Dramaturgy | Lanford Wilson and Circle Repertory Company

by Rachel Lerner-Ley, Dramaturg

Circle Repertory Company was founded in 1969 by playwright Lanford Wilson, director Marshall Mason, actor Tanya Berezin, and director Rob Thirkield. With little money—paying the rent out of their own pocket for the uptown crumbling loft that would serve as a theatre and offices until they got a permanent home in the '80s, the four founders created one of the original off-off broadway theatres that would come to be a major influence in the American Theatre and the creative home to some of American Theatre’s biggest names. The theatre closed its doors in 1996.  

“It was created out of the need from the artists to express themselves,” Mason pointed out in an 1999 NewsHour interview. “and at that point, Broadway was almost exclusively English: Harold Pinter and John Osborne, these guys were occupying the Broadway theaters. Off Broadway had become very commercial. It was running ‘Little Mary Sunshine’ and ‘The Fantastics,’ and that sort of thing…..A young American playwright had no place to go, and so we went to the little coffee shops—you know—down in the village. Most of it was down in the Village.” It was in one such coffee shop, Caffe Cino—a tiny place of  mismatched chairs, postered walls, and a killer espresso machine—that the four founders of Circle Rep. met in the early '60s and began the collaboration that would eventually lead to the creation of a theatre company.

Circle Repertory Theatre was established as “an on-going ensemble of artists—actors, directors, playwrights and designers—who would work together to create a living play.”

 The company was host to resident playwrights who wrote new plays inspired by and tailored for the company’s core of actors. The company held workshops for the actors, training them in voice, movement, and scene study. These workshops allowed the company to build a vocabulary so that everyone could contribute to the creation of the play. At Circle Rep, making a play was an all hands on deck, collaborative process.

Circle Rep. was the perfect artistic home for Wilson who confessed in a 1978 New York Times article, that he has a deep aversion to working alone: “A long time ago I was told that writing plays was a lonely business and I knew then that wasn’t for me. You’ll never catch me a hundred miles away from New York, cloistered in a cabin, pounding out the third act. I could as easily write in a closet. I know I can’t work away form the city. Eight years ago I found a house in Sag Harbor, made a fine writing room there, and have never written a word in it. It’s a kind of mild aversion to working alone that everybody at Circle Rep comes by honestly. We began working at Caffe Cino and La Mama, with everyone bumping elbows, and it never occurred to us to ask if we had good working conditions. At Circle Rep we bump each other around a lot….”

It is from such a bumping of elbows that Wilson’s Fifth of July emerged. Fifth was written entirely at Circle Rep. with five readings of five different full drafts occurring over several months, plus the readings of numerous other scenes that Wilson tried out by just grabbing actors as they passed by.

The actors at Circle Rep. were critical to Wilson’s process. He once reflected, “Sometimes you see something in an actor (a small, odd movement, a turn of voice) that suggests a whole character, someone you’ve know and wanted to write about….” He continues “I’ve always written for actors. ‘Whom do you write for?’ Actors. ‘But what audience do you write for?’ Anybody. One of the pleasures of being a playwright (count them on one hand) is watching an actor in the process of understanding, believing, the part.”

In the end, all the aspects of Fifth of July were Circle Rep derived: the direction, the acting, the designs, and even the song which Wes Hurley plucks out on his guitar throughout the play was composed by actor and company member Jonathan Hogan.

[ ... ]

Dramaturgy | Romeo Prefigured: A Portrait of Jeff Buckley

compiled by Kristin Idaszak, Dramaturg

Starlight takes hundreds of light years to reach the earth, and as a result stars continue to shine brightly in the night sky long after the antecedents themselves have died. Jeff Buckley’s light similarly continues to shine 13 years after his death. Excerpts from this 1993 article form The New York Times give us a glimpse into a brilliant past from an artist on the brink of stardom:

Strange things happen when Jeff Buckley opens his mouth to sing. One moment he's a white bluesman with a sound straight out of the Mississippi Delta; the next, a jazz singer whose acrobatic voice swoops and glides through a haze of cigarettes and pained memories. The last thing he sounds like is his age -- only 26.

Even odder, his singing makes otherwise jaded clubgoers and music-business executives rave with none of their usual cynicism. They will talk of catching Mr. Buckley at East Village hangouts like Sin-é and the FEZ, where they have heard him sing anything from "I Loves You Porgy" to a Sufi chant, an obscure Elton John oldie or one of Mr. Buckley's own unconventional songs. And they will talk about his new contract with Sony Records and how Buckley is a name to watch.

The one person who doesn't care for the talk is the source of it all. "The music business is the most childish business in the world," Mr. Buckley said one morning last month at a downtown bistro, "Nobody knows what they're selling or why, but they sell it if it works."

Mr. Buckley, whose hair is cut in a short, modestly spikey buzz, pauses and shoots an intense stare out the window. "There was a woman outside who was talking to someone, and I was trying to guess from her eyes what she sounded like," he said softly. "You can tell everything from the eyes."

You can tell a lot from Mr. Buckley's eyes, too. He's the son of the late Tim Buckley, who helped disassemble the barriers between folk, jazz and improvisational music before a fatal overdose of heroin, morphine and alcohol in 1975. Not only does Jeff Buckley have the same winding, sensual, octave-stretching voice as his father, but his waiflike looks recall the face on the covers of Tim Buckley albums like Goodbye and Hello, a cult classic from 1967.

