Don't hand me that line.

The following story was submitted to the Write On! January 2011 contest to write a 200-400 word story about excuses writers come up with to put off doing their work. While it was a fun distraction, and earned second place, it nevertheless became a wonderful excuse for putting off more urgent writing demands.

I speed-walked around the corner with my briefcase in one hand, my coffee and donut balanced in the other, and plowed into the back of a large man blocking the sidewalk. Ahead of him, a line of people stretched to the front door of First Trust, where I was a loan officer.

"Wasn't watching where I was going," I apologized as I brushed glaze smudges from his coat.

“No excuse,” he grumbled without turning around. “You can’t miss me.”

"I didn’t miss you,” I quipped, trying to change the mood.

He turned with a glare, which quickly softened.

“Hey! You're the procrastination guy . . . with the book!" he exclaimed, drawing others around us.

"What book?" I asked.

“There’s No Time Like Next Time,” he said.

“It's online," a woman said.

“Another Time?” I asked.

“No," they said. "Today!”

“The title," I explained. "It's Another Time, not Next Time. Anyway, it's not a book. It's a fake essay I wrote in college. Someone's kid must have found it and made that Youtube video. It's a joke."

The group of moms with their kids, anxious businesspeople, and students just stared at me. "It's no joke," someone said threateningly.

"My son needs something for school," the woman said hugging an embarrassed child. "I'll pay you."

The others nodded. "Yes, we'll gladly pay."

"Let me get to my desk," I said.

For the rest of the morning, I worked my way through the line, handing out excuses I'd used in my years as an editor, publicist, and freelance writer. Some were unassailable: debilitating heartbreak, hospitalized children, visits from dangerous relatives, temporary blindness, even a homework-eating dog. The more outlandish they were, the more people paid: clearing earthquake rubble, a lottery win, an exploding washing machine, being attacked by crows, starring in a reality show.

When I reached the large man at the end of the line, he sat down, made sure the others had left, and stopped me from writing.

"Mine isn't for a writing assignment," he whispered, hanging his head.

I looked up and saw that he was actually eyeing my donut.

"You want to put off your diet?"

He nodded.

"How about telling yourself you spent a stressful morning in a loan office?"

He looked up, smiled, and reached for his wallet.

"No charge," I said, as I slid the donut towards him.

News spill: All that we can do?

Though not yet making its way to the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, or the Washington Post . .. a refitted Taiwanese tanker is waiting for approval to test skimming potential of, according to owner Nobu Su, 500,000 barrels of oil a day. The owner believes the tanker, “ten stories tall and three football-fields long,” will ingest the oil-water mixture, put it into its bays, where it will separate. Reports are, however, that a 1920 maritime law demands that ships operating in U.S. waters fly a U.S. flag. (The tanker, dubbed the “A-Whale,” flies a Liberian flag.)

The story was mentioned on NPR Friday, June 25, and appeared here in the Daily Press. While there’s probably a “too-good-to-be-true” aspect to this, the question of why it isn’t part of the “we’re doing everything we can do” conversation seems odd. Could it be “ownership of the oil” that is the real concern?

Art, Artists and Outtakes.

In Tracy Letts’ ‘August: Osage County,’ the writer has inserted many sly references to things outside the mechanics of the action. Nevertheless, they are a big part of what makes the play exciting to a critic. Unfortunately, doing justice to this invisible dimension would throw the review out of balance and deprive readers of the rewards of their own discovery.

Fortunately, citing such connections – whether vertent or inad – falls perfectly within the odd parameters of this column. There is nothing inadvertent about Letts’ efforts, however. (Though some of these sightings likely ripple beyond his intentions.)

The fun begins with the first scene, in which blocked poet Beverly Weston conducts a one-sided interview of the Native American woman he hires as his housekeeper. It continues through the last tearful lines, wept by his widow into the lap of this housekeeper. The first scene ends with“Here we go ‘round the prickly pear,” which begins the fifth and final section of T.S. Eliot’s poem, ‘The Hollow Men.’ The last scene, and with it the play, ends with “This is the way it ends,” a slight alteration of the last lines of 'Hollow Men.' The actual line is “This is the way the world ends," and continues with the oft-quoted “not with a bang, but with a whimper.”

This bookending underscores some of Letts' key points: the importance of poetry as a vehicle to embrace and encapsulate; the concept of hollow men, who seem to populate the play exclusively; encouragement to the audience to project the Westons' situation onto the larger social canvas; and certain parallels between the Westons and the Eliots.

