Reflections of Another Place

It's not that New Paltz doesn't occupy a unique niche in my consciousness. It's not that I'm getting old and everything reminds me of something from the past. It's not, I repeat not, that I'm hung up on the little town where I grew up, where "all the women were strong, all the men were good looking, and all the children were above average." The little town where I grew up--Fairhope, Alabama--was full of nice people, some of them smarter than others, but almost all were a little off-center.

After I left Fairhope for good I was so haunted by the way it used to be I began writing about it. I had written about it before on my blog "Finding Fair Hope," in which I often philosophied not only about the town but about the concept of combining "fair" and "hope" in one place. My first book of recollections was written in collaboration with Robert E. Bell, and entitled after his book The Butterfly Tree, which was a novel about some of the eccentrics he had run into in the town in the early 1950s. Our book Meet Me at The Butterfly Tree covered some of the same ground and included letters we had sent to one another. Bob never lost his fantasies about the town and I felt Meet Me at The Butterfly Tree was hostage to those fantasies, so I rewrote it and retitled it The Fair Hope of Heaven, alluding to the utopian vision of the founders of the town.

The Fairhope of my childhood was unpolished and bare, a haven for seekers of all kinds of dreams. It was attractively located on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay, where sunsets were spectacular and by all rights dreams were destined to come true. Unfortunately, dreams so seldom do come true as we imagine them that many people over the years came to be disillusioned with Fairhope, and as they did so, they left, only to be replaced by a new crop of people with something else in mind entirely.

It is now highly decorated, highly focused, and highly productive. A horticulturist changes out flowers on every street corner on a regular basis, and establishments move in with alarming alacrity to capitalize on the town's tourist population. Events are frequent and well-organized, money is flowing in, and everybody claims to be ecstatically happy. This is something that would astound and probably not please the founders. I can only speak for myself. This is not an aspect of the new Fairhope that pleases me very much.

I miss the smattering of genuine eccentrics who used to walk around in odd clothes or with beards and/or bare feet. I miss the give-and-take of honest debate, the lifelong feuds and making-up. I miss the forums and the fire of conflict on philosophical subjects.

In New Paltz I see something similar to the Fairhope I recall. There is a contained smallness to the community, interesting offerings at the library and the local amateur theater. There is a scruffiness, an almost-bohemian savoir-faire.  Its resemblance to my childhood home is heartwarming to me. It has an authenticity that cannot be papered over by the influx of too much money and too little taste. I have fair hope for it.

I Changed the World Yesterday

It was a little hard to sleep last night. I wasn't uncomfortable. I wasn't overwrought. My mind was racing, however. I had just changed the world.

When I grew up in a little Southern town (Fairhope, AL, pop. 3,000) in the 1950s, I attended a radical private school where children played freely and had lessons out of doors as often as possible. Folk dancing and arts-and-crafts were required courses along with traditional academic subjects. Fairhope had been founded as a utopian community in the 1890s, to demonstrate the efficacy of Henry George's theory of the single tax, and from its inception it attracted reformers of just about every stripe. My school was founded by Marietta Johnson, whose name was a household word in her lifetime, and is all but forgotten today. Along with the other personages who inhabited early Fairhope, Mrs. Johnson was convinced she could save the world.

I've come and gone to Fairhope many times over the years. I returned to live when my husband retired in 1988. For most of the 19 years I remained, I was haunted by the village Fairhope once had been, the school itself in its glory days, and the ghost of Marietta Johnson. I worked at a museum honoring Mrs. Johnson and while there was instrumental in getting a statue of her erected in a prime beauty spot on the bluff overlooking Mobile Bay. I was on the board of managers of the school and planned its 100th reunion in 2007. I wrote a book called Meet Me at the Butterfly Tree, celebrating the town and the characters who set it apart in my memory. I envisioned the book as a sort of Lake Wobegone Days with a single-tax slant.

