Murray Mednick: The Primacy of Language and Words, Part 1

 By Gray Palmer

Playwright Murray Mednick as “Old Nana” in Coyote V: Listening to Old Nana at Padua Playwrights Workshop (circa 1980) (Photo by Margaret Von Biesen)

On a hot day in October, I visited Murray Mednick at his new house, just as Open Fist Theater Company was preparing its ambitious production of The Gary Plays, being directed by Guy Zimmerman, presented at Atwater Village Theater through June 2. (They’re doing material from six out of the eight plays.)

Mednick is perhaps L.A.’s most entrenched playwright, having resided in Southern California since 1975 and writing singularly poetical-spiritual works saturated in wry, Beckett-existential and sometimes morbid wit. Mednick was the driving force behind the Padua Playwrights Workshop, founded in 1978 and home to the likes of Sam Shepard and Maria Irene Fornes – a festival performed outdoors in the foothills of Claremont. It was at this festival the Mednick premiered is epic The Coyote Cycle.

Mednick’s first play The Box, a monologue, was directed at New York’s Theatre Genesis by Lee Kissman in 1965. Mednick had brought the pages to one of the Monday Night readings at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery. Many plays quickly followed.

In April 1968, The Hawk moved from Theatre Genesis to the Actors’ Playhouse— and closed after 15 performances. In the Times, Clive Barnes wrote that “[it must signify] an awful lot that I could only dimly begin to understand…”

We can take that as a critic’s confession. Barnes was unable, in time for deadline, to articulate a message “fit-to-print” from the play. Other critics were “angry and bewildered.” This is a pattern that continues to the present. And the methods used to devise The Hawk were not so different from methods used much later for portions of The Coyote Cycle — as Mednick relates in the following interview.)

Did St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, where he discovered his vocation, have something like a secret door that connected poets and playwrights? Maybe. Aspects of Mednick’s theater can be thought of as something like animated calligrammes, Apollinaire’s delightful late inventions. And the Poetry Project started at St. Mark’s in 1966. Alice Notley said that for a long time she wrote for the poets in that room — Mednick was present.

In 1970, he received an Obie for his three-act play, The Deer Kill.

Prizes are all right if you get one, though it’s always good to bear in mind who gives them. Jack Kroll, John Lahr, and the wicked John Simon were on the awards committee that year. Mednick was recognized along with the playwrights Joe Orton, Paul Zindel, Megan Terry, and Vaclav Havel. (Genesis-based actor Lee Kissman also received a 1970 Obie — for his performance in Sam Shepard’s The Unseen Hand).

What happened in Mednick’s work between 1965 and 1970? A compass-setting, I think.

Mednick has said, “[We found that] you could use a certain kind of visual symbology… to great effect in a small space. We were really interested in discovering iconographic usages: what would have the resonance of an icon, a newly discovered icon, so that you could communicate directly to the audience’s subconscious?”

Spare visual presentation, and focus on the sequence of language.

We sat in his living-room; beyond a glass door was his bright swimming-pool — the light and composition was like a painting by David Hockney. Mednick spoke quietly.

Norbert Weisser, Carl J. Johnson and Darrell Larson in The Gary Plays, Part 3, Charles Story, The Open Fist Theatre Company at the Atwater Village Theatre (Photo by Darrett Sanders)

STAGE RAW: At Theatre Genesis you worked with Ralph Cook.

