WGBH Radio; The Callie Crossley Show

I'm Cally Crossley and this is the Calla Crossley Show. Today we're dipping our quills into the deep well of the Massachusetts art world celebrating the state's rich literary traditions through contemporary takes on the spoken written and performed words. We begin with a national treasure local poet Dan Chasen whose insights form a kinship with another Massachusetts luminary Emerson. From there we step onto stage with one of Boston's great theatrical institutions Karen McDonald a 30 year veteran of the American Repertory Theatre and recent recipient of an Elliott Norton award. We'll ask her why she's resisted the artistic exodus to that other theater town south of here. We talk it off with a literary initiative in Linux where young offenders are sentenced to perform Shakespeare. Up next the art of Massachusetts from poetry to penitence. First the news. From NPR News in Washington I'm Lakshmi saying. Scientists working on

the BP oil spill are examining the results of a pressure test on the leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico. BP is almost done creating a relief well to drill into the bottom of the ruptured one but retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen says the so-called bottom kill method may not be necessary after all if the pressure test reveals that cement poured in from the top last week has actually killed the leak. Alabama's attorney general Troy King is suing BP and other companies involved with the oil spill accusing them of damaging the state's coastline and economy and of member station WABE reports to separate federal lawsuits have been filed. They seek an unspecified amount of economic damages as well as punitive damages. A spokesman for BP says the company does not comment on ongoing litigation. The move by the Republican attorney general puts him at odds with Alabama's Republican governor Bob Riley. Riley believes the state should pursue an out of court settlement first. A spokesman for the governor adds the state is still compiling a list of economic damages it will submit to BP. For

NPR News I'm Andrea Jaeger in Birmingham. A 600 million dollar initiative to boost security at the U.S.-Mexico border is now law. President Obama signed it today. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says it's a critical move. The legislation adds permanent resources that will continue to bolster security along the southwest border. Supporting our efforts to crack down on transnational criminal organizations and reduce the trafficking of people drugs currency and weapons. The suspect in a stabbing rampage across three states is waiving extradition to Michigan from Atlanta in a hearing this morning. Well as I'm told a judge he was no longer interested in fighting the charges while in Georgia after hearing the battling extradition alone could take months. He lost a bet with today like a day's work well for you to start. I mean that's that's most common sense it's more logical to go right now then quit. You know after two months of declines Commerce Department says retail sales rose four tenths of a percent last month. More from Daniel Carson.

Shoppers are still digging in their heels just not as much. Retailers are banking on sales picking up in August when families start filling their shopping carts with back to school purchases. Scott Hoyt a retail analyst at Moody's Economy dot com says July's report was welcome after two months of declines and should set off any alarms. It certainly confirms we've had a slowing down of you know the pace of spending growth is far below what we saw in the first quarter. On the other hand it's encouraging to see some growth even if it is concentrated in a few segments stores that cater to teenagers a key spending group will need to build their cash receipts after weak sales last month. The likely reason the job market for teens is more than double the country's jobless rate. For NPR News I'm Daniel Carson. Dow's up 25 points. This is NPR. Another snapshot of the U.S. economy the Labor Department reveals a three tenths of a percent jump in July's Consumer Price Index largely due to rising gas and food prices. And the government reports inventories held by businesses went up for a six straight month in June

though on the flip side inventory sales were down again. Another sign people are still worried about how they spend their money in an era of high unemployment and weak job growth. Tens of thousands of residents in Ames Iowa are without drinking water after record setting floods breach pipes. People have been lining up for bottled water and emergency management spokesman is also urging residents to conserve because clean water is in very short supply. A fashion icon in South Korea has died from sold waffly Sokoto reports under Kim was known not only for his glamorous ballgowns but also for wearing his signature all white outfits and heavy black eyeliner. Andre Kim was a pioneer in South Korea's fashion industry. Nearly 50 years ago following the Korean War he introduced his first fashion collection to South Korea in downtown Seoul. It was then that a French diplomat suggested the name Andre instead of his birth name. Hume told the Korea Times that his vision was to impress citizens from around the world with Koreas high culture and

sophisticated artistic fashion. Often using celebrities diplomats and actors instead of models Kim became so internationally known that singer Michael Jackson actor Brooke Shields were among his fans. Ellen Kim died from complications related to pneumonia. He was 74 and is survived by his adopted son. For NPR News I'm Doualy psych out in Seoul. This is NPR. Support for NPR comes from the John D and Catherine team across the foundation committed to building a more just verdant and peaceful world. More information at Mac found dot org. Good afternoon. I'm Kelly Crossley and this is the Kelly Crossley Show. We're on a retreat today with a focus on how to improve our show in our absence where rebroadcasting one of our favorite shows an entire hour dedicated to the deep literary tradition of the written spoken and performed words with some of our great contemporary artists.

