Murray Ross

Hard times

The other night after the show, a long time subscriber told me he hoped THEATREWORKS would do some comedy next season.  "But," I said, "We just did a comedy---The Lying Kind--and people seemed to think that was very funny.  We already do comedy!"  "Oh yes," he said, "but this year most of the shows have been so heavy."  And so we parted.

If I could rewind that moment I might have gone on to say, "Hey, most of our shows have been pretty light.  What about As You Like It---four weddings and a clown--wasn't that a comedy?  And love and lust soaked Venus and Adonis was an entertainment, wasn't it? The truth is we've done three comedies this season so far and only two plays that weren't comedies. Besides, we just came back from London and there wasn't a comedy in sight.  How about next year we do what we saw in London: No Man's Land (late night drinking, impasse, death around the corner), Oedipus Rex (laugh out loud self mutiliation and doom), August, Osage County (incest, booze, drugs and massive dysfunction up and downstairs), The Family Reunion (sterility and the furies at a country house)?  Now there's a heavy season for you. And we loved it---or I did, anyway."

But of course I didn't say that and wouldn't say that, because the truth is always in the beholder.  And I could see that the two serious dramas that we've offered this season, Wit and The Grapes of Wrath, have indeed far outweighed everything else in his mind.  And both these plays are heavy--one with cancer, the other with oppression and the destruction of a family--you can't get much heavier than terminal cancer and family destruction.  No matter that both plays offer vivid images of redemption at their ends: Rose of Sharon nursing the starving man, the choral salvation of Vivian Bearing finding the light.  Our subscriber felt weighted down and burdened, heavy with care.

These are hard times now, here and everywhere.  We feel the weight.  In normal times, I would argue, tragedy lifts us up.  We are stronger for enduring the unendurable, we are enlarged and lifted by feeling so much.  But in hard times, what we're looking for is relief and escape and hope.  Life is hard enough, too hard. And hard life makes us smaller; it can diminish our capacities. Heavy drama in these circumstances is just punishing. 

Does this mean next season we should do comedy and nothing but?  What do you think?

His Last Bow

Here, without comment, Tony Babin's farewell to the stage at THEATREWORKS in May, of 2009, in the role of the fabulous,pompous and foolish actor, Montfluery, in Cyrano de Bergerac. Notably discharged, with the usual signature aplomb.

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Big Guy, Big Doll, Gone

Tony Babin was a really big guy.  Too big for his own good, probably.  I suppose we should have known he was in cardio trouble, and I know some people did know.  There were warnings, I gather.  But in the twenty years I knew Tony, I only knew him as a man full of life ---constant, steady, abundant and endless (I thought) life.  His size was completely in proportion with his personality and his energy, which were prodigious.  He was a gifted and accomplished guy, and also a gifted and accomplished doll.  When I think of Tony, though, I don't think of a gifted actor, a resourceful entrepeneur, a pioneer, or a drag queen, all of which he most certainly was.  I think of Tony as one of the most completely benevolent people I ever met.  Amazingly so, regularly so, only so.

There will be a great tribute to Tony on Wednesday at 2:00 pm at the Fine Arts Center. Here I offer merely a few glimpses of the great man in action in the role of Big Jule in our Guys and Dolls here three years ago.

Like Big Jule, and whether with Nathan Detroit or Sky Masterson, Tony always came to play. He always wanted a piece of of the action.

It must be said he wasn't always a fan of conventional evangelical preaching.

But he got religion all the same. He carried the spirit within him and he gave it all away freely.

No matter where he went, Tony made a huge impression. 

He was almost impossible to hide.

 And even though he is no longer in our view, his presence abides.  He is sort of a holy ghost of theater in our town.  I feel he will watch over us.  God loves you Tony, and we do too. We really do.
 

Deck the Halls!

The Colorado Springs Chrorale presents its annual holiday concert tonight in the Pikes Peak Center.  Lots of carols,  poinsettas, trees, and a few surprises too. One of the small surprises is me---I've been invited to narrate the text of the final number---a musicological journey.  What's that, you might ask? You'll just have to come out tonight and find out.  Really, though, this is the chorale's night--and there's nothing like the sound of a hundred odd really good and happy singers to make your Christmas bright.