Mr. Buckley grew up with his mother and stepfather, mostly in Southern California, and learned about his father from old friends…[He] played briefly in a rock band, Gods and Monsters, but departed in the spring of 1992. As his main solo base, Mr. Buckley chose Sin-é (Gaelic for "that's it"; pronounced shin-AY), a coffeehouse where the occasional baby mouse scurries across the wooden floor. The stage, such as it is, is a cleared-away area against a wall.

"I figured if I played in the no-man's land of intimacy, I would learn to be a performer," Mr. Buckley said. Gradually, he did; he also paid the rent on his East Village apartment with money he'd collect from the plastic pitchers passed around at Sin-é.

Shane Doyle, Sin-é's owner, said : "He'll stop by to sing at 2 in the morning, and it doesn't matter if only a handful of people are there. He's definitely unusual in that way." Mr. Buckley often helps wash the dishes, too.

When asked which musicians have influenced his work, Mr. Buckley cites figures that predate his father. Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, Louis Armstrong and Judy Garland records taught him about phrasing, for example. And "there was a time when I wanted to be Miles Davis," he said.

"A lot of time I feel like I don't belong here" he added, quickly turning forlorn. "Here" meaning where? "Here," he replied, as if the question was downright silly.

One moment Mr. Buckley will gush about a Led Zeppelin bootleg or will cockily say, "There are no precedents for what I'm doing,." Then he will turn near-suicidal : "I'm sick of the world. I'm trying to stay alive."

by David Browne ©1993 by New York Times. This interview was originally published in The New York Times, October 24, 1993.

[ ... ]

Dramaturgy | Thornton Wilder on Our Town

compiled by Sarah Slight, Dramaturg

Thornton Wilder wrote many letters to Gertrude Stein (and her, to him) and he credits her for inspiration and ideas in Our Town. Reading their letters, in combination with his journals, sheds light on his writing, process, and the ideas behind the play. They even convey a bit of the rocky relationship he had with Our Town's first producer, Jed Harris, and a few of his misgivings or doubts before the play's success. Here are a few excerpts that I think you'll enjoy.

Writing Our Town

·   
 “I can no longer conceal from you that I’m writing the most beautiful little play you can imagine. Every morning bring[s] an hour’s increment to it and that’s all, but I’ve finished two acts already. It’s a little play with all the big subjects in it; and it’s a big play with all the little things of life lovingly impressed into it. And when I finish it next Friday, there’s another coming around the corner. Lope de Vega wrote three plays a week in his thirties and four plays a week in his forties and so I let these come as they like. This play is an immersion, immersion into a New Hampshire town. It’s called “Our Town” and its third act is based on your ideas, as on great pillars, and whether you know it or not, until further notice, you’re in a deep-knit collaboration already” (Letters, 175).

·    
 “Last night no sleep, but an influx of ideas that make my little play the most beautiful one you can imagine” (Letters, 179).

·    

Becky Ann Baker and John Rubinstein

 “My play No #1 is as far as the stage has gone toward “mere” description. A New Hampshire town: its daily life; its living; its dead; its weather; its geology; its sociology; its mores as seen by an archeologist a thousand years from now, its birth and death statistics; and how Mrs. Gibbs ironed Dr. Gibbs’ shirts—all in one great curve: quod erat demonstrandum” (Letters, 182). *QED is used to convey that a fact or situation demonstrates the truth of one's theory or claim.

·   
 “Nature (clouds, mountains, trees, sunsets, stars) is said to be beautiful. Bergson suggests that we did not find these beautiful until Art opened our eyes to that beauty…I had not sufficiently taken into account the fact that the emotion of beauty in nature derives also from recall (the reminder) of the sights that surrounded us when we were happy. A portion of every childhood is happy; in the majority of cases a large portion of every childhood is happy. Leaving aside for a moment the objections raised by Mrs. Apfelstrudel that there are many unhappy childhoods…I now declare that the beauty of nature is a qualification we confer on those things (effects of light and moisture surrounding land, sea, and air) which recall to us the surroundings of our happier hours. Natural beauty is a memory of the scenery that we scarcely noticed in our early life during moments when we were deeply stirred. The child being taken on a walk, a drive, by the big mysterious loved one, is storing up the norms of what he will later recognize as the concomitant—the décor—of happiness” (Journals 244).

·    
 “The intervening material need not be as freighted with emphasis as thought, and should not be, but the theatric invention must tirelessly transform every fragment of dialogue into a stylization surprising, comic, violent, or picturesque. Here lies the increased difficulty over the writing of Our Town, where the essence of the play lay in the contrast between the passages of generalization and those of relaxed and homely tone. Had I not all my writing life been convinced of the fact that the subconscious writes our work for us, digests during the night or in its night the demands we make upon it, ceaselessly groping about for the subject’s outlets, tapping at all possibilities, finding relationship between all the parts to the whole and to one another—had I not long been convinced of this I would have been the other night. Turning over the play in feverish insomnia, I suddenly saw that there, waiting for me in the structure of the Act, was a felicity, integral, completely implicit and yet hitherto unforeseen…” (Journals 23). *The play mentioned at the end of this quote is Skin of Our Teeth--isn't his writing in his subconscious fascinating?

