theatre images and sense memories

Images from Broadway cast recordings and movie soundtrack recordings, especially the sizable LP covers, can take me back to little Martha sitting on the floor of her childhood bedroom rapt, absorbing entire scores, imagining the linking dialog, wondering about stage moments.  Sure, I didn’t use that language then, but that’s what my screwed up little face was doing.  Where were people standing, what happened before the song and after the song and how did the people look when they were singing the songs? I listened to The Sound of Music (1965) day and night for weeks on end after I’d seen the movie, and came to the Mary Martin and Theodore Bikel 1959 version later when I discovered it amongst my mother’s LPs downstairs.  Because I was quite aware of Julie Andrews, from The Sound of Music movie and Mary Poppins (1964, another disc I played all day every day until I knew every word), and I’d been taken to see My Fair Lady (1964) that same year I was 5 at the Fisher Theater (did they show the movie in the stage theatre section of the building?  I have no idea) on a visit with my mother to Detroit relatives after my very first plane ride.  I felt like a princess.  And I of course had no idea that Julie Andrews’ spirit informed My Fair Lady too — the role that should have been hers but if she hadn’t been passed over, she wouldn’t have been available for Mary Poppins and THEN where would we be?  All of us, pining for the perfect beautiful nanny mother, even when we had wonderful mothers who were, more often than not, wittier and perhaps just as beautiful but maybe not first thing in the morning.

I did soon figure out the Andrews connection to My Fair Lady in mom’s LP collection and that haunting, funny, scary Hirschfeld drawing), and moved on to that same year’s Broadway recording of Funny Girl (1964) — I memorized the cast recording long before the film released in 1968.  And I was probably among a minority of 10-year-old viewers of the film who immediately bemoaned the absence in the film of “His Is The Only Music That Makes Me Dance” from the stage score.  And my heart’s embrace of  Judy at Carnegie  Hall (1961) about this same time period (again thank mom) brought another magic voice, another storyteller in song, into my life.  And more iconic album cover art.  (I go on about this recording and memories of mom in a blog entry last April: http://wp.me/p1dUHf-lb.)

As I get a bit older I meander in the Sondheim direction.  A Little Night Music (1973) won my soul during its first month on Broadway in its initial run, a treat among many others during my first trip to New York City from the American Midwest.  This original album is now framed on my bedroom/office wall, as is a copy of Judy at Carnegie Hall, and several other memorable album images.  Graphic art — it makes us happy.

And all that informs my response today to a current display at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.  Truth be told, I was wandering through the building today on my way from the Lincoln Center plaza side toward Amsterdam Avenue.  In the hallway between point A on the building’s east side and point B on the west, I chance upon a current display “Design: Fraver — Four Decades of Theatre Poster Art” that stops me in my tracks.  So many familiar images, so some images recently cherished.  The 2002 Kennedy Center Sondheim Celebration festival cover image for a summer long festival during which I saw most offerings as a then-resident of Washington DC.  Some images evoke distant memories — such as Fraver’s design for the poster (and program) art for Circle in the Square‘s Night of the Iguana in 1976.  I saw this 1976 production, probably on one of my frequent 5-plays-in-a-weekend trips to NYC from Harvard.  While I had forgotten the year of that viewing, the exhilaration (and slight panic) of those student days of eager absorption and thrilling experiences came back in a wash.

And a final treat in this exhibit:  the designer’s poster for the upcoming Follies production at the Kennedy Center.  From the wall plaque, the designer’s own words: “After many concepts, the poster that I felt really captured the essence of the show was the ripped and faded wall of past Follies attractions creating a showgirl’s face.”  I may not be able to see this new production but I can still trill to this image.  “In Buddy’s Eyes”, “I’m Still Here”, “Could I Leave You?”.

And it all starts with a poster image.  Show iconography.  Sense memories.  Yes.

© Martha Wade Steketee (March 8, 2011)

calm and coiled: musings on the lolling styles of hepburn and garland

Judy Garland on set. A Star is Born (1954).

