When Robin Williams & Steve Martin Starred in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot (1988)

in Comedy, Theatre | January 2nd, 2020

Despite the dourest demeanor in lit­er­ary his­to­ry and a series of plays and nov­els set in the bleak­est of con­di­tions, there’s no doubt that Samuel Beck­ett was fore­most a com­ic writer. Indeed, it is because of these things that he remains a sin­gu­lar­ly great com­ic writer. The deep­est laughs are found, as in that old Mel Brooks quote, in the most absurd­ly trag­ic places. In Beck­ett, how­ev­er, char­ac­ters don’t just tell jokes about the wretched exi­gen­cies of human life, they ful­ly embody all those qual­i­ties; just as the best com­ic actors do.

It’s true that some of Beckett’s char­ac­ters spend all of their time onstage immo­bi­lized, but the play­wright was also a great admir­er of phys­i­cal com­e­dy onscreen and drew lib­er­al­ly from the work of his favorite film come­di­ans. Vet­er­an vaude­ville com­ic Bert Lahr, best known as The Wiz­ard of Oz’s cow­ard­ly lion, starred in the orig­i­nal Broad­way pro­duc­tion of Wait­ing for Godot in 1956. “Beck­ett once wrote a film script for Buster Keaton,” notes the­ater crit­ic Michael Kuch­wara. Godot’s cen­tral char­ac­ters, Vladimir and Estragon, evoke one of the most renowned of com­e­dy duos, many of their ges­tures “obvi­ous deriva­tions from Lau­rel and Hardy,” as film his­to­ri­an Ger­ald Mast notes.

It is fit­ting then—and might meet with the approval of Beck­ett himself—that Robin Williams and Steve Mar­tin, two of the most riv­et­ing phys­i­cal come­di­ans of the sev­en­ties and eight­ies, should step into the roles of the bum­bling, bowler-hat­ted fren­e­mies of Godot. The pro­duc­tion, which took place in Octo­ber and Novem­ber 1988 at the 299-seat Mitzi E. New­hous The­ater on Broad­way, sold out almost imme­di­ate­ly. Williams and Mar­tin weren’t its only big draw. Mike Nichols direct­ed, and the rest of the cast includ­ed F. Mur­ray Abra­ham as Poz­zo, Bill Irwin as Lucky, and Lucas Haas as the absent Godot’s mes­sen­ger boy.

Sad­ly, we only have a few clips of the per­for­mance, which you can see in the grainy video above, inter­spersed with inter­views with Mar­tin and Irwin. These too will leave you want­i­ng more. “I saw it as a com­e­dy,” says Mar­tin of his read­ing of the play. What this meant, he says, is that the laughs “must be served, almost first…. The com­e­dy of the play won’t take care of itself unless it’s deliv­ered.” Robin Williams, writes Kuch­wara, deliv­ered laughs. “His Estragon is a mani­a­cal crea­ture, verg­ing out of con­trol at times.”

Williams also veered “into some stage antics and line twist­ings that Beck­ett nev­er would have dreamed of—giving hilar­i­ous imi­ta­tions of R2D2 and John Wayne, com­plete with an impro­vised machine gun.” For his part, Mar­tin had “a tougher assign­ment play­ing the sub­dued, almost straight man Vladimir to Williams’ more flam­boy­ant Estragon.” Mar­tin has always tend­ed to sub­merge his mani­a­cal com­ic ener­gy in straighter roles. Here he seems per­haps too restrained.

For rea­sons that have noth­ing to do with the play, the trag­ic heart of these clips is see­ing Williams as Estragon. Yet in the final few min­utes, trained mime Irwin shows why his Lucky may have been the most inspired piece of cast­ing in the show. We get a taste of his per­for­mance as he recites part of Lucky’s mono­logue.  “Every ges­ture has been care­ful­ly thought out, not only for the com­e­dy, but for the pain that lies under­neath the laughs,” Kuch­wara says.