Then I left. I moved back to the Northeast, but Fairhope really never left me. I began to write about the Fairhope I remembered, revising Meet Me at the Butterfly Tree and titling the new version The Fair Hope of Heaven. Then I went to work on a novel set in Fairhope in 1921-22, about a young schoolteacher who moves to Fairhope to work with Marietta Johnson. I didn't intend the book to be about Mrs. Johnson, but she let me know she had to be a major part of any book about Fairhope in that day.

That Was Tomorrow was first released as an eBook, but is now available in paperback. I am in Fairhope promoting sales, and I yesterday I gave my second talk about the book, this time at the Marietta Johnson Museum. Excitement was so high at this talk, which was attended for the most part by educators (maybe 40 of them), that even I was caught up in the revival spirit. The school has not been thriving in recent years, and the prospect of a new director is always a shot in the arm. The incoming director was at my talk--an upbeat, capable lady for whom we all have high hopes. She will be running the school officially as of January 2014.

Yes, it was hard to sleep last night. This director says she was inspired to take the job after reading That Was Tomorrow. People here are snapping up the book like hot cakes. Everywhere I speak there are intelligent, concerned questions from old-timers and newcomers alike, and I feel as if I have changed the world. I'll let you know how it goes. Maybe I'll even pay for the publication of That Was Tomorrow, but if I don't break even it will have been worth it to have a shot at changing the world.

Hearts and Souls

I haven't been involved in theatre since--when? 1996, when we wound up Jubilee Fish Theatre with a few seasons of A Christmas Carol, and my longtime steady stage manager, directing, had a meltdown and bawled me out because his actors disappointed him? Or was it my swansong when I played Kate in Dancing at Lughnasa at the local amateur theater in Alabama? Whatever it was, time went by and I wasn't doing that anymore. I drifted away from the theatre, the love of my life. I had burned myself out, invested and lost my own money, and just didn't have the heart to keep it up.

At that time, my daughter had told me she was pregnant, and I knew my life was changing for good. A grandchild was a new responsibility, and Alison needed all the emotional and every other kind of support I could muster for her. I couldn't keep throwing money at my theatre, which was foundering anyway, never having found solid sponsorship except for a few donors and myself. There is only so long you can go on beating a dead horse.

In 2006 I left Alabama and moved back to the Northeast. I chose the wonderful city of Hoboken, New Jersey, and was exhilarated by being close enough to visit my daughter and two grandsons often and get to New York to plays as often as I liked. At first I went to plays all the time. I met the two women who ran a local theatre and we hit it off. I even won four free tickets to a great off-Broadway comedy and took the two of them along with me. There was no real place for me in their theatre, but I wrote reviews of their shows for my Hoboken blog and they came to count on me to do that. I still get hits on some of those posts.

In New Paltz I met Ann Citron, a local theatrical type who is Managing Director of the Rosendale Theatre Collective, and she asked if I might be interested in either appearing in their annual fund-raising Short Play Festival, or in directing a couple of the plays. I hadn't done a play in 15 years and really had sort of given up on it. I love the theatre with a love that brings me to tears, but, except as an audience member, didn't even think about being involved again. Without thinking, I told her that maybe I would.

The Short Play Festival is very well managed. It has a routine, a machinery that I was unfamiliar with. There are three directors of the plays, and a contest for the best 10-minute play on the given theme (this year: The Movies) is held, seven to nine plays selected, and auditions are held for the actors. The three of us sorted out the best-written plays that best fit the theme and cast the actors, having one week of intense rehearsal time to get the show on the boards. I knew such an endeavor would have to be chaotic, but it has been pretty smooth, considering all the things that could go wrong. All my experience in the theatre has taught me to roll with punches I could not have anticipated.

I've whipped you through the process fast, but indeed it goes fast. We are at the end of the second week and our short plays will open tonight. I'm directing one of my new local heros, the hilarious Doug Motel, about whom I've written a blog post here. Christa Trinler, a beautiful actress who, it appears, can do anything she's asked--from over-the-top farcical comedy to tender relationship plays, is in two of my plays, working with  two of the most talented young actors I've ever worked with.