MURRAY MEDNICK: I’d love to tell you about him. I’ve been thinking about him lately. For example, all [my] emphasis [on] text, and the text being the important way into a play — I learned that from Ralph… I was a poet on the Lower East Side. I was also a waiter — and other things. One of my friends at the time was an actor named Warren Finnerty, a very good actor. He was in Easy Rider — the guy at the gas station. He since has gone, of blessed memory. He took me over to Theatre Genesis one night and I saw a couple of plays there. That’s how I got into the theatre. I saw a play called The Inspector in Baggy Pants by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. That was Ralph’s idea — Ralph was very interested in poetry for the theater, in poets writing for the theater. And so, he got poets like me interested. He said to me, “Just write something for the stage and I’ll do it.” So. He really would do it. He had made a program on Monday nights of readings of new plays. And you’d get these good actors down there. It became a thing, these Genesis Monday night readings, so you’d get to hear your work read by good actors. That’s how I learned. Because I never went to school about theater — or anything like that. But I learned at Genesis. I learned about how it sounded, how things worked. But I was still a poet. And you start writing for the stage space and for live speech… That’s a thing in its own right. So, that by the time I got to Padua and started doing the Padua Festival here, I had enough background to be able to teach what I had learned — In other words, you see the stage and you hear the dialogue from the stage, which is very different than television or movie dialogue. And certain things can only be heard onstage. They can only be heard onstage. There’s a certain kind of thought that can only be heard through that medium… There’s another level, above, that’s invoked, or evoked, by the appearance of the stage as a medium, or vehicle, for a certain kind of experience… That’s a special kind of thought. It’s thought that has more than one resonation. This idea of levels of meaning is very important…

SR: What is theater poetry?

MM:: Yes. Well, first of all, it’s rhythmic. And one’s rhythms are of course one’s own. Like Beckett’s rhythms are a little different than Pinter’s. But they’re basically coming from the idea that the text is what’s important. That’s the unifying idea about poetry in the theater. The text comes first. Because all the actor’s choices should derive from the sound and the movement and the rhythm and the textual implications, you know, the meaning of the text. Usually what happens is actors make interpretive and performative choices before they learn the text, before they know the text, before they’ve heard the text. So, that’s a really important point… And then, poetry is, in a sense, it’s a valuation of language. So, you can have what we call prose, it can be in that category, as long as it’s carefully written and the writing is what’s important and foremost. Not prosaic, let’s say. Not necessarily realistic, even. That’s what happens so often in the business and in entertainment. People are talking naturalistically, and the acting is naturalistic, the behavior is naturalistic, and the writing is naturalistic. And if you have a very good ear, you can get away with it and call it “poetic.” But what makes it really poetic is that you’re not stuck with trying to be realistic with the language, with character and plot — trying to catch the way people talk — then discoveries can be made. The aim is not just to catch the way people talk. It’s what comes before, what comes after, where it’s going. There’s a kind of inner rhyming. And there’s rhyming in the text — unexpectedly. And then there’s the sheer enjoyment of language and wit.

SR: By “rhyme” you mean something other than the repetition of terminal sound — The rhyme of event?

MM: Yes. And the rhyming of theme. Of phrases and ideas.

SR: What about the rhyme of behavior?

 MM: I tend to suppress behavior as much as possible in favor of the text. Because actors have come to depend too much on behavior. Because in television, behavior is the thing that carries the performance. Everything is according to, or dependent on, behavior. In a good actor, it’s ok, I mean one doesn’t mind that. But in the theater it’s not that important. Language, speaking, is what’s important. So, behavior tends to interfere. And I tend to discourage or minimize behavior when I direct.

SR: I know.

MM: You should know. But I like the movement to be crisp and choreographed.

SR: A picture that changes when the units of the play change.

MM: That’s right, and it has to be coherent and precise. But that’s me. Some people don’t get into that too much. To me that’s part of the poetry of the text, the corresponding movement, the transitions… They’re just hard to do. Takes lots of repetition.

SR: The transitions are where you get the most arresting visual experience.

MM: Yes. They are visual moments. And there shouldn’t be too much visual, besides that, going on. Except we’ve learned to use screens very well in my plays, just learned it almost by accident. But there’s a place when you have — the kind of language I use — there’s a natural place for imagery, if it’s intentional. I mean projections. . . And they work really well in my plays. I’m not sure why, exactly. It has to do with the kind of writing it is. The writing doesn’t demand a lot of visual aid. So, there’s room for, if someone’s really good at it, for corresponding projections that can be thematic and engaging. But indirectly. And that’s interesting… Because the emphasis in my work is on the sound, there’s room for an indirect, thematic progression of images… Of course, you don’t think about that when you’re writing… It’s very interesting to me technically, and that’s what gets me going, usually, to see if something will work. Like with the chorus idea, using the chorus as part of the text.

SR: What does a chorus mean?