Lucky is essen­tial­ly a slave to Abraham’s dom­i­neer­ing Poz­zo, who keeps him on a leash. He gives one speech, when his mas­ter orders him to “think.” But in his ver­biage and bear­ing, he con­veys the play’s deep­est pathos, in the form of the arche­typ­al tor­tured clown, who reap­pears in Alan Moore’s joke about Pagli­ac­ci. When Beck­ett was asked why he named the char­ac­ter Lucky, he replied, with mor­dant wit, “I sup­pose he is lucky to have no more expec­ta­tions….” It is as though, Mel Brooks would say, he had fall­en into an open sew­er and died

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Wait­ing for Godot, the Acclaimed 1956 Pro­duc­tion Star­ring The Wiz­ard of Oz’s Bert Lahr

Steve Mar­tin & Robin Williams Riff on Math, Physics, Ein­stein & Picas­so in a Smart Com­e­dy Rou­tine

Steve Mar­tin Per­forms Stand-Up Com­e­dy for Dogs (1973)

Robin Williams Uses His Stand-Up Com­e­dy Genius to Deliv­er a 1983 Com­mence­ment Speech

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

Why Should We Read William Shakespeare? Four Animated Videos Make the Case

in Literature, Theatre | December 12th, 2019

Soon­er or lat­er, we all encounter the plays of William Shake­speare: whether on the page, the stage, or—maybe most fre­quent­ly these days—the screen. Over four hun­dred years after his death, Shake­speare is still very much rel­e­vant, not only as the most rec­og­niz­able name in Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture, but also per­haps as its most famous sto­ry­teller, even if we don’t rec­og­nize his hand in mod­ern adap­ta­tions that bare­ly resem­ble their orig­i­nals.

But if we can turn Shakespeare’s plays into oth­er kinds of enter­tain­ment that don’t require us to read foot­notes or sit flum­moxed in the audi­ence while actors make archa­ic jokes, why should we read Shake­speare at all? He can be pro­found­ly dif­fi­cult to under­stand, an issue even his first audi­ences encoun­tered, since he stuffed his speech­es not only with hun­dreds of loan words, but hun­dreds of his own coinages as well.

The crit­i­cism of Shakespeare’s dif­fi­cul­ty goes back to his ear­li­est crit­ics. Sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry Eng­lish poet John Dry­den declared that the play­wright “had undoubt­ed­ly a larg­er soul of poesy than every any of our nation.” In the plays, we find “all arts and sci­ences, all moral and nat­ur­al phi­los­o­phy.” And yet, even Dry­den could write, in 1664, that Shake­speare’s lan­guage was “a lit­tle obso­lete,” and that “in every page [there is] either some sole­cism of speech, or some noto­ri­ous flaw in sense.” (These issues are some­times, but not always, attrib­ut­able to scrib­al error.)

“Many of his words,” wrote Dry­den, “and more of his phras­es, are scarce intel­li­gi­ble. And of those which we under­stand, some are ungram­mat­i­cal, oth­ers coarse; and his whole style is so pestered with fig­u­ra­tive expres­sions, that it is as affect­ed as it is obscure.” Seems harsh. How could such a writer not only sur­vive but become an almost god­like fig­ure in lit­er­ary his­to­ry?

Maybe it’s all that “poesy.” Shake­speare is sure­ly one of the most musi­cal writ­ers in the lan­guage. Read his speech­es to children—they will lis­ten with rapt atten­tion with­out under­stand­ing a sin­gle word. It is bet­ter that we encounter Shake­speare ear­ly on, and learn to hear the music before we’re buf­fet­ed by exag­ger­at­ed ideas about how hard he is to under­stand.

Writ­ten in a time when Eng­lish was under­go­ing one of most rapid and rad­i­cal shifts of any lan­guage in his­to­ry, Shakespeare’s inge­nious plays pre­serve a riot of bor­rowed, invent­ed, and stolen words, of fig­ures of speech both old- and new-fash­ioned, and of schol­ar­ly and pop­u­lar ideas trav­el­ing through Eng­land on their way to and from a glob­al­iz­ing world. The tor­rents of verse that pour from his char­ac­ters’ mouths give us the lan­guage at its most flu­id, dynam­ic, and demot­ic, full of unpar­al­leled poet­ic fugues crammed next to the rough­ness Dry­den dis­liked.

This is the essence of the modern—of lat­er Shake­spearen suc­ces­sors like Samuel Beck­ett and James Joyce who freely mixed high and low and invent­ed new ways of speak­ing. Why should we read Shake­speare? I can think of no more per­sua­sive argu­ment than Shakespeare’s lan­guage itself, which daz­zles even as it con­founds, and whose strange­ness gives it such endur­ing appeal. But which plays should we read and why? The TED-Ed videos above from Iseult Gille­spie, and below from Bren­dan Pel­sue, make the case for four of Shake­speare great­est works: The Tem­pest, Ham­let, A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream, and Mac­beth.

