DavidGoingOn

Smartphones and Teaching Acting

noreply@blogger.com (David Downs) — Sat, 29 Oct 2016 03:07:00 +0000

This is an edited version of an email exchange between me and a former student who teaches acting.

I am learning so much from teaching…it’s the strangest, most energizing relationship…my students look to me as if I have the answers and I am looking at them to see what questions need answering.

[Wise Alvina Yoda Krause once said that a teacher’s job is not to provide the right answers but to ask the right questions.]

I am now teaching the Sophomore Acting for the Musical Theatre BFAs and Acting for Film which I’m treating as an advanced BFA class. I would like to build some classes around photo journalism. So often I see pictures online and in newspapers that I would love to use to discuss character, story, bodies, relationships.

[Save them. Send them to your students. Point out what they illustrate about human behavior. Get them to improvise their favorites in class. Here’s a photo of the guy who sells newspapers at the stand on the corner. What is he doing that reveals “merchant”? or “just doing my job” or—whatever. Get someone to improvise it. What do they discover about him? Now find an opposite in him in the photo. Be specific. Improvise that. Take a few minutes in each class for someone to bring in a photo they took and do the same kind of work with it.

Goal: How do we reveal who we are through our behavior?

Then: Assignments from plays. Find a photo of Juliet’s Nurse. What specifically will you look for? How does this photo reveal what’s important to the nurse? Now improvise that. Get them to discover revelatory sensory response to specific stimuli.

Where are you likely to find Melchior Gabor from "Spring Awakening"? Mimi Marquez from "Rent"? What will they look for in specific behavior? Why?]

I remember using some pretty dramatic pictures in your class when we were exploring the Greeks. Can you describe other ways in which I could spark interest through these photos?

[Plays ask us to deal with driving passions, elemental forces—avoid the word “emotion” as it gets people to huff and puff and you want to focus on deeply motivated behavior, not just feelings. Ask three people to bring in photos that illustrate Grief. Improvise the photos. How does each express Grief?

Then: Turn those photos into Electra keening over the urn that contains Orestes's ashes.

Look for photos and videos that demonstrate Betrayal, Rage, Ecstasy, etc. Is there a Medea somewhere in today’s deep indignation regarding recent responses to rape? Even if they aren't studying Greek tragedy, working on this can help them to discover depths of passion beyond simple--however intense it is--emotion.]

I’m wondering how I could use what the students have with them always, their phones, to make an assignment that asks them to capture a story in a picture…and then…? I want to have a small series of classes in which we see some pictures and we improvise the life leading up to the shot.

[Absolutely. Embody the people in the photo and then: what responses to what specific stimuli in the environment determine the experiential path that ends up with the photo? It will illustrate that people exist in response to stimuli in their world.

Try: Someone creates a photo or video essay of their subway ride from home to school. The class improvise the ”story.” Maybe one of the students brings a photo series illustrating a narrative through a dramatic situation in her home life. The class improvises. The student responds, clarifies, etc.

Then: Hamlet takes his phone with him as he goes through Elsinore, creates a photo essay of what's going on. What does Claudius see when he does it? What does he think important enough to include in his photo essay? Why? Polonius creates his own photo essay. Gertrude does it. Hand Ophelia a smartphone. She looks to her father for help.

This has terrific potential to get young people to use the extension of self that smartphones have become. They could shoot short videos as well.

Send them out to photograph moments of realization (what literally happens during a realization?) and decision. What exactly will they look for? It's in moments of realization and decision and consequent action that drama happens and where lives change direction. Where in the play does Uncle Vanya fully realize that he has wasted his life? (Create a photo of this.) Plot the moments of major realization and decision that take Marchbanks in Shaw's "Candida" to the final realization that makes him decide to leave the house.

Get your students to identify the major realization or decision that happens at the end of a scene in a play and then create it as a photo or video. Start with this end photo and then all responses lead to that photo. Begin with the first realization of the scene; then each "beat" ends with a realization and they grow in importance on the way to the big one, the major final photo op. (Try this: Start with the end of the entire play. Then see how the end of one act leads to the end of the next, right on to the final curtain. Then within each act, the ends of each scene add up, etc. What is inevitability?)

Try discovering/creating the sequence of realizations that take the characters through these scenes:

Nina and Treplev in the “I shot this seagull” scene (leading to the gunshot at the end of the play)

Hamlet and Ophelia in the nunnery scene (leading to "The rest is silence")

Tartuffe’s entrance and scene with Dorine (leading, it would seem, to the officer's arresting of Orgon--and then the sudden reversal)

How do all the moments of a scene in a musical lead up to the big song in the scene?

What are the major responses photo ops within the song?]

You helped us to look at HUMANITY…the vulnerabilities, the habits, the physicalities, the history of a body and a face. I know that without Learning How to Observe the World, my students can’t be as attuned to the specificity that really good acting requires. I want to awake my students to the human drama that is all around them.

[The use of photos and videos on phones and online now is absolutely something to take advantage of for teaching acting. It’s part of daily interactive life so you have to find a way to incorporate it. A video that expresses Nina’s (The Seagull) attitude toward life. A video that illustrates the relationship between Arkadina and Trigorin. A series of photos that show the development of the Masha/Vershinin (Three Sisters) relationship over the three plus years of the play. (Get one of your choreography students to create a dance based on that photo series.) Send someone out to find and photograph Irina Act One. Someone else finds photos of Irina as she changes through Act II, III, IV. What specifically will they look for in spine for each? in relationship to gravity? in eyes? hands? What might she be doing in each that reveals the changes?

Look for relationships: Go to Central Park and find the Polonius/Ophelia father/daughter relationship. What specifically will you look for? Be exact (Note: the two people don’t have to be an older man and a younger woman).]

I’m thinking of an assignment that involves sitting on the steps of a major pedestrian crossroads and picking up/recording bits of dialogue as people walk by…the people who are walking/talking together are in communication mode that is very different from the bits of highly emotional one-sided conversations you catch as people walk by deep in conversation on their phones.

[I love this idea. How about this: they shoot a video of an encounter. They transcribe the dialogue and let two or three groups of fellow students prepare the dialogue as a scene. Note the differences among the scenes when they are presented. Then play just the audio and compare with what the students came up with. Then let them go out with the audio as further info and prepare the scene again. Come back and present to the class. Then show the original video--what the people were doing as "the dialogue" happened.

And always: apply to a play what this experience illustrates. Take a scene from a script. How can you learn to come as close as possible to “what the play asks of actors who do this”? What if the play came with audio and video as well as dialogue? Note: There is never just one "right" audio and video of a scene. But are there "wrong" ones?]

I want to structure an exercise on observation that incorporates the way that young adults are looking at the world…to help them learn how to observe with their whole being.

[Exactly. And I’d say go beyond observation to true perception, to comprehension in muscles and nerves and bones and organs of perception. Somebody brings photos or videos of his parents doing something typical, revelatory of their relationship. Can you find such behavior/relationship in a play? Then maybe two dancers create an improvised duet right after they see the photos or video.

Try: The Lopakhin/Varya (Cherry Orchard) relationship dance. Or singing their duet.

You must always find something that they can apply directly to a character in a play, to a moment of response, a relationship, a moment of change, etc., in a play.

You are teaching them to become artists who use deeply perceived and comprehended behavior and response as their medium of creation. They are training their totalities to become perceivers of humanity. Lead them to recognize they must embody what it is that a play dramatizes; why it is and what it is that they are communicating with their heightened artists’ totalities.]

I’m attaching a video that my Music Theatre students made. You will love the energy and the joy, while I hope, at the same time understand my challenges.

[They’re terrific. And, sure, since it is Music Theatre Acting, you have to feed directly into that. I don’t know much about contemporary musical theatre, but there must be a few really good things between "Rent" and "Spring Awakening" on one end and "Hamilton" on the other.

If you include a couple of these—maybe a Sondheim or two—will they go along with one Shakespeare (R and J—maybe Hamlet) and one Chekhov (Seagull and if they like it maybe Three Sisters)? A Moliere fer sher for MT students.

It might be a way to introduce them to a wider range of musical styles than they are comfortable with. Once they find themselves doing a couple of real life studies of Juliet and the Nurse, maybe they could find a musical way into the character of each or to express their relationship; perhaps a musical version of the moment when Juliet realizes she can not trust her nurse. It would be freeing for them to use their love of music and singing and dance in spontaneous and improvisatory ways while you are connecting them to great drama. The Masha and Vershinin waltz of Act II; the Solyony and Tusenbach duet of Act II.

Will they work hard at old white male canonical plays if you make sure to compare and contrast with contemporary diversity pieces? They could write their own old school character solo à la “As Long As He Needs Me” for a character and then write one for the same character in a contemporary adaptation of the play. (Taking a look at “Seagull” and Aaron Posner’s “Stupid Fucking Bird” in this context might be encouraging.)

In the meantime, they are out shooting videos of spines and movement patterns and sensory responses to stimuli simply to train themselves to become observers and perceivers and storers-up of human behavior—which will be cast into the reality of Sondheim, of Lin-Manuel Miranda, of themselves as composers/lyricists/book writers/choreographers. Might be a great way to illustrate that no matter how “stylized” the piece is, everything must be rooted in real life observation; that, in fact, the more “stylized” it is, the more it has to be rooted in reality because you’re stripping away the unnecessary and focusing, intensifying, even exaggerating, that reality—so you better know it in your muscles, your totality, really really well.

And one final thing:
You might think of considering each sense individually: What did you learn about eyes today? Take pics or shoot videos that show people revealing something about who they are through their eyes. Find Juliet’s youthful “I want to run out and meet life directly” eyes. Have they seen Nina’s eyes when she looks at Trigorin (The door to their class room opens and Lin-Manuel Miranda walks in.) How about a photo diary of eyes: eyes that reveal; eyes that conceal; eyes that accept, reject, object; eyes that welcome; eyes that see only the literal.

How do Donald Trump’s eyes reveal what’s important to him? Let them bring photos and videos; let them let their eyes do what Trump’s eyes do. Can they let themselves see with his eyes? Can they let themselves see with Elizabeth Warren’s eyes? Kim Kardashian? Can they eliminate preconceptions and simply let themselves respond as they see these people respond?

Do the same with hands. What do Trump’s hands do that reveal the opposite of what his eyes reveal? How do Hillary Clinton's hands reveal "policy wonk"?

This election season would enrage Moliere and he would create magnificent satirical comedy from his rage. (Have you seen the SNL presidential debate sketches? Brilliant.)

Photograph five construction workers’ hands. Can you let your hands do “if I were a construction worker”? Then pick up an axe as Lopakhin and chop a tree.

Bring to class videos of your brother’s hands doing something that reveals something about him. Then: Horatio shoots a video of Hamlet holding Yorick’s skull.
Get them to come up with their own illustrations.

Voice: Cover your eyes and listen to the voice of someone brought in on video. Can you let your voice discover something about the person through pitch, range, volume, etc.? If the voice were Treplev’s, describe its qualities. Be specific. What does Trigorin’s voice reveal about him? Have you heard such a voice? Who is it? Where? What does Mike Pence's voice reveal? Is there an opposite? Be specific. How does your own voice express education? ethnicity? social class? depth of spirit? where you were born? etc. Apply to Vershinin and Solyony individually and then in contrast with each other. The same with Natasha and Olga.

The difference between Nina’s Act I voice and her Act IV voice. Be specific. Can they find examples and record them? What happens to the spine from which such a voice proceeds?

And always be prepared to demonstrate in class.]

Anyway, I told you I would babble at you one day, and here it is…would love to know your thoughts.

[Hah! I think I out-babbled you with this one. I threw a whole lot at you and you can decide what sticks. Let me know how it goes.]

noreply@blogger.com (David Downs) — Tue, 13 Sep 2016 03:32:00 +0000

Last year my former acting student Max Shulman engaged me in an animated interview in my home. His edited version, which maintains the spontaneity of our conversation, appeared in the March 2016 issue of the academic journal, Theatre Topics. Here is that interview:

Everyday Astonishment and Crafting the Theatrical: Speaking with David Downs on Undergraduate Acting Training
Max Shulman

David Downs is an emeritus professor of acting training at Northwestern University, where he taught in the School of Communication for thirty-five years. He is the author of The Actor’s Eye: Seeing and Being Seen (1995), an introduction to the craft of acting. Some of his former students include actors Zach Braff, David Schwimmer, Denis O’Hare, Harry Lennix, Mamie Gummer, and Lily Rabe; playwrights John Logan (Tony Award for Red, screenwriter for Gladiator, The Aviator, and Skyfall) and Bruce Norris (Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for Clybourne Park); and director Mary Zimmerman. His curriculum was designed for Northwestern’s acting program in which majors began working with a teacher during their sophomore year, and typically remained with the same instructor for three years (on a quarter system). He presently resides in Los Angeles, where he occasionally teaches workshops at the Antaeus Theatre Company. He is also a playwright and painter.
I was Professor Downs’s student at Northwestern, graduating in 2003. In August 2015 I interviewed him regarding his unique approach to acting training.

