The Stages of Preston Jones

This is Sonia Beasley in the New York studio of the BBC and today I'm talking to playwright Preston Jones from Dallas, Texas. Preston Jones for some 12 or 13 years, you were an actor and director at the Dallas Theatre Centre in Texas. Then you sat down and wrote three plays, a Texas trilogy and in a very short space of time they were being produced in theaters all over the country. They were a sellout this summer in Washington and now here you are on Broadway already acclaimed as America's best new playwright. How do you feel about the success that these plays have brought you in the publicity that surrounds you now? Well, it's been real.

Very rewarding, of course. I mean, it's been very exciting. It's something that, you know, if you're in the business, you dream about it, you know, about it happening. It's been very like a dream, really. It's just last year's been a real dandy. I didn't have to go on the go, you know, ever since we started casting here in New York and on into Washington and then back to Washington. Now, you know, today's the day in New York, and I don't know about all this prior claim. The proof is in the pudding, and the whole pudding goes on the night, I guess. It just overwhelmed with the automobiles and all the people on the sidewalks, and all the kind of costumes, kind of like carrying all different kind of parcels. There's no boy going on this group, there's a push thing, so I'm talking.

You know, it's very interesting, interesting city. I don't remember the guy who used really used to it. It's just a two way to cosmopolitan corner again. I don't know that actually work here as far as riding. I'd have to be back if I don't know if you'd have to. I was born in Albuquerque in New Mexico in 1936, and I grew up out in the country. I had a home just a little bit outside of Albuquerque in those days. Today, I was probably right in the big middle of it. And then, in the way, all the work came along course, my brother went. My two sisters married and were off, so I was mostly, but those times alone, every ginormal, I had normal home life.

After I took my undergraduate degree, I wasn't going to graduate school, and I got a job working on a highway department in Colorado City here in Texas, and I liked that part of the country very much. And so when I started riding, I was wanting to set the plays in West Texas in Colorado City, of course, and became the perfect setting for them, because I'd been there, I'd worked there. I knew a lot of people there. This became just the natural setting for me to use that little town as more or less as Bradley did. I was really, after the whole West Texas kind of feeling an atmosphere. I guess it was one of the things that got me to riding Luanne Hempton,

Lafferty Oberlander, looking back on the people of the state, different places that I live in. Here in Luanne, she's talking about being in the town and about how it sort of affected her. She's staying in this little town all the years, and this friend of ours comes back when I was talking to her, like I was talking before. And he asked Luanne about why she'd ever left, why she stayed in Bradleyville, and she says, I did leave once, I got as far as Snyder. Oh, I don't know, Billy Bob, I suppose I never did think much further than this here, town, ever anchored to. You recollect that time, and you and me was supposed to go to the senior picnic, and I run out on you, went to San Angelo with old Dale Lafferty. Well, I think maybe it was there that my life just sort of dug itself in.

And they found a little hollow to stay. You went on to the college, all those other places, but I just started to stand him still. I run out on a picnic and ran straight into a rut, you might say. Even old Corky couldn't pull me out on the rest of the soul. Billy Bob says to her, it's a waste of the Lord's time to dwell on the past, Luanne. And she says, oh, sure. The Lord's got lots of time to waste. It's us, the clock runs down on. But I've been at the University of New Mexico. And when I first entered the University, I wasn't really interested in drama as a career at all. And I was in the fraternity there at school, and at the University.

And I used to always had a thing every year. They'd call it stunt night. And you would write little scripts. And all the fraternity would compete. And so it fell to me to write the scripts and to kind of directly the shows. And it must have been my junior year. The director of the theater at the University of New Mexico has asked me if I would try out for a play. They were at the University Theater, and I didn't got the part and sort of got the bug. I came to Texas in 1960 to begin graduate work with Paul Baker who had founded the Dallas Theater Center three years before. Everyone that becomes a member of the resident company must be able to do two or three things very, very well. He came as an actor and worked as an actor, but when he's not working as an actor, those several first several years, he was working in the shop, building scenery,

working in the property shop, working in the box office, and then he began working as a director. That's all right. That's perfect. For a long time, I thought of myself primarily as an actor. I think that acting is a very good thing for anybody in the theater, whatever branch you're in because it disciplines you. I was very nervous and apprehensive when I was first on the stage, and I would try several tricks. I used to carry a matchbook or something and hide it in my hand and cool around with it so that I could work off some of my nervousness in front of the audience while I was there in the role. After a while, I discarded the matches and just did the role in my old lethargic way. I met my wife Mary Sue when I first came to the theater center. She's heavily involved in it too. She's a very fine actress and designer. I don't know how long we've been here really before we were cast and sister, but I noticed right away

that he gave greatly on stage. From the beginning, I noticed a strength, a kind of magnetism, he loves to talk, he loves to listen, he needs to be around groups of people. I'm plastic. I'm plastic. You knit. Get out of it. You'll issue. I thought you were trying to bargain the two team over. What did you move the board? No, no, no, no. Go ahead. No, no, no. I'm going to get serious. Oh, blast. He does not worry about tomorrow or next week. He lives very much in the present with his eyes sometimes turned toward the past. I think that's the writer in it. I'm sure it's an individual thing. I've never really talked to other actors in depth about this, but it always seemed to me that you put yourself as an actor so much into the show

that it's almost like cotton candy. It's an important thing. That's when I started working on my sculptures. I felt that through all five or six years in the theater that I wanted to create or do something a more permanent way. It's cool. Something you've written is a tangible thing that you can get a hold of and look at and see that you've done it. I've always really wanted to write in three years ago now. One of them, I haven't got this idea. I've had it in the back of my mind for a long time about this girl in a West Texas town. I'm just going to page by page and a mistake on the stake. I would find myself going up blind alleys with it and coming back again. But the idea was there. When Mr. Baker saw it, he was very excited about it.