Learn new facts about the plays, and why their tragedy and humor, and their copi­ous amounts of mur­der, still speak to us across the gulf of hun­dreds of years. But most of all, so too does Shakespeare’s glo­ri­ous­ly ornate poetry—even when we can bare­ly under­stand it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear 55 Hours of Shakespeare’s Plays: The Tragedies, Come­dies & His­to­ries Per­formed by Vanes­sa Red­grave, Sir John Giel­gud, Ralph Fiennes & Many More

Hear What Shake­speare Sound­ed Like in the Orig­i­nal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Shakespeare’s Globe The­atre in Lon­don

The 1,700+ Words Invent­ed by Shake­speare*

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

Kabuki Star Wars: Watch The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi Reinterpreted by Japan’s Most Famous Kabuki Actor

in Film, Sci Fi, Theatre | December 4th, 2019

The appeal of Star Wars tran­scends gen­er­a­tion, place, and cul­ture. Any­one can tell by the undi­min­ish­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of the ever more fre­quent expan­sions of the Star Wars uni­verse more than 40 years after the movie that start­ed it all — and not just in the Eng­lish-speak­ing West, but all the world over. The vast fran­chise has pro­duced “cin­e­mat­ic sequels, TV spe­cials, ani­mat­ed spin-offs, nov­els, com­ic books, video games, but it wasn’t until Novem­ber 28 that there was a Star Wars kabu­ki play,” writes Sora News 24’s Casey Baseel. Staged one time only last Fri­day at Toky­o’s Meguro Per­sim­mon Hall, Kairen­no­suke and the Three Shin­ing Swords retells the events of recent films The Force Awak­ens and The Last Jedi in Japan’s best-known tra­di­tion­al the­ater form.

To even the hard­est-core Star Wars exegete, Kairen­no­suke may be an unfa­mil­iar name — though not entire­ly unfa­mil­iar. It turns out to be the Japan­ese name giv­en to the char­ac­ter of Kylo Ren, the pow­er-hun­gry nephew of Luke Sky­walk­er por­trayed by Adam Dri­ver in The Force Awak­ens, The Last Jedi, and the upcom­ing The Rise of Sky­walk­er.

In Kairen­no­suke and the Three Shin­ing Swords he’s played by Ichikawa Ebizō XI, not just the most pop­u­lar kabu­ki actor alive but an avowed Star Wars enthu­si­ast as well. “I like the con­flict between the Jedi and the Dark Side of the Force,” Baseel quotes Ichikawa as say­ing. “In kabu­ki too, there are many sto­ries of good and evil oppos­ing each oth­er, and it’s inter­est­ing to see how even good Jedi can be pulled towards the Dark Side by fear and wor­ry.”

The the­mat­ic res­o­nances between kabu­ki and Star Wars should come as no sur­prise, giv­en all Star Wars cre­ator George Lucas has said about the series’ ground­ing in ele­ments of uni­ver­sal myth. Lucas also active­ly drew from works of Japan­ese art, includ­ing, as pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, the samu­rai films of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa. And so in Kairen­no­suke and the Three Shin­ing Swords, which you can watch on Youtube and fol­low along in Baseel’s play-by-play descrip­tion in Eng­lish, we have the kind of elab­o­rate cul­tur­al rein­ter­pre­ta­tion — bring­ing dif­fer­ent eras of West­ern and Japan­ese art togeth­er in one strange­ly coher­ent mix­ture — in which mod­ern Japan has long excelled. No mat­ter what coun­try they hail from, Star Wars fans can appre­ci­ate the high­ly styl­ized adven­tures of Kairen­no­suke, Han­zo, Reino, Sunokaku, Ruku and Reian — and of course, R2-D2 and C‑3PO.

via Neatora­ma

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a New Star Wars Ani­ma­tion, Drawn in a Clas­sic 80s Japan­ese Ani­me Style

How Star Wars Bor­rowed From Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Great Samu­rai Films

Japan­ese Kabu­ki Actors Cap­tured in 18th-Cen­tu­ry Wood­block Prints by the Mys­te­ri­ous & Mas­ter­ful Artist Sharaku

