The Williams College Tennis Court

In early 1967, on one of my first trips to the estate to visit people I knew who'd moved in there, I heard stories of how those theatrical types had just entertained themselves by recreating a famous scene from the Antonioni film "Blow Up" on the estate's tennis court. Peter Cohon, Ronnie, Darryl, maybe Sandy ... I don't know for sure who was on the court that day.


I'd just seen "Blow Up" over in Albany, as had half of the East Bay. All I remembered thinking was those mimes sure were noisy, weren't they?

There was a small cornet hanging from a braided cord on the wall of the cottage that Sandy and Ronnie were handing over to Darryl and his friend. And Ed Leddy by all reports had given a trumpet lesson or two to one of the residents of the cottage recently.



(Photo of Ronnie Davis and trumpet
"Vietnam veteran R.G. Davis, one of the founders of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, rides his bicycle to an Iraq war protest in San Francisco while playing "Reveille" on his bugle. Chronicle photo by Deanne Fitzmaurice"
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2003/03/22/BA125137.DTL
Retrieved: 7.28.11

Ed Leddy: Jazz Trumpeter

Darryl's cottage was quite large, an unpainted wooden structure with steeply pitched roof covered in forest green tarpaper. The great room boasted an ancient gas furnace which was never that I recall used, as that would have been futile because the room was wrapped around with windows. The floor of was covered with an equally ancient huge single piece of linoleum of indeterminate well-worn design, nailed in place around the edges and peeling away from the walls. That was layered with large braided woolen rugs or rugs with floral borders acquired on various thrift store outings. Furnished with couches, upholstered side chairs, occasional tables, and bookshelves with books and papers falling into each other.

The outside door led directly to the great room. A hard right turn from the entry door carried visitors into the kitchen, which was large enough to hold an ample kitchen table and three wooden table chairs all set beneath the window which afforded a view of the shrubbery outside. And a 1930's gas stove with a sink next to it set into a short wooden counter with shelving underneath for pots and pans, an area that was covered with thin curtains held in place by small brass curtain rods. There was a small gas wall heater in the wall of the kitchen that adjoined the bedroom, which was farther to the right through a door. That was at a different level because of the natural geography of the estate, built as it was on a hill, so you had to step up a stair or two into a small hallway and two steps carried you past the shower and bathroom facilities and on into a bedroom expansive enough to hold a bed, looking glass in a standing frame, two dressers, large woven baskets with lids containing clothes. That room, too, was wrapped on two sides with windows, under which on one side had built-in large cupboards and shelving.

Another cottage, set almost directly across the estate on the southern edge of the grounds, was much, much smaller and more primitive. This structure truly was ramshackle in appearance, and despite framed windows and a small step up porch under a small covered porch roof looked to be a building that had originally been erected to hold gardening tools, but which over the course of time had been improved and expanded upon. This small unpainted wooden cottage, no bigger than ten foot square, with a door once painted blue was the rental residence of a mysterious resident who was seldom seen on the estate. Squeezed inside was a bed, an easy chair with reading lamp, a small dining table with one chair, a stove for cooking and heating. There was a kitchen sink and towards the back, though I never saw this area, was the bathroom and shower. The tenant who was seldom seen was Ed Leddy. Ed lived on the estate for some undetermined number of years, certainly from 1966 to 1971, who knows how many other years on either side of that span.

Darryl Henriques: Comedian in Residence 1966-1969

So Ronnie and Sandy relinquished use of the desirable cottage and the Mime Troupe went on tour. Darryl Henriques the next season portrayed Borracho in "Olive Pits", a play which opened the tour in Delano and eventually won the troupe an Obie that year.

Although history remembers and often mentions Peter Cohon's (he wasn't Peter Coyote just yet) role as writer and actor, as I recall, Darryl was the only performer whose image was pictured on the poster, his face beamed out from the middle of a large blue star. That poster is missing from the San Francisco Mime Troupe official site, and to my knowledge the only place on earth you can view it is the lobby of Dell Arte International, 615 H Street, in Blue Lake, California.

While in residence at Williams College, Darryl Henriques stayed busy with the Mime Troupe throughout the year and especially during performance seasons. As a Mime Trouper, Darryl handled the crankies and made paper movies of his own. He was also an actor in the early plays about the parking meters and the telephone credit cards which the Mime Troupe performed at Provo Park in Berkeley among a number of other locations.

Darryl founded the East Bay Sharks, a Musical Theater Group, which also performed in parks throughout the Bay Area, including the park in San Francisco's China Town. The East Bay Sharks also performed onstage at the Freight and Salvage Coffee House and Mandrake's, both popular Berkeley venues of the time.

