Huntington Theatre; WGBH Forum Network; Peter Ellenstein on William Inge's "Bus Stop"

Today Speaker is Peter Allen Stein. We have a bio of him in the program so I won't read his credits at length but I want to just highlight a few things for you. He's the artistic director of the William enage Center for the arts and in his home state of Kansas. And he's been in that position since 2001. He travels and speaks frequently on William engine on theater nationwide and has worked as a director producer stage manager and actor across the country throughout his career. He holds an MFA from Minnesota state and serves frequently on arts boards panels and committees. We're very pleased to have him with us today. Good afternoon. And there'll be no table service during my speech. William Inge's is a really fascinating playwright. I grew up in the theater my father and brother were both actors and directors and they both ran theaters and I'd known Inge from reading them when I was young. But I didn't realize how good a playwright he was until I got older and began to appreciate the

depth of his characters and the complexity with which he approached life. He's one of the few playwrights who's in my opinion major contribution to the theater is that he studies human empathy and forgiveness and if you look at all of his major works you won't find a single villain. They're all human beings who are flawed. Who are trying to struggle and overcome something. They make mistakes they make mistakes they can't fix and then they move on and and try and go on with their lives and make the best of what they've got. He grew up in. He was born in 1913 in Independence Kansas and he was the youngest of five children. He was the second boy the oldest boy was the star of the family and then later on wrote a book that is mostly a fictional autobiography called my son as a splendid driver that talks all about the family's life and how his brother who was 10 years older than he was died shortly after he'd been married. And I think within a

couple of months of his son being born. So the star of the family died when William inj was 10 years old and he was left to try and fill the shoes. And while his older brother was a man's man and everybody loved him and he was the star. William Inge was was a much more sensitive. He was he collected as is depicted in the dark at the top of the stairs. He collected movie cards of the famous movie stars. He had a rich fantasy life. He liked to dress up in all different characters. He put on plays with his sister in the backyard actually in the in the barn which is now in the garage. And they would charge either a penny or pins in order to get in. And he grew up in a town where where his sensitivity certainly wasn't appreciated he may or may not have known it at the time but he was homosexual in a time when it was not at all except that especially in small town and religious Midwest. And so he always

felt different. I think that that sense of the difference that he felt from people made him in some ways and knowing that he was growing up keeping a secret meant that he was much more acutely aware of other people's secrets and the things that they didn't say and the stuff that they kept hidden during his childhood as his parents had a fairly rocky relationship at times they were not very well off and they had to take in boarders and they took in schoolteachers which is where Picnik comes from. For those of you who know picnic. He actually would sit on the stairs and listen to the conversations of of the boarders coming in and out and the single women talking about their lives and how their lives were so deeply affected by whether or not they had a man at that time. And and what that meant for them in terms of what they could do with their lives and also their status in the community. He later on Wright went on to read a novel called his first novel which was called Good luck Miss Weiskopf which deals with an incident that actually had happened

in his town although it's completely fictionalized. One of the funny things about him is that he uses most of the names that he uses where people from his hometown but he never attached the incidents of the people to their names. And so they wouldn't accuse him that he or. His parents had said at a rocky relationship and in fact when he went off to college he had to come back a year early. Because they ran out of money because they both have gotten syphilis from his father's philandering. And they needed the money for the Mercury treatments in order to. Try to treat them so he had to come back and he went to a little community college there which is actually now the place where the William in center for the earth sits. So he had to wait for a year to go back to school. Little towns in the Midwest I grew up in Los Angeles but I lived for the last 10 years lived in Independence. The people have known each other forever. There is an incredible sense of community which is in many ways quite wonderful but it also means that you live in a fish