The Cast of Avengers: Endgame Ren­dered in Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Ukiyo‑e Style

High School Kids Stage Alien: The Play and You Can Now Watch It Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch Life-Affirming Performances from David Byrne’s New Broadway Musical American Utopia

in Music, Theatre | November 27th, 2019

It’s time, writes Kim Stan­ley Robin­son in his essay “Dystopia Now,” to put aside the dystopias. We know the future (and the present) can look bleak. “It’s old news now,” and “per­haps it’s self-indul­gence to stay stuck in that place any more.” Of course, David Byrne has nev­er been a dystopi­an artist. Even his catchy decon­struc­tions of the banal­i­ty of mod­ern life, in “This Must Be the Place,” for example—or Love Lies Here, his dis­co musi­cal about Imel­da Mar­cos—are filled with empa­thet­ic poignan­cy and an earnest desire to rehu­man­ize con­tem­po­rary cul­ture.

Still his oblique take on things has always seemed too skewed to call utopi­an. Late­ly, how­ev­er, Byrne has become unam­bigu­ous­ly sun­ny in his out­look, and not in any kind of star­ry-eyed Pollyan­nish way. His web project Rea­sons to Be Cheer­ful backs up its opti­mistic title with inci­sive long­form inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism.

His lat­est stage project, the musi­cal Amer­i­can Utopia, which he per­forms with a cast of dancers and musi­cians from around the world, announces its inten­tions on the sleeves of the match­ing mono­chro­mat­ic suits its cast wears.

Bare­foot and hold­ing their instru­ments, Byrne and his back­up singers, musi­cians, and dancers march on the “Road to Nowhere” with smiles hint­ing it might actu­al­ly lead to some­place good, They per­form this song (see them on Jim­my Fal­lon at the top), and a cou­ple dozen more from Talk­ing Heads and Byrne solo albums, espe­cial­ly last year’s Amer­i­can Utopia. In the course of the show, Byrne “lets his moral­ist out­rage explode” yet “bal­ances it with lev­i­ty,” writes Stacey Ander­son at Pitch­fork. “There is a polit­i­cal engine to this per­for­mance… with a clear­ly hum­ming pro­gres­sive core… but Byrne’s goal is to urge kinder con­sid­er­a­tion of how we process the stres­sors of moder­ni­ty.”

The musi­cal doesn’t sim­ply urge, it enacts, and pro­claims, in spo­ken inter­ludes, the sto­ry of an indi­vid­ual who opens up to the wider world. “Here’s a guy who’s basi­cal­ly in his head at the begin­ning,” Byrne told Rolling Stone. “And then by the end of the show he’s a very dif­fer­ent per­son in a very dif­fer­ent place.” The road to utopia, Byrne sug­gests, takes us toward com­mu­ni­ty and out of iso­la­tion. Amer­i­can Utopia’s min­i­mal­ist pro­duc­tion com­mu­ni­cates this idea with plen­ty of pol­ished musicianship—especially from its six drum­mers work­ing as one—but also a rig­or­ous lack of spec­ta­cle. “I think audi­ences appre­ci­ate when nobody’s try­ing to fool them,” says Byrne.

See sev­er­al per­for­mances from Amer­i­can Utopia, the musi­cal, above, from The Tonight Show Star­ring Jim­my Fal­lon, Late Night with Stephen Col­bert, and the Hud­son The­atre, where it’s cur­rent­ly run­ning. The musi­cal debuted in Eng­land last June, caus­ing NME to exclaim it may “just be the best live show of all time.” Its Broad­way run has received sim­i­lar acclaim. Below, see a trail­er for the show arriv­ing just in time, The Fad­er announces in a blurb, to “fight your cyn­i­cism.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Byrne Cre­ates a Playlist of Eclec­tic Music for the Hol­i­days: Stream It Free Online

David Byrne Launch­es Rea­sons to Be Cheer­ful, an Online Mag­a­zine Fea­tur­ing Arti­cles by Byrne, Bri­an Eno & More

David Byrne Curates a Playlist of Great Protest Songs Writ­ten Over the Past 60 Years: Stream Them Online

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Improv Comedy (Live and Otherwise) Examined on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #20

in Comedy, Film, Pretty Much Pop, Television, Theatre | November 20th, 2019

 

What role does improv com­e­dy play in pop­u­lar cul­ture? It shows up in the work of cer­tain film direc­tors (like Christo­pher Guest, Adam McK­ay, and Robert Alt­man) and has sur­faced in some of the TV work of Lar­ry David, Robin Williams, et al. But only in the rare case of a show like Whose Line Is It Any­way? is the pres­ence of impro­vi­sa­tion obvi­ous. So is this art form doomed to live on the fringes of enter­tain­ment? Is it maybe of more appar­ent ben­e­fit to its prac­ti­tion­ers than to audi­ences?