Max Shulman: Can you talk a little bit about the training system at Northwestern while you were there? What were the roots of that program?

David Downs: I do want to say first that the system, the curriculum, the acting program was a three-year structure that a teacher, Alvina Krause, created over her thirty years of being at Northwestern. But it didn’t begin as an acting program because there was no theatre department when she started. There was one acting class, and it was what became the first year of acting. The other two years, she taught courses under the heading of “Interpretation” as an area of study, what became [the department of] Performance Studies. There wasn’t an acting program the way you would think; she had figured out a way to make it three years of acting. The first year was supposed to be the fundamental creative aspects of acting and, technically, scene-free . . . not quite scene study. The second year was interpretation of drama. The first quarter of that was supposed to be Greek tragedy, second quarter was Shakespeare, and third quarter was Chekhov, Ibsen, and Shaw.

MS: What is behind that progression and what do you think was at the root of the way Krause taught and the way you taught?

DD: I was Krause’s student and the understructure I got from her in terms of “why bother doing this and why teach at all?” The first year became the creative understructure. You wanted artists to be able to perceive the world more vividly and meaningfully than other people did. If you read da Vinci’s notebooks he talks about “Oh, painter, go out into the world, look and see what happens when shadow hits light. Do not think you can just do it.” And it’s sort of the same thing. Becoming a perceptive artist means translating what your senses experience into paint and into form. The actor translates what your senses perceive into understood behavior. It was training the senses. If you’re aware of how you sit, what is it revealing about you? And not allowing it to be an intellectual response. Krause just kept saying “it’s your totality that has to come to this understanding.” So you start that in the first quarter by training the senses to perceive, and then [in] the second quarter you focus on what the creative imagination does with that perceived reality. It was the imagination for the actor—once again, in behavior terms. These foundations highlighted what we can call “inner techniques of creation.”

MS: In that first year with your students, you’re teaching sophomores and you talk about learning to perceive the world—I remember a lot of that being through physicality. The actor comes in, where do you start with that actor?

DD: The first quarter was just supposed to start people realizing, discovering through individual senses. Sometimes I would start with sense of sight, sometimes I would just start with kinesthetic sense, whatever the class seemed [to connect to]. And I would make assignments like: what was the most visually exciting thing that happened to you today, that you can say “Oh my god!”; and what details did you actually see, specifically? Like a sunset—start working on [noticing] your response to that. Did you lean back? And then, you remember, my father, my mother . . . you start [asking] yourself “can I let myself see that sunset and be my father?” If you know your father well enough just to let yourself see what your dad would see. If your dad is a painter, he will see certain things. If your dad is a mechanic, he will see . . .

MS: So a lot of what you did worked from your knowledge of the student and the personal elements of their lives?

DD: Yes, which is sort of what the journals were about.

MS: They would write a journal?

DD: And it was a work journal, a notebook. It wasn’t [to] sit down and tell me all about how you wish you could be an actor someday and what your mother was like. It was: what did you do today to learn about the sense of sight a little?

MS: And this journal was not about: what did you do in class and what did you like?

DD: No, no, I didn’t care. [Laughs.] That wasn’t important. I wanted to make you figure out how to become your own teacher, outside of class. How do you start to see that a person’s literal spine is in fact a spine [that] embodies something? So you go and you look at this person. Go and look at five different lawyers and see what they all do that is the same, that is lawyerly. If you, Max Shulman, became a lawyer, you’d still be you, but you’d be you if you were a lawyer. Something would have happened to you because of certain kinds of experiences. It has to be you, but it has to be You-If—experience changes who we are.

MS: So, to do that it starts with physicality and—

DD: [Interrupting] And I always want it to stay physical—you are creating with your physical and
emotional and intellectual totality.

MS: Can you discuss the way that physicality connects to emotion and how an actor taps into that?

DD: I avoid the word emotion because it usually means feelings and I would see actors standing there trying to churn up feelings when what was needed was a true, specific behavioral response to a specific, concrete stimulus, a physical response. How does something hit you and what do you want to do to the other person? That response includes the chemical releases that we associate with feelings. With emotion you usually get only feelings, which are passive, so they’re not dramatic, no matter how strong they are. Sensory, behavioral response—physicality—is active and inherently dramatic.

MS: When you get to the third quarter of that first year, where do you begin?

DD: It was characterization on a real specific level. You take how you perceive people, how your imagination and how metaphor works. If “I am a seagull” is in the text, then you have to do something with that—physically, truly. You have to ask yourself, what is the behavior that Chekhov has in mind when he has Nina say “I am a seagull?” What [is it] about a seagull in this lake did he see? To create Me-Nina I start with my mother and father arguing in our kitchen, the harsh clatter of dishes in the sink and hard voices bickering until I have to run out of the house and hide in the lilac bush with a pad and pencil and there I draw birds and butterflies and beautiful things. I take that David and I run out to the lake, and I see a seagull soaring above the water, and I lift my spine and I open my arms, and the clouds become a . . . powdery blue staircase to theatre and celebrity . . . and I have perceived and imagined my way from Me to Me-If-I-Were-Nina. And then, [Chekhov’s] behavioral metaphor: “I’m a seagull. Drawn to this lake.” Embody this and you get experiential understanding of Nina. To create Treplev you start with the You who wants to be an artist. What specific stimuli touch off the need to be an artist within you? What drives the artist-motivated spine? Once you’ve got that basic drive to be an artist—to need to communicate something about the world to the world—take yourself out to the lake. Treplev goes here to be alone and to clarify his ideas. A fish plops, ripples come to shore. The end of a weeping willow branch touches the water, and he sees a seagull floating, soaring, circling in the air above the lake. Do this until something in the fragmentary stimuli that add up to “the lake” [as Treplev sees it] pierces you deeply.

MS: So there was a conversation, at this early stage of the training with plays? Plays are already a factor even though it wasn’t scene work?

DD: The plays are in always from the beginning. Any kind of improvisation you do, any kind of work, is only valuable if you can connect it directly to a play, somehow. [A student would say] “I saw this man walking down the street,” and my job would be, as a teacher: can I connect that to a play somewhere? If you were going to look for the nurse from Romeo and Juliet, would you go to Saks Fifth Avenue to look for her? Why not? I’ve read some of the early acting texts that were written, and all the other systems of acting teaching were: “I want to teach you to act and more’s the pity we have to use plays to do it.” I want to teach you what the magnificence of Chekhov and Shakespeare can mean to a human being, and—wonder of wonders!—you have to learn to act in order to get there. You teach acting to get to this great drama. And I think that is a huge difference. People use plays so they can teach the actor, but I wanted to teach the actor so they could get to plays.

MS: But how did you ensure that your students could do that? Were students always driven to read, supposed to be reading?

DD: Well, that’s what the journal was supposed to be recording. Ideally, my job was to ask questions and make them go back to what they observed and make it deeper and always connect it to plays. How does this thing from your journal relate to Gayev [from The Cherry Orchard] when he touches the bookcase? You’re helping people to develop their ability to see the world in an actor’s sense—which means behavior and using their imaginations. Applied to character, it means: how did your character emerge from a background? A background of influencing, determining forces like social forces, geographical forces, culture, religion, sexuality, family? We improvised situations that [literally] dramatized these determining forces in specific ways from your life. What happens to the human being responding to these forces in conflict is drama, and it is also character-forming. Once we had spent some time using individual students as illustrations, we applied this to characters in plays. And [to end the first year] I chose representative plays of realism, as these plays focus most directly on complex character. Each student chose a complex character from some realistic play: Chekhov, Ibsen, Arthur Miller, August Wilson, Tennessee Williams. And we worked through improvisation to imagine and create situations, as suggested by the play, that influence character. The final presentation was an improv that would take a character directly into the play: George and Martha getting ready to go to daddy’s faculty party; Blanche DuBois packing, leaving to take the bus to New Orleans and to Stella’s apartment, etcetera.

MS: Again, the three years is unusual—that someone gets three years with their students.

DD: And the second year was [focused on] the interpretation of drama. You started with Greek tragedy, the most elemental form of theatre/drama. And then you went to Shakespeare so you could add language complexity and the reality of poetry. And then Chekhov, Ibsen, Shaw took all that underground. It went underneath and it was still as powerful and meaningful, but now compressed into corsets and jackets and it happened in living rooms. And then the third year was style: how do you make sure that all the stuff you’ve created is communicated as clearly and cleanly to an audience as possible?

MS: Style of performance? Or style as in genre, like Restoration comedy versus Coward?

DD: That could be part of it because performance of those meant selectivity. Of all the things a person might do in response to this, a Coward character is going to likely do this. And you asked, “why? Why as Coward?” So style was that process of selection by which you can communicate as clearly as possible to an audience what it is that you’d like them to get. I think people tend to think of style as stylized.

MS: Did you separate realism from other genres?

DD: No.

MS: It was broken down by playwright? Some seem to teach realism as central and other things as peripheral.

DD: No, because I just thought anything that’s worth it as a piece of art is as artificial as anything else. And if it’s worth it, no matter how artificial it looks, it is as real as anything else. If it’s really good it has to be theatrical, no matter how realistic it is. I think that’s a mistake people make when they talk about realism. Here in LA [Los Angeles], people don’t come to LA to make theatre their career; they come to make media their career. And they rightly learn how to just talk like real people. But then they get onstage and they sit there and talk like real people, and I want to kill myself. Because no matter how good they are—if there was a camera on you, the camera will make style, it will intensify, it will select—but you’re in a theatre. How are you being theatrical, no matter how real you are being? Think of it as a selection process—intensification and selection. Why is [Picasso’s painting] Guernica as real as anything else? What did [Picasso] select from quote-unquote reality? What did he heighten . . . in order to communicate? And that’s what I think you have to do with plays too. I would love to see Hamilton, I want to see what they do when they talk about redoing the musical comedy form. I hope it’s redoing it in ways other than just diversity of casting. If you’re gonna change music to hip-hop and rap, then everything has to change. If that is the best way to communicate this story, then you’ll change the form. And if you’re teaching young people, you teach them [to ask]: “what is the reality that [Lin-Manuel] Miranda started working with, that he wanted to communicate about life today, that made him do it this way?” And that’s what the third year was about; comedy got into that because then you have to learn just the techniques, external techniques—how to deliver that joke in that play because they were going to be in service to style. We worked on plays that demand great style in order to succeed, often something like Molière, Coward, Wilde. Style is that part of the creative process that leaves only what is necessary. Think of the last stages of a sculptor’s work or the writer choosing just the right word to communicate this particular reality at this particular moment. But this [third] year is the best time to explore nonrealistic plays, contemporary forms working to find the exact, right way to express new contemporary ways of looking at what it means to be human: Annie Baker, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Sarah Ruhl, Stephen Adly Guirgis, and probably even more current makers of theatre than I am aware of.

MS: It’s interesting that you mention that because looking at a lot of what you did, it’s working from the Western canon. And I always felt you taught that the play’s the thing, and I believe you taught us how to read plays and know what they wanted. A play might be foreign, but we learned how to deal with it. Can you offer some words on how you taught actors to read a play and understand what it wants from them?

DD: Well, you nailed it. How to read a play. How to ask a play what it needs of those who will bring it to stage life. If you add how to develop the ability to bring all that to life and to communicate it to an audience, you have articulated the over-arching goal of the whole three-year process—and, of course, a lifetime’s process. And we get a new idea of what makes drama as we focus on new ways to see what makes us human. [We] start getting that cultural knowledge, start working to learn what new playwrights and storytellers and theatre-makers are doing to keep theatre a vital part of a healthy culture. Entertain by all means, but also illuminate, manifest, challenge.

MS: What environment do you think is the most effective for young actors? Inside that rehearsal room or inside that department?

DD: I think we have to go at least one more and that is: what is it that you’re teaching and what are you teaching for? I know that students came there and they wanted to learn to be professional actors. But I wasn’t teaching that and the environment I was in was created to teach something else. I remember one of the last classes I had, a mother said to me: “can you guarantee that my daughter is going to have a career?” And I remember thinking that’s not why I was teaching her. It wasn’t about career training.

MS: You were often in a situation where the majority of people in that class that had given you three years were not going to be in the theatre at all. So what were you teaching and why?

DD: I really did think that I was teaching people how to act. They were going to be able to act, to be able to be professional actors. And I guess in order to be professional about something, it seems to me there is always a part of the training, which they are now trying to make more and more in the college curriculum—craft and career—occupational realities that have to be learned and dealt with. I think one needs now to ask: which of these can be taught in a classroom and which of these really have to be taught in the field? There are people teaching the business of acting, and they end up teaching you how to get headshots. Well, that changes every three years anyway. It’s not that I don’t think the business side of acting is something that shouldn’t be taught; it’s that you better know exactly what you’re doing and don’t kid yourself into thinking you’re doing that because you know you should be doing something. But, that’s not about acting; it’s not an acting class thing. As a student, suddenly here I was and Alvina Krause came into my life and deepened and broadened my understanding in ways that made me a human being that wanted to keep living. That’s what I want to teach. [Laughs.] Seriously, and along the way you learned how to act. But you didn’t necessarily learn how to get an agent, and certainly not how do you sustain yourself on a TV show for ten years. How could you teach that? A teacher has to learn: how much are you responsible for when they’re twenty-two and leaving college? What are the most important things they need to know? They’ve got four years of college and the environment—the liberal arts education environment—was so important because I was teaching really smart, intelligent, creative people, and I was hoping that their learning theatre and acting was going to help them in whatever life they went on to.

