How Firm A Foundation

This is the paper I presented at the 31st annual William Inge Theatre Festival's scholars conference at Independence Community College, Independence, Kansas, on April 21, 2012.

How Firm a Foundation

Faith and Practice in the Works of William Inge

One of the bedrocks of life in a small town in America is going to church. As an observer and chronicler of small town life, William Inge uses faith and practice as a subtext in his plays and novels. Although there is very little outward acknowledgement of expressed faith, it weaves its way into the characters and stories as a subtle presence. Through his writings, Inge expresses an almost wistful view of religion, as if he is an outsider with his nose pressed against the stained glass, wishing he could believe fully in the power of God as a guiding force in his life so that it might relieve him of his perceived failings, and a sense of envy in the apparent fulfillment found by those who do believe in making their life complete.

If you Google “churches in Independence, Kansas,” you will get about thirty-seven hits. That’s an impressive number for a town with a population of just over nine thousand souls; it works out to about one church for every 256 people. The churches run the gamut from mainline Catholic and Protestant to evangelical non-denominational, and there’s even a Quaker meeting. (If you’re looking for a synagogue, though, you have to go to Tulsa.) It’s not hard to imagine that there were probably just as many places of worship in Independence when William Inge was growing up, and according to the 1920 census, which was taken when he was seven years old, the population was over eleven thousand, so chances are there were probably a few more.

In many respects, that is not a remarkable fact. Small towns in America, whether they are in New England or New Mexico, have always had faith communities at their heart. Whether it is the iconic white steeple at the center of town in Vermont, the adobe mission in Taos, or the red brick Georgian on the corner here in Independence, we have made it the foundation of our culture to the point that membership is not required to be a part of the congregation. It provides a gathering place in times of joy or sorrow, celebration or commiseration, a shelter in the time of storms, and a refuge for the faithful when the outside world becomes overwhelming or a threat. And while the church itself may be open only on Sunday (or Wednesday night for bingo), it makes its presence felt in every corner of the town, even in places where religion or a profession of faith may not have be welcome.

It is impossible to imagine a more pervasive or defining force in our civilization. Everything we do, think, or learn, is instilled by the nebulous belief in a supreme being and the practice of worship, even if there is no formal schooling or professed acceptance of faith. It defines us as clearly as our race, our gender, our social standing or ethnicity. We are born into it and have it woven into the fabric of our lives and identity that it becomes practically inseparable. And yet… the sense of belonging and participating can be a distancing factor as well if, for some reason, either by instinct or learned behavior, we find that we are apart from this force, somehow at odds with the tenets and teachings, and subliminally ostracized from the rest of the flock. Somehow, something keeps us from fully accepting – and being fully accepted by – the practice of worship as a part of our lives. And it is not at all hard to imagine what it must have been like to grow up in a place like Independence in the 1920’s where worship was as natural as breathing and yet still feel estranged from it by some inner awareness that you did not find comfort or even felt hostility or bigotry emanating from this institution dedicated to unconditional love and peace… for those who believe.

That must have been what William Inge felt as he grew up here, surrounded on all sides by the faithful. Something deep inside him must have told him he was not unconditionally welcome, or he could not accept it if he was. In his autobiographical novel, My Son is a Splendid Driver, published in 1971, the Hansen family’s church affiliation is tangential – the denomination is not mentioned – and religion is given either lip service or used as a cudgel of bigotry against those who are Not Our Kind: for example, the Holt family across the street with their Catholicism, or the Jewish couple that owns the clothing store downtown. Oh, they’re nice enough people until they do something awful like marry one of your kids.

In the evangelical tradition that is pervasive in many of the faiths in the Midwest, a fundamental tenet is that the believer must develop a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Statements of faith begin with the declaration of the moment when the believer accepts Christ as their personal savior on a one-to-one basis in the same way someone might declare their relationship with a spouse. This foundation of faith takes on an intimate characteristic: you become one with Christ and therefore you define your relationship with God in those terms.

