Turning Eighty

As the old saying goes: ‘With age, comes wisdom.’ I guess the word ‘recognition’ could just as easily be substituted in my case. If one can remain open to the world around them, there’s still a lot to be seen and heard; whether it’s accepted or not…is another blog entirely.

This generational differences between myself and the rest of the world didn’t raise its head and nudge my consciousness until I was recently interviewed by a reporter from our local newspaper, the Desert Sun. Brian, the newspaper’s Arts and Culture Reporter had contacted me to talk about my latest play ‘Widow’s Waltz.’

The theme of the play was such that he thought it sounded different from the usual fare produced in the Valley. Whether that was a fair comparison or not, we met at Koffi, another local caffeinated establishment and talked at length about the play, the venue (Script2Stage2Screen) that was producing it and play-righting opportunities in the Valley.

At the end of our lengthy conversation, I asked him about his impressions of today’s Palm Springs since he’d been a reporter here for more than fifteen years. When he began talking about the ‘creatives from the coast’, remanences of Old Hollywood still lingering in the shadows and the uniqueness’ of the place, I realized his take on Palm Springs (as it is today) was a different world than the one I existed in.

Of course, that shouldn’t have come as a total surprise. Brian was born in 1980, about the same time as my own two kids. When he spoke of ‘ancient times’ he was referring to the turbulent 60’s, the war in Vietnam and social and political upheavals run rampant in our otherwise staid and comfortable world.

OMG, I asked myself. Am I really that old? I guess the answer is yes if I’m willing to admit it. A lot of generations have started to come up through the ranks since I began my formal journey in the 1940s.

If Family history is any indication of generational acceptance then I might be in trouble. My Mother never did admit her age and perhaps that’s her flotsam I’ve inherited. My mother worked until late into her sixties, remarried after being single for thirty plus years and never looked back.

She and her husband danced two or three times a week until their late seventies then continued playing cards well into their late eighties.

She was quite verbal in her distain for those old people who complained a lot or wouldn’t get off their duff and ‘do something’ besides watch TV and go to church on Sunday. While on the surface that seems understandable, my mother also insulated herself from world events, local politics, and generational changes with the younger set.

Hers was an insulated, encapsulated walled-off world of her own where only the like-minded dare to tread. Unfortunately, that brought her unwanted stress and discomfort as the world changed and evolved around her sheltered life. I don’t want to repeat that same performance.

I realize that to fully live in this world, one must be prepared to learn and understand the newer generations that are (for the most part) ruling it today. Most of our lives are now in the past and the future is rapidly closing in. To appreciate what we have, we have to embrace what’s there… whether we understand it or not.

Death Be Not Alone

Talk about walking a tightrope. As a playwright, it’s imperative that I tell a good story. It must be open and honest and true. It has to be realistic as I’ve come to paint that life tapestry in my mind. But is my audience ready for such a truthful adaptation about their own final demise?

Statistically speaking, many folks in the audience are going to be faced with their own reality acted out up there on the stage. Some might become very upset. Others could feel pain and anguish because I’ve opened up old wounds once again.

All of this theatrical honesty could threaten to turn the audience against me. It might provoke some into anger and outrage at the audacity of sharing such a personal storyline. Here is reality staring them back in the face. How are they going to react? How will they take this honest portrayal of their parents, aunts, uncles, siblings, friends, neighbors and, perhaps, themselves…as they are all about to die? That’s my dilemma and the challenge facing my newest play.

The play is called ‘The Last Sentinel’ and it joins my other plays that have tried to examine snippets of real life. The storyline is simple enough. Four old women in a nursing home are facing the end of their lives. That probably sounds a bit crass but it succinctly describes the premise of this play. It’s about death, dying, denial, and acceptance.

We‘re all going to face it. Or perhaps we’ve seen others face it recently. I’m talking about the death of people we know no matter if they’re close to us or not. Perhaps these are people we’ve known all of our lives or a part of it and now it’s time for them to go.

