WGBH Radio; The Callie Crossley Show

I'm Cally Crossley This is the Cali Crosland show. We're talking to playwright Kirsten Greenwich about her new play The luck of the Irish. It's about an African-American family in the 1950s. They move from inner city Boston to a white part of town. Their dream is the American dream to own a home. Segregation forces them to find a buyer. They pay a cash strapped Irish family to act as their front. Fifty years later the Irish family wants the House back. It's not autobiographical but Greenwich does write what she knows. Her grandparents moved from Boston to Arlington in the 60s. It's an area that she captures in her play and in moving between the two centuries she explores the timeless themes of race and class. From there it's the public art piece slow dancing the wide screen slow motion video portraits of dancers hits Harvard Yard. Up next poetry in motion and prose. First the news. From NPR News in Washington I'm Lakshmi Singh. The Postal Service is looking to

Congress for a financial reprieve. The Senate is expected to take up a measure today that would pour 11 billion dollars into the agency which is about 12 billion dollars in debt. Republican critics may attempt to block the legislation. The latest report on homes reveals a mixed picture on prices home prices across the U.S. are still falling the Standard and Poor's Case-Shiller Index dropped in 16 of the 20 cities surveyed from January to February. That reflects ongoing problems in neighborhoods with many foreclosures. However in other areas displaying some stability home prices are not falling. A heated primary battle between two Pennsylvania Democrats will come to a head today from member station say in Pittsburgh. Deanna Garcia reports the men were pitted against each other thanks to new district maps in the newly created 12th district north and east of Pittsburgh. Democratic U.S. Representative Jason Altmire and Mark Critz are fighting to be the last one standing after the legislature and governor approved a redistricting law combining their previously

separate districts Critz tried to get his fellow Democrat kicked off the primary ballot with a lawsuit challenging petition signatures. But a judge ruled in Meyers favor much of the district is old Meyers home turf and pundits have given him an early advantage. Critz who took the seat of Representative John Murtha after his death has won the endorsement of the AFL CIO. For NPR News I'm Deanna Garcia in Pittsburgh. A group of seventh graders from Burbank California have reason to brag a little today their teacher Rebecca Milwaukee has been honored as Teacher of the year in Washington by none other than President Obama. Milwaukee beamed as she accepted the award and overcame a bout with Lerone giantess to deliver a heartfelt message to America's teachers set the highest expectations for each and every one of your students but do me a favor and set an even higher set of goals for yourself. You are a hero to someone and you may not even know it. President Obama noted that Milwaukee hosts family nights dispatches weekly

memos to parents and maintains a Facebook page for her students. Overseas there are more reports of Sudanese airstrikes on the recently independent South Sudan a South Sudanese military spokesman says rival planes dropped several bombs overnight. This came hours after Sudanese warplanes bombed a market and other sites killing at least two people. An explosion has ripped through a major railway station in eastern Pakistan authorities in Lahore say at least two people were killed 10 others wounded. The blast ended a period of relative calm in Lahore. Here's the latest from Wall Street Dow Jones industrial average up 78 points at thirteen thousand five and trading of 1 billion shares Nasdaq off ten points at 2161. And the S&P 500 up 413 71. This is NPR. Good afternoon from the WGBH radio news from in Boston I'm Christina Quinn with some local stories we're following Springfield Police have arrested 11 men they say solicited sex from an

undercover officer pretending to be a prostitute. The men were rounded up in a two hour period one afternoon last week. All are charged with sexual conduct for a fee. Two are facing drug charges. Police say one man gave the officer a rock of crack and promised more officers found an additional 35 bags of crack cocaine on him when he was arrested. Authorities have confirmed that human bones found in the woods in Falmouth last week are those of a pregnant Nantucket woman who disappeared under suspicious circumstances nearly two years ago. District Attorney Michael O'Keefe says the bones are the remains of Trudie Hall and indicate that she was shot. Senator Scott Brown plans to release six years of tax returns and is calling on his likely Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren to do the same. In a sharply worded letter today Brown's campaign manager accused warren of trying to conceal important and potentially revealing information about her income. Rhode Island lawmakers are set to review several proposals that would raise income taxes on the state's wealthiest residents the House Finance Committee is scheduled to hold hearings on the legislation today at the State House. One of the proposals would impose a 1 percent tax increase on all

personal income over $250000. Another would impose a 2 percent tax increase on income over 250000. A third proposal would also raise income taxes on the wealthy but would automatically reduce tax rates whenever the state's unemployment rate falls by a percentage point. The weather forecast for the remainder of the afternoon partly sunny and breezy with highs in the upper 50s tonight mostly cloudy in the evening then becoming partly cloudy breezy with overnight lows in the mid 40s. Wednesday partly sunny highs in the upper 50s. Right now it's 52 degrees in Boston 50 in wester and 53 in Providence. Support for NPR comes from Harriet and Richard gold to help extend their breath and depth of NPR news programming and coverage of global events. I'm Christina Quinn. You'll find more news at WGBH news dot org. The time is 106. Good afternoon I'm Kelly Crossley a local playwright Kirsten Greenwich his new play The luck of the Irish is onstage at the Huntington theater through May 6th. It's about race class and the pursuit of the American dream. Kirsten Greenwich