For William Inge, it seemed to be a strained relationship. If the narrative in My Son was his own life story, God was, to use one of his own phrases, “an ornery bastard.” God exacts a price for living a life of leisure and lust; he takes away precious children with the stroke of a razor blade, and he visits gloom upon an aging relative by prolonging her life to the point that she is begging to die. This is not the kind and loving God of the New Testament, but rather the vengeful and exacting God of the Old, who controls each life and promises destruction for those who are not suitably obedient. And yet this is also the God that delivers the peace and tranquility of the promise of everlasting life in the rainbow at the end of the Flood, and later on, in the name of his son Jesus Christ, whom God himself tested and punished while on Earth. It is the paradox of faith that you must be both afraid of the wrath of God yet also forgiven for all your sins in the name of his son. This contrast of hope and resurrection with fear and anguish was the undercurrent of faith in the eyes of a small-town boy who knew, deep in his heart and never spoken out loud, that he could never be acceptable in the eyes of the Lord as seen through the eyes of the faithful that surrounded him.

His mother sees God as a harsh and judgmental figure, cursing her personally with a faithless husband who infects her with a venereal disease, and punishes her for her lack of faith by burdening her and her family with hateful relatives and, worst of all, taking her beloved eldest son for no other reason other than what seems to be pure spite. If she had a distant relationship with God before, this cemented her estrangement from him, and she viewed others who went to church as hypocrites and show-offs. In a passage from My Son is a Splendid Driver, Mrs. Hansen lays out her feelings neatly in observing her neighbor:

“Every morning on the front porch we would see Mrs. Holt leave her house and start for the Catholic church, on her way to mass.

‘She doesn’t miss a day,’ Mother observed. There was a dedication about the woman that always gave us pause. ‘I wish I had a God to pray to now,’ Mother sometimes said, ‘but I don’t seem able to find Him.’

Mother had stopped going to church. ‘Church isn’t the place to go with your troubles. Church is just a place to go when you’re feeling good and have a new hat to wear.’ There was a little bitterness in what she said, a little self-pity, but there was also truth. Our minister would have been the last person in the world she could have talked to, to have lifted the curse she felt upon her and save her from feeling damned. She would have embarrassed the man into speechlessness had she gone to him with her story. He would have been unable to look at her or my father without coloring.

Most of our morality, I was beginning to think, was based on a refusal to recognize sin. Our entire religious heritage, it seemed to me, was one of refusal to deal with it.” (1)

When her son dies suddenly from blood poisoning, leaving a young wife pregnant with their son, Mrs. Hansen is inconsolable and finds no comfort in faith or in the inconsequential platitudes of “it is God’s will.” She cries out,

“‘Oh, my son! God give him back! He wasn’t meant to die!’
But God was stern, and unrelenting. He doesn’t end our griefs, Mother had to learn; He can only help us to endure them.”(2)

Of course Inge could not shake his fist at God in his plays and expect to see them performed. Instead, they are layered with the sense of presence of religion as the foundation of everyday life. Few of the characters are depicted as particularly imbued with religious fervor, and with the exception of Sammy in The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, no one’s specific denomination is mentioned. Even then, because he is Jewish, he is seen as an outsider (and comes to an unhappy end.) But faith and practice is always present, and most of the characters in the plays and novels are, if not practicing members of a community, aware and respectful of it, if not terrified. In Picnic, Hal is welcomed into the community and told when the local bible study meets, taking it as a matter of faith that he is both a Christian and a Baptist.

