Seminars in theatre; Episode 14 of 31

This is seminars in theatre a series of discussions with leading members of the theatrical profession who comment on the problems and pleasures of life in the theatre. Here now is the host of seminars and theatre Richard Pyatt. Good evening and welcome to another of our panel discussions regarding the theatre. Tonight we're especially pleased to have as our guests commissioner of parks of the city of New York August picture Gordon Duffy who is strategically involved in one of the projects outlined for the Department of Parks and the assistant director on that project I think that's a correct title. Alba Shiffrin what we're talking about specifically is New York City's theater workshop for students and the. Recently the final auditions were held for the company which numbers 100. And just to begin to get an idea a little background on why the Department of Parks is going to preempt Broadway for the summer we like to ask you commissioner just what you have in mind in this kind of a project in

the Department of Parks. The Department of Parks is also a department of recreation and a Department of Cultural Affairs. So from all points of view the outdoors is a beautiful setting for dramatics. The role of the arts both in recreation and in and in Cultural Affairs from all points of view. I'm very much involved in trying to see that the theater is made available both to those who want to participate in it and those who enjoy watching it. When I became part commissioner. About a year ago one of the bright spots in the horizon nice of aid was the presence of a young man Gordon Duffy who had been working with the Parks Department and was then laying plans which I was very glad to sponsor and encouraged for a workshop on the East River in the East River Park for the summer of 1967 and that Wilkes shop was I think perhaps the best thing which we in the parks department

were able to do. The most encouraging and the most exciting thing that we are able to do it with young people during this past year. We are very lucky to have Gordon Duffy here who can explain something about it. Well before we get to Gordon Duffy with a question regarding his progress. Commission What did you have. There's a great deal of talk about hot summers and cold winters and cetera. But what do you have in mind. Did you conceive of this project as one means of utilizing the energies of young people here in this city during the summer to avoid what is known what has become associated with the concept of hot summer. Or is this an aesthetic project in its inception and completion. I dislike the idea of using the arts and music using cultural present patients for a secondary or ulterior motive namely to try to keep the city cool and I think it is its own

justification. I think the aesthetic purpose or the purpose of the release and development of these young people is reason enough having done what we did and are planning to do what we will do in the future. But nevertheless having said that I'm perfectly convinced that by these sort of activities we do give to the young people of the city a sense that the city cares for them a sense that life is worthwhile a sense that opportunities are open to them. A sense that perhaps above all that the arts are something from which they are not cut off because they live in poor neighborhoods or have been deprived of many of the cultural advantages which the city should offer up and it will end in giving the young people all this. I think it does help too. Make the city better and perhaps to make the summer's cooler. Let me take a negative approach commissioner because after all that's about the only response usually commissioners have or negative responses. Do you anticipate a conflict with all of the

young people that were not accepted after all Gordon Duffy has set himself up as casting director along with his assistants and they've rejected something like. I estimate thousands of young people who want to participate in a summer project who are involved in psychologically and wanting to be in the theatre. And what about all of the rejected. Do you think they will arm up and attack the theatre. Well they may attack a park commissioner but I'm used to I'm used to that. You know I think the fact that thousands were carefully and sympathetically audited this past winter you know one of the 100 or so might be chosen is an indication to these young people that the door was opened if they didn't make it this year they may make it next year. They see their friends succeeding where they may have temporarily failed and all of life has this element of hope and then a disappointment. So I think the great thing is to go ahead and do the program. And trust that others even those who are most disappointed will recognise it's

justice. I don't worry about being picketed by Gordon Duffy. Well you may be picketed by Lincoln Center. You got a location that I think is at 210 West Sixty fifth Street which is near Lincoln Center garden. And you are also going to engage in some aspect of the Kabuki theater and I wonder if you could just give us an idea of how you plan to incorporate Cup booky techniques with young untrained actors and actors let's recall from many of them from the poor up and least advantaged part of this I think you know certainly there are many does most enthusiastic with what we're doing with kabuki is very simply not going toward a kabuki production at all. I'm not particularly interested in that sort of purist approach of doing a Japanese play as such but I believe that the training the sort of physical control that's involved