Mark, Eri­ca, and Bri­an are joined by Tim Snif­f­en, announc­er on the pop­u­lar Hel­lo From the Mag­ic Tav­ern pod­cast, and a mem­ber of the Impro­vised Shake­speare Com­pa­ny and Baby Wants Can­dy (impro­vised musi­cals). He’s also writ­ten for Live From Here and oth­er things. We dis­cuss dif­fer­ent types of improv, a bit of the his­to­ry and struc­ture of Sec­ond City, improv’s alleged self-help ben­e­fits, how impro­vi­sa­tion relates to reg­u­lar act­ing, writ­ing, pod­cast­ing, and oth­er arts, and more.

Here are a few improv pro­duc­tions to check out:

For fur­ther read­ing, check out:

For musi­cal improv, try Naked­ly Exam­ined Music #30 with Paul Wer­ti­co and David Cain, and also #55 with Don Pre­ston (Zappa’s key­boardist) whom Mark quot­ed in this dis­cus­sion.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Is Opera Part of Pop Culture? Pretty Much Pop #15 with Sean Spyres

in Music, Opera, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Theatre | October 23rd, 2019

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is PMP-Opera-as-Pop-400-x-800.jpg

Opera used to be a cen­tral part of Euro­pean pop cul­ture, Pavarot­ti was as big a pop star as they come. But still, it’s now the quin­tes­sen­tial art-form of the wealthy and snob­bish. What gives?

Guest Sean Spyres from Spring­field Region­al Opera joins his sis­ter Eri­ca along with Mark and Bri­an to dis­cuss oper­a’s place in cul­ture (includ­ing its film appear­ances), how it’s dif­fer­ent from music the­ater, the chal­lenges it faces and how it might become more rel­e­vant.

Some arti­cles:

Watch the Shaw­shank Redemp­tion opera scene or per­haps the Pret­ty Woman scene. What Is pop opera? Here’s Ranker’s list of artists. Paul Potts sings that famous song on Britain’s Got Tal­ent. Plus, check out albums from broth­er Michael Spyres. Yes, you can hear an opera-singer sing “Take Me Out to the Ball­game,” but you prob­a­bly should­n’t.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Patti Smith Sings “People Have the Power” with a Choir of 250 Fellow Singers

in Life, Music, Theatre | October 4th, 2019

…peo­ple have the pow­er

To redeem the work of fools

—Pat­ti Smith

As protest songs go, “Peo­ple Have the Pow­er” by God­moth­er of Punk Pat­ti Smith and her late hus­band Fred Son­ic Smith is a true upper.

The goal was to recap­ture some of the ener­gy they’d felt as youth activists, com­ing togeth­er to protest the Viet­nam War. As Pat­ti declared in an NME Song Sto­ries seg­ment:

… what we want­ed to do was remind the lis­ten­er of their indi­vid­ual pow­er but also of the col­lec­tive pow­er of the peo­ple, how we can do any­thing. That’s why at the end it goes, “I believe every­thing we dream can come to pass, through our union we can turn the world around, we can turn the earth’s rev­o­lu­tion.” We wrote it con­scious­ly togeth­er to inspire peo­ple, to inspire peo­ple to come togeth­er.

Sad­ly, Fred Smith, who died in 1994, nev­er saw it per­formed live. But his wid­ow has car­ried it around the world, and wit­nessed its joy­ful trans­for­ma­tive pow­er.

Wit­ness the glow­ing faces of 250 vol­un­teer singers who gath­ered in New York City’s Pub­lic The­ater lob­by to per­form the song as part of the Onas­sis Fes­ti­val 2019: Democ­ra­cy Is Com­ing last spring.

