It was also home to some of the most inventive theatrical work I’d ever seen. Eddie Lee created a version of “Mandragola” there that was one of the funniest experiences of my life — and I got to be onstage every night, playing music I’d written. Barbara Lebow wrote “A Shayna Maidel” for that building, a production that went on to New York and to the movies.
Frank even allowed me to continue with my admittedly twisted performance pieces, one of which was a seasonal production called “Christmas From Other Worlds.” It was actually just an excuse to expose short pieces that were only tangentially associated with the holiday. Donna Persons, practically naked and wrapped in Christmas lights, danced in the dark to then-husband Michael Catalano’s trumpet playing. Beth Heidelberg performed a Huron Indian carol. And I somehow persuaded Betty Smith, a beautiful Appalachian psaltery player, to perform several songs, including the ever-popular “Christmas Pig.”
At the end of the performance, Frank called me aside and said, “Betty’s the show. That’s your show.” And with very little additional encouragement, I agreed. I’ve been creating versions of “Appalachian Christmas” and Appalachian everything else (including seven Fever Devilin novels) ever since.
That, I think many would agree, was Frank’s genius: he could spot what worked, spot it a mile off. Barbara used to say that he created the best stage pictures she’d ever seen. It was his general method, in fact — one that had been radical in the 1950s when he’d started, and had become tried and true. He would encourage the performers to begin in chaos, moving around the stage any way they wanted to, making any kind of noise or music they could, and when something would arise out of the madness, he’d know it and he’d use it. He hadn’t invented that method, of course, but he employed it better than anyone else. I certainly went on to use it to great effect as a university professor in a variety of theater courses, but it took me awhile to remember that when I was 15, kissing girls and making Klansmen mad, Walter Roberts had also used some of those same ideas at the Actors and Writers Workshop.
In 1676, in a letter to his friend Robert Hooke, Sir Isaac Newton wrote, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” The quote is no less applicable to any artist, but theater is especially fond of simultaneously standing on the giant’s shoulders and kicking him in his big head.
At the Moscow Art Theatre, Konstantin Stanislavski wouldn’t have been so interested in realistic or natural theater if the melodrama that preceded it hadn’t seemed so ridiculous to him. Several decades later in France, Artaud wouldn’t have been so interested in destroying realistic theater for more or less the same reason.
So while it’s the way of the theatrical arts to rebel, to recoil at what has gone before, that’s a process available only to artists who know what has gone before. Otherwise, we’re doomed to foolishly think we’ve invented something that we’re really only re-creating in new and, we hope, interesting ways. We ought to know more about what has gone before.
We could start by taking a look down at the giants.
Phillip DePoy is an Atlanta playwright and author. A former artistic director of the Theatrical Outfit, he was the recipient of the Edgar Award in 2002 for best mystery play.
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Frank even allowed me to continue with my admittedly twisted performance pieces, one of which was a seasonal production called “Christmas From Other Worlds.” It was actually just an excuse to expose short pieces that were only tangentially associated with the holiday. Donna Persons, practically naked and wrapped in Christmas lights, danced in the dark to then-husband Michael Catalano’s trumpet playing. Beth Heidelberg performed a Huron Indian carol. And I somehow persuaded Betty Smith, a beautiful Appalachian psaltery player, to perform several songs, including the ever-popular “Christmas Pig.”
At the end of the performance, Frank called me aside and said, “Betty’s the show. That’s your show.” And with very little additional encouragement, I agreed. I’ve been creating versions of “Appalachian Christmas” and Appalachian everything else (including seven Fever Devilin novels) ever since.
That, I think many would agree, was Frank’s genius: he could spot what worked, spot it a mile off. Barbara used to say that he created the best stage pictures she’d ever seen. It was his general method, in fact — one that had been radical in the 1950s when he’d started, and had become tried and true. He would encourage the performers to begin in chaos, moving around the stage any way they wanted to, making any kind of noise or music they could, and when something would arise out of the madness, he’d know it and he’d use it. He hadn’t invented that method, of course, but he employed it better than anyone else. I certainly went on to use it to great effect as a university professor in a variety of theater courses, but it took me awhile to remember that when I was 15, kissing girls and making Klansmen mad, Walter Roberts had also used some of those same ideas at the Actors and Writers Workshop.
In 1676, in a letter to his friend Robert Hooke, Sir Isaac Newton wrote, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” The quote is no less applicable to any artist, but theater is especially fond of simultaneously standing on the giant’s shoulders and kicking him in his big head.
At the Moscow Art Theatre, Konstantin Stanislavski wouldn’t have been so interested in realistic or natural theater if the melodrama that preceded it hadn’t seemed so ridiculous to him. Several decades later in France, Artaud wouldn’t have been so interested in destroying realistic theater for more or less the same reason.
So while it’s the way of the theatrical arts to rebel, to recoil at what has gone before, that’s a process available only to artists who know what has gone before. Otherwise, we’re doomed to foolishly think we’ve invented something that we’re really only re-creating in new and, we hope, interesting ways. We ought to know more about what has gone before.
We could start by taking a look down at the giants.
Phillip DePoy is an Atlanta playwright and author. A former artistic director of the Theatrical Outfit, he was the recipient of the Edgar Award in 2002 for best mystery play.
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