MS: I saw people in your class perform parts and characters in ways that will never happen on a professional stage. People playing roles they will never play—beautifully. It was like we had an ideal repertory company and anybody could play any role. And I wonder what happens when you start talking about what parts people will actually play when they get outside of that place?

DD: There are teachers who do that. Their idea is: identify as soon as you can what your type is and what you’re going to be cast as, and then really get good at that. I wouldn’t spend my life teaching that, I would have done something else [with my life]. We’re learning, for example, Shakespeare, and what’s important is Shakespeare, not you. Shakespeare lets you find out all the things that you are or can be, but the work requires that you not be limited. It’s not career preparation, it’s person preparation. If I had to justify what I taught by how many people actually were successful actors, whatever [“successful”] means, it’d be very hard.

MS: People often advise young actors to go out and do their own work. And very often that work ends up being socially driven work.

DD: The whole devised theatre, theatre of social engagement.

MS: Right, and applied theatre. But do you think in the training of social agents, rather than actors,
are we going to lose something in the execution of even that socially driven work?

DD: My response is, if you’ve got eighteen to twenty year olds, teach human beings everything they need to know to become an artist of social engagement, but I don’t know that if you start teaching them how to go to the west side of Chicago . . . what are they going to take to the west side of Chicago? I remember in the ’60s being a passionate twenty-year-old and doing plays about civil rights. But I don’t know that I was capable at that time as a person of becoming an effective social agent. Once I had studied really hard and become an artist, then I could have. If that’s where my passions went, I could have done it. And I think our job in theatre is more to train the artist who is going to find out why he or she wants to be one—or at least, how to have that direction after school. You spend your life doing that. Eighteen-year-olds need to discover who they are in order to do all this. So, a class in the theatre of social engagement should still help the young actor to discover what capacities for response they have, where their passions lay, their fears, their contempts, their fascinations, etcetera.

MS: Can I shift and ask: for people who very often have a single semester for an introduction to acting, and are often in a situation where most of the people in the class are not even in the theatre department and [are] students who are just fulfilling an arts requirement, what would you do with that single semester? What would David Downs make as his goal?

DD: You know, I started the “Acting for Non-Majors” class at school. What I wanted them to do was to sense the experience, the artistic experience of creation. I picked three or four plays: The Seagull because it involves young people and theatre; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof when I saw that I had athletes in the room, which there always were a couple; I think I did an Albee play; a couple of realistic plays, and I started off the same way. I remember a session and somebody did something and I asked “who’s his friend?” and somebody said that they were high school friends. And I said “tell us something about his family.” And he said something about his father, and then I told him “show us his father. Be his father.” And he did. He sort of became the kid’s father [and] the kid responded. And it was amazing that they let themselves do this. It illustrated that you’ve absorbed something about what this man is like, how he behaves, why he does what he does. And now I said, “you have these things already intensely stored up in you.” It is part of who they are. The friend had spent enough time with the father to express that part of himself that is the father, or he couldn’t do this. And that’s the goal: how do you store up things that become part of who you are? I would do things like that, asking: show us your father the banker, you and your father. Then I said, “now what if somebody just happens to know Stanley Kowalski, what would they show us?” Treating the characters as if they were the people they had already shown us. Then we end with a scene from the plays. And that didn’t teach them a whole lot about acting, but just a sense of what the creative process would be to the point where you could bring some work in character to a scene.

MS: So let me ask a big question: what do you hope for the future of theatre?

DD: Oh no! Well, I don’t think it needs hope. If it dies the way radio drama did, there was no reason to bemoan the fact that radio drama was dying. There will be a young person who won’t have to learn the new tools that will make the next thing happen because those tools will just be part of who he or she is as a young person. But they will need to tell stories and to create and it will happen. So you say, “what do you hope for theatre?” I always think, what do you mean by theatre? What do I hope for New York? There will always be people who want to create live storytelling in front of others. I don’t know what I hope—it doesn’t need hope. It’s going to happen and there will be people who resist whatever “it” is.

Max Shulman is an assistant professor of theatre at Colorado University, Colorado Springs. He is presently working on a history of the representation of drug addiction in US popular entertainment from the 1890s to the 1950s. He spent nearly a decade working as an actor and literary associate in new-play development in New York before his graduate studies. His work has appeared in TDR, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Studies in Jewish American Literature, and the recently published volume Working in the Wings.

Work Cited
Downs, David. The Actor’s Eye: Seeing and Being Seen. New York: Applause Theatre Books, 1995. Print.

Chekhov's Yelena

noreply@blogger.com (David Downs) — Sun, 14 Aug 2016 21:10:00 +0000

Inquiry:

I have an audition coming up for the Annie Baker Uncle Vanya, this time for Yelena. Just wondering if there would be some time to chat with you about it, it's just a great review to go over Chekhov with you.

Response:

My sense of Chekhov's Yelena (and who knows? it may not be Baker's--I haven't read Baker's translation/adaptation) and what you would most want to work on to create her is the woman of privilege who has never really had to do anything for herself (as opposed to Sonia, who spends her life doing for others what must be done). "Studying piano at the conservatory" is something that a few of the women in Chekhov’s stories have in common and it's always an indication that they lack purpose, grounding, sometimes even substance. (As you know, he's really pretty big on "We must work" as a key to a worthwhile life.)

Yelena has never truly had the depths of her being engaged or assaulted or uplifted or…or…or.... She sees/experiences Sonia's direct, deep engagement with Vanya, with Astrov, with the Professor (Sonia’s father and Yelena’s husband) and it's as if she recognizes that there are strings deep inside her that have never been played or even touched, or--something she doesn’t confront--that may not even exist. So she kind of wills herself to experience the passions she sees. "I'm going to play the piano and I'm going to cry." "Oh, now I’m crying, too" -- that sort of thing.

The caution here is to be sure not to judge her needlessly or to minimize her. She just hasn't had to live deeply or elementally to any extreme--and she may not have the capacity to. (We're all fully human, but some of us have more depths than others; some of us greater or lesser capacities for certain kinds of experience, etc. I think it's destructive to interpretive creativity in the name of "agency" to give every character the capacity for every kind of human response.) Yelena senses this reality when she says "I live like an ornament" or some translations say something like "I'm a minor character." Note: she doesn't envy Sonia or resent Sonia’s emotional capacities; she views them more with awe and wonderment—the way we view those youtube videos of things like artists creating portraits out of string or dancers doing lyrical acrobatic moves inside those huge DaVinci-like hoops—and then takes a further step of trusting that after she sees Sonia in action, she can jumpstart herself into the kind of engaged passion she observes in Sonia. She’s like one of the many young women with little experience and lots of “good upbringing” who read Wuthering Heights or just about any Brontë novel and want so very much to run on the moor in the rain and to experience the depths and breadth of Cathy's passions; or who want to fling themselves at Mr. Rochester as they walk along a garden path. (“I think I could fall for the doctor myself.”) Or even any of Jane Austen's women who maintain the social graces while still revealing the passionate heart beneath the conservative dress.

But she doesn’t. Why? She says it’s because of morals, ethics, duty. What does Vanya mean when he says her philosophy is lazy, shallow?

One of the things about you that will always come to your rescue in life is the Sonia part of you--the grounded down-to-earth workhorse part of you that will just roll up your sleeves and do what has to be done in order to get on with it.

That's the part you have to put aside when you create your Yelena.

There is a Yelena in you--surely the capacity to become a Yelena. Find ways to allow her to come out and play. Lift your spine (hers is a spine that has worn beautiful clothes all its life) and choose a dress of uncluttered lines that reveals your lovely figure. Let yourself do some classical ballet moves that emphasize balance, grace, flow. Then try a sweeping waltz. Enjoy the feel of heavy fabric moving about your ankles. Maybe walk with a book on your head until you can climb stairs or stroll in the garden or sit on the garden swing with ease, with grace, and with no sense of stress about the book balancing on your head. (Paris Hilton said you learn to walk as if you're always wearing a tiara. Eliminate the vulgarity of Hilton from this and it's a good image to add to your Elena.)

Let yourself sit relaxed and erect at the piano and let your hands be lovely, delicate, manicured hands that play the piano with grace, with precision even—but not with much depth and little emotional understanding. Play until you tire of it, until it bores you. (Something that shouldn’t take too long—why?)

Then let her go to the door of Vanya’s room and hear Sonia’s voice pleading with him to shake off his depression and to get back to simple, one-foot-in-front-of-the-other work; perhaps she sneaks a peak and sees Sonia standing behind Vanya, leaning with her face next to his, her arms crossed over his chest. Let Yelena see, absorb this until her heart wants to be able to feel that deeply about something.

Note: If the production has a contemporary setting, the realities still apply--you just adapt them to contemporary dress. Since I do not know Baker's translation, I rely on your good judgment to take these ideas and let them help you where they can.

Why do Vanya and Astrov bring their lives to a halt for Yelena? When Yelena comes into their world, what exactly comes in that makes these two men fall in love with her? To answer this it will help to widen your view a bit and take a look at Vanya's and Astrov's lives, worlds. What is it that is utterly lacking and that Yelena brings into it in full human embodiment? (Imagine you were going to get an acting class to create the world that Astrov and Vanya live in. Come up with a few illustrations of the daily realities of their lives and then they improvise them--At the end of a long day Astrov rides in the mud to a peasant hut and on the kitchen table (there are pigs snorting in the corner) lies an unwashed little girl whose appendix has burst; Vanya exhausts himself helping to bale hay in the hot sun and one of the peasants punches his adolescent son with his fists; at home in the evening Astrov starts to read a favorite Pushkin poem, there's a knock at the door, there's been an accident in the village, he downs a shot of vodka, maybe two, before he leaves; Vanya sits at his desk at night entering the week's receipts into the estate log book; he looks up into the mirror and sees what? etc. etc. You devise more; let the play guide you)--until the class experiences the great lack/need/emptiness/longing at the heart of it all. And then Yelena steps into that dreariness. And they respond. The irony is: What they fall in love with is the very stuff that Yelena wants to escape from.)

When Sonia asks Yelena why she doesn't get off her butt and do something--like go into the village and teach--her response is "People do that sort of thing in novels but not in real life." If she had the capacity to roll up her sleeves and do something worthwhile for others...ah well, but she doesn't.

Yelenas live among us. They live up in the Hollywood hills or maybe in Malibu colony and when we think of them—though who can blame us for not thinking of them what with “The Real Housewives of…“ distracting us—when we think of them we think they must live full, glamorous lives. (I always thought there was a Yelena in Princess Diana--only it was a Yelena who decided that dammit, she was going to have a meaningful life, so she made herself go to Africa and visit with AIDS patients. But even there--"It must be hot in Africa"--she was still Yelena.)

Anyway, enough. Lucky you, to get to work on Chekhov--for whatever reason!

Letters from Alvina Krause: October 16, 1981

noreply@blogger.com (David Downs) — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 19:36:00 +0000

Context
The last letter

Letter
David,
Thank you! thank you for the beautiful flowers. You know how I love them. Soft pinks, pale yellows, white. It's a lovely basket and it speeds me on to health. I am much better. Just need to get confidence in my ability to do things for myself -- .
I was grateful too to hear that your Dean was not guilty of that threat. Your School is still dear to me. The BTE "Music Hall" is a big success.

****

Context
Alvina Krause died December 31, 1981, just one month before her eighty-ninth birthday.

Letter
February 2, 1982

Dear David,
Thank you for a very beautiful letter.
I know how much you meant to Alvina and what more can I say.
Carry on as only you can do!
Sincerely,
Lucy

****

Letter
Dear David,
Thank you for the note, and thank you for the earlier one which I treasure!
Spoon River opened last night -- a rave review -- I have an idea you have heard already.
I missed it -- minor but compelling ailments -- but R is an excellent director and I was assured of his success before it opened.
I will see it tonight.
I hope your work continues to grow and I am sure it will!
Love, Lucy

****

Context
The Alvina Krause Theatre was dedicated in Bloomsburg PA

Letter
Dear David,
Why were you the one chosen to deliver this dedication speech? Was anyone ever given more help in the exact direction this theatre should go?
Whatever comes from your heart is what you should say. No one should say anything about what you feel and want to say, yourself.
I have avoided writing because this is your day, and as important as anything you can ever do. You will come up with all you need, and it will be right.
Much love,
Lucy

****

Dedication of the Alvina Krause Theater

August 5, 1984

Keynote Address

(transcription)

David Downs

Governor and Mrs. Thornburgh, Mayor and Mrs. Bauman, honored guests and dignitaries, Miss Lucy McCammon, Members of the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble, and friends of Lucy, of the BTE, and of Alvina Krause:

Let me first thank Betsy for a most gracious and generous introduction. And let me thank the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble for extending this invitation to me. I regard it as the finest moment of my professional life to date.