MM: I was experimenting with what it means. The impulse came from wanting more voice, as the writer, to somehow be heard. So, it was kind of an inner chorus. So, that the text would be going along and at certain points you’d hear an interjection… An inner voice. And the voice is authorial, in some cases. It’s commentary. And that led to experimenting with the idea of the chorus in other ways.

SR: You wrote Tirade for Three, the first of The Gary Plays, without attribution of voices.

MM: Yeah, the first version… Because it was so voice-oriented, I thought at the time that it would be interesting, in rehearsal, for the actors to find which lines they wanted to say. I thought it didn’t matter, in a way. Because it was one whole, in a way, poetically. Except, when there was attribution, in the play, then they would step out of that mode and into a more usual dialogue format. More formal. But I thought when it was not in that format, it didn’t matter, because the voices would speak for themselves. In the end the entire thing would find its own metier, you know, its own fomat. And I think it can still be done that way. It would depend a lot on the director. That’s one way to go. Ultimately, I decided to attribute.

SR: You’re making gestures that indicate a horizontal axis and a vertical axis.

MM: That’s what should happen in a good play. Where both are going… It’s the actor who is the — this was what Artaud was trying to say — it’s the actor who does that transmutation. It goes through him. In doing so, as you know, being an actor, you can accomplish a certain freedom inside, that is hard to get anywhere else, in any other way… It’s a state of grace.

SR: Like grace in sports.

MM: When you’re hot. I agree. Except there’s a little more… It has mind… And the audience shares it, they can share in it, if the actors get there and the play is good… They share the tension — the intention — which becomes almost a physical force. Which is irreplaceable and live… That’s what makes it more interesting, for me, than movies.

SR: Watching TV or watching movies is an act of private consumption. But in the theater a group subjectivity may be formed.

MM: That’s right. There’s a unity. That’s a real unity. And that is part of the ritual — in that sense. Because there’s only one thing happening. There’s a focus of attention. We’re lucky to be in the theater for that reason.

Read Part 2  here.

The Mad Russian and the Dane, Tales of Rudolf Nureyev and Erik Bruhn

Part 3 – Interviewing Rudi

By Neal Weaver

Please read here for Part 1 and Part 2

Nureyev (Rudik), and his mother, Irkutsk, Siberia, circa 1942

Meanwhile, changes were afoot at Dance Magazine. The advertising manager, Bill Como, had been fretting for years over the fact that the limited scope that a magazine devoted solely to dance had to attract advertisers. He wanted a broader based, general entertainment magazine, and certainly I found the idea appealing. I made up long lists of story ideas, and we discussed the possibilities carefully before approaching Jean Gordon.

Rather to our surprise, she was quite open to the idea, and felt that the owner of the magazine, Rudolf Orthwine, would be also. He had wanted to launch an entertainment magazine years before, and had registered the name After Dark. Suddenly, we were launching a new magazine. The old Ballroom Dance Magazine was seeming more and more outdated in the age of rock, so it was decided to use it as a vehicle of change. It would be called Ballroom Dance Magazine, incorporating After Dark, the entertainment magazine. Over a period of a few months, the Ballroom title would be increasingly smaller, and After Dark increasingly larger, till finally the Ballroom part was dropped altogether.

I was concerned about the elderly editor of Ballroom, Helen Wicks Reed, who was a former ballroom dance teacher, and I didn’t want to put her out of a job, particularly as her husband was unemployed and Jean Gordon had taken him on as a replacement for our elderly mail-room guy, who had fallen ill. Jean Gordon loved to humiliate him by making him sweep the office or do other menial jobs when visitors were present. Helen probably could have stayed on in some capacity, but she was indignant at being superseded, and attempted to raise a rebellion among her dance teacher subscribers. She hadn’t realized that her correspondence with them would elicit replies that Jean Gordon would see before she did. She had signed her own death warrant. She was a nice lady, but she was regarded as dispensable.

At first it was not easy to persuade the Broadway press people that they should provide house seats for critics writing for Ballroom Dance Magazine. But our early issues coincided with the opening of Hair on Broadway, and it was the hot ticket in town. We gave it a lavish spread, with a review by me and lots of production photos. And that got us a considerable amount of attention. I made it onto the second night list of theatre critics, and was invited to more and more movie screenings as well. But what we really needed was some substantial stories that would get us taken seriously. I kept thinking that what we needed was an interview with Nureyev. His defection to the West while on tour in Paris with Russia’s Kirov Ballet had been an international event, his spectacular performances on the Bell Telephone Hour, and his appearances with major dance companies had raised him to the first rank of celebrities. If we could get an interview with him, it would really put us on the map. But how to accomplish it? I felt I had established a relationship of sorts with him, but I doubted it was enough to get me past the protective web that surrounded him.

