Theatre of the absurd
The Moppets of Mission Viejo
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| Charlene Baldridge Photo by Ken Howard |
For Halloween I was invited to a friend’s home to see how
the moppets of Mission Viejo beg for treats. Not much differently than moppets
anywhere, except there were fewer than expected, and they were mostly
pint-sized, dressed as fairy princesses, witches and ballerinas.
Upon my return the next evening my condo elevator was occupied by three cooler-dragging adults, all decked out in numbered shirts. “Your Halloween
costumes?” I asked.
Turns out they were returning from a football game. I had
fun at their expense: “The Chargers? Is that a football team?” They fell for
it, hook, line and lineman. I’m as interested in the football team as they are
in new plays and playwrights.
Playwrights process at Cygnet
The play is another case of culture clash, in this case imaginary
meetings between the brainy Arthur Miller and plain Joe, Joe DiMaggio. Both were
married to pop culture icon and film star Marilyn Monroe, who would likely wish
to be remembered for serious acting and brains more than for her sexual allure
and celebrated body. At the time of her controversial death, Monroe and DiMaggio
were planning to remarry. Havis explores it all through the two men who loved
her and a mysterious redhead seated in the restaurant. She speaks at the 12th
hour. Nothing is real, of course, because the two men never met so far as we
know. Havis provides a heady evening, exploring the worshipped Monroe from other,
absolutely oblique angles.
I had quite a long talk with playwright Tim West, whose
play, Cooperstown, was read Friday
night. Readers were Amanda Cooley Davis as Beth, Tom Hall as Steve, Walter Ritter
as Pop, and 8-year-old Dash Williams as Michael.
Cooperstown is a
poignant father-son drama. A former major league pitcher, the widowed Pop gets
a letter from Cooperstown, home of the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was on the
road a lot when Steve, a short-story writer and college English composition
teacher, was growing up. They have a rather prickly relationship that probably
stems from Steve’s feelings of abandonment. Even though Pop isn’t going to be inducted
into the Hall of Fame, he’s been invited to a teammate’s ceremony. Steve is
persuaded to take Pop, who no longer drives at night, on a road trip to
Cooperstown. The relationship between the athletic Pop and the bookish Steve deepens,
ultimately carrying over to Steve’s relationship with his own son, a talented
10-year-old baseball player who struggles academically.
By coincidence, these two play readings juxtaposed the world
of sports and the world of intellect. Just like the clash in the condo
elevator.
A switcheroo in plans Sunday night afforded me the
opportunity to attend part of West’s seminar on the journey that one takes with
playwriting – the actual writing and rewriting and the eventual sharing of the work through private and
public readings that hopefully lead to full production.
I also stayed for a reading of Lance Arthur Smith’s Two Wisemen of Las Cruces. With gripping
momentum, Smith’s characters charge through another father-son road trip, set
in New Mexico circa 1880. Olivia Espinosa read the part of Sabiduria,
a Spanish-Indian woman torn between Coates (Steven Lone) and Reg (Patrick
Duffy) and devoted to her son Sam (Jonah Gercke). There is a grisly showdown
that seemed to satisfy those present. I would have preferred redemption,
reconciliation, and some indication that the bad guy was not really such a bad
guy. But that's just me, and this is, after all, the Wild West.
The Playwrights in Process New Play Festival was hosted by
both the Playwrights Project and West and included daily workshops and
talkbacks following each reading. Saturday presented a reading of Julia
Fulton’s Lake Powell that I was
unable to attend. Kim Strassburger was festival artistic director. Generous
support was given by Bill and Judy Garrett, the County of San Diego, and the
Playwrights Project.
Mellicone, Cage and Beethoven open La Jolla Symphony &
Chorus season
“Time has a sound, and history makes music,” said La Jolla
Symphony Music Director Steven Schick, paraphrasing Stegner in remarks that
prefaced the organization’s inaugural 2012-2013 concert, “Hero/Anti-Hero.” In
fact all the programs this season are inspired by Wallace Stegner’s 1971 novel,
Angle of Repose. Schick explained
that the repose of the title refers to the calm that ensues a protracted
struggle. Music is, after all, the struggle between keys, the clash of dissonance, discussions, some heated, between orchestral sections, and the sometimes untidy discourse of musical ideas. Resolution is nice, but as in the case of Two Wisemen of Las Cruces, is not necessarily the ultimate goal of playwright or composer.
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| Steven Schick Courtesy of La Jolla Symphony |
The main attraction of Schick's pre-concert talk – and the entire
program, it turned out – was 32-year-old American composer and Pennsylvania
native Missy Mazzoli, who attended Yale School of Music, the Royal Conservatory
of the Hague, and Boston University. She is deemed by The New York Times as “one of the more consistently inventive,
surprising composers now working in New York.” Her work upholds that
imprimatur. She is certainly vivacious and her work is fascinating.
The West Coast premiere of Mazzoli’s Violent, Violent Sea opened Saturday’s 7:30pm concert at Mandeville
Auditorium. The composer was especially pleased because it was only the second
time the work has been performed in its extended version for full orchestra. As
she says, her sea shimmers on the surface, but is “gnarly” underneath – lots
going on in the work, which is essentially melodic. As Schick said of this
ocean, “You have to get in it to hear it.”
I also loved Mazzoli’s declaration that in order to do
something new, one's oeuvre must proceed from previous history, that originality is
inevitable when one is true to oneself and one’s heritage. These are inspiring
thoughts to carry into one’s life and creative endeavor, no matter what the
challenges may be: To be true requires heroism. I think of the critical
lambasting endured by young composers who dare to sound like themselves,
their music flavored by their influences.
The LJS&C program also paid homage to John Cage’s birth
centennial with performance of three works including 101 (written for 101 musicians playing, with certain flexibility,
written parts within proscribed intervals) and 4’33”. Soprano Jessica Asazodi and the orchestra performed Aria. Graceful and gloriously clad in apricot and
beige silk and armed with a delicious sense of humor as she assayed Cage’s
vocal world, Asazodi totally charmed the audience with a spectrum of
spectacular vocal iteration. She and Schick performed an encore, she sitting on
the podium’s step and he, accompanying with percussive hand-generated beats on
the podium itself.
I guffawed over the program note that stated 4’33” would be presented in its version
for full symphony orchestra. Anyone familiar with the work knows it is utterly
silent. The side doors of Mandeville were thrown open to admit any ambient
sound. All I heard were audience coughs, shifting, and, from the campus, a
distant shout.
Immediately following the conclusion of 4’33” Schick and the orchestra launched into an entirely adequate
performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Opus 55 (“Eroica”).
San Diego Symphony plays Mahler
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| Jahja Ling, San Diego Symphony |
Even amid life’s fierce tribulations, fraught with ill
health and superhuman requirements, there is hope, as evidenced in Gustav
Mahler’s Adagietto, the first of two
movements in Part III of his transcendent 5th Symphony. Listen here
to Daniel Barenboim and the Chicago. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWPACef2_eY
Maestro Ling and the orchestra profoundly captured Mahler’s
sublime utterance.
The coming week with Brenda
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Brenda also plans to attend the LA Phil's La
Vida Breve,
Jim Caputo’s Holiday Spirits at
Scripps Ranch Theatre , and the Old Globe MFA production of
Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure.
Director Ray Chambers directs The Old Globe/University of San Diego Graduate Theatre Program production of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure in the Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre Nov. 10 - 18, 2012. Photo courtesy of The Old Globe.
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