As I was packing my bags on Friday to come to this finest moment of my professional life to date, I stopped in the midst of folding a shirt and I said to myself, “Do you think Alvina Krause, that supremely optimistic of human beings, really believed this day would come?” And I answered myself instantly: “Of course she did, you fool.” Alvina Krause spent the last ten years of her life working for this day. After all, who is the driving, propelling force that has brought us all together here? It would be no surprise to her.

I used to think that all of the years Miss Krause had lived and worked were only years of preparation for my appearance in her life. She spent so many years at Northwestern University learning—learning what teaching is in a way that I wonder if anyone else ever has or ever will. And those twenty seasons at Eagles Mere where she learned so intensely what an audience is, what a creative imaginative part in any theatre the audience must be. And finally those ten years after her retirement from Northwestern, spent traveling and doing workshops and conferences only to discover, as she once said to me, “the horror, so late in my life, that no one else was teaching acting.”

There are people here today who can speak much more authoritatively about those years than I can. She came into my life, or rather I barged into hers, at the very beginning of what was to be the last decade of that life. She was seventy-nine years old then, living in Bloomsburg. And in March of 1972, Miss Krause and Lucy graciously agreed to allow five people from Chicago to spend seven days and seven nights living in their house and studying theatre. Miss Krause conducted class from nine o’clock to twelve o’clock every morning and from seven o’clock to ten-thirty, every evening. And, of course, ten-thirty became eleven-thirty, then quarter to twelve until Lucy would finally take over and kick us all out to rehearse for the next class.

At the end of the week, three of us told Miss Krause that we were returning in July for six more weeks. She and Lucy found us rooms in the college dormitory and we came for six weeks and worked every day from nine to twelve and seven to ten-thirty.

During this time “Eagles Mere” became a name that resonated like “Camelot” resonates. We resented you all for your Alvina Krause. But in the years since that beginning time of ours, I have come to think that we have an Alvina Krause that no one else has had. We have a distillation of a lifetime’s living and teaching; we have a clarity of vision and wisdom reached only at the end of the journey; we have a person who was free of all the social and political distractions of the academic world. (Henry Kissinger, I think it was, once said that conflicts in the academic world are so very intense because the stakes are so very small.) We experienced Alvina Krause at a time when she could be, as we sometimes jokingly said, our own personal Star Wars Yoda.

And so, at the end of those six summer weeks we decided that we were coming back temporarily forever, and we announced it to her. Without so much as a blink of her eyes, she said, “Well, then you’ll have to get jobs and we’ll hold class only twice a week. Be here October 10.” You simply didn’t surprise Alvina Krause.

Within days of our return, work began in earnest: Besides class work, we now kept detailed written journals. She wrote notes, she talked to me, she began to expand our thinking of why we were in Bloomsburg. She began to connect us and our work with the life of the community. It began to occur to me that as far as Alvina Krause was concerned, theater did not exist for its own sake in her basement so that we could revel privately in what we were learning.

“Couldn’t you do A Midsummer-Night’s Dream in the park this summer?” she asked.

I nearly choked. “Miss Krause, there are only three of us.”

A moment’s thought and then, “Yes, we’ll have to double up the roles.”

“What about a stage and scenery?” I asked in growing terror.

She said, “We’ll have to get evergreens from the park.”

Well, that project never materialized. We were not so courageous in our thinking as she was. But she pressed on. In my journal one day she included an article about lunchtime theatres in London. Little twenty or thirty minute pieces performed at noon had begun to be very popular. There was a note from her attached to the article:

Couldn’t you get Dick Benefield [manager of popular hotel and restaurant in town -- DD] interested in something like this? You could start with something like an old melodrama, get a heroine, a lover, and a villain. My favorite is Lady Audley’s Secret.

You notice she was going to leave it all up to me.

Fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, and then you have to have an entr’acte: I suggest “Bird in a Gilded Cage”. No setting. All you have to have is a card bearer. Here’s what should be on the card….

And then she’d say, “I didn’t know this was going to happen”.

By the way, does anyone in the group play the piano? And then once established with melodrama, you could change to other things.

This idea, too, fell on deaf ears.

In two months we three were joined by six or seven others. We met downstairs in the recreation room twice a week and Chekhov, Shakespeare, Shaw began to come alive for us. None of us had the nerve to think beyond that wonderful room. None, that is, but Alvina Krause. On January 10 in my journal she wrote:

You have a good grasp of these principles. Why don’t you look into the opportunity of an hour or two at the junior high school on Wednesday afternoons? This is the very way to teach theatre to young people. And you could do it so well and make Bloomsburg begin to see itself through its children.

Well, I still didn’t have confidence enough to take action on that assumption and the suggestion came to nothing.

In March of 1973 I was invited to interview for an acting teaching position at Northwestern and I told Miss Krause there was no way in hell that I would take it. Earlier she had written to me:

If you are going to be an actor and a teacher, it’s time for you to get a job. It’s time for you to start teaching. Aim for some of the public schools in this area. Go to the Bloomsburg College perhaps.

And then the invitation came to interview at Northwestern University.

In May 1973 Miss Krause was invited to speak to the Rotary Women. The next day she wrote in my journal, “I had hoped that these intelligent educated mothers of today would see a need for theatre in Bloomsburg. I failed.” But she never failed for long. I still don’t know how it happened, but suddenly, in June of 1973, we were doing Oliver! with the children at St. Columba’s School. We turned the cafeteria into a theatre and Alvina Krause came to our rehearsals. I will never forget how those ten and eleven year old children responded to her, how she got them all to understand what it was to become a character and to love theatre.

And how did I ever get the courage to direct Everyman in the Catholic Church? And to ask Father Casey to take a role in it! I played the voice of God. Miss Krause wrote notes to me after the production and said, “Your God was all right, but you could have punched the ends of lines a little more.”

It was in the middle of the last week of rehearsals that I was officially offered the position at Northwestern. Only the week before, I and the two original sojourners to Bloomsburg had decided to stay in Bloomsburg and to create a theatre. I called NU and turned down the job. That afternoon my two friends told me that they had decided to go to London in the fall. The fall! That was only two months away! I called Northwestern. “I changed my mind. I’d like the job.” Thank heaven they gave it to me.

That evening Lucy and Miss Krause appeared at rehearsal. Miss Krause had not come to any rehearsals. She had been determined to make me discover that I could direct the production on my own. But this was dress rehearsal week, her last chance to see what we were doing. I suppose she simply could not resist. She came into the back of the house as unobtrusively as she could. (Imagine God being unobtrusive.) When I saw her, I realized with simultaneous grief and horror that only hours earlier, I had pledged myself to leave Bloomsburg.

I don’t remember how rehearsal went, but afterwards, as AK and Lucy got into their car, I ran up to them and asked if we three could see Miss Krause the next morning. As she looked at me, I burst into tears and told her that we were coming the next day to tell her that we were leaving Bloomsburg. There was the slightest of pauses and then Lucy tramped down on the gas pedal, the car roared out of the parking lot, and I didn’t see what Miss Krause thought.

We arrived the next morning and AK was downstairs in the classroom reading a magazine, startled to discover that the time had gone so quickly and we were there.

“Well,” she said, “what’s so important?”

We choked on the lumps in our throats. The others did not know I had already told her.

“You’ve decided to quit the theatre!” she said with mock horror.

“No, Miss Krause.”

In a slightly more serious tone: “Have you decided not to go on with Everyman?”

“No, Miss Krause.”

A pause. She removed her glasses. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

We all began to cry. And that wonderful woman said, “Why so sad? Your leaving was implicit in your coming here, wasn’t it? Did you not get what you came for? Have you not leaned what you wanted? Are you disappointed in me?” And on and on she went until she made us feel absolutely good about leaving. I like to think that her heart was breaking too, but she wasn’t going to let her breaking heart ruin our futures.

So I went to Northwestern. And then I started getting news from Bloomsburg. “We’re doing a program called The Human Comedy for the AAUW next month. We’re planning a parable in mime for the Bloomsburg Fair.”

I sent Miss Krause a weekly journal of every class I taught, and though she had her own classes here, she wrote extensive notes to me with specific comments and suggestions meant to stimulate my own thinking, and questions, questions, questions. She had simply decided to do everything in her superhuman power to make me discover my own way of teaching. I returned to Bloomsburg over Christmas vacation and then for spring break. In March 1974 I got this note:

If the little group here succeeds in the promotion of theatre in the park this summer, would you be interested in joining them—acting, directing, building a youth theatre for Bloomsburg? Whether anyone will come up with a subsidy is anybody’s guess. But it doesn’t do any harm to plan, does it? What would you suggest?

Now she knew I was going to come for the summer to work with her on teaching style. For heaven’s sake, the next year I was assigned to teach the course in style, something she had worked twenty years to develop.

It occurred to me that we could do an old melodrama with style. Lady Audley’s Secret perhaps….

Well, once again she was more adventuresome than her students. There was no theatre in the park that summer.

Each year as a class of my theatre students graduated from Northwestern, a certain few made the journey to Bloomsburg to continue their study. By October of 1975, however, Miss Krause had become thoroughly frustrated with the current group.

Yes, I have told the group we stop work in two weeks. It is useless to go on and I refuse to pursue a useless course. I would rather work in my garden.

And then, the next month: “Lucy has fallen ill. Please pass the word: I will not be answering letters.” And I thought: This is it, it’s all over now.

One month later in December, I got the following letter:

The doctor insists Lucy is recovering. It is slow but it is recovery. When she will be able to go home he can’t say, but she will go home. And that starts contemplation of a future. I have been thinking perhaps of resuming acting classes.

And it was the class that went to Bloomsburg in the spring of ’76 who are here today dedicating this theatre. From the time of their arrival in Bloomsburg, the list of programs and plays and projects and productions done for the community grows and grows. I will not believe that Alvina Krause was forced to create the BTE. Today’s dedication ceremony is the direct result of her unquenchable burning drive to bring theatre to Bloomsburg.

And so I said to myself: I am the Keynote Speaker at the Dedication of The Alvina Krause Theatre. What does all that mean? Keynote. Dedication. Theatre. Alvina Krause. To what should such a theatre be dedicated?

AK had this to say about teaching:

To achieve what in your heart you long to achieve you will need a clarity of mind and vision, a physical stamina beyond that of ordinary man. I know whereof I speak.

And in response to my questioning her about those years after her retirement when she traveled from college to college and conference to conference, she wrote this to me:

Please try to make clear why I traveled so extensively—it was not for money nor fame nor self-exploitation—it was because I believe totally in the importance of theatre in our culture. It must be restored to that importance if we are to exist in this world of conflict—understanding—God help us! Let us do the drama of all nations, all people, with understanding, for understanding. Please get the motive for my teaching and my concern for young people (like you) who truly want to learn to achieve, to reach for stars.

If the bedrock of the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble is to be found in the life of Alvina Krause, I want to end this address by asking, “Where do we find such a bedrock in which her life was anchored?” Not surprisingly, she gave me the answer. In the fall of 1978, in response to a letter from me about the burning of the Speech Building at Northwestern, I got this letter from Alvina Krause:

“In the beginning was the word. And the word was with God”. Do you know that that was the beginning of the School of Speech? That was how it started. That was its function, its purpose. To read the word of God, to speak the world of God, to communicate the word of God with beauty, with meaning, with dignity, with truth, with conviction. Isn’t that wonderfully unique in this crass, unbelieving world of ours?

A young theological student sat listening with growing indignation at the way his fellow students, his instructors, his Wesleyan ministers read the glowing words of the Bible. He sensed that “out of the depths” came the Psalms. He cried out when “Lift up mine eyes unto the hills” was read in dull, dead, meaningless tones. He experienced the vitality of the scripture, he recognized the beauty of the King James version. The Scottish poet soul in him rose in rebellion. He was a man of action. He started classes for his fellow students in reading the Bible, in public speaking for ministers—all based on his deep feeling that the word of God, the life of Christ, the acts of the Apostles was too deep, too important to humanity, that it must be communicated in a form fitting the importance of the subject and the beauty of the language.

I wish you could have heard him read a Psalm! It glowed with understanding of the depths of our needs. And the book of Job. To me it had been a lengthy over-wrought tale of misery until I heard him read a passage with the simplicity of great art and the comprehension of a great mind revealing, through the beauty of the spoken word, the depths of human faith. He illuminated the Bible, Shakespeare, Bobby Burns. He saw the need for Speech education. With his own funds he bought from NU the land on which Annie May Swift stands. He set about raising money for his school, he assembled a staff of people who shared his sense of truth and discipline. And among those students was Ralph Dennis whom he recognized as a worthy successor. And Dennis carried on. It was glorious.

These people believed. They believed in their work, they believed in the School and they believed in their students. They had true comprehension of the power of the spoken word to reveal humanity through great writing and they shared that belief with their students.

I saw what speech could be. It shook me, stimulated my mind, my imagination, my will. You have written to me of my ‘greatness’. I have just given you the source.