joins us to discuss her new work and also with us is the director been Susan. Welcome to you both. Thank you. Let's start with you Kirsten. What people don't know I think is that this is totally fictional and not even autobiographical. Really it's a piece of Boston history so give us first is just a very brief synopsis of the play and then if you would tie that history to where you began writing from a fictional perspective. The play is a story of two sisters and their grandmother has just passed away and they've inherited our house and they're going to have a memorial. And they've invited some an old family friend who knows the sisters are African-American and the family friend is white and he has they know that they he helped their grandparents buy their house by acting as a ghost buyer which meant that they put up the. The average American family put the money and the Irish family act as the buyer so that the neighbors and town hall wouldn't get

suspicious and he goes their purchasing into an all white all life neighborhood and a suburb of Boston and the white family the white couple comes back 50 years later and says this is our house. Please give it back. And they're in the play unfolds. And when I started writing I was very interested in my grandparents story I've been told these stories of ghost spying growing up. And that's what my parents call this my mother called it. I sort of do some research the first thing you do when you do research is you Google and I couldn't find anything. And I had a lot I hid a lot of roadblocks trying to find historical facts based on home buying and go spying because I was it wasn't red lining and it wasn't Blockbusting. It was this thing where a family would act as the buyer and then kind of disappear which is like a ghost. And I had to write from a more emotional place then factual at first that I didn't really get help once they I'm recommissioned to me to take another look at this play was first mentioned by another theater. They they helped. Trying to. Cover the tracks

factual tracks and we we ended up getting a lot of our probe blocks. But the good thing about this play is that as being performed more people are coming forward and saying we this was our story too it's our house. So that part is very very exciting. And you mentioned a couple of other roadblocks that are different from Ghost buying but I think it's important to put that in the context of what African-American families were up against if they were trying to purchase a home in an area where not with him do stuff you know blacks would be living. So you mentioned redlining as a consequence there were people need to understand a laws and customs and all kinds of structures structural obstacles put in place to prevent families. If you had the money you still couldn't buy a home where you may want to. So Hince goes spying became something real that families could do.

Yes. Well I mean redlining is. From what I understand realtors and banks are actually telling families people who who do have the money and who have the means where they can and can't live and where they can and can't purchase a house which we look back now and it seems really reprehensible and and and quite horrific that in a country where we like to pride ourselves on the American dream that if you if you can if you're able then you can buy wherever you want. That wasn't the case in that that there were legal roadblocks for that happening. And then you got blockbusting where you'd have an organization and want to kind of bust up a neighborhood or integrated neighborhood is a better way to put it. And who would they choose usually choose a family to move in and or a couple families who've been to a predominately white neighborhood. And that was not the case with this family in the play or with my with my grandparents because they very much wanted to live where they were where they thought there were better schools and open land my grandfather was I

grew up on a turkey farm. So those things were that were very important to them and they were going to they felt they were to find those outside of the city that lived in the south and at first. Million let me turn to you been Susan the director. How did you I don't know how you were assigned or volunteered or came to came to be the director of the peace so. So tell me about that and I'm interested in your take on the play when you first heard what it was about because as I've just said so many people didn't even know that this was a real based on reality actually. Absolutely and if you'll forgive me answering in reverse order I'm so struck by what Kristian has just said because there there is the literal. There were the literal obstacles that happened in the 50s and I think one of the really wonderful things that Christian has done is is woven together the present and the past and these questions of where someone should or. Should or should live and what is better and the same reasons. You know that her grandparents made the move when they

did resonate through the play in the present and what are the obstacles now to integration and how does it feel to be an only in a neighborhood and we do in Boston. In our contemporary society still have so many issues around neighborhood segregation so I just want to sort of say that there's the the the both the literalness and even a character in Christine's play talks about how back then meaning in the 50s they were the clear boundaries and it's a little more difficult now in some ways because perhaps they're subtler so it to me is really interesting to look at both the history and then what the emotional legacy and the contemporary emotional reality is John of ghost buying before. I I never had but I had I never heard the term but I'd heard some similar anecdotes in some different settings to do with being the only Jewish family in certain neighborhoods and coming from a Jewish background myself and that the Jews who were able to behave in certain neighborhoods could do it because they

passed for white. I mean that was the phrase. I am eternally grateful to the Huntington theater who matched us up right Kirsten they were and they were our matchmaker. They they were really so supportive of the whole process of developing this play. Kristen and I did a workshop together a year and a half ago. I think about now right was January of last year and it was a bit of a testing ground for how the rewrites would go on the play and I think mostly how Christian and I would work together and if it was a good match so we really have Peter Dubois and the literary staff at the Huntington and Devon Ogier and Chris why go all the you know Lisa and Charles and the great folks there who really fostered our relationship and the play. So let me go back to you Kirsten because what milion has said is really key to this we're talking she's talking about weaving together the past and the present. And though we've talked about the historical foundation upon which your fictional