I took it to my apartment and put it on his shelf and didn't look at it for a couple of weeks. Then one night, I couldn't sleep so I woke up about three o'clock and got up and said, oh, well, the miles will read that script or look at it and I couldn't put it down. It was, I believe, the first one was Lou and Hampton Laverdi, overlander. I was terribly excited about it and I started to rest over to talk to him about the script. And just a short time after that, he gave me, must have been a month later or a couple of months. Preston probably knows by then I do. He gave me a second script of the last meeting, the nights of the white Magnolia. So we decided that the thing to do was do them in the Down Center stage in a small theater, sitting 55 people. It was an opportunity, as I mentioned earlier, in college, that was a cap of alpha. It was during the 50s and they had great lists out of subversive organizations and some of them were really weird. But I ran into this name,

it was called the Knights of the White Communion. What interested me was, how does any organization just stop? I mean, surely there's got to be a last place where the last guys get together. That got me going on this place, last meeting in the Knights of the White Magnolia. held the Alexander to the Imperial Wizard and everything was really broken out. At the end of the meeting, people have run out, people have left, people have got mad at each other and the only people left in the room at that time are Red Grover and L.D. Alexander. L.D. says to Red that although things are looking bad right now, the brotherhood, you see the idea is still going to continue. Red says the brotherhood. My God, the brotherhood, Jesus Christ, L.D. wake up, get back on the goddamn planet. The brotherhood ain't anymore. The brotherhood ran out of here with Ronnie Roy and Milo, the brotherhood fell on its ass with Skip over there.

The brotherhood got carried out of here with a diagonal man. There ain't going to be no stake at Knights of the White Magnolia because the Knights of the White Magnolia idea is gone. Finish. Oh, Worston. So, I guess it just leaves you, L.D. Only true believer. L.D. Alexander, supermarket manager and keeper of the White Magnolia. Let me tell you something, the White Knight Imperial Wizard. You know, put down all the sun's abitian freedom writers and mine already bastards all this crap anymore. You've got to look for the loopholes pal. And all the men are segregationists who walk about lunch rooms and schools all they want. In my place, I simply reserve the right to refuse service to anybody. Look for the loopholes that have been held. A lot of people have been held in the town. A lot of people have been held

in the town. I ain't going out there for now. You might as well be the one who's going over there. A lot of people have been in the town. A lot of people have been in the town. It was Chicago. Oh, Chicago. California is sweet. Baby Reynolds, y'all. Lookin' good there, Debbie. Lookin' good. And then we got a man standing on our mark, Marky. Hey, Texas. Trilogy. Pretty exciting. Pull in, play as somebody. Right, but then Edward, costume's a game. And then everybody over landers. Yeah. Lookin' good. New York. Lookin' good. Very nice pictures. I'll send him more to him. Good picture, Louis. And here they're giving me this billboard once the thing closes down. Huh.

And then he held it on. Well, I completed these two plays and just sort of became academic that put the third one in and make it a trilogy. And I consider really a lot of alternatives before I wrote oldest living graduate. I had, you know, I thought I might be writing a play about some of the other characters that I had written in Magnolia's and La Land. However, the people who had seen these plays were so taken with the colonel. And in one part, one point in last meeting in the Knights of the White Magnolia, I talk briefly about the colonel's family. So, using that, I started to work then on oldest living graduate. Well, the thing that's always bugged me that stays with me constantly is time and time and its effect on not only on people's lives but on the environment they live in. And the positions of times far as people are concerned like a woman

and her child, you know, and given a space of time then the woman becomes a grandmother, the child becomes the mother. It's very, very interesting, very interesting thing there. That's, of course, the universal theme in the stage with us all of time. And I touch with it a little bit in oldest living graduate when the colonel starts talking about things that he remembers and times that have gone by. And he says the things I've seen and remembered in this country is all gone now. Even the sounds of things is going to try. Even the sounds of things. The creek and noise of saddles used to make when it went to work for the morning in the Ellen Dogs barking horses stomp them snorting and farting around. Sometimes we'd round up and corrals some of the stock. A few deer would get mixed up

with a bunch. We'd close a corral gate and then damn deer just jump over the fence and run off. Well, a cattle would just stand around looking dumb and stupid. I like working on that ranch. Maybe I should have stayed there and jumping the fence and running off all over the damn world. Philippines, Mexico, France. But then if I had enough, I would never got to serve with a blackjack. I got that with something alright. Everyone have heard of you and around bird forest never would have never made Mike. Mike. Yes, sir. I am the oldest living graduate that the mirror bow be the mar military cadence. Did I hell of a note? oldest living graduate.