Parallel lines. Letts chose to name Beverly's wife Violet, and abbreviate it as Vi, to invoke T.S. Eliot’s wife. Vivien, Viv. suffered from mental illness, tormenting "Tom" to the point that he "disappeared." He first went to America but eventually returned to London, never telling Viv he was alive. Eventually she made contact at a public engagement, but they never reconnected and she died in a sanitorium. That is the reason Letts chose "Vi." But that prompts the question, did Bev choose to marry a woman with such a name because his adoration of Eliot was turning to emulation? And, in that case, was Violet’s downward psychological spiral, shall we say, not discouraged by a man seeking the trappings of the timeless poet?

For art’s sake, forsake the artist. In the first scene Bev makes a passing reference to differentiating art from the person behind it."Gapping" the creative process this way, between source and product, is something alluded to in that same fifth section of 'The Hollow Men': "Between the conception / And the creation / Between the emotion / And the response / Falls the Shadow." (While this is not quoted, the line that follows it, "Life is very long," is.)

This important distinction is not a new concept. The first time I heard it was about 30 years ago. The reference was to Ezra Pound, from a friend old enough to have been his contemporary. Pound the artist was a seminal poet, an indispensable part of 20th Century literature. As a man, however, he made statements supporting anti-semitism and fascism. My friend, who was both an intellectual and a Jew, had to separate his awe of Pound’s poetry from his revulsion at his public person. Not an easy thing to do.

Though Pound – as I recall – is not mentioned in the play, it is safe to conjure him up when reflecting on Weston’s opening remark. Not only was he very important to Eliot, Pound was descended from the great American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow through his mother’s family – the Westons.

Writer’s Block is a Fatal Dis-ease. Two other poets are alluded to in 'Osage County': John Berryman and Conrad Aiken. Aiken is there in the family name of Violet’s brother-in-law, Charlie Aiken. Berryman is discussed at length in the opening speeches. These are also signposts to Letts’ core concerns.

Berryman’s father shot himself, as did Aiken’s. The latter, however, did so after murdering his wife. Aiken, a lifelong friend of Eliot’s, attempted suicide, but survived to die naturally at 83. Berryman killed himself by jumping off a Minnesota bridge at age 57. Eliot died peacefully in 1965. There is much more to savor what Letts has written, and what he has let lie between the lines. What the character of Johnna, the Cheyenne housekeeper, represents is enormous. But a final note here regarding that year 1965. It may be a coincidence, but the year Eliot died was the year Beverly Weston stopped writing. It was also the year Tracy Letts was born.

There is much more, of course. Any other ideas?

Above – Robert J. Saferstein's photo of Jon DeVries and DeLanna Studi, with portraits of Berryman, Eliot and Pound

The Diary of 'Match Point'

I had been having trouble getting around to watching the third of three films my neighbor had loaned me along with his recommendation. For some reason, I couldn’t get revved for “The Motorcycle Diaries.” But, yesterday, I put it in the dvd tray as a step in getting me to the other side of this watcher’s block.

Then, Netflix intervened, dropping off the latest in its revolving theater door of the post. I was blissfully ignorant of the story line of Woody Allen’s “Match Point,” or any reaction to it.

As it turns out, it’s not a very good film. The actors are all fine and the story does have some interesting territory mapped out, with its literary and opera references helping to deepen the pretexts. It’s easy to see critics citing this as an Allen apologia for his famous romantic compromising. It’s just as easy to see why he’d deny any such thing. This, he would no doubt claim, is about randomness and the pivotal role luck plays in the course of a life. Unfortunately, the character who benefits most by the twisting of fate, in the micro-universe of “Match Point,” does so at others’ expense. So, the Woodman might infer, a non-deterministic world – free of the oversight of the Great Chess player in the Sky – is not so innocent after all. Justice is blind and there’s blood on the hands of those callous, indifferent fates.

The other point, sadly, is Allen's dialogue. The once great auteur has several places here where he has characters chewing words that are out of place in their mouths. Most notably in the exchange between two detectives, who assess a crime in terms that promote the film's theme. Rather than harking back to resonant antiquity, however, they sound like agents of anachronism.

Meanwhile, as synchronicities go – bounding along, parallel the powerful fates like the moon following your car – I was amused to see, midway through the film that the main characters take in a movie. As they meet to go in, a nice wide shot of the marquee reveals “The Motorcycle Diaries.”