Everyone handles his or her own end of life differently. Some are in total denial until they take their last breath. Others gather family and friends around them for a final good-bye. I don’t think anyone really knows how they’re going to handle that situation until faced with it themselves.

So why would I want to write a play about old folks facing their demise and some not handling it well? For laughs, of course. And to explore a seldom discussed reality facing all of us.

I honestly can’t remember where the idea came from. This play was one of six story outlines that I vomited out (sorry but it does describe the sudden uncontrollable retching out of ideas from my brain) in one overly caffeinated afternoon when the ideas started flowing non-stop and I began typing away furiously to capture them before they slipped out of my collective consciousness.

I’ve been there at the end with my parents, Sharon’s parents, aunts, uncles, and assorted acquaintances. It’s hit home but it really hasn’t. I think when others my own age or closer to me start to pass then it will hit home a lot harder.

So I wanted to write an honest play about death and dying but also to get some chuckles in at the same time. I knew right from the start that my four old women would be a wonderful menagerie of quips, comments, complaints, statements and sometimes outrageous antidotes for reality. They would reflect many older folks I’ve known over the years.

So in the story, simply stated, the women make a pact to stick together and be there for one another until the end. It’s an agreement they struggle to keep. They nag at one another and yet show love and compassion at the same time. They argue about nothing and still shore up sagging feelings while doing so. They all face the inevitable in different ways and reveal to the audience their true colors. They are irritable, persnickety and remind all of us of people we know, knew or want to forget. But in the end, I hope they represent a realistic portrait of individuals facing that ultimate test in life.

‘The Last Sentinel’ is warm and engaging. It is outrageous and funny. But I hope mostly it is a celebration of the human spirit when it is needed the most. The play isn’t a melodrama or a tragedy or a maudlin check-off of someone’s life. Instead it is a rich tapestry of life recaptured, the power of friendship and self-actualization celebrating life. It will be engaging, truthful and a lot of laughs. What better way to remember someone’s final good-bye than with a smile on your face.

Oh, and the music will be pretty neat too.

August of 2019 is the date set for the premiere of ‘The Last Sentinel’ at the Steeple Center in Rosemount, Minnesota

Breaking the Fourth Wall

‘Breaking the Fourth Wall’ is an expression coming out of the world of theater. In most modern theater design, a room will consist of three physical walls, as well as an imaginary fourth that serves to separate the world of the characters from that of the audience. An accomplished actor can break through that fourth wall and draw the audience into his or her world, forgetting about the fourth wall there. Artists of every ilk seek to do the very same thing to reach their audience.

‘Behind the Music’ was a series on MTV a while back. The television series covered a number of famous bands and how they originated. Most had been honing their skills in three-two bars and the dance hall circuits for years before some well-written song or lucky coincidence was the break-through they needed to make it to the big time.

Across the board with almost every band was the image of a group of individuals with a fire in their respective bellies. Musicians so dedicated to their craft that they would let nothing get in their way of making music.

Musicians are certainly not alone in that endeavor. The actor, Dustin Hoffman, labored for ten years in Off-Broadway plays before hitting it big with ‘The Graduate.’ Jennifer Lawrence ran the same race.

This quest for recognition and success got me to reflecting why it is that some individuals can talk forever about doing something while others simply do it. Some curb jumpers think about running a marathon but never get past their wishful thinking. Then there are others who begin with a walk, then a jog, a short run and finally begin putting on the mileage.

There are hundreds of thousands of wannabe writers who can’t get past a blank sheet of paper or empty screen. Then there are others who toil for years trying to write something worthwhile but can’t get past the first page. There are only a relatively few who can sit down and write a play or novel or screenplay while so many others never complete that first sentence. What is the difference here?

I certainly don’t have an answer as to why some folks stoke this ‘fire in their belly’ while the majority of dreamers simply wallow in wishful thinking. Yet all of this mindful meandering begs much larger questions as to why do artists or athletes do it in the first place? What drives them to toil in the trenches of an athletic field or in front of a keyboard? Why are they different from the rest of the populous? Can they help themselves or do they want to help themselves? What internal needs are they trying to answer or satisfy?