In a more sobering aspect, so to speak, Doc in Come Back, Little Sheba is a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, a group that is based in the belief in a Higher Power – God as we understand him – and that it is a part of the journey of recovery by relying in part on the spiritual power. It is not a religious practice; there is no service or ritual other than the meeting and sharing and spoken prayer, and it is open to all faiths or those who have none. But its members strive to turning over the problems and sorrows that led to the alcoholics’ behavior to God and thereby free themselves to work toward healing. “Let Go and Let God” is one of the more common aphorisms in the AA lexicon. And since Inge acknowledged his alcoholism by joining AA in 1948, it seems as if he found that if he could not find God in the pews of the churches of Independence, nor in the bottom of a Scotch bottle, at least the awareness of a spiritual presence gave him comfort and shelter that eluded him for his entire life. And when he saw the effect it had on the people he cared about, he marveled at it. He summed it up in a passage in My Son where Joey meets up with Betsy, an old friend from college while in a bookstore in Kansas City. They had become friends because they were both outcasts; Inge because of his shyness and repressed feelings, and Betsy because she was, in the words of the time, “a wanton woman,” who had flaunted the rigid mores and racial barriers of the time. When they meet years later, it is a heartfelt reunion, including her telling him of thrill of seeing A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway. She tells Joey that she would have made a wonderful Blanche.

“After a moment, she said, ‘You know something, Joey? We never learn what life is all about until we fail.’

I asked her to explain.

‘Well, it’s as though I had wanted all the time to become an actress just to have my own way about something, and I really don’t know what the something was. But I was ambitious in the wrong way. It’s almost as though I wanted to be a brilliant success in the theater in order to have vengeance on someone… I don’t know who. Maybe the world. So I missed. I know I had talent, but I was using it in the wrong way. It was I who messed up my chances. I alone. I had to give up my conception of what my life was going to be, do you see? My will had to be overcome. I had to learn that there’s a stronger will that works behind the entire universe that sometimes stops us in our headstrong way and says No. And then you have to surrender to a real life, Joey. The life that’s really yours…. Understand what I mean? Or am I being too metaphysical, or something?’

‘I think I understand something of what you mean, Betsy. I think I do.’ After lunch, we parted. All the rest of the day, I thought of Betsy, feeling somehow I had witnessed one of Christ’s miracles.”(3)

If William Inge could not find comfort or acceptance in faith in God and his church, then at least he does see that faith is not something that is inherently religious. Faith is the belief in things unseen, intangible. You can’t put your hands on it; you can’t take it apart to see what makes it work. And yet, we all have faith in something. It doesn’t have to be in God. It can be faith in knowing that we have friends we can count on, a family who cares for us, or faith in our own abilities to make the right choices because we learned that we human beings rely on others and ourselves to be good and moral people with no need to prove it every time. It may be called “trust” or “love” or nothing more than just the basic human instinct that we all carry within us to take care of our fellow man and mankind. But to some degree we all have it, and even when we see horrible things happen – war, destruction, bigotry, and hatred – we are able to say that we have faith in knowing that that is not truly who we are.

But we speak of faith in the present tense. It is in the here and now: you have faith in God, or your friends or the other qualities, but when we look to the future, it isn’t so much faith that we rely on; it is hope. And hope is an even more powerful force than faith. You can rely on your faith, but you put your hope in the future. It is even more nebulous than faith, for in some cases, faith can be proven or disproven. A child may have had faith in Santa Claus, for instance, but at some point he will know that Santa is really a marketing gimmick exploited by F.A.O. Schwarz and your dad is the one who ate the cookies left by the fireplace. But that child never lost hope that he would get presents under the tree, whether they were brought by a jolly old elf and eight tiny reindeer or the guy in the UPS truck. Or we may have hope in the long term; that we will live a good and happy life and that no matter what comes along in the next year or four years or ten or so; no matter what demons and perils and tragedies and losses and battles we face, we have hope we will make it through, putting our faith in that hope. It is, as Emily Dickinson said, “the thing with feathers that perches in the Soul – and sings the tune without the Words – and never stops – at all.”

