Dale Wasserman

1914-2008
Playwright

He followed his quest.

Friday Dance Party: Eartha gets Nothin' for Christmas

It's been difficult to maintain the Christmas Spirit, as losses continue to be felt throughout the holiday season. Just since Thanksgiving, we've lost Harold Pinter, Van Johnson, Beverly Garland, Paul Benedict, and even others.

It seems that the weekly Dance Party, invented by my buddy Larry at http://ldahlke.wordpress.com, has evolved into something else in these pages. I'm not sure WHAT, but it doesn't seem to be "dance," at least not lately.

No matter. For the final Holiday Dance Party of 2008, please enjoy the clip below, remembering the sultry Eartha Kitt, who left us Christmas Day.

Eartha Kitt

1927-2008

Orson Welles, who cast her as Helen of Troy, dubbed her "the most exciting woman in the world." Though she was born among cotton pickers in South Carolina, she never allowed her mixed race to deter or define her (her mother was black and Cherokee, her father was white). She was abandoned by her mother and raised by an aunt, who took her to New York and enrolled her in the High School of the Performing Arts (she never graduated). By chance she landed in the Katherine Dunham dance troupe, with which she made her Broadway debut in Bal Negre. She returned to Broadway in New Faces of 1952, a revue which also featured future stars Carol Lawrence, Paul Lynde, and Alice Ghostly. Other Broadway appearances included Shinbone Alley and The Owl and the Pussycat; she received Tony nominations for Timbuktu and The Wild Party. Her most recent appearance on Broadway was as Chita Rivera's replacement in Nine.

Kitt received her first Emmy nomination for a guest appearance on I Spy in the mid-60s, and famously replaced Julie Newmar in the campy Batman series. Her sultry purr as the Catwoman remains a cult classic.

Kitt's outspoken criticism of the Vietnam War, which she notoriously voiced at a White House luncheon attended by Lady Bird Johnson, nearly destroyed her career. She was investigated by the FBI and CIA, and was forced to work overseas for years after the incident.

More recently, Kitt earned back-to-back Emmy awards as Best Performer in an Animated Series for her work on The Emperor's New School. She has received multiple Grammy nominations, and her 1954 recording of Santa Baby insured that the song is now a holiday standard. A recent concert in Chicago was taped by PBS for upcoming broadcast in 2009.

Kitt succumbed to colon cancer on Christmas Day.

Harold Pinter

1930-2008


Playwright, screenwriter, poet, essayist, actor, director, conscientious objector, and political activist, Pinter's theatrical career was bookended by two colossal flops. The Birthday Party, his first professionally produced play, was considered one of the biggest disasters of the post-war era. His final screenplay, an adaptation (and remake) of Anthony Shaffer's Sleuth, was a critical and financial bomb. In between, he produced a body of work which places him alongside Beckett as one of the most influential theatrical writers of the 20th century.

PLAYS:



The Room (1957)
The Birthday Party (1957), at right
The Dumb Waiter (1957)
A Slight Ache (1958)
The Hothouse (1958)
The Caretaker (1959)
A Night Out (1959)
Night School (1960)
The Dwarfs (1960)
The Collection (1961)
The Lover (1962)
Tea Party (1964)
The Homecoming (1964)
The Basement (1966)
Landscape (1967)
Silence (1968)
Old Times (1970)
Monologue (1972)
No Man's Land (1974), at right
Betrayal (1978)
Family Voices (1980)
A Kind of Alaska (1982)
Victoria Station (1982)
One for the Road (1984)
Mountain Language (1988)
The New World Order (1991)
Party Time (1991)
Moonlight (1993)
Ashes to Ashes (1996)
Celebration (1999)
Remembrance of Things Past (2000) [Stage adapt. of The Proust Screenplay; a collaboration with Di Trevis.]



Screenplays:

The Caretaker (1963)
The Servant (1963), picture at right
The Pumpkin Eater (1963)
The Compartment (1963) [Screenplay for unproduced film; adapt. for stage as The Basement (play)]
The Quiller Memorandum (1965)
Accident (1966)
The Birthday Party (1968)
The Go-Between (1969)
The Homecoming (1969)
Langrishe, Go Down (1970; adapt. for TV 1978; film release 2002]
The Proust Screenplay (1972) [Published 1978, but unproduced for film; adapt. by Harold Pinter and director Di Trevis for the stage (2000) Remembrance of Things Past]
The Last Tycoon (1974)
The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), below
Betrayal (1983)
Victory (1982) [Published but unproduced]
Turtle Diary (1984)
The Handmaid's Tale (1987)
Reunion (1988)
The Heat of the Day (1988) [adapt. for TV]
The Comfort of Strangers (1989)
Party Time (1992) (Rev. & adapt. for TV)
The Trial (1993)
"Lolita" (1994) [Unpublished and unproduced]
"The Dreaming Child" (1997) [Published but unproduced]
"The Tragedy of King Lear" (2000) [Unpublished and unproduced]
Sleuth (2007)



Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005. In a videotaped response which has become the most famous Nobel acceptance speech in history, he delivered a vitriolic diatribe against American foreign policy, including this sensational accusation: "The United States supported and in many cases engendered every rightwing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the second world war". (He then proceeded to provide examples.)

In honor of one of the great voices of contemporary drama, let us (ahem)

...pause.

Merry Christmas

Shane Wallis

1975-2008

This year of loss continues for the DC theatrical community. Wallis was a rising young actor on local stages, and in recent years has populated productions at Washington Shakespeare Company, Rorshach Theatre, Baltimore Shakes, American Century Theatre, and the Source Theatre Festival. His theatrical skills included directing Spoon River Anthology at American Century. He also graced the area's larger stages, appearing as "Snake" in School for Scandal at the Folger, and was The Shakespeare Theatre's ensemble swing for Macbeth and Pericles. He was scheduled to appear in Arena Stage's Sweet Bird of Youth in 2009.

