The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 57, No. 24, Ed. 1 Thursday, April 16, 1970 Page: 4 of 6
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Staging problems detract from players''The Physicists'
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"Only in the madhouseare
we free. Only in the madhouse
can we think our own thoughts.
Either we stay in the mad-
house, or the world becomes
one."
Durrenmatt's Physicists re-
turns the audience to the prob-
lem of science and The Rice
Players to the asylum. Marat-
Sade, where madmen take the
roles of the neurotics who make
history, succeeded at Rice as
no other play has. In The
Physicists, apparently sane
scientists fearing the use that
society will make of their
knowledge, assume the roles of
madmen playing the parts of
great scientists gone apparent-
ly mad. This play, one feels,
like Marat-Sade, could be lived
at Rice rather than acted.
But in the Players' produc-
tion, the audience is often more
aware of the acting.
Donald Bayne is innovative
and persuasive as an apparent-
ly sane man playing a mad-
man's Newton. Dave Nissen is
erratically brilliant as a cracked
Einstein. And Bennett Falk
once more dominates the Play-
er's stage, this time as Mobius,
the scientist who has achieved
his ambition to know as much
as God.
When the three men control
the stage, the play manages to
live. / When they do not, it
seems simply cluttered with
people trying to act. Given all
the talent that is available to
the Players, it is fair, I think,
to ask why their productions
alternate between the extremes
of success and pass-fail.
The Hamman Hall stage it-
self is clearly a problem. Neil
Haven's set for this play is
almost as startling as the tin-
foil of America Hurrah! In that
play and in Marat-Sade, the
action filled the stage with
dynamism and psychic energy.
But for The Physicists, the
stage is simply too large and
open. It does not contain the
energy of the best scenes, but
dissipates them. The wall of
shadow that separates the audi-
ence from the stage in Hamman
Hall contributes to this dis-
persal of energy.
The floor of the set, with its
asymmetrical patterns con-
tributes strongly to the mad-
house atmosphei-e. But in the
design of the rest of the 18th-
century interior there is, I
think, a timidity in the exercise
of the historical imagination.
Designers should take the same of voice, projection, self-aware-
freedom with the older styles
of furniture and architecture
that they take with ^he mod
sets. An obvious source for
Durrenmatt's madhouse would
be the 18th-century interiors
of Beardsley's drawings for
The Rape of the Lock, where
each rococo flourish seems to
hint at some unspeakable and
unfathomable mystery of mind
and body.
The Physicists once more'
crowds a number of minor and
inexperienced parts on the
stage. The timing and blocking
is workable, even for the un-
wieldy figures of the male
nurses — Would you believe
Brownie Wheless, Rodrigo
Barnes, and Fred Dooley? But
the new recruits need to work
at the basics of movement, ges-
tures, and projection until they
lose their acute self-conscious-
ness on the stage. Except for
the old pros, most of the Play-
ers march, stride, and parade
across the stage like the
emperor in his new clothes.
Finally, one has to ask, I
think, why the number of cap-
able actresses remains so con-
sistently small on the Rice
stages. The obvious problems
Gregory jabs US money-worship
KATIE DESOMMA
"When Hitler was busy wip-
ing out the Jews, most of the
Germans didn't have anything
to do with it. But they didn't
do anything. They knew about
it, but they didn't do anything."
This was Tuesday night, in the
Chem Lecture Hall, wbei;e Dick
Gregory talked to an audience
two abreast down the aisles,
and standing in the back. "Well,
when the bombs started falling
over Berlin, these same Ger-
mans were looking up, and they
found out that the bombs were-
n't marked 'For Bad Germans
Only.' This kind of suprising,
ironic, and often extremely
funny illustration marked
Gregory's speech.
Gregory talked of human
problems rather than of black
problems. "When these white
parents in Mississippi, rather
than send their kids to school
with niggers, set up classrooms
in a condemned building, then
who really has a problem?" He
talked of the Indians locked up
on reservations, of the forty-
four million in America who
go hungry, and of grape-pickers
in California. "A friend of mine
was showing me the census
form, where it says under Race,
'black or Negro' . . . And I told
him, blow it off. Put down
human."'
Non-violence was what Greg-
ory advocated. It wasn't the
police he blamed, but rather
American money-worship. "It's
not the cops who are the pigs.
It's the Rockefellers, the Du-
ponts, the Kennedys that are
making the air. unbreathable
and the water undrinkable. But
you can't touch them. They got
the Jolly Green with certain inalienable rights
the dollar,
Jesus."
Not only have the old folks
left the country to you young
folk in this condition, he said,
but they used up all the tricks.
Nixon was the last one. White
America put him in office, and
he can't even please them. "Do
you know that he has managed
to get us into a depression and
a recession at the same time?"
Gregory's free rambling easily
lent itself to very humorous,
much-applauded sallies on
Nixon and Agnew, and softened
the audience for continuous
blows.