in learning the dance techniques of the Kabuki Theater of Japan are very excellent I have a fine teacher by the name of Miyoko Watanabe who is sounds Japanese who is a marvelous teacher who has had her training at the Tokyo could because she is teaching these youngsters in these techniques and we find that there's a terrific overlap from that class on to dance classes. The mime classes the acting classes and. Also I think probably the main advantage of the Kabuki is that it brings with it as a ritual of training that is to say when there is a special stage which the Department of Parks or Carpenters did a beautiful job and doing a wonderful stage and this stage has been a part of the discipline for the students is rubbing it down with the fine steel wool to make it very smooth. There's 35 of them on to the mall scribbling away. The next step after that is they rub bean curd into the floor to make it smooth. They go around they check it in their

stockings and their bare feet to make sure there aren't any splinters they're never allowed to walk on it with shoes. They wear special tabi or socks which they have to keep clean it's their own responsibility to keep those things clean. They when they begin a class on there they bowed to their teacher as a sign of respect for her. They have ensure a respect for the place in which they do their craft and also it has to do they wear kimonos in this class. As well the Komodo has to be put on properly has to be worn in a very precise sort of way. So we find when they go downstairs to the dance floor or even to the sidewalks we're going to do a lot with street theater this summer any place that they now work they have more respect for that place in which they do their craft and I think that's important for any artist I think that's the main reason we're doing kabuki not to do a kabuki pull him. What kind of plays Will you be doing. We are planning to write everything this year and last year we did some very exciting things. We did the Kurd vile and Bertolt Brecht opera. Or

we did the very fine baseball opera by William Schumann. I find that there aren't very many scores or scripts like that left and besides we are on to a new. A sort of audience involvement idea where we want to write plays ourselves forward for the different neighborhoods where we're going to different audiences we're going to be involved with our main project is going to be in addition to our usual program is going to be sort of a Saturday program during the summer in which we pick each Saturday a different block in a disadvantaged area in one of the five boroughs. And that play is to be presented right in that block with we call it a block opera now for lack of a better term. We have a composer who has done some very exciting work Richard Peasley who is the composer as you know of them are outside music and he's now in England doing a project for Peter Brook. He just finished a film called Tell me lies. He's going to write that music for that opera.

We have two other playwrights who one of whom I'm sure will be doing the script for this. This play will evolve out of improvisations based on newspaper articles about the problems in those ghetto areas and also from interviews. We're going to each one of these blocks and talk to everybody on the block and find out say you know if there were to be a play about your BLOCK What would you like it to be about. Would you like to say that. Let me ask you something Gordon and imagine you're working directly with a lot of these children and the park is you certainly. What are you rehearsing them or what exactly is your function at the moment we are trying to get them to the point where they function as a company number one so that we can bring them as a company into an area of the city and have them absorb children in the neighborhood into their own play. In other words the play that that we export to various locations around the city will not be finished until the day on which it is presented with the children in that neighborhood. But we have to do with our

group is to train them so that they first of all can physically and vocally do whatever they want to do so that they can express what they wish to express and then to be enough of a group to be able to respond to signals within the group and in a to understand each other and how they work so that they are a strong core for either going to our children in the local or in the other blocks to which you go. Are they going to be part of the acting rather you know that's it. But you know in effect we're teaching these hundred kids. You see that's why I don't feel so bad about you know you talk about the ones who are left out. So you were going to do is if we go in with a hundred kids we feel that if that group of 100 is broken into groups of let's say five you know that five if they are well enough trained and they can you know they also know how to teach. You know they can they can take five of their kids in that neighborhood or maybe 10 but one of you will have to be with that group of five. Well it depends some of these kids are so capable after a while you know that they really can function and they can do better and I can say I was unbelievably optimistic