Meanwhile back at the Bon Vivant, Irma Vep rages in hilarious imperfection.  "The funniest play I've seen all year," says the Gazette reviewer this morning.  That pretty well makes it the funniest play of the year, period. And I think it is too.

And last but but not least---HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM ALL OF US and Lady Irma too.

Lady Enid's Tale

"I sat up late reading a treatise on Lycanthropy and the Dynasties of Egypt . . then suddenly the glass shattered.  I turned.  It was in the room. I think I screamed.

But I couldn't run away!  I couldn't run away!

It caught me by the hair and then . . .

I can tell no more! I can tell no more!"
 
 

Off Broadway Debut

Khris Lewin, formerly a swordsman with a very large nose, was kind enough to send me a holoiday greeting from Greenwich Village, featuring Mark Hennessy, formerly the Comte de Guiche, with the following message: "This is not a comment about your direction of Cyrano--well, not necessarily . ...."  Such is my golden age, the life of an eminence grise, surrounding by flattery, gifts, and loving care:

Hanging Gardens of Armenia

I hope everyone in our town saw this latest chapter in the very active life of Mike de Marsche, the whirlwind who blew through town and created the great new wing of the Fine Arts Center just at the right time.  And then he jumped ship at the right time too, landing in Armenia. Maybe not exactly at the right time. The Cafesjian Arts center looks to be one of the weirdest places in the world, but of course we know it's a de Marsche project because its expensive and full of Chihulays.  I hope someone local will send an on site report, but in the meantime this is pretty great:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/arts/design/19abroad.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=armenia%20museum&st=cse

Portrait of a Madman

Encho Avramov is easily the most annoying person I have ever met.  Get him started on something (and that's not hard) and you can't turn him off.  The Bulgarian volcano just keeps on spewing out his molten lava.  ALL RIGHT, you say, I UNDERSTAND!  The volcano is still erupting.  AND YOUR POINT IS??? We say---to no avail.  YOU ARE GETTING VERY BORING, we cry--and it does us no good. What point is there to a volcano?  Does it really care if it's boring us? If you are a volcano you just have to blow, that's all there is to it.  And believe me, Encho has got to blow.  Even when he's silent and contemplative, you feel the volcano's potential.

I should also say that Encho is one of my very best friends. He has many non-volcanic qualities. He makes me laugh, always, and sometimes I make him laugh too.  His eruptions often provoke eruptions of my own.  He's an artist, so he's often dreaming and thinking.  We argue as much as we agree and I think this is a good thing. He is one of the very best critics of my work- he likes what I like about it, when I like it, and he is always ready to say what is missing or misguided: ("To be perfectly frank, Murray, I must tell you this was very bad" is a sentence I expect to hear after every production).

I confess it was with some trepiditation that I accepted a personal tour last week of Encho's current exhibition at the Smokbrush gallery.  I am all too familiar with his diatribes about the corrupting influence of money and power on the social order.  I agree with him, but I am not so eager to go see art which bludgeons me with the message, a message I have heard all my life.  And this message is indeed part of this exhibition, but it arrives in a most surprising way.  Facing you when you enter the gallery is a series of small pictures, variations on a vicious circle of fish swallowing each other in the name of capitalism,socialism, communism, etc (Encho, who has known them all, is an equal ism despiser).  The imagery is brutal and scary, and, surprisingly very lively, bright and cheerful, with the fish devouring each other in seas of bright red, gold, blue and glitter.  They could almost be tiles in a playroom, or wall paper--in fact I think it would be very powerful to walk into a room entirely covered with this repeated fish pattern, and be completely bombarded with such happy happy brutality. 

 In the center of the room stands a pyramid literally composed of the almighty dollar, from which hangs a mobile where the different religions dangle like little trinkets from the dollar sign (In God We Trust).  Again,this is theme we have heard and seen before---but it's presented with brio and joy that rather wonderfully contradict the punishing thud of the message.

All together the pyramid seems as much celebration as critique.