Katharine Hepburn on location. Summertime (1955)

Since mid December 2010 on tumblr — a blogging site that seems best suited to sharing images quickly and seamlessly as a  kind of “blogging lite” — I have been playing with a theme, a meme,  of “lolling”.  Lolling as a way of selecting (from thousands) and sharing images from the movies and performances of Katharine Hepburn and of Judy Garland I have been collecting from fan sites and other means over the past few years.

[My main tumblr page is at msteketee [dot] tumblr [dot] com.  My “archives” page which displays text and image entries like a proof sheet, is at msteketee [dot] tumblr [dot] com [forward slash] archive.  The site is like the wild west and I’m not sure I’ll keep a blog there, but for the time being, there it is.]

I selectively have now made my way through the Hepburn oeuvre, then the Garland oeuvre, movie by movie (with the occasional play thrown in for Hepburn), in alphabetical order.  I select for image quality, I prefer black and white, and for this run through the riches it’s all about the lolling.

“lolling — present participle of loll (Verb)1. Sit, lie, or stand in a lazy, relaxed way: “the two girls lolled in their chairs”.2. Hang loosely; droop: “he slumped against a tree trunk, his head lolling back”.”— Merriam-Webster – The Free Dictionary

I have been playing with the idea that in these publicity portraits, production stills, screen captures, on set encounters something might be revealed about each actress.  Perhaps.  Lolling between takes and at rest and posing and chatting with colleagues.  Moments of repose in public by two women who lived very public lives.  Two icons, two women I greatly admire for their talent and in part how they each quite differently lived their lives.  One was present and reserved.  One was present and may have given, willingly given, a great deal of herself away.  In Anna Deavere Smith‘s show Let Me Down Easy (her musings through multiple characters on health and culture and end of life), she quotes the DC sports writer Sally Jenkins on the nature of athletes and their attitudes towards their mortal coil: “Athletes aren’t happy unless they’re actually used up.”  I wonder whether this personality attribute might relate in different measure to Hepburn and Garland.  Long-haul, family home to visit then live in, paced life style with consistency of routine and sense of place versus shifting residence, performance focused.  I refrain from further assertions or conclusions, but the concept is for me evocative.

Katharine Hepburn on set. Bringing Up Baby (1938).

We have beauty.  Check.  We have presence.  Check.  We have focus.  Check.  We have intensity.  Check.  And here we may be venturing into the areas that, from our vantage point outside the lives of these outsized characters …  I’ll reach for quotations by others now to elaborate some thoughts.  Then leave this post with some final images.

Hepburn’s great friend Garson Kanin, for a time estranged and finally reconciled, wrote of her and of her several-decade relationship with Spencer Tracy in 1971’s Tracy and Hepburn: An Intimate Memoir.  (The fact of this book, that Kanin would dare to write about the open secret of their relationship, caused the estrangement from Hepburn.  At some point after  Ruth Gordon passed away and Kanin was married to Marian Seldes, there was a “life is too short” moment and all parties decided to forgive and be friends again.) Observations by a witty and fine writer about several witty and fine human beings, creates quotable language on almost every page about Kate.  Each word relates to the “lolling” meme in my mind: Hepburn had her own style in every moment, and a lanky ease.   Tracy and Hepburn, p. 152:

“In the largest sense, Katharine Hepburn’s popularity has never waned because people know (magically, intuitively) that she stands for something, even if many of them have no clear idea as to what that something is.  They recognize that in a time of dangerous conformity, and the fear of being different, here is one who stands up gallantly to the killing wave.”

Judy Garland on set. In The Good Old Summertime (1949).

Several contemporaries and colleagues of Garland provide reflections on her style, focus, intensity. John Fricke‘s Judy Garland: The World’s Greatest Entertainer (1992) features a range of intriguing commentary from the era of A Star is Born.  On page 145, Doris Day is quoted:

“Some Hollywood faces seem to have been made for cameras.  Judy had such a face — right, left, up, down, it didn’t matter…. She was one of the funniest, wittiest ladies I have ever known, a marvelous conversationalist who would set me laughing until I actually doubled over…. [Garland was] the most tightly wound person I ever knew…. She kept so much of herself locked up, but what she did let out was beautiful.”

Judy Garland and George Cukor on set. A Star is Born (1954).

And a final present.  Our women together on the set of the movie in which one starred, directed by the husband of the other.  Focus, intensity, beauty in repose.