 “My play, golly!” (Letters, 188).

Our Town in Production

·   

Jessica Hecht, Will Rogers and Dylan Baker

 “As you predicted Jed [Harris—the producer] got the notion that he had written the play and was still writing it, As long as his suggestions for alterations are on the structure they are often very good; but once they apply to the words they are always bad and sometimes atrocious. There have been some white-hot flaring fights. At present we are in a lull of reconcilement. The play opens a week from Sat[urday] (Jan 22) in Princeton, New Jersey, for one night; then goes to Boston for two weeks; then enters New York. Even with Jed’s sentences in it—which I hope gradually abrade away—it is a very good play. The cast is fine. But that’s not all: Morning’s—Jed’s first phone calls don’t start before noon, nor cease until 3: A.M…” (Letters, 206).

·   
 “The theatre’s a furnace. Its been one long fight to preserve me [i.e. my] text from the interpolations of Jed Harris, and I’ve only won 50% of the time. We opened in Princeton. Then we opened in Boston. Now we open Friday night in New York. The play no longer moves or even interests me; now all I want out of it is money. Money so that I can feel justified in going off to Arizona and write some more,--reconstruct the mode of life I had at Zurich. The may be a failure. The newspapers in Boston were not much more than luke-warm. But in every audience there are a few people who are extremely enthusiastic” (Letters, 207-208).

·   
 “Perhaps this bare stage will never be completely right within our theatre; nevertheless, although a compromise, I hope to wrest some signal advantages from it for this play. Foremost is the already proven suggestibility of the imagined scene. In Our Town that was accompanied by a studied resort to changes of lighting” (Journals 43).

Playing the Stage Manager

·   

Thornton Wilder playing Stage Manager in WTF's 1959 Our Town

 “Girls, what do you think? I’m playing the leading role in my play—six nights a week and two matinees. Wouldn’t that freeze you? Every night my insides turn white—all that memorization to sustain—its like walking a tight-rope of danger. I’m only doing it for 2 weeks while Frank Craven gets a rest” (Letters, 223).

·   
 “So I’ve been acting all Summer. I will have played it in four different theatres with four entirely different casts. Its been very successful. In places, we’ve broken house records; chairs in the aisles; ovations; weepings. Being present at these repetitions I get to know the play pretty well and I find a lot to wince at in addition to some fine wincing at the actors’ renderings, but I hope I’ve learned a lot that can go into future plays” (Letters, 242).

Peterborough, NH

·    
 “There’s only one thing that’s a little disappointing about this. And that is missing July at Peterboro’. I shall be there all June, but the advantage of that place lie in duration. June and July in that deep pine-wood is what I need most of all. I have an Arabian Night play-subject that’s a fine house-afire, and I could only grasp it and devour it in the Green Isolation up there” (Letters, 146). 

Excerpts from The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder edited by Edward M. Burns and Ulla E. Dydo with William Rice and The Journals of Thornton Wilder, 1939-1961 selected and edited by Donald Gallup.

2010 photos by Sam Hough. 1959 photo by William Tague.

[ ... ]

Dramaturgy | A Short (and quite simplified) History of Communism in the United States

by Rachel Lerner-Ley, Dramaturg

On Wobbly Legs—pre 1917

Huge waves of immigrants from Eastern Europe bring Marxist teachings. Soon, these socialist teachings will move into the mainstream…in fact, Oklahoma becomes a hotbed for communists!   

At the same time, an American brand of Socialism is emerging. There is great discontent amongst the working classes that primarily labor in dangerous and unsanitary conditions in factories (a la The Jungle by Upton Sinclair). Monopolies and robber barons are everywhere; Big Business has begun. As Howard Zinn puts it: “In this situation—terrible conditions of labor, exclusivity in union organization—working people wanting radical change, seeing the root of misery in the capitalist system, moved toward a new kind of labor union.”

A new union is formed—a mega, all-inclusive union called the Industrial Workers of the World (the IWW; still kicking today). Members are later nicknamed “Wobblies.” The Wobblies hold large meetings, organize workers, strike. This is scary for Big Business, and thus, the Wobblies are deemed a threat to “America.”

The First Red Scare—1921

In 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution occurs. An official American Communist political party is formed soon thereafter—an above ground institution directly tied to Moscow—and advocates for revolution. A combination of misunderstanding and fear leads to a massive governmental strike against American communists. There are constant arrests and deportations. Anti-subversive laws are passed, making it illegal to deliver speeches promoting revolution. Communists go underground: change names, destroy incriminating papers. By the end of 1921, the “Red Scare” is over. In its own way, the scare leads to the emergence of a stronger, more devoted party, as those who were “armchair” communists had fled at the first sign of trouble.

1930’s—the height of American Communism

A tiny little economic crisis cripples the U.S. in 1929 and proves that there are some major problems with the capitalist system. This revelation boosts the communist party. The party begins to take a softer approach, focusing on immediate reforms to help the unemployed masses rather than calling for violent revolution. By 1939, the party has 100,000 registered members, let alone hundreds of non-citizens.

WWII—My enemy’s enemy…

Once Hitler invades Russia, the Soviet Union joins the Allies. This new alliance takes the heat off American Communists for a bit, and they begin working beside Democrats. Meanwhile, Soviet spies have infiltrated the US and recruited government employees and scientists to pass along information.