Sometime during this period, Darryl traveled to Mono Lake to be in a movie called "Shoot the Whale", which is still offered for viewing at places like Pacific Film Archives.

The cinematographer for "Shoot the Whale" was Philip Makanna, who'd recently aired a short cinematic piece on local PBS television station KQED (see San Francisco Cinematheque below).

Darryl moved from the estate sometime before close of 1969. Before he did, one of his visitors was an old college friend, Barry Leichtling who had run a rock palace in San Diego called the Hippodrome briefly in 1968 and who'd gone on to co-write a script and appear in a film, which had been released briefly to popular acclaim before being withdrawn for decades, now regarded as a cult classic, called "Captain Milkshake."

Darryl moved from the estate in 1969, but many of the scripts and ideas he'd been working on there found realization within the next short period of time.

In early March of 1971, the East Bay Sharks shared a bill with Commander Cody at Mandrake's where Darryl likely ran into film student Bill Farley when Bill was tending bar at the club. Eventually Farley made a documentary (2006) about Darryl, called: "Darryl Henriques Is In Show Business" and Peter (Cohon) Coyote found his way into that film.

And to conclude, Darryl Henriques is in show business.



http://www.cfiwest.org/sos/archives/newsletter/about.htm
Retrieved: 7.18.11
From Darryl's resume:

About Darryl Henriques

Member of the San Francisco Mime Troupe. 1967 Park Season and National Tour of Obie winning L'Amam Militaire.
Founder of East Bay Sharks Musical Theater Group in San Francisco Bay area. Appearing in parks, schools, and nightclubs. 1972-76.
Writer and performer on Scoop's Last News Show on KSAN FM in San Francisco Bay area '76-'86. Voice of The Swami from Miami, Joe Carcinogenni, Jacques Kissmatoe, Rev. Clyde Fingerdip.
As a stand-up comedian has performed at benefits for such groups as the Rainforest Action Network, the Sea Shepherd Society, the Alliance for Survival, the Abalone Alliance, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Various Waldorf Schools, Fair, Media Alliance, etc.
Author of 50 Simple Things You Can Do To Pave The Earth, Ulysses Press.
Darryl played Nanglus, the Romulan Ambassador to the Federation in Star Trek VI, the Undiscovered Country.



Darryl Henriques, partial filmography
http://www.blockbuster.com/browse/catalog/personDetails/28066
Retrieved: 7.28.11

Darryl Henriques, partial filmography
http://www.moviezen.com/celebrity/darryl-henriques/filmography
Retrieved: 7.28.11

Darryl Henriques, partial filmography
http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Darryl_Henriques
Retrieved: 7.28.11

"Olive Pits is an adaptation of Lope de Ruede's sixteenth-century farce, El paso de las olivas. The original is a short skit about a husband and wife who begin counting the profits from their olives the day they plant the olive tree. Olive Pits was banned at California State College at Fullerton. The Jack London Society had invited the troupe to perform it on their campus in February 1968. However, after learning from administrators about the troupe's use of obscene language in A Minstrel Show, the Faculty Council voted to forbid the performance. Four hundred students and faculty attended an anti-censorship rally on campus, then walked off to an orange grove where the show was performed."

The San Francisco Mime Troupe Reader
by Susan Vaneta Mason
(University of Michigan Press, 2005)
pp 57-58

San Francisco Cinematheque

"Originally aired on KQED TV (PBS) in San Francisco in 1969, the Dilexi Series represents a pioneering effort to present works created by artists specifically for broadcast. The 12-part weekly series was conceived and commissioned by the Dilexi Foundation, an off-shoot of the influential San Francisco art gallery founded by James Newman. Newman, who operated the Dilexi Gallery from 1958 until 1970, saw this innovative series as an opportunity to extend the influence of the contemporary arts far beyond the closeted environment of the commercial gallery.

"Formal agreement was reached with KQED in 1968 with the station's own John Coney designated as series producer. No restrictions regarding length, form or content were imposed upon the works, except for Newman's stipulation that they be aired weekly within the same time slot in order to gather an audience.

"Of the 12 artists invited to participate in the Dilexi series (Julian Beck, Walter De Maria. Kenneth Dewey, Robert Frank, Ann Halprin, Philip Makanna, Robert Nelson, Yvonne Rainier, Terry Riley, Edwin Schlossberg, Andy Warhol and Frank Zappa), ten of them completed new works, and two, Andy Warhol and Frank Zappa, submitted extant works. The tapes and films are far-reaching in their approaches to the medium and the circumstance of the broadcast series.