tank. Everybody knows what's going on with everybody else and everybody knows what's been going on with everybody else and their families for many many years. And so reputation and what people think of each other is is enormous and even now I talk to people who are still. Viewing their fellow citizens through the lens they viewed them as when they were in high school together and almost not at not being allowed to change. So it's a very very different thing than growing up in a large city and yet the emotions that are underneath it are all still the same. Inj I think he struggled both with his homosexuality and alcoholism and pills throughout his life he attempted to commit suicide a number of times in his life. He went in for treatment to the Menninger clinic to the Riggs clinic in Massachusetts where he became very good friends with William Gibson the dramatist who wrote. The Miracle Worker and gold balcony and two for the seesaw because Gibson's wife had trained at the meeting or

institute and then was a therapist at Doctor psychiatry at the Riggs Institute. And he struggled with his self-acceptance constantly throughout his life. There he had a number of different relationships mostly with men but they were never long lived. He did not in any journals that he wrote and apparently he did write some he destroyed before he died. Everyone will find some some additional letters and things that come across because we also have his complete archive or not his complete archive. But the largest collection of his papers at the center and he. He was a deeply deeply troubled man his whole life. Although everyone who knew him said how kind he was. He was considerate he was thoughtful he was extremely well-mannered. He was quite shy. And. Although in his younger years he'd been an excellent actor. He started to get stage fright in his early twenties and gave up

pursuing acting. But still loved the theater. So when as he was trying to find out what he was going to do after he graduated from Q And I think you'll read in the program an excellent bio that you'll find he went on to try and be a teacher and he was struggling he really wanted to in some way to be involved in the theater was able to through a connection in St. Louis during the war take over a theater critic in St. Louis. Through that he met Tennessee Williams went up and saw the glass menagerie in 1945 in Chicago in its pre Broadway tryout. And it really kind of changed his life he also became very good friends with Tennessee Williams and realized that if Tennessee Williams could write about his family with so much empathy and truth that Inge could do it as well in the first play that he wrote with called farther off from heaven. And it was produced it was actually the very first play produced by Margot Jones in Dallas which was the beginning of the regional theatre movement or one of the big starts of the regional theatre movement and it was a moderately successful play but it still needed

work. And but from that he got an agent named Audrey Wood who was also a Tennessee Williams agent and went on to continue writing. And in 1950 wrote. Come Back Little Sheba which I think was produced in 50 or 51. And that sort of launched his career in the 50s. He was the most successful playwright in America. He outgrowths Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller and and you know O'Niel any of them. He had four hits an hour on Broadway starting with Come Back Little Sheba then picnic which won the Pulitzer Prize by the way if any of you have not seen or read Picnik recently. I urge you to do it. I didn't realize what a masterwork it was until I started working here and and was able to see several productions of it. And there is not a line in the play that doesn't resonate throughout the whole play and the themes of it which again are about choices and regret and forgiveness and empathy. The same thing is true here. Every time I read his work his major works. I'm deeply moved because I recognize

so many things in it that I hadn't heard before and hear them in a different way. And whereas many dramatists write or you know a great story or a release crackling dialogue what Inge did was really explore the human condition through character. And very few of his characters are not nuanced deeply nuanced and you'll find that even their small lines the couple of words that are thrown in here or there. Give you information about their character he's been called the American check off for that reason in that his his you cannot do his plays without doing them really ritually researched and ritually developed in the character if you try and do just the surface of the line can come off kind of pedestrian and surface and you don't get the depth. Of humanity that he really imbues all of his characters with. I mean in this in bus stop. You can see that he does not make anybody a villain. You can certainly find fault with almost everybody on the stage with perhaps the exception of Will masters. But even even

will talks about his own having to come to grips with what he. Had at with what he had done earlier and having to have gone through something in order to be who he was. But everyone else on the stage. None of them are perfect all of them have made mistakes or choices that have left them someplace. No one is fully and completely satisfied. I don't know anybody in life was fully and completely satisfied. But onstage often we're left with pictures of people. Who at the end of the play oh everything is happy or everything is tragic. And Inge didn't see the world that way. Or at least he didn't see the world that way and others he was really able to recognize nuance to recognize that that someone might have made a mistake. But they were growing from it. And I think he spent much of his life and much of his work. Forgiving others in an attempt maybe to forgive himself. For his own failings and unfortunately was never able to do so.