There is a kind of guarded optimism and hope is in Inge’s plays, even if it is but a faint glimmer. After all, God is still that ornery bastard. But we see Madge run off to Tulsa chasing a man we know will never amount to anything, hoping that she can change him and find happiness. In Bus Stop we see Bo and Cherie get on the bus and head for the West with little more than hope. In both cases, though, we see them leaving behind wistful and lonely friends and family. In Come Back, Little Sheba, Doc and Lola are barely able to speak to each other until Lola finally admits that Sheba is never going to come back, but life must go on. So many of Inge’s stories end with apparent sadness, yet each does seem to offer just a tad of hope because the people in them have their faith shaken but not lost, their hope dented but not destroyed, and a solemn acceptance that while the future may not be all roses and rainbows, at least there is something to live for.

After he parted from his meeting with Betsy, Joey muses,

“And yet, though she had asked me to come out to visit her and her husband, I know it was unlikely that I would. I could not help feeling apart from them, for they had already become a fixed part of what outsiders call with some derision, some envy, the normal world, the world of people who come home at night to ordinary meals, enjoy ordinary companionship, and suffer ordinary appetites and desires, a world I often curse, like Lucifer the heaven from which he had been expelled, knowing I am not Lucifer and that it is a false heaven I long at times to return to, wishing to God I could still find comfort in its solidarity and mirage of warmth, feeling at times I would be willing to hate Negroes, or condemn Jews, and pretend to worship God while I worshipped Mammon, if I could feel once again the assurance of belonging to the great mass of people who live their lives without conscience or reflection, and subscribe to mass opinion as my father subscribed to Time magazine, never challenging its precepts.

But once the mold is cast, the form cannot be changed. The shape of me could no longer fit into other people’s houses. I cannot claim that Betsy and her husband are hypocrites because they are happy. But sometimes, in spells of bitterness and isolation, happiness in itself has seemed an hypocrisy. And if I hated their happiness, it was because I felt a stranger to it, and a stranger to their welcome. It was a happiness that made me feel more alone.” (4)

Within two years of publishing those words, William Inge let the feelings of being the stranger win out. He tried to find solace in reaching out to the Catholic church, but it was not enough, and on a quiet evening in June of 1973, he went into the garage in his home in Hollywood and sat behind the wheel of his car for the last time. While he may have given his plays and his characters some sense of hope, he could never reconcile his own distance from his faith-filled hometown and friends. In the words of a character in a play by another author, hope was his greatest weakness.

Notes

1. William Inge, My Son is a Splendid Driver (Boston: Little, Brown and Company. 1971) p. 152-153.
2. Inge, p. 110.
3. Inge, p. 214.
4. Inge, p. 214-215.

Bibliography

Inge, William. Four Plays. New York: Grove Weidenfeld. 1958.
--------------. My Son is a Splendid Driver. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. 1971.
Voss, Ralph F. A Life of William Inge. University of Kansas Press. 1989.

Inge Festival 2011, Day 3 - Cool Times

After the thunderstorms swept through Independence on Thursday night, the weather turned cold, windy, and rainy. It did not, however, put a damper on the festival.

Friday morning for me began with a discussion of Inge's relationship with the press and drama critics, always a dicey area for playwrights, and for Inge in particular. For some reason he was viewed by several critics as lucky; he seemingly came out of nowhere in 1952 to conquer Broadway with four hit plays in a row and elbow his way into the stratosphere of American theatre next to Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. Of course, he was not an overnight sensation; his ascendancy had been a long and winding trip, including stints teaching and other occupations and even spending a couple of years as the critic at large for a St. Louis newspaper. His first play, Come Back, Little Sheba, had taken years to get into shape and had endured a lot of rejection before getting to the stage. The same thing happened with Picnic, and when it finally made it to Broadway and won the Pulitzer Prize for drama, it had been through a lot, including a stormy relationship with the director, Joshua Logan, and the version of the play that we've come to know was despised by the author, who felt that he was bullied into making the play have a "happy ending."