Bill Como went from Advertising Manager to editor of After Dark, and I was only feature editor. And though we did rely to some extent on freelancers, for the first few months it was just Bill and me, and art director Neil Appelbaum putting together the whole magazine. I was writing theater and movie reviews, feature stories, photo captions, news stories, and so forth. So much, in fact, that I had to use several pseudonyms. My standard pen name was Ted Flagg (derived from the names of two characters in my play War Games), but I also got a kick out of signing myself James Mavor Morrell, which was the name of the pastor husband in George Bernard Shaw’s play Candida, which no one ever caught onto.

Bill agreed that an interview with Nureyev was just what we needed, but I didn’t know how to go about getting it. He notoriously refused interviews, and had given only one, with Clive Barnes of the New York Times. Bill put me in touch with Olga Maynard, who was a West Coast dance critic and the West Coast critic for Dance Magazine. She said that the way to get his attention in a crowd was to speak to him very quietly. Everybody yelled at him, and he ignored them. When she had spoken quietly, he gave her his attention, and when he learned who she was, he surprised her by producing a clipping of her review of his work from his wallet, and said he wanted to discuss it with her.

So I went to hang-out with the stage-door Johnnies outside the stage door in the bowels of the Met. (One of them, interestingly enough, was a minor porn-star.) When he came out everybody was yelling “Rudi, Rudi, Rudi!” As he passed me I said quietly, “Mr. Nureyev.” He stopped and said “Yes?” I don’t remember the details, but I assume I reminded him of who I was and asked him for an interview. I don’t recall if he agreed, or referred me to his manager, Chris Allen. But whatever happened, I was set up with an interview before the last Sunday matinee of his production of The Nutcracker.

On the Sunday in question, I went to the Met and was admitted without question. I was frankly terrified. I’d never done an interview with anybody, and now here I was, facing an interview with an international superstar. I think I had been told already by some one that I could interview him, but I was forbidden to use any quotes. I had also arranged to see his Nutcracker prior to the interview so I could talk about it. It was darker than most productions, with a rather Freudian scene in which Clara’s family turned into ominous looking bats. But it was still joyous, and beautiful to behold.

I was left on my own to find my way to his star dressing room. I knocked, and a voice said, “Come in.” I entered the room only to discover that he was seated on the floor, wearing nothing but a dance belt, and preparing to put on a pair of tights. And sitting across the room from him was the same cheek-bony young man I’d seen with him before. Great! Not only was I doing my first ever interview, but I’d have to do it with an intimidatingly handsome audience.

I was embarrassed by his near-nudity and turned discreetly away. My embarrassment seemed to embarrass him, and he began struggling with the tights as if he’d never seen a pair before. And he began babbling nervously about how he was getting fat—which was absurd. He didn’t have one extra ounce on him. He finally got into the tights and stood up, still not introducing the cheek-bony one. He looked around, then gestured toward a small tabouret on which there was a tangle of tights and ballet slippers, as if to say, “Sit down.” Then he looked confused and said, “Oh, that’s not a chair.” He took the things from the tabouret and flung them in the closet, and placed a chair for me, by the window and right by his dressing table. The sun was coming in the window so he tried to adjust the venetian blind. But on the window sill was a large vase of roses, and one of the roses caught in the blind. The vase was tipped over on my head, dousing me and leaving me with a lapful of roses.

He was totally mortified, as he tried to clean up the mess. I kept saying, “It’s okay. I’m wash-and-wear.” But inwardly I was rejoicing. After this he’d be totally eager to co-operate. He sat down and began applying his makeup. I apologized about taking up his time just before a performance, when he needed to prepare. He said never mind, that was not a problem. He was trembling so much he could barely do his makeup, and I realized that he was more afraid of me than I was of him. For, though he was quite erudite, about music, art, dance and literature, he was self-conscious about having little formal education, and intimidated by anyone he feared might be his intellectual superior.