One is Stephen Balantzian, a theatre teacher at SUNY New Paltz, and the other is Sean Marrinan,
who has a list of professional credits as long as his arm. The talent pool of artists, actors and writers here is astonishing and delightful.

There have been few bumps and most of them were in my own head. I was on familiar ground but not accustomed to handing the reins over to managers, technical experts, and the support system that is in place in a more ideal company than any I ever created. I just hoped I got it right--and from the word go, I saw that my actors were going to pull this off.

If you're in the New Paltz-Rosendale area this weekend, drop by the Rosendale Theatre tonight or tomorrow night at 8, or Sunday at 3. I promise you laughs and a heartwarming feeling of community doing what it knows how to do and loving every minute of getting together for events like this. You may see me around, kvelling in the background and feeling lucky to be where I am.

Oh, that grandson is 18 now. His grandma has taken him to a lot of plays in the city and he and his 15-year-old brother bring a lot of joy into their grandma's life. So, it would seem, does the Rosendale Theatre Collective.

Pencils With Erasers

One the the first lessons I learned as an aspiring actress was a practical one: Always bring a pencil with an eraser to rehearsals. Simple.

When you're walking around with a script in your hand, writing the stage directions in the margins of your script, as dictated by your director and duly recorded by the stage manager--and to which you are expected to adhere as rehearsals progress--that lead pencil is all-important. The eraser as much so, maybe more, because these original moves are likely to be changed.

Insecure in my early days, I used the blocking of the movements as a safety net. Knowing where I was standing and when I moved to which exact point on the stage was my security blanket. I found I remembered lines in relation to where I was when I said them. For the first years I worked as a neophyte thespian I was stiff as a board, bound to the moves and concentrating on all the wrong things to protect myself against the right ones, that is, trying to make it look as if I knew what I was doing while making myself as impervious as possible to emotion. Spontaneity and improvisation terrified me. I don't know how I ever got cast, but I suspect it was in spite of my rigid adherence to blocking. I took Alfred Lunt's advice to actors ("Speak in a loud clear voice and don't bump into the furniture") literally and was confident that if I could do nothing else I could do that. I always carried a pencil with an eraser, too, so I could record the changes from above and not move a muscle I wasn't told to.

Years later I learned (seat-of-the-pants, the way I learn most everything) to direct plays. My first admonition to actors, stage managers, all people who show up at the early rehearsals, was "Bring a pencil with an eraser." It is important even if the actors are not as tied to blocking as I once was. Details must be written down, even if they will be changed soon after.

I was founder of The Little Theater of Geneva, an American community theater in Switzerland, and saw to it that everybody showed up at rehearsals with pencils with erasers, and, in case somebody didn't, the stage manager had a stash of them to dispense. Later, back home in Fairhope, Alabama, I was founding director of Jubilee Fish Theater, an Equity theater based in my hometown. In both jobs I was in charge--selected the plays, cast them (sometimes in NYC with professionals) and directed almost all of them. I was in one or two myself. The buck stopped with me and I had to do a lot of the tasks usually taken by others in the smooth-clicking machine that is theater.

Landing in New Paltz, all that was a few years in the rear view mirror. I had attended a lot of Broadway and off-Broadway shows while living in Hoboken, but the local theatre there was small and didn't really have a place for me. I wrote reviews of their shows on my blog "Finding Myself in Hoboken."

I connected early on when I got here with the cozy Rosendale Theatre Collective. Lunch with Managing Director Ann Citron bagged me an invitation to join the group

Stephen Balantzian and Christa Trinler, rehearsing "Titanic"

s Short Play Festival as a director. We hit it off and I am on two committees as well as directing three ten-minute original plays that will be seen July 5, 6, and 7 at the Rosendale. The show is expertly run and the plays are first rate. I am thrilled with my actors, but I confess a little apprehension the first time I met with the cast for the first of my shows. Did I still have it? Would I convey the authority to direct these young pros? Am I over the hill, or will my ideas strike them as hokey and old-hat? I would bring pencils with erasers to the first rehearsal to show them the way we used to do it in the old days.