It would be inevitable that Inge -- like his fellow playwrights of the era -- would hit the wall and produce unsuccessful plays. For some, they accepted this with a begrudging awareness that they have done their best work. But for Inge, the combination of flops and his internal demons of addiction and repression became too much and he committed suicide in 1973. The common practice -- especially with Inge -- is to blame the critics for sneering at his works as dated and sentimental. But it was more than just rejection by the press; it was Inge's own inability to believe in himself and shrug off the critics. It's not easy to do, but he seemed to let it -- along with his own demons -- lead him to the end. And it was a terrible loss.

Friday afternoon I presented my paper for the scholar's conference; "Plain Speaking - The Voices of William Inge". I examined Inge's use of everyday dialogue and the sometimes clumsy way his characters speak as the reflection of the true heart and soul of the characters, and how Inge often used the silences between the characters as powerful moments in his plays. It forces the actors to examine their roles with more precision and care, and to listen carefully to what the other characters are saying.

Last night was the gala dinner with performances by Elizabeth Wilson, Sheldon Harnick, Daisy Egan (the youngest person ever to win a Tony for her performance in The Secret Garden), and reminiscences of the last 30 years of Inge Festivals. I'm glad I've been here for twenty of them.

Inge Festival 2011, Day 2 - Another Opn'n', Another Show

The 2011 William Inge Theatre Festival kicked off Wednesday night with a wonderful concert performance of A Doctor In Spite of Himself, a musical version of the play by Moliere. The entire production -- music, books, and lyrics -- were written by Sheldon Harnick, who, with the late Jerry Bock, gave us such theatre legends as Fiddler on the Roof, Fiorello!, and The Rothschilds. With a cast made up of local talent and guest artists John Schuck and Alan Safier, it was a delightful evening of great music and Moliere's humor and satire.

Today we had workshops and classes, including session on acting and auditioning for local high school students taught by working actors from New York and Los Angeles, including Barbara Dana, and a look at the critics process as envisioned by Dan Sullivan, the former drama critic of the Los Angeles Times.

Tonight we had a staged reading Horsedreams by Dael Orlandersmith, winner of the New Voices award presented annually by the Inge Festival. It was a collection of monologues; an interesting approach to theatre and not exactly what I envision a play to be. However, there were some interesting characters, and I think the play -- if I can call it that -- has some potential if it can overcome the limitation of having the characters address the audience and rarely interact with each other.

And on a purely shameless self-promotion note, copies of Can't Live Without You are selling.

Inge Festival 2011, Day 1 - Welcome to Independence

Greetings from Independence, Kansas, home of the 30th annual William Inge Festival. This is my 20th trip here, starting in 1991, when Edward Albee was the guest of honor, and I've only missed one -- 2002 when I was directing a production of Grease (and would have been far happier to be here than doing that).

The flight from Albuquerque to Dallas and then on to Tulsa were uneventful (except for a child two rows behind me who was working her banshee audition), and the weather here is beautiful; clear and warm, and so likely to be for the rest of the week.

My first stop was at the William Inge Theatre on the campus of Independence Community College, which is the the host of the festival. There I dropped off the supply of Can't Live Without You scripts (on sale for the incredibly low price of $10) and greeting old friends. Tonight will be a performance of a new musical by Sheldon Harnick (Inge honoree in 2007), A Doctor In Spite of Himself.

Tomorrow begins the workshops and sessions with actors and guests. My big moment is Friday when I am at the Scholar's Conference.

Pictures From The Inge

I finally got around to downloading the rest of my pictures from the William Inge Festival... a week after. Here are just a few memories of good friends and good times.

Artistic Director Peter Ellenstein welcomes us to the Festival.

Tom Jones, lyricist of The Fantasticks and last year's honoree, teaches on the joy of writing great plays.

The Scholars Conference - Jef Petersen, Sue Abbottson, David Savran, Jackson Bryer, and host Lesley Simpson.

Marcel LaFlamme, curator of the Inge Collection at ICC, chats with Paula Vogel.

Barbara Dana entertains at the Gala Dinner.

See you in 2011.