The event was staged by Choir! Choir! Choir!, a Cana­di­an orga­ni­za­tion whose com­mit­ment to com­mu­ni­ty build­ing vis-à-vis week­ly drop-in singing ses­sions at a Toron­to tav­ern has grown to include some star­ry names and world-renowned venues, rais­ing major char­i­ta­ble funds along the way.

As per Choir! Choir! Choir!’s oper­at­ing instruc­tions, there were no audi­tions. The singers didn’t need to know how to read music, or even sing par­tic­u­lar­ly well, as par­tic­i­pant Elyse Orec­chio described in a blog post:

The man behind me exu­ber­ant­ly deliv­ered his off-pitch notes loud­ly into my ear. But to whine about that sort of thing goes against the spir­it of the night. This was a democ­ra­cy: the people’s cho­rus.

Direc­tor Sarah Hugh­es had been hav­ing “one of those the­ater nerd Sat­ur­days,” and was grab­bing a post-Pub­lic-mati­nee sal­ad pri­or to an evening show uptown, when she bumped into friends who asked if she want­ed to sing with Pat­ti Smith and a com­mu­ni­ty choir:

I’m work­ing on play­wright Chana Porter and com­pos­er Deepali Gupta’s Dear­ly Beloved, a med­i­ta­tion on pro­duc­tive despair for com­mu­ni­ty choir, and have been hav­ing beau­ti­ful, enlight­en­ing expe­ri­ences mak­ing music with large groups of non-singers, so I was curi­ous about what this might be like. 

And it was love­ly. Just singing at all is always very great, even though I am not “good at it.” Singing along with all the oth­er peo­ple in the room felt espe­cial­ly good. 

The Choir! Choir! Choir! lead­ers were gen­er­ous, had a sense of humor, and weren’t afraid to tell us when we sound­ed ter­ri­ble, which was refresh­ing. 

We learned our parts and then I ate my sal­ad stand­ing in the Pub­lic lob­by while we wait­ed for Pat­ti. She took a longer time to arrive than they’d planned for, I think, but it was because she was at a cli­mate cri­sis ral­ly so we weren’t mad. And she was just very ful­ly her­self. 

I’m not like a die-hard Pat­ti Smith fan, but I sort of fell in love with her after read­ing her beau­ti­ful recount­ing of mess­ing up while singing “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” at Dylan’s Nobel Prize cer­e­mo­ny. This expe­ri­ence made me appre­ci­ate her even more—her human­i­ty, her vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, the strange­ness of being famous or rec­og­nized or hero­ic to many many peo­ple. And she real­ly did lead us, in this very spe­cial, sim­ple, real way. It remind­ed me of how lit­tle we real­ly need in the way of mon­ey or pro­duc­tion val­ues or even tal­ent for a per­for­mance or pub­lic event to feel worth our time.

The film reflects that sense of the extra­or­di­nary co-exist­ing glo­ri­ous­ly with the ordi­nary:

An unim­pressed lit­tle girl eats a peach.

Two young staffers in Pub­lic The­ater t‑shirts seem both sheep­ish and thrilled when the film crew zeroes in on them singing along.

Gui­tarist and Choir! Choir! Choir! co-founder Dav­eed Gold­man near­ly bonks Pat­ti in the head with the neck of his instru­ment.

Also? That’s the Police’s Stew­art Copeland play­ing the fry­ing pan.

Next up on Choir! Choir! Choir!’s agen­da is an Octo­ber 13th con­cert at California’s Board­er Field State Park, with some 300 peo­ple on the Tijua­na side and 500 on the San Diego side rais­ing their voic­es togeth­er on Lennon and McCartney’s “With a Lit­tle Help from My Friends.” More infor­ma­tion on that, and oth­er stops on their fall tour, here.

Sign up to be noti­fied next time Choir! Choir! Choir! is look­ing for singers in your area here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith, The God­moth­er of Punk, Is Now Putting Her Pic­tures on Insta­gram

Hear a 4 Hour Playlist of Great Protest Songs: Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Bob Mar­ley, Pub­lic Ene­my, Bil­ly Bragg & More

Pat­ti Smith’s 40 Favorite Books

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Octo­ber 7 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domaincel­e­brates the art of Aubrey Beard­s­ley. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Sir Ian McKellen Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Letter to High School Students: Make Art and “Make Your Soul Grow”

in Creativity, Letters, Life, Theatre | July 29th, 2019

Author Kurt Von­negut was pos­sessed of a droll, unsen­ti­men­tal pub­lic speak­ing style. A son of Indi­anapo­lis, he nev­er lost his Hoosier accent, despite lengthy stints in Cape Cod and New York City.