Passion might be another word for their collective ‘fire in the belly.’ But where does that passion come from? It’s a question that has tugged at my consciousness for a long time and yet never reached a solid conclusion. As such it’s a mystery that has permeated much of my writing.

Not surprisingly the protagonists in most of my novels, male and female, wear a cloak of in-security tempered by blind determination that torments their very souls. One of the phrases that I used to describe my protagonist in “Love in the A Shau” was: ‘Daniel was born hungry.’ The same moniker could be used to describe Robert, my other protagonist in the ‘Debris’ trilogy.

I liked that handle because it so clearly defines the person as a seeker. He or she on their own vision quest. It was what drove them to extraordinary action in Vietnam; it meant traversing the barren and dangerous mountains of Western Arizona or leading a ghostly expedition through the canyons outside of Palm Springs. My heroes had become what they strove to believe in the first place.

For some of us this ‘real world’ vision quest gets tempered with time but never loses its urgency. For a select number of youngsters my age it’s become our age of truth and reason. It is a way of finding ourselves through our art. This quest for authenticity came to me almost by accident. A cessation of my business and a refusal to embrace the acceptable terms of retirement caused me to reflect on that next stage of my life. Writing seemed the next logical step for me.

Now in retrospect I seem to be picking up where I left off at the end of the ‘60s before I got married, settled down and became distracted by life and family and kids. It means forgetting about the miles traveled and shaking aside society’s prejudice, expectations, standards and assumptions. It means recognizing that those were labels and confinements put on us as kids by naïve parents.

This personal quest is about finding your freedom wherever it may be while recognizing it’s a different time, different place, different you that is the seeker. Yet beneath the wrinkles and glasses it is the same mental ramblings, inquiries, and occasionally discoveries. It is a journey I’ve chosen because I didn’t know what else to do with my life. I’m guessing the same can be said of most other artists too.

As a writer, retired folks are a category that intrigues me a lot now. Unlike the legendary ‘old men of the coffee shop’ so many retirees have decided that retirement is their time to slow down and enjoy the fruits of their years of labor. While on the surface this seems to make perfect sense, I can’t help but feel it might also one big step in the wrong direction. ‘Riot at Sage Corner’ was an attempt to explore this dichotomy. What to do with the rest of your life when nothing is not an option.

One of my goals in attempting to define ambition is to light a fire under my grandchildren. I don’t care where their interests or passion or focus goes, just so it goes someplace. I want to be there to encourage them to follow their dream whatever it might be. I can’t do it for them but I certainly offer my help.

A life in pursuit of something is far more satisfying than a life just lived.

Sage Taught Me Well

Watching her perform on stage I was struck by the fact that this woman began as just a figment of my imagination. I created this old hippie and made up the storyline that was starting to unfold in front of a packed house. All those voices heard inside my head so long ago were now being repeated by actors mimicking my imagined characters.

‘Riot at Sage Corner’ was coming alive in an old converted church after a brief four weeks of rehearsals. That was scary and even more unnerving than I had expected it to be as a first time produced playwright.

Fortunately, Sage was being played by an accomplished actress who had the role down pat. The rest of the cast was comprised of great actors whose limited time on stage hadn’t diminished their enthusiasm or acting abilities. There was a minimalistic set design that defined the area but didn’t distract from the action taking place. The set designers had provided a wonderful environ-ment in which to create a fun and entertaining story.

But most importantly (from granted, a self-serving point of view) it provided invaluable lessons for me as a playwright. Writing novels is an entirely different gladiator contest from drafting a play. Playwriting was no longer a solitary venture for me; a journey inside my head. Instead my playwriting was meant to be consumed by other creative types and ultimately the general public.

The lessons learned were easy to list and yet hard to define. This summer I had to learn team work, the idiosyncrasies of small town America, clashing and compromising personalities and life in Community Theater.

It meant discounting ingrained prejudices for my ‘baby’ and the anguish of ‘letting go.’ It’s almost akin to ‘killing your babies’ which in the world of writing is defined as editing your work despite the blood, sweat and tears that came with its creation. My limited take on the process of play production had to give way to the reality of group consensus and the director’s vision.

