The Beggar and The Starving Artist: New York 1982 Blog 35

Namaste!

Canal Street NYC

Last time I woke up to snow, my mind found its way to the Poland of 1981 when I was first working as an actor with Triple Action Theatre. Today there's no fresh snow but the sudden heavy downfall of last night has settled and there is that particular sound of stillness that accompanies snow. 

I've run out of builder's tea and instant coffee, so I rummaged in the cupboard and found some old green tea with lemon. Its quite refreshing. My blog writing is usually accompanied by music, and in my trip into my past I find myself drawn to listen to Bread. The first track, Make it with you transports me back nicely to 1982. Then I had it on a cassette in one of those early Sony portable players, one of just a few possessions I had in those years of itinerant touring with Triple Action Theatre. Music is exquisite in its ability to instantly take us straight to the heart of past times, loves, experiences.

So here I am on Canal Street in the sweltering summer of 1982. We had been invited to Manhattan by a production company for a residency in a converted warehouse in Greene Street. We drove down from Chicago where we had been working with a small theatre company called Remains, an offshoot of the famous Steppenwolf Theatre. Our show was an adaptation of Ulysses by James Joyce. I played Molly Bloom, and had that wonderful stream of consciousness monologue which called on a good Irish accent. Thanks to my heritage it was within my gift to find the lilting softness I needed for Molly. 

Chicago had been a heady time. This bright young company had set up in an old corner shop on Halstead Street, one of those wonderfully triangle shaped streets that distinguish the windy city. And the young actors I worked with there turned out later to be some of America's brightest things, John Malkovich, Glen Close, Gary Cole, Laurie Metcalf, Amy Morton and Billy Petersen of CSI fame. We were all young and hopeful and hopelessly poor but that didn't matter, these guys had a space of their own, tiny as it was to make theatre. These were pure and joy filled days. We had met at the Toronto International Festival of Theatre earlier that year and had brewed our plans for Chicago with them there.

The guys invited us to bring our show to their tiny 50 seater theatre, where they were producing themselves in Balm In Gilead  by Lanford Wilson. The 1965 play was Wilson's first full-length effort. The play centres on a cafe frequented by heroin addicts and prostitutes (both male and female) and thieves. It featured many unconventional theatrical devices for its time, such as overlapping dialogue, simultaneous scenes and largely unsympathetic lead characters. The plot draws a parallel between the amoral, often criminal activity that the café's denizens engage in to provide temporary relief from their boredom and suffering, and the two main characters becoming a couple in order to escape from their lives. I remember an eerily beautiful rendition of Mona Lisa sung by Gary Cole. 

During these brilliant days in Chicago, where I stayed in Billy's squalid basement flat, the show was seen by a 'Producer' from the Big Apple. We jumped at the chance to take him up on his offer of a run in NYC. Little did we know that this guy was a fantasist!  Anyway we believed him and packed up with excitement for our Off-Broadway experience. 

How wrong we were. We got to Manhatten to discover the very 'Producer' curled up in a corner of his theatre in Greene Street pleading poverty. The money he had promised us had never existed. And we were stuck with him too. As you can imagine we had not a dime between us and not much hope of earning one! Fortunately there were some kind supporters of this failing theatre who took pity on us and gave all seven of us rooms in their lofts and apartments. Mine was just off Canal Street, a converted office building, where the makeshift shower was on the landing between appartments. It was pretty seedy. Outside the front door downstairs, vagrants and drug addicts huddled in the doors of the 7/11.  I was told by my kindly but uninterested host to make sure that I walked fast through the street and not to make eye contact with anyone. 

The resilience of youth inoculated us against what was potentially a disastrous situation. We decided that we would go ahead and perform the show in the theatre for the three weeks we had planned, and we would sell tickets ourselves and share the proceeds  (sound familiar?!). And we did. In the meantime the producer was actually having a nervous breakdown and the bailifs were due any time to evict him. But we did it. We photocopied our poster and we leafleted around the area, slapping posters on pillars and lamposts. We still had the advantage of marketing ourselves as a 'British avantgarde' company which had a certain cachet! 

James Joyce

The show was well received and we did manage to get 20-50 people most nights. At $5 per show, if we got 20 people that meant $100 which divided between the seven of us gave us each about $14 a day. This was just about enough to buy some food from a street stall and some breakfast from the 7/11. Some days it was more and some days less. 

I thought I was the only one who counted the heads whilst doing the show to work out how much I would get that night, but soon discovered that we all did it!  But it was a fabulous experience. We all got a bit thinner and looked like the archetypal starving artists. I quite liked the look. And we were also-rans in the vicinity, full of its beggars and half way houses. My God we knew we were alive!

That three weeks was my Off-Broadway debut! I went back there a couple of years ago and the old warehouse and the deluded 'Producer' were long gone, replaced by a swish office block. But in my mind's eye I could still see the funny little theatre that had been there in 1982. 

Those were good times.

Have a great week.