I needn't have bothered. The pair showed up, raring to go and cooperative on every level. And they brought their own pencils, with erasers.

Just Around the Corner

The park above symbolizes Rosendale to me; beautiful, peaceful, with something wonderful just out of sight, just around the corner.

Around my corner is the Short Play Festival. It's a presentation of original ten-minute plays about movies. We're well into the planning stage, having read some first-rate scripts, auditioned excellent actors, and awaiting our first rehearsals later this month. Such a project requires expert organization and intense coordination, but the team of directors (of which I am the newbie) is working together like a well-oiled machine that enjoys what it's doing. We've met together to talk it over and I'm scoping out the territory while being scoped out at the same time. My companions on the team know the lay of the land and are hoping--as only theatre people can hope--that I shall fit in and provide a new voice for future festivals. I join them in that aura of hope.

The plays we've chosen are excellent. Most are two-handers but two are monologues. The show will be rounded off with an original song about falling in love at the movies (and learning you're a lesbian), and a ten-minute documentary film about the productions. There are love stories, spat stories, a didactic lecture by the ever-exuberant Doug Motel, family-unit stories and stories about people actually making a film. Something for everyone. I'm directing one about a couple in the process of natural childbirth while discussing the merits of the movie TITANIC; a discussion of acting styles between a hilariously demanding movie director and his clueless starlet--and the third one is a monologue by the one-man dynamo that is Mr. Motel teaching a class in Film 101.

I search my soul as I get back into directing plays. I found a few old resumés that remind me of how many times I've done this--as producer-director of The Little Theater of Geneva and at Jubilee Fish Theater in Fairhope, Alabama--and how well I did--and how much fun it all was. And meeting my professional-level actors I am certain that the work is not going to be difficult. In fact, it's going to be fun for all of us.

Writing this, I can't help hoping you are somewhere in the Rosendale NY area, and will be around for the show, which will run July 5, 6, and 7. It is a fund-raiser, and it's going to be a hit. In the meantime, I'm getting back to work.

How Great Is This Gatsby?

I went with my friend Georgette to the local cineplex to see the new Baz Lurmann version of The Great Gatsby. The movie had to show me a lot, as I am a fan of the book and was not a fan of the 1974 version with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow.

I carped about the casting: Leonardo DiCaprio, although a fine actor, didn't have the suggestion of a hidden past as say, a younger Jon Hamm or Johnny Depp might. Carey Mulligan wasn't pretty enough to be the decorative trophy Gatsby wanted and I required. Tobey Maguire was a little too eccentric to portray the bland narrator, Nick Carraway. My nephew, Will Friedwald, jazz columnist and popular music expert, had written a column outlining the very specific songs F. Scott Fitzgerald had woven into his book, and he objected to the anachronistic interpolation of new tunes and even Rhapsody in Blue (which was written years after The Great Gatsby takes place) into this story.

I expected the mishmash to be a repulsive mess. But then I recalled how much I had loved Lurmann's mishmash called Moulin Rouge years ago. I announced, "It won't be Scott Fitzgerald's Gatsby, and it won't be my Gatsby, but maybe it's worth a look."

I loved everything about the movie. Well, maybe the parties were overlong and not that interesting unless I had been imbibing whatever the partygoers were--but that's a small thing in such a big picture.  The sets and costumes--although maybe not pinpointed to 1921, but more of a generic 1920's mode for effect--were dazzling and quaint at the same time. The 20's hadn't really begun to roar at that point, but the era was waking up. It makes a better movie if you push some of those things around a little, like the Rhapsody in Blue even if it had not yet been written. Such a rhapsody was swirling around Jay Gatsby, taunting him, spurring his aspirations.