When Alvina Krause died during the early hours of that last day in 1981, she left me as I was emerging from the tortured adolescence of my teaching life. It was as if a cherished parent had left me just when I was beginning to understand. It was as if a compassionate, loving, knowing doctor had left a patient just as that patient was recovering enough to be able to thank the doctor properly. It was as if suddenly the beloved places of my life—the hills at the horizon that comforted always during my troubled childhood in Pennsylvania, that magic lake in Evanston that has sustained me through eleven long years of teaching, and that amazing house at the end of Second Street in Bloomsburg where I learned to live and first truly came to life—it was as if these places had left me. When Alvina Krause died it seemed to me that one of humanity’s rare proofs of what it can achieve, given the passion and the will, had died with her.

Well, I have survived and I will thrive.

Alvina Krause left the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble, it seems to me, in its needful childhood. Today we meet to dedicate its theatre. We meet without Alvina Krause whose dynamic drive provided the life force for this theatre. Somewhere in all those letters to me she said,

Theatre fulfills a need in humanity as fundamental as sex: the need to work the imagination, the need to feed our hunger for revelation, for understanding—to stimulate our growth as rational beings and as responsible members of society. Are not the performing arts, and theatre in particular, as significant to a country as the national defense on which we spend billions every year? For the performing arts defend our beliefs, our ideals, our achievements, defend the creative mind and imagination. And on that we spend so little.

There is only one thing left for me to do and that is to strike the keynote. I went through the journals and through all of those letters, and it seems to me that the keynote of Alvina Krause’s life was the power to believe and the determination to work to achieve those beliefs.

The BTE exists, it struggles, and it must thrive. The continued health of the community depends upon it.

I will always cherish the way Miss Krause ended one particular letter to me, written at a time when I thought I would quit teaching and go away forever. The letter said, “Chin up, spine erect, eyes bright, stride into the future like Renaissance Man”. That advice sustains.

Thank you.

Letters from Alvina Krause: October 6, 1981

noreply@blogger.com (David Downs) — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 15:19:00 +0000

Context
Krause had been told to stop working because of the possibility of heart failure. She had refused. "What's the point of living if you're not doing," she said.
"My heart!" she said to me once. "I thought if would be this [pointing to her head], but not my heart [palms to chest]".

Letter
David, I have been hospitalized again. Recuperating, but not able to do biography now. [I had been asked to write a brief bio for a reference work -- DD]
But I am angry with you, very angry! Why didn't you tell me the Dean had threatened you with dismissal if I spoke what they did not want spoken. What are they afraid of? That school was my life -- My life! I brought distinction to it during a rotten regime -- At home and abroad -- My work was recognized with distinction. What are they afraid of? I would never have appeared on that platform if I had known of that threat to you. I shall never appear there again. Such a dirty, low down deed! What are they afraid of?

Footnote
AK, Lucy told me later, said the next time she would go into the hospital, she wouldn't be leaving alive.

Letters from Alvina Krause: February 1981

noreply@blogger.com (David Downs) — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 18:21:00 +0000

Letter
Your petits fours were a sweet Valentine. They let me feel all cozy and warm, and coddled and loved. I like it! Thank you! I eat them slowly with great relish and gloat over all the wealthy people in the world who will never enjoy the deep satisfaction in one box of petits fours.
I know you have been told that X is taking the summer off. I can understand why: he must prove to himself that he is master of himself. Ridiculous, but he needs that self assurance. And that cancels our first production for there is no one else in the company who can charm an audience as X can -- and there is no one else who can sing as X can and the entractes absolutely require it. So we are without an opener. I do not want to direct, especially in a season that is going to demand so much of me. I do not want to direct. But this is a crucial season: we are asking for donations of a quarter million dollars. I thought "Alvina Krause Directs" might be a proof of our [sic -- a word not written? -- DD] I do not want to direct Lady Audley's Secret, but this is a crucial year. We must have a show that makes the whole audience laugh together, enjoy together, go out into the lobby hobnobbing together -- and the committee comes up with no such comedy. So I choose Lady A -- believing X would be here. So -- we must find another X or another comedy that will achieve the same results. Have you got an X that you would lend us for a while? Or a comedy like Room Service or Something Happened on the Way --- cast must be small -- Who wants life to be easy?
My cast comes off tomorrow I hope -- I'll be normal again! We should throw a whale of a party!
Happy Presiden't Day! Isn't that a laugh in this Carter -- Reagan -- Haig day?
Greetings to your Candida people.
A.K.

Letters from Alvina Krause: November 1980

noreply@blogger.com (David Downs) — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 18:11:00 +0000

Note to DGO Subscribers
If you read Krause's letters via the email sent to you by Feedburner, please check the actual blog post of Friday January 18 for a video of Krause's remarks accepting the President's medal.

Letter of November 1, 1980
Congratulations on Candida. Tell your cast I am proud for them. Now they can move on to even greater achievements. Bravo!
Doll's House was a success too. Good houses of people new to our theatre. Julie did a terrific performance of Nora. She is a true actress. And how the audience loved Ibsen! They were spellbound for three hours. One man said -- mind you: a man -- "that wasn't written 100 years ago! That's today!" Do you think Ibsen heard that?
I have a group coming today for a three hour session on acting -- Next weekend we go to NY for the dedication of a little off-off Broadway theatre which will bear the name "The Alvina Krause Theatre" -- two more days of celebration of my name in light in NY!
On your next visit to the Dean could you just subtly insert the words that we are working, striving, begging for $25,000 down payment on our theatre. The irony of it! I witnessed all that money thousands, millions tossed about at NU and BTE is begging for $25,000 down payment.
You are on the crest of a wave: ride it!
A.K.

****

Letter of November 21, 1980
Is NU Speech restored to normalcy?
I spent a weekend in NY for the dedication of Neal Weaver's The Alvina Krause Theatre. A tiny little theatre on a top floor, but oh, the love! They had invited former students of mine -- I couldn't believe it! There was Priscilla Weaver, one of the three original founders of E.M.! [Summers at The Playhouse, Eagles Mere, Pennsylvania, started in 1945. Patricia Neal was among the original group -- DD] I had not seen her since she left EM in 1946. And there we stood holding hands and saying over and over "Oh, Priscilla, Priscilla!" "Miss Krause"! And George Furth broke in -- George Schweinfurth who couldn't act "but you can write, George. Write." And "Twiggy" made him rich -- and there was the fabric of my life -- Norm Larson [Not sure of either the spelling or the identification -- DD] came up from Washington -- You know the real story that should be written about me? "AK actors who became writers, teachers, leaders." They are every bit as important as Charlton Heston, Patricia Neal, etc etc. It was a wonderful two days I had with them.
Thank you for the clippings. I especially appreciated the Evanston Review article and picture. Or isn't it called "Evanston Review" any more?
BTE has accumulated $15,000 toward the down payment on the Columbia Theatre. They have a few days left to collect the rest of the down payment. Did Dean Wood mean it when he said "I can do something about it"? By the way, is he going to pay my plane fare? I have not heard from him --
We are deep in Christmas Carol --
Beautiful letter from one of your students --
A.K.

Letters from Alvina Krause: October 1980

noreply@blogger.com (David Downs) — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 02:38:00 +0000

Context
October 11, 1980. The gala celebrating the opening of the Theatre/Interpretation Center. (Sometime during the summer, Krause had telephoned, wanting information ["The Dean hasn't told me anything"] -- the only time in the almost ten years of our relationship that she called me.)
Months earlier, in an effort to ease Krause's concern that she was being used by the university, the Dean had told her that the school was planning to give the President's Medal to her and to Lillian Gish and to Agnes de Mille. ("Lillian Gish," Krause said. "A has-been actress. I'm still doing things"). In the weeks after Krause (finally) agreed to attend, mention of Gish and de Mille disappeared.
I will be Alvina Krause's official university escort for the weekend.

Letter
To corroborate: We, Lucy and I, arrive Oct 9, on US Air flight 205 at 9:10 am. As I told the Dean we will stay at John Van Meter's. We depart Monday, Oct. 13 at 7:50 am -- Some BTE members insist they are driving to Evanston for the event. I am trying hard to discourage them. In this TV Spectacular [It was being taped as a television special -- DD] could they expect to meet anyone? Is there any place for Alumni in this gala? Alumni who do not have $1000? I hope Lucy is included in the Gala attendance.
I shall be wearing my strongest armor and pray to keep my cool. If you see friends who want to see me tell them Thursday night. Friday before late afternoon, or Friday evening. John Van Meter will be in Indiana until Thursday, I think.
Prayerfully,
A.K.

****

Context
The presentation of the President's Medal to Alvina Krause October 11, 1980. Charlton Heston, Dean Roy V. Wood, President Robert Strotz.

Krause's Remarks (She altered them a bit here and there)
Thank you, Mr. President. My gratitude is deep -- especially deep since Northwestern was my home...for most of my life.
But who is this Alvina Krause you honor? A myth? A legend?
A few weeks ago I loitered in the front yard of my Pennsylvania home. A car drove up -- I think you would call it a car -- with a New York license. A young man leaped out.
"Hello, Alvina!" And he kissed me!
Keep your cool! Keep your cool! This is 1980! And I grinned up at him. What did this young young man from New York say to this old old woman in Pennsylvania?
"Teach me!"
And suddenly it is 1914 -- Yes 1914! And I a stringy-haired, freckle-faced, undersized, runt of a girl am sitting -- at last -- in the auditorium of Annie May Swift. Dean Dennis is introducing -- as only Ralph Dennis can do it -- the founder of the school, Robert McLean Cumnock!
I know there were a hundred or more students in that room, but I swear the great man looked straight into my eyes as he said,
"Stand up! Tell me who you are, where you came from, what you have done."
"St. Paul, Minnesota, and I --"
"Boston, Massachusetts, and I --
"Portland, Oregon, and I --"
"Los Angeles, and I played Juliet in 'Romeo and Juliet' --"
"Tallahassee, and I played Rosalind in 'As You Like It' -- "
And I stood up and blurted out
"Alvina Krause, New Lisbon, Wisconsin" and I sat down. Nobody from Nowhere, who had done Nothing! That was my beginning in this famous school!
It is years later. I am sitting in the Dean's office in Annie May Swift. I try to tell him that first year of teaching in St. Paul, Minnesota, was not so bad. I -- and I heard the Dean's voice:
"I am inviting you to join the faculty of the School of Speech!"
Blackout! Complete blackout until I heard
"Well, Alvina Krause, do you accept?"
Did that Cumnock voice of mine ring out in jubilation? My mouth opened -- closed -- not a sound! Reflex action wagged my head up and down!
Now, fifty years later -- yes, fifty years -- I stand here holding the President's honor in my hand --
Who is this Alvina Krause?
I am a teacher!
And this teacher has a creed which must be spoken now. No, this is not the senile babbling of an octogenarian. This is the creed that has been the backbone of my teaching -- the spine that kept me erect through the long years.
I believe. I believe in Michelangelo. I believe in William Shakespeare. I believe in Bach, Brahms, Beethoven and all the great artists that preceded them -- and that followed them. And most of all I believe in that combination of the arts we call Theatre. I believe, in spite of all that has been committed in that name, I believe that Theatre can -- if we but serve it truly -- I believe the Theatre can illuminate the lives we live even in the darkness which is today.
I am a teacher. Ralph Dennis made me one, as did those students, thousands of them, who drove me, questioned me, challenged me every inch of the long road up to this moment.
And a teacher must ask questions. We are here to celebrate the dedication of this Theatre/Interpretation Center. To what -- to what do we dedicate this Center?
And deep within me there is still a faint voice which insists
I believe!

Footnote
Krause insisted that artists must learn to make the ideas of others their own thinking. She did it always. Here is a quote from Bernard Shaw's The Doctor's Dilemma:
I believe in Michael Angelo, Velasquez, and Rembrandt; in the might of design, the mystery of color, the redemption of all things by Beauty everlasting, and the message of Art that has made these hands blessed. Amen. Amen.

****

Context
The weekend came and went.

Letter
You were an heroic escort all the way. Thank you! I have not yet recovered enough to objectively view those incredible four days. Will anything ever be the same at NU? Do keep me informed of the aftermath.
If any write ups in papers come your way, do send me copies. I keep wondering how it all looked to outsiders. And besides my sane relatives like to keep track of their mad aunt. Surely such an extravaganza never was held on any other campus! How did the press view it. What did Kup [Irv Kupcinet, long-time columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times -- DD] think, I wonder. What's the Dean's viewpoint now?
The Doll's House [the next play Krause was directing with the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble -- DD]
seemed very promising today. Was it by contrast?
Remind your Candida cast I love them. And those two who crashed the party remind them of their promises now and then.
Will we ever be the same again?
A.K.

Letters from Alvina Krause: June 1980

noreply@blogger.com (David Downs) — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 17:51:00 +0000

Context
I was scheduled to direct the play that opened the fall 1980 season at NU -- the first production in the Louis Theatre of the new Theatre/Interpretation Center.

