"The Girl in the Black Helmet"

 

Last night, I reread Kenneth Tynan's article about Louise Brooks, "The Girl in the Black Helmet," in the August 29th issue of the New Yorker, a kind of greatest hits selection of old articles.  This was a profile from 1979.  I don't remember when I first read it, but I certainly know more about Brooks now than I did then.  I remember being more interested in the fact that she wound up in upstate New York than anything else.

I have seen "Pandora's Box," the G.W. Pabst film (with Brooks' remarkable performance), ad I've read (and taught), Frank Wedekind's plays "The Earth Spirit" and "Pandora's Box."  I certainly understood why Wedekind's plays weren't produced in the German Empire in the 1890s; plenty of sex, prostitution, a Jack the Ripper-like serial killer, and a lesbian countess.  The film's screen play is not identical, but the broad strokes are the same.

The other reason that I feel like I know Brooks better, is that I've been fortunate enough to twice be a playwright-in-residence at the Inge Center for the Arts in Independence, Kansas.  Eleven miles to the east of Independence is Cherryvale, Kansas, where Brooks was born in 1906.  I find it difficult to wrap my mind around Brooks coming from such a small, rural place, that looks like it could be anywhere.  I suppose Brooks was a thing unto herself.    

My Hutterite Life

 

There are Little Libraries all over Brooklyn these days, and, also fewer books abandoned on the street.  My latest find is an early career John Le Carre, but the previous one was Lisa Marie Stahl's My Hutterite Life.  I chose it because I knew nothing about them or where they lived.    

The Hutterites came to the northern U.S. and southern Canada from Germany by way of Russia.  They are somewhat like the Amish in their rules about dress and adult baptism, but they don't eschew all modern technology.  In 2003 when this was first published, Lisa Marie Stahl had decided to give up writing her newspaper column in he Great Falls Tribune, 'On the Colony,' because she married.  This meant that she had to move to her husband's colony after the wedding.

One fascinating thing to me was the amount of cooperation among the colonists. All cooking is communal, all meals are eaten with everyone present.  All the men run the farm.  Their church services consist mainly of old sermons read aloud in German.  Children study German at the colony's school, which goes to the 8th grade.  Stahl writes that all the adult vote in local and national elections but that they don't get involved in politics (huh).  

Since this is Stahl's personal chronicle of her life "on the colony" there is no third party critical writing.  She does not question her life as it is (why do men make most decisions?  what would attending high school be like?).  This is a collection of newspaper columns explaining life on the colony, not examining it.  For me, that made the material more interesting.  I would not want to live there, but I enjoyed reading about it.

 

Elegy for Sandy

 

A car service is a distinctly New York City outer borough thing.  Cheaper than a Yellow Cab, and often cheaper than Uber, a car service is the cheapest and easiest way to get somewhere the Metropolitan Transit Authority doesn’t go.  In order to use a car service, you call them.  The dispatcher answers and assigns a driver to pick you up.

 

About 15 years ago I got priced out of Manhattan and moved to Brooklyn. Shortly thereafter my partner and I adopted Augie, a beagle/Brittany mix whom we rescued from Animal Care and Control.  We tried a series of daycare places, and finally lucked out with Paws in Paradise on Fifth Avenue. 

 

A car service is the easiest way to transport a medium-sized dog who weighs too much to take on the subway in a crate.  At our current car service we usually got one of three drivers.  One of them was Sandy.  He started driving us years ago, and during Covid-19 nearly every weekday.  Sandy was of average height, barrel-chested, wire-rimmed glasses, shaggy gray hair and a walrus mustache.  He was a few years older than me.  Like me, Sandy was divorced, an anti-racist Democrat and had lived in New York for a long time. 