I bet she didn't know that. Did you? Mr. Baker and the staff of the theater center and invited producers and directors and agents from all the country to come to these shows. Everything started to come together for me then. Alan Schneider who wound up directing the trilogy in New York saw the shows and interested the arena theater and the opera wood who is now my agent saw the plays and put me under contract with the agency that she works for. I felt that this man had his own approach to a part of America that I thought had never been covered yet in the American field and having worked with

I felt the Jones and what he was saying was uniquely his own method his own way I was also very excited about the fact that he was an actor who was just beginning to write and the idea that man at this age who hadn't written before could write this well was was the answer I thought best suited to understand Preston to work with and he works and it has been perfect relationship well actually the greatest riders and the the the richest part of the work was an expression of that area now if the expression itself

is going to be richer and deeper than someone less town and therefore it becomes a fact said to me did I feel at Preston's regional qualities would expand and I said they have already expanded the fact is that at this point his life his life the the universality that goes quite beyond whether it's West Texas or New Mexico or wherever it may be Chris yes when you are happy to say your life right well now you deal with a specific moment in the life of the specific individual and hopefully if that's truly that's truthful and serious and intense and shape

in some way it will be universal but you can't start off by saying this is some kind of universal cosmic large scale grandiose thing no it's a very small specific particular person at this moment and that's what you deal with always and which is always what which is really what the director does is paramount or is the overall problem and the one that we struggle with and as we get closer opening one simply finds more more details to deal with to accomplish that rhythm we went to Washington when it opens there in some ways I was more nervous about the Washington opening than I was the New York opening I am in in an audience in a theater that sizable the design

everything was new about it at that point and that that it was really remarkable fact the place had a tremendous amount of coverage and in the summer before it went into New York bob really nice to close the play down so there's no news about the play and then take it into New York he debated that there's no way to really avoid all this quantity of publicity that's come from California and Chicago and all over the country the amount of this coverage began to be a could we build up expectations too much in New York it was not much different than tense opening here

i mean you had the same kind of tension there was just more of it three shows in a row pressed and said that he might not ever write a trilogy again for that reason because no one should have to go through the the kind to some change yeah okay we take this take be very good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good I mean you you know but you know uh for tonight sir ico

you you wanna you it you you know Thank you very much and we You know, you're a good boy. You're a good boy. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. How'd you feel? Great. You got a fair way, friends. Oh. No. You're in to the room. Yeah. Can you please bring your paper in? No, no, no, no, no. You don't want to say that. I mean, just back here. OK. Say you're getting under. I'm down. I'm up here. I'm down. I'm down. I don't know what to do. No, you know. I want to do it. I want to do it. Good night. Can I ask you for people to get a little closer this way? Sure. I'm just going to do this. I'm going to do this right here. Lovely. Great. Perfect. Thank you. Looking good.

Looking good. Thank you. All right. Five. Those two. Hey, Josh. Look at your mind. Thank you. Thank you. Oh wrong. Are you with a one? First me's got a handle on my eyes. Can you get the right hand? Turn it, sir. Somebody go over. OK. It's a new play called Luanne Hampton Library Overlander, and Stuart Klein was on the aisle

at the Broadhurst Theatre. Luanne Hampton is the first of three plays collectively titled A Texas Trilogy by Preston Jones, a gifted brilliant new playwright. New York viewers sort of split the difference on the plays, something that liked them very much. They hadn't wanted to attest to them. I don't know why. I don't know why. But, where the power lies is in those big papers in New York, and we just didn't get by them very well, or well enough to continue. The plays closed, they closed after five weeks, like a sixty-some production. And the thing that, you know, hurt us the most, I suppose, was the reviews. I hate to see the plays closed so soon because of the actors, and they're really tremendous work they put into the play, and the belief they had in the plays. But like Arthur Miller says, it comes with the territories, a weird business.

And you never know that maybe the next play will run a long time there. Maybe I won't even consider going in New York again with it. But it's been something that I'll never forget. And I have no absolutely no intention of stopping. I'll go once again into the breach with this new play of mine, a place on the Magdalena flat, and if region is thrown at me again, well, there I am again, folks. I feel sometimes there's a line that people remember in Lulann, and Charmaine goes to see her father, her father, mother, and divorced. And I don't know if you remember the line or not.

Charmaine says, well, I don't know really what I expected. She had, once we had never seen her father, she's, and she goes to San Angelo the next town where her father works for a livestock calling company, and she just sees him. She doesn't talk to him anything. She goes back, she's telling her, her uncle, I don't know what I expected, but damn sure weren't a big old fat man leading up against a greasy semi, and smoking a cigarette and probably thinking about nothing at all. Well, my analogy for that was, I don't know what I expected, but it damn sure weren't a bunch of fatal critics leading up against a greasy city, smoking cigarettes, and probably thinking about nothing at all. How do you go to your way?

Yeah. Okay.