PANTOMIME by Derek Walcott The Brooks Theater, Directed by...a long story...

This was one of the first shows we did in the reopened Brooks theatre, and it was an attempt to draw in the surrounding community. It was somehow felt that a play with a black author of some renown and a black star (the talented and wise Kenneth Daugherty) would miraculously draw people from the immediate neighborhood of the Play House into the seats. This was one of many attempts to be "inclusive" (During the run of Mensch Meier we offered twofers to union workers with similar results...) Needless to say, despite the best of intentions and glowing reviews, we didn't lure Karamu's faithful into our inner sanctum. We played to amazingly tiny houses.

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...the long story... made short. The man hired to direct Pantomime, who on these pages shall remain nameless, had a resume as long as your arm. He was black, trim, attractive...and addicted to cocaine. I was too naive to know what was going on. Kenny and I would run a scene, and Herr Direktor would carefully describe what we had just done--no value judgements or suggestions, just description. I assumed he was letting us "explore" and telling us what was reading. But when this kept up for some time, Kenny took me aside and clued me in on what was going on. We banded together, went to Obie, who backed us up. We banished the wayward fellow from the rehearsal hall and directed each other. Obie came in during the last week and pulled things together and no one was the wiser.

We must have succeeded as the reviews were glowing, though the houses small.

A few years later, we did a world premiere by Derek Walcott, the ill-fated To Die For Grenada. It too drew truly bad houses, but unlike Pantomime, it was a truly bad play. Will had sent the manuscript to me and told me we were committed to putting on the mainstage in the Bolton theatre. He realized it needed rewrites, but Mr. Walcott was willing to do them, so he asked me (I was then the dramaturg) to send along my comments and suggestions. Which I did. There was indeed a play somewhere in there amid the poetry, and a bit of editing, primarily to remove logical inconsistencies and mistakes of time, place, etc. would surely make a strong and challenging play. I annotated the manuscript with a flood of questions and choices--I firmly reject the idea of a dramaturg offering "solutions;" it's not the dramaturg's play--and I sent it off. After a time, I received a polite reply that my suggestions weren't needed as rewrites had already been done and the new manuscript was on it's way. When the manuscript arrived, the rewrites took the play further away from the basic conflicts and character interest which had interested us in the play in the first place and further toward a confusing (if not confused) rant. I sent off more annotated questions and choices; In retrospect, I was far too timid an polite. I realize now I should have said flat out what I thought of the play. Chances are I would have been ignored. Walcott had just received a MacArthur Foundation grant declaring him a bona fide genius and bestowing on him the princely sum of $350,000. He certainly didn't need my approval or our paycheck. But at least I should have made a better effort. Alas, the string of new rewrites took the play further and further away from the reason it was chosen in the first place.. In fairness, there was always a good line or two in each new rewrite, and some fabulous Walcott poetry, but less and less play. And my too polite editorial comments were always returned politely unread. Rehearsals were closed, though there were rumors of unhappy ingenues etc. flying about. To make a long, sad story shorter, the play was an unmitigated disaster, derided by houses and critics alike.

But during his stay in Cleveland, while rehearsals were going on, I interviewed the new genius for the Play House mailer. I taped about an hour of conversation which was delightful, exciting, animated. Walcott is a very dynamic personality with a fiery passion and an active intellect. I took the tape home (I still have the tape) to transcribe it and choose the bits I wanted to publish and was astonished to discover that there was hardly a complete sentence anywhere on it. The convesation that seemed so connected and focused had been knit together by a very effective non-verbal communicative style made up of gestures, vocal gestures, poetic turns of phrase and juxtapositions, practically none of which translated directly to the page. I set about making sense of what we had said on the page. The results of my efforts are below:

THE DRAMATURG CONVERSES WITH DEREK WALCOTT ON THE PERFECT AUDIENCE AND OTHER MATTERS

Derek Walcott, Trinidadian playwright whose new play To Die For Grenada has its World Premiere in the Bolton Theatre this October, is a certified genius. The Obie award-winning writer was one of the first "geniuses" to be awarded a five-year MacArthur Foundation fellowship in 1981. The money allowed Walcott to "lengthen and deepen" the writing process on the plays he wrote during the term of the fellowship. Typical of his generosity, he shared some of his monies in support of several young Trinidadian dancers, actors and painters. He was also able to travel from Boston University where he teaches to his native isllands to refresh his inspiration. All in all the last five years have been as nearly perfect for an artist as one might imagine.

