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“Parting Words from Moristotle” (07/31/2023)
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By James Knudsen
March milestones are piling up. March 10, I turned 57; March 13, the run of “Guys and Dolls” ended; March 17, St. Patrick’s Day; and, March 20, Spring arrived. Is it possible to connect all of these events? Let’s find out.
March 10, 2022. Myself and the cast of “Guys and Dolls” begin our final week of performance. It is not the first time I have found myself performing on my birthday. I hope it won’t be the last. Fifty-seven is, from this vantage point, a terribly blasé birthday. It’s well past 50, but still far enough away from 60 to not feel like...well, 60. It no doubt helped to be in a dressing room with four older actors, as in older than me. One, upon hearing my age, remarked, “A mere slip of a lad.” And at this point I should add, the idea of mortality has not sunk in completely.
By James Knudsen
Last month’s column ended with a cliff-hanger of sorts – would the show go on? To recap, a production of “Guys and Dolls,” which I am working on, was originally scheduled to open on January 13, 2022, but due to the ongoing pandemic, and positive cases among the cast, opening was postponed until January 22. Have things gone on without incident?
By James Knudsen
The other day, a student, sighing, said, “Two years. This pandemic’s been goin’ for two years.” Many people still cling to the idea – some actually promote or create ideas, meme, tropes, fairy-tales, op-eds, “news” – that the pandemic isn’t real. I’ve never suffered from any delusion, illusion, malocclusion (actually I might have that one): I have known it was real ever since March of 2020, when Andra and I stocked up on liquor hours before California went on lockdown. And recently I observed irrefutable proof that COVID-19 is real. Like so many things, this came to me via the theatre.
By Jonathan Price
Edward Albee died last month. It wasn’t exactly a surprise; he was 88 [March 12, 1928 – September 16, 2016]. But like many recent prominent deaths, it made me think. Edward Albee always made you think and feel. He was one of the great American playwrights of the twentieth century, and certainly by far the greatest of my contemporaries. Of course, no one can say such a thing for sure, since it is a matter of opinion – of many opinions over time. Nevertheless, in any week Broadway sports perhaps 30 plays or dramas, and then there is off-Broadway, which Albee helped to invent. Over the years, that’s a lot of plays, and the competition is intense. No one, I guess, sees all the plays, or reads all the plays. But Albee seems to me like a great pro golfer – Tiger Woods, or Jack Nicklaus. In a very competitive field, where audiences and critics are always demanding, he stands out.
Waiting for Lefty
By James Knudsen
This week marked the sixth week of instruction for this Fall 2016 semester. I have a typical load of classes, one beginning-acting and one theatre-appreciation course. But I’m also assisting in the production of this season’s first play, Waiting for Lefty, by Clifford Odets. My colleague Janine Christl is directing, and, since the start of rehearsals five weeks ago, I’ve been working with the ensemble and the featured actors to help them better understand the time period, 1935.
It’s Hawaii!
By James Knudsen
For people of my generation, knowledge of our 50th state is based largely on Hawaii Five-O, Magnum, P.I. and the three-part episode of The Brady Bunch with a cursed tiki idol at the center of the storyline. None of these was much help during my recent five-day stay on Oahu as part of Fresno City College’s trip to the Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival for Region Eight. (I previously covered this topic in February 2013: “A piece of theatre’s pie.”)
A problem
By Rolf Dumke
In “Shakespeare in Modern English?” [New York Times, October 7], James Shapiro rightly discusses a main problem in both British and American Shakespeare productions, “that even the best directors and actors...too frequently offer up Shakespeare’s plays without themselves having firm enough grasp of what his words mean.”
Wishing to be her
By James Knudsen
Lost in the media frenzy following the loss of Malaysian Airlines, Flight 17, was the news that the world of theatre had lost one of its true greats. Elaine Stritch died July 17, 2014 at her home in Birmingham, Michigan. She was 89.
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