The show was hosted by our arts and culture contributor Alicia and Stitt. She began the conversation in the Poet's Corner with Dan Chasen a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship a professor at Wellesley College and Co poetry editor of The Paris Review. He's published three collections of poetry. His latest is titled Where's the moon. There's the moon. Being a poet it seems to me is about as rare today as being a Supreme Court judge and that the path is kind of fraught with criticism and very few people actually get to take a seat at the table. Yeah and let's not even talk about the challenges of publishing right. Why in the world would anyone be a poet in 2010. Well you just get addicted to language in a certain way and language hits you maybe primarily as a set of sounds or a set of associations that you know don't have a direct use in everyday life so you get I think impatient with

language use just to convey information or just to communicate you know the bare minimum and you get a little sort of enchanted by other ways you can use language. To cast a spell or to confound or to inspire. So I think that's the that's that's how you get the get the bug. So we also I think many of us have a stereotypical sense of what a poet is or what a poet's life is and I don't think you really do actually first of all you don't have a beard. No I do I have occasionally had a beer. OK OK well today you don't have a beard and you're what my pal who's a career coach Marcy Alba her calls a slasher you're a poet slash Professor slash editor serious journalist. You know these these are job descriptions we're all struggling with right now kind of putting together what our careers are. But are you doing the same poet things that Homer did or that Chaucer did.

Well that's interesting I mean I think the core of it just being in love with language and in love with words and maybe having your love for words in a way kind of misshaped you a little bit. I think that maybe is a common is a common thread. You're right I mean I've never felt that to be a poet had to be a primary and exclusive identity. One of the great joys in life is explaining to other people what a poem is and what a poetry is so that's why I like to teach. We have little kids that have taken an interest in poetry and so on so it's it's fun to put it out in the world and sort of be its kind of liaison or spokes person for poetry. So do you put that on your taxes in the little section or when you go through immigration the immigration officer says what's your. Oh yeah. I find it. No and I also find that it tends to be as they say a conversation killer so I usually say Professor which opens one up

rather than closes one down. So you've said that the world of poetry didn't really open for you as a writer. Yeah Int'l you were in your 20s Yeah. But there must have been some gestation that took place in an earlier life maybe not so much with language but with your powers of observation that you trace it back into your own boyhood of what you saw and how it filtered through your imagination. I mean I love today I loved and loved to daydream and spent a lot of time in my head. I was always a person perfectly sociable person but I always preferred to be alone. And what you fill up those daydreams with although I wasn't actually writing that as poems until much later. It wasn't that different from what I've been doing all along which was kind of working on my imagination in my imagination. Do you find that quiet that day dreaming which feels it

can feel rather lazy. Yes people in the workaday world. How important is that to you now as an adult. So it's it makes you know friends to say that you need to sit around all day. In order to potentially write a single line of poetry and you know poets some poets are very productive I'm sort of committed to underproduction and poetry I like to write a few poems you know not more than a handful of poems a year in fact. But I do a lot of other things I as you say I teach and I write a lot about poetry actually in fact that's become my sort of primary daily task is I've always got an essay working or a piece of a review piece of criticism that I'm hatching in my brain so that's what takes over in a way I've got it. I think now I've got to clear the stage a little bit to get some poetry written and some more daydreaming done.

Was it always clear to you that you would be in the literary arts. I don't think I would have been any good at anything anything else. Did you try anything else. Not really no I mean I. Growing up I worked in restaurants and I think maybe I would have been a good not chef but maybe like a short order cook or something like that. When she like to take a poll to find out how many people working in the creative arts started out in restaurants Salut Lee I've done everything bar 10 you know cook prep cook waiter everything. Concierge What would you call it. Host everything. So I think I don't know I don't have the kind of brain that I think would have been adaptable to some other you know profession I wouldn't a been a good lawyer doctor. I think I would have been a I think I would've been a good restaurant employee. Yeah. You grew up in Vermont yeah educated at Amherst and Harvard and I mean bridge to iconic locations for American poets and not just because of the ones we think about Dickinson Longfellow Eliot of the past but the present ones. Richard Wilbur Yeah very GRAHAM Yeah. Great critics

of poetry. Helen Vendler. Tell me a little bit about the influence that this really vast and still vibrant New England tradition has had on you. Yeah I grew up sort of on the margins of the periphery of the Boston literary idea but very much. What does that mean exactly the Boston literary idea. Oh you know just this long long tradition you know starting in the 17th century of great writers who are relating and talking to one another across generations also talking to the landscape talking to nature of working America out in their heads and in their minds. And I in some ways felt very peripheral to all of that. You know I didn't come from a highly literary background in Vermont. Actually my Vermont can feel very far from here. Can you tell us just give us a little thumbnail Dan about what did your folks do. Oh I didn't know my father my mom worked at a

college. And I you know she now works in a convent she's a sort of resident manager for a convent. But you know I grew up a lot of people in my family have been farmers and sort of improvisers of way of life. A lot of people are up there. There aren't professions in the same abundance or opportunities in the same abundance so there's a lot of improvisation which I like and I always love going to places like that. Was there of binocular also that got into your ear. I don't know it's interesting I mean I have you know my name is spelt C H I S S O and it's a French name it's pronounced chasten and I realize I come from a place of sort of badly or clumsily Anglicised French French words Montpelier Berry said. Callous callous callous.