"'If the 60s meant anything as a unifying principle or idea, it meant a lack of caution that I don't see around much anymore. Certainly, there is nothing like the KQED of the 60s. You could barely get past the reception lobby today at Channel 9 with a proposal for a Dilexi type series. It was wide open: all the facilities, color quad studio cameras, location film equipment, whatever, were available at what was calculated to be their cost, an amount not to exceed $1,000 per production. The artists were commissioned for $500 each. It seemed daring at the time, perhaps it was. Anyway, we just went ahead and did it and, to a degree, it worked.'"

Makanna's piece was "The Empire of Things", an experimental narrative, using a text by H.L. Mountzoures which describes a post-apocalyptic culture.

San Francisco Cinematheque
1991 Program Notes
THE DILEXI SERIES
Curated and presented by Steve Seid

http://www.archive.org/stream/sanfranciscocine91sanfrich/sanfranciscocine91sanfrich_djvu.txt
Retrieved: 7.18.11

Sandy Archer and Ronnie Davis: Cottage Residents to 1966

Bay Area theater people had close ties with Williams College during the 1960s at least.

One of the cottages, in fact the one which journalist Phil Small had rented previously, had a steady line of theater people in residence for the better part of a decade.

Until 1966, R.G. Davis and Sandy Archer rented and used the cottage. Each of their names are legendary to this day in theater circles.

Sandy Archer is well loved and remembered for her contributions as an actress, teacher, and overall inspiration to theater throughout Northern California. R.G. Davis (or Ronnie as he was known to people closer to him) is the founder of what has become the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Trained as a dancer and in pantomime, "after studying with French mime master Etienne Decroux, R.G. Davis founded the Troupe in 1959" as an experimental project of the Actor's Workshop, "creating pieces, some silent, some with words, that were considered avant-garde. Today it would be called performance art. So, in fact, the first year of our long history we did perform pantomime." In their earlier performances the troupe was named the R.G. Davis Mime Troupe.

In fact, it was R.G. Davis's arrest mid-performance that "thrust the Troupe onto the stage of the Bay Area arts community" on August 7, 1965. "The Mime Troupe's performance of Peter Berg's adaptation of "Il Candelaio" by Giordano Bruno was stopped in mid-performance by San Francisco police on orders of the Recreation and Park Department. The Mime Troupe's permit had been revoked on grounds of obscenity. After the police arrest Director R.G. Davis, subsequent organizing efforts thrust the Troupe onto the stage of the Bay Area arts community." The subsequent benefit either to raise bail bail or pay for court costs attracted the attention of promoter Bill Graham, and so began a long relationship between the SF Mime Troupe and Graham. The Mime Troupe won the lawsuit, establishing the right of artists to perform uncensored in city parks.

Unlike most theater companies around the world, the Mime Troupe took its politics seriously. Even in the 1960s, Mime Troupe shows were not just busted for “indecency” and “obscenity.” The performances most often harassed were the most controversial like the devastating civil rights parody that was A Minstrel Show and the biting anti-war farce L’Amant Militaire, which a Des Moines, Iowa critic slammed as “shocking”, “unpatriotic”, “blasphemous”, before confessing “I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed an evening of theater more.”

(From Mission Local
The S.F. Mime Troupe Turns 50
by Mark Rabine
December 10, 2009)
http://www.sfmt.org/company/archives/50anniversary/articles/missionlocal12_10_09.html
Retrieved: 7.26.11

In early 1966, the SFMT was taking the show on the road. Sandy and R.G. also had another place to live in across the Bay and had been maintaining the keys to this cottage for occasional use. A fellow Mime Troupe actor, Darryl Henriques, knew of this pleasant, quaint, infrequently occupied, and most desirable Berkeley cottage and suggested that Ronnie and Sandy turn it over to a friend of his who was moving into the area and needed a place to live, which they did do. Darryl's compelling argument to convince Ronnie and Sandy was their having use of two houses was "bourgeois".

Another visitor to the estate during this same period was Julian Beck, founder of The Living Theater. I recall seeing the Living Theater present "Frankenstein" in Berkeley. But long before that performance, I was shown a black and white photograph of Ronnie and Julian standing together in conversation on the great patio near the mansion.