Korean War and Cold War—late 1940s and 50s

It’s post-WII, and the Cold War begins. The arms race is in full swing. Truman requires all non-elective government employees to sign a loyalty oath stating that they have never been and never will be involved with the Communist Party. Penalty for perjury will be imprisonment.  

America practices a policy of “containment”—trying to keep Communism from spreading—but it’s not working. The USSR has already held onto more territory than its due at the end of WWII, and soon communist North Korea will invade South Korea. Communism is spreading, and the US government fears the American communist party, already so public. Will communism spread within America, too?

HUAC and Blacklisting—late 1940s

In 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) begins investigating alleged communism within the film industry. Several actors and producers, including Ronald Regan and Walt Disney, came forward and name names. However, a group of ten writers, producers and directors refuse to testify, taking the 5^th. The “Hollywood Ten” are sent to prison for Contempt of Congress. The “Hollywood Ten” along with the other film professionals whose names were named are blacklisted by producers and are unable to get hired for years.

McCarthyism—early 1950’s

Joseph McCarthy, a Republican senator from Wisconsin, leads a vigorous and vicious campaign against potential communists within the government. He kicks off his anti-red campaign with a 6 hour speech delivered before the senate in 1950 in which he claims the Democratic Party has been harboring communists and assisting the Soviets for years. In 1952, he is named chairman of the Senate Sub-Committee on Investigations and holds public hearings, putting hundreds of “communists” on trial. His persistence leads to a second “red scare.” However, once McCarthy begins attacking members of the military, his credibility is called into question, and the anti-communism fervor begins to die out.

Horrors of Stalin revealed—late 1950s and beyond

In February 1956, Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union, delivers a secret speech to the USSR’s Communist Party Congress. In the speech, he details the atrocities committed under Stalin’s nearly 30 years of what essentially was a dictatorship masked under the title “Communism.” Under Stalin, thousands of innocents were killed in “purges” (let alone the thousands in the Ukraine that died due to Stalin’s agricultural reforms that resulted in the starvation of an entire nation). Hundreds were sent to gulags—prison camps—in Siberia. Khrushchev refers to Stalin’s regime as a “cult of personality,” and his speech inspires Soviet satellites to come forward with their own tales of Stalinist terror.

Eventually the speech is leaked and published in major US newspapers. It presents a devastating blow to American communists. As Klehr & Haynes explain: “In the mental world of American Communists, Stalin’s mass murders were visible only if Moscow could see them. Once Khrushchev gave Moscow’s sanction to the charges against Stalinism, American Communists, in shock, suddenly saw bodies littering the landscape.” This new acknowledgement crushes the spirit of many an American communist.

By 1958, ¾ of the American Communist Party has dropped out. During the 60’s many of the political movements take on communist teachings, and radical groups such as the Weather Underground emerge. The Communist Party continues to be active today, though has never again reached the heights of the 30’s and 40’s.

--sources/adapted from A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, The American Communist Movement: storming heaven itself by Harvey Klehr & John Earl Haynes, atomicarchive.com, theomahaproject.org

[ ... ]

Dramaturgy | The Art of High Society

by Kristin Idaszak, Dramaturg

“Who said when artists dream they dream of money? I must be such an artist.” – Ouisa Kittredge, Six Degrees of Separation

In the nineteenth century, a new school of artists called Impressionists became the mockery of the art world. Ironically, a century later, these same artists—eg Degas, Monet, Cezanne and Van Gogh—who lived in squalor and oppressive poverty during their lifetimes (often having to barter their artwork for food and art supplies) were now so sought-after that their paintings were drawing in tens of millions of dollars. By the 1980s fine art merged with big business as the nouveau riche desired to be seen as cultured and sophisticated, and by 1983 the New York art market was a $2 billion industry. The auction house Southeby’s exacerbated this phenomenon, employing attractive young women to cultivate potential clients and extending credit for the first time ever so that buyers no longer needed to be able to pay for a painting upfront.

Six Degrees of Separation's protagonist Flan Kittredge is one of these new art dealers, a businessman and art connoisseur buying and selling paintings for more money than the artists whose work he handles could have imagined. These paintings had become part art, part commodity, and more than anything what Flan deals in is social status. In his book American Culture in the 1980s, Graham Thompson points out that art became a marker of social status in an unprecedented way: “What marked the American art world of the 1980s was the degree to which late-nineteenth and twentieth-century art now attracted such sums and the fact that money, business and art became so intimately entwined that the buying and selling of art was as much of a story as the art itself.”

He continues: “Given the close links between art and business during the 1980s, it seems fitting that just as the corporate world of takeovers, mergers and stock dealing which so dominated the shifts in corporate and business structures during the 1980s was dominated by Wall Street and other Manhattan financial institutions, so the art market and the art scene was dominated by Manhattan…Art became one of the places in which the new money unleashed by economic growth in the 1980s revealed itself through conspicuous consumption.”

Art dealers became critical liaisons between artists and the entire world of high finance. The cutthroat industry became increasingly less about artistic integrity and increasingly more about money and status. Southeby’s owner said about the industry, “Selling art has much in common with selling root beer. People don’t need root beer and they don’t need to buy a painting either. We provide them with a sense that it will provide a happier existence.” But some dealers, like Flan, disparaged this viewpoint as well as the larger phenomenon of high art’s commodification, even though it was inescapable. These were the men and women who remembered Vasily Kandinsky’s mandate that “the artist must train not only his eye but also his soul.”

