BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: THEATER

for playwright Robert Karmon
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"The essence of dramatic form is to let an idea come over people without its being it being plainly stated."
                Stanley Kubrick
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ON ARISTOPHANES 

"... the most gratifying distinction conferred on him was the presentation of a wreath of wild olive made from the leaves of Athena's own sacred olive tree on the Acropolis. This was awarded him on the second performance of the Frogs , not because of his glorious poetry or his sparking wit, not because he was an artist or a humanist, but because he had given the city patriotic advice."
                   Louis E. Lord
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 KEITH BAXTER -- ON  BEING INTERVIEWED

"Many years ago in Belfast, when I was playing Prince Hall, I was asked to give my first interview to a journalist. Afterward Orson Welles asked me how it had gone. "He only wanted to know who I was sleeping with and how much I was worth." Welles was amused. 'That's all they ever want to print, every single one of them."
quoted in The Spectator (18 October 2003)
**
A POET IS KNOCKED UNCONSCIOUS
BY A RHYMING DICTIONARY & DREAMS
ABOUT SEEING THE PLAY SLEUTH

When I was visiting the city of Duluth
To attend a production of the play Sleuth,
I bit on hard candy & broke a front tooth,
& cried out in pain “O forsooth!”
I then turned to my friend Ruth
& told her I had to leave Sleuth, Duluth, & Ruth.
**
PIPER LAURIE GOES TO THE THEATER WITH
HER FAMILY

"...for some family reason, we all had to go to New York City. While we were there, we had the rare and special experience of seeing Lee J. Cobb in the original Death of a Salesman. At the final curtain I saw my father cry for the first and only time in my life. If theater could do that, I knew I was touching something wonderful."

Piper Laurie. Learning to Live Out Loud (New York: Crown Archetype, 2011)
 **
BORIS KARLOFF ON PERFORMING WITH THE HARRY ST. CLAIR PLAYERS  MINOT, NORTH DAKOTA (CIRCA 1913-1914)

"We played in the upstairs Opera House over a large hardware store, and we had no money to do anything with -- we just got by. We were up in about eighteen plays and we played those in the first three weeks. So with no money to move on, we had to stay there and start expanding the repertoire. We did two new plays a week for fifty-three weeks. Three rehearsals and you were on! It was rugged, but good training, and it stood me in good stead. I was forced to become a fast study -- or starve to death.
"I think we were really a veryn good company actually. Of course, frequently we would leave out an entire act and no one noticed, so maybe the audiences were just not paying attention. I'll say one thing for them, though. The audiences of the sticks were in no way unintelligent. When at the end of a run we'd ask for repeat requests, they invariably chose the best plays."

Cynthia Lindsay. Dear Boris (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975)
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THE RUINS OF NERO'S THEATER

ROME (AP) — Rome’s next luxury hotel has some very good bones: Archaeologists said Wednesday that the ruins of Nero’s Theater, an imperial theater referred to in ancient Roman texts but never found, have been discovered under the garden of a future Four Seasons Hotel steps from the Vatican.
Archaeologists have excavated deep under the walled garden of the Palazzo della Rovere since 2020 as part of planned renovations on the frescoed Renaissance building. The palazzo, which takes up a city block along the broad Via della Conciliazione leading to St. Peter’s Square, is home to an ancient Vatican chivalric order that leases the space to a hotel to raise money for Christians in the Holy Land."
                              July 28, 2023
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HOW TO  RAISE MONEY TO PRODUCE A PLAY

HEADS OR TAILS by H.J. Lengsfeoder & Ervin Drake (1942)
"Heads or Tails produced by Your Theater Inc. waa one of the financially wackiest production of the decades:  all those buying tickets before opening night automatically became stockholders. Unfortunately, they became stockholders in one of the worst  plays of  the century,"
TIME (May 12, 1942)
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TALLULAH BANKHEAD in CONCHITA (1924) or GREAT MOMENTS IN THEATER

" Again she played a dancer. But this time she carried a monkey with her in the second act. On opening night the monkey jumped onto Tallulah's shoulders, grabbed her black wig, and to her horror, ran with it to the footlights. There she stood, a Latin from the eye-brows down, a tawny blonde on top. The audience went from giggles to hysteria in seconds and Tallulah climaxed the situation by turning a cartwheel not in the script. At the end of the play Tallulah was afraid to take a curtain call, expecting to have to endure her first British booing. But she was persuaded to go out and face the crowd and when she did they howled their approval --of her-- not the play."

Denis Brian. Tallulah, Darling (New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1980)
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TALLULAH BANKHEAD

Bankhead, Tallulah
Shouted "Hallulah,
I'm playing Cleopatra. Going down the Nile
I shall not wear panties. Now that's acting, my style."

MARLON BRANDO

Brando, Marlon
Never tried out for Lon
Chaney's Quasimodo. Nor did he play Harlequin.
He preferred characters involved with sin.

Louis Phillips