story takes place I want to be clear to people that it's it's set. Yes. In that time period but also in right now. And that's really what has drawn a lot of people to the play is that you are going back and forth between the two flashbacks if you will. And each story illuminates the other. Yeah I thought it was important that it wasn't the play wasn't an artifact that it was livable. And I think those scenes the modern day scenes do that for the play. And then we get to see Hannah's journey trying to figure out how do I how do I create a home for for my family for my children when I'm having all these feelings that are left over from my family buying this house in this in this way that seems that has been made to seem dubious down because I think for the family there's an enormous sense of pride living there and yet to come back and have someone say this is our home we don't belong here to make puts the family in a tailspin. And it was indicative of you know I think sometimes when you're

either in America sometimes you feel as though do I really. Is this the best place for me. Where should I make my home. Where should I pick my battles. And what makes it feel like home. I mean how do you not only when does the society say you belong but when can you yourself say you know all is really a big question I think. So in creating the first of all the moving back and forth seems lessly million. You had to create literal flashbacks on the stage but were in the theater it's not TV so we don't you know have a blurry scene and people go into a time warp. So it's not like that. Right so I thought you did something very interesting we'll talk about that if you would. Part of the great joy of working on this is that I think and Kirsten you chime in right. We really both the development of the play and some of the production choices really came in hand in glove. Christian had some early stage

directions which I found really haunting and stayed with me about hearing voices of the cocktail party during the contemporary scene and and going through and imagining the ghosting of the past on the present and also I think you know just the sense that we're we often experience especially in certain physical space in physical places a sense of all times kind of living together those two that the combination of curse and stage directions and the sense of time happening in one place and how many things can happen in one place. And I went through and really had a sense of how important this one spot that Kristen describes so beautifully is. For most of the characters in the play there's one physical spot and it made sense along with the designers to have the whole play happen in that spot and to explore what would happen if really we could get the sense of all the characters

in the story at some point crossing each other in real space and to make it as theatrical a solution as possible theatre doesn't do what film can do and I think when we try to do on stage what can be much better done on film. You know we look like an also ran but there's the the magic of having different generations in a physical space together is something the theatre you know I find can celebrate so we are what the what the production speaks to is celebrating one physical space and how time can act on everybody in that space together. What is that kind of a vague answer like. Well yeah I know it's not a vague answer what I took from what I took away from there particularly and I'm going to toss it back to Kirsten was your explanation that ghosting was a larger write piece here not just the act of buying the home goes that's right but that there were some haunting going on from some carry over some issues that needed to be dealt with and

that had to be dealt us right. Even the right way to focus on it. Yeah. In contemporary times and her family didn't have the same issues. Kirsten is that as her grandparents did that seem to be critically important for people to see that through line what speed I mean what I what I love about the production is how form and content really become married. And in that respect and how you do have ghosting weaving through the play in a way that's that I find quite beautiful and quite moving and that was something that we found through the rehearsal but then also in those last few weeks when we started working on the stage and the costuming we have some beautiful costumes that were built for the 50s particular the ladies and and those helped add that form and content feel and how were those 50s years seem to be praying a little bit on the on the mark. And a family. All right so more to be discussed about the race and

class and the intersection of and how it represents itself in both of these time periods and through the characters and what it says perhaps about Boston and elsewhere. I'm Kalee Crossley I'm speaking with playwright Kirsten Greenwich and director M. yeah been Susan. We're talking about Kirsten Greenwich his new work The luck of the Irish currently on stage at the Huntington theater. You're listening to eighty nine point seven WGBH Boston Public Radio. This program is made possible thanks to you. And orchard cove where updates are now complete. You can go to their open house on May 6th to see how orchard cope is redefining what retirement living is all about. You can visit orchard Cove live dot org to register. And SNH construction SNH construction uses all the WGBH multimedia form. Doug Hanna partner we feel that it's really important to get our name out to WGBH radio

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amount and every month your support helps eighty nine point seven stay connected and reduce on air fundraising become a sustainer online at WGBH dot org. Great question what is a great question and that's a great question. It's a great question. Rick great question on fresh air you'll hear unexpected questions and unexpected answers this afternoon at two here on eighty nine point seven. WGBH. Welcome back to the Calla Crossley Show. If you're just tuning in my guest is local playwright Kirsten Greenwich and director Neil Young been Susan. We're talking about Greenwich as new play. The luck of the Irish. Now on stage at the Huntington theater. So Kirsten we should say that you're a part of the Huntington's sort of new playwright program that's been going on for a while the same program if anybody is familiar with Lydia diamonds that helped to produce Lydia diamonds work Stick Fly which was very popular here and is on Broadway

now. Yes I did a playwright fellowship which I am intrigued Turly grateful not just for this play but they what they do what it does is that it allows local playwrights to have a space to work on their new work. So throughout those that my year and a half to your time with them and I had was with three other writers we could just bring in work. I think we were met every two weeks and we just read each other's work and gave each other feedback and that is invaluable I mean and it's also intense you're reading other people's work for a whole two years and you're presenting your stuff for a whole two years he really gets no other people's work and he really gets to delve into your own as well. What inspired you to tackle this particular piece of not only Boston history but a little bit of your own personal history. Well when I wrote it I started writing it I was pregnant with my daughter about five years ago because this is her due date was her due date for the visit. And my grandmother had just died. And in the in the play there is this motif of