[ ... ]

Dramaturgy | From Naperville, IL to Cameroon, Africa

compiled by Sarah Slight, dramaturg
 
Naperville, IL Overview
Located 28 miles west of Chicago, Naperville, Ill., is home to approximately 145,000
people. This vibrant, thriving city consistently ranks as a top community in the nation in
which to live, raise children and retire. The city is home to acclaimed public and parochial
schools, the best public library system in the country, an array of healthcare options and an
exceptionally low crime rate. Naperville has ready access to a variety of public
transportation, housing and employment options. The city’s diversified employer base
features high technology firms, retailers and factories, as well as small and home-based
businesses. Residents also enjoy world-class parks, diverse worship options, the opportunity
to serve on several city boards and commissions, a thriving downtown shopping and dining
area, a renowned living history museum known as Naper Settlement and an active civic
community.

Ranked as a top community in the United States to raise children, retire and start a homebased
business, the city boasts nationally acclaimed schools, the best public library system
in the country, an exceptionally low crime rate and a lower unemployment rate than the
state's average. In 2005, the city was named as one of best places to live in the United
States by Money Magazine. Naperville ranked third of 100 finalists and was the only Illinois
town to make the 2005 "Best Places To Live" list. The city was also named as one of
Fortune Small Business' Best Places to Live and Launch in 2008. 
from www.naperville.il.us


Cameroon, Africa Overview
The modern state of Cameroon was created in 1961 by the unification of two former
colonies, one British and one French. Since then it has struggled from one-party rule to a
multi-party system in which the freedom of expression is severely limited.
 
FACTS
Full name: Republic of Cameroon
Population: 19.5 million (UN, 2009)
Capital: Yaounde
Area: 475,442 sq km (183,568 sq miles)
Major languages: French, English, languages of Bantu, Semi-Bantu and Sudanic groups
Major religions: Christianity, Islam, indigenous beliefs
Life expectancy: 50 years (men), 52 years (women) (UN)
Monetary unit: 1 CFA (Communaute Financiere Africaine) franc = 100 centimes
Main exports: Crude oil and petroleum products, timber, cocoa, aluminium, coffee, cotton


Cameroon began its independence with a bloody insurrection, which was suppressed only
with the help of French forces. There followed 20 years of repressive government under
President Ahmadou Ahidjo. Nonetheless, Cameroon saw investment in agriculture,
education, health care and transport. In 1982 Mr Ahidjo was succeeded by his prime
minister, Paul Biya. Faced with popular discontent, Mr Biya allowed multi-party
presidential elections in 1992, which he won.

In 1994 and 1996 Cameroon and Nigeria fought over the disputed, oil-rich Bakassi
peninsula. Nigeria withdrew its troops from the area in 2006 in line with an international
court ruling, which awarded sovereignty to Cameroon. In November 2007 the Nigerian
senate passed a motion declaring as illegal the Nigeria-Cameroon agreement for the
Bakassi Peninsula to be handed over to Cameroon.
 
Internally, there are tensions over the two mainly English-speaking southern provinces. A
secessionist movement, the Southern Cameroon National Council (SCNC), emerged in the
1990s and has been declared as illegal.
 
Cameroon has one of the highest literacy rates in Africa. However, the country's progress is
hampered by a level of corruption that is among the highest in the world. 
from bbc.co.uk country profiles
 
Language in Cameroon
Cameroon is home to 230 languages. These include 55 Afro-Asiatic languages, two Nilo-
Saharan languages, and 173 Niger-Congo languages. This latter group is divided into one
West Atlantic language (Fulfulde), 32 Adamawa-Ubangui languages, and 142 Benue-Congo
languages (130 of which are Bantu languages).
 
English and French are official languages, a heritage of Cameroon's colonial past as both a
colony of the United Kingdom and France from 1916 to 1960. The nation strives toward
bilingualism, but in reality, very few Cameroonians speak both French and English, and
many speak neither. The government has established several bilingual schools in an effort
to teach both languages more evenly. Cameroon is a member of both the Commonwealth
of Nations and La Francophonie.
 
Kamtok, or Pidgin English, has in many ways been the lingua franca of Cameroon since the
1880s. It is commonly used as a vehicle for enhancing communication in this bilingual
country that has approximately 250 native dialects. There are several variations on Kamtok
based upon where it is used -- in grass fields, in the Catholic Church, in the Francophone
areas of the country, in the southwest of the country, and among the Bororo cattle traders.
 
The People
Cameroon has a diverse population comprising approximately 250 ethnic groups that then
form 5 regional/cultural groups. These are western highlanders (also called grassfielders),
which include the Bamileke, Bamoun, and many smaller groups in the northwest; coastal
tropical forest people, which include the Bassa, Doula, and many smaller groups in the
southwest; southern tropical forest people, which include the Beti, Beulu, Fang, and
Pygmies; Muslims of the northern semi-arid regions and central highlands, which include
the Fulani; and the Kirdi, non-Muslims peoples of the northern desert and central
highlands.