He is following his string of hits which I said was a. Come back little Sheba. Picnic then bus stop which was also a huge hit. Dark at the top of the stairs which is a most autobio biographical play and the dark comes up the stairs. By the way was was a real real look at farther off from heaven. It involved many of the same characters but it was it was much more nuanced. It's a I think quite wonderful play if you ever get a chance to see it. All of those plays were made into major motion pictures. He then wrote a screenplay. Called Splendor In The Grass which won him the Academy Award. It's a wonderful screenplay. He appears in it as the priest. So if you ever want to rent it and see it you can see him in that. And he. He was at the height of his career. But he then the critics started to turn on him. And. Often critics in order to make their own reputations tear down other people's reputations even if they later on go on to become quite wonderful critics. But

you can read so many people who had been who had been critics at times later on apologize for some of things they had written as they were on the way up. Frank Rich in fact the New York Times apologize to all of the all of the playwrights whose plays he had panned and not been generative to when he was writing and said wow I wish I had known then what I knew now and realized how difficult it is to do and not been so quick with my responses. But Inge was. Was devastated by the crash. The one thing in his life he felt like he did really well. And that was he was maybe put on earth to do was to write plays and when the critics turned on him and he had three Broadway flops in a row natural first it was a loss of roses the natural affection. And where's daddy which lasted only a few weeks on Broadway. He. Stopped writing major plays or at least he stopped having them produced on Broadway. He turned to film and TV he ghost wrote a lot of movies that have pieces of his work

in them. And he struggled and he wrote plays and struggled with form because the form that he was so good at which was studying the people of small towns and getting inside of them seemed to now be passe the critics were no longer interested in it in the rough and tumble of the 60s with all the changes going on and he tried to adapt his style and in fact we recently uncovered or I should say just sort of opened the box and looked again at a number of his plays short plays and long plays that he'd written in the late 50s and through the 60s and really some of them we published a small volume of of six of the plays and they're quite interesting because he was really experimenting with different forms to try and find what was going on still in almost all of them. He's deeply empathetic for all of the characters who were who were in the play. There's maybe one or two plays you can. You can look at and say well this really seems like this person is a bad person but it's pretty rare. He didn't see people that way. That might be kind of interesting.

Just so you can get a sense of what his personality is because he had a lovely sonorous voice and he had a great sort of instinct for. The sense of how a place should. Go. And I thought I brought with us we have a few recordings of William inj and we're going to play a little tiny clip. A few minutes long of enjoy reading. A piece of the second act of bus stop. Because it is an animated movie. Dr. Lyman leaves the scene of action repeating the line making his way stumblingly back to the counter. My name is hateful to myself Elma hurries to Dr. Lyman's side and Virgil grabs hold of ball pulls him back to the floor and shames you touch your life in such a manner. My dear let us not continue this meaningless lie. Did I do something wrong. You couldn't possibly do anything wrong if you try. I can try to say the lines differently. Don't don't just tell your audience that

Romeo suddenly is fraught with remorse. He drops to a stool Elmo remaining by him a few moments and certainly both turns to virtual virgin as a way to make love. I'm going to give up Elmo speaks to Virgil. I'm afraid he isn't feeling well. I tried to prompt him but we've only got one more number. She speaks to share. Are you ready. Sure. Ladies and gentlemen I next number is Mademoiselle chéri the international Shantou is direct from the blue dragon night club in Kansas City. Chéri all applaud as she comes forth Virgil playing an introduction for her. VOLP puts his fingers through his teeth and whistles bar. Chéri takes off her robe whispering to Homer. Remember I don't allow no table service to my members OK in the background now we can observe the Dr. Lyman is drinking heavily from the bottle in his overcoat pocket. Sherry gets up on one of the tables and begin singing that