Actor Ian McK­ellen, on the oth­er hand, exudes warmth. He’s a charmer who tells a sto­ry with a twin­kle in his eye, alter­ing his voice and facial expres­sions to height­en the effect. (Check out his Mag­gie Smith.) Vocal train­ing has only enhanced his beau­ti­ful instru­ment. (He can make a tire repair man­u­al sound like Shake­speare.)

These two lions may have come at their respec­tive crafts from dif­fer­ent angles, but Sir Ian did Von­negut proud, above, as part of Let­ters Live, an ongo­ing cel­e­bra­tion of the endur­ing pow­er of lit­er­ary cor­re­spon­dence.

The let­ter in ques­tion was penned the year before Vonnegut’s death, in reply to five stu­dents at a Jesuit high school in New York City, regret­ful­ly declin­ing their invi­ta­tion to vis­it.

Instead, he gave them two assign­ments.

One was fair­ly uni­ver­sal, the sort of thing one might encounter in a com­mence­ment address: make art and in so doing, learn about life, and your­self.

The oth­er was more con­crete:

Write a 6 line rhyming poem

Don’t show it or recite it to any­one.

Tear it up into lit­tle pieces

Dis­card the pieces in wide­ly sep­a­rat­ed trash recep­ta­cles

Why?

A chance for Xavier High School’s all male stu­dent body to air roman­tic feel­ings with­out fear of  dis­cov­ery or rejec­tion?

May­haps, but the true pur­pose of the sec­ond assign­ment is encap­su­lat­ed in the first—to “expe­ri­ence becom­ing” through a cre­ative act.

This notion clear­ly strikes a chord with Sir Ian, 17 years younger than Von­negut but by the time of the  2016 per­for­mance, clos­ing in on the igua­na-like age Von­negut had been when he wrote the let­ter.

Should we attribute the quiver on the clos­ing line to act­ing or gen­uine emo­tion on Sir Ian’s part?

Either way, it’s a love­ly ren­di­tion.

Novem­ber 5, 2006

Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lock­wood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Bat­ten, Mau­r­er and Con­gius­ta:

I thank you for your friend­ly let­ters. You sure know how to cheer up a real­ly old geezer (84) in his sun­set years. I don’t make pub­lic appear­ances any more because I now resem­ble noth­ing so much as an igua­na. 

What I had to say to you, more­over, would not take long, to wit: Prac­tice any art, music, singing, danc­ing, act­ing, draw­ing, paint­ing, sculpt­ing, poet­ry, fic­tion, essays, reportage, no mat­ter how well or bad­ly, not to get mon­ey and fame, but to expe­ri­ence becom­ing, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seri­ous­ly! I mean start­ing right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a fun­ny or nice pic­ture of Ms. Lock­wood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the show­er and on and on. Make a face in your mashed pota­toes. Pre­tend you’re Count Drac­u­la.

Here’s an assign­ment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lock­wood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about any­thing, but rhymed. No fair ten­nis with­out a net. Make it as good as you pos­si­bly can. But don’t tell any­body what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to any­body, not even your girl­friend or par­ents or what­ev­er, or Ms. Lock­wood. OK?

Tear it up into tee­ny-wee­ny pieces, and dis­card them into wide­ly sep­a­rat­ed trash recep­ti­cals. You will find that you have already been glo­ri­ous­ly reward­ed for your poem. You have expe­ri­enced becom­ing, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!

Kurt Von­negut

(Ian McKellen’s oth­er Let­ters Live per­for­mance is a fic­tion­al com­ing out let­ter from Armis­tead Maupin’s Tales of the City, from a gay char­ac­ter to his Ani­ta Bryant-sup­port­ing par­ents.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In 1988, Kurt Von­negut Writes a Let­ter to Peo­ple Liv­ing in 2088, Giv­ing 7 Pieces of Advice

Why Should We Read Kurt Von­negut? An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

Kurt Von­negut Offers 8 Tips on How to Write Good Short Sto­ries (and Amus­ing­ly Graphs the Shapes Those Sto­ries Can Take)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 9 for anoth­er sea­son of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.