Religion
The constitution guarantees freedom of religion. About 40% of the population follows
some form of indigenous beliefs, 40% adhere to a form of Christianity, and 20% are
Muslim. The various religious groups get along reasonably well, although there have been
some problems reported by religious minorities in various parts of the country. The north
of the country is primarily Muslim while the south tends to have more Christians.
 
The Family
The extended family is the focus of the social system. It is the extended family and includes
grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. Members of the extended family are considered
as close as the nuclear family is in the West.

Family obligations take precedence over pretty much everything else in life. Individuals
achieve recognition and social standing through their extended family. The young are
expected to care for elderly members of the extended family; retirement homes are an
alien concept.
 
As with many family orientated cultures nepotism does not have the negative connotation.
In fact, hiring relatives is part of the cultural context since it not only provides for the family, but also ensures that Cameroonians work with those they know and trust.
 
Cameroonians who have a common background tend to organize themselves into small
groups commonly called associations. Individual members refer to themselves as sons and
daughters of a given community. 
from kwintessential.co.uk, a customs and social website

[ ... ]

Dramaturgy | Snapshot: Rome 200 BCE

by Rachel Lerner-Ley, Dramaturg

City of Rome: At this point in time, Rome is over 500 years old. The city sits along the Tiber River and contains the famous 7 hills on which sit the homes of the elite, temples, and government buildings. Streets are paved with raised stones. Living quarters are made of stone and are either 1-2 story private houses or multi-level apartment buildings. Oftentimes, the ground floor is occupied by a store. These stores pour out onto the streets, which are filled with people selling their wares. There are no street numbers so you have to rely on description to find a residence.  The forum is the center of the city, home to religious and government institutions as well as large open air market.  Aqueducts—at this point mainly underground—deliver water to the city, allowing for many fountains and bath houses. Like any city, graffiti of all sorts appears on buildings.

Slavery and Prostitution: Slaves are ubiquitous. Almost every household, rich and poor, has at least one slave (some estimate that the ratio of free to slave was 1:3 by the end of the republic!). Slaves are typically former prisoners of war that were sold at markets held in the forum.  Children of slaves automatically became slaves.  Slaves could buy their freedom by saving up the small allowance doled out by their master or could be granted it by their master as a reward for good service. Slave-owning is a status symbol, and so many ex-slaves go on to purchase slaves of their own. Slaves wear brown tunics made of coarse fabric. Like slavery, prostitution is accepted as a necessary social institution with its own set of laws (social and governmental). Prostitutes are of the lowest social order.

Father Knows Best: The Roman family is dictated by the notion of patria potestas. The father has complete control over all members and aspects of his family: wife, children, children-in-law, grandchildren, slaves, and property. A father may emancipate his son, allowing him to become the paterfamilias of his own family.

Midlife Crisis at 20? Average female life expectancy is 34. Average male life expectancy is 46.5.

Marriage: Girls are married off between the ages of 12 and 14. Their future husbands can be as young as 14 and as old as…well, there’s no upper limit. The girl is given away by her father with a dowry that can be returned if there is divorce. The marriage is a signed contract, and weddings include feasts and processions. An important custom: the groom must carry the bride over the threshold of their home.

Drink up!: Wine is the beverage of choice for everyone and is served at almost all meals.  A typical dinner for Romans is an egg dish served with sweet wine followed by a main entrée (usually fish or poultry) served with wine. Dessert is fruit served with—you guessed it—wine!

TOGA! TOGA! Men wear knee length white tunics covered by white togas. If a man holds a position of power, he has a purple stripe along his tunic and toga. Women wear long white tunics with sleeves. Over the tunics, they wear a stola: a draped dress dyed in a solid color. Togas are always worn in public; not necessarily worn in the home. Sandals are casual, at-home wear; shoes are outdoor, proper attire.

V’s are W’s: Latin is the language of the day. When spoken, “v” is pronounced as “w.”

Sources: Ecce Romani IA,IB,IIA,IIB. White Plains, NY: Longman Publishing Group, 1995. Hornblower, Simon and Antony Spawforth, eds. The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3^rd edition revised. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

[ ... ]

Dramaturgy | A Brief History of Situation Comedy

by Kristin Idaszak, Dramaturg

Lucy and Ricky, Mary Tyler Moore, Archie Bunker, Rachel and Ross, Jerry, George and Elaine—every week America turns on the television to see what shenanigans its fictional friends have gotten into.

Situation comedies developed from popular radio shows—like the Jack Benny Program—and were originally recorded live every week. In 1951, Lucille Ball shook up America with her riotous antics while Desi Arnaz, the co-creator of I Love Lucy, revolutionized the genre by recording the show on film every week, using a live studio audience, and multiple sets. Early sitcoms tended to focus on families, like Three’s Company and The Honeymooners.

By the 1970s, sitcoms increasingly dealt with real world events. All in the Family was particularly groundbreaking for its frank treatment of racism, homosexuality, women’s liberation, and sexuality. The seemingly-bigoted protagonist, WWII veteran Archie Bunker, is considered to be one of the greatest protagonists in television history. Norman Lear, who in addition to All in the Family, created Maude, The Jeffersons, Diff’rent Strokes and The Facts of Life later said, “My shows were not that controversial with the American people. They were controversial with the people who think for the American people.” Lear also considered the sitcom a 26-minute one-act play, and was consternated that it had to get interrupted so frequently for commercial breaks.