buttons that goes sort of cold throughout and out her Morial I found all these buttons on the floor. And a friend of mine and my sister both were like that's really creepy because my grandmother they were all buttons that your mother probably might not have like they were plastic. She was very very very particular woman and they were not nice buttons. And so we did post humorously pop the buttons off people's jackets because she didn't like them. And my friend said that has to go in a play. And so I ended up and we're not quite like that but it did buttons did end up at the play. Now as we've said it's not autobiographical but you know in your own family made a trek somewhat similar to Hannah and her family and you had some experiences that you know some people are saying Well as you know did she just make this about a whole cloth. I would share one of the experiences that led you to really write this looking at race and class in a very particular way. It's not in the play anymore it used to be. And it's a story about my

I hope he doesn't mind this my uncle sorry Uncle David. And he told the story he and my aunt went to public school in Arlington. And I after my grandparents moved there and their first two years in Arlington public schools are really really difficult they had some really really wonderful friends and wonderful neighbors. But there were often incidences from my aunts I know it was a daily occurrence for her and for my uncle. There were a lot of violent issues for him as well and one is that I think he was in first or second grade and his he didn't do something right in the class. And his teacher her got really really upset with him probably disproportionate to what he had done because he was six or seven. I mean really what can you do it six or seven. And she made him stand outside and surrounded by snow covered in snow. And I for years have had that image of my head of this little brown child surrounded by white cold cold white which is I'm a

playwright so I thought in how I usually think is in metaphor. So it's really hard to miss the metaphor on that one. And that was one of the stories that was in this in the play for a long time and because it didn't happen to one of the characters ended up being taken out but. Certainly instances like that were really really painful and difficult for my family growing up there and what as I've been working this play and we've been talking to some of the neighbors and some of the people who we knew at the African Afro-American society of Arlington where my my family lived was that oftentimes the adult neighbors were pretty cool. And times in the town were OK but the battle wars really fought in school advocating for your child. I know my my grandmother literacy was very very important to her during the summers when my aunt and uncle and mother worked in school she told school in the back yard. She was that kind of mom I'm a mom now and I don't know if I had to have it in me to be like every day at you know from 12 to 5:00 like we are sitting on this blanket and we are going to read.

But that was what she liked. And so they entered these schools very well-read and possibly reading above grade level or behaving prosody above grade level academically and because of race weren't the teachers I don't think took very kindly to that and that as we've been talking of this my family in the play has come out we've done some work with his historical society talking about some of these history what people have said is please talk about the schools because often it wasn't that they moved in and neighbors were putting up for sale signs and were and were mean to them it was that their children were facing these battles and that I think that was part very very difficult for my family. So you decided to make this decision for the better of your family and for the better of your kids and you realize where who's taking the brunt of it is or is the children that you're sending out to school each day questioning a lot of code in the content stuff. Christian I mean you really sort of stress the challenges it for different

reasons but nonetheless the continuing challenge. Yes and I think for Hannah what complicates it too is that I think in today's educational world you have there is a move towards being. More understanding to defer but people who learn differently and people who are different and diversity and difference in the classroom. And so Hannah is in a whole different almost a whole different ball game even though those those issues resonate today because there is a sensitivity towards kids who are having behavioral problems having an IEP I mean that's that is a modern found IEP an IP is an individual education program so if your child is having trouble in school it is the school's prerogative and the teacher to have your kid tested and to come up with an education plan that's going to work for your kid. And that is something that is new and I think Hannah is trying to navigate that and it's much more difficult to pinpoint is is my child having trouble because we're black. Or is my child having difficulty

because. We're not the IP isn't up to date we need to work on this we don't actually talk about IP in the play though right. But the correlation we have. I have a friend who teaches public health and Chris and I get to tell you this but after that she saw the place she told me that she had a colleague who was working on the diagnosing of an ADHD in young African-American male population. And you know when that happens and if the numbers are different and you know how this is handled and she felt that the play really spoke to that question as well. Well what happens. Million and I've mentioned to Kirsten before that some of Hannah's dialogue felt ripped from the actual pages. Private schools in Boston as I know some information about from people who consult in private schools it's exactly it's almost you know it's just a right from the pages of it and what has all also been documented is that particularly with young black boys they often get targeted for quote unquote special education be it rite aid or something else so they're

hearing about. So it's you know there you are faced with that if you are in a situation as a black parent wondering what's going on. Let me. One of the things that you said about it is that when we talk about these issues filtered through Hannah particularly who was very upset about it and then trying to navigate am I about to lose my home because this house in the play is not just a facade building it's a home that you were drawn to the emotional honesty in this play. I I do when I first read this play and it's it's a you know it's gone through various drafts and Kristen's as a wonder at rewriting right if we think of writing is rewriting Kirsan has really mastered how to shape this play. But no matter what has changed the core emotional truth of this sank to me from the first time I read it and it really it's so honest there are no villains and there are no heroes there are