Brimming with Pride

Crowns
by Regina Taylor, directed by Israel Hicks
Pasadena Playhouse • July 10-August 16, 2009 (Opened, rev'd 7/12)

Regina Taylor’s 2002 play ‘Crowns,’ a loving tribute to African-American women based on the Michael Cunningham-Craig Marberry book of the same name, is now rattling the Pasadena Playhouse rafters in a spirited staging by Israel Hicks, artistic director of L.A.’s new Ebony Repertory Theater, which is co-producer. Taylor conveys the emotional essence of the book, subtitled “Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats,” which is that the self-bestowed “crowns” of these “hat queens” sent a message: we are fashionable, we are devout, we are united, and we have arrived.

Taylor incorporates many direct quotes from the book’s 50 subjects into the play, which is further enlivened with a couple dozen church songs delivered with soaring, take-me-now-Jesus conviction by the six-woman, one-man cast.

“Crowns” has been a huge success in its many mountings and inspired one of its past directors, Charles Randolph-Wright, to adapt another Marberry book for the stage. ‘Cuttin’ Up,’ the book of interviews with African-American men that looked at their lives through the communal setting of neighborhood barbershops, became ‘Cuttin’ Up’ the play, staged here in March 2007. Coincidentally, Randolph-Wright’s 2008 play ‘The Night is a Child’ will follow ‘Crowns’ at the Playhouse.

We can now see that the imitator substantially improved on its inspiration. Where “Crowns” puts us on a pew for a two-hour revival meeting filled with great singing and personalities, “Cuttin’ Up” lets us sit against the barbershop wall to eavesdrop on serious stories with a deep weave and darker resonance. Which is not to say that men inherently have more to say.

Wearing hats to church is a subject rich with dramatic potential. As a character points out early in the play, it carries on an African tradition as it celebrates the only place slaves and freed slaves were allowed to assemble. Taylor has come up with a thin storyline, of a teen awakening to her heritage, upon which to hang her hats, but it isn’t developed enough to shake off the source material’s intrinsic gallery feeling. While the program indicates that the actresses all have single characters, with two exceptions they do not become clear and consistent individuals. Instead, the show works its way through a half-dozen chapters based on church functions (baptism, funeral, etc.) into which characters pop with the randomness of a breeze rifling the pages of a book.

Taylor has given her story another important wrinkle, that traditions such as these (hat-wearing, church-going, community-embracing) persist for a reason, and the resistant younger generation would do well to get on board. The new generation is represented by Yolanda (Angela Wildflower Polk), a nascent Nuyorican Poetess displaced to South Carolina to live with her grandmother, Mother Shaw (the great Paula Kelly in a triumphant return from retirement), following the death of a brother. Although passing the hat tradition to Yolanda seems unlikely to succeed, the writing is on the wall, given the way she proudly clings to an oversized baseball cap.

That Taylor’s script skips over potential dramatic treasure is revealed in a couple of exchanges that briefly offer passage to deeper worlds. Early on, Mother Shaw sings directly to her grandchild. It’s a rare opportunity for eye contact between actors and Hicks, Polk and Kelly make the most of it. Later, Yolanda is caught up in an especially exuberant gospel choir. When she stumbles free from the seething circle of singing she seems imbued with insight, questions, and answers. Rather than plumbing that moment, however, the opportunity to delve into what’s going on with these characters is dropped in favor of continuing the parade of anecdotes from the women in the book, with Polk relegated to watching it like a kid on a curb.

But it’s a helluva a parade, and it’s easy to see why it’s so popular. This cast – all making their Playhouse debuts – is excellent. In addition to Polk and Kelly, the other women are Sharon Catherine Blanks, Vanessa Bell Calloway, Suzzanne Douglas and Ann Weldon, with Clinton Derricks-Carroll playing all the men. Derricks-Carroll has a slight advantage, since his characters are recognizable by their function: fathers, husbands and preachers. It seems as though all his numbers are stand outs, with “That’s All Right” being the first one to raise the Playhouse roof. By the end of the two-hour, intermissionless production, the ceiling will settle back down. But, through August 16, it will stay at a rakish angle, giving the California landmark's roofline the dip of a flirtatious fedora over a come-hither smile.

WITH Sharon Catherine Blanks, Vanessa Bell Calloway, Clinton Derricks-Carroll, Suzzanne Douglas, Paula Kelly, Angela Wildflower Polk, Ann Weldon MUSICIANS Eric Scott Reed (piano); Derf Reklaw (percussion), Trevor Ware (bass) PRODUCTION Edward E. Haynes, Jr., set; Dana Rebecca Woods, costumes; Lap Chi Chu, lights; Cricket S. Myers, sound; Linda Twine/David Pleasant, arrangements; Eric Scott Reed, musical direction/additional arrangements; Keith Young, choreography; Gwendolyn M. Gilliam/Lea Chazin, stage management