Vincente Minnelli, Judy Garland, Katharine Hepburn on set. Undercurrent (1946).

© Martha Wade Steketee (January 24, 2011)

golden globes highlights: off the cuff

I read plays.  I attend plays.  I review plays.  I quickly note fragments of dialogue that capture my fancy.  Tickle my funny bone.  Pick your whimsical reference.  During last night’s Golden Globes telecast I engaged in a Twitter spree I summarize here, inspired by this instinct to capture quips and turns of phrase that delight me.

(“Twitter spree” — is that an existing or new Twitter phrase?  I use it to mean  that sudden spate of Twitter activity inspired by a live event communally experienced.  Oscars, Emmys, Golden Globes inspire this play-by-play commentator in me who usually hangs back.)

These are ordered sequentially as I noted them, during the broadcast, Eastern time, from 9pm to 11pm, plus a little red carpet action.  The action begins with one line from Jane Lynch on the red carpet.  I shall annotate in square brackets some context for each of the 14 phrases listed here.  Sequential not preferential order.  You can make your own decision on that score.

• “I have slept with Brad Pitt but I never met him”. [Jane Lynch, who had just met Brad Pitt on the carpet, when asked on the Red Carpet whether they had met before.]
• “Just don’t look at it when you touch it” [Gervais advice to Hugh Hefner’s new fiance.]
• “Ashton Kuchner’s dad Bruce Willis” [Gervais doing the introductions]
• “Screw that, kids”  [Chris Colfer in his charming acceptance speech for his sometimes bullied gay character on Glee, telling the kids out there who are told not to dream big what to say about that.]
• “Holly effing crap” [dang who said this? it was in an acceptance speech.]
• “Are these porn films?” [Gervais again, in listing film titles for one of the presenters]
• “Don’t turn the channel, we’re still stars”. Steve Carell. [upon taking the stage with Tina Fey to present.]
• “I am nothing if not falsely humble.” [Jane Lynch accept for her role in Glee]
• “Those few hours we spent at the Maritime Motel”  [Surprised Melissa Leo addressing the producer, I believe, of the movie that got her the award, thankful for what got her there, who didn’t think through the double entendre in her choice of words.]
• “Thank you to public school teachers. you don’t get paid like it, but you’re doing the most important work in america”  [one of the Glee folks accepting]
• “Right now this is all that stands between me and a Harley Davidson” [Colin Firth on his award and approaching a big birthday.]
• “I think I can cope with just about any age as long as I can still see her.” [Colin Firth on that same big birthday and his adorable adoration for his partner.]
• “There has got to be an easier way to get a standing ovation”.  [Michael Douglas on taking stage, post cancer recovery]
• “Thank you to god for making me an atheist” [Ricky Gervais as the credits were rolling.]

I have edited out my random references to fashion and other details and focus, instead, on the list I began assembling, on the fly, of contenders for favorite lines of the night.  Instant commentary is so much fun, and often results in lists unlike those that appear on news shows the day after.  Thank you all for playing.

My usually blather-y Twitter feed located here: http://twitter.com/msteketee

© Martha Wade Steketee (January 17, 2011)

life lessons from sandy (1926)

I seek life lessons from many sources.  Plays I’m reading (often in a hurry, often on a deadline, often after which I am challenged to commit to a report my reactions and responses), books I devour, movies I adore, chance encounters, billboards, overheard dialogue fragments.  Often the dis-embodied, uncontextualized sentence is the most fun, right?  Make your own meaning, enjoy the turn of phrase, no obligation to make the pieces fit.

About a year ago I attended a screening of a 1926 silent as part of some research I have been privileged to conduct as dramaturg on an evolving project about Dorothy Ponedel.  One of the first female make-up artists in the movies, friend to stars, intriguing gal.  When she first arrived in Hollywood she made her way into the movies as an extra, often uncredited.  Sandy is one of those outings during which Dot has about 20 seconds of screen time in various guises, usually in group scenes.  My blog entry about that screening in November 2009 here: http://wp.me/p1dUHf-j

I recently looked through some snapshots I took with my cell phone during the screening (we had the “don’t tell me I don’t want to know” go-ahead from the sympathetic projectionist) and came across some of these little pearls of wisdom.  Dialogue cards from the movie, but fun to consider as chance bits of wisdom in the “life lesson” frame of mind.  I may or may not annotate these myself.  I leave them here for your ruminations.