human beings trying to make the right choices for their families and in some cases for themselves but really by and large everybody is thinking of someone else they may not be doing it in the best way and it might not be the someone else would wish them to think of. But every you know and it's also to me very much a play about the struggle of being a parent. So when you see Hannah sort of in this perfect storm of race you mentioned class I mean it was a huge piece in this. And so that you see Hannah the contemporary mother struggling with race and class and modern parenting. The sort of confluence of these questions of what is a modern working mom supposed to be doing you know they're discreet there's Hanna has a wonderful monologue that I don't know a mother a working mother who doesn't who hasn't seen the play and hasn't felt utterly recognised by Kirsten's writing by this monologue no matter what the race or class. So because it really lines the emotional difficulty

of what contemporary society asks of all of us. So I think she's able the construction of luck of the Irish and the complex city of all these lives being revealed to us without judgment being passed. It's it it's its regulatory in this way. You're listening to eighty nine point seven WGBH an online of WGBH dot org. I'm Kelly Crossley. I'm speaking with playwright Kirsten Greenwich and director Neil Young been Susan. We're talking about Kirsten Greenwich his new work The luck of the Irish. Now on stage at the Huntington theater Kirsten something that million just said is really important and that each of these characters is quite complicated. You know nobody walks away with a pass in this even though the scenario in and of itself would seem to suggest there is a right there is a wrong. But the but everybody in this playing out their parts in both the past and the contemporary times got some issues. Yeah absolutely.

But and so I want to put that on the table also that to reference the title of the play the luck of the Irish. I didn't realize until this play that doesn't mean what it seems to me it was when I first titled The start of this play the luck of the Irish I thought that it meant something good. You hear it around St. Patrick's Day and it seems very jolly and happy to go away and then I looked up and that was cool. I was able to google that and may you have the luck of the Irish is not a friendly it's not a nice thing to say because the Irish had the HAs have had their own problems in historically but particularly in urban centers and particularly in Boston before it became such identified with Irish huge Irish population that began to stratify itself that you do have Irish people who were struggling but then you also have a really affluent successful Irish Americans as well in Boston. And you have the luck of the Irish is actually not an not a friendly terms on the nice terms and I thought it was really appropriate for this play. There's They talk a lot about

luck and needing luck in our in our country in our society to be able to get ahead or be able to do well. And it was really important to me not to vilify anybody. I mean. Oh you've got after American family and Irish Catholic family on stage in Boston and you got to do that stuff right. Lot of people are going to be upset if you don't. And the way one way one way into that is to make sure everybody is complicated and it wasn't just that a white family comes and asked for this house back from a black family there by Saint in the black family because then also where does that how Where does that leave the family as actors what does what job are you giving the actors to do nothing if they're just going to sit on stage for two and a half hours and be good people like that. So it was really important took to complicate them. And also it's it's a little more fun to figure out the nuances of all these relationships when everybody has a side that they go to go to that's not so pretty. Yeah. And so you know you get the complexity of their marriages as well.

So that was gender politics play into the rehearsal was a lot of couples. You have touched two of the definite third rails of race and class in this piece and I am always struck I was struck by with your play and also with Lydia diamonds that it's from the perspective of it's from an African-American perspective that's not generally how I see it presented in most art pieces. So that was interesting. Wondering how you have seen the residents here in Boston particularly. We've talked about the title we've talked about the setting it's very it can be very particular to Boston but I can also go to other cities. But here in town how have the audiences responded. A lot of people respond to I've had a lot of people say that oh you know Joe was my dad or. Joe in the in the play is the Irish husband the father. You've got six kids and he can't seem to make it he's find it very hard to make ends meet. And his his wife takes in washing and

she works and works and works and I think ultimately Joe is a dreamer you know he he wants to read and write and think and that is a that's a luxury that when you're able to do that with your life. That's a luxury a saying it's a very very fortunate thing and he doesn't have that. And he spends his whole life trying to kind of make amends for that and always kind of owing money and a lot of people said you know that was my mom darning socks and making ends meet or that was my whichever parent was. A lot of people identify with that as of as well as being the only in an in area. And did you there's been a number of interracial couples that talked about who goes to see the house. Right Person I mean that's more what's been wonderful Has having a lot of people come forward and say this is how we purchased our property this is how we purchased our home. And a lot of them are interracial couples of black and white and the the white partner was the one who went and looked at the house

maybe brought someone else along with him or her to look at the house so that it seemed that that was maybe the other spouse and that the neighbors didn't get all up in fisticuffs before they moved in. So that's been wonderful because it was very difficult to find actual books and actual. Literature on this in a way that I could use to write like if I was the story I'm sure I could I would spend you know years doing this and picking out little bits of each book but if you're if you're if your job is to write the play you don't always have that kind of time. So what's been wonderful is having people come forward and say this is how we did this too. And I was alright so go head Miller. No no I was just going to talk about that couple the beautiful family that sense of the letter. Oh more than half of the four of them used to be a couple a family in Concord and it was a gay couple two men and their wife and their children are black. And they have a dog.