That's right and then chastened So I'm a product of that world of sort of badly or clumsily Anglicised French French-Canadian things in names. I don't know the way the way I hear English is probably more informed by my reading actually than by any kind of I didn't talk a lot as a kid actually I was really shy and I still feel that talking is secondary to writing it feels unnatural I feel almost have to sketch it mentally on paper and then say read from my script. So no I wouldn't say I'm a poet who draws on the you know the vernacular in a way that say Robert Frost and you're about to tell us a little bit more about the influence of the whole Boston traditional yeah you are now. Well it was just incredible to arrive here you know and to feel that you know for me I mean these are my heroes. And not just the dead ones you know to suddenly know and

have my papers graded by Helen Vendler was a profound experience in my life. In fact one of the things that got me into poetry. As a teenager up in Vermont was a PBS APB I think a GBH series in fact called voices and visions which was an episodic profile of American poetry and my childhood seemed to be mainly about watching a lot of TV so eventually I did find this extraordinary series which was put together by Helen Vendler and some others. So to get here what was like living the dream as they say and was you know you talk about Helen Vendler in correcting your papers. Was there someone who had a profound influence in print on you and a profound influence on how you shaped poetry. Yeah well I would name one of my dearest friends and my colleague at Wellesley but I would name Frank dart a wonderful Cambridge poet you know that was exhilarating because he was the

dear friend and kind of. And then you end of Robert Lowell who was one of my heroes so I felt I allowed myself to feel that I was connected to Lowell through through fright but also I mean for me Frank's work goes beyond Lowell's even and it was. A challenge to admire a style so much. And I also feel that I couldn't imitate it because I can't. You can't imitate you can't imitate at all and you certainly should imitate your mentor because people will. People will criticize you for that I would say. Dan what does it mean to be influenced by someone else in real terms I mean did he influence you. Well he had a way of breaking language down into phrase and line and of way of shaping making a poem you know putting a poem on paper that was totally new to me.

He took on huge and still takes on huge themes philosophical ideas questions of identity sexual identity childhood and so on in a totally fresh way. And I guess to be influenced by a writer like that is to feel that you want to you want to be as original as he is you want to do. You want to find for yourself what whatever. Whatever he found for himself. Well I think back to the years that Lowell was fairly well known and yeah a lot. And I also think about the public forum for poetry in the 20th century and how it feels to me and you'll correct me if I'm wrong how it got a little derailed. And I know poetry slams have taken off these days but let's just pursue another train of thought before we come back to that I've mentioned to you once before that one of my colleagues told me that going to the Tate Modern Museum in London left me cold. Right he didn't get contemporary art and I explained to him that when his daughters were born he immediately began throwing a ball

to them and then maybe put them on the T-ball team in grade school and then softball in high school then maybe they'd play rugby in college. So when it came time to be a Red Sox fan they were completely equipped with the vocabulary of sports. Yeah but how do you expect to walk into a museum or for our purposes open a book of poetry and get the vocabulary and practices. Is there some lesson we can take away from this little story for poetry too. That's wonderful. Wonderfully put. It is impossible I mean poetry is hard anyway and part of the point of poetry is that it's hard and you have to have a an appetite for sort of partial comprehension. I think reading a poem and not want it to make itself totally plain immediately on the first reading but it would help if poetry were taught in high schools for example and it's largely not I think. Even in the places where it has been historically tight it's vanishing so it's dismaying to me that

students kids aren't. And particularly because little kids have such a natural appetite not to natural just thirst for poetry but at some point it's drilled out of them and you read Huckleberry Finn for nine months and one play of Shakespeare and that's your English course. It's too bad. I think I think your advice is modest to say grade school or high school I'm thinking we should be getting poetry at baby showers Yeah. To get is not really thinking that right because think of the rhythms that newborn babies have and how natural it would be to move into any number of arts but poetry in particular. Yeah. So OK Dan help us understand how to read poetry. Will you read one of yours and then let's figure out some tips for entering it. Sure. I mean I'll read one that would on the surface seem particularly difficult it's called mosaic of a hair. Corinne Iam 100 A.D. that's h a r e