Shane was an accomplished combat choreographer, musician, and set constructionist. In addition to appearing onstage there, he was the associate technical director for Theatre J, which will be hosting a memorial service 12/29 in his honor. He leaves behind an extended family in Mississippi, including two young children.

Shane died in a motorcycle accident last week.

More Lights

It appears a tradition has been born. Last year, for the first time in 4 years, I spent a fortnight in Los Angeles. I used to visit much more often, but the regular routine faded, and my trips became more sporadic. Last year was the first time I had made the trip during the holiday season, and I found it to be so much more fun and rewarding than visiting during the summer, which was my previous habit. I lived in LA off and on, mostly on, for 20 years, and developed a tight-knit group of friends whom I now consider my family. (I wrote about them last year in these pages.)

This year, my plan to visit was not finalized until it became clear that I would have no work over the holidays. The less said about that, the better, though my continued unemployment allowed me to return to LA for more holiday fun. So, I suppose being Out Of Work is really a Christmas Blessing... yeah, I'll go with that.

My buddies Scott and Drew graciously offer me digs whenever I visit, in their spacious home in the hills above the San Fernando Valley. I have my own bedroom and bath, which allows me to stay out of my hosts' hair whenever possible. That was even easier than usual this year, as I arrived to a deserted manse, and had to pop next door to the French neighbors to pick up the house key. The Boyz were completing a two week cruise, so I was on my own for the first four days of my stay. I've been in their house many, many times, but I admit it was a bit eerie to putter around the place alone. Thankfully, they had failed to mute their home answering machine, so an unrelenting beep kept me company. An unrelenting beep. An UNRELENTING beep.

I'm lucky that another of my chosen family, Judy, tosses a bit of teaching my way whenever I show up in California. She runs the theatre dept at a prestigious private school, and she has the ability to hire me to teach a few workshops during my stay. I enjoy this part of my LA trips immensely, as I find her students focused and enthusiastic. And it gives me something to do during the day, when all my friends are working or otherwise unavailable to hang out. The only downside to this routine is the fact that these courses are all scheduled at ungodly hours of the morning. I suppose when I was in high school, I started class at 7:45 AM too, but my body does not remember those long ago days. The commute across the Valley, during morning rush hour, was the only negative aspect of my trip.

Well, that's not exactly true. This year, my visit was marred by an insidious bug which I apparently picked up from one of my flight mates on USAir. (Another reason I despise the strangers with whom I travel.) I did not begin to feel the effects of this germ until the very moment Scott and Drew returned from their travels, on my fourth day in LA. I came down, quickly and hard, with a sloppy cold, which turned from a sore throat into a hacking cough in 24 hours. I infected my hosts, who themselves were getting over illnesses contracted on the high seas, so we made a fine tubercular trio.

Nostalgia always plays a part in my Los Angeles sojourns, as I usually take the opportunity to catch up with various cronies from Days Long Gone. This year, I shared a meal with a grand gal I had not seen in over 20 years. Barbara and I were fast friends for several years right out of undergrad, and as students of my treasured acting coach Bobbi, we shared a real bond. Barb was one of those people who became very very important in my life for a brief while, then, for some reason, faded out. The last time I saw her, I visited her and her husband in the Hollywood Hills apt. they shared in the mid-80s. Barbara parlayed her interest in theatre into a career as a therapist, and now conducts a booming practice, catering to the loonies who make LA their home. Her husband Sam was a working actor back when I first met him, and has maintained a consistent career ever since (here he is in Lost, in which he plays mild-mannered dentist "Bernard").

But the highlights of my visits to LA are always the times spent with Scott, Drew, Claudia, and Judy. Together or separately, they remain my family. This year, as last, we spent a lovely evening decorating the Christmas Tree in my hosts' den. Though I see them separately during the week, that night is extra special, as it's the only time we five are together. Lots of laughs, lots of food, a good bit of booze, and lots of love. Humor is always central to the evening, but it is enhanced with a feeling which can only come from a long shared history. Claudia has been in my life since high school, so we are celebrating a whopping 35 years as friends. Judy and Scott came into my life over 30 years ago, and Drew, as the youngster of the group, has still been one of my closest friends for a quarter century.

It is Drew, actually, of whom I think when I wonder if this December Trip to LA has in fact become a tradition. He had a sad and chaotic childhood, the effects of which taught him to create his own traditions (and he has a buttload of them). The Annual Decorating Of The Tree has now become one, an evening which isn't really about hanging ornaments on branches. It's about our family.

The routine goes like this: as Drusis and Claud and Judy circle the tree, and I try to stay out of the way, Scott observes from his throne (the armchair), "It needs more lights."

(I wouldn't dream of contradicting him. He likes a BRIGHT tree.)

Ornaments are hung, a few traditional glass balls, but mostly, sentimental pieces Scott and Drew have picked up over the years. They reflect their interests and their loves. Peanuts and Ziggy and other whimsical items give the finished tree a distinctly original look. All the while, we five catch up on our lives, reminisce a bit, eat, drink, and laugh. It's not the wildest gathering ever created, but it is meaningful.

And I've discovered that I need it. I can't predict that I will be able to get out to LA every year at Christmas, my life does not have that kind of structure. But I like this new tradition of Drew's, and will do my best to make it happen as often as I can.

It hasn't been the best year for me, or for several others in the group. We've all had our dark times. But I've noticed, this year and last, that by reconnecting with my Scott and Drusis and Claud and Jude, it's not quite so dark.

When I see them, this family I chose, I get more lights.