 

Over the years, Sandy and I became close. Some mornings I’d wait for his car, thinking of what I needed to tell him.  Sandy always had a treat for Augie, and Augie always had a tail wag for him.  They actually grew quite attached to each other.  Sandy and I talked about our families, our health and politics.  We both had had all different kinds of jobs; Sandy had originally studied to be a social worker, then went into the restaurant business and wound up managing a parking garage on the west side of in Manhattan.  When we traveled, Sandy would pick my partner and I up from the airport and know to drive us straight to Paws in Paradise so we could pick up Augie.  After one long flight, Sandy picked us up with Burger King burgers because he thought we’d be hungry.  He always gave Augie a special Christmas treat.  One year, Sandy even gave gifts to my partner and me. 

 

In June 2021, Augie and Sandy both got diagnosed with cancer.  I worried about both of them.  Sandy went through multiple hospitalizations and endless tests.  Augie became unable to breath on his own anymore, and we had to put him down at the end of October.  When I had to tell Sandy, his eyes were brimming with tears.  “You see, since we both got diagnosed at the same time, Augie was my cancer buddy.  I needed him,” Sandy said.  He couldn’t talk about Augie anymore, he got too upset.  Sandy Seeman died last month.  It feels so strange not to be able to tell him things anymore, and that he won’t grow to love our new dog, Buddy.  I haven’t been able to find any kind of memorial for Sandy. So I wanted to write one of my own.  We miss him.            

Reading American Photographs: Images as History Mathew Brady to Walker Evans

    Alan Trachtenberg, above

During COVID-19, I have found some great books in Little Library's in Brooklyn.  I stumbled on Reading American Photographs in one of them a few weeks ago.  

I thought the book had the potential to be pretty interesting, or really boring, and it was the former.   Turns out that it's this famous book from the late 1980s.  I certainly learned things from it, like the fact that Mathew Brady was the front man for a whole bunch of photographers.  There wasn't one female photographer who Trachtenberg covered seriously; frankly, I think Dorothea Lange or Berenice Abbott is way more interesting than Walker Evans, but that's just me.    Trachtenberg did have interesting things to say about history per se, in addition to the history of the way US audiences perceived photography.

There is only one page where I spotted an error, not obvious to most people.  Chapter 4: Camera Work/Social Work covers Lewis Hine and Alfred Stieglitz.  Trachtenberg describes Stieglitz returning from Europe to New York City, and feeling dislocated. He writes:  "Hearing the Italian opera singer Duse one evening in 1893, he felt a sudden charge:  a contract existed between myself and America.'"  I was shocked to read this, because as any theatre history geek knows, Eleanora Duse was one of the great European actresses of the early 20th century, not to mention the fact that her boyfriend, Gabriele D'Annunzio, inspired Mussolini to invent fascism.  So, Duse did not sing anything.  But presumably Stieglitz saw her act onstage in Italian, and that made him feel more connected to the US, not less (which I think is an interesting thing to contemplate).     

People and Animals

There's a brief but good book review in the May issue of the New York Review of Books about Peter Sahlins' '1668:  The Year of the Animal in France' by Lynn Hunt.

Hunt writes:  'The industrial production of animals developed at the same time as governments and reform-minded elites began to root out bear-baiting, bull-baiting and the wholesale torturing of cats for fun.  The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was founded in England in 1824, and the first law against cruelty to animals was passed in 1835, whereas the abuse of children was only explicitly criminalized in England in 1889.  One reformer of the London Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children complained, "If wretched children were only dogs, what sunlight would fall into their doomed and dismal lives."'  

Something Wonderful Solves the Mystery

When I first joined the Dramatists Guild, right after grad school, there was a note on our membership cards that said we were allied with The Authors League.  But I could never figure out what The Authors League was.  In Something Wonderful, Todd Purdum solves the mystery.  It was comprised of members of the Dramatists Guild, the Radio Writers Guild and the Screenwriters Guild, and in 1950, Oscar Hammerstein was its president.  Purdum writes:  "Oscar had spoken out strongly against the Hollywood blacklist, saying that to 'blacklist writers on the basis of their personal political views, however repellent those views are, is more in accord with the practices of the Soviets than with our democratic traditions.'"  Thank you, Todd Purdum!