Nureyev and Karen Kain, National Ballet of Canada

I told him I had seen his Nutcracker, and enjoyed it very much. He said, “Who did you see?” Meaning, who did you see in my role? I mentioned the dancer who was sort of third in the pecking order. He said, “It’s a shame that you couldn’t at least have been (Anthony) Dowell.” (Later he and Dowell danced a tango together in the movie Valentino.)

I don’t remember a lot of the interview. But I do recall asking about a quote in the newspapers to the effect that he’d love to be in Hair. He said, “Yes, if I could sing, if I could dance. But they are all so talented.” That was about the only quote I wound up using.

I remembered the charming section of the ballet, danced by children, in 18^th Century costumes, in a toy-theatre set. I said, “You must be very fond of children.” He looked alarmed, as if he thought I was accusing him of pedophilia. He said, “Why do you say that?” I said, “Because you give them such lovely things to do.” He still looked frightened. I said, “Relax, I’m on your side!” And I was, too, though that’s probably against journalistic protocol.

So the interview proceeded, but suddenly all my questions seemed beside the point. I felt I knew what his answers had to be—if he was a real artist, and that he certainly was, there was only one possible answer. I felt the need to get out of his hair and let him get ready for his performance. Just then, there was a knock at the door, and ballerina Maria Tallchief and her young daughter Elise walked in. She’d just flown in (from Cuba?) to see the last performance of his Nutcracker in NYC. He was clearly delighted to see them, and adored them both. But Elise didn’t seem to know who he was. She’d been very little when last he’d seen her. “Oh, Elise! You don’t remember me!” he said, seemingly crushed. I didn’t want to intrude on their reunion, so I quietly crept away. (Later, I would hear more about Rudi’s relations with Maria from Erik Bruhn.) Lydia Joel spoke contemptuously about his distress that the little girl didn’t remember him. “So childish!” she said. But I found it touching.

So now I had the interview, such as it was, and had to figure out how to write it up without using any quotes.

I did sneak in a couple of harmless quotes, but largely had to confine myself to giving my impressions of the man. I took on all the critics who’d found him arrogant and impossible to deal with, and tried to present his side: people who dealt with him sensitively got sensitive results. I said that, unlike many male dancers, he served his ballerinas loyally and self-effacingly because he wanted to, and not because he lacked the gumption to do anything else. And I said that as a dancer, he was exciting because he was so volatile that one felt he could blow the whole ballet convention out of the water if he wanted to. I guess my interview read rather like a love-letter to him, and in a sense it was. But it apparently rankled Clive Barnes, who was no longer the only one to interview Rudi. He commented on the fact, in print, rather grouchily.

I didn’t know how the piece landed with him (it was close to his ideal interview—full of pictures and few significant words). But it served to put After Dark on the map, and it proved to be an open sesame. I was soon invited to do an interview with Erik Bruhn.

This is the fifth in a series of memoirs by Neal Weaver. Here’s the fourth, the third, the second and the first.

Can the Arts Bridge our Divisive Culture?

Karen Eilbacher Shines a Light on LGBT Community in Fun Home
By Maureen Lee Lenker

L-R: Karen Eilbacher and Abby Corrigan in the national tour of FUN HOME (Photo by Joan Marcus).

“Everyone has more in common than we give ourselves credit for. We expect not to connect with people, but there’s always something if we’re open to it.”

This revelation is what actress Karen Eilbacher experienced as an audience member when she first saw Fun Home – perceiving a greater understanding and a connectivity between the collective members of the audience when she left the theater. It’s something that she now witnesses from the stage every night as a member of the cast of the musical’s national tour, now playing at the Ahmanson.

As individuals and as a nation, we could all use a little more soul-searching of the nature Eilbacher describes. The musical’s subtle advocating for understanding and connection are needed now more than ever in a country (and world) that is increasingly divided. Though, Eilbacher cautions against labeling the show more relevant simply because of political climate. “It just so happens that our world really, really needs a show like this,” she says.