For more about this film, see: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017344/

© Martha Wade Steketee (January 7, 2011)

blueprints and celluloid dreams

In the middle of the Dream Factory, Hollywood city of symbols, rises a temple to movies and handprints, footprints (and hoof and paw prints) in the front courtyard — Grauman’s Chinese  Theatre.  Plans and construction happened in 1926 (and perhaps before).  The building held its Grand Opening on May 18, 1927, and was opened to the public the following day.  [Building history summarized here: http://www.manntheatres.com/chinese/.]

So other than appreciating the locale, its role in American movie history, and the pageantry surrounding the movies and people who are part of the movie industry, what does this all have to do with me?  It has to do with images on paper.  In blueprint blue.

Over the past five years or so, I have developed a business relationship with a rare book dealer located in Manhattan.  When he and I first began discussing items of interest to me (anything related to Judy Garland and Katharine Hepburn and old Hollywood and the theatre — we talk about a huge array of items and the vast majority are far far far out of my financial league), I lived in Washington, DC.  During the time we have been communicating via email and mail I have lived in Washington, DC, Chicago, IL, Philadelphia, PA, and now New York, NY.  Through the years I have purchased play scripts and film scripts, some that have come with published first edition hard cover copies of the scripts or movie stills or other treats.  And over the past few years I have been tantalized by an offering that was available for a while, then purchased, then recently available for sale again — two images for which my dealer pal arranged a massively reasonable price for me in exchange for several items in my possession and some cash and a future sale — it gets complicated. Two beautiful 1926 construction blueprints for Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.

This week I met my now local dealer pal in his West Village office and  took possession of two pieces of faded, worn, folded, records of stages of the construction of a dream.  An old acquaintance from a distance becomes a familiar acquaintance close up.

Here are low resolution, slightly cropped, versions of my new possessions.

Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Elevation of Entrance Pavilion & Street Elevation. Dated February 4, 1926. 44" x 30 "

Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Interior design and planned modifications. Last revision date June 1926. 44" x 30 "

© Martha Wade Steketee (December 14, 2010)

blog bifurcation

After a year of blogging (and some years of blather on discussion boards and other internet communities) I have reached a perhaps inevitable moment — the splinter moment.  I began this adventure on my original blog urban excavations (msteketee.wordpress.com) at a time of upheaval in my life: a recent move from Chicago, a city I adore, to the East Coast and what turned out to be stage one of my current adventure living in Manhattan.  Spring 2009 selling property in a major American city to move east in two stages.  Three major moves in two years.  It has indeed been a time to reflect.  L. Frank Baum has something to say about that.

The following is from Chapter 9 “The Scarecrow Plans an Escape” in The Marvelous Land of Oz (the first sequel to The Wizard of Oz).  First, some text from the 1904 title page to set the scene: “The Marvelous Land of Oz.   Being an Account of the further adventures of the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman and also the strange experiences of the Highly Magnified Woggle-Bug, Jack Pumpkinhead, the Animated Saw Horse and the Gump; the story being A Sequel to The Wizard of Oz“.

Tip was looking out the window.

“The palace is surrounded by the enemy,” said he “It is too late to escape. They would soon tear you to pieces.”

The Scarecrow sighed.

“In an emergency,” he announced, “it is always a good thing to pause and reflect. Please excuse me while I pause and reflect.”

My adventures always include traveling and writing.  My “further adventures” blog wise have led me to focus increasingly on theatrical writing, including writing on productions as formal reviews and reflections on panels and other theatrical events.  My original blog has now become two.  My Gemini soul loves this.  urban excavations (msteketee.wordpress.com) is now focused exclusively on live performance reviews and reflections.  This new blog looking outside (mattiewade.wordpress.com) contains all other entries from the old blog, entries outside that specific focus, and new entries along these lines.

With a nod to Garland (because, let’s be honest, it’s instinctual) I’ll end this entry with a quotation.  And look forward to further musings with all y’all.