Martin Luther

Image of Martin Luther, ca. 1523

I've just finished reading Lyndal Roper's "Martin Luther:  Renegade and Prophet."  I knew little about Luther before I read the book, other than Western Civ. in high school and the Netflix documentary starring Hugh Bonneville. 

A couple of things that I learned:  any woman giving birth "was under the sway of the devil, and that if she were to die before being churched, she could not be buried in the church yard."  I think the Roman Catholic Church outdid itself on that one! 

The secular powers had little say in the institution of marriage:  "As a sacrament, it had fallen under the purview of the Church, which decided which marriages were permitted and what counted as incestuous and required dispensations; it all was made more complex because godparenthood created an additional spiritual network of kinship and so a host of potentially incestuous unions."  So this was where the Church was when Luther wrote "On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church," where he began evolving his ideas about marriage, eventually denying that it was a sacrament. 

Roper also devotes the final chapter of her book to Luther's anti-Semitism.  To read his words about what he believed Christians should do to the Jews is horrifying.  Anti-Semitism was essential to Luther's theology:  "it was not incidental to his theology, a lamentable prejudice taken from contemporary attitudes.  Rather, it was integral to his thought; his insistence that the true Christians-  that is, the evangelicals-  had become the chosen people and had displaced the Jews would become fundamental to Protestant identity."

McCarthy's Bar

'McCarthy's Bar' is an odd book.  The title makes one think that the author owns a bar named for himself.  Not true.  McCarthy has a penchant for visiting bars of that name.  The beginning of the book is rife with frat boy-like drunkenness, to the point where I almost gave up on it.
But then it starts to get interesting.  McCarthy was born in England, though he thinks of himself as Irish, and he starts picking apart exactly what that means, as he explores Ireland's west coast.  (I cannot call it the 'Wild Atlantic Way'-  that just sounds silly.)  He also explains the difference between English and British.  If a white man commits a crime, he's British.  If a black, Asian or Irishman commits a crime, he's English.

It is well worth the read, but I can give you the highlights.  McCarthy stumbles upon a Famine memorial in Skibereen, with victims buried beneath it.  He considers why it was so rarely spoken of by his relatives, and comes to the conclusion that it was shame.  He guesses how many victims were in the pit-  maybe a few hundred?- and is astonished to read that it held 9,000.

McCarthy travels with William Makepeace Thackeray's 'Irish Sketchbook,' if only to not look like everyone else, clutching their copies of Lonely Planet.  He is impressed by the settled-ness of immigrants in Ireland who swear they feel very Irish.  In the midst of a religious pilgrimage on one of the Aran Islands, one of his companions says:  "It's an easy place to be at home in, in Ireland.  I notice, watching the different nationalities on the mountain, the fluidity of interaction the Irish people have with the visitors, and with each other.  It's a skill that's less developed in other nationalities, and it's so instinctive, it doesn't even look like a skill."  

The Ikarus Play

Photo:  Emily Ann Banks (Kara) and Kendra Mittermeyer (Deedee).  Photo by Christie Marie Clark.


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I have a new one-act going up at Open Source Gallery soon.  It’s an adaptation of the Daedalus/Icarus myth called The Ikarus Play, based on sculpture by Sana Obaid.  It will be performed Sunday, August 6th at 6 and 7 pm, and Monday, August 7^th at 7 and 8 pm at Open Source Gallery, 306 17^th Street (near Sixth Avenue), Park Slope.   Featuring direction by Christie Marie Clark, costume design by Cathy Small, Kendra Mittermeyer as Daedalus and Emily Ann Banks as Icarus.  Admission is free. 

Nearest subway stops are the F/G/N at 4th Ave./9^th St., or F/N at 7^th Ave./9^th St. 