On a recent afternoon, chatting with Walcott as one well acquainted with perfection, I asked him what he would like to have as the perfect audience member for one of his plays. His lively, thoughtful answer is vintage Walcott:

"I once answered that question...But it must be very carefully said. I think just like Terence Rattigan had Aunt Edna (He said, you know you've got to please Aunt Edna); somebody referred to blue haired ladies from somewhere, I see a plump (small laugh) black woman from the Caribbean, either laughing like hell in the way that we laugh which is total, or weeping like hell. The person that i have in mind is that sort of person. It's not an intellectual. It's an audience that I can reach. I think that's the furthest point of the audience for any writer. Not even the artist, something beyond the artist, which is how you can touch, who can you touch? Can you thouch the person who is considered to be illiterate and so on. Because there is no such thing as illiterate sensibility in terms of an audience. It's much more likely that Oedipus Rex could be more deeply appreciated because of its greatness by somebody who is considered to be illiterate--more profoundly appreciated because of the sorrow than literature--than "made" literature, than what we consider to be (literate). I think everybody would look for that: I think Grotowski would look for that. Peter Brook would look for that, to go back to that think in which there is no barrier between the craft of theatre--you don't see the craft--(and the object of theatre). It's just there relating to the person. That's what I wish I could write like. I don't think I can..."

I told h im that I show the Tyrone Guthrie/Douglas Campbell Oedipus Rex every year to my Theatre History students and, regardless of their background or preparation, they are blown away.

Walcott continued: "That does not surprise me. I can say that in all honesty because I come from a society that is considered to be illiterate. And I have never written anything that is considered to be helpful to the imagination of people who are partially literate. We [Walcott's theatre company] went back to my home in St. Lucia and did Dream on Monkey Mountain. Now Dream on Monkey Mountain in terms of its test is not too easy, interms of what its images may be. And I rememver when we did it, the theatre was full that afternoon and then people wanted to see it again so we had to send a truck around saying that we'd play it again. This was being done by people who do not speak very good English because they speak French Creole. I felt very proud--not of me but of the audience--because they wanted to see something that they felt. Even if they couldn't write accurately or spell or pronounce that language, it got to them and they felt something. And I think that when that happens, there is nbothing equal to that in terms of the power that's beyond the immediate translation and is this a good moment in the play and...it's like a great opera in a sense. You don't understand what's being said, but you know, it hits you like hell.

"The images [in his work] come out of incantation. If you're drumming--I've gone to Shango drumming and so on. And if out of the liturgical and repetitive and ritualistic aspect of the theatre, you get into a kind of mesmerized state and then images come, that's coming out of percussive celebratory, oral aspect of the theatre. I think if it's made literary, then the same audience I'm talking about would be lost. They'd feel ignorant--even if you present them with mythical oblique symbolic kind of things. They can appreciate total metaphor, but if y ou make sort of similes of things rather than the metaphor or things, then it hits everyboduy. So a lot of times the play has been directed as a simile rather than as a metaphor--that this is like that then this signifies that..."

"And that is a mistake." I said. Returning to the Greeks, I said, "The Fifth Century Greeks--Aeschylus, So0phocles, Euripides--didn't have those marble theatres; they had very flexible space; very flexible things. And by the time we got to the Fourth Century, they were imitatin those things and it didn't work because they weren't communing with their own muse."

Walcott replied, "Another thing about that Greek theatre--the fun of the things--there was a lot of noise in that Greek Theatre--cymbals going and bells...I think it was Irene Pappas who said that the closest thing to a Greek play would be an American musical. But we think in terms of some lofty translation. There people are in bright sunlight dancing, and having a hell of a good time--in an Asiatic way not in like a transferred, WASPish, you know, with it, with thou, Oedipus way. They're not imitating the Elgin marbles..."

"We've lost a lot of the partiipation in the theatre," I said "because we ask people to watch a play instead of participate. The Greek festival plays were probably closer to a modern Rock concert; I don't care for Rock music very much, but there is a community event happening."

"Exactly," said Walcott. "I think Western, slick metropolitan theatre has lost something--something Grotowski and Brook are trying to get back to. They want a member of the audience not to be an individual. In other words, it would be OK if you alone were in the theatre, or if you multiply y ou by 200, then it's one individual reacting. But if you get a thing where it becomes so participatory that you don't count--that the audience becomes one in another way--that's what you're saying, that ;you're sharing in the elation of the thing.

"That leads to a kind of clinical, psychological motivbated Freudian based interpretation of what the actor does. But if yhou think of the actor in another way, the actor as somebody who goes back to the feel of the mask, then you have what I'm talking about. I mean nobody remembers who played Oedipus first."

I added, "It doesn't matter."

Walcott said clowning, "I didn't know Zeroski played it, you know."

I was quick to reply, "But he was a professional, after all."

"Yes!" countered Walcott. "Or the Japanese theatre where the actors are synonymous rather than anonymous."

"In Japan they even take the same names." I threw in. "They pass on their stage names based on the kind of role they play. Theuy are up to the twelfth or fourteenth generation of Kabuki actors..."

Sadly, we were interrupted on that note and had to stop. I hope you enjoy the product of this agile and creative mind, To Die For Grenada. There may be more than first meets the eye.