It meant knowing the venue and recognizing the limits of Community Theater as compared to a professional theatrical venture. Knowing the production staff meant recognizing their boundless enthusiasm but also the limitations of finances, support staff and physical venues.

As important to the playwright as working with producers was, it also meant sharing ones vision with the director. The director has to be a team-leader, a cheerleader, a teacher and a counselor. I can see now that having a voice in casting the actors ingratiates the playwright into the creative process as does the ability to make comments during the rehearsals. There must be a shared vision for your story. It can’t just be the director’s next gig.

Storytelling is the same recipe no matter what the format. The storyline must be engaging from the very start. Act one; Scene One must grab the audience’s attention. The second scene must hold that attention and by the third scene it’s ‘go for broke.’ Each scene must take the action/conflict/tension/suspense to the next level. Grab the audience by their collective consciousness and never let go. Every scene is important. Every actor is important.

The actors portraying your characters must be believable and realistic. The audience must care about them even if they dislike them in the process. If the audience doesn’t care then you’ve lost the battle before it even began. The common goal for all is entertaining story-telling.

As a playwright the lessons are very clear and indisputable. Despite its folky façade, the creative/entertainment industry is not known for its warm feelings and caring concern. It isn’t a basket of puppies or kittens. Instead the business is rife with insecurity, jealousy and sabotage. That doesn’t mean there aren’t clusters of very talented people brought together for a common cause or story to tell.

We were fortunate enough to be sold out both evenings. I give full credit to my wife, Sharon, and her brilliant marketing acumen for filling the house.

‘Riot at Sage Corner’ provided me an invaluable lesson in the theater. My learning curve was on an accelerated thrust that could only be described as ‘rocket to the moon.’ Where it takes me next is still up for grabs. On reflection, I loved the process, hated the uncertainty and was thrilled with the results.

Many people have asked…and yes, there is another play concept that I’ve had mulling around in my brain for some time now. The storyline encompasses universal themes such as the challenges of growing old and the culmination of a lifetime of living. I would describe it as a lighthearted drama with some serious moments.

Oh, and there’s original music too.

Sleeping with Sage

To tell her story as honestly as I could it was imperative that I know Sage intimately. If that meant sleeping with her I was willing to make the sacrifice…to go the distance.

The genesis for writing a play or a novel or a screenplay is to understand your characters better than anyone else. Why not? You created them so you should shoulder the responsibility for understanding their actions, motivations, thoughts, fears, aspirations and even their darkest of secrets.

My goal was to get to know Sage better than anyone else ever had. I needed to get inside her mind, thoughts, personality, fears, phobias, cares and concerns. I had to understand what lay behind that rainbow façade she so prominently displayed as a fixture of her past. She was a fascinating woman unlike any I had encountered before and yet an enigma in my mind.

If I had to (figuratively) sleep with her to get to where I was going, then I was willing to do that. My wife knows I’m a writer and as such I sometimes have to take desperate measures to reach my goal. All in the name of art…or in my case, simple story-telling.  Still even for a wannabe hippie sleeping with a fictional one proved to be a real challenge.

Constructing a story, or in this case writing a play and then producing it, turned out to be a lesson in perseverance, patience and fortitude. It became a journey into the minds, motives, emotions and back-stories of a lot of folks. It was taking all the personal information and then sharing it with the world or in this case, an audience full of expectant participants.

The first step was to write the play which is simply story-telling in its most stripped down, naked form. I wrote ‘Riot at Sage Corner’ as a spec play for the Second Act Players, a part of RAAC, the Rosemount Area Arts Council. I did so without any idea if it would work or be accepted by RAAC once it was completed.

First titled ‘Riot at Sunny Acres’ the play slowly evolved into its present-day form. There were dueling protagonists with Sage on one side and Margaret Maple, her arch-enemy and the other. There was a mysterious man nick-named ‘The General’ and enough underlying tension to blow the place apart at any moment.