“In the night, every night, we’ve known somehow it would come to this.”

— Irene Hoffman Wallner (Judy Garland) in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)

© Martha Wade Steketee (December 1, 2010)

vaults, volumes, splendor and excess at the morgan library

 

Mr. Morgan's Library (East Room). The Morgan Library & Museum.

 

The Morgan Library and Museum has been a New York City favorite place to visit for the past 10-15 years.  In a building completed in 1906 to house the private study and library of financier Pierpont Morgan, the average person, for a fee, is able to ogle one of the more opulent structures in America. An “Italianate marble villa, designed in the spirit of the High Renaissance … considered one of New York’s great architectural treasures”, according to the press release distributed at the “media preview” I attend with my pal Kerry on Thursday October 21, 2010.  The press preview focuses on the imminent public reopening of the original 1906 structure that has been closed the public for a few months of rehab and refurbishing and buffing and polishing.  The 2006 Renzo Piano designed expansion and renovation completes the airy modern multi-dimensional experience of this space, with the requisite groovy gift shop at cafe.

This joint houses so many stunning works on paper (manuscripts ranging from monk-illuminate religious texts to several Gutenberg Bibles to ancient cuneiform cylinders to a letter written by Elizabeth I to … ) it is impossible to list the riches.  Get to know this venue, visit often, appreciate the beauty, attend to the temporary exhibit schedules. When visceral reactions to this massive concentration of wealth abate  …  focus on the splendors and majesty and wonders of the items in the holdings and now more fully on stunning display for all to view.

Back to the press preview event this week.  For a moment, indulge me in imposing some theatre critical commentary upon an otherwise nicely designed press preview experienced yesterday morning.  Press opening as performance.  First the pleasantries.  There is a lovely classical small group string quartet in Piano addition lobby/courtyard with soaring glass panes, coffee and bites, as we wait for formal comments and tours to begin.  Opening words are offered by the excited and articulate Director of the Museum, William M. Griswold.  Kerry and I also luck out by having the Director as our “tour guide” for when several groups of the assembled press folks were led around the refurbished original building after the opening remarks concluded.

And now for the criticism.  Before we are released to our color-coded touring groups, another staff member delivered the text of the letter quoted below.  If you’re a meek researcher, don’t try to be an actor.  Hire an actor to do a dramatic reading or just read the words.  In this case some hapless and I’m sure otherwise well qualified academic curator or museum administrator (not the charming Director), reads from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to his daughter Martha with a bad kind of English accent.  Thomas Jefferson with a second-rate generalized bad British accent.  O my god.  Really, Morgan, the embarrassment of acting riches in this City should really tell you something.  Don’t act like a clueless academic in such a setting again but if you must wander into accents and dramatic readings — talk to the Lark Play Development Center or talk to a student training program.  Hire a professional.  Do something but don’t do this again.

 

image: Martha Steketee

 

The words from this letter are now printed in a display case that holds the letter manuscript located in the rehabbed 1906 McKim Building Rotunda.  This is Jefferson writing to daughter Martha who was largely brought up in Europe, instructing her to buck up, stop complaining, take note of what differentiates the European from the American character, especially in the 1700s.  Perhaps whining contemporaries could read these words and get back to basics.  Mr. Jefferson:

“It is part of the America character to consider nothing as desperate; to surmount every difficulty by resolution and contrivance.  In Europe there are shops for every want.  Its inhabitants therefore have no idea that their wants can be furnished otherwise.  Remote from all other aid, we are obliged to invent and to execute; to find means within ourselves, and not to lean on others.  Consider therefore the conquering of your Livy as an exercise in the habit of surmounting difficulties, a habit which will be necessary to you in the country where you are to live, and without which you will be thought a very helpless animal, and less esteemed.”

