Our guest
author today is the incomparable Lenny
Kleinfeld. If you’re not familiar with
Lenny's work you’re missing something really special. Make that really hysterically special. Lenny’s first novel, “Shooters And Chasers,” is one of the funniest crime novels I ever
read. His recently completed
second, “Some Dead Genius”—the
manuscript of which Leighton and I were privileged to read—is the
funniest. As Lenny puts it, the
exact date “Some Dead Genius” will be inflicted on the public has yet to be
determined. Lenny began his career as a playwright, columnist and freelance
writer in Chicago. Then he sold a screenplay. He is currently 27 years into a
business trip to Los Angeles. —Jeff
In September of
1968 I got back to Madison, Wisconsin a week before the start of classes for my
senior year at UW. I called a friend. He wasn't home. I called another friend.
Wasn't home. But his roommate said both guys were rehearsing a play, directed
by another friend, Stuart Gordon.
So I dropped in. It was at the Play
Circle, a 140-seat theater in the Student Union, where, Wednesdays through
Sundays, they showed movies. But three or four times a year the Union funded
original student plays in that space. You got a $250 budget and three
performances: one Monday night, then a matinee and an evening show on Tuesday,
after which you had to strike the set so the movie screen could be
re-installed.
I
walked into what was a typical late-1960s rehearsal; the cast was stoned and
doing improvs, riffing on Peter Pan.
A short time later so was I. A short time after that I was informed I was in
the cast, despite the fact I'm one of the worst actors in the English-speaking
world. Stuart, no fool, cast me in the role of a dialog-free spear-carrier.
More precisely, a gun-, baton-, and tear-gas-carrying riot cop.
Riot
police, in Peter Pan?
Glad
you asked.
Stuart
was doing a site-specific adaptation of the J.M. Barrie classic. Specifically,
it embodied the sex, drugs, rock&roll and political upheaval going down in
Madison. Peaceful anti-war demonstrations on the campus had been attacked by
the city police. Some of the students fought back, so what were essentially
police riots were dubbed student riots. Several continued for days, ending only
when the governor called out the national guard to get between the cops and the
students, not to mention get between the cops and the taxpayer-funded campus
before they wrecked the place.
Therefore,
Peter Pan was now a free-spirited hippie dude. His sidekick, Tinkerbell, was a
hairy guy in a fringed leather shirt who dealt acid—I mean dispensed fairy
dust, which sent Wendy and her brothers on a trip to Neverland, where the Lost
Boys were a commune of semi-feral teens, the Indians were African-American
Black Power radicals, and Captain Hook wasn't a pirate, he was a cop, as were
his men, who wore leather jackets, helmets and aviator shades.
The
trip Peter, Tink, Wendy and her brothers took to Neverland consisted of a
heavy-duty light show. The set and everyone on it were covered with deeply
colored stage lights, pulsing oil projections, blacklights, strobes and a movie
of flowing lava, accompanied by In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
played at brain-mulching volume.
And,
center stage, waiting to greet Peter and Wendy, was Stuart's Big Allegorical
Move: six naked female dancers. They symbolized, he explained, innocence.
Later,
after the first dust-up between the Lost Boys and the cops, the women danced
again—this time in tights, nude only from the waist up, to symbolize
compromised innocence.
Then,
after Peter shoots and kills Hook—these were turbulent times, man—they
symbolized the loss of innocence by dancing fully clothed, with fright wigs and
monster make-up. Though, if I remember correctly, they wore leotards with no
bras. As did a good portion of our audience.
Ah,
our audience. The previous semester Stuart had done a fantastically creative,
hilarious and disturbing comedy that was a huge hit. So when the 420 tickets
for his Peter Pan were released—the
Union gave them away free—they were gone in an hour.
When
we arrived for a combined dress/tech rehearsal on the Monday afternoon before
our Monday night opening, the theater's lobby was packed with students who
couldn't get tickets, imploring Stuart to let them attend the rehearsal. He
agreed, but asked them to wait while we got set up.
At
that point I was collared by one of the students—a photographer I knew from the
student newspaper, for which I wrote. He asked if we would let him in early,
get him a front row seat, and permit him take pictures. He promised to provide
free copies to the cast—an offer Stuart agreed to, as this show had no budget
for production photos, and none of us had snapped a single shot during
rehearsals.
So
we did the dress/tech in front of a full house, and despite the usual glitches
requiring stops and starts to get the equipment and the actors coordinated, it
worked. The audience left happy and we got busy with the usual frantic last-minute
fixes for the official opening.
That
went even better. Big fun, standing ovation. But no big opening night party. We
were exhausted from rehearsing and building the show, and had to be back at the
theater by noon. After going to morning classes.
I
hadn't told anyone in the cast this was also my birthday. But when I got back
to my apartment, one of my roommates eagerly led me to the kitchen, where,
despite being high and munchy, he hadn't cut into any of the three birthday
cakes sitting on the kitchen table. They'd been baked by four women I was
seeing; two were roommates who collaborated on cake #3.