After its acceptance by RAAC the really hard work began. That meant finding a common vision with the director and the producers. It meant traveling inside our collective heads and coming to an agreement on what we found there.

The second step was to find the right actors to portray my characters. Auditions were critical to find the right personalities for your fictional characters. Then rehearsals are meant to stir up the storyline, flesh out the characters, and give humanity to the pretenders on stage.

After weeks of intensive practice on and off stage, the dress rehearsal put all of our collective effort to the test. It was where all the kinks were (hopefully) worked out.

Finally, it was time for the performance where the audience hopefully will enjoy all our collective efforts at storytelling.

August 25^th and 26^th are the performance dates. The cast is ready. The crew is ready. Margaret is posed to stamp out problems with that aging hippie once and for all. Sage is ready to blow her mind; literally and figuratively.

Thursday and Friday at the Steeple Center in Rosemount. Tickets on line or at the door. Seating is limited. The ‘Riot’ starts at 7:00 pm.

Let the storytelling begin.

A Waiter with Attitude

I was admonished by my wife to be a team player from the very start. As a card-carrying introvert and self-professed’ uncomfortable in crowds’-kind of person, it was a challenge to rise to the task. But I did so and soon found myself as an obnoxious waiter at the L’Ambrosia Luncheria. It seemed a small price to pay for the generous opportunity that RAAC (Rosemount Area ArtsCouncil) had given me in agreeing to produce my play ‘Riot at Sage Corner’ in the near future. So I accepted their offer of the role and agreed to became a waiter…albeit one with attitude. I wanted to have a little fun with the role.

My first taste of the theater was a little community theater in my old neighborhood of Highland Park. It was called the Edith Bush Little Theater. I have vague memories of some date nights there and the thrill of the story-telling experience.

Years later, in the 70’s, I earned my acting chops at the Chattanooga Little Theater in Tennessee. That seemed like small potatoes compared to what I had to agree to now. I would be working with a bunch of seniors who hadn’t been on stage since their high school or college years if ever at all. Fortunately for all of us what they lacked in experience was more than made up for with their unbridled enthusiasm.

Back in high school, my real world experience in the restaurant business lasted all of three weeks. I thought it would be easy work after school to waiter at a small restaurant in Saint Paul. It was hard work and quickly began to cut into my paper route schedule and homework. It also meant being nice to smart-ass kids who piled into the restaurant just lounge around and harass the wait staff.

Now I found myself back in black pants and a white shirt and dealing with some old matrons and ditzy women who couldn’t distinguish a salad fork from a soup spoon. We had a condensed three weeks of rehearsals and then the performance. Unfortunately, our venue hadn’t had its air-conditioning installed yet. So it was the heat not nerves that soiled our clothes and ran beads of sweat down our cheeks. But it was all good. Everyone had a great time performing and the audience was very supportive and appreciative.

The other seniors like myself took their roles very seriously. We all felt a collective love of the theater and the whole theatrical experience; abet a small one, but one nonetheless. It took a lot of courage for some of these women to get up in front of an audience of strangers to perform a role so unlike their real life one. It was a lot of fun and a real privilege to work alongside of them in the storytelling process.

Maya, my eldest granddaughter was visiting us for a week and she was in the audience.

At the end of our play I was asked to talk about my own upcoming production of ‘Riot at Sage Corner’ which is set for performance on August 25^th and 26^th. I won’t be acting in that play but I’ll certainly be cheering the actors on and wondering what I’ve gotten into on the other side of the spoken word. 

Denver Brownies

I didn’t see her, as much as I imagined what she was like when she first ambled into the room. That vapid image slowly morphed into a mind-picture right after the phrase ‘Riot at Sage Corner’ was ghost-whispered into my ear by forces still unknown. Somehow I understood that Sage was an older woman and although wrinkled and slowing down a bit she still carried a force of beauty and brain about her.

She was envisioned as an aging hippie on the backside of her life and stuck in a senior complex. I knew she bristled at the rigid rules and stifled attitude of many of her fellow residents. There was another protagonist in the story too; really an antagonist of Sage. It was Miss Margaret Maple, the self-imposed disciplinarian at the complex, and a nemesis to Sage and her disruptive antics.