I will scheme to identify a project that will allow me to obtain research credentials and spend time with the materials in the vaults and resources of this amazing place.  From tourist to local haunt.  In one lifetime.

more about the Morgan and this restoration: http://themorgan.org/McKim/default.asp

© Martha Wade Steketee (October 22, 2010)

writing women: woolf, harrison, hulst

I am a recovering liberal arts major. I adore my liberal arts education that fed (and continues to feed) my inquiring and often fragmented literary brain through film and history and literature and as little science and math as possible. And lots and lots of theatre. I once heard my Harvard classmate Peter Sellars, a number of years after we graduated, say in a public talk about living a life in the theatre and reminiscing about how the museums and libraries of his youth in Pittsburgh encouraged him to be “an interdisciplinary child”. I’ve always loved that phrase. I continue to follow that interdisciplinary, connection-finding (hey some call it ADD but hey it works for me), overlapping-meaning-seeking, discipline-wandering way through theatre projects, writing projects, research projects, and just getting to know a series of home base cities over the past few years. I also come from a long line of fabulous women, some thwarted in their dreams and some who crafted treasures I am just beginning to try to understand. And sometimes all these worlds collide as they did on October 19, 2010 in the South Court Auditorium of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building of the 42nd Street Branch of the New York Public Library.

Once I obtained my New York Public Library card (see here for my theatre-life postings on that subject http://wp.me/p1dUHf-Cn) I began receiving presents in my email inbox announcing screenings and lectures and new acquisitions. Just the kind of thing that gets my geeky heart all a-twitter. And some weeks ago I received advance notice of three days of free public lectures on the subject of Virginia Woolf that I noted in my calendar. 10/19: “Goddesses and Ghosts: Virginia Woolf and Jane Ellen Harrison in Conversation”;  10/20: “When is a Printed Book as Good as a Manuscript? The Proof Copy of A Room of One’s Own“; and 10/21: “On Traffic Lights and Full Stops: Editing Mrs. Dalloway”. As my appointments developed in ensuing weeks, the 10/19 lecture, the first of the three lectures, on Woolf and Harrison (a boundary spanning anthropologist and classicist herself) emerged as the one lecture I could attend.

Virginia Woolf projected. Jean Mills standing.

Ah, a delight. Jean Mills, Assistant Professor at John Jay College, CUNY has been writing on the work of these two women for some time, and graced the assembled crowd with charming context, imagery, substance, conversation.  Woolf wrote in the pacifist essay Three Guineas (1938):

“… listen not to the bark of the guns and to the bray of gramophones but to the voices of the poets, answering each other, assuring us of a unity that rubs out divisions as if they were chalkmarks only … the capacity of the human spirit to overflow boundaries and make unity out of multiplicity”.

Mills presents the well documented case that Woolf (1882-1941) and Jane Ellen Harrison (1850-1928) certainly knew each other and had an intellectual relationship.  Mills argues that Harrison was for Woolf an “intellectual mentor” and that certainly the writing of the two women, their texts, talk to one another.   I love this kind of thinking that combines biography with thick and careful reading of texts and the ideas contained within them.

Harrison, as I learn in this talk that focused not on mythology but on political positions about pacifism, is a classical scholar who reinterprets Greek mythology through a feminist lens at the beginning of the 20th Century.  She eschews merely translating texts from the original Greek and Latin and instead illuminates archeological and anthropological facts and findings.   She interprets cultures and icons and goddesses.  She finds new meaning.

And as I listen to Mills discuss the legacy of this early 20th century thinker this lovely New York City afternoon, I recall, all too slowly, my own relative and her work in myth and anthropology and I wonder if there are any connections.  Cornelia Steketee Hulst, an archaeologist and the sister of my great grandfather Jacob Steketee, a woman who died a few years before I was born, published the book Perseus and the Gorgon in 1946.  I grew up hearing my mother speak with some pride of “Aunt Cornelia” who mother knew when she was a new bride, and who mom respected for living a life of the mind and having graduate degrees.  I think Mom wanted me to know all about her and the possibilities of this kind of life.  Mom had plans to name her final child Cornelia if it had been a girl (it was a boy she named Joe, who now has a delightful daughter of his own).  I will summarize Cornelia’s work in this book from Olympia Dukakis‘ 2003 memoir Ask Me Again Tomorrow.  In this book, Dukakis writes of the role this slim tome plays in her research for a role that becomes for her a continuing personal spiritual inquiry:

“From a box in the back of the store, I pulled out a small book called Perseus and the Gorgon, by Cornelia Steketee Hulst, an archaeologist who wrote about a 1911 dig on the island of Corfu.  The book was dedicated to Gorgo, a goddess figure from Greek mythology — she with the hair of writing snakes — so terrifying that anyone who gazed at her would turn to stone.  According to Hulst, the Gorgon of Corfu had once been the goddess Ashirat (which means happiness, energy, and joy).  When the island was overrun by Perseus (whose name means “to lay waste”), he cut off her head and sacked her temple.  He also decided that her name should be stricken from all written records and that henceforth she should only be known as Gorgon, the snake goddess.  In describing what Perseus had done, Hulst wrote that he had ‘buried in oblivion and covered with silence the teachings of the Great Mother.”