From The Lobby of The Apple Tree Inn

The 29th Inge Festival wrapped up last night, and I'll have some pictures and notes from the events on Saturday a little later. At this moment, I'm waiting for my ride to the Tulsa airport to catch my flight to Dallas and then on to Miami.

This lobby could tell stories from the Inge Festival of years past. I'm sitting in the exact place where I met Edward Albee in 1991 after he came back from his morning walk. He sat next to me and we introduced ourselves. I also remember sitting here and seeing Jim Lehrer, Frank Rich, Stephen Sondheim, Neil Simon and Arthur Miller check in at the desk; not all at the same time, but spread out over the years.

This is also the place where we spent many a late night/early morning after the events at the college with snacks and drinks -- lots of the latter. I have memories of August Wilson, Gordon Parks, and Pat Hingle swapping stories while sitting on this couch, and singing camp songs with Shirley Knight and her daughter Kaitlin Hopkins. Director Daniel Mann told many stories about the New York theatre history going back to the early part of the 20th century, and he could tell the best jokes: my favorite was the old man going into the rest home.

A lot of the people who were a part of this festival when I started coming 20 years ago are gone now: the playwrights we've honored such as Jerry Lawrence, John Patrick, Wendy Wasserstein, August Wilson, and Arthur Miller; and dear souls such as Jo Anne Kirchmaier, niece of William Inge, dear friend, and keeper of the Inge family flame; and Robert Anderson, playwright and friend. I still see them here on the couch or coming around the corner, dressed for the tribute, or first thing in the morning, padding out in slippers for an eye-opening cup of coffee. The friends I've made here are my inspiration as a writer and scholar, and knowing that this group of dedicated and devoted friends will become even wider is the reason I keep coming back.

It's not goodbye; it's just intermission.

Inge 2010 - Day 3

This was a rich full day, beginning with an interview on stage with Paula Vogel, this year's honoree, followed by the scholar's conference where I delivered my paper to polite applause, and then the gala dinner at the Civic Auditorium. I'll update with pictures as soon as I download them.

So far it's been a lot of fun, and the best part is that the weather has cooperated fully. Over the last twenty years we've endured wind, rain, tornadoes, sleet, even a snow flurry or two. One year it rained so hard that my shoes got soaked through just from running from the college parking lot to the theatre. I had to go out to Wal-Mart and buy a new pair. (I still have them.)

One of the best parts of the festival is that we get the chance to mingle with people who know what it's like to work on a play or a piece of writing for weeks, months, or years and then try to get it produced... or even read. There's a lot of solidarity and commiseration, but there's also good advice and networking going on, too. I have already been asked for copies of Can't Live Without You from people who are interested in considering it for readings by their theatre group or even consideration for a full production. It's both gratifying and inspiring, because the next inevitable question is, "What else have you got?" So I am working on giving them more.

Tomorrow (Saturday) is the Picnic picnic, a master class with Paula Vogel, and the tribute to her.

Pictures from Friday:

Paula Vogel is interviewed by David Savran.

Mary Hanes shares ideas on playwriting.

I had some pictures of the gala dinner, but the quality isn't all that hot, so I'll see if I can nick some from the official photographer and post them. Suffice it to say that we all had a great time, and the program of songs put together by Tom Jones, last year's honoree, which included a tune from his work-in-progress, a musical version of the film Harold and Maude, was a delight.

Inge 2010 - Day 2

I spent the morning listening to two good friends -- Elizabeth Wilson and Barbara Dana -- read a portion of a work-in-progress by Barbara. It's a play about two aging actors working to come up with a play that they can do for a benefit and touches on the friendships -- past and present -- that they share.

Elizabeth Wilson and Barbara Dana
After lunch I sat in on a lively panel discussion with agent Peter Franklin, Gigi Bolt, and Mary Hanes on the current state of theatre and promotion of new playwrights in America. The consensus was that there are innovative ways to get new playwrights out to the theatres that are looking for new works, and there should be a means of providing support for theatre programs that nurture new writers. After all, where would theatre be without playwrights?

