A TALE OF TWO MORNINGS - Part Two
or Why New York is the Greatest City in the World
Morning Two
Joe Papp’s opposite number was a most extraordinary woman, Ellen Stewart, founder of the world renowned avant-garde theatre, LA MAMA, ETC. (Experimental Theatre Club.) Books have been written about the redoubtable Ms. Stewart; she is and was the stuff of legend. With no sense of irony, many said she was a witch, (as well as a word that rhymed with it.) I can attest to both. Ellen was street, black, refined and coarse, as needed. When she rang her bell to introduce shows in her curtain speech, she had a French accent that could not quite be placed. When she was pissed at you for some slight, real or imagined, she turned into a foul-mouthed street “niggah” (her word, not mine) that would excoriate and eviscerate you with profanity to embarrass a Barbary pirate. There was no corner large or small enough to crawl into to escape your butt reaming. But when Ellen found favor with you and called you one of her “children,” her “babies,” ah, well then, you floated on a cloud akin to receiving the Presidential Medal of Honor, the Oscar, the Pulitzer, and personalized Star Trek decoder ring. Ellen Stewart - Voodoo priestess queen from N’awlins. Visionary. Truly, in every sense of the word, unique.
La Mama began as an East Village coffee house where new playwrights could present their work. Sam Shepherd was one of the first, waiting table and reading his stuff. The history of the acting world is writ large there; quite simply everybody passed through La Mama’s early in their career, most remaining loyal long after they’d made the big time. Dustin Hoffman was fired, (fine actor - lousy waiter,) it didn’t matter; you pulled your weight, hung lights, cleaned toilets, or hit the road. F. Murray Abraham, Meryl Streep, Bette Midler. Blue Man Group, André De Shields, Olympia Dukakis. Harvey Fierstein, Philip Glass, Diane Lane. Liz Swados, Meredith Monk, Tom O’Horgan, (who became a great lifelong friend and collaborator, and remains the only director to have three hit shows running simultaneously on Broadway.) Estelle Parsons. David and Amy Sedaris. Julie Taymor, Robert Wilson, Peter Brook, on and on, writers, directors, actors. And Alki Steriopoulos. Yes, that Alki Steriopoulos. For one miraculous, life-changing year, I had the honor of being her “composer-in-residence.”
When LaMama outgrew its humble start, landing a three-building location where it still operates today on E. 4th St., some said it was because Ellen used her sorcery to bend the land barons of NY to her will. In one of the hottest real estate markets in the world, the East Village of Manhattan, Ellen had three contiguous “through” buildings running the entire north/south block, stretching from East 4th to East 3rd Streets; all for $1 a year in rent. This, despite NYU fighting tooth and claw to get their greedy, powerful paws on it. Men who would not cut their own mothers a break on rent gave Ellen three adjoining through buildings for a dollar a year. One - dollar- a - year. Ellen knew where the bodies were buried. Ellen had probably put some of them there.
Somehow, I truly cannot even remember how I’d come to be composer-in-residence. Part of it might’ve been the fact that I, and everyone else, was willing to work for $100 a week, just for the privilege of saying so. Being homeless as I often was in my early years in NY, I’d managed to sweeten the deal with a bed and a roof over my head.
I’d been tapped to make music for a series of gaslight comedies in the style and period of Victorian London, a trilogy about a Holmesian detective written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Paul Foster, called THE DARK AND MISTER STONE. I was given a cubicle in the dorm, run by an urbane housemother named Maurice, and his lover, (and Ellen’s favorite), actor Lou Zeldis. The three buildings housed several theatres from black box to a cavernous space that had once served as the soundstage for the television show, NAKED CITY. The dorm was above this theatre, home to international troupes and a handful of serfs such as myself. Ellen’s sanctum sanctorum perched on the top floor of another building in the midst of a world-class folk-art collection that would be the envy of any major museum.
My digs were more modest, but was the stuff of dreams, disturbing and grand. There was a shared communal kitchen, a pay phone by the front door, and a living room. A couple showers in the back. Some small monk cells with room for a single bed and not much else. Spartan. But the bulk of the massive square footage was given over to the storage of the most fabulous sets, costumes, and theatre pieces you could imagine. Decades worth of stuff, micro and macro, from hundreds of shows, all waiting patiently under dust and dust covers to be brought back to life or fall into the oblivion of discarded broken toys. Imagine walking through the mind of Terry Gilliam and the Monty Python world, tripping on acid, and you begin to approach the terror and wonderment of walking through this junkyard garden of Heavenly, earthly delights. Fantastic doesn’t begin to do it justice. Often, I’d sleep, (and get into mischief), back there, pulling up on the couch, with or without company, to see what dreams might come. There was a French au pair working on some sort of exchange program who cleaned and did nanny day-care when the need arose. We’d meet back there for afternoon tea. She spoke no English, and I, no French, but somehow we communicated. Mais oui.