Letter
David,
In cleaning my desk of a month's accumulation of unanswered mail I found your last letter. In haste I write: if you are going to do Candida for the first show next year God help you! You better begin work on it now -- hard work. It is the most difficult of all Shaw's plays to direct unless you have "natural" actors for the leading roles! In all my years of teaching I found only one person capable of creating Candida and only one Marchbanks. Mind me: go to work on it now -- and hard, comprehensive intense work. I would never do it with the company I have here and they are skilled actors!
Will you please send me McBurney's address? I need to reach him --
The tumult and the shouting dies ---- thank God! Eventually I can get to work again -- perhaps --
A.K.

Footnote
I'm don't remember what "the tumult and the shouting" was about, but I think Krause and the BTE people had spent the spring wrangling over organizational issues.

****

Context
A few days after the letter, this postcard arrived. I must have said something to Krause -- perhaps on the phone -- about helping the actor playing Morell to gain more physical flexibility.
Dean Wood had invited Krause to come to the to-be-televised gala in October dedicating the new Theatre/Interpretation Center.

Postcard
Morell must have the strength and inner charm of a John Kennedy. Remember Candida loves him, Prossy loves him, his congregation loves him. He has warmth and sincerity. He has everything as human being that Marchbanks lacks -- but he is not a poet! He is open, direct, understanding. He is not stiff and he is angry only when Eugene draws blood. This fine balance of character is most important -- Dedication? I don't know.

Letters from Alvina Krause: February 1980

noreply@blogger.com (David Downs) — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 19:48:00 +0000

Context
Krause's eighty-seventh January 1980 birthday.

Letter
Pink roses and purple heather! They make me almost forget that another year has been subtracted. I love them! You are a special person who remembers. No doubt someone has told you of the exciting, beautiful birthday party at Joanne's. What greater gift can there be, greater than love that asks nothing in return? Now we can begin classes again on Tuesday with a free, joyful expectation. I am a most fortunate person: in a world of violence I am supported by love. Would I could take my message to Washington, to the Kremlin, to Iran!
I was disturbed that the TV program did not reproduce the points I really tried hard to make: that theatre must survive if civilization is to survive. Where church and schools have failed theatre could illuminate if we disassociate theatre from "show" business. Be sure you send that home in your classes: theatre is an Art, a great Art; in ordinary times it could be served as an art, great as the dance, as opera, as symphony; but these are not ordinary times; these are days of survival; theatre by its very nature can illuminate these times, perhaps save us from the ultimate disaster. Don't dare teach Hamlet without creating that lascivious world which destroyed him. "The rest is silence". What is that silence? Take your students to a grasp of that silence. "King Lear" Oh dear God! Shakespeare saw it all: a world fallen into the hands of money-mad Gonerils and Reagans! You are teaching at this hour, David, and theatre could be more powerful than -- the bomb? God be with you!

Letters from Alvina Krause: Fall 1979

noreply@blogger.com (David Downs) — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 21:13:00 +0000

Context
The roots go deep; the passions persist.

Letter
I am most curious. The theatre department, the School, received notices of the Theodore Fuch's [Design Teacher 1932-1970 (Chair of Theatre 1940-1951) -- DD] Collection on Theatre Technology going to Brigham Young University. Incredible! NU let that collection go to another university? It is absolutely invaluable! A master craftsman, artist, teacher has assembled the material of a lifetime and the School he served for a life time ignores the colossal, vital work of that life time! What are your bases for the claim: "a great school"? Dean Wood dares to write me he "loves" the School -- Love isn't words; it is acts, deeds, manifestations. It is incredible that the tale of destruction continues to unfold. Does everyone believe a new building will make a new school? I read with deep interest the plans for the dedication of the new building. Interesting the names of people involved: Martha Hyer, who left NU in her sophomore year, Charlton Heston, who never came back after his Sophomore year, etc. etc. Ralph Dennis gave his life to that School, and not one Dennis student is considered in the New. McBurney grew fat, married his son's wife, destroyed that School and his era is honored! Yet Dean Wood "loves" that School! What does he love? ---- And I take it out on you!
Another matter. When are you going to return to the requirement of Theatrical Backgrounds as prerequisite for all acting students. How dare you give theatre degrees to graduates who know nothing about the literature of the theatre? What, in God's name are they studying? Speech graduates do not know what a play is! Daily that fact confronts me. BTE must select plays for next season. Where do they begin? They grab at straws, They fumble in the dark. They have no criteria. What makes a good play? All they have is what you gave them in specialized fields. J decides we must do our own dramatization of Christmas Carol. It is driving me mad! Not one person in the company ---- and they are highly intelligent! ---- knows anything about the construction of a drama. They turn in dialogue from the book. "Dialogue isn't drama!" I cry. They stare. And now J is going through the torments of hell because as a graduate of theatre school she does not know what makes a play. And she is a bright girl! Why do you offer courses in dramatic literature if they have no importance to your own students. Does anyone "love" the School enough to tell the truth?
You are wise to plan a new course, your course. Get it in the schedule next year. Go your own way positively; students will follow. Hope that Sam or a new teacher will support you. I don't know what you can build on rotten foundations -- better build new ones. But don't acquiesce! You have tenure!
Integrity: is it a lost word?

Letters from Alvina Krause: Fall 1979

noreply@blogger.com (David Downs) — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 21:27:00 +0000

Context
Because she wanted me to have full directorial control of the production of Misalliance, Krause stayed away from rehearsals. And because I wanted it to be perfectly the production she would have directed, I paralyzed myself creatively. By the time we got to tech week, the production was failing.
It was at the first tech or dress rehearsal that Krause finally appeared. And she came back every night until opening. She was eighty-six years old. At first she was on stage prodding, cajoling, teasing -- doing everything she could to spark Shavian comedy in my beleaguered actors. And when they caught fire, she was in the theatre house shouting, scolding, compelling those actors to communicate Shaw out into the audience.
The production succeeded magnificently and I learned mightily. In the realm of "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger", that week-long profound and concentrated experience in creating theatre vitalized my teaching ever after.
In the fall, I began my seventh year at Northwestern and Krause and the BTE started work on their Theatre in the Classroom project.

Letter
David,
Are you as busy as we are? We are a few weeks deep in Theatre in the Classroom and BTE is realizing the job they undertook so blithely. Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Importance of Being Earnest, Pygmalion, Our Town -- Discovered to their great astonishment that Our Town (oh so trite and easy!) was as difficult as Chekhov if it is to be done with meaning. Suddenly they wake up and exclaim: "It's beautiful"! Oh David, do go after the real force of drama! Actor, playwright, director, technicians working together to create an art that can be a mighty force in this dying world! You can't, you must not teach acting for itself alone. You must teach theatre. Don't be pigeon-holed! If there is no one in the department big enough to do it, then you must. Do you want to spend your life teaching a dead art? Well that's where theatre is going if people like you do not rise up and fight the trend. Your acting class should inspire playwrights. Does it? Well -- so be it -- go your way: let the nuclear forces turn you into rubble. For me I shall fight to the end. The life force refuses to die in me, and those who come my way, better realize it!
Do you watch the TV P.M. show? If you do, you may see me on Friday of this week. What excerpt will be shown out of three hours of class and a two hour interview, God knows. If as the blurb in TV Guide indicates it focuses on "stars" I taught, I shall blow up. That bit came at the end and I tried to toss it off in a hurry. Why won't they focus on what's important! -- Last week I spent two 8-hour days with the Hugh Downs people [The weekly television magazine Over Easy -- DD]. They got quite excited but what will come out of that. 16 hours reduced to 7 minutes. Why do I do it? BTE needs the publicity. Pass the news on to the Interp department. The Hugh Downs won't be shown until March!
Carry on,
A.K.

Letters from Alvina Krause: May 24, 1979 and June 2, 1979

noreply@blogger.com (David Downs) — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 18:26:00 +0000

Context
I remember urging recently-graduated students to go to Bloomsburg and to show up at Krause's doorstep.

Letter
David!
Why did these three people come here? Why! I told you that I was teaching no more. Didn't you believe me? I am teaching no more! I am tired -- I do not want to take on another group. It isn't the time, it isn't the hard work although the hard work is part of it. I can't take the nervous strain, the worry. It's final. I am not teaching!
So why did these three come? I found them interesting, sincere, dedicated. But what could I do? With no study with me, what could they do here? I suspect whomever they talked to were as at-a-loss as I. If we were producing plays during the winter there might have been a valuable place for them. But we are not. Any time I have must go to the "theatre in the classroom" project -- which just may be vital. True: the group needs some strong actors. They recognize that fact. But they need leaders not people like themselves. They need a strong vital actor -- man or woman -- who is a crystallizing force, someone they can admire, respond to with strong return of creative energy. I do not know where to find such a person -- but that is the need.
I am most sorry about this. The visit of your students troubled me no end. I did not want to say "No", but I must.
I think you may be pleased about the summer. Be definite about the set. Do not let it take precedence over the production.
A.K.

****

Context
SNAFU

Letter
What a mass of misunderstandings!
In the beginning: why did these three students come here? You knew I would take no more students. I was terribly distressed that these three people came expecting me to accept them. I was impressed by their positive qualities. I hoped that by referring them to the BTE group they would learn why I could teach no more! The BTE program for next year is a heavy one: it will tax my strength. That referral was the source of the mistakes that ensued. BTE could only reiterate: the only teaching done next year will be by BTE members ----- and they are not seeking students! Many misinterpretations followed. The apprentice program is the only learning program available now. No pressure is put on anyone to join that program. I regret deeply my referral of your students to BTE. It was a mistake, but an innocent one. ---- But I still ask: why did these three people come, knowing that I would not accept new students. I am tired. I have had enough! True BTE needs talent. They need a truly strong leading actor -- and they know it. But I am not going to give classes to train that actor! He -- she -- will come with training, or he will learn by participation. No more classes for new people! True BTE will meet with me regularly to work on their Theatre in the Schools project: Shakespeare, Ibsen, Shaw. It will be a heavy study program and I will give it my best. I have every reason to believe we will be able to send out a strong program. That will be my -- our -- goal or the coming year. I can do no more --
Everyone is keen about Misalliance. They will play many roles for you and they realize the difficulties of production. No characterizations will be complete and relationships will not be finalized before casting. Will R be prepared to try out for you with the others? (By the way: does R expect to stay at Mrs. Wilson's? If so he should write her immediately!) I know from experience the play is difficult to direct -- much more so than other Shaw. Have you sent in floor plans, furniture and prop requirements? When you come we will be deeply involved in two other productions, you know. Time is at a premium here --
C has been through a horrendous growing up experience. She is responding sanely. I hope the aftereffects will be healthy.
A.K.

Letters from Alvina Krause: May 9 and May 29, 1979

noreply@blogger.com (David Downs) — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 17:14:00 +0000

Context
May 9 -- My visit to Bloomsburg to direct Misalliance looms. Nothing further is said about the spring Alumni Meeting at NU -- see letters of March 1979.

Letter
David,
If you have any persuasive power at your distance better get busy. So far there is only one person I would consider for Misalliance and that is R. They don't work! They sit back and wait for me to create their characters and the play. I am willing to do my share but no endurance ordeal as Sea Gull was. Will you get word to them that you expect characters developed before you come, relationships established, the Shaw debate started. Say you will stage what they bring. "Tell them you expect Shavian-British speech -- No Americanisms! and hit that last hard! They seem not to realize how little time they have. Sets and costumes must be built and they will have teaching programs. Do what you can or we will be in bad trouble. Both plays must have perfect style, and they haven't even got a grasp of the obvious elements of each drama. No one -- except J -- was prepared with anything today. I had to push and prod and pull to get anything out of anybody. This is something I simply do not understand: this do-nothing except under pressure. Why?
By the way -- Misalliance is a debate. How do you plan to stage a debate? Now don't you dare leave that to me!
Help!

****

Context
May 29 -- I write asking, among other things, if characters and relationships had been established.

Letter
David,
"Characters established", "relationships established" -- in six class sessions? Divided between "Milkwood" [They were also producing Dylan Thomas's Under Milkwood -- DD] and "Misalliance"! You are expecting too much, David! I think it best to warn you: you will have much to do with regard to character and relationships as a director when you start work here. We have achieved a grasp of what Shaw is up to but we have not yet put that in theatrical form -- that is a director's job. We have a grasp of what Shaw is trying to do through character, but this has not gone into dramatic action -- that's your job. Character relationships develop slowly. We have the beginnings. We will go as far as we can in the brief time remaining which is divided with Milkwood. Keep in mind: only L, J and M have played Shaw and M says she was pretty inadequate to. The spirit is good and they love the play. In casting you will have several decisions to make and I shall leave it to you and BTE.
I was quite serious in my question: how are you going to stage it. Two and a half hours of debate in terms of theatre -- on one set on our small stage! Better have your blocking set definitely before you start. You won't need to spend time discussing the play: You will start right in on the staging -- no improvisations will be needed except the ones you do outside of rehearsals with development of character. Plan to start with a very sure directorial hand. In all rehearsals play the play fully. Be specific. And stick to the text. Permit no improvisations during rehearsals.
C has great difficulty playing her laughs -- as do others. If you use her you will have to direct her and others in this technique. Shaw's laughs must be landed and played.
What I am trying to say is that your directorial job must be very positive and secure. These people are excited about the play, they are doing good work, but they have two other productions to play and to construct. Time is precious.
A.K.