The paradox of Encho's abiding anger and frustration merging with his enthusiasm and vitality create a unique environment at Smokebrush.  All around you is evidence of an artist bent on scourging hyprocrisy and yet the room makes you happy to be there. "Hey, I am fun guy!: says Encho, just before launching into another tirade, hitting you between the eyes.

Encho has sometimes almost made a living as a painter of orthodox religious icons --- he is in fact a master painter in this genre.  To the right of the fish is a portrait of Jesus in the classic Icon manner, with yellow disaster tape wrapped around it saying: CAUTION, SOCIALIST. Enough said. (I must admit I have never understood how Christians can oppose universal health care or promote offensive wars; I just don't get it).

This very simple, powerful and masterly picture unites the political with the spiritual--the two strongest impulses at play in Encho's art.  The spiritual is finally the most important--the exhibition is called "The Most Essential is Invisible."  It's a common enough expression (attributed both to St. Exupery and Helen Keller), and a difficult and paradoxical foundation for a visual artist. Encho plays with work that presents then erases the image-- a relief Buddha shrine tryptich first removes Buddha and then almost all of the shrine leaving only a field of gold; an icon of Mother and Child is succeeded by a companion picture which leaves only a trace of its predecessor's outline. Most ambitious of all is his Last Supper at the end of the room, which subtracts everything but the halos of Jesus and his disciples--but adds a real tablecloth, bread and a goblet of wine.  This almost interactive piece (does it encourage or repel audience participation?) both invites communion and implies betrayal (are we true followers or are we Judas?).  Very provoking--though I confess that while being invited to acknowledge the power and deeper truth of the invisible, I kept wanting more of the visible which--in an art exhibition--seemed plenty essential to me.

And actually there was plenty more to see--the exhibition is a kind of Encho anthology, showing his work ing in many moods and styles. Everything in the room speaks to Encho'spassionate commitment to a life of art and the spirit. I haven't yet mentioned my second favorite picture, a double photograph portrait of his beautiful daughter, Tinka, in Bulgarian costume. (Tinka, I should disclose, is a former girlfriend of mine, and even though she dumped me when she turned ten we remain on friendly terms).  

It wasn't long before the power of the exhibition overwhelmed me.  I was overcome with shame after I stol the one real dollar left as an offering on the pyramid.  I felt myself to be deeply inessential. I could see no more.  I looked deep within myself for the invisible.  Encho tried to rescue me.  But all was dark.

I sought and received comfort from lovely Holly Parker who curated the show and lit it beautifully:

And at last I begged forgivess of my volcano friend, saint and shark, agent provocateur and clown, and he, holy man that he is, gave it to me.  On the condition I blog about him.  Which I have now done.

As for my very favorite and hitherto unmentioned picture: it's a small one, over in the far corner.  It shows a paintbrush pushing a palette up a hill: a playful portrait of the artist as Sisyphus. You feel he's going to get there. That's my madman--and our madman now, since Betty bought the painting at the opening.  I strongly advise you to see this exhibition at Smokebrush before it closes November 27. If you are lucky, the Bulgarian volcano will not be on the premises.  Count your blessings. The most essential will be invisible!  

Veterans Day

I flew to a farm in Massachusetts last weekend to see some good theatre (more about this soon), but the best scene I saw was coming home, in the Denver airport, where just ahead of me on the escalator was a soldier in his desert camoflauge uniform. A small guy, unprepossessing,modest--I barely noticed him in the crowd heading for the exit.  I was thinking about the drive home and apple pie. But at the top of the escalator, in the terminal arrival area, I heard a gasp and then there he was, and there she was--his wife or partner--together in a deep embrace.  Not as quite as flamboyant or glamorous as this one, from England, but close.

 

The crowd stopped as one: it takes a lot to stop an airport crowd on their way out, and usually it's something much less pleasant. We stopped, and looked, and we cheered. The guy next to me, also a soldier I think, but not in uniform and not yet met, said, "that home will  be rocking tonight."  And I said "it's rocking now."

During Our Town, there's a moment when Emily rushes into the arms of her fiance, George.  We worked hard on that moment, making it full and truthful---and on stage it was a good moment too. But it was nothing like what I saw in the Denver airport on Sunday night.  Sometimes there's nothing quite like the truth--the truth a only tour of Iraq and a trip up the airport escalator into the arms of someone who loves you can deliver.