and in connection with as you mentioned there your experience with this summer I mean we had the same kind of problem even within the group. After all we were using a cast of 85 to do an opera. You couldn't go around to each child and work on his individual motivation what you do is get the group to work together and you have some of the same this is OK you're the captain. This 10 people has a jet this is general objective and you have to work out the details and within the group. And in the sense that they're used to working in teams want to get into detailed breakdown of that I'm just mad about something that concerned me. You're working slightly differently this summer with the workshop than you did previously. You're using you're using an improvisational not that you didn't last time but you're using improvisational technique based on the news items that are based on ghetto problems I assume and based on a kind of

ideology and you're using someone from tell me lies which again is an improbable Robbie's ational film treatment of the Vietnam ideology commissioner Hector what I wanted to ask you at this point. Ideology growing out of these improvisations and conceptions of social import growing out of these improvisations may be at odds with what the city is attempting to. I would say do in having a kind of peaceful summer in in the cities a spousal of certain. Ideologies if you will how will you react to this Will you come down and close the curtain if we find that this is taking place. Well it's a very interesting question that I don't think I have fully faced up to. I do remember we have another workshop which is in the movie which Roger Lawson who's a friend I guess it was called and I remember his telling me that when these kids would put on

movies which they would also express some rather unorthodox ideologies. And I remember Roger Lawson saying sometimes I myself don't know what the movies say. And then he said six months later I suddenly realized that what they're saying and then he said by him will stand up on end I have a stand up on it and go on with some of the things that you were doing. I think art today is full of Revelations sometimes revelations of ugly and tormented things within people within society and within limits one has to accept that as part of the risk. We had an example recently in the parks where we lent one of our park areas for a sculpture show and one of the sculptures turned out to be a as it were as it turned out to be a menace to health as well as do good sense and good judgment. It was a wrecked car. And it it was a skin. Calf or cow. With all its end trails hanging out in its skull bleeding and so

on. Well now there was a case where we took a risk and put your scalp here we didn't know what that skull was and I must admit when we saw what it was we had to water it taken away. So I think that one always in a in a position of public responsibility has to take some stand on decency and seen this and and accepted standards of taste. But I don't worry too much that what these kids are going to express will transgress those standards. If I may just recall an incident last summer and one of the improvisations that touched me greatly as you say newspaper stories and so on are given to these kids and they were told to act them out. Well I remember one which you gave a go in the day that I was they up it went like this the heavy rains of last weekend extinguish the eternal light on the grave of President Kennedy. And the kids were given that and three minutes later they came back and acted out this encouraged moving drama in which they were they were the flame and they build up this fire you could see it in their motions and their activities

and then you could see or feel the rain's coming and that flame was extinguished and I was and it is an extraordinary skill to think about that I know these members that maybe didn't want to call incident of you know summer but as I say with kids like that I worry less about the kind of danger that you know and perhaps I will when the summer is over and years especially. What is the age level that you have auditioned for you Gordon. You take them from what is it seven to one thousand. You know those are the limits we set we find in practice that the ones who really are able to function easily in that situation are about eight years old to about 18. I wonder whether I could ask Gordon Duffy whether he thinks that I'm as Paul commissioner I'm likely to be confronted with difficult choices and problems in this area. I wonder I think I think there's definitely a danger element when you say that we would like a theater to grow out of the people and the things that are important to people whether that audience happens to be you know very different

satisfied middle class neighborhood or whether it happens to be in a ghetto area where there are distinct problems which become intensified during the summer. I think you take a definite risk when you go out and you say I'm going to do. A production which involves you because of the very fact you get somebody involved throws them off their guard. People have said you know you've got to be very careful you going to start a riot with this or are you going to focus attention on the need to do something other than riot you know what. Those as commissioner has very clearly pointed out that may be some social purpose like this might be an effect of what you do but for us it's always an artistic goal and we go out I'm interested in doing plays because those are very exciting audiences. One thing I worked I had a theater at the Boys Club in East Harlem for several years and I found doing plays outside there was just fantastic as people are very alive mainly because a lot of have not seen theater before. And so that's one of the reasons I do it it's an exciting audience to work for. But we're not sure we want to take issue with you saying you're