Adapted from the book by Michael Cunningham and Craig Marberry, co-produced with Ebony Repertory Theatre


PHOTO: Vanessa Bell Calloway, Ann Weldon, Angela Wildflower Polk, Paula Kelly, Suzzanne Douglas, Sharon Catherine Blanks and Clinton Derricks-Carroll, foreground. (Craig Schwartz)

Let’s Play Hardball

‘Farragut North' by Beau Willimon, directed by Doug Hughes
Geffen Playhouse • June 16–July 26 (Opened 6/24, rev’d 6/25)

Among the intrigues in Beau Willimon’s Farragut North, a winning backroom drama about high-stakes political campaigns and the operatives who play them, is whether an upbeat “love of the game” or a weary cynicism will ultimately own the play’s tone.

Giving buoyancy to the more optimistic option is last year’s Presidential contest. For many, certainly the majority watching the Geffen Playhouse staging (through July 26), the election of Obama was an episode of mold-breaking that promised a new era of integrity at the top. That backdrop provides subliminal updraft to an early confession by communications manager Steve Bellamy (Chris Pine). This time, he says, he really believes in his candidate's potential for good. Though Farragut is not about Obama, his election has leavened the playing field enough to allow that Steve may be expressing inner insights and not self-delusion, and not just blowing smoke.

Farragut North arrives in Westwood as an intact import from New York’s Atlantic Theater, except for four new cast members, including Pine. Pine not only adds huge marquee value – he's Captain Kirk in J.J. Abrams’ universally praised new Star Trek series prequel – he is a solid lead returning to the Geffen after appearing in the first casting round of the West Coast premiere of Neil LaBute’s Fat Pig.

The arena for Willimon’s five political operatives – who include wannabes, wunderkindern, interns and hardened vets – is Des Moines, Iowa before the Presidential Caucuses. What were, in the earlier eras Farragut recalls, smoky backrooms and arm-twisting contests, are now, thanks to wireless communications, anywhere and everywhere. David Korins creates the restrained unit set of lounge booths, bar tables and hotel beds, shifting to a barrage of projected video collage by Joshua White & Bec Stupak. Those oppressive clips of TV reporters remind us that what we're seeing is not what we get: the public is at the end of the information food chain.

Willimon keeps us guessing about these characters throughout act one. That a solid 70 minutes of talking heads kept a full house coughless and riveted attests both to his skill at dialogue and suspense and director Doug Hughes' sure hand with pacing and tone. That the stage proscenium’s aspect ratio seems destined to be one-upped by the big screen is confirmed in his bio. He is currently adapting Farragut to film.

Part of the magic of the rising arc of act one is Willimon’s ability to make every character equally suspect without making them seem the same. Whether it is New York Times reporter Ida (Mia Barron), lowly staffer-on-the-make Molly (Olivia Thirlby), campaign manager Paul (Chris Noth), opposition campaign manager Tom (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), spokesman Steve, or press director-in-waiting Ben (Dan Bittner), all are utterly contemporary, but with a touch of the Bard's big-theme flaws to give the play even deeper resonance. Steve’s travails amount to over-ambition undermined by over-confidence, up-ending the adage that “you can’t shit a shitter.” It seems more likely that he who lives by the spin may not realize someone has him in full pirouette until he lands flat on his ass.

To close the play, a communications representative addresses the audience with a prepared statement that puts a public face on the outcome of all the wrangling we’ve just witnessed. We suddenly realize that these are the first words of the play that would have reached the public. It's Willimon's final word on the matter: We do not know what's really going on and how complicit the media is in the packaging process. The spokesperson's statement is, in a word, crap.

Set, match. Cynicism wins.

WITH Mia Barron, Dan Bittner, Chris Noth, Chris Pine, Olivia Thirlby, Isiah Whitlock, Jr. (u/s – Troian Bellisario, Robyn Cohen, Thomas Fiscella, Peter Swander) PRODUCTION David Korins, set; Catherine Zuber, costumes; Paul Gallo, lights; David Van Tiegham/Walter Trarbach, sound; Van Tiegham, music; Joshua White/Bec Stupac, video; James T. McDermott/Jennifer Brienen, stage management An Atlantic Theater production.
Photo: Chris Noth, Chris Pine, Olivia Thirlby, Isiah Whitlock Jr. (Michael Lamont)

'Touch the Water' (Cornerstone Theater Company)

For the fourth play in its four-year, six-production cycle of original work exploring how laws impact contemporary American life, Cornerstone Theater Company is premiering Julie Hébert’s Touch the Water, a river play (through June 21). After plays on immigration, reproductive rights and penal retribution, the “Justice Cycle” turns to law and the environment.