Here's to our vets, at home and abroad---we wish them all such a homecoming, and soon, too.

the solo show

Some of the bravest and most peculiar theatre artists in the world these days belong to genre of the one person  show.  These people are out there all on their own, traveling light, propelled by their own wit, will and invention.  Every now and then one of them hits it big--- Hal Holbrook was Mark Twain, and filling huge auditoriums all over the country.  And Rick Miller, coming to THEATREWORKS this week with his hilarious hybrid, MacHomer, has a show you really don't want to miss. It starts strong, stays alive, and the finale is a staggering display of virtuosity--- as a fellow theatregoer said to me after the show last night:" Now that's talent!"

Miller and Holbrook are the exceptions. Most solo theater performers don't hit it so big.  Partly because they are too peculiar--I mean you have to be an odd bird to want to make a living going around from town to town setting up your own one man carnival,turning on the lights, running your show, and then taking it all down again and moving on.  You are a one person travelling circus. And most of the time your act will lack the mass appeal and instant recognition of Mark Twain or Bart Simpson.  The odds are against you--how long can a theatre audience endure a performance by just one actor, no matter how great?  Even Thespis, the Greek Tragedian  credited with introducing the first actor, had a back-up chorus going for him.  Ninety minutes is a stretch, just  about as far as a single actor, no matter how charistmatic or protean, can go.  Your sets have to be minimal too.  So a one person show can wear an audience out very quickly, and usually does.

And yet, a few of the very best nights I have spent in the theater have been at one person shows, three of them in our theater: Wanda McCaddon in Happy Days, Karen Slack in The Syringa Tree, and Bob Pinney's Christmas Carol were all indelible performances.  At an even higher level of risk--actors who are also the authors and creators of their own material--we've seen Mike Daisey, and the greatest of them all, Spalding Gray in a shaky appearance here recovering from a serious automobile accident. Jim Jackson, across town at MAT, has done two wonderful one  person shows based on his own life. There have been more. Many years ago I saw John O'Keefe in a little theatre in Los Angeles performing in his autobiographical play, Shimmer, and it was a transcendent experience.  A short time later I saw Fred Curchack's one man Tempest, and was stunned by its invention.  I thought I need these guys.  I invited John to play Odysseus and Fred to created puppet shadows in the Smokebrush adaptation of Homer's Odyssey twenty years ago.  Bad idea. Solo performers are solo artists for a reason--they are meant to play more with themselves than with others. That production was the most harrowing in my long memory---though not entirely without reward (a woman walked into our theater a year later and told me she was still dreaming about it).

Last weekend Betty and I went up to Denver to see a solo show created by Thaddeus Phillips.

Thaddeus grew up in Colorado Springs, and for a summer was in a children's theater company with my son Orion. He went to Colorado College,and studied with Encho Avramov, my mad man friend from Bulgaria (who will be having his own show at Smokebrush next week).  Thaddeus has become a distinguished solo theatre artist (with the excellent collaboration of his wife, Tatiana), living the life of an avant-garde theatre guy, creating shows, playing festivals, touring Europe, South America--and now--for a moment, Colorado.  His new show is called Microworld, pt. 1. It is an hour and fifteen minutes of extraordinary invention and charm.  It plays one more weekend at the Buntport theater and is absolutely worth the trip.  We stopped to eat lunch at the the Peruvian buffet at Los Cabos II downtown--a restaurant full of strange dishes  (was I eating dog?) and a wonderful ethnic texture you don't find in our town (blacks, latinos and my two white grandchildren). The buffet prepped us for thinking globally,as Thaddeus wants us to do in his new show, which is set in a pod cubicle in the Toyko Nagakin tower, designated for destruction--the pod turns out to be magician's box with many rabbits and one adorable rubber duck.  Here's John Moore's Denver Post review (a rave):

http://www.denverpost.com/theater/ci_13612132

It's theatre for the 21st century for sure. See it if you can.  My grandkids can't wait for part two, which arrives in the spring.