Peter Franklin, Gigi Bolt, Mary Hanes
Later there was a session with Dan Sullivan, the former theatre critic of the Los Angeles Times, and his view of the state of dramatic criticism and how the critics treated William Inge.

Tonight is the concert reading of The Mountaintop by Katori Hall. I'll have some thoughts on it later.

Update: My thoughts on The Mountaintop.

The premise of the play is that it is the night of April 3, 1968 in Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. retires to his room after giving a speech to a Memphis church congregation during the sanitation workers strike. When a mysterious young hotel maid comes to visit him during the night, King is forced to confront his mortality and the future of his people.

When you have a story that depicts an event in history where you know the outcome, it takes a bit of ingenuity to make it interesting to the audience, and when you're writing about a man whose history and life has been so well documented, it takes some imagination to put an additional dimension on the character. In this case, Ms. Hall has accomplished both with a degree of success. No small credit goes to Anika Noni Rose who played Camae, the hotel maid, who gave the role a depth that went beyond the stereotype of the hip black woman of the 1960's. (There is a twist to her character that made it more interesting; think Touched By An Angel.) Gilbert Glenn Brown played Dr. King, and he had the added burden of taking him to a level that goes beyond the historical footage that we remember of him from forty years ago. The problem with playing him is that for the most part the only record we have of Dr. King is his famous speeches, including the one he gave in Memphis the night before he was shot, and the one containing the line that gives the play its title.

The performance was done in a concert version, which means the actors were reading from scripts on music stands, so there was no blocking or interaction. It didn't seem to hinder their performances, though, and at the end of the play, the audience gave them a standing ovation.

The other problem with plays that deal with an historical event is that we have our own memories to compare it to. The death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. struck a number of white people as not only a tragedy for the country, but there was inherently a sense of white liberal guilt; as if there was something we could have done to prevent it or done more to advance civil rights so that Dr. King would not have had to take his campaign to the streets and to the South. Perhaps there was an echo in that tonight in the applause at the William Inge Theatre, but I also think that the reaction and the accolades that the playwright and the actors received was in genuine appreciation of their work. But I also think that political theatre requires a measure of both timelessness and inclusiveness: the message cannot be merely to reflect the moment, because the shelf-life of those plays can be measured with an egg timer. And in order to go beyond preaching to the choir, it has to do more than emphasize a point of view that can only be appreciated by one segment of the society. Playwrights do not get to choose their audiences, and it takes a deft hand to make a play on such a topic reach across the aisle... including the ones in a theatre.

Inge 2010 - Day 1

Christmas in April

Last night we were treated to a staged reading of Paula Vogel's A Civil War Christmas. It's a combination of music and a very moving series of vignettes that depict, among other stories, a slave and her daughter slipping over the Potomac to escape to freedom, young soldiers dealing with being away from home during Christmas, assassins plotting against President Lincoln, and the Lincolns trying to find the perfect Christmas present for each other. They are all tied together at the end with happy endings and a harmonious blend of Christmas carols and battle hymns of the time.

Even though it was staged with actors reading from scripts, the performances were excellent, and the music, supplied by members of the Independence Community Chorus, was enchanting.

It was a great start to the Inge Festival, and a promise of good things to come.

Thursday's schedule includes workshops and the concert reading of The Mountaintop by Katori Hall, the Otis Guernsey New Voices winner.

Awakening...

For those of you who stop by here, the news is that I will be posting here from the 2010 William Inge Theatre Festival taking place in Independence, Kansas, April 21-24.

This is a little break from the past in that normally I would be posting at Bark Bark Woof Woof, but since this blog is dedicated to my literary output, I thought I would use it for that purpose. After all, Bobby Cramer is a fictional character; what better place to write about theatre, creative writing, dramatic literature, and other artistic stuff than here?

So check in this week and see what's going on in Independence. I'll even have pictures, and if you're lucky, I'll post the paper I'm writing for the scholar's conference.

See you in Independence.