I don't think there there there's the return address stamp that they put on the envelope was beautiful and had the whole family and all the different hues which is if if you've ever tried to buy this stuff for your kids you know that's very difficult and took a lot of care so you can already tell this was a special family wrote about moving to Concord in the both of those. The husbands are teachers and that what a difficult decision was knowing they had this African immigrant family. And but knowing that there were better schools and for what they could afford and what the kind of life they were trying to have are trying to have lives outside of Boston and how this place spoke to them in terms of trying to find home or having a home and then trying to affirm it in your community. And I mean I didn't even have to open the letter before I started crying. You know gorgeous and and lovely and we got that letter before we opened the day before. So it was one of those moments really because you don't know what's going to happen when you're playing live bodies on stages it's just

theatre is a tricky tricky business as you can think. You can think you have one thing and then you get audiences and you don't have it in you don't have what you think you have. So getting that before we opened before reviews came out before a lot of stuff was lovely because I thought if it's just reach this family I know that sounds completely cheesy and horrible but it is very true because I thought this is this is touch this family maybe can touch other families in the same way. M. Yeah I want to get both you and Kirsten if you will briefly to say what you would like people to take away from it because there are multiple themes of we've discussed of belonging identity emotional safety history that a lot of us don't want to look at particular history to Boston and understanding that people can take away whatever they wish. But right if you had to underscore something million what would you like for them to walk out with. This is a brutally difficult time. I think that I would want an audience to both feel recognized in their

own struggles in making a home but to have a glimpse into how difficult it is for everyone around them as well however we define the other however we define ourselves. We're not always what we seem to be and neither are our neighbors whether you know there's a lovely moment in the play where the in the late 50s between the what the assumptions of the black mother are about the white mother and vice versa. And they each just read each other so completely erroneous SLI that it's heartbreaking because you realize they're each just acting from their own insecurities. So I guess I would hope for that some sort of recognition of were all in a struggle and person. Well this is this is a very difficult question but I hope that people do see themselves in the play and I hope that from just sheer theater I have to have a good time at the play. Yes. It's such a weighty topic and particular for the entire country but particularly in Boston

and there are laughs in there as I think it does it's it's got a a wonderful human spirit and I hope they take that away from it. Thank you so much Michel as. Thank you so much. I'm Kelly Crossley we've been talking about the new play The luck of the Irish on stage at the Huntington theater through May the 6th. I've been speaking with playwright Kirsten Greenwich and director million Bensusan to learn more about the luck of the Irish visit our site WGBH dot org slash Calla Crossley. Up next we mark National Poetry Month was a world event taking place right here in Harvard Yard. This is WGBH Boston Public Radio. This program is on WGBH. Thanks to you. And Comcast Internet essential Internet Essentials is available to help families in need. Families with students qualified for free school lunches may be eligible for Internet Essentials. You can learn more at Internet essential dot com. And new Repertory Theatre presenting the off-Broadway

hit musical Little Shop of Horrors filled with doo wop an early Motown song stylings Little Shop of Horrors runs April 29 through May 20th. Tickets at new rap dot org. And the members of the WGBH sustainer program whose gifts of five ten or twenty dollars a month make up the most reliable income for the programs you love on eighty nine point seven. Learn more about sustaining membership at WGBH dot org. Anna Quindlen the Pulitzer Prize winning former New York Times and Newsweek columnist has a new memoir called Lots of Candles Plenty of Cake about life in her 50s. On the next fresh air she talks about raising her children who are now young adults. Her decision years ago to give up alcohol and why she recently left the Catholic Church. Join us. Sad to hear an eighty nine point seven WGBH. Stretch your dollar from many towns in western Massachusetts a fishing village in

China to a small island in the South Pacific and keep your entire community connected to what's happening around the corner and across the globe. All it takes is a few minutes and a dollar a day. As a member of the WGBH leadership circle the world is getting smaller. See how far a dollar can take you. Visit WGBH dot org slash leadership WGBH rides the team with a full week of focus coverage. Never on time breaks down a lot. Would think it would be better than this with all the technology we have coming up this afternoon. You're on eighty nine point seven. WGBH. Welcome back to the Calla Crossley Show. Today we're marking National Poetry Month with a look at poetry in motion. I'm talking about the public art installation slow dancing. It's a series of super slow motion video portraits of dancers and choreographers that are projected on to lock huge screens until the