Age
of Aquarius, my ass. It was the Age of Dionysos, Mars, Dionysos, Apollo and
Dionysos.
The
next morning it morphed into the Age of Kafka & Fellini. I had no idea my
photographer pal was also a stringer for AP and UPI. He'd been supplying them
with shots of massive anti-war demonstrations. This time he'd sent photos of
our little show; mainly, for some
reason, shots of the totally nude dance number.
The
wire services had distributed them globally; they'd been all over European
newspapers and TV, and during the day began to appear in the American media.
When
we finished the matinee we were greeted by reporters, cameras, and breaking
news. Madison's District Attorney had issued a statement: if we did our third
and final performance we'd be busted on indecent exposure charges.
A
recent Supreme Court decision had rendered such laws unconstitutional in cases
where the work had artistic and/or socially redeeming value. A prosecution
would fail, or if it succeeded, would be overturned on appeal. But the DA was a
Republican who was up for re-election in a month. This was about political
exposure, not nipple and genital exposure.
And
yet the university locked us out of the Play Circle so we couldn't do our final
performance.
So
we broke in.
So
the school pulled the fuses.
So
we lit some candles and occupied the theater.
So
a deal was struck. If we left the theater, we'd be allowed to return and do a
matinee for a tiny audience: the DA, the Chief of Police, and three theater
professors. After the show the five would share their professional assessments
of the play's socially redeeming allegorical nipples and genitals.
In
the meantime, the story surged way off the charts; Johnny Carson was cracking
jokes about us on The Tonight Show.
So
the next afternoon we took the stage, with the three professors sitting on one
side of the theater, the DA and Police Chief on the other. When we finished,
the professors went to the center aisle and waited to discuss things with the
law enforcement officials.
The
law enforcement officials brushed by them without a word and marched straight
to the lobby—which was jammed with a mob of reporters, TV cameramen and still
photographers large enough to cover an actual national emergency.
The
DA pulled out and read a typed statement, about how after witnessing and
evaluating a performance of Peter Pan, it was in his opinion obscene, and any further
showing would meet with the full wrath of the law.
Our
first instinct was to commandeer the theater and do our final performance—but
that was a non-starter, what with the school able to cut off the electricity.
However…
a student film society, which had two movie screenings scheduled for the next
night, offered to let us use the room they were in—a six-hundred-seat lecture
hall. Both showings were sold out, so we'd do two performances—to a total
audience of 1,200.
The
thing was, after the DA's threat, half of the cast dropped out. Every actor and
dancer had gotten calls from their parents. Damn few—if memory serves, the
exact number was zero—were supportive.
Dire
measures were necessary. I was promoted to the role of Second Mate Smee, which
entailed me inflicting dialog on an audience.
On
the other hand, one of the involuntary accommodations improved the show. Two of
the Lost Boys were twins who constantly squabbled. One of the twins dropped
out. So the remaining actor played both brothers, as one schizophrenic who
argued with himself. It was a ton funnier.
The
serious problem was the dancers—there were only two left. The choreography
looked like crap. It might work with three, but there was no time to rehearse
in a new dancer—not that any women were volunteering.
André
De Shields volunteered. He was playing the leader of the Black Pantherish
faction. André was—still is—a brilliant actor, singer and dancer. And willing
to work nude. But, after some thought, Stuart chose to have André wear a dance
belt, just enough fabric to cover his privates. Stuart knew there'd be cops in
the audience, and in those days, even that far north, a black guy swinging free
between two naked white women might press bad buttons. He didn't want the show
stopped, perhaps violently, less than halfway through. Followed by pornography
and sex trafficking charges.
So
we went ahead with our semi-defiant closing night of Peter Pan—on a very narrow lecture hall stage, which flattened our
movement, so it had a sort of two-dimensional shadow-puppet quality. No matter;
it got roaring responses. One of which we discouraged, when a student jumped to
his feet and shouted, "Let's all take off our clothes in solidarity!"
What a social activist considers solidarity,
us theater sluts consider upstaging.
Speaking
of clothes, the undercover cops in the house were easy to spot. There were like
596 long-haired college kids in tie-dye, bellbottoms and India-print dresses,
along with four chunky adult men with crew cuts, wearing chinos and
windbreakers, which they kept zipped up in an attempt to conceal the holsters
that were bulging under the jackets' elastic waistbands.
On
the far right side of the lecture stage there was a door that led directly to
the campus outside. After our final curtain call we all—in full make-up and
costume—ran out the door and fled into the night.
The
DA issued warrants for Stuart and the two female dancers. They only had the
name of one—Carolyn Purdy, Stuart's girlfriend. The other was a Jane Doe
warrant. They never caught her.
Stuart
and Carolyn hid out for a few days, hired a lawyer and turned themselves in.
The
DA was re-elected and dropped the charges.
Stuart and Carolyn got married, started a
successful theater company in Chicago, and raised three terrific daughters.
In
2007, André De Shields was nominated for a Tony for his performance in the
original Broadway production of The Full
Monty.
Lenny Kleinfeld
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