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May 1, 2005
A
reading of “Black Comedy,” by Peter Shaffer, will be held
in the green room at 51 Walden Street on Saturday, May 7, at 2 pm. All
members are welcome, to read or to listen. “Black Comedy”
is a possible replacement for “Dolly West’s Kitchen,”
which was announced for next season, but is unavailable for production
at this time. If any member has a play they would like to bring to a future
reading, please contact Rik Pierce
at rikp@pobox.com . Prepare enough
copies of the play to cover the entire cast. You can get them from the
library or play suppliers (see links
- theatrical publishers).
Speaking
of Peter Shaffer, Kirsten Gould
will direct “Amadeus” by Peter Shaffer
at the Vokes Theatre in Wayland in March 2006.
Talene
Monahon has been cast as Mary Lennox, Mark
Nimar as Colin and Christian
Milde as Dickon in the Belmont Dramatic Club production of
“The Secret Garden.” Director Donna Johns and
music director Joseph Reid have assembled a splendid and accomplished
cast for this beautiful show. Performances are May 6, 14 and 15 at 8pmand
May 14 at 3pm at the Payson Park Church, 365 Belmont Street, Belmont,
MA. For more information call (617) 489-2529, or go to www.belmontdramaticclub.org.
Susie
Baldwin, producer extraordinaire of our current production of The
Memory of Water, has a new e-mail address. It’s susanbal@verizon.net.
Our Back Pages
10 Years Ago: Dorothy Schecter directs William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream on a grand scale.
25 Years Ago: Jack Sweet and Susan Ellsworth produce Picnic, by William Inge.
50 Years Ago: The Concord Players present Eugene O’Neill’s Ah! Wilderness.
100 Years Ago: The quintessential show-biz paper, “Variety,” is founded in New York City. Isadora Duncan establishes the first school of modern dance in Berlin.
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I saw Jimmy Dean in Giant the other night, and I must say that - (Weeps.) You see, that’s what I was afraid of. When I got in the cab, I cried. And it was funny, because actually I was crying out of two reasons. It was pleasure and enjoyment, which is odd, but I must say I cried from that, too. And the other thing was seeing Jimmy Dean on the screen. I hadn’t cried when I heard of his death. It was somehow what I expected. And I don’t think I cried from that now. What I cried at was the waste, the waste. If there is anything in the theatre to which I respond more than anything else - maybe I’m getting old, or maybe I’m getting sentimental - it is the waste in the theatre, the talent that gets up and the work that goes into getting it up and getting it where it should be. And then when it gets there, what the hell happens to it? The senseless destruction, the senseless waste, the hopping around from one thing to the next, the waste of talent, the waste of your lives, the strange kind of behavior that not just Jimmy had, you see, but that a a lot of other actors have. It isn’t temperament. As soon as you grow up as actors, as soon as you reach a certain place, there it goes, the drunkenness and the rest of it, as if, now that you’ve really made it, the incentive goes, and something happens which to me is just terrifying. I don’t know what to do. You can tell somebody, “Go to a psychiatrist,” or “Go here,” or “Go there,” but in the meantime there is the waste. -
Lee Strasberg |
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Thomas Caron, editor