Sunday you can see this work on the facade of the white nerd library at Harvard University. Joining me to talk about this work are arts and culture contributor Alicia ANSTEAD and Jill Johnson director of Harvard's dance program. Welcome to you both. Hi Kelly. So Jill this is called Slow dancing because there are very slim video portraits of the dancers and choreographers that share with us how it's done. Well it was shot at a thousand frames per second. So each danced for five seconds and it was shot a thousand frames per second so what you see on the screens is only five seconds but it takes 10 minutes to watch that second that five seconds on hold. That's pretty remarkable. And to put that in perspective you understand that normally it's 30 frames per second so that's really really really slow slow. Now these huge screens are projected on this fabulous building the Weidner library in Harvard Yard. You know you were instrumental in bringing this to Harvard this is only the

second academic institution that's been gifted with this wonderful installation. Why did you think it was such a perfect fit for Harvard and the community at large. Well I'm so grateful for the help that we received to be able to do it. Part of what we're doing in the dance program at Harvard is to reframe how dance is seen on campus and hopefully for students to take that outside of their experience at Harvard so to be able to literally reframe out of a perceived him sort of base theater and to be able to see dance in that way where dancers tell their story rather than a story being told to them is a great way to expose them to great art as well. So what we see Alicia are on these three screens dancers so you might have a ballerina on one screen in the middle there's an ethnic dancer over here there's a Broadway hall for all at once turning very slowly in their own space. What's the impact as you've seen it over these last few days. Well you know what Jill said this is a this is of course a Harvard

supported. Public art but I want to really emphasize the word public because this is for everyone this is anybody who happens to be walking by. You can see the students in their dorms looking out their windows onto the yard and seen what's happening there. But for me the impact is how to slow down how to look at art and how to engage spontaneously in community because every night I've been there I've been there all four nights and it continues through Sunday night each night 7 to 11 every night that I've been there. A new community is formed and it may be people in motion maybe people seated. It may be people coming out of a class or just happenstance coming through the yard. And that's what that's what's so important that I see happening nationally right now too is that art that engages the community that puts the community members on the stage which is where they end up in front of wider library they are now part of the art because it's as much about engaging the community as it is engaging in.

David Michael X art and we should say that David's work he's married to a dancer. I was interested and he's a fabulous photographer. Period. So he wrote that he felt that static shots his own beautiful static shots were in ately unsatisfying Jill because you couldn't really engage in this very intimate way. Well what's Integra of course a dancing is motion. So we're articulating ideas for which there are no words and I think it sort of peels back because of the speed. You really are able to identify with those dancers that sort of scene. I'm reachable on the stage and yet there's this huge scale so how could that be possible but I think there's an intimacy with each one of these portraits that there's a tremendous amount. David is so empathetic as an artist and so I think what he drew out of each artist out of all of us resonates on the huge screen and also what what he was talking about in terms of community and how it transforms public space. And there are unlikely things that happen and and really great art is

about what is unlikely not what's predictable what was interesting to me is us listening. You know if you're just overhearing comments so I heard somebody say she looks like a flower because it's like slow motion stop photography you scene of a flower opening. Someone else was talking on the phone trying to show it to his friend and he said no no he's really moving. Watch. And then other people just you know gasping is saying oh wow this is great. And as I sat there freezing and it was cold last night. But still I have to say the word that I heard a lot was mesmerizing. At one point it seemed to me or maybe it's all through that each dancer on all three screens is on the same line as if they're on a trap E's line or something as they do their work. That was deliberate right Joe. Well what we did have the same mark in the film where we were filming. But what the crazy thing that happens all of these loops are random. So each There are three loops in each projector. But they don't start at the same point every night so that

there are these alignments that happen that are again so unlikely and they cross disciplines they cross ethnicities they cross different practices and I think that kind of unity and to be able to see that is part of what makes it mesmerizing and also just so arresting to be able to be witness to that. Alicia if you ask someone to define what poetry in motion is it's pleasant to look at its fluidity its grace. It can be all of that and that's what's meant by it for you. With this exhibit what does it mean. I think there are two things Cali one is the resonating silence. You hear voices but you're seeing people dance and there's no music. OK so we're not really used to that. So for me that's that juxtaposition that poetry creates it's quiet and yet you hear. This movement OK and in a silent kind of way. The other is the attention to detail. We're looking at works we're looking at bodies as they move through grueling moments. Bill T Jones one of the featured dancers and someone who's been on your show Cally said it was a gruesome thing to subject

the performers ego too but that ultimately he thought that that's why it was so beautiful. And indeed I think what we're doing as we do in poetry when we have to pay attention to every single word every single piece of punctuation every nuance the mood the tone of the voice we have to do that with this installation to it forces us to it. I say force but really it invites us and yet I kind of feel forced into it with this one because if they are Jumbotron like screens and you're it's almost as if God is looking down on you from Wiener library. And yet it's also very democratizing both in and of itself because of the range of dancers from street dancers to you know highly trained conservatory dancers and you know that's part of the democratizing effect but also here we are all together out under the stars. Human beings ourselves embodied. In our own bodies and watching other human beings whose bodies are every nuance is available to us to witness.

