. And he was very close friends to playwright Sam Shepard, with whom Chaikin collaborated on such plays as Tongues, Savage Love, The War In Heaven, and When The World Was Green: A Chef's Fable.

I met Joe in 1991 and began working with him as an actor on a new collaborative project about disabilities. Most of the company were actors with a disability of movement. The play was about mobility and cultural attitudes. I was one of two able-bodied actors who were to represent the rest of the able-bodied world. This project developed over the course of ten years, and was the thing that Joe returned to over and over during the last decade.

We then began teaching together. Workshops for Actors and Directors. Joe would choose a small number of playwrights to focus on (always Beckett and Shakespeare), and we would bring together a group of 12 actors and 6 directors for scene-study over the course of six weeks. I learned more in those workshops watching others than perhaps all my years of training.

I also had the priviledge of being directed by Joe in such shows as Chicago by Sam Shepard, A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White by Adrienne Kennedy (both at Signature Theater Company in New York), and The Glass Menagerie at Yale Rep. I got a taste of what it may have been like to work with him back in the Open Theater years when I was a member of the company in a re-working of his famous Winter Project play Tourists And Refugees, workshopped at the Manhattan Theater Club.

So when Encke King asked whether I would be interested in speaking with him about Joe I was thrilled. He told me they were looking for materials about Joe's life post-aphasia. It was a good excuse for me to go to my obscenely-overcrowded storage unit and do some editing. I found a milk-crate full of materials from my work together with Joe. I had been meaning to archive this material at some point. Now seems as good a time as any.

And so, dear reader, you will be the first to share with me what I uncover from my personal Chaikin archive. This truly was a great life in the theater.

I'm off now to rehearsal. Today I begin work with director Eva Burgess on a new piece, untitled, which explores America in the 1950's through the lens of Grace Metalious, author of the scandalous Peyton Place. Wish me luck.

See you bac here soon!

Wayne