In the 1980s and 90s, standup comedians began getting their own shows. Bill Cosby’s sitcom The Cosby Show “revived a television genre (situation comedy), saved a beleaguered network (NBC), and sparked controversy about race and class in America” (http://www.museum.tv). Seinfeld, on the other hand, was acclaimed for the exact opposite reason: its creator Jerry Seinfeld “found comic brilliance in the exploration of ‘nothing’ [and] penetrated pop culture as no sitcom had done before” (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine).

Ultimately, “the idea of the sitcom is for viewers to form a long-term relationship with the characters and return to view them repeatedly” (http://www.life123.com/arts-culture/television/sitcoms/tv-sitcoms.shtml). So we all share these friends and families every week when they enter into our living rooms, join our dinnertime conversations. They share with us their triumphs and tribulations, so we can feel a little less alone in our own struggles and achievements.

[ ... ]

England in the 1960's

by Clare Drobot, Dramaturg.

This turbulent decade saw the dawning of a “classless society,” a stark change in the country’s social and moral attitudes, the virtual end of the British Colonial Empire, as well as major political shift from the Conservative to the Labour Party. Quartermaine’s Terms (set in 1964 in the WTF production) is a sort of prism for the larger social and economic struggles that defined those momentous years.

The 1950s and 60s were, in general, prosperous decades in Britain especially compared to the rationing of the war years. As then Prime Minister Harold MacMillan said in his famous 1957 speech, “Indeed let us be frank about it - most of our people have never had it so good.” This reinvigorated Britain saw a growing middle class which, despite re-electing a conservative government in 1959, grew increasingly discontent with Britain’s rigid class structure.

1964 was, in fact, a watershed year for the U.K. At the center of this transition was the 1964 election, in which Harold Wilson and the Labour Party wrested control from the Conservatives for the first time in 13 years. The election was driven by the resignation of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, who ostensibly resigned due to ill health, although it was rumored that the Profumo Affair played a large part in his decision. The scandal centered on Macmillan’s Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, who became involved with the showgirl lover of a Russian spy. After being accused of breaching the security of state secrets, Profumo refused to acknowledge the affair and lied under oath to the House of Commons. Concrete proof of the affair was later obtained and Profumo was forced to resign. The affair and specifically Profumo’s lying under oath became a national example of aristocratic entitlement. The scandal significantly damaged Macmillan’s government and is often sited as part of the impetus behind the ’64 election results. Whatever the cause, the social transformations heralded by the younger generation led directly into the later half of a decade defined by rock’n’roll and swinging London.

The 1960s saw a wave of legislative changes that redefined the moral laws of Great Britain. Although Quartermaine’s Terms takes place at the beginning of these sweeping reforms, the characters’ lives reflect many of the period’s social controversies, from Thomas and Eddie’s relationship to the marital woes of Anita and Sackling. Over the course of the decade reforms were passed legalizing abortion (1967 Abortion Act) and homosexuality (Sodomy was decriminalized in 1967), abolishing capital punishment (outlawed in 1964), and relaxing the requirements of grounds for divorce (Divorce Reform Act of 1969). The loosening of traditional moral laws became an equalizing factor in British society.

Despite these social evolutions the decade also marked the passing of stricter immigration laws. The Commonwealth Immigration Act 1962, in essence, removed the ability of commonwealth citizens (basically the non-white populations of British colonies) to immigrate to the United Kingdom. Beginning in 1948, any citizen of a British colony had possessed the ability to immigrate to the UK by virtue of being a colonial citizen. Rising immigration rates from struggling colonies began to disquiet the native population. As illustrated in the first act of Quartermaine’s Terms by principal Loomis’s speech on “Cambridge Land Ladies” specifically one who is “refusing to take any of our students except what she calls traditional foreigners,” the tide of national sentiment was turning against foreign immigrants. Perhaps some of this strife came from the crumbling of the British Empire. Under MacMillan, the first half of the decade saw the emancipation of Nigeria (1960), Tanganyika (Tanzania) and Sierra Leone in 1961, Uganda in 1962, Kenya and Zanzibar in 1963, Zambia and Malawi in 1964, the Gambia in 1965, Lesotho in 1966, and Swaziland in 1968 (Oxford Companion to British History). In addition, both Jamaica and Trinidad opted for independence. Social unrest in these new counties led to an increase in immigration, and greater friction with the native British population.

Framed in historical context Quatermaine’s Terms is a reflection of societal transformations of the 1960s. One can see lead character Quartermaine as a metaphor for the enfeebled old guard, used to croquet on his aunt’s lawn and breakfasts of kidney and mushrooms. His inability to adapt and keep up with the shifting social mores illustrated by the day to day of the staff room parallels the increasing irrelevancy of the strict social codes that defined 1950 England and led into the tumultuous decade that followed.

[photo] Sam Hough for WTF 09

[pictured] Ann Dowd, Simon Jones

© [scenic design | Derek McLane; costume design | Martin Pakledinaz; lighting design | Kevin Adams] 2009

[ ... ]

Shakespeare and Arthur Miller in CAROLINE IN JERSEY

Caroline in Jersey contains a lot of quotes from other plays, most notably Macbeth and Death of a Salesman. Here are some examples and their context within their respective plays. Listen for them in Caroline!


