What: Theatrical program for a limited run of Tongues by Sam Shepard and Joseph Chaikin, with insert poem by yours truly.
Cost/Value: $4 to see the show, the cost of a sandwich at Baggins.
The story, as I recall: Being part of a theater troupe was the closest thing I've ever come to being a pirate: driven far and hard by blackhearted cap'ns, living rough among scurvy crewmates for low wages and long nights, cramped in dank, nasty vessels cast upon maps of imagination, we chased selfish, criminal dreams of easy plenty and starred infamy that, according to legend, lay somewhere beyond the horizon.
The treasure was all ours, too, if we'd only take the demented risk.
Not to judge, but if you call yourself a thespian and your experience was nothing like mine, you missed out. Depending on the mood, I suppose other extended metaphors might come to mind as I remember that life--rag-and-bone shops where the used shit of our lives gets sold for pennies, insane asylums run by the inmates, etc. etc., but pirates will do for this one.
Despite what you might imagine, culture wasn't exactly rare and running scared in Tucson in the 1990s. My first month in town, I learned the map of Tucson easily by plotting out islands of cultural solace: The Loft Cinema, on 5th Street before it moved to Speedway, Zia Records, which I'd later manage in Phoenix, and the various used and new bookstores where I mainlined transgressive entertainments on student's wages. The local theatre scene, fed generously by the University of Arizona's fine drama program, was a distant country cousin of what I imagined "the life" in New York City to be like, a sort of I-met-Woody-Allen-at-the-bistro-and-he-loves-my-writing fantasia that I chased for several years before retiring for a life of medical benefits and upwardly mobile recompense for an education and reasonable aspirations.
AKA Theatre and other black box theaters dotted the local map, run as described above, no more or less rare, I suppose, from the denizens of other similar theatres around the world where this perennially dying art form still thrives in respective economies of class and local concern for the arts.
To put this production of Tongues in that context, you'd also have to imagine that other recent productions would have included works by Bertolt Brecht, María Irene Fornés,
While AKA hosted Tongues, this was actually a production of GOYA, a loosely considered collective, less a formal movement than the intention of one, the result of collective creative will energized by ideas and youthful desire to shine. GOYA stood for Get Off Your Ass, a "forum for artists interested in multi-media collaboration," which meant "go see a play and we'll give you a free poem," pretty much. But we tried.
Well, they did. I'm among a very fortunate few who, through the vagaries of geography and timing, studied theater arts under Marie Kerwin, who ran the Moon Valley High School program, not as an after-school nursery for misfits and imaginative children, but as a serious, semi-professional dramatic arts academy. As a public school educator, she had no business doing that, but thank god she did. It was magical, the closest thing to Hogwarts I've ever experienced. But even then, I was always a loiterer in the wings, drawn to the indiscreet backstage treats far more than the dogged discipline of being a talent on stage or off. When GOYA launched, nothing had changed: I wrote a few things and dreamed, but my partners--the actors, the production consultant--were far more serious about getting on that boat and sailing for the high seas, which they did. They were the real theatrical artists, powerhouses of energy and creativity who settled on Tongues, a two-man piece for voice and percussion, as the perfect showpiece for their livid energies. It was their ship, and I was happy to be a castaway.
The poem included is bad beat poetry with socialist overtones, a humanist peaen to depravity, my melieu in those days, although I still like the refrain of "My mouth is no comedian"--it has a dumb fatalism that even a salty old pirate could appreciate.
Why did I keep it? It's an obvious keepsake. Although not my inaugural publication--we'll look at that one some other time--I'm proud to have been bonus content for a good night at the theater.
Item 3: A collection of concert tickets from the 1980s/1990s.
Cost/Value: $4 to see the show, the cost of a sandwich at Baggins.
The story, as I recall: Being part of a theater troupe was the closest thing I've ever come to being a pirate: driven far and hard by blackhearted cap'ns, living rough among scurvy crewmates for low wages and long nights, cramped in dank, nasty vessels cast upon maps of imagination, we chased selfish, criminal dreams of easy plenty and starred infamy that, according to legend, lay somewhere beyond the horizon.
The treasure was all ours, too, if we'd only take the demented risk.
Not to judge, but if you call yourself a thespian and your experience was nothing like mine, you missed out. Depending on the mood, I suppose other extended metaphors might come to mind as I remember that life--rag-and-bone shops where the used shit of our lives gets sold for pennies, insane asylums run by the inmates, etc. etc., but pirates will do for this one.
AKA Theatre and other black box theaters dotted the local map, run as described above, no more or less rare, I suppose, from the denizens of other similar theatres around the world where this perennially dying art form still thrives in respective economies of class and local concern for the arts.
To put this production of Tongues in that context, you'd also have to imagine that other recent productions would have included works by Bertolt Brecht, María Irene Fornés,
Friedrich Dürrenmatt, and Caryl Churchill alongside lesser-known contemporaries and local writers. Sometime after one of those headliners, then, our little troupe would have been a late-night attraction.
While AKA hosted Tongues, this was actually a production of GOYA, a loosely considered collective, less a formal movement than the intention of one, the result of collective creative will energized by ideas and youthful desire to shine. GOYA stood for Get Off Your Ass, a "forum for artists interested in multi-media collaboration," which meant "go see a play and we'll give you a free poem," pretty much. But we tried.
Well, they did. I'm among a very fortunate few who, through the vagaries of geography and timing, studied theater arts under Marie Kerwin, who ran the Moon Valley High School program, not as an after-school nursery for misfits and imaginative children, but as a serious, semi-professional dramatic arts academy. As a public school educator, she had no business doing that, but thank god she did. It was magical, the closest thing to Hogwarts I've ever experienced. But even then, I was always a loiterer in the wings, drawn to the indiscreet backstage treats far more than the dogged discipline of being a talent on stage or off. When GOYA launched, nothing had changed: I wrote a few things and dreamed, but my partners--the actors, the production consultant--were far more serious about getting on that boat and sailing for the high seas, which they did. They were the real theatrical artists, powerhouses of energy and creativity who settled on Tongues, a two-man piece for voice and percussion, as the perfect showpiece for their livid energies. It was their ship, and I was happy to be a castaway.
The poem included is bad beat poetry with socialist overtones, a humanist peaen to depravity, my melieu in those days, although I still like the refrain of "My mouth is no comedian"--it has a dumb fatalism that even a salty old pirate could appreciate.
Why did I keep it? It's an obvious keepsake. Although not my inaugural publication--we'll look at that one some other time--I'm proud to have been bonus content for a good night at the theater.
Item 3: A collection of concert tickets from the 1980s/1990s.
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