mosaic of the hair the little rabbit like creature. The boats pulling in the boats pulling out the top hat. Commerce of the infant century. Crowds crowds the certainty of others the bomb that filled the air with horsehair and the ambulance after. Why wouldn't I hide in my little glass body. I have a clover sprig made of glass to aspire to with my glass appetite. I raise certain questions about art and its relation to status. Yet I despise the formalists as naive and historical. Here's my problem with America. This would be that obliterates all other moods playing over and over in people's heads. The abstract optative that destiny works out. I don't have the luxury to think in terms of destiny. What nobody seems to get about me is that you're made of glass. It doesn't mean you don't have

appetites. I do or fears I do. The day the darkness took hold the silica I was afraid and equally afraid the day centuries later they switched the lights on. Let rabbits think in terms of destiny with men. The great American rabbit poet. The rabbits in the government. The rabbits that light and the ones that snuff out the fuse and all their pretty rabbit children waiting to be casserole. So what's that about. So I can tell you my first question is starts right with the title. Yeah. Why hare not rabbit. Well that's a very profound insight. I imagined in my head that hairs felt this incredible resentment against rabbits and that in the world of animals there was this long standing resentment and antagonism between hares and rabbits and this was going to be a poem spoken by a hare condemning rabbits and all the sort of prestige that rabbits have in the world and

so that was maybe one of the you know founding insights of that poem and I wrote it not long after 9/11 and I was thinking about different cultures and the way some cultures get marginalized and have resentments against the main mainstream or more privileged cultures and of course the poem isn't meant to be serious or some kind of political treatise but. Because I was thinking in that way once I had the hair rabbit issue worked out. I then saw a documentary on PBS again about the nine thousand twenty bombing of Wall Street and that's why there was all that stuff about the bomb at the beginning and so on and then thinking about Wall Street in New York got me to thinking about Whitman the great poet of New York and somehow all these things Constellation into a poem and also of of a culture in the midst of great trading. Yeah. Element we're talking about early Britain really the Cotswold area right. Yeah in 900. And I have to I have to think too that we're

in the territory of Ode on a Grecian Urn here. Absolutely and that we're meant to see that art is what carries us through the centuries. Yeah that's wonderful that's true. I was actually thinking about in a Grecian Urn you know this little. The mosaic I saw is of a hair about to eat as a sprig of clover and so here's this poor creature suspended in work for two thousand years just about to satisfy its appetite but not able to do it because its mouth has been frozen open by the artist. And that's something that art does and it's something very poignant about looking at art that it seems to talk to us across the ages and yet also be kind of frozen in time. And of course we're talking about John Keats's. Yes. Oh don't agree. Right right. And also I guess that one of the one of the experiences I have of poetry is that I don't feel that I'm always getting it. And yet there are impressions coming. And I mean I'm not sure how to make sense of them but

I knew that there was destruction here. I knew that there was art. I knew that there was also a certain level of disappointment right happening in this poem. Yes but I have no I don't know that I could parse that for you exact don't know that I can parse it I'm very pleased actually to leave it on an parsed but all of those things are circulating in it. You know you have to have an appetite for a kind of delayed and partial comprehension. And if you don't understand something right away if you don't understand a piece of language. Look for other pleasures in it look for the pleasure of innuendo or the pleasure of the sound of the words imagery. Just entering the zone of action where not every single thing is spelled out our culture spells everything out for us it gets to be very fatiguing. I think but it's certainly certainly OK to do a little research too. Oh I don't know were you understand the nuance that comes with Hare versus rabbit. Yes or the the sense of what each of those words might represent.

Right right. Yeah well as Stephen says the poem must resist the intelligence almost successfully and I think that's that's the dynamic we're aiming at. So tell me now what is a poem. Oh it's a what is a poem. Well I go back to the etymology it comes from the Greek word for making. It's a made thing out of language. It's some piece of language that somebody has decided they can make a work of art out of. And it's language presented as a kind of end in itself not a vehicle. Of course it will do all these things but really more than any other use of language we have. It presents language as an end in itself as something to be thought about appreciated taken to heart for itself I think. And can anyone be a poet. Well yeah anyone everyone anyone has many many times and it takes no Gosh it takes no certain type of training.

And no one kind of style of working results in writing poetry Frank OHara the great American poet you know would write out poems on his lunch hour. He worked at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and he would write them out of his lunch hour. So maybe spontaneity will work for you or maybe craft. I don't know. And can we say that there are some poems that are better than others. Of course. Yes yeah absolutely. We need to say that. And whose poetry do you read. I read over and over the 17th century poet George Herbert. I read John Milton. I read Dickens and I read. Elizabeth Bishop. Give us a couple poets for people who would like to begin reading poetry today. Who should they start with. Start with Elizabeth Bishop and work your way through her complete poems. And then because it would be easier if you were starting out to do an American poet read Frank OHara. OK and I have a feeling that you're going to find that beauty is