Macbeth

“You’re the witch. He’s Macbeth.”—The women in Macbeth are some of the most talked about characters in Shakespeare. Debates over whether the witches control Macbeth or fate or nothing at all abound. General theory is that Macbeth is a coward, a man who only when pushed by the women around him—the witches and his wife—accomplishes greatness. (Except his greatness is flawed by the murders he had to commit in order to obtain it).

“Screw your courage to the sticking place and we’ll not fail!” and “Unsex me here.”—both lines belonging to Lady Macbeth in Act I, scene vii and Act I, scene v respectively

“We fail?
But screw your courage to the sticking-place,
And we’ll not fail. When Duncan is asleep,
Whereto the rather shall his day’s hard journey
Soundly invite him, his two chamberlains
Will I with wine and wassail so convince
That memory, the warder of the brain,
Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason
A limbeck only. When in swinish sleep
Their drenched nature lies as in a death,
What cannot you and I perform upon
Th’unguarded Duncan?...”

“…Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here
And fill me from the crown to the toe topfull
Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood,
Stop up th’access and passage to remorse
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose nor keep peace between
Th’effect and it…”

“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow”— Macbeth’s speech from Act V, scene v.

"She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing."


Twelfth Night

“Salt. White light. Twelfth Night—that’s the counter curse—remember? The play that’s all love and light—help me with the lines—the counter curse—“With a heigh –ho—Help me!—the wind and the rain—“

The last moment of Twelfth Night is Feste’s song,

“When that I was and a little tiny boy, With heigh, ho, the wind and the rain,
A foolish thing was but a toy
For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came to man's estate,
With heigh, ho, etc. 'Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate,
For the rain, etc.

But when I came, alas! to wive, With heigh, ho, etc.
By swaggering could I never thrive, For the rain, etc.

But when I came unto my beds,
With heigh, ho, etc. With toss-pots still had drunken heads,
For the rain, etc.

A great while ago the world begun,
With heigh, ho, etc. But that's all one, our play is done,
And we 'll strive to please you every day.”

As we all know, saying “Macbeth” in the theatre is not only bad luck, it curses the actor/production. Many counter curses exist. One is to go outside the theatre, spin counter-clockwise 3 times and spit over your left shoulder. Some people add swearing, knocking on the theatre door to be let back in, throwing salt, etc. Another way to counter the curse is to recite a line from another of Shakespeare's plays, often "Angels and ministers of grace defend us," (Hamlet Act I, scene iv), "If we shadows have offended," (Midsummer Night's Dream Act V, scene ii), or "Fair thoughts and happy hours attend on you" (The Merchant of Venice, Act III, scene iv).

“Make me a willow cabin!” and “And make the babbling gossip of the air/ Cry out”—Viola’s lines in Act I, scene v in which she woos Olivia on behalf of Orsino. Olivia asks what Viola would do as a wooer.

“Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon my soul within the house;
Write loyal cantons of contemned love,
And sing them loud even in the dead of night;
Holla your name to the reverberate hills,
And make the babbling gossip of the air
Cry out, ‘Olivia!’ O, you should not rest
Between the elements of air and earth,
But you should pity me!”


Death of a Salesman

“How was Boston, Willie?”—a reference to Willy Loman, the protagonist of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. Willy Loman is a salesman who does most of his business by traveling from New York to Boston. Throughout the play Boston is frequently referenced and in one pinnacle moment—seen through flashback—it is revealed that just prior to graduating high school Biff caught Willy in a hotel room in Boston with another woman. This event irreversibly changes the relationship of Biff and Willy and is arguably the start of Willy's demise.

“I ran down 17 flights of stairs with a pen in my hand—“ Biff, Act II. During the final climax of the confrontation between Biff and Willy, Biff references the pen he stole from Mr. Oliver’s office earlier that day in a moment of clarity about his true identity.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to want.” –a conversation between brothers Biff and Harry in Act I after discussing how Biff's unsettled lifestyle effects Willy, Happy asks Biff, "Is there any future for you?" Biff responds with "I tell ya, Hap, I don't know what the future is. I don't know--what I'm supposed to want."


King Lear

“Milk livered man”—Goneril in reference to her husband, offers herself to Edmund, Act IV, scene ii

“Milk-liver’d man!
That bear’st a cheek for blows, a head for wrongs;
Who hast not in thy brows an eye discerning
Thine honour from thy suffering; that not know’st
Fools do those villains pity who are punish’d
Ere they have done their mischief,—where’s thy drum?
France spreads his banners in our noiseless land,
With plumed helm thy state begins to threat,
Whilst thou, a moral fool, sit’st still and criest
‘Alack, why does he so?’”


Hamlet

“Good night sweet ladies.”—Ophelia’s lines from Act IV, scene iv

“I hope all will be well. We must be patient: but I
cannot choose but weep, to think they should lay him
i' the cold ground. My brother shall know of it:
and so I thank you for your good counsel. Come, my
coach! Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies;
good night, good night.”

“And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”—Horatio’s lines after Hamlet dies Act V, scene ii

“Now cracks a noble heart.—Goodnight, sweet prince/And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!—“

compiled by Krista D’Agostino (Assistant Director) and Sarah Slight (Dramaturg).

[photo] Sam Hough for WTF ’09

[pictured] Melinda Lopez

[ ... ]