Happy Birthday Sam

It is the birthday of the man whom I consider to be the greatest contemporary American playwright (and possibly the greatest living playwright in the world), Sam Shepard.

This fact is extremely appropriate as a follow up to the last post about Godot being performed in New Orleans this past weekend. There is probably no contemporary writer more directly influenced by the traditions and styles that were launched by Samuel Beckett than Sam Shepard. In 1978 he received The Pulitzer Prize for his first major play, "Buried Child," which I had the delightful opportunity to see performed at San Francisco's Magic Theater (where it was debuted) a few years later. Seeing that play was the beginning of my fascination and admiration for Shepard, a man who has built an amazing career as a writer, director and actor in both film and theater. About 15 years later, I returned to The Magic for the debut of Shepard's play "The Late Henry Moss" and had the chance to sit two seats away from him and witness his director's technique as he made notes on performances and enthusiastically cheered his actors on.

Sam's plays grapple, over and over again, with the strange intensity of family dynamics and his writing (both in plays and in short form fiction) never ceases to knock me over and force me to reflect on what it means to take up space on the planet.

Both his acting and his writing have an ability to communicate the true essence of being an American male in the 20th and 21st century, demonstrating a groundedness, solidity and empathy, while struggling with heart and soul and angst.

On top of all that... he's been married for more than 20 years to the woman I consider to be the most beautiful woman alive, Jessica Lange.

Without Sam Shepard my life would be poorer and emptier and I would be more lost.

Nothing to be done...

This weekend on an empty street in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans and again the weekend after, in front of a deserted house in Gentilly, a group of actors will present my favorite play in my favorite city - Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett.

Two quotations about Beckett which I found on a Samuel Beckett website describe not only why I dearly love this curmudgeonly Irish playwright, but frankly come very close to worshiping him.

"The farther he goes the more good it does me. I don’t want philosophies, tracts, dogmas, creeds, ways out, truths, answers, nothing from the bargain basement. He is the most courageous, remorseless writer going and the more he grinds my nose in the shit the more I am grateful to him.
He’s not fucking me about, he’s not leading me up any garden path, he’s not slipping me a wink, he’s not flogging me a remedy or a path or a revelation or a basinful of breadcrumbs, he’s not selling me anything I don’t want to buy — he doesn’t give a bollock whether I buy or not — he hasn’t got his hand over his heart. Well, I’ll buy his goods, hook, line and sinker, because he leaves no stone unturned and no maggot lonely. He brings forth a body of beauty.
His work is beautiful. " -- Harold Pinter

" Samuel Beckett is sui generis...He has given a voice to the decrepit and maimed and inarticulate, men and women at the end of their tether, past pose or pretense, past claim of meaningful existence. He seems to say that only there and then, as metabolism lowers, amid God’s paucity, not his plenty, can the core of the human condition be approached... Yet his musical cadences, his wrought and precise sentences, cannot help but stave off the void... Like salamanders we survive in his fire." -- Richard Ellman

This is the real deal, and though I have seen Godot performed many times and in many settings, this is the production I would give my eye teeth to see. Put on by CreativeTime, an experimental dramatic arts group from New York City, in conjunction with a number of arts and education groups in New Orleans, these performances (which are free by the way) are being presented in what has to be the best possible contemporary context for this play; a play about confusion, torpor, and despair, but possessing within that context an amazing and incongruous hope in, and at, the base of life.

The mounting of this presentation, in and of itself, contradicts the first spoken line of the play, "Nothing to be done." This performance, and the energy, creativity, and life that has gone into its creation is SOMETHING to be done.

See it if you can... or, if you can't, at least grab a copy and read (or re-read) Godot this weekend. It might just be the most important piece of literature for our time.

Every Day's A Holiday with Mary...

Saturday night was the big Halloween Fundraiser at Petaluma's Phoenix Theater when I had the honor of becoming Bert (doesn't he have a last name somewhere?) the chimney sweep (among a host of other occupations... a bit of typecasting actually) accompanying Mary Poppins to the wonderful event.

Mary Poppins, I must say, besides being wonderful company for the evening, was indeed the hit of the party. It was amazing actually... Sort of like being a Disney character (which, I guess, in a way, we were). EVERYONE, and I really do mean everyone (well, with the exception of Ace Ventura, but that's another story), wanted to say hello or have their picture taken with Mary Poppins. While the dancing was going on, Mary would often simply take off and float through the crowd as I followed along, chimney brushes over my shoulder, trying to catch up with the girl on the winds.