It's probably because I associated with some of these people back in the mid-sixties and being steeped in moving through the same times that I find myself relishing these memories.




http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sandy-Archer/134897503226235
Retrieved: 7.18.11

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Mime_Troupe
Retrieved: 7.18.11

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/03/21/obituaries/etienne-decroux-is-dead-at-92-master-of-modern-french-mime.html
Retrieved: 7.18.11


Audioclip of Ron Davis in 1998 in the interview by Celine Deransart and Alice Gaillard for the film "Les Diggers de San Francisco".
Contains actual footage of Mime Troupe Bust in San Francisco
http://www.diggers.org/mime_troupe_bust.htm
Retrieved: 7.18.11
http://www.sfmt.org/company/archives/minstrel/minstrel.php
Retrieved: 7.18.11

Staging the Revolution: Guerrilla Theater as a Countercultural Practice, 1965-1968
By Michael William Doyle
[First published in Imagine Nation: The American Counterculture of the 1960s and '70s, New York: Routledge, 2002]
http://www.diggers.org/guerrilla_theater.htm
Retrieved: 7.18.11

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Beck
Retrieved: 7.18.11

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_theater
Retrieved 7.16.11

The purpose behind the Mime Troupe, according to founder R.G. Davis:

"The radical stuff we did in the '60s was a combination of avant-garde and rejection of bourgeois theatrical stuff. Anyone, especially Joan Holden, who talks about the Mime Troupe talks about it as if it was a political entity and not an art entity. And we were art people, avant-garde people. We did events and happenings and I performed with other artists who were also breaking rules, Tape Music Center and dancers and young painters from the Art Institute. I then got political, but that was because I thought that political people were more interesting. People joined us because we were ready to open up to ideas, anything that was subversive, radical, disruptive, entertaining and freewheeling. Then I left the Actors' Workshop and decided to play to audiences that seemed to be volatile, people who were active. I would say that's the definition of a radical theatre group. Otherwise you're playing to the bourgeoisie and telling them that they're stupid, or what the Mime Troupe does now, tells the middle class that they're really sharp and that the stupid people are in government."

(Encore: R.G. Davis
by Sam Hurwitt)

Ronnie Davis when discussing agit-prop:

"When the Mime Troupe first went to the streets to do short skits, crankies (paper movies a la Pete Schumann), and puppet plays, we didn't try to insult or assault people; we decided to teach something useful. We began by teaching general city-folk how to stuff parking meters with tab-tops, using a simple puppet-and-actor skit to inform them of the.free use of parking meters. Another skit in this vein, telephone credit cards, was also designed to teach people something useful."

R.G. Davis, "1971: Rethinking Guerilla Theater", in Performance (1), Vol. 1, No. 1, December 1971

The New Radical Theatre Notebook
by Arthur Sainer
1975 p. 50

The Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company: Visitors 1968-1969

Realtors trying to sell Williams College or what is called John Hopkins Spring Mansion or just "The Spring Mansion" these days are challenged in the current housing market, and the current owners have reduced the asking price from something like $6.5 million.

The realtors confide publicly to the press that "there were a lot of wild parties there in the sixties." Maybe there were. Dr. Schoenfeld mentioned to me he'd hosted some large parties at Farley Hall, but I don't think that's the kind of party the realtors are winking at. And certainly the occasional campfire sit-a-round where we barbecued corn on the cob to celebrate a birthday wouldn't qualify as winkable, not in anybody's book. Nor would those late Sunday afternoons the residents spent at a small line of weber cookers on the great patio. Could basting and turning or even admiring the stately Washingtonia palms ever really be regarded as winkable in any way?

I suspect when merchants are signaling to the press about "wild parties there in the sixties", in an attempt to spice up a property description, such historic gossip might actually be a cultural memory handed down to posterity about the times when the Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company rehearsed at Williams College.

That makes sense, because theater troupes and dance groups all knew of Williams College as a place in Berkeley that offered rehearsal and dance space.

This theater troupe, The Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company, because of sheer numbers really needed a large performance space. The company attracted a multitude of members, maybe 20 or 30 or even more if counting the musicians, all of whom drifted on and off the estate, joining together for an evening of long rehearsal that went on far into the night. There was dancing, and music. So I guess that could qualify as a party.

The Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company, under the helm of Daniel Moore, began creating what he called a poetic sacred folk theater. From 1966 to 1969, the troupe alternated presentation of two plays: "The Walls Are Running Blood" and "Bliss Apocalypse". In each, there was a lot of pageantry and ritual, costumes and masks and painted bodies, flags, props, planetary imagery, prayer scrolls, thunder, lightning, gongs, horns, cymbals, more combinations than can be outlined in a single sentence. The performances were powered by music, and, according to Moore, "the music cut through to the other world, domain of all possibility."