If you want to read on, it gets complicated:

I’ve worked with Open Source and its artistic director, Monika Wuhrer, for ten years.  I’ve premiered six plays there, all based on art being shown in the gallery:  painting, sculpture, local artists, European artists.  Monika and I met last summer, when she suggested that Sana would be a great person to work with.  Sana and I Skyped in May; she is intelligent, candid and funny.  I immediately wanted to have her come over for dinner.  Sana’s art is not inherently political; she is interested in metaphoric walls between people, and walls of self-preservation.

Until now, Open Source has never had a problem getting an artist and their art to Brooklyn.  They got an NEA grant to bring Sana here (she’s based in Karachi), and then applied for an artist visa, which the State Dept. denied.  So there’s still a show (video), but there’s no artist.  And no art juxtasposed with the play.  Which I find deeply troubling.  But, damn it, there will be a play!

For more details:  http://open-source-gallery.org/

Photo:  Emily Ann Banks (Kara) and Kendra Mittermeyer (Deedee).  Photo by Christie Marie Clark.

Fritz Lang

I recently finished reading Patrick McGilligan's massive biography, 'Fritz Lang:  The Nature of the Beast.'  It was so big and overly detailed, I almost didn't make my way through it.  I can only think even St. Martin's Press is cutting down on editors.

But there were some interesting bits.  The set for Lang's film 'The Spider Woman' was constructed in the Hagenbeck Zoo in Hamburg (the first modern zoo, where its founder Carl Hagenbeck revolutionized animal training).  His 'Lady in the Moon' (a sci-fi classic from 1931, which he co-wrote with his then wife, Thea von Harbou) invented the countdown (yes, that 5-4-3-2-1 countdown).    Having decided that Peter Lorre would whistle the 'Hall of the Mountain King' from Grieg's 'Peer Gynt,' he didn't like the way Lorre whistled, so the whistle in the movie is Lang himself.

When he was working in Hollywood, Brecht had to keep the same twilight curfew that other enemy aliens did.

And finally, von Harbou became an enthusiastic Nazi (she stayed when Lang fled to Paris).  After the war, she served time in prison, and labored as a Truemmerfrau, separating usable bricks from bad in Berlin's rubble.


Photo credit:  Wikipedia

Interview, Take 2

This is a corrected post.  There's punctuation now, which helps:

http://m.axs.com/news/interview-with-playwright-anne-phelan-86519

An Interview with the Dramahound (that's me)

An interview with me by Meaghan Meehan on axs.com:

http://m.axs.com/news/interview-with-playwright-anne-phelan-86519?utm_campaign=ex_content_axs_approved&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Sailthru

Hades

Fool’s Progress and Dramahound Productions are pleased to announce the world premiere of a one-act play by Anne Phelan, Hades.  It will be performed on Saturday, June 18 at 4:30 and 5:30 PM at Lazy Susan Gallery, 191 Henry Street, between Rutgers and Clinton Streets, on the Lower East Side.   Admission is free. 

The play was commissioned by Fool’s Progress Productions, and is inspired by Tom Bovo’s Merge photograph (above) in Curiously, a group show featuring the work of Tom Bovo, Gail Flanery and Karen Gibbons at Lazy Susan.  The production is directed by Katrin Hilbe.  It features Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum as Dante and CK Allen as Virgil.

Dante has been driven from his home in Florence, Massachusetts.  Disillusioned, homeless and broke, he meets Virgil on the streets of Brooklyn. Virgil then proceeds to guide Dante through three circles of Hell in South Slope and Gowanus where they encounter a murdering wife, a notorious Welsh traitor from King Arthur’s time and finally Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger, the murderer of Julius Caesar.  By the end of the play, Dante has begun to rebuild his spirit, and he and Virgil go off to further adventures. 