At one point, as we were standing outside in front of the theater a group of teenagers came by and Mary approached to discuss, "when I used to take care of you." The funniest part of this interchange was that several of the kids were the first people all night who didn't know who she was. But one of them did, and he kept trying to enlighten the others. When I walked up, his eyes got big and he said (as so many others did) "Dick Van Dyke! Bust it out man! Chim Chiminey... Come on... Bust it out!" So I did, standing on the corner of Washington, I started singing Chim chiminey, kicking up my heels like I learned 30 years ago in theater class and join by a kid who is probably ten years younger than my daughter.

And speaking of my daughter... while I was busy kicking up my heels with Mary, she and her sweety were partying in The City... Can YOU guess who they are?

On top of everything... Mary and I even won the Grand Prize in the costume competition (and there was some stiff competition) with one of our competitors telling the audience, "Vote for Mary Poppins!"

It was a SUPERCALAFRGILISTICEXPEALIDOCIOUS evening!

The Prophet... Rocks!

The Boss was in Oakland last night, and he's there again tonight (but then you knew that if you visited here yesterday).

The show - a two hour and twenty minute extravanganza - was simply astonishing. Astonishing in a somewhat unexpected way. The show - as it seems, from viewing the set lists of the tour, is the case everywhere - is an interesting juxtaposition of some of Bruce's oldest and best tunes and a heavy selection of songs from the new album, Magic. What happens in this context is a broad spectrum experience of what Bruce, at heart has always been about, and how that perspective plays at this time in our personal and collective history.

Starting the show with the clarion call, "Is there anybody ALIVE out there!?" Bruce ripped down through the set starting with Radio Nowhere, the new single, followed by a bone rattling, mind-altering three song line up of "The Ties That Bind," "Lonesome Day," and "Gypsy Biker" - a rock and roll look at what holds people together, and what, in this time of war and malfeasance, tears them apart. As the conslusion of this initial foray into what would be a two hour long musical look at what is wrong - and what is right - about our country right now, Gypsy Biker is an amazing song. The story of a group of people preparing for the return of their friend and brother, it's not until the end of the song that you realize that Gypsy Biker's coming home dead.

Late in the song, there's this lyric:

"The favored march up over the hill
In some fools parade
Shoutin' victory for the righteous
But there ain't much here but graves"

It pretty much describes the perspective that Bruce is taking on the whole scene. Even the title song from the new album, Magic, is explained as a song "not about magic, but about tricks... and their consequences."

Along the way, there's plenty of the real deal... heart stopping, ear clearing, joy inspiring, screaming rock and roll that serves to emphasize the fact that the ugliness and despair is NOT THE WHOLE STORY.

This is Bruce in the sixth year of the Dubya Occupation. He's brought the truth, again, but he's done it with strength and thought, and senstivity, and rock and roll.

The raging funamentalists who are running the Republican agenda right now might try paying attention to some of the hard stories in that Bible they are so proud of declaring to be infallible.

When the Prophet speaks... or in this case ROCKS... one would do well to listen.

Magic Pushing 60

Tonight's the night! Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band play the Oakland Coliseum tonight and I am going to see Bruce and the best rock and roll band anywhere for the first time since I saw them at the end of The Rising tour at San Francisco's Pac Bell Park in 2004.

Last spring, I had the great good fortune of seeing Bruce introduce the Seeger Sessions band and absolutely tear up the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, bringing 30,000+ battle scarred people to their feet to raise their hands in the air and cry out to the city around them "Rise Up!"

It was at that show that Bruce introduced a song that he had written specifically for New Orleans, an adaptation of a song written first during the Great Depression, but adapted for the times by Springsteen, How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?

Tonight in Oakland he's back with Clarence, Little Steven, Patti and the gang... all in support of the amazing new album Magic, an album that does for these war times what The Rising did for our collective psychological struggle with the aftermath of September 11. In this album he looks backwards and forward, reflects on the good things in life (and in our country) and considers from several different angles the ways we have lost our better selves (and a good number of our good people) to the obscene Imperial March of George II.

And that's what Bruce is best at... Somehow he can make you look at what really sucks about life, the world, and the times, without losing yourself, and without losing the goodness of the world and the beauty of people at the same time. He even celebrates those good things while refusing to turn away from the difficult. And he does it all with a kick ass rock and roll band that ranks with the best players anywhere.

At the same time... with his creativity, energy, and drive he does a damn good job of revealing an excellent model for moving into one's seventh decade on the planet.

So... well... I'm excited!

I am just damn ready to share that Magic!