old black magic with the chord accompaniment from Virgil a rendition of the song is a most dramatic one that would seem to have been created from Sherry's observations of numerous tortured singers but she has appeal. And if she is funny she doesn't seem to know that. Anyway she rekindles post most fervent love when she cannot help expressing during her performance Nici beautiful verge show. I'm going to get her verge. I made up my mind. I told myself I was going to get me a gal that's the only reason I ended that rodeo and I ain't taking no for an answer. Oh you hush up and let me be. Anything I ever want in this life. I went out and got and I ain't gonna stop now I'm going to get her. In rage. She jumps down from her table and slaps low stingingly on the face. He ain't got the manners God give a monkey Cherry. If I was a man I'd beat the living daylights out of you and that's what a man's gonna do some day and when it all happens I hope I'm there to see she flashes back to her dressing room with Beau gapes. By this time Dr.

Lyman was drunk himself almost to insensibility and we see him weaving back and forth on his stool mumbling almost incoherently. Romeo Romeo wherefore art thou. Art for. Romeo. He laughs like a loon falls off the stool and collapses on the floor. Elman Virgil rushed to him. Remains roofed and glaring at chéri with puzzled hurt. Dr. Lyman Dr. Lyman The man's in a pretty bad way. Let's get him on the bench. Halman Virgil managed to get Dr. Lyman to his feet his bow glides across the room scales a counter leap and take a sherry in his arms. I was telling Virgil love you got no right to come over and slap me. Let me be. We're going down. Wake up the justice of the peace and you're going to marry me to night. How did you take Sherry in his arms and transport her to the door. Just as Alma and Virgil were helping Dr. Lyman onto the bench. Chéri cries for help. Help Virgil help help show out. I'll make your good husband you won't ever have nothing to be sorry about. Help me help me. Someone help

me. The action is now like that of a two ring circus freshman Virgil whose attention suddenly is diverted from the plight of Dr. Lyman to the much noisier plight of chéri Volk gets her kicking and protesting as far as the front door when it is suddenly opened and both finds himself confronted by the sheriff. Will you mind reading of his work. You can hear your a beautiful voice and a real sense of rhythm and drama. In it. And if. You could tell what. Sort of. Soulful sense he had in each of those characters he really held what they were about. Good question. I mean this so much. We can talk about it about in his work. But what I think may be finding out what you are interested in about him might make. Why do you think that nowadays in his plays are performed as frequently as those of say the bill or Tennessee Williams.

Well I think every major player has gone in and out of fashion. One of the reasons that I believe some of his art is art performed as often as with Arthur Miller you always have the politics involved and the sort of the ideas of the play. He was very much a playwright of ideas much as as George Bernard Shaw was and so those ideas and that social justice and all of those things he talks about don't tend to go out of fashion or of you in the lands of different political things that are going on at any time. With Tennessee Williams. You have. The incredible poetry that he wrote just his use of language which is very attractive with. What you have is a real sense of human frailty but in fairly common and he writes such complex characters that it's very very difficult I think to do him well. And so people who see him done in an amateur theater or in high school will see it is very kind of mundane and when they don't get the depth of everything that's going on. And so

I think that was one of the reasons however he started to have a number of major revivals he had come back little Sheba on Broadway a couple of years ago which was quite a hit. There's talk of a picnic production sorry a bust up a post up a pic but a picnic that's going to be coming. And I think David Kromer the director who is attached who had the recent big hit revival of our town is supposed to be directing. There's talk of one of the published plays which I can't really talk about that may eventually be coming to Broadway in the next year or two at one of the major theaters. And he actually is being done now all over the country. This is a number of regional theaters such as the Huntington. We're doing really nice productions of his work. This was actually done a Kansas City rep just a maybe four six months ago. There's productions all around the country. He's actually being produced quite a lot right now. And he had one of the little plays that we had uncovered called the killing had a very