Letters from Alvina Krause: March 1979

noreply@blogger.com (David Downs) — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 00:54:00 +0000

Context
The Dean continues to woo.

Letter
David,
Do tell me whatever you can find out about the Alumni celebration in May. Why is the Dean suddenly eager that I appear on that occasion? I think I told you that he had invited me by mail. Then this week he telephoned. Would I come? Consider it seriously? I stuttered (hate telephones!) and he urged further and I answered, "Where Speech School is concerned I am an alien." That stopped him for a moment. then, yes, he knew, he understood. If only we could meet and talk, etc. etc. for half an hour. I said, "Alumni Days can be lonely experiences. I do not choose loneliness."
"You won't be! We have plans. There will be people there -- David." So what goes? Who will be there? I know no one. McBurney successfully cut all Alumni ties. So why should I come to the Centennial Alumni Day. When Muriel and Vera consulted him before Christmas about something in my honor, he was very cool and they decided to give nothing. What happened after that? I would do anything if I could believe there was serious intention to restore the School to the honor of the Dennis-Cumnock days. But I refuse to be a pawn in a fund raising campaign to promote the work of Coakley, Schneideman, [another colleague's name -- DD] and their ilk. It was not easy to stand for quality in those McBurney days, but I did it. I do not care to compromise now. If you can give me any clues as to what goes on, please do.
Am I a nuisance?
A. K.

Letters from Alvina Krause: March 1979

noreply@blogger.com (David Downs) — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 23:38:00 +0000

Context
The School gears up for a televised gala in October 1980 to celebrate the opening of the new Theater/Interpretation Center. The Dean wants Krause to agree to participate.

Letter
David,
[Discussion of an applicant for an acting teaching position in the Theatre Department -- DD]
Many things puzzle me. Why is Dean Wood suddenly courting me? A huge floral arrangement comes to me on the occasion of the film festival. [One of the Bloomsburg students had made a short film about Krause and her Bloomsburg teaching -- DD] And before that an urgent invitation to the Centennial Alumni meeting May 11. "Be my guest". Why? I have virtually been banned for years. Why this urgency now. Dean McBurney told me: "Understand, Miss Krause, alumni have no control in my administration, no influence whatsoever". And he cut all alumni ties. All contacts with Dennis-Cumnock alums were cut off. And he made a point of establishing none with graduates of his own regime, particularly theatre grads. So where would I be on alumni day? Alone? alumni days can be fearfully lonely. But what I do not understand is this sudden intimate pressure. What goes?
The film festival was a big success. I can't bear the film myself, but people seem moved by it. And so I endure it. Tony Roberts was at his best: his genuine, outgoing, sharing self. BTE did a smart job inviting him here. How much money will come in remains to be seen.
Sea Gull progresses. [Krause was directing -- DD] There are hurdles but it is promising. C is becoming a real actress -- if I can get her to make it big enough. Why do NU theatre majors fail to realize that theatre is bigger than life? But the group spirit is remarkable. Pray for us.
A.K.

Letters from Alvina Krause: January/ February 1979

noreply@blogger.com (David Downs) — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 20:36:00 +0000

Context
A new year with new concerns and old passions.

Letter
The fog, heavy and all-concealing, is creeping up from the hollow this January day. What a winter! Snow and cold and now a fog!
[...A discussion of the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble and the possibility of my directing for the upcoming summer... -- DD]
Someone told me that Coakley is resigning -- Is it true? Is it possible? I restrain my Glory Hallelujiah until I hear positive truth. And what is [another colleague -- DD]'s present stand? If anyone is leaving you and Sam [Ball -- DD] must have a strong voice in new appointments. Both of you are too reluctant to fight. If you can't name a strong, giant of a replacement, can't you wangle a Galati directed production? That's how I made a transition from Interpretation to theatre. In that new theatre can you start clean? Is there no one else but me who wants the name Dennis over the portals?
Have I disturbed you?

A.K.

If the name McBurney is to be featured in the new theatre building, I will never go near it. The name alone fills me with revulsion. Does Sam remember this?

****

Context
Krause's birthday was January 29.

Letter
The flowers are beautiful! Did you tell them to tuck yellow rose buds? among pink carnations, white mums and purple heather. Exquisite! I thank you for thinking of me so beautifully! My heart leaps up.
It was a wonderful birthday party! So good to be with a company laughing together, celebrating together. I dread birthdays and birthday parties -- reminders of the race that can't be won. But this was a happy event this year.
You know we all want you to direct here this summer. I have told the administrative committee to write you conditions. I have nothing to do with financial arrangements. Artistic Direction is all I can manage. You will hear from them very soon. There is a problem. If "Misalliance" is the first show it must go into rehearsal in May. In fact I would start character work immediately after the Bucknell performance of "Sea Gull" [Krause had directed -- DD]. Can that be managed? "Misalliance" is a good opener for the season. Any other suggestions.
[...Discussion of BTE finances... -- DD]
...I repeat we are all most eager to have you direct a production. Does Equity cover you as a director or only as an actor?

Letters from Alvina Krause: December 1978

noreply@blogger.com (David Downs) — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 19:43:00 +0000

Context
Krause's 1978 Christmas card.

Letter
Merry Christmas wherever you are!
This morning was three hours of brilliant Shakespeare. I think JG's [a recent addition to the Bloomsburg class -- DD] work has sparked the group. She knows how to work (remarkable!) and she works. Her work glows. This morning she was a Juliet, truly Shakespeare's Juliet created for J! Young, glowing, "natural", responsive to all living things. I felt I were seeing Juliet for the first time. And S played Romeo, not as brilliant as her Juliet, but a truly responsive Romeo.
X and Y still agonize. Z did a Launcelot Gobbo that was absolutely brilliant. Not one trace of Z struggling. Easy as if he had played clowns all his life. Z has been working hard and it is paying off. T still has problems. She is tangled up in personal complications and cannot give her talents the concentration due them. The other day I ordered her to get her personal life in order and come to grips with what is important. She does an excellent piece of work one day, then nothing for weeks.
Are you insisting on voice training for actors. B could be terrific if she had a voice equal to her talents. As it is her voice is her enemy. She is aware of the need, but I can't give time to voice!
Did you know Vera Ward and Muriel Bach [former Krause students -- DD] approached Dean Wood with a project to raise funds to have my name somewhere in the new building? He was cool to the idea and they dropped it. It seems I am still "controversial". I don't mind: I feel no link to the present School, but isn't it ridiculous? Is he afraid of me? After all the School once stood high nationally and internationally for excellence. Is that evil?
A.K.

Footnote
Lucy once said to me, "She's always complaining about the school, but all the flowers she plants are purple and white". [Northwestern University's school colors -- DD]

Letter from Alvina Krause: November 1978

noreply@blogger.com (David Downs) — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 16:10:00 +0000

Context
With Annie May Swift closed, the school rented the seventh and eighth floors of a downtown Evanston bank building to house the Dean's offices and the Theatre Department. The acting classroom was one of those rooms with low ceilings, fluorescent lights, tile floors.

Letter
David, I know it must be hard -- this adjustment. (My own heart aches thinking of that Annie May Swift auditorium and what we created therein. Lear! A magnificent Lear!) But take a deep breath, David, and respond to that challenge! With what you have to give you can convert any space into a stage. Play in the round and create a world in a little space. Make it an opportunity to test imagination! I have just written a biting criticism to your students here in Bloom on their inability to create, on their total lack of imagination, on their inability to get out of their commonplace egoes [sic]. Not one can see and respond to General Gabler's picture on a wall! And so they fail utterly as actors. Get busy, David. It's a challenge. Convert your present class rooms into Ibsen's world. Chekhov's. Shakespeare's! maybe out of nothing you can really be a great teacher and touch the creative minds of actors which now luxuriate in unmotivated emotion and lines without imagery behind them. Why tell me why can no Hedda put images behind, around, and overflowing: "I am bored -- bored to death" Why does not one of them want to smash that lamp shade with red roses painted on it. Why can not one of them want to stamp on my French Oriental turned into a flowered green carpet? NO creative minds! Get busy in your desolate classrooms. I challenge you! And I believe in you! Grieve with me over Annie May Swift, but join hands with Cumnock and Dennis --
By the way maybe you can jolt your Dean a bit. Muriel Bach [former student -- DD] called me the other night. She and Vera Ward (former student -- DD] had approached the Dean on a project of theirs concerning the new Theatre building and me. He welcomed them, said he favored their project, said he had considered it himself but someone had always come forth with derogatory comments -- Can you make him see the nature of the source of those comments -- C C Cunningham's letter of resignation tells the full story I can swear it is the truth. It is in the archives, if it isn't in his own office files it is in President Miller's file. Can truth never prevail? Must the Mitchells, Schneidemans, Coakleys forever prevail? Muriel and Vera think otherwise. I doubt that they can make their point.

Letters from Alvina Krause: October 1978

noreply@blogger.com (David Downs) — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 16:14:00 +0000

Context
Annie May Swift Hall burned. A fire had started on the stage of the very theater where Krause had taught her acting classes. The fire had spread to within the walls of the building. To determine the extent of the damage, Annie May Swift Hall was closed indefinitely.

Letter
David,
Thank you for calling us about the fire. I couldn't have borne to hear it from someone who didn't care. Let me know what happens now. The people who would deeply care are either dead or like me far away. McBurney, you know, deliberately, purposefully, ended all alumni relations with generations preceding him. "Alumni do not run my School" says he to me.
"In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was God". Do you know that was the beginning of the School? That was how it started. That was its function, its purpose. Should that not be the beginning of the History. To read the Word of God, to speak the word of God, to communicate the Word of God with beauty, with meaning, with dignity, with truth, with conviction. Isn't that wonderfully unique in this crass, unbelieving world? A young theological student sat listening with growing indignation at the way his fellow students, his instructors, his Wesleyan ministers read the glowing words of the Bible. He sensed that "out of the depths" came the Psalms. He cried out when "Lift up my eyes unto the hills" was read in dull, dead, meaningless tones. He experienced the vitality of the scriptures, he recognized the beauty of the King James version. The Scotch poet soul in him rose in rebellion. He was a man of action. He started classes for his fellow students in reading the Bible, in public speaking for ministers all based on his deep feeling that the Word of God, the life of Christ, the work of the Apostles was too deep, too important to humanity, that it must be communicated in a form fitting the importance of the subject and the beauty of the language.
I wish you could have heard him read a Psalm! It glowed with understanding of the depths of our needs. And the book of Job. To me it had been a lengthy overwrought tale of misery until I heard him read a passage with the simplicity of great art and the comprehension of a great mind revealing, through the beauty of the spoken word, the depths of faith. You have written to me of my "greatness". I have just given you the source. He illuminated the Bible, Shakespeare, Bobby Burns. I saw what Speech could be; it shook me, stimulated my mind, my imagination, my will. He saw the need for Speech education -- it was called Elocution in those days, but don't let that mislead you. There was nothing of elocution in his own work and any tendency in that direction was knocked out of us pronto. With his own funds he bought from NU the land on which Annie May stands (It has its own campus!) He set about raising money for his school, he assembled a staff of people who shared his sense of truth and discipline. And among those students was Ralph Dennis whom he recognized as a worthy successor. And Dennis carried on. It was glorious. Those people believed. They believed in their work, they believed in the School, and they believed in their students. And they had true comprehension of the power of the spoken word to reveal humanity through great writing. They shared that belief with their students. The Cumnock spirit carried on right up to the Sarett Conspiracy which ushered in McBurney and death. How dare that woman write those drab paragraphs. The School of Speech was a light in the wilderness. Truly it was Dennis was the personification of a leader in Speech. In his tacky old suits he strode about the Speech education world like a giant. Sure! He was hated. He tore down empty attitudinizing. He jerked us up by the nape of the neck on any evidence of satisfaction with mediocrity. Mediocrity! It could not exist in his world. We had to reach, reach. He started the theatre department. Before it was fully established he had opened up Speech Correction, speech therapy; before that was old, radio was on its way, TV. And he travelled Europe, China, India, Russia (when the Revolution broke) Always learning, discovering, searching, living.
He brought that world and the people of that world right into Annie May Swift. And now they turn over the writing of that history to a woman as devoid of mind and imagination as a rhinoceros -- the dumbest of beasts! ----- So she makes a cut-and-dried dissertation out of life itself. Do something! Take her to dinner, get her drunk, wangle her material from her, re-write it. Strangle her!

Letters from Alvina Krause: October 1978

noreply@blogger.com (David Downs) — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 15:53:00 +0000

Context
More and more Krause was connecting her experience with the Bloomsburg students to her suggestions for my teaching.
And the School of Speech centenary celebration continued to rankle.