I flipped to the sources in Great Grand Aunt Cornelia’s book when I returned home from the Woolf-Harrison lecture and there in the alphabetized bibliography is the cryptic listing J. E. Harrison, Ancient Art and Religion; Themis.

My world’s collide and new moons and stars are formed, and perhaps goddesses spin off to find their own orbits.

© Martha Wade Steketee (October 20, 2010)

norman rockwell: "i tell the story through characters"

Washington, DC is a place of monuments and spectacle.  Theatre in politics and theatre on performing stages.  Washington also is a city I called home for eight years and a part of me will always be a bit in love with it — as an American city, as an assemblage of awe-inspiring architecture, as a city chock-full of world-class museums and surprise exhibits.

On a visit earlier this week, I stayed on 7th Street near theatres (including Shakespeare and Woolly Mammoth) and museums (including National Gallery of Art, the Building Museum, and two Smithsonian venues — the National Portrait Gallery, and the American Art Museum) and views of the Capital and the Washington Monument.  At the Building Museum I chanced upon an exhibit about America’s SIX world fairs during the Depression 1930s (from Chicago to New York and four other locations in between).  Another surprise was suggested to me by a new pal by email during my visit.  Be sure to visit the Rockwell show while you’re there, he said.  He had traveled to DC from New York City a few months ago especially for this exhibit.  I was in the midst of moving from Philadelphia to New York City during the middle part of this calendar year when this exhibit opened and hadn’t heard about it, but during that time period I was at the time lucky if I could attend to what was directly in front of my face.  Now that I was alerted to it’s existence, his exhibit by subject matter was one crafted for me, I thought.  And boy oh boy, did I have that right.

“Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell from the Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg”
1st floor West, American Art Museum, Washington DC
July 2, 2010 — January 2, 2011
http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2010/rockwell/

Steven Spielberg and George Lucas have donated extensive portions of their private collections for a unique exhibit honoring perhaps the most iconic presentational American artists of the early and middle 20th century: Norman Rockwell.  Many millions know Rockwell’s work from decades of crafting magazine cover images for The Saturday Evening Post and other publications.  What Spielberg and Lucas as young men resonated to in the work of this older man is  outlined in a short film created for the exhibition called “George Lucas and Steven Spielberg: Reflections on Rockwell.”  The film runs in a loop in the corner of the display and features the two filmmakers discussing Rockwell and their drive to collect his prints, drawings, and paintings.  To these two collectors, Rockwell’s pieces were cast, scripted, staged to move us through the stories they tell or simply suggest. The artist’s works are intensely cinematic, they tell us.  We don’t always know for sure what has happened in each scenario portrayed in Rockwell’s still pictures, but we can impose a story, just as we always do when we view human tableaux in train stations or in parks or at neighboring tables in restaurants.  These are human stories in snapshots.

• Rockwell: “A cover should be more than a one-line joke.”
• Rockwell: “I tell the story through characters.”
• Rockwell: “Story illustrations shouldn’t give away the plot.”
• Lucas: Rockwell gives us “little bits of culture, captured like snapshots.”
• Lucas: “A picture just has to touch the emotional side of a human being.”
• Lucas on Rockwell constellations: “He cast the painting.”
• Spielberg on the world Rockwell envisioned: “probably the way we hoped it had been.”