"The intention underlying both of the productions was the transformation of evil and dark energies, such as were driving the Vietnam War, into positive and light energies, through a cathartic initiation, which the central hero had to undergo."

"The impetus and inspiration for the theater company was manifold: Zen Buddhism, which Moore and others of the company were studying at the time, primarily with Zen Master Shrunryu Suzuki in San Francisco, the very vivid and public poetry of the time, by such luminaries as Allen Ginsberg, and its application to open-air ritual theater, as theorized by Antonin Artaud, the music and dance of folk theater, such as Balinese Gamelan rituals, Tibetan monastery rituals of evocation and exorcism, Kathakali of India, etc. and the general wild imagination of the era. Initial poetic "scripts" were written by Moore, with changes, inclusions or deletions, as the members of the Opera Company began rehearsing, trying different things in the kaleidoscope of states we were in at the time,though the final arbiter of changes (usually negotiable) was always left to Moore."

The plays, with singing and chanting, shouting and undulating, like ancient drama went on for hours. At one of their first performances at Live Oak Park in Berkeley, the whole event was closed down by the parks director.

"Just before the 10 p.m. crack down Sunday, the Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company completed its ceremony-drama, the 'Quest for the Inner Eye of Truth'. Costumes, gestures, music and words woven by the Floating Lotus led a procession of spectators into a spontaneous dance."

Because one of the residents of the estate shared that she had been drafted to dance on a picnic table at a park with the troupe, one can guess the Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company had rehearsed at Williams College at least from September 1968 until sometime in June 1969.

Dr. Hopkins liked the Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company and he attended some of their performances at nearby Hinkle Amphitheater.

When the troupe rehearsed at Williams College, afterwards many of the actors and dancers availed themselves of the shower in the rental home that used to house the peacocks. The man living there was pleasant enough about it, and didn't seem to mind the comings and goings.

On the other hand, the neighbors, or to be more precise one neighbor, seemed to mind the comings and goings of the Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company. Under the aegis of the San Antonio Road Neighborhood Association, a barrage of complaints were launched to the city containing reports of noise, parking issues, great numbers of people swarming about the estate, blue jeans caught drying in the sun on a balustrade, and, what seemed the greatest cause of alarm, one which caused the highest level of outrage, an automobile. As it turned out, this vehicle was not owned and operated by any of the tenants on the estate but rather by one of the visiting actors. The automobile was noticed as it was driven up San Antonio Road and then as it had been parked on the estate premises for many hours while the actor was in prolonged rehearsal. The automobile which excited the inexplicable high state of offense and outrage was a large out of date convertible, something like an early '60s Pontiac, as big as a whale, and covered entirely in feathers.

As it turned out, there was no one left to possibly complain about and have evicted. The Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company were already in the process of leaving the estate because they'd been offered living and rehearsal space at an abandoned lumber camp near Santa Rosa and the group moved out of Berkeley entirely.

But as a result of the neighborhood association's noted complaints, the city thus beckoned to duty by upstanding citizens responded, and city building inspectors were assigned to visit and examine all the rental structures, inquire about numbers living in each dwelling, count electrical outlets in each building, advise tenants against the use of extension cords, and so on. So the residents of Williams College had to continue dealing for a time with the administrative aftermath that had erupted as one person's response to feathers glued to a convertible.

So the moral of this story is, if you weren't there, at least try to be accurate about it when recounting history, even if you're trying to make a sale in hard economic times. In the meantime, read the entire "Bliss Apocalypse" and use all the powers of your imagination and pretend you were there.


http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2010/08/05/bignsturdy_cement_palace_in_berkeley_now_15m_less.php
Retrieved 7.26.11


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_Lotus_Magic_Opera_Company
Retrieved 7.26.11

http://www.danielmoorepoetry.com/theaterNote.html
Retrieved: 7.26.11

September 28-29, 1968 Live Oak Park, Berkeley
"Love and Peace Fest Bummed by Fuzz"
From the Berkeley Barb, Issue 163
http://berkeleyfolk.blogspot.com/2010/12/love-and-peace-weekend-part-ii.html
Retrieved: 7.26.11

I believe Dr. Hopkins had a number of models he'd periodically rotate on table display. I remembered the one above on the table when I stopped up once to the manor house, as I had made note of the strange hieroglyphs. There was a little man inside the cockpit, but the plastic bubble covering the cockpit was a bit opaque and hazy. This was likely the original model from 1954, manufactured by the Lindburgh Company.

Usually, the illuminated model was in steady use in the John Hopkins Spring mansion, and the saucer was lit up every evening it was there.

(Image courtesy Kimberly A. King, of Altamont, TN, Amazon Customer)