Letter
David, don't don't don't let your students in beginning acting perform. They have no instrument with which to perform. A violinist wants a perfect Stradivarius so an actor must want a perfect instrument before he can perform. That instrument is himself: his body (train every muscle) his voice (it must express every character from Hamlet to Lear, every emotion, reach everyone in an audience without effort) senses -- which create the Renaissance world, the Arthur Miller world, unknown worlds etc -- the imagination ------- but I don't need to tell you this. Do it! The trouble with the actors I have here is that they cannot create worlds, they cannot respond to that world or to each other. You saw it this summer. They are only now beginning to perceive (to use their senses to respond to stimuli, to understand through perception what a human being is and how he relates to his world) to play together and that means to actually respond through the senses to each other.
Do not let Juliet speak one word or "emote" one emotion until she actually has seen an Italian sun in an Italian sky and felt its heat on her face, her neck. And for God's sake: she must sense stars in an Italy sky -- stars stars -- that play is full of stars. You train those senses to respond truthfully or I disown you. I have told this group "Work on Act II Hedda Gabler but know that you are not Hedda, you are not Brack, you must create them. Hedda must handle an army pistol as a man does, must shoot in the air because she dares not fire straight; she hears, senses, people gossiping etc. --
Your actors have nothing with which to act until they have trained those senses to respond. Talent in acting is the ability to perceive more deeply than other people do -- They must create an actor's Stradivarius.
If Lynn [Rein. See the December 13 post -- DD] is capable of doing the history of School of Speech why is her article in Dialogue so utterly devoid of appreciation of what that school was. Why is it so devoid of appreciation, of color? It reads like an article written in response to an unimaginative assignment of a professor in an English class "Write a 1000 word essay on -- --". But that wasn't what surprised me most in the last "Dialogue". Lee Mitchell who was McBurney's right hand man in the destruction of the theatre department writes on "foundations of excellence" ---- for the Centennial section. So the "Centennial" is to celebrate McBurney's reign! I get my invitation to the ground breaking the day before the event! But McBurney gets there on time! I have a diploma from the old School and two degrees from the present school. And I knew Dr. Cumnock! ---- Sorry!
It's a beautiful day! Pennsylvania in October. We drove for two or three hours this morning. Intoxication! "Lord, thou has made the world too beautiful this year"
Yes, the class is alive this year. I begin to enjoy teaching again. I still fear "Sea Gull" [A spring production was planned by the new Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble -- DD] but not quite so much as before. Tell JC [a former Bloomsburg student -- DD] of these developments. He might be impressed --
Have fun
A.K.

Letters from Alvina Krause: Fall 1977

noreply@blogger.com (David Downs) — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 16:29:00 +0000

Context
The play I directed for my first University Theatre mainstage production (fall quarter 1977) was Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance.

Letter (27 November 1977)
David,
Do you present your show in Cahn? [The largest theater auditorium on campus. With one balcony, it seats over a thousand-- DD] If you do let me warn you about projection problems. You know it is difficult. There are spots on stage from which it is exceptionally difficult: upstage center and in a direct line down stage. Get your people on stage before dress rehearsal and have them think out and up to the balcony. It isn't loudness that carries. In fact loudness strikes up subtle reverberations that muddle sound. It is (1) think up and out, (2) realize that it takes sound time to travel that distance 3 articulate clearly but not artificially, 4. Direct tones to the front. I know you have probably been aware of this, but I have to make sure -- And maybe you are not in Cahn!

[Comments about an NU colleague -- DD]

Can't you get the department to bring in a good voice instructor? Your people badly need it. It is shocking that people in the field of acting graduate from Speech with such hideously inadequate voices. And people like T [A former graduate assistant, studying in Bloomsburg -- DD] are not equipped to do the job! And Speech reeducation people [now the department of Communications Sciences and Disorders -- DD] are not equipped to do the job. They know only remedial speech, not speech for the actor. When is the department going to wake up to this fact?
Write me in full about Delicate Balance opening. You know we are all wishing big wishes for you. Keep your spine erect, no caving in! My other self will be sitting in the right end seat, 8th row, center section. Tell them to play out to me.
A.K.

****

Letter (19 December 1977)
I have not yet had a direct account of Delicate Balance, maybe Rand will be back tonight. [Rand Whipple, NU alum and Bloomsburg student, and current resident of Bloomsburg PA -- DD]
Sizing up the strength and weakness of this year's group: You must concentrate on responding, responding to fellow actors, to the world in which their characters exist, to the specifics in that world which play on character. These people still want to play emotions, say lines! After six months of Chekhov. I am desperate. They can play escape, but from what: the stemming from the stimulus is missing. And stir creative minds!
Always,
AK

****

Letter (30 December 1977)
David, this letter came to me from John Van Meter. He is a deeply thoughtful critic. I thought you might like to see it. It is high encouragement. Did the theatre staff recognize the merit in your work?

[...Discussion of the beginning plans to start a theatre in Bloomsburg -- DD]

A brilliant 1978 to you!
A.K.

Letter to Krause from John Van Meter (27 December 1977)
Dear Alvina,
David's production was such as to command the utmost respect from all who saw it. The quality of listening in the audience was something you rarely sense in theatres today and the lively discussions of Albee's intent, meanings, dramatic methods which you heard in the lobby during intermissions and after the play showed that the drama was engrossing to the spectators. David seems to have spent his rehearsal time on all the right things, so that we were treated not only to comedy and climaxes, but to poetry, good diction, voices well-placed, actors' bodies under control, developing characters and character relationships, beautiful resonances after and between lines. He did, I thought, an especially remarkable job of opening up the evening -- of establishing his characters, the tone of the evening to come, the questions to be probed in our own minds. David seemed genuinely excited by my suggestion to him that his principal characters needed something "new" to do in the latter part of the play so that an audience wouldn't feel they had heard all the strings in a given actor's bow -- that some new vocal tones, new notes of speaking, new acting areas to play in, new attacks on scenes, etc. in the last hour of playing could keep us refreshed and on the edges of our seats right up to the end. David's mind grasped the possibilities of this with any production and went racing off to develop its potential: he has a robust intelligence. I know you would have been thrilled by the play in performance and by seeing the sound applications of your principles to worthwhile material. And at NU again -- of all places. My own fondness for Albee as a playwright has quickly-reached limits: I find his people tiresome, I don't like some of his involuted dialogue, he hints at things he will dramatize later and then sidesteps the whole matter instead, and he is too darkly pessimistic for my taste. I would hate to be trapped for six weeks as the director of one of his plays, but I admire David's staying power in such a situation. When he told me about some of his problems with individual cast members (the girl who played the four-times divorced daughter in particular) I was in awe of his handling of the cast, for it was ensemble playing from beginning to end. And how difficult! -- all the characters in that grey zone of middle age where nothing but solid character acting will carry the day, even if the average cast age is 20! ... a college girl who has to be drunk all evening, etc. etc. David dared mightily and brought off a production to be remembered by U. T. [University Theatre -- DD] audiences. His lot from now on with his colleagues wil not be an easy one. He is too good!
I'm delighted to know that Lucy has been feeling well and that you have had some company in the house for part of the holidays. I'm so sorry to learn of your sister's death. [Krause's favorite sibling -- Otelia? Krause was the youngest of five and ten years younger than Otelia, the next youngest -- DD] Would that we could go on at our peak performances always and not have to waste away. But it cannot be. And so I settle for memories more and more of the enrichments that have come my way from those who have at some time been close to me.
Will you ladies travel to Chicago when the snows are over or shall I come to Bloomsburg again to see you?
Love,
John

Letters from Alvina Krause: Winter 1978

noreply@blogger.com (David Downs) — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:28:00 +0000

Context
The School of Speech was planning to publish a 100th anniversary history.

Letter
David,
A Centennial history of the School done by a present graduate student fills me with horror. What department is the student in? He should be in Interpretation. Not by Public Speaking! The School was first of all: Interpretation. You should supervise the study -- can't you manage it? If not it should be Lilla. [Lilla Heston, chair of the Interpretation Department]. She has more links with the Dennis regime than anyone. See that whoever does it gets in touch with Hazel Easton [Instructor of Voice and Interpretation 1919-1936; those positions were phased out in 1936. And Winifred Ward's life partner (see blog post of September 22, 2012) -- DD], she will have invaluable material and perhaps knows how to reach people still living who were in some way connected with the Dennis years. Be sure that whoever does it begins with a graduate dissertation done some years ago on Cumnock by Grace Mattern. That Centennial paper must come out of the Interp department. It was when McBurney, a public speaking man, was made Dean that the ruin began. Let's have an end to hypocrisy!
Your new course -- splendid. Go on working at it, think about it deeply, find yourself in it. That's all I can say. Find what you really want to say through theatre. Keep at theatre roots in living, but growing to theatre. Set up goals, never lose sight of them. What is it we want: great Theatre. Now define that term! Never lose sight of what you are really teaching. And what students deeply need --
My flu has been dreadful -- I still go weak with no provocation. And I am sick of being shut in for three weeks! And my head doesn't click on all fours. And I didn't know Moliere would be such a nightmare to teach. They seem all responsive, understanding ---- and nothing happens. No carry over. They do nothing. They seem content to know about. There's no drive to do. Are any of them really actors?

Happy working!

****

Letter
David,

[...Krause asks about someone who had written to inquire about joining the Bloomsburg students...--DD]
Lynn Rein [Hired to write the centenary history of the School of Speech -- DD] was an experience! I hate living in the past. I recognize roots in the past, but I do not want to relive it. And she did her dissertation on Lew Sarett! [Professor of prosody in the Public Address and Communication Department 1920-1953 --DD] That bit of news almost turned me off completely. Lew Sarett put McBurney in the Dean's chair. His name, to me, is anathema. For whom is she writing this book? Wood? [Roy V. Wood, Dean of the School of Speech 1972-1988 -- DD] NU? Who is financing it? She somehow dodged my questions. Has she interviewed Sam Ball? (Teacher of Set Design 1960 to late 1990s] He could tell a thing or two about the McBurney era. I wish Rein success but what can she do with the McBurney years. And will she tell he married his daughter-in-law after his son deserted her. To my amazement she had found C C Cunningham's [Professor of Interpretation 1929-1947-- DD] letter of resignation in the library! In President Miller's files. You must read it some day. It was plain truth he told.
[...Discussion of the situation with her current Bloomsburg students... -- DD]
W was here the other night all afire -- he had just discovered Shaw. He was so excited he bounced in his chair. He had just discovered Bernard Shaw! You get busy and really teach this giant in Theatre! M is full of Shavian vitality too. He is a stimulant. Teach him.
We have just returned from a beautiful trip to the Gaspé Peninsula. John Van Meter drove us. Beautiful!
Make it a great year!

Letters from Alvina Krause: Summer 1977

noreply@blogger.com (David Downs) — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 16:46:00 +0000

Context
It had been a tumultuous Ft. Lauderdale summer. This post is a conflation of two letters from Krause with discussions of her Bloomsburg students omitted.

Letter
Wisdom, David! Seek it! Hang onto it! Wisdom and understanding. Let this summer lead you to it. Try hard to see through this tangle and come through it without scars that are too deep.
[....]
...try to reach understanding. Pass no judgment until you can view it all from a distant mountain top. And grow, David! Taller and taller.
[....]
I think you all have learned much this summer. Or rather, much has crystallized. You have grown. I think you are, at least, the leader you should be. Is the way clear now? Are you strong enough to take over the role you must play at NU? No more downstage extra player positions? You know now that you can act, you can direct, you can teach.
The questions you ask me are the ones that hit me after I was retired and started travelling to other teachers. It hit hard: Where were the teachers of acting? I was shocked, amazed, sick: All other aspects of theatre taught in detail, but no acting -- Why? -- Because in this country -- in this great America, the "star" system prevails! You have it or you don't have it: it can't be taught -- And it has infected [Krause names names -- DD]
I don't need to give you the answer, David. You know it. You have found it.
[....]
Meanwhile if this group can start things going in Bloom -- Who knows maybe you don't need NU --
Be brave --
Two roads- - - -
I took the one less travelled by
And that made all the difference

Well?

Letters from Alvina Krause: Summer 1977

noreply@blogger.com (David Downs) — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 16:44:00 +0000

Context
Besides directing Arms and the Man in Ft. Lauderdale, I played Vladimir in Waiting for Godot. This post is an excerpt from a longer letter dealing with her Bloomsburg students.

Letter
[....]

If an audience does not look with you into the far distance and see nothing you fail. I suggest you play in black darkness and try to see light. If your audience sees a nuclear cloud rising -- good.
The comedy springs from the incongruity of two tramps, two naive humans concerned with a banana and the need for a toilet are faced with profundities -- Charlie Chaplin and a nuclear bomb -- You -- David -- washed up on a desert isle -- you need food -- why? -- shelter -- why? But you can't remember the end of "King Lear": Waiting for -- what? Godot. Never forget that empty waiting. So you eat a banana, take off a shoe, rub a corn, talk, take off a coat, put it on again -- endlessly waiting -- for what? And in come Pozzo -- money -- money -- and a slave remembering all the things he has forgotten -- with no association with realities. -- Some rehearsal play it as a nightmare more real than reality --
The summer was a curious one, but wound up with three final hours of work that make hope flame again.
[... Further discussion of her students -- DD....]