truth and truth beauty. That's our arts and culture contributor Alicia and interviewing poet Dan Chasen. He's a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship a professor at Wellesley College and cult poetry editor of The Paris Review. He's published three collections of poetry. His latest is titled Where's the moon. There's the moment. Up next a conversation with local actress Cameron McDonald. We'll be back after this break. Stay with us. Support for WGBH comes from you and from Suffolk University with strong ties to the city's business legal and educational communities offering students more

than 90 academic programs. Suffolk University. Dedicated to excellence in teaching scholarship and service. And from the Office of Cultural Affairs. The Lowell Southeast Asian Water Festival is dedicated to the preservation and sharing of the cultural heritage is of the Southeast Asian Americans. August 20th and 21st culture is cool. Dot org. And from the New England mobile book fair in Newton New England's independent bookstore. The Book Fair is your summer reading list headquarters. More details online at any book fair dot com. That's an e-book fair dot com. In 1994 filmmaker Ken Burns told the story of America's past time simply titled baseball this epic film 150 years into nine full and now Ken Burns has returned to the park with his four hour documentary that tend to include the historic 2004 World Series victory by the Boston Red Sox. So this side your copy of the sun looking at a price below retail at WGBH dot org.

Thirty five years ago Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert began reviewing films together on TV. Now after multiple incarnations the show at the movies will have its final broadcast this weekend on the next FRESH AIR we feature an interview from our archive with Gene Siskel and Roger Eva join us. If you've recently received. I'm asking you to. Please return it as soon as you can. August 3 1st marks. The end of this week here to gauge your support in any amount will make a big difference. Thanks. I'm Kelly Crossley and this is the Calla Crossley Show. We're working offsite today and in our absence we're rebroadcasting in our on the arts in this segment our arts and culture contributor Alicia and Stead speaks with actress Karen McDonnell. Karen McDonnell is

a founding member of the American Repertory Theater and has appeared in more than 70 A.R.T. Productions. Earlier this year she played Kate Keller in the Huntington Theater Company's production of All My Sons. Her credits also include film and television appearances. Here's Alicia and Stead talking to Karen McDonnell about the Elliott Norton award for sustained excellence which Karen McDonnell received in May. The Eliot Norton award for sustained excellence is the gold star. Oscar Eustis Julie Taymor Tina Packer Christopher Plummer these are these are your people now and this is an award from the people actors traditionally have the most contentious relationship with the theater critic. Yeah it's a it is an interesting thing. I went to Boston University and Elliot Norton was actually a teacher of mine. And what I remember learning from him in addition to many things about the theater and its history was that. He was a critic who. He was someone who supported the

theater who really loved what he did he loved going there every night and he was happy to say when he didn't like something and offer criticism I think he had some famous pronouncements about things that turned out to be huge hits in New York. And so yeah I think you're right that there is a you know that you respect them for what they do. And yet there are times when I think a lot of actors I actually am one of those actors and I don't read reviews. I don't read them. So that makes it kind of odd in to. Well I think there's a long tradition of actors not reading reviews and I mean I forgive me all my theater critic colleagues out there but you know I'm OK with that. I think that you've got to do what keeps you brightened and alive on stage right. Yeah. And it's not that you you don't appreciate the fact that there are people who read the newspapers listen to the radio and write the newspapers and and who and who therefore you know use that as a guideline for whether they want to go to a show or not I mean

it's sort of. But it you're right it is a kind of strange relationship that we have with them. I mean I just find as an actor that I. You know you're in the midst of something you've created with a lot of other people. There is no actor in the world who who on the first day of rehearsals says hey let's do a really rotten show. You know let's do a terrible show that everyone will think is bad. You know everyone tries their best and sometimes you succeed and sometimes it doesn't succeed as well but you the actor still have to you're still doing that show every night and you have to have some joy in what you're doing so if you are a person that's influenced by one other person's opinion. I mean I think it's even hard sometimes for actors to hear friends you know people that come to see the shows their opinions because you you appreciate that they want to talk about something but you still have a job to do every night.

Well I'll tell you Karan A as a theater critic for 20 years that's exactly how I felt about going to theater and people coming up to me at the intermission or afterwards and saying So what do you think. What do you think and I felt like you know I'm working here and I don't really want to talk right now. Right right. So so the last thing I read about you was that you and this is a quote delivered a knockout performance in All My Sons. You just mentioned how actors approach their roles and approach the stage. Nobody wants to do a bad job. How do you know when you're doing a good job. I don't. I don't know how to describe it except I think there it's just there's a feeling in the room usually in and it's not always in the rehearsal room that can be a place where things are still difficult and they're still being formed. But a lot of times there is just a kind of of a kinetic thing that's going on between the actors between the

director between the stage management the people who are who you don't even see in rehearsal who are building your sets making your costumes those people you do see from time to time. But there's something where all the pieces you know the people doing props I mean the people seating the audience there's just some way that everybody's working together and it all just fits in and works beautifully and then of course there are times when you know there's a cat in the attic or a snag in the in the process. And it's not that those things don't turn out well but I don't know it's just something that I know with all my sons. Just personally speaking and I think I can speak for the other actors who I share the stage with that from the very first night we went out. There was something it was like OK there's something going on here that's really interesting because the audience was sitting up in their chairs absolutely alert attentive.