And that's what the poetry is for me is that attention to detail that brings us back to the whole. That's my guest Alicia ANSTEAD arts and culture contributor Jill Johnson director of Harvard's dance program. When the dancers all speak the same language which is really what Alicia was saying Is it poetry in motion for you. Oh I absolutely think it is again I think it's the rate of speed that really reveals that as well that there was a woman watching last night that said I keep trying to leave and I can't because I keep seeing something else. So there's something about having an image that large being so compelling that you want to understand it more. And that's all we could wish for for people to understand dance in that capacity that it's not a priest one prescribe meaning for everyone but you make it again just like poetry you. You interpret how you want to and it's all valid BALLAnd rather. What was it like for you to be one of the participants to be up on that screen. Well it was a thrill and an honor that sounds so cliche but it's true you know to be in such incredible

company. So some of whom are colleagues and friends people have admired all these years. And it was remarkable to have that challenge of five seconds how do you with all this practice with the 10000 hours of practice that Malcolm Gladwell talks about. How do you choose five seconds to two be a portrait of your entire body of work. Literally how do you do that and as in poetry too. It's a great editor. You know you have to be selective and you get you know you don't get too attached to your own ideas. And at one point you let it flow and whatever is revealed and is quite unexpected sometimes if you become too self-aware or egocentric it didn't work but when I let go it was it was it was a beautiful thing. Jill Alicia is accustomed to me asking the peoples question or maybe the low brow questions or here goes. So when I watch Dancing With The Stars I'm listening to the judges and they say your form Wasn't this your line wasn't there she lifted your foot and you know I can't really see it when they're turning

but this is so slow. Suddenly I'm looking I say this is what they mean about law and this is what they mean about structure. If you know nothing about dance Alicia don't you come away just really feeling as though you've entered into something else you really feel more informed as a result of looking at it. Well I think you know dance is the medium through which this is conveyed really to me is about the human body and how we all move and these are hyper stylized movements you know. I'm kind of interested Jill if I could ask you a question. How did you choose those five seconds I mean you must have had if you're if you're paring it down to five seconds your repertoire must be like four million seconds long. Yeah. How did you bring it down to five. I know well again editing you and also part of it was watching the first playback you know which was kind of a horrifying like oh my goodness I'm making all of these mistakes and they're being stretched out at five minutes each. You know so the perfectionism that keeps us going could you know was a detriment at first but it helped inform the process.

Also just watching people on set before was really really helpful too. And you just started to get a sense of what it needed to be that day and had to be OK with that too. What did you want people to know when after they saw your five seconds. I think the viscera whole joy that I experience when I'm dancing is to somehow also a sense of surrender to just be able to you know dance is so much an offering and to be able to at least shed some light on what that means to me and that it might convey something to that and to someone else's was what I was thinking about. We should mention that this installation has moved around in various places mostly at museums in other parts of the world. Again Harvard is only the second academic institution. What about being against the widen or building for you Jill. Really adds to this experience. Well it's a place of great knowledge and it's a memorial to a young student who went too soon you know so to be able to to sort of poznań reflect on that

that gravity and at the same time use the structure and the learning as a way to juxtapose this modern work. And it works it looks as if it I mean it was the same thing at Lincoln Center that I've experienced that it looks like it lives there it doesn't look out of place it doesn't look like anything should is should be a certain way. It doesn't even function in that capacity it's just there. And yet it's only there for a short period of time. But it's so exciting as I felt about Christos work the gates in New York City and just public I'm a public art enthusiastic the temporariness Alicia doesn't matter. I think all art in some degree is temporary. You go to see the Mona Lisa in the Louvre you're there for only a minute or 10 or 15 or two days and then you're gone where art where does art live Calley does it live on the wall does it live on the facade of Wigner or does it live in Jill's legs. You know where where does it live. I think it lives inside of us most vibrantly and we're stimulated when we see it in public spaces I

mean when I think about scene slow dancing I think about what happens when you see the Mona Lisa or Dobby or even most recently are. Nationally our newest public art the Martin Luther King Memorial in Washington D.C. That's right. You know that's those are community events. We think of art as being just one on one but it's all community event. And that's what slow dancing does so well and I have to point out too I've watched it from both the audience side of slow dancing and from the stares of Weidner where you're looking back on the audience and to watch people just walk by and not really be prepared for what they're going to see when they look up and just watch them slow and crane their necks and slow and they become almost a slow dancer right there. Last seconds Jill what do you want people to know about it I know you'll be there tonight again. You know way t shirts and tickets I think to sort of echo what Alicia was saying is that it's about an experience so much

of the arts is having that personal experience to know how meaningful it can be and people's lives so if in some way we can change the NEA statistic that only 8 percent of the American public will see a live dance performance then than it would be worthwhile. Well it's quite something to see and it was well worth freezing tonight. It was mesmerizing So congratulations to you for pulling it off and it's and people should go. What a wonderful place to watch it. I'm thrilled. And we've been talking about the public art installations slow dancing. I'm joined by Jill Johnson director of Harvard's dance program in our arts and culture contributor Alicia and did slow dancing is at the Wiener library at Harvard University through this Sunday to learn more visit our website at WGBH dot org slash Calla Crossley. You can follow us on Twitter of become a fan of the Calla Crossley Show on Facebook today show was engineered by Antonio only our and produced by Chelsea Merz will Rose live and Abbey Ruzicka. We are a production

of WGBH Boston Public Radio.