popular production that sort of got us on the front page of The New York Times about the new plays that we discovered and in the International Herald that was done last summer. At a little theater in New York. But it raised a lot of interest in inj again. So there's actually quite a bit now. Of interest in inj. I don't think he's as he's as much of a household name because he was he disappeared for 20 years. But in the last I would say seven or eight years it's been quite a number of production. I think it's something that Peter Dubois art director was really conscious of when he was thinking about this season. Well he's been thinking about doing this play ever since he arrived almost two and a half years ago. But the sort of resurgence and interest and was definitely part of. Part of that dynamic you have stressed the regional American local origin as well as universal values have these pleas been translated into other languages. Would you say something about international performance success.

They have been translated some I don't know that they've been done a lot recently but they certainly when they were the big hits in in in the 50s got done in a number of other countries and I'm not positive how many different languages. But in most of the major European countries there were translations that were done. I would be asking to know if he was ever done in Russia and I should look into that. I haven't because I think that the Russians would actually really get. What it is because Picnik has an awful lot in common. To my mind with the three sisters and the trying to leave the small town and feeling stuck. And feeling different there. One of the things a great line from. From dark of the top of the stairs which apparently his mother actually said to him was that you're a speckled egg and your mother doesn't know how you got in the nest. And I think she felt that way most of his life that he didn't fit he didn't fit. As so many of the characters in this play don't fit.

I think. I think. That element doesn't it feels like she doesn't fit certainly Dr. Limond doesn't feel as though he fits. Virgil. I don't think feels as though he fits. In with another question. I was interested when you said when the reviews started getting predominantly negative he felt totally broken. What I want to know is was anybody defending him when things started going down. Because what I thought of him in relation to this place last season there was one. Conventional interpretation they did of the Pirates of Penzance. One critic said she didn't like it and she thought it was you know wrong headed for this that the other reason. So one of the spokesman from this place rather than saying well we think she's wrong in this why we think

there's that. Well everybody let's you know overwhelmingly loved it and Miss So-and-So from the globe is just a silly little snob. Everybody right to boss to come and tell him that was anything like that happening back that I don't was before it were like before the Internet. Well it's interesting it's one of the reviews that was the big review that devastated him. It was not a review it was a it was actually an article that was done on him I think in Harper's and it and it went after his saying he was a fiddle with one string and saying that all of his female characters were the same. And it went after him and it deeply hurt him and some of his friends told him you should call him up and give that critical piece of your mind and he called him up. Got him on the phone. And said. This is William Inge. And then broke down in tears and and hung up is a really devastating thing. I think he certainly had his defenders at the time of some of the directors that were there but they didn't have an

organ a national organ to put it out there and it almost doesn't matter when you're somebody who is so extraordinarily sensitive. You don't hear the applause. You only hear the boom. So he can say even though plenty of people still appreciated him. He considered the glass half empty rather than half full. Oh absolutely. Yeah yeah. Yeah he felt well he immediately believed they were right. If you don't have good self-image any way anybody tells you you're worthless. You believe it. Yeah yeah I think that's exactly right. The Harper's article was of course by Boston lyin Robert Proustian. And sort of an interesting side note. Having lived in another small Kansas town. I wonder how it's accepted in independence at that time today. Well it's an interesting story. He was not very well accepted at the time he was thought of is I don't know that he was certainly thought of as different by most of the people he had several really close friends. It's very interesting what I find in small towns. I'm making a

broad generalization is it that people are very very proud of the town. And they're very proud if someone makes the town famous but they don't always like the person who did it. So they'll take the credit in essence and change came back many times. But he often would only sneak into town to see his friends. But he was always wanting acceptance in the town. He tried desperately to get picnic. And splendor in the grass to be shot in independence because he had set them in independence and in fact his home which he grew up in which there William and Senator William ingestible foundation owns is the setting for picnic in the dark at the top of the stairs and he would have been nothing that he would have rather loved than to have his town celebrate him. He did give permission for them to name the theater at the college after him. And but even in 1990 late 70s I think it was. There was this there was a big debate as to whether they should let the theater of the campus be named after him because he was you know a degenerate and you know.