The Maestro Returns

Charles Ansbacher paid us a visit last weekend. 
Charles cut quite figure in Colorado Springs a while back. When I first came to town he was our neighbor up the street, conducting the Colorado Springs Symphony in the Palmer High School auditorium. He was the symphony's conductor for nearly two decades.  It's thanks to Charles (and his terrific cohorts, Bee Vrandenburg, Kathleen Collins, Phil Kendall and others) that the symphony grew and prospered, and that the Pikes Center was created and built.  Charles was the real face of the arts in our town, beaming brightly in our newspapers nearly every week.  It was almost too much: everywhere I looked there was Charles  #$%** Ansbacher.  I sometimes wished there might be room for someone else--a young theatre guy for instance.

Charles did not limit himself to conducting our orchestra and building our principal auditorium.  He was a White House fellow; he hob nobbed with the vice president and the transportation secretary sat on his lap. He served on the blue ribbon committee responsible for the state of the art Denver International Airport.  After leaving Colorado Springs, he spent some time with his distinguished wife Swanee Hunt in Vienna (she was Clinton's ambassador to Austria). He flew in under armed escort to conduct the orchestra in war torn Sarajevo. And not incidentally he founded the Boston Landmarks Orchestra, composed primarily of the best free lance musicians in Boston, playing outdoors in public places. It's fair to say that Charles has been busy.

He might be a little less busy in the near future. He recently learned that he has a brain tumor, and that it is malignant.  The prognosis is not so good. When he came to town last weekend most of us realized we might be seeing him for the last time. Kathleen Collins arranged a reception for him over at Scott O'Malley's place, and 50 of Charles' best friends came over to see him in on a snowy afternoon. It was a great crowd. After a little food and drink, we were invited into the small theater to listen to Charles to talk.

I might add that Charles has made a habit of coming into town two or three times a decade.  And when he has come, Kathleen has always seen to it that the maestro has had the opportunity to speak to a gathering of those who know him, and tell us what he's been up to (a lot, always). But this time, of course, was a little different.

There was Charles sitting on Scott O'Malley's stage in the Western Jubilee Warehouse--an unlikely site for a conductor of classical music. The room is small. The walls are covered with Scott's affectionate memorabilia: posters, pennants, quilts, tons of guitars, old radios.  The room is a kind of shrine to old time country and western music. Charles is neither. But for this occasion the room was just right: warm and very personal, glowing. 

Charles began by telling us in a concise and dispassionate way about his condition and treatment.  Following his diagnosis they had operated by cutting a manhole cover in the side of his skull, lifting it up and removing the tumor.  The operation, he said, had not disturbed the cognitive functions of his brain. But it may have removed some of the brain that is connected to the emotions.  That was all right, Charles said, because he has always thought of himself as a mostly rational kind of person anyway.

He then told us his prognosis, as far as it can be known (never perfectly), and quoted Samuel Johnson saying "Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."  Everything that followed gave proof of Johnson's wisdom.

Charles gracefully and economically summarized his working life here and afterwards. He began by saying he had been born in privileged circumstances--and that his good fortune had helped him make the best use of the gifts he had. He told us Beethoven was his favorite composer,because Beethoven was brave, strong, well organized and never sentimental-- unlike the French, he said, with a twinkle in the direction of Larry Smith who had just finished conducting a program of French music in the house that Charles built.  He took some questions following his brief talk, and accepted some compliments as well.

I listened to everything Charles said, and everything he said was spoken with grace,and good humor, and great charm--- all Charles trademarks.  But there was something quite special about this performance, a complete honesty and transparency of presence. Charles had no agenda, nothing to sell this time. He was, all there, wonderfully all there. He's lost a little weight, and is just a little more fragile, but that only makes him look more quintessentially himself--his fine features are finer, his face was becoming a master drawing. There was no evidence of emotional disconnection.  On the contrary every single thing he said and did was suffused with feeling, without ever once becoming maudlin. I had never seen Charles like this; I have almost never seen anyone like this. 

Charles has given hundreds of concerts in his life, and spoken well to thousands. But I venture to say that his little talk to friends last weekend was the performance of a lifetime.  It was a privilege to witness.  There's nothing like a fine man come home, all of him right there.