Dramahound Productions is happy to be working with Fool’s Progress Productions on their fourth world premiere, the first at Lazy Susan Gallery.  Previous plays include The Mermaid Won’t Sing for Tom Bovo’s The Other Side of Summer; The Skull Beneath the Skin for Tom Bovo’s Genius Loci and Ellen Chuse’s Everyone in the Pool; and Did You Hear the One About the Carp Who Hailed a Taxi? for Tom Bovo’s New York.   

Opened in January of this year, Lazy Susan Gallery is a creative project space with a revolving roster of curators and artists.  Its curator is Jill Conner. 

Directions:  To reach Lazy Susan Gallery, take the F train to East Broadway. 

Lazy Susan Phone:  646.736.2457 

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Hades Cancelled

We've had some issues with the reading scheduled on Sat., February 13, so we are cancelling it.  We hope to produce it elsewhere soon.

Hades- A New Play

Fool’s Progress and Dramahound Productions are pleased to announce the world premiere of a one-act play by Anne Phelan, Hades.  It will be read on Saturday, February 13 at 4:40 and 6 PM at 440 Gallery, 440 Sixth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn.   Admission is free. 

The play was commissioned by Fool’s Progress Productions, and is inspired by Tom Bovo’s Merge photographs in the back space at 440 Gallery. It features Patrick Avella and Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum as Dante and Virgil.

Dante has been driven from his home in Florence, Mass.  Disillusioned, homeless and broke, he meets Virgil on the streets of Brooklyn. Virgil then proceeds to guide Dante through three circles of Hell in Park Slope and Gowanus where they encounter a murdering wife, a notorious Welsh traitor from King Arthur’s time and finally Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger, the murderer of Julius Caesar.  By the end of the play, Dante has begun to rebuild his spirit, and he and Virgil go off to further adventures. 

Dramahound Productions is happy to be back at 440 Gallery, for its fourth world premiere in conjunction with Fool’s Progress Productions.  Previous plays include The Mermaid Won’t Sing for Tom Bovo’s The Other Side of Summer, The Skull Beneath the Skin for Tom Bovo’s Genius Loci and Ellen Chuse’s Everyone in the Pool; and Did You Hear the One About the Carp Who Hailed a Taxi? for Tom Bovo’s New York.   

Directions:  To reach 440 Gallery, take the F, G, or R train to Fourth Avenue/Ninth Street.  718.499.0901

440gallery.com

Photo by Tom Bovo

Venus von Merkel

Abover:  Detail of "Venus von Hamburg" by Cristian Bors and Darius Ritiu. 
Photo credit:  Anja Matthes, courtesy of Open Source Gallery


It's been a busy theatrical summer, which I'm winding up with a new play, "Venus von Merkel," which opens this Friday.  It's much broader and more overtly political than I'm used to writing.  But thanks to Open Source Gallery, I have the opportunity.  

All the info is below.

Dramahound Productions and Open Source Gallery are pleased to announce the world premiere of a one-act play by Anne Phelan, Venus von Merkel.  It will be performed September 18 and 19 at 7:30 and 8:30 PM at Open Source Gallery, 306 17^th Street, Park Slope.   Admission is free. 

The play was commissioned by Open Source Gallery, and is inspired by its current exhibition Venus von Hamburg, Cristian Bors and Marius Ritiu’s sculptural take on the Greek debt crisis. It features Alexandra Gellner (Romeo & Juliet, The Cradle Theatre Company; Pericles, The New Ensemble Workshop; Coffee & Biscuit, HERE Arts SubletSeries, NYC Fringe) as Aphrodite, and Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum (Robert Moses, in Les Frères Corbusier’s Boozy; Bernie Madoff in Woodshed Collective’s The Confidence Man; Old Testament God in Les Frères The Franklin Thesis) as German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The director is Christie Marie Clark (Anne Phelan’s They All Know Me, Thespian Production Slam-a-Thon; Clown Love, Strawberry One-Act Festival; The Diner, Caravan Play Festival) with costume design by Anna Slocum.  