 

"Little Girl Looking Downstairs at Christmas Party", McCall's December 1964, oil on board, 10 x 101/2 inches, collection of George Lucas

 

It’s a stunning assemblage.  To remember a childhood, to remember a time that was or a time that never was, to enjoy an exhibit with seniors in their 70s and 80s and kids under 10 who all enjoy the imagery and understand the stories in the paintings — this is one for your short list.  My favorite image is a color oil sketch loaned by George Lucas entitled “Little Girl Looking Downstairs at Christmas Party” (for McCall’s December 1964).  This image evokes my own suburban upbringing, hearing the adults downstairs, wanting to be grown up so I could be part of the laughter and story telling and know what they were talking about, yet happy enough lurking upstairs in my pajamas, observing.  The budding brain of a dramaturg and observer.  For some, it speaks to their inner filmmaker.  Explore what the image and sister images in the gallery rooms evoke for you.

For more information on locations mentioned in this post:

• Shakespeare Theatre Company: http://www.shakespearetheatre.org/index2.aspx
• Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company: http://www.woollymammoth.net/
• National Gallery of Art: http://www.nga.gov/
• National Building Museum: http://www.nbm.org/index.html
• National Portrait Gallery: http://www.npg.si.edu/
• American Art Museum: http://americanart.si.edu/

© Martha Wade Steketee (October 13, 2010)

archives and attics

During the eight years I lived in Washington, DC, I grew to think of many of that city’s museums and galleries as second homes, including those that actually expect admission fees.  I would join some of the admission-charging private museums in alternate years — the Corcoran Gallery, for example, or the Phillips Collection — and blend them in with the no-fee-charging institutions.  I thrilled in the availability of world-class art and cultural artifacts on a whim for moments between meetings in government offices, or for a few hours of serious escape.  Ah, the many locales associated with the Smithsonian Institution and ah, the National Gallery of Art.  And while corners of favor and particular interests abound (a Katharine Hepburn portrait at the National Portrait Gallery or the Matisse room at the National Gallery’s East Wing for example), I grew to love in particular, with a free wheeling abandon, the eclectic and now remodeled National Museum of American History.  [http://americanhistory.si.edu/]  Frequent repeat visits to favorite objects over the eight years I lived in this fine American city.

The "Wizard of Oz" ruby slippers (one of several several existing pairs) on display in "America's Attic". image credit: smithsonian institution.

The museum that some have described as “America’s attic” captures a vast array of objects.  From the web site cited we find this text:

The Museum collects and preserves more than 3 million artifacts—all true national treasures. We take care of everything from the original Star-Spangled Banner and Abraham Lincoln’s top hat to Dizzy Gillespie’s angled trumpet and Dorothy’s ruby slippers from “The Wizard of Oz.” Our collections form a fascinating mosaic of American life and comprise the greatest single collection of American history.

When this particular museum was reopened in 2008 after a several year shut down for its most recent refurbishing, the New York Times’ coverage reminded us of the organization’s nickname — “America’s Attic”.   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/arts/design/21hist.html

Archive portraits of the Shubert brothers. Left to right: Lee, Sam, and J.J. image credit: martha wade steketee

I spent time this week in the 2nd floor offices of the Shubert Archive in the Lyceum Theatre at 149 W 45th Street.  Archive Director Maryann Chach similarly describes her resources as “the attic or the garage for the organization”, a repository of both first and last resort, a place of repose for the essential detritus and effluvia of the business and artistic visions of her “country”, the culture she works for, the work and productions and buildings related to the theatre-producing Shubert brothers’ legacy.  [For even more about the Shubert legacy refer to the lusciously illustrated The Shuberts Present: 100 Years of American Theater published in 2001 by Harry N. Abrams.]

And unless anyone might conclude that I have wandered too far from my Judy Garland loving roots, note that one of the four full-time staff members did his dissertation on the performance history of Baum’s Oz (the original story).  And quite sweetly, the original American Judy Garland Club president, Albert Poland, is represented in the Archive’s resources with papers from his general theatrical management career.  From the Archive’s web site http://www.shubertarchive.org/ this general description:

“The Archive is the repository of significant collections of papers from contemporary general managers, including Albert Poland, Marvin Krauss, and Gatchell and Neufeld.”

That last bit was a surprise to me.  Garland touched many during her life time and legions more now years after her passing.  It never fails to stun me.  Presents when I least expect them.

Shubert Archive images on a table. image credit: martha wade steketee

© Martha Wade Steketee (September 24, 2010)