So just as Dr Hopkins would answer "Miss Kim" when I asked how Sandy Archer found herself onto the estate, if someone were to ask me where the idea came from for that first play the Mime Troupe took to the farm camps, I would have to say "Padua Hills." Because I had clipped out one of the playbills or ads from the local Claremont newspaper, with the idea of sending it to a friend of mine who had gone to school in Los Olivos because the name of the play at Padua Hills was called "Los Olivos." But because the original play had likely been transmuted so much over the course of the years, with the original meanings likely laid over with veiled meanings, convoluted here and there, then added to and obscured some more plus the meaning given by new hands in performance, as well as changing by new theatrical styles all over the passage of time, (and I was by then a student of classical literature at the time), I suggested going back to the Ur-version, the original version of the play, the one far back in history that might have a clearer or somehow purer intent than later renditions we might have access to today. Just like the song "Sierra Morena" that became "Cielito Lindo", as I would try to explain to friends at the time.
So someone took over writing the script, that was Peter Cohon, and I mean took over writing the script when such ventures were much more gentle and communal in nature previously, and I was in this cold dark damp basement somewhere in San Francisco borrowed for a rehearsal hall and not enjoying the experience very much. I can't remember what this group was rehearsing, or what the play was, but it wasn't "Los Olivos" (the script Peter had taken over). And I went back to Berkeley to the big cottage on Williams estate and talked with a woman about this, and then Sandy came in I think. I ended up saying, "Peter's as bad as Ronnie, sometimes, always blowing his own horn." Because Ronnie sometimes had that aggrandizing temperament as the plays met with more popularity.
Here is one of the in-between skits. I think it had a title of "Kumraden", maybe I'm misremembering.
One time, I just remembered this, Ronnie fired me during performance at some political event on the Berkeley campus because Ronnie, because of his outlook, determined I was "playing to the bourgeoisie" during a period of improvisation in between performance, when you're trying to engage members and small groups of the audience individually to pull them into the piece and better engage them with the larger piece. This! After I had so much fun walking into the middle of a Wrigley's commercial being filmed on campus and improvising on the stairs of the student union. This! I can't even remember what I was doing or what the group was doing, and truthfully maybe that WAS part of my own problem. It had been MY idea, afterall, to take this series of skits to the steps of the Student Union Bldg in Berkeley. Ronnie stepped out from the left from behind a columnade and we talked in between my lines, and I was fired. I persisted, "What am I doing wrong, Ronnie?" and "I wasn't at that meeting, Ronnie, where we discussed the theory behind such skits ... " He stood next to me firmly as if ordering me off the stairs, and Peter came out and added bulk to the shoulder assault. At one point, I spelled it out for them and the audience, "B-O-U-R-G-E-O-U-S! BOURGEOIS!" So then I said, "So what if I spelled it wrong, I still am one!" I even led a little cheer, "Bourgeois to the left, and bourgeois to the right, stand-up, sit-in, fight, fight, fight!" And Ronnie was caving in beginning to agree with me, seriously agree with me. And I said, "I saw one out there. I saw a bourgeoisie!" I crossed my arms over my chest while facing the audience, with my right hand resting on my left shoulder, as if I were hugging myself for comfort, and wiggled my finger at Peter and said, "And him! HIM!, Bourgeoisie! Mon Ami. HE's bourgeoisie!" And I spat at Ronnie, "You're right, Ronnie, I shouldn't be here. But HE (pointed at Peter) shouldn't be here, and YOU (pointed at Ronnie), either. We shouldn't even be here! We should be playing someplace else!" Then I walked down the steps saying "woe!". And threw up my arms as if to plead, and grasped my hands in front of my chest as if I were begging: "What, did I do wrong, Ronnie? What? Ronnie, please I beg of you, tell me, what can we do to truly inspire these people?" I turned back to give them a look as they resumed the regular skit, and went and sat on the curb on Bancroft, across from the smokeshop that once sold real Cuban cigars, where the buses pulled down the street in a very noisy squealing manner and always spewed our exhaust. And that was it. I was kind of done with it. The two men were locked together in their very fiber of being and had joined creative forces to try to keep the women in their place. But all of that other stuff, about how we shouldn't have been there and go someplace else instead .... that's what ended up really happening.
That skit evolved a bit in its treatment, to be the one where Sandy was led to the guillotine and Darryl was in chains on the stage, both trying to be set free. Everybody LOVED Sandy. She was the greatest actor in the troupe!
Then Tessa came in to take over some of Sandy's parts (the bureaucrat with a heart of gold at the telephone company) and I was in the audience watching that one, too, as I had provided some input into the thing early on.