What I wasn’t able to decipher right then was why Sage acted out the way she did? One thing I was sure of…that this lava lamp of images swirling around in my head might make for a very interesting and entertaining story...and maybe even a play.

So as a spec project I wrote a play entitled ‘Riot at Sage Corner’ and presented it to the Senior Theater Group at RAAC (Rosemount Area Arts Council.) It was an unproven treatment meant for a group of well-intentioned yet inexperienced seniors by an unproven playwright.To my delight and good fortune RAAC gave it a read-through and agreed to produce my play in the near future...near and future being relative.

Triangle Bar

Sage was probably lurking in the back of my mind for a long time. I just didn’t know it. My interest in and fascination with hippies goes back to my old Triangle Bar days on the West Bank of Minneapolis. Turns out, Sage was a compilation of a number of women I knew or met along the way to matrimony and kids and a new way of life.

I envisioned Sage first coming into the room carrying her Denver brownies in the second scene of the play. Those medicinal goodies added humor to the sketch and expanded upon the on-going conflict between Sage and Margaret Maple. The two women were like Sulphur and gasoline toward one another and just as volatile.They came to life almost immediately and their antagonism toward one another was palatable.

Then to mix up this cauldron of conflicting objectives even more I added a mysterious figure nicknamed ‘The General.’ His background proved the perfect mixture of patriotism verses individualism and sad memories verses cold reality. These and some other assorted characters were a delight to work with and helped move the storyline toward a startling conclusion and (I hope) enjoyable experience for my audience.

‘Riot at Sage Corner’ was my first attempt (aside from a few blogs) to examine the aging process from the perspective of individuals who were living it right now. I wanted to address their fears and concerns, hopes and aspirations while not ignoring the pending life-changing circumstances surrounding them. ‘Riot at Sage Corner’ was also an attempt to help the senior theater group find a play that fit their criteria and could be easily produced by a group of amateurs. RAAC seemed to agree.

Link to the Rosemount Area Arts Council

The Rosemount Area Arts Council was started in 2007 by four area residents who had been serving as advisors to the city about possible future use for a church that was closing in town. Their final recommendation was that the church be re-dedicated as a community arts center.

As the group was making its final recommendations they decided that the arts in Rosemount were about more than just a building in town. They felt there was need for an arts council that could spearhead activities and programming to bring the arts, all kinds of arts, to the people.

Now they have a new project called the Senior Theater.

Photo Courtesy of Keith Reed

Photo Courtesy of Keith Reed

This latest project of RAAC’s follows on the heels of a growing trend in this country of theater groups for seniors. It’s a trend that continues to grow by leaps and bounds. In 1977, there were 79 such groups, now there are more than 800 spread out across the country.

Part of the inspiration for this trend came from the work of the late psychiatrist Dr. Gene Cohen who headed centers on aging at the National Institute of Mental Health and at George Washington University. Dr. Cohen’s research concluded that involvement in the arts provides seniors with numerous benefits for mind and body.

Photo Courtesy of Keith Reed

Photo Courtesy of Keith Reed

Stuart Kandell who founded Stagebridge in Oakland, California in 1978, the oldest senior theater company in the U.S., has stated: “We all have a need for challenges in our lives. We have a need to keep learning. We have a need to feel like we’re giving back to other generations. We have a need for a social environment. Theater does all of that and more.” Then he adds: “The social element is huge, gigantic. The (theatrical) company for many people is like their extended family.”

Even at their initial meeting I could sense that the newly organized members of the senior theater felt this immediate theatrical comradeship too. Those lifelong road warriors seemed more than willing to embrace their future no matter how challenging or terrifying the theater might seem to them right now.

It’s been a while since I was involved in Community Theater. It’ll be good to get back to live story-telling again. Perhaps my play can help these seniors and others in this mutual journey of self-discovery. Hopefully we’ll all have a ‘riot’ of a time along the way.