So finally it prevailed to two and that was only 30 years ago. But now we're the festival is it is maybe the first words out of the mouth of the Chamber of Commerce there. We have hundreds of volunteers who support it. The woman who founded the William institue fifth with a very close friend of a steam engine named Margaret go here who is a much beloved theater teacher and had been a fellow student with inj at the college and she was able to galvanize just enormous support and in fact the William instead of that was named the State Theatre Festival of Kansas last year by the legislature and Governor Kathleen Sebelius who is now our labor secretary of Health and Human Services. Curious So with respect to his self-criticism and sensitivity and what seem like an introspection. With respect again to the I think it was the professor who talked about the possibility

considered whether he should go into psychoanalysis. And it occurs to me now hearing what you say about inj whether he did consider the same thing himself. And if he did did he go into psychoanalysis he was in psychoanalysis several times both at the Menninger. Clinic and then also at Riggs. He tried a bunch of different cures. He unlike Tennessee Williams who was much more accepting of his own homosexuality inj was not he he he. Thought he could be potentially could be cured of any kind of accepted at the time it was viewed as a mental illness rather than as something that you just were. And he even if he didn't think that was true. He believed that he wanted to be except that it was so difficult especially in a small town to be gay at that time. You know it just was not spoken about and colored everything and all of the people he grew up with and his. His

family the fact that that he was known as a drinker or anything. Reflected on his family which of course was huge as well even if he had difficult relations with his family. So it was it was a he was in it and he was in and out of psych psychiatrist offices a lot. And then he gave it up and then he tried it again with someone different and there was a psychiatrist who is a bit of a. Crank who treated an awful lot of people theater people back in the in the 50s and 60s who I don't know if he was a crank he just wasn't very good. And and just whatever techniques he was doing were not working for most of the people and policies because he was trying to cure something that's incurable with some of them. So it's not a disease. It's just who you are you know. Thank you. Sure. I think we probably have time for a final question or two. If there's that last question that question was about sort of the faithful ness of the transfer of plays to movies and then they're sort of successes

to varying degrees. They were faithful. The movie of bus stop is probably the least faithful of any to the to the script. There's things of engine it takes place half half of it takes place outs or more outside of the bus stop prior to it. They do all the backstory and things and they really turned it into a star vehicle for Marilyn Monroe as opposed to it being the ensemble piece that it really is on the on the stage. They did a pretty a pretty good treatment of Come Back Little Sheba. The picnic is is pretty close. With the exception that they cast you know William Holden who was 37 to play a 23 year old and it kind of skewed the whole balance of the movie it made it a very different story than a young guy he turned him into a bad guy because this older guy seems more like a rake and a troublemaker as opposed to a struggling young man. And so although a lot of people really love that movie for me it really takes away some of what Enge. He didn't write the screenplay for any of those

films The only but he did write Splendor in the grass. And so that very much is and Aliya Khazan was a close friend of his directing it and they collaborated on and I think that very much came out the way that he would have liked it dark at the top of the stairs has some lovely things in it. Shirley Knight is wonderful. In it. As the as the young girl of the daughter. But that mix of faithfulness but it did give him an awful lot of money. That's the wonderful thing about the theater is you know. For those of you who may not know that in the theater the the playwright controls what is on the stage you cannot put anything on the stage according to the drama it has killed guild conflict or say anything that the playwright doesn't give you permission to say in the movies you sell the script to the producer and they can do whatever they want with it. And so that's why it's really a director's medium and a producer's medium whereas the stage is really the medium of the playwright. Thank you all so much for coming in. Thank you to our

speaker