Renaissance Collection

Introduction

By Richard Gaffield-Knight

"Times are a'changin'," to quote Dylan. Believe me Bob, only change is eternal. Change is as natural as breathing, or falling in love. Change can be minimal over a long period, or maximal, instantly. Things are very different now, from before—and the change happened in a moment we remember only if we stop everything and listen to the sound of the wind in the trees, or a baby crying a long time ago. Alas, human survival depends on our ability to assimilate change.

The French poet, surrealist, actor, director and visionary, Antonin Artaud, thought theater could somehow persuade bourgeois society to listen, look, feel or think past it’s paycheck—and to reconsider it’s part in maintaining the planet as a "...slippery world which is committing suicide without noticing it..." Theater artists all over the world were inspired by him during the 2^nd half of the twentieth century.

I know I was. As Artistic Director of the American Folk Theater I chose Laurence’s Ruby and Pearl: A Class Act, with Yvonne Southerland and Alice Spivak in the title roles to run in repertory with plays by Percy Granger, Marcia Savin and Leslie Lee at the Beckett Theater on Theater Row. A story of two 35-ish burlesque dancers, it was described as "Gritty, realistic repartee . . . armpit realism" by the The Village Voice when it premiered. Set in 1962, our leading ladies are strippers in the classical sense, however,

RUBY: Something's going on here and I still don't know about it.

MARNIE: Total nudity, girls. Tits, ass, and then some. You girls ever wonder why we don't book you into San Francisco, huh?

RUBY: I thought about it.

PEARL: I didn't.

RUBY: Why not?

PEARL: Because we don't give them tits and ass, Ruby. We don't so we don't get any tips and we just keep making fools of ourselves.

Pushing our ladies to new limits is Sally Vavoom, a 19 year-old undergraduate student at Columbia University, who is prepared to take it all off. Imagine what it was like when, as a high school student, all she wanted was a way out of her ignorance and conformity. Ruby liberates herself from further degradation with this to Pearl:

RUBY: Well, baby doll, you're not the only one who wants an immediate transition. I'm tired of junkie caballeros and dames singing the dope blues at all hours of the day and night. Am I making myself clear, Pearl? I'm sick of smelling the retch at home and at work every time I move anywhere. I'm tired of being pushed around, hyped, suckered, and sold to the highest bidder. Sanity isn't the price I'm going to pay in order to perform. And if I have to I'll go it alone.

Dreams are the driving power of change. Where there are hopes and dreams there is a way out of despair. Life without being free to dream of a better world for ourselves, our children and others is impossible. Dream Rooms, the second play in this volume, is an example of trying to cope with the impossible.

ROGER: Something happened. Remember? Huh? Do you? Do you remember?

REGINA: I remember.

ROGER: I was just walking down the street, what was it State Street? Near the Catholic High School. And someone was rolling the night watchman. You remember?

REGINA: I remember.

ROGER: And the description was a really good one. Light skinned Negro male weighing in about 240–250. I fit the description. I got arrested. I had no alibi. I had left you about what two hours earlier? They had me. Positive identification. A black male is always out of work, aggressive, sexually active. I'm black. I fit the pattern. Just look at me. So they took four years out of my life. And I hadn't done a damn thing.

The arresting officers were Chuck and Don, members of the local police force, with dreams of their own.

DON: Well, Buddy, soon we'll be in Hawaii.

CHUCK: Surfing with the boys by day. Channeling with the babes by night.

DON: I love it. Do you think they'll fall for it?

CHUCK: They're greedy. We just play it cool. Most of the spotlight is going to be on us just because we're the bodyguards.

DON: Moonlighters, at that.

CHUCK: Yeah, no more of this job crap. You see where they're in their 3rd week of a national strike in France and the bureaucrats ain’t giving them nothing, so it's hell with the unions.

DON: It's every man for himself.

Next question: what happens when an enraged Simone deBeauvoir leaves her lover Jean Paul Sarte in France, arrives in America and meets ultra cool Nelson Algren? What happens when existentialism meets pragmatism, when The 2nd Sex meets The Man With The Golden Arm, when ex-catholic girl meets slick Midwestern ex-Jew? Holder’s answers are found in his sensuous and sexy Nelson'n'Simone: Out Of The Senses.

And what brings us back to theater again and again? A moment of theater is like life—gone without so much as a trace of what it really felt like. It can be described in words of course with a different degree of success. Oh, yes, it can be written about. The relationships can be documented and the feelings can be recorded, but a moment in theater cannot be re-lived. Theater is a fugitive art unlike film, a painting or sculpture. Like life, theater is a one time only experience, now its here, in the moment, and now it isn’t like Simone in Nelson’s arms.

Loften Mitchell wrote in Black Drama:

I stood in the garden and cried
As I looked down on the flowers that would not grow
I bent over and I tried to pull the soil around one.
And the bush toppled.
It had no foundation because I, its planter,
Had not dug deep enough into the soil.

Laurence Holder in this collection and 4 volumes that precede it, like Loften Mitchell did in Black Drama, digs deep into the soil and plants ideas that will be discussed as long as we dare to venture into their gardens.