Touch the Water delivers its environmental message in an environmental staging by Director Julliette Carrillo. The audience bleachers face a found-art set by Darcy Scanlin sitting beside a rare stretch of Los Angeles River where water and vegetation have reclaimed it from the concrete. The “River,” a 50-mile channel that travels from the western San Fernando Valley through the Glendale Narrows and L.A. Basin to Long Beach, serves as the central flood control system for (and punch line for jokes about) metropolitan L.A.'s unnatural landscape.

The overarching tone of Hébert’s script is one of loss, with the concrete trough as a symbol of man's break with nature and lack of vision for an urban landmark that would bring L.A. beauty, recreation, and civic pride in the way the Seine serves Paris. However, the play is itself a lost opportunity. While Carrillo’s design and technical team have given the play a wondrous world for its premiere, with a compliant moon joining Lonnie Rafael Alcaraz’s award-worthy lighting design on opening-night, Touch the Water, like a walk along the broken channel floor, proves an uneven ramble.

According to the playbill, the Justice Cycle explores “how justice functions in society.” But there’s more of ‘cycles’ than ‘justice’ to Touch the Water: natural cycles of rain, run off, and reclamation; human cycles of spiritual rebirth and social responsibility; a real meandering subplot about cycles of violence; and, most importantly, the life-cycle of cement: “Snakes shed their skin and are reborn,” one character says. “Rivers are snakes.”

Although the play's heavy nativist tone and anthropomorphizing may undercut the aspects that are factual, a redevelopment plan exists to make the L.A. River a real waterway that retains its flood-control functions while returning it to a natural habitat and adding recreation benefits.

Admirably, Carrillo dives in after Hébert, investing the proceedings with sincerity and reverence. These Cornerstone plays are the product of careful real-world participation, going to the community members for their expertise, and in some cases to draft cast members. While nice on paper – particularly grant applications – from a purely theatrical standpoint, non-actors can compromise the impact. While Someday (reproductive rights) and For All Time (retribution) did not suffer from their expanded cast, the drop off in Touch is more noticeable.

Cornerstone's mission is a two-way street: giving voice to urgent issues and unheard communities through theater, and promoting back to those communities and their extended publics renewed appreciation for the power of this art form. Touch the Water's dual responsibility is to inspire its audiences to appreciate the majesty of nature and the magic of theater. Real actors are alchemists who need protection, too. Fortunately, two of Cornerstone's real magicians – Shishir Kurup and Page Leong – are here to share their considerable talents, and break up the non-actor speeches that recall the skit portion of a seminar.

While Hébert's script may be trying to satisfy too many constituencies, her lyrics – co-written with composer Kurup – are a solid contribution, delivered on a sound system that, despite mic'ing all the actors, never draws attention to itself. Costumer Soojin Lee creates a fantastic menagerie of river wildlife by recycling everything from flattened aluminum cans to coat hangers. And, without benefit of spot operators. Alcaraz employs a warm palette that always bathes its actors with pinpoint, flattering light – even when they are on the opposite bank of the river. Quite an achievement. Kudos, too, to stage manager Marisa Fritzemeier and her board operator.

Touch the Water, a river play, by Julie Hebert, directed by Juliette Carrillo; music by Shishir Kurup; lyrics by Kurup & Hébert; Cornerstone Theater Company • May 28-June 21, 2009 (Opened, rev’d 6/4) World Premiere

WITH Neetu S. Badham, Lane Barden, Matt Borel, Ceci Dominguez, Ricky Dominguez, Ben Fitch, Richard Fultineer, Rachel Garcia, Liebe Gray, Ubaldo Hernandez, Joel Jimenez, Shishir Kurup, Page Leong, Joe Linton, Lewis MacAdams, Laural Meade, Pat Payne, Gezel Remy, Jennifer Villalobos, Terry Young, and Laural Meade & Rachel Garcia, puppeteers MUSICIANS Danny Moynahan, Ben Fitch, Richard Fultineer, Marcos Nájera, Shishir Kurup, Neetu S. Badhan PRODUCTION Darcy Scanlin, set; Soojin Lee, costumes; Lonnie Rafael Alcaraz, lights; Benajah Cobb, sound; Danny Moynahan, music direction; Marisa Fritzemeier, stage management

Photo Illustration: Against L.A. River backdrop, Lewis MacAdams (Roger Vadim), Page Leong (Isa Pino, Shishir Kurup (Luis Otcho-o Authermont), Rachel Garcia (Ardea, a Great Blue Heron). Show photos by John Luker; L.A. River by Timo Elliott (Wikipedia)