Burr Morse hauling a vat of maple sap up our muddy driveway, headed out to his big sugarhouse across the road.
Video Recording
Monday April 21st 7:30 PM
People have been telling us for years we needed slick video, and we decided maybe it's time. The day after Easter, we're performing stories from The King and the Thrush and Wolves, in a Burlington TV studio, before a live audience with four cameras mixing on the fly.
Admission is free; the performance primarily exists for video-recording purposes, so to that extent the audience (adults, teens, schoolaged children) is part of the show and we're all in this together. The session will hopefully last about an hour, assuming all goes well technically.
5 seats are still available as of this writing, a couple more may open up if history's a judge. More kids would be particularly welcome, but first come first served. Contact us if you're interested. While there's no charge, admission is by reservation only.
Summer Schedule
Basin Harbor Those of you who know us from our performances at the Basin Harbor Club may want to know that we've been engaged for four days this summer: Tuesday July 1, July 15, July 29 and August 12. We return Saturday October 11, for "Harborween."
Kinhaven We're returning to Kinhaven Music School for both senior and junior sessions this year. Dates have not been finalized.
Feel free to tell them you're glad we're coming.
Pets
The cat continues to emerge by degrees. He still sleeps above the furnace, but he eats in what we call "the pantry," and has been coming out one step further, into the dining room. There he sits in a cardboard box, looks at the dog (safely babygated away in the kitchen), and thinks things over. The dog has so far made a point of not looking back at him. And, feisty though she can be-- nicknames include "Grumbleena" and "Snarlette O'Haira"-- she neither growls nor barks at him. We are hopeful.
Something About Storytelling
text, audio, video
Here's a text left behind by an old oral narrative. Try reading it aloud, imagining yourself with a huge nationwide audience on secular prime time television, trying to hold their attention from beginning to end. Pretty daunting.
Here's an audio of that identical text, performed for a small crowd by a gifted performer. Good isn't he? Notice how he does not hide from-- in fact, virtually rolls in-- the persistant repetition.
Here's a video of the same performer, same piece, on Ed Sullivan. If I may say so, wow!
He began this project in the forties, performing for wounded WWII veterans in the Los Angeles VA hospitals. Notice how contemporary he makes the story for an audience fresh from fighting fascism, see how he looks around before he says "Jews." Notice how he creates the physical arrangement and movement of the characters and objects around him by looking and gesturing in a very simple, conversational manner. Note the conversational yet thorough character sketches: the emperor ("a bit Oscar Wilde" he called it, it's an echo of his earlier Nero), the plotting Chaldeans, the upright Jews. Notice how, though he knew all about using camera angles and movements to create mood and sustain interest-- he directed a movie that continues to hold up as one of the great and most stylistically adventurous films of the twentieth century-- he choose to do this work with one completely static camera. All the technique was in the performance.
(That tactic worked in the context of a variety show. He tried it for a full television program of his own, and, for whatever reason, it did not succeed.)
This was the second or third time he did this story on Sullivan. I've seen the first one, and it's even better. This one came very near to the end of his life, and he was, as he says, out of practice. But still and again, wow!
He was one of the biggest stars of his day, a very important artist in movies from the early talkies into the sixties, with ground-breaking work on radio, phonograph records, and the New York and London stage. During the fifties, he toured the heartland as a platform storyteller, with greater impact than anybody since Mark Twain. His personal story near the center of the Hollywood purge was unique. He mentored Al Pachino. His last performance, a tour de force Southern senator in a big Preminger movie, was made as he was dying of kidney cancer.
There's lots more. His "bit of fun" with Brecht.... well, obviously, I'm onto something here, and will let you know more as it takes form.
That's it for now.
Tim