starting out with and idiology I think that that's not that's not true. We're starting out with a problem. We start out with with a problem which is what is really important to these people. I don't know what the answer is I'm not going out and saying that I've already got a program I don't have a program. And in a sense kind of a political I do I just look around a lot and that's what we're going to do. You may well say fighting no one but of course I said this a growing. I make of all the stations. Yeah but can you always control the interests and the needs of those that work for and with you and this was really the basis of the question which you may not have any problem. However I just would never have to come dance of the questers question I should never have to come to him you know if I can't run my shop in a way that I think is you know with the proper dangers if voided and with the done with the proper taste with the proper artistic responsibility I should hope would never have to come to Michigan to

say you know the problem that the problem arise in any form that troubled you last time a lesson or not at all as a matter of fact a very strange thing happened we found it. For instance we're doing newspaper brothers ations during the summer about the riots in New York and so forth and easily more than 50 percent of our group were negro and the thing was that they were not only not informed about what was going on and they were they were completely indifferent to it had nothing to do with them because it wasn't happening on their block. He'd be surprised how provincial these kids are you know and so it's you know even from for the ones who are from Central Harlem from Bedford-Stuyvesant where they were not aware of those things were going on in Newark. Let me ask you this question Gordon commissioner. What is the breakdown in the racial strain of this of this group. You have a hundred. I don't have a clue. I'll tell you we we get very we get very colorblind somebody will say is so-and-so a negro and I don't know this. I hope it's not protected but I

forget. I really don't know. Because here's the way the group and the group themselves according to economic value levels. For instance I can tell you I could almost sit down and tell you how many kids there are who like to live in a certain kind of middle class around here. How many are rebellious. You know whether they happen to be of rich parroted and are running away from home or where they happen to be in black power communities or whatever because they hang together and the people who have nice clothes and of course you know once again is that the thing they don't have nice clothes thereby wears tights you can't tell. But the thing you can tell a little bit by their values but their color I really don't know. We don't take them we don't try to go for any balance it just happens that there's a spread you know. But the only reason I bring that up is because recently thought as a matter of fact a week ago the black militant group prefers to be called black and not negro. And in New York. Yes. And you're working in New York and we're also we're starting things in Buffalo and Binghamton and well that's still me

that I got there. Do you know I don't follow. Yes you see this is a this is a problem I just wonder if you will feel that you have to face this problem or if you feel that the group is so homogeneous in terms of their spirit and their interest and their motivation that this is a problem that certainly you won't have to deal with and if you do have to deal with it who does that fall on the commission are you. Well as I say the commission has a lot of things to look over and I'm only one very small segment of worry about this problem at all. Knowing the philosophy with which the Enterprise was launched and knowing its emphasis upon first place upon the self-expression of children who have been denied opportunities to liberate themselves and to find themselves I think we're going to get just about the right proportion of almost everybody and knowing Gordon Duffy I think that would be trouble in that life.

It would be interesting to me to know some time and God may not be able to tell me but somebody must be able to tell they haven't a Puerto Rican children are how many how many Afro-American children there are and how many how many white children there. But when you say there's no reason why you should tell me let me continue another may by no means is when you come here. I know that when you started to cast children for a workshop what you are really casting what you're looking for potentially are a number of casts for a number of different plays and you just begin to look for variety in texture within the group. It's not color the color difference that you're looking for it's different kinds of people with different kinds of attitudes. Yes this is all that you know if you are presenting this project as and I think the commissioner at the beginning stated that he feels that the art is its own reason for being and if that's the reason that you are starting a theater in the park as a workshop with children for its artistic endeavor billeted then certainly that's all you're concerned with. However the intention was gleaned here