DiCaprio showed me things about Gatsby I had not grasped before. I had seen him as a clueless climber, looking at Daisy through the rose-colored haze of a man in love with a face, a look, a semblance of the one thing he thought mattered: Money. DiCaprio's Gatsby was smitten with something more--his dream of the life he wanted, his fantasy of the woman who would make his hopes and dreams worthwhile. He loved her because he thought she was the key to happiness. He thought, because of the social position she was born into, that her love could transform him into his own dream of a man. And Leonardo DiCaprio accomplished this acting feat mostly by the way he looked at her--the yearning, the fear of missing the mark, the total inability to see how shallow and uninteresting she really was. He conveyed all of Gatsby's yearning and fear just with the look on his face.

Carey Mulligan was almost pretty enough, but she gave this Daisy something else instead. She was neurotic. I thought Daisy was a lightweight who had nothing going for her but looks, but at least Ms. Mulligan imbued her with a sense of conflict about what she was to do. Not a conscience, but an awareness that there might be something immoral going on here. Tobey Maguire is always engaging, and he was in this but he added an undercurrent of thwarted passion. Elizabeth Debicki was spot-on, a stunning Jordan Baker. The one wrong note in casting was Joel Edgerton as Tom Buchanan. He had no old-money charm or indolence--in fact the actor might have done better as the service station guy. I would have thought he would have had to be at least good-looking to have landed Daisy. And why they cast Amitabh Bachchan as Meyer Wolfsheim I shall never understand.

But the principals carried the show. I admit I wasn't totally on board until the shirt scene, which I was waiting for with bated breath, certain they wouldn't get it right. They got it exactly right.

In a Beautiful Place

Let me say that basically I am an optimistic person. Not, I think, to the point of being unreasonably sanguine on every subject, but I tend to have a good time even when bad things are happening. I've had my share of tragedy and stress over the years, but somehow I remain upbeat.

That's why it isn't extraordinary that I love my new life in New Paltz. But something has come over me. I look around as I drive through the beautiful spring-green surroundings--from one event or meeting to the next, inhaling the fragrance of fresh-mown grass--and the realization hits me: I am happier than I have been in years.

My daughter persuaded me to make the move a few months ago. I  had finally accepted that the tiny apartment I had bought in Hoboken was inadequate for my life. Pretty and well-decked out with amenites, it was too small at 530 sq. feet to have more than one couple over at a time, a bit of an awkward location as I had to walk everywhere, and my arthritic knees were getting worse; and then there was Hurricane Sandy, which wiped out the summer clothes and the hot water heater I had in the basement. I was thinking about relocating in Hoboken to a bigger place--which would be a bigger monthly payout whether bought or rented. I was ready to do it.

The real difference was that it was my daughter who wanted me. She really wanted me nearer, and as long as I was sure I would move, it was enormously appealing to move where I was wanted. Hoboken had been pleasant. I had met some very congenial, interesting people--but the town hadn't put its arms around me. Alison and her family, my wonderful grandsons, her new partner and his wonderful 20-year-old son, honestly wanted me nearby. I liked the area and had always admired New Paltz out the bus window when I visited them in Kingston. It was reason enough to make the move.

So I packed up and moved December 1. After being here a couple of months Alison, knowing my fondness for Buster Keaton, urged me to attend a matinee of The Cameraman at the Rosendale Theatre one Saturday. She said she loved attending movies at The Rosendale, and that it was run by volunteers who seemed to be my type of people.  My experience at that event was so heartwarming that I wrote a blogpost about it.

If you scroll through this blog at the posts since then you'll see how important The Rosendale has become in my life. I've been to meetings, joined committees, had lunches--and even helped a virtuoso actor a little with his one-man show. And I'm on a team producing a fund-raising festival of one-act plays next month.

I'm back in love--this time with a place, with a mood, with a raft of projects. Spring came, and with its melted snow, a happy feeling of anticipation. My grandsons are big, strapping boys with plans and hopes, Alison is conquering her own world, and I wake up feeling better than I have in years.

I'm adding years to my life, too. Just ask my doctor. My knees are improved (not so much pounding of the pavement, more hours at the gym), and I've reduced my intake of cookies and cake. Who needs them? I'm feasting on well-being.