"If democracy is such a good
thing, then why ai-e we having
to cram it down the throats
of the people in Vietnam with
guns?" he asked. Gregory
talked of a country where
indoctrination replaced educa-
tion, and in which newspaper
editors, following the burning
of certain buildings in New
York, warned against leftists
—when even the FBI didn't
know who was responsible.
"When the President of the
U.S. comes out before Cong-
ress advocating the death pen-
alty after some empty build-
ings in N.Y. get burned, rather
than after a church in Alabama
full of blacks gets bombed,
then you know that something
is wrong."
Broken by inumerable brusts
of applause, it was only at one
point that Gregory's speech
was actually halted by a stand-
ing ovation. He was speaking
the first words of the Declara-
tion. "We hold these truths to
be self-evident . . . that all men
are created equal . . . that they
are endowed by their Creator
He emphasized that the revo-
lution was already underway.
"My grandmother, when I was
about four years old, taught me
that when I grow up some
white man would call me 'boy,'(
and not to let i£ bother me . .
Well, I got seven kids. And
me and my old woman, we ain't
teaching them nothing."
ness, and living within a role
arise most often with the
women's parts. And in this
play, the emerging talent of
Martha Gipson is unfortunately
confined to the role of a melo-
dramatic German spinster in a
wheel chair, and her gently
expressive mouth and eyes are
distorted with a septuagenar-
ian's make-up.
The Players, I think, have
succeeded most when they did
their own thing, which usually
works in the direction of the
drama of the surreal or the
absurd. Heavy Shakespeare and
naturalistic drama have usually
meant disasters, even in as
modern a form as Durrenmatt.
The solution for both the
staging and the problems of
acting must be a consistent
commitment to innovative and
surreal theater. And the heavies
—whether Shakespeare or Dur-
renmatt—should be completely
and unscrupulously transformed
into the modern idioms which
the Players handle so well. An
obvious corollary would be for
the Players to
produce such home
finables as the
productions. The Players, mi 4 pM 12 AM
effect, should take advantage | 1 AM Sat and gun f
of their freedom to create 3. ^ HAPPY HOUR 5*6 ^
drama which grows out of the ^►►►►►►►►►►►►►►►►►►►►►►►►►►►►►►►►►►►►►►►►►►►^
KAA/WWWW\AAAA^AAAAAAA/W\AAAAAAA/NA/SAAAA/W\AAAAAAAA^VWSA^VWW«
ONE'S A MEAL
BROOKS SYSTEM SANDWICH SHOPS
FINE FOODS FOR EVERYONE
Rice experience. Otherwise the
audience will think, as the nurse
(Linda Kerr) tells Bennett
Falk a few moments before he
strangles her, "You were just
putting it on." "Yes," Bennett
solemnly assures her, "I was
only pretending to be mad."
STEWART A. BAKER
English Department
Wiess movie
premiere later
The premiere of "Grigsby, G.,"
the feature length motion pic-
ture being made by two Wiess
College students has been post-
poned until next week. The
champagne gala is now sched-
uled for Saturday, April 25, at
7 pm in Hamman Hall as part
of the formal Rondelet evening.
Following the premiere, the
movie will be shown in the
Biology amphitheater April 26
through May 2 at 8 pm with
a second showing at 10 pm on
May 1 and 2.
2520 Amherst
.ife Th$ Village
9307 Stella Link
Stella' Link Center
24 HOUR LOCATIONS AT
9047 South Main
4422 South Main
Does it hurt
to chill beer twice?
Bernard Gold Dispensing Optician
Independent
Serving- Houston Since 1952
Prescriptions, Repairs, Replacements
Eyewear & Contact Lenses
Fellow In
International Academy of Opticianry
American Board of Opticianry
In the Village Off Kirby °
2525 Times Blvd. JA 4-3676
' Not that you'd want to. Some-
times it just happens ... like
after a picnic, or when you
bring home a couple of cold
6-paks and forget to put 'em
in the refrigerator. Does re-
chilling goof up the taste or
flatten the flavor?"
Relax. You don't have
to worry.
A really
good beer like
Budweiser is just
as good when you chill it
twice. We're mighty glad about
that. We'd hate to think of all
our effort going down the drain
Yes?
just because the temperature
has its ups and downs.
You can understand why
when you consider all the extra
trouble and extra expense that
go into brewing Bud©. For in-
stance, Budweiser is the only
beer in America that's Beech-
wood Aged.
So... it's absolutely okay
to chill beer twice.
Enough said. (Of
course, we have
a lot more to say
about Budweiser. But we'll
keep it on ice for now.)
®Udwei «*
Budweiser. is the King of Beers.
(But you know that.)
ANHEUSER-BUSCH, INC. • ST. 10UIS . NEWARK • LOS ANGELES • TAMPA • HOUSTON • COLUMBUS • JACKSONVILLE
the rice thresher, april 16,1970—page 4
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Murray, Jack. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 57, No. 24, Ed. 1 Thursday, April 16, 1970, newspaper, April 16, 1970; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth245081/m1/4/: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.