that there was some aspect of providing of an outlet for the energies of the so-called. Ghetto children or the unprivileged or what have you. And if that is so then you'd have to compromise the so-called casting principles and move into the area of using the art as a social means of quieting the wrong assumption. What this is simply is you know I really disagree with the people who think that having several goals to go for is like a man jumping on a horse and riding off in all directions at once and you'll get anywhere you know. I really think that I'm. I think we're perfectly capable of having several goals at once and achieving some of them and maybe missing some of them. But I think above all just just as an actor has to making acting choices when he can decide what kind of characterization he has yet to choose one thing and play it very hard in the thing above all that you know makes is my greatest criterion for making decisions along this line have to do with artistic

choices. Now inevitably you're going to be affected by other things too. You know it's like being a schoolteacher and you say you know I had this experience when teaching in a college I thought well OK I'm going to have 27 pupils. Right. And you know and so I just think of them as a body sort of. But you teach there two weeks they're suddenly people and you thought you weren't going to get involved with them you know. And you thought you just you know sort of you know it was it was I think we're doing with our school system. Oh this is a private college and I don't agree. But the thing is you have to once you once you get involved those people then you know then you start worrying about each one of their individual problems and so forth. If we haven't argued just a goal to start with the fact that some kid is beginning to grow suddenly he was a troublemaker and we're beginning to he's beginning to find himself that he can do something and you know he becomes more responsible but his concentration improve and so forth like that will make a lot of artistic exceptions just to help the kid grow.

But we don't start out to help that may I say make that kid grow it's on our minds but you know that's it but you must have an assumption somewhere that there is a great city and enormous amount of talent which you might not see the light of day perhaps more than even in other areas so I think you do begin with with a bias in favor of Bedford-Stuyvesant. I do frankly because those were the places we went to audition we didn't go to the center of Queens where people were able to you know had dance classes of what we went to the South Bronx. We went to Central High. I think we're just not really interested in is that you didn't go to the existing places where we can come down I think if you want to. When he says because the other kids can't. Maybe I can see their car maybe I could tell the story that one of the girls who appeared not having told her family at all that he was going was the daughter of the director of Office of Cultural Affairs. Yeah nobody knew it was OK and she she succeeded in apparently becoming part of the company.

Yeah but that was not because of who she was. Nobody knew and we didn't have to go out to look for. There's another question here of funds and physical plant and the use of the city's parks etc. that you mention that you were grateful to the United States Housing and Urban Development Agency for making the work space available. Is that the West Sixty fourth Street plant that you're talking about. Yes it is it is and we have that only. We will maintain the parks will maintain it. We are maintaining it and keeping it reasonably clean gone. When I was doing after I was asleep. But that's the best we can do. I am charged by the new charter to build a cultural facilities but is not easy to to build these things. Given the situation of this city's budget and I may say also given the changing nature of all these experiments in which we are engaged I think it to be the height of folly to build a kind of junior Lincoln Center and we like this better and this is a premier of a phone building you know your kids can do things to the kids and paint their own doors for and show

them that they paint their own dressing rooms the paint the hallways the it's their building in a way that if they want to do one wall with pictures cut out of magazines they can do it because we always say well get the wrecking ball is going to hit because we're too soon doing that is marked for demolition you say in about two years. There are sometimes things don't get demolished. Police suspect the Polish commissioner there's another plan while we have you on seminars and theater regarding the summer and that is what I think has tentatively been proposed is to use Broadway performers in free performances throughout the park. What is your view of this proposal and do you think it has any particular merit. The mayor Mayor Lindsay very rightly tends to various parts of our economic and cultural life and what can you do to help us and to help the children and

the younger people through this summer and the Broadway Theater has responded apparently in a very. Cooperative way and they are working to bring teams of play as from the stars and players from the various hit shows out into the poorer areas of the city. We don't know exactly how well this is going to work. It does lack this quality of participation which we've been speaking of here and a relationship to go and Duffy's theatre workshops. On the other hand it holds up the highest level of professionalism to these kids and I think that's important for them to see you know cause it holds up the glamour which is always good. I would say this is an important plus in our overall plan but unless in the long run and this we can get to the younger people themselves and to the people who live in these areas and make them participate then the whole cultural program is a very shallow one a superficial thing.