We had a special guest that night he Howard Zinn was a dear friend of mine and also a friend of some of the other cast members and he cowers into her story and yes right. And theater lover and sometimes playwright. And he came to our first preview and he was so extatic afterwards that he just said people are going to just they're going to go crazy over the show he said it's so timely and so important now and he just was such a kind of a guardian angel for us and unfortunately about two weeks later he passed away so we we kept Howard as our guiding light our. And that happens too that there's someone that just inspires you and you kind of think about them and think about doing the show just the way that they saw it you know keeping that show fresh and new. So we were just really I mean it was just a wonderful experience all around that the audiences were so responsive and. David us Bjornson our director was so

terrific to work with in the cast I mean we all just you know everybody just loved each other. It was a hard story to tell him tonight so that's important too when you feel like you have each other to lean on you have that support even though maybe your characters don't get along necessarily in the play. Well let's talk about that hard story to tell because you have more than 30 years of characters floating around in your head. Where do these characters go when you're done with and why they still there. Are you schizo phrenic where are you what's happening inside of that head of yours. Well I think you I don't know I think for me when the when the show is over you sort of put them away but not away like you forget about them and they never come back. I remember working with an older actor a long time ago who said OK this is the last show let's send it up into the ether so it'll just be there when you need it. And and in a way I think you know all those the experiences that I've had in a lot of the really. Incredible characters I've had a chance to play in my career. Oh I can

still remember particular shows on a night when you know this happened or that happened and I think that's probably true of most actors that you get it you store it in some other place I don't know if we have extra gigabytes megabyte I'm terrible and you've got to you've got an actor file in our brain right brain. But but yeah you can you you can call in those memories and also sometimes if you revisit a play it's amazing how much it might come back to you if it's been many years since you've done it which happens often. I guess most often probably with Shakespeare but certainly with other classical plays and just just in the course of a career you might be playing the odds you know in it one day and a few years later you're turned into the mother did you say how do you write. Karen I know that you do great improv. I've seen you do improv specifically when President Drew Faust had a night of the arts and you owe him and as a as a Cambridge traffic cop and gave her a ticket. But

do you ever get tempted as an actor out in the world to just pull out those roles in the grocery store or become another character in your real life where no one knows you. I don't I don't think I'm I'm. I'm a person that necessarily you know wants to go out and do that a lot but oh sure there are times in your life when you know you're on the phone with someone who you need something from you know or a business person or you know something is going on and you can you can find a way to just say I'm just going to sort of channel that nice positive character to get what I want. I mean the meter maid thing that I did the night that we had that celebration for Drew Faust is an old character that I created a long time ago with a group called the next move. We used to have a theater at the first ICAC now there's a new one but this is at the old one and the. And that was a character just based

on you know some of the women that we would see around you give us a little taste of her. I don't know what you're talking about taste. I have a job to do when I you know Course now. Now it's very funny they just push those buttons and make a ticket I liked it when you used to have to write it out longhand and that way you'd be right in the middle of writing it you know and somebody would say Oh you've given me a ticket. You'd be like yeah. Once the pen has touched the paper. That's it pal. And it's funny how many people I mean because I have been around Boston a long time will still come up to me as a oh my god the meter maid. So it's funny how you know sometimes it's not like you're intending Oh I think I'll create a character people will remember but somehow it is something that people remember. Sure so born in Norwood Right. Yes lived there very briefly grew up in South Boston. What did you see around you that nudge you toward this career not necessarily what did you perform but what was happening around you that

alerted you to performance or expression. I think the the fact that my father died when I was about three and a half and that was the reason for my mother and I moving I was the only child from Norwood back into her parent's home in South Boston where my mother grew up and. So I was living in the house with my Polish grandmother and Russian grandfather and I remember at an early age that you know when they would say think they didn't want me to understand things they would speak this sort of it wasn't really polish and I wasn't really Russian It was summer in the middle some pidgin language that they had made up that they understood together. And I do remember when I was a kid you know sometimes coming into my grandmother and just trying to speak to her in that language because I thought well you know I don't understand what she says when she's doing that so I'll say something and she won't be able to understand me. And I think probably because I was an only child for a long time and

that you know I was kind of this grandchild in the middle of my grandparents house and my mom and uncles aunts cousins that there was I don't know I think there was something where I always like to like to listen to records and I like to sing. I remember being sent around the gate of heaven school in South Boston in the second grade to sing detain was from South Pacific and I thought I was very special because I could sing in French. And when we moved to Milton when my mother remarried my stepdad moved us out to the burbs and I enrolled in a theatre a children's theatre program because we moved in the summer all the other kids in the neighborhood were in camp. How old were you. And I was just shy of nine and I was in a play and that was it I was like oh my god I'm home this is where I feel like people understand me and they're like me and they like to get up on a stage in front of people it always felt like a very comfortable place for me.