Ellen loved “tableau” in her theatrics almost as much as she hated and feared the color green any where near her or her theatres. She had a superstition about green that forbade any shade of it being used in a costume, a set, a light gel. I’d seen her dismantle and order a new set to be built for one of the shows, already far along in rehearsal, close to opening night.
One morning I awoke to this “tableau.” THIS is the heart of Morning #2, the kind of morning that can only happen in New York City.
Walking out to the kitchen in search of coffee, eyes crusty with sleep, scratching my bum, I stepped into a particularly busy “stammtisch” communal table. Min Tanaka, a Japanese rice-farmer who happened to be one of the world’s foremost butoh dancer / performers sat with his entourage drinking rot-gut saké heated in blackened, dented kettles. It was maybe 7:00 a.m. They’d maybe been there all night. Dressed in kimono, a pile of empty cardboard half-gallon containers littered their area. Seated with them was an all-girl Parisian dance troupe nonchalantly smoking Gauloises cigarettes, sipping espressos, all of them naked, their parts covered by only the hair that grew there. Naked was their “thing.” This was well before Brazilian waxing. Hairy armpits, hairy legs, and… yes. Hairy. They lived and performed naked, causing quite a stir every time they stepped into the streets of the Lower East Side. They did wear shoes, sunglasses, jewelry; maybe a hat. These were not savages after all, these were sophisticated Parisians. Even jaded New Yorkers looked twice. And in the midst of it all, Maurice and Lew, in silk robes, flittered about the kitchen making sure everyone had what they needed.
Then came the kicker. The Wall of Communism hadn’t quite shattered, but there were cracks in the ceiling. The hero of the movement was an enigmatic Pole named Lech Walesa who’d ushered in a new era of Glasnost by forming a union called Solidarity. Lech would go on to become Poland’s first democratically elected president, but initially these were fraught, dangerous, exciting times in Eastern Europe. With civil war and Soviet crackdown imminent, no one, and I mean no one could get anyone in or out of Poland. Except, of course, for Ms Ellen Stewart. At the height of international tensions, while the world held its breath, Ellen brought the great experimental Polish theatre director, Tadeusz Kantor, with a company of 40, (FORTY) actors, from Poland! They’d come with several secret police KGB agents, there to “protect” them in dangerous New York, (the only real danger being the actors jumping ship.) These refrigerator sized men guarded the only two doors in or out, one by the pay phone, and one at the back of the storage space, emptying onto East Third Street. The President himself could not have pulled this off. Ellen Stewart could.
I rubbed my eyes, fighting to take it all in. Remember, I’d still not had my first cup of coffee. It seems that morning magic in NYC happened best before one had one’s first cup of coffee. Just then, the payphone rang. Incoming. I went to answer it, if only to buy myself some time before engaging with naked French girls, drunk Japanese, and politically charged Poles. Thankfully, the KGB moved aside so I didn’t have to hurt him.
“Hello?” I said, sounding rough around the edges even to myself. A sultry, smoky female alto answered. “Good morning. I’d like to speak to Peter, please.” I called to the at-large, “Anybody named Peter here?” Maurice called back, “They must mean Peter Brook. He came in late last night and needed a bed. He’s not here, take a message.” Peter Brook, for those who may not be aficionados of alt theatre is one of the granddaddies of the genre working with people like Philip Glass, Jean Cocteau, Robert Wilson, Allen Ginsberg, et al. Those bums. I returned to the caller.
“Sorry, he’s not here. Can I take a message?”
The smoke spoke. “Yes, tell him Lauren Bacall called. Ask him to ring me back.”
This was an opportunity not offered every day. I resisted the urge to answer in my best Bogey. “Sure. Your number, Miss Bacall?”
The smoke was not so easily taken in. “Oh, he has it,” she assured me. The chick clicked and a new day began in New York City. The greatest city in the world.
I rest my case.
In the spirit of La Mama and all the otherworldly weirdness I came to think of as normal, I would like to introduce you to the music of Shooby Taylor. I first heard Shooby in Los Angeles, during a recording session working for Grammy / Emmy / Oscar-winning composer, Michael Giacchino. Shooby’s unique music broke the tensions that go with recording big-budget, high-stakes film scores. Just listen. I’ll shut up now.
And now, a provocative image, just to keep the Twilight Zone vibe happening. What’s the story of this you ask?
In the way back, a friend of mine, GS-B, (initials only because she’s a well-respected ballerina / teacher in Switzerland, and I wouldn’t want her students’ parents to worry) claimed she could find anything in no-time flat on the nascent internet. “Oh, yeah!” says I! “Find me an image of a doll’s head with a fish in its mouth.” In no-time flat, this image came back. You go, Genia!
Well that’s enough fun for this week. Stay sane, remain calm and kind, and remember… it’s all illusion. A very convincing illusion certainly, but illusion none the less. With so much more to follow, a bientôt, je suis Alki
I know of the Tin Palace, friend Marco. But I never had the chance to go. A pity. It seems a place I would've loved.
Great read! Did you ever go to The Tin Palace?