We were always being reminded not to play to the bougeoisie, and I had somehow done it, even though the script actually called for it. Later, in another performance at Provo Park, I remembered seeing the horrified look come into Darryl's eyes as his costume malfunctioned and first he stared straight into the eyes of someone he knew would likely become bourgeoisie, and as Darryl was slipping his arm into the costume (which wasn't designed well enough to afford a quick character change), Darryl turned his eye towards me, and it seemed he was horrified by that realization and I thought I saw a real moment of FEAR! in his eye, and I thought he was going to quit on the spot. But he turned back and had help getting into the costume, and finished the performance. But he did decide to quit, a little after I did, and started up "The East Bay Sharks."
The women actors and their friends would follow everyone's careers and follow the news of their former friends,and we didn't like hearing stories about the communal sex that Peter was involved in and how he would decide to sleep with which women, and when. Because WE KNEW BETTER! We knew the women were making decisions in that regard, as well. I thought he was dippy.
In the old old days, when this all was just starting to form, it was all so very, very much better. When a good idea came out on the floor, Darryl who always held his recorder and would play little notes in between the interchanges and sometimes over and through them, when a good idea came out that Darryl thought was FUNNY or GREAT, he would soar into a high pitched note. He was like Harpo who only talked through his harp. He was funny doing that. But his note was soar HIGH and everybody would catch on that Darryl thought this was a good idea. And some would follow him off to talk about it, like they were following the Pied Piper.
At the time I am writing of, 1967, with "Kumraden", I used to wear a French denim workshirt, pullover style with collar, and with a large buttons to fasten the top. Almost exactly like the one Dustin Hoffman and Steve McQueen wore in "Papillion", the movie about Devil's Island. But that movie came out in 1973, based on a book that was first released in France in 1969. I had found my workshirt a few years prior, nestled among some import items at a local Army & Navy store. I'd see the movie and say to myself, "Hey! They've got nothing on me!" I could feel like such a trend-setter, sometimes. "Prisoners on Devil's Island!" I'd say to my friend, Heidi. "At least they're on a nice little tropical island in the Caribbrean somewhere." And Heidi caught on and started laughing. "We should write a script," I said to myself, about people who just see the gloss and don't really understand the content. So I described a scene I had in mind about the Great Gatsby, where it was told from the perspective of people all sitting around the pool watching girls dance, being totally unaware of what was really going on. I would later describe that scene to a friend, and he would stare at me in complete disbelief and say, "THAT"S not what the Great Gatsby was about .... " And I would reply, "But a lot of people at the time seemed to think it was!"
We had another skit about draft dodging and how they were drafting longhairs and Uncle Sam cutting off their locks, and I would urge everyone to participate by singing an old pattycake song: I'd shout out, "HIPPIES!" "Quick, hippies, help! They're cutting off his hair! And then I'd sing the pattycake song to urge audience participation, "Hippies ...... Does you hair hang high, does you hair hang low, can you tie it in a knot, can you tie it in a bow, Can you throw it over your shoulder like an old Union soldier? Does your hair hang low?" So we'd draft members from the audience to come up and help the hippie (which came at the exact point I cang "throw it over your shoulder like an old Union soldier") who was picked up and thrown across the shoulder of the guy playing the army guy drafting the hippie who was likely being dragged off to war, but he started rotating in time with the music until it stopped and stood there still holding the hippie on his shoulder. And one of the women would shout out from the audience, "Where are they taking himn?" And the reply was, "To jail". So we'd shout in unison, "To JAIL!" (in horror) Then I or someone else would And the jailer would reply, "You either get drafed or you go to jail" And I or some other would say, "To JAIL or the draft! What a choice. This calls for some quick thinking to get out of this mess. And the girls would huddle and talk a bit and then shout out "Quick! Anybody got a draft card?" And produce a basket for donations, "Just a small donation for the theater" Then as they were out in the audience doing that, with the audience thinking the skit was over, we'd re-emerge ask for a donation from the audience of a draft card. And one would usually appear, and WE didn't cut it up!! Oh no, it was that puppet with the scissors who did.
(FREE LONG DISTANCE TELEPHONE CALLS)
And after the credit card number skit with the puppets, everything evolved again and soon the troupe was doing the same sort of skit, almost exactly the same, only THIS time the little puppet had a Captain Crunch whistle he would hold to his lips and pretend to blow (and an actor behind the stage would blow an actual Captain Crunch whistle at the perfect moment) and the fellow in front of the stage would hold up a box of Captain Crunch cereal to let everyone know where they could get such a whistle.
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