So lucky for you found that it almost made right. Yeah that's pretty early on. Yeah and I never really changed my mind about it it was what I wanted to do. So why didn't you ever go to New York. Karan What why have you stayed in Boston what kind of theater town is Boston for you. Well Boston was always you know it was my training ground. And when I got to be you and worked in improv for a while and then we began the next movie theater that all there we were in Boston we were working. There was a lot of stuff going on around us the Theater Company of Boston Boston rep. There were all sorts of people like ourselves that were young people trying to get the others going. And eventually I did go to be part of the first company the founding company of the American rep when Robert Bruce came to town and was there for four years but then I did do a move to New York because I figured if I never did if I I probably you know I

should go and see what it was like. And so I was in New York on and off for about 12 years. And I worked some there but but quite honestly I worked more around the country I also wanted to go there to be able to audition for theatres for resident theaters around the country and I got my wish. I mean I worked from California to Chicago to Texas I was in Houston for a couple of years at the Alley Theater and and around New York but I did I think I I kind of got tired of packing my bags and I had an opportunity to come back and work on a couple of shows again and so I did that. And then that turned into here I am and you know so I think Boston has always been. You know it's always felt like home to me but not in a bad way like oh can I get away from this place but. But a really great place to to work you know there's an amazing community of actors here directors and in recent years there have been a lot of smaller

theatres that have started to you know there certainly was a period of time where things were just disappearing. Director in the area when when I asked the director about you said to me I said what about this Karen MacDonald. And the director said she's she's very talented and she sells tickets. You're an institution. You're a brand in Boston. I don't know about that but I'm happy to sell tickets that's why we're that's why we're doing it so people will come and see. All right. Of many of the you know people don't realize in the performing arts in particular in theater if you're an actor if you don't have an audience you don't have a job. Right. Right. And that's been you know certainly a concern in recent years with the economy doing what it's been doing. But I think the hopeful thing is that people people like to be told stories that's really what our job is we're storytellers. We do it simply we do it grandly and

everything in between. But as long as people want someone to tell them a story then there's always going to be somebody sitting in the audience and sometimes it's not as many people as you would like. But but they're there and you know they deserve the performance that. A. Packed house would have. That was actress Karen McDonnell speaking with our arts and culture contributor Alicia Anstead. They spoke in May shortly after Karen McDonnell received the Elliot Norton award for sustained excellence. She's currently directing Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband Glocester stage company. Up next we continue the literary conversation with Shakespeare. Stay with us. Support for WGBH comes from you and from the Office of Cultural Affairs

in Lowell August 12th through the 14th is Lowell's Quilt Festival. You can enjoy a juried quilt show exhibits of antique quilts and much more. A city of world culture. More info at culture is cool work. And from New England nurseries. A family business providing gardening enthusiastic with a wide selection of landscape supplies and services for over 100 years. Route 62 West in Bedford online at New England nurseries dot com. And from Subaru of New England offering the totally redesigned 2010 Subaru Outback with symmetrical all wheel drive. Dealer listing at New England Subaru dot com. Monday morning. What are you going to remember from your weekend. Turns out that only amps and humans have full scale impersonal warfare where masses of individuals go after each other. And that's because ants in human have larger societies than anything else up to millions of individuals. Stories are not going to forget coming up this weekend on the new eighty nine point seven. WGBH radio.

Aug. 30 Merced marking the end of the fiscal year for WGBH This is the time when you pay NPR News interment budgets for special events and get everything in line for the next green year radio if you're given in the past and recently received an envelope in the mail from WGBH. Please return it or save the stamps and renew your WGBH membership securely on line at WGBH dot org and bank with. Y any 9.7. Because the way some kind of run barefoot may be better for their bodies than running in shoes because you'll only hear Marco Werman and the world on the new eighty nine point seven. WGBH radio. Welcome back. I'm Kelly Crossley and this is the Calla Crossley Show. We're working off site today instead of our usual Week in Review. We're rebroadcasting one of our favorite

shows on the arts which was guest hosted by our arts and culture contributor Alicia and Stitt. Here she continues the conversation with KEVIN COLEMAN the co-founder of Shakespearean company in nearby Linux where he also runs the program Shakespeare in the courts a nationally recognized initiative that aims to help juvenile offenders by engaging them in an intensive study and performance of works by William Shakespeare. The program is built around the idea that the timeless words of Shakespeare can speak directly to troubled teenagers. KEVIN COLEMAN welcome. Oh thank you I'm so glad you're here because I have a really big question for you. For many people the language and the poetry from the 16th and 17th centuries doesn't feel universal or transformative it sounds difficult and archaic and frustrating. Why Shakespeare. Daunting the language is daunting if you ask an English teacher what's their most difficult problem teaching Shakespeare in school and they'll say it's the language. But at the same time the

