Sunday, June 11, 2006

First things first.....

U & Me & Tennessee
- an American romance...
The story of how we made the movie

My name is Paul Birchard. I'm the only actor ever to have left Hollywood, based himself in Glasgow, and lived to tell about it!

In the spring of 2005, I was cast in a production of BABY DOLL, the stage adaptation of Tennessee Williams's screenplay, at the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre.

Over two decades and more, most of my work as an actor and presenter has originated in London, in spite of the fact that I live up in Glasgow, and this was the first time I'd ever worked at the Citz.
During rehearsals, word circulated among the cast that there was this man who had known Tennessee Williams, and he was living near Glasgow - and he might be coming to see the show.
Apparently he also had stack of correspondence between Mr. Williams and himself.
This tantalising information - and the mystery man behind it - intrigued me, and at the same time I couldn't help detecting a strange non-reaction among my fellow cast members and crew.

Hmmm.......

I am old enough to remember Tennessee Williams, particularly during the late '60's and early '70's, when he was often a guest on American TV talk shows. I was aware of his well known fondness for Stolichnaya vodka and various pharmaceutical stimulants and depressants - not to mention strong black coffee! - his recounting in his work of some of the more unsavoury aspects of his private life, and the fact that he really went off the rails for a while during that time - a decade and more after he was the Zeus of Broadway and A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat On a Hot Tin Roof had garnered Pulitzer prizes and been made into major movies.

I remembered a story told around the U.C.L.A. Theater Arts department - with arched eyebrows and a snigger, and sometimes with a terrible sigh - that a Broadway producer or a critic had been asked who he thought was the greatest living American playwright and neither Tennessee, nor Arthur Miller, nor anyone else of great stature, was cited. When the question was asked: "Well, what about Tennessee Williams?" that man's reply was brutally frank:
"Tennessee Williams?! He hasn't had a hit in years!"

But I had a sneaking admiration for Williams. Because no matter how dissipated or depressed he was said to be, new work kept on appearing. Out Cry, Memoirs, Moise and the World of Reason, Small Craft Warnings....

In the '70's, when I was studying singing in Hollywood, my vocal coach introduced me to another of his students - Annette Cardona - and she was starring - with Anthony Quinn - in The Red Devil Battery Sign, another new play from Tennessee, and Quinn believed in it enough to put his own money into it, as I recall.....

And then I remembered my friend Bonnie had acted in A House Not Meant To Stand, in Chicago, around 1980. She'd said that Tennessee had been in very good spirits at that time, swimming most days, giving her private rehearsals so her character could convincingly - and comically -"speak in tongues," his distinctive cackle repeatedly echoing from the back of the stalls as his unrestrained enjoyment of his own jokes bubbled forth every night during the show! The theater threw a big party for Tennessee on his 70th birthday which had fallen during rehearsals, and Tenn and Bonnie had danced the night away with abandon.

These were part of my own living memories about Tennessee Williams, though I'd never met him. Of course I'd worked on a number of his plays, when I was a student, and as a professional. I'd seen many productions. In the U.K. some of Williams's plays are staged over and over again. But he has attained the status of a classic. That means that there is often a strange, unexamined disconnect among audiences - and too often among directors and actors- between his work and its often terrifying and disturbing implications. That disconnect is even more apparent in these British productions' - and indeed most productions' I've ever seen anywhere! - solemn approach, resulting in an almost total inability to adequately convey Tennessee's grim - or more often broad, burlesque - humor!

So, in the spring of 2005, I was at the Citz, working in Baby Doll, and this man who had known Tennessee - who had a sheaf of letters from him - who was living nearby - was a vague presence around the theatre....He was going to come see the show.....

Well -

One night in the theatre bar after the show, I was tapped on the shoulder by Jeremy Raison, Artistic Director of the Citz. With an unmistakeably delighted twinkle in his eye he offered to introduce me to the man in question. He was here!
I followed Jeremy over to a table where a lively fellow in a black knitted watch cap was holding forth, and I sat down just at his elbow because all the seats in the direct line of his vision were occupied by other cast members.

He mostly ignored me, in favor of the younger, the more beautiful.

He was a sparkling and witty conversationalist, and he was trying to help the actors comprehend something of what had gone into the making of Baby Doll. But there was a gap, a disconnect, and I realized that for them, Tennessee Williams was just a name - a "classic" - an indistinct figure from what they unconsciously assumed was long ago. And it was long ago - for them.

But not for me.

I began to chip into the conversation.

And the man and I began to inquire about places we'd both visited, people we might know in common, why and how and when Williams had written this or that. We were weighing one another up.

And somehow or other, this man recognized something in me. Something that could recognize him, and what his life and experience might mean in the broader context.

His name was Konrad Hopkins.

Copyright Paul Birchard 2006 All Rights Reserved.

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