Fun Home is a five-time Tony winning musical. Based on Alison Bechdel’s memoir as graphic novel, it tells the story of Bechdel’s discovery of her own sexual identity in the midst of probing her relationship with her father, a closeted gay man who committed suicide when Bechdel was in college. Eilbacher portrays Joan, an out and proud lesbian woman who becomes Alison’s first girlfriend. For Eilbacher, the role was an opportunity to examine her own life, as she is a member of the LGBT community who found art an integral part of her journey.

Over the course of three years of performing in a play called She Likes Girls, Eilbacher realized that she was gay. She describes starting the production process identifying as straight (“whatever that means,” she quips) and going on a three-year journey to the realization that, like the play’s title, “Woah, yeah, I like girls.” Memories of that experience fill her with a mixture of understanding and awe for the tale of Alison Bechdel’s own coming out in Fun Home and her character Joan’s role in it. In regards to Alison’s experience as portrayed onstage, Eilbacher says, “I look back at my coming out and I have a lot of empathy. I have a lot of heart for a young woman going through that, especially in such a heightened time where she’s going off to college.”

More than anything though, she’s humbled to portray Joan each night. “It’s an honor to play a role where I didn’t know what was becoming of me as I was growing up and coming out, and I always looked up to the woman who I portray inside the role of Joan,” she says. “To now be in a place where I’m playing a woman like Joan, who[m] I still look up to . . . it’s like I’m mothering to part of myself.”

While her friends all felt she was perfect for the role based on her personality, Eilbacher says, for her, maintaining access to Joan is about dismissing negative thoughts, saying “yes,” and keeping a solid internal base of strength and confidence. Still, though portraying Joan requires a fair amount of meditating and head clearing, Eilbacher is touched by the opportunity to recognize and pay tribute to the Joans in her life. “I had many Joans. I had many ‘ring of keys’ moments,” she says. “I guess I’ve always been surrounded by Joan, whether I knew it or not given what I knew about my own sexuality. And there’s been lots of championing for myself, finding little pieces of Joan inside myself to make it through darker times.”

Eilbacher saw Fun Home on Broadway long before she ever knew she would be touring the country with it, and it became a profound moment in her own life. She attended the show with her parents and was struck by how it depicted recent experiences in which they could place themselves.

“Seeing Fun Home was incredible because there was material to possibly help facilitate a reference,” she says. For her, it wasn’t merely about seeing LGBT stories on stage, so much as it was providing a platform to further her relationship with her parents and deepen their understanding. “I was younger then. It was closer to the time when I first came out, and it just doesn’t end right there [with coming out],” she explains. “I want to live my life intimately with them as I’m sure they want to live their life intimately with me.”

Lest you think this personal experience be all about her parents gaining deeper understanding and insight into her identity, Eilbacher says the show actually gave her significant perspective in its depiction of Alison’s parents’ own struggles and challenges. “They’re still growing up, they’re still learning,” she says. “Fun Home put some perspective in my life that it’s two-sided. They might be trying to figure out what’s the best way for them to love me now, just as I’m figuring out what’s the best way for me to love myself and love others now that I’m more honest and open.”

She hopes others will find the same empathy and understanding in the show. For some, it might not be an easy sell – dealing with issues of homosexuality, the trauma of growing up and letting go, and suicide, it might turn off certain subsets of the audience. Still, Eilbacher relishes the chance to challenge people to step outside their comfort zones. “I’ve watched people walk out, and I’m totally cool with that,” she says. “When you come to the theater, you have the right to react. And the person you’re going to have to face, whether you’re in your seat or you leave the theater, is yourself.”

For her though, the show’s potency and relevancy have been present since day one. “As human beings, we’re constantly trying to connect, first and foremost with ourselves, so that we can then connect with other people and so on and so forth, so I don’t think it shifts too much,” she says. To Eilbacher, the show is about our shared struggle to connect and express ourselves, not something exclusive to the LGBTQ community. Yes, this message is supremely relevant right now, but Eilbacher sees the show as something that consistently lives in the present moment (even in its moments of “flashback”). As she says, “Fun Home is a show for everyone because it’s [of] the moment right now.”

That present moment transcends time and space, making itself more relevant in our political climate and surpassing it with its deeper, more universal themes.

Fun Home is being performed at the Ahmanson Theatre through April 1.     https://centertheatregroup.org