language is what Shakespeare is about and it's the most exciting thing you. I mean you're you're really daunted by it at the beginning but once you start working on it it's like your brain explodes and you go oh my god this is what language could be. This is a 15 course banquet. And what I'm used to is what I'm speak what I used is what I'm used to speaking and reading is French fries. And suddenly this language is really tasty it's it's outrageous it's full of images it's dirty it's everything that I want language to be. If I said so in your work you got to ratch that up a little bit too for the people you're working with because you know it may not be just french fries for them they're a whole different community from what we think of when we go to see a professional Shakespeare play. Just give us not a cast list but tell us who the people are who are in your shows and what they're doing there.

Juveniles that have appeared in front of the judge in the juvenile court and for various reasons he has determined that they would be best served by doing this project so he court orders them to participate in performing a Shakespeare play. Do you know what he's looking for in particular in each of those I mean it's not that many people who get to do this right. No no I know I I mean I have some ideas because I've had many conversations with both judges that I've worked with. But for some of them I think he's he's looking to give them a chance to be outrageous in a positive way rather than in NO in a way that they've determined which is maybe more destructive. But it's he gives them a chance to explode. And in an environment with material in in an art form that

really lets you explode and does it work. Does it work. If it works like mad. But I'll be really clear it doesn't fix that. It's the most difficult thing. Many of them have ever done and they will talk about that and they're terrified. And it's really hard work and it's daunting it's very they find that it makes a huge demand on them on multiple levels physically emotionally intellectually. Vocally it's just so hard and so daunting and so scary that just by going through the rehearsal process and accomplishing that and then accomplishing the performance and then seeing people in their lives

and the court and the police officers and the probation officers stand up and give them a standing ovation. There's there's no other opportunity like this and it change. I can't say it changes them but they change as a result of doing this. They really change and you can see them change. But it doesn't fix them. When when when you're talking about these these young people who are we talking about here. You know another way of asking that is one of the prerequisites to get into this course. What do you have to have done and what is too much to have done I mean is it theft is it assault. What is it. It's theft it's assault. It's all over the spectrum. What we usually do we've had gang members in it what we usually don't see is someone who's had a history of some real violence. I mean that have perpetrated some real violence. They tend to be in lock up and we never see them. And it's also at the other end of the spectrum it's some kids that are desperate for I mean they're

really in need of services. They're really in need of. Being around people that care for them. They're really desperate for a positive experience in their lives. So it runs the whole spectrum. So years ago when I taught disenfranchised to single mothers in Manhattan Shakespeare No kidding. And in the course of teaching them what I realized I couldn't require them to read the book because they didn't have the time to do that but I taught it to them in other ways and I taught portions of each of the plays for sure. Right. So so what I found was that I want to see if this is similar for you to one not every class went as expected because someone might be missing because they are in court and to their perception of the essential themes of Shakespeare was profound.

OH MY GOD YES YES. Why is that what happens there. Because well I think it's just the nature of that that kind of theater classical theater it really delves to the essential questions of human nature and its questions of love friendship. The trail of violence forgiveness hopelessness fear. I mean it's Shakespeare is presenting in his plays characters that are in extreme situations and these kids that work on the text are in extreme situations. I noticed in one of the pieces that I listen to that that you had some contemporary connectors such as at the end of one piece which I'm afraid we don't have time to really listen to today. I was I was hearing the fade out with Marvin Gaye's Let's Get It On.

How important. How important is it to have these contemporary connectors for these young people. I mean that's contemporary to me. You know sometimes I record to them. So how important. It's not it's not so very important. I mean they they kind of think it is at the beginning and we played I mean they brought in music that we play with. We just did Henry the Fifth. And they brought in music and none of it kind of worked for the play I mean weren't we have broad swords in our hands and but there was one section where kind of the idiot characters the NIM the pistol BARDOLPH. They're fooling around and we have hip hop music going in the background and they're doing this dance and they're talking about running away and going a wall from the Army. Well keep doing it even Coleman is the co-founder of Shakespeare and Company in nearby Lenox where he also runs Shakespeare in the courts now celebrating its 10th year. To learn more visit Shakespeare dot org. KEVIN COLEMAN thank you so much for joining us on our day of art it's a pleasure being here. That's our arts and culture.

Here interviewing KEVIN COLEMAN. You've been listening to our rebroadcast on the Arts in Boston. Which originally aired in May. Will be back on Monday with an original show. Until then have a great weekend. This is the kind of books that show production of WGA makes radio works of NPR stations for news culture.