Venus von Merkel imagines a surreal summit between Merkel, dressed as a pirate of the Caribbean, and Aphrodite, representing the Greek people.  It is a satirical, questioning exploration of globalization, the euro crisis and their the human cost. 

This is Anne Phelan and Dramahound’s sixth production at Open Source; previous plays include Brooklyn Lighthouse; Deconstruction (featuring Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum); Mi Tigre, My Lover (featuring Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum); a reading of The Tiger Play; and Olmsted in Autumn.

Open Source Gallery is a 501(c)3 owned and curated by Gary Baldwin and Monika Wuhrer.  Directions:  To reach Open Source, take the R train to Prospect Avenue.  306 17^th Street, near Sixth Avenue, Brooklyn NY.  646.279.3969

open-source-gallery.org

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The Mermaid Won't Sing

"The Mermaid Won't Sing" is a new one-act by me, inspired by Tom Bovo's photograph "Harbor- Fog."  It will be presented twice, at 4:30 and 6, on Saturday, July 18th at 440 Gallery, 440 Sixth Avenue (near Ninth Street), in Brooklyn, New York.  It's directed by Christie Marie Clark, and features Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum as Barnaby, and Shannon Marguerite as Aphrodite the mermaid.  Admission is free.  The play was commissioned as part of Tom Bovo's solo photography show, "The Other Side of Summer." 

Theatre History Geeks Alert!

Tomorrow morning there's a special guest at the Church of Monika at Open Source Gallery.  Cezar Del Valle is coming at 11AM to talk about his new book, "Brooklyn Theatre Index, Volume III," about the history of theatre in Coney Island.  I am a total theatre history geek in general, but I'm particularly interested in Coney Island because of Eddie Cantor, Chico Marx and Louis Roth.  Roth was married to (and trained) Mabel Stark-  they're both in my play "The Tiger Play."  He learned to train big cats while working for a wild animal show in Coney Island, ca. 1900. 

Open Source Gallery is at 306 17th Street, near the corner of Sixth Avenue.

The Other Side of Summer

"Harbor- Fog" photo by Tom Bovo

Tom has got another solo show at 440 Gallery, and once again, he's commissioned me to write a play based on a photo of his (I chose the above).  It's called "The Mermaid Won't Sing," directed by Christie Clark, featuring Shannon Marguerite as Aphrodite the mermaid, and Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum as Barnaby.  The play will run one afternoon only, Sat., July 18 at 4:30 and 6PM. 

Tom has many events for his show.  This Saturday, there's an opening reception, 5-8.  Sat. the 25th, I'm giving a talk on mermaids (really not for children, nor is the play) at 4.  Sun. August 2nd, Jody Mullen is singing a pop and standards set; and Sunday, August 9th, there's a closing reception, 4-7.

440 Gallery is at 440 Sixth Avenue (near Ninth Street) in Brooklyn, New York.  The nearest trains are the G, F, R at 4th Avenue/Ninth Street.  For more information, www.tombovo.com or www.440gallery.com

The Master Writer of the City

There's a new biography of Joseph Mitchell by Thomas Kunkel called "Man in Profile:  Joseph Mitchell of The New Yorker."  It's reviewed by Janet Malcolm in the April 23rd issue of the New York Review of Books.  I had a copy of Mitchell's "Up in the Old Hotel" which I kept for years- such an eerie tale of old New York, before the Brooklyn Bridge was built. 
I didn't know Mitchell, but I saw him fairly often.  He liked to come to the 11 o'clock service at Grace Church, and lurk in the back by the narthex (that's foyer to the uninitiated).  He didn't discriminate between Morning Prayer and Communion, never approached the altar rail.  The Rev. Fleming Rutledge, the assistant at the time, told the congregation that Mitchell came for the sermon.   
I never felt like Mitchell was approachable, so I left him alone.  Never asked him about his writer's block, or about the New Yorker's glory days.  He was a man who wanted to be left alone.   And I was a young writer who didn't want to upset an old man.