MARRIAGE PLAY (LOVE AND THEATRE)

I have been wondering who I am of late. I am now a former editor attempting a theatrical comeback after recently retiring from a 30-year career in publishing. Audiobook publishing to be exact. It has been a 34-year absence from the stage for me. Today as I write it is only 11 days until opening night for Edward Albee's Marriage Play. My comeback, of sorts. I am playing Jack, a man in the midst of a middle-aged crisis who has just experienced an epiphany. Type-casting.

My stage career was of little note to anyone else save myself, but it spanned from roughly 1966-1988. I count the years from when my passion for theatre first actualized when I was ten to when it became a longing too burdensome, a love unrequited. It all began in community theater at Camp Darby in Livorno, Italia in the musical Oliver and ended Off-Broadway, a Theatre Row venue on 42nd Street between the 9th and 10th Avenues in NYC.  My last gig was in the title role of Shakespeare's Henry V.

    I turned down a paying gig on Theatre Row, a chance to play James Joyce's character, Stephen Dedalus, to play instead the wordiest motherfucker Shakespeare ever wrote. The play was performed by a company of actors called the New Rude Mechanicals. I did it for free, but that is too long a story for the present time.

    Marriage Play, is a two-person play. Adriane (my wife) will be playing the role of Gillian. "Jack and Gillian, went up the hill etc."

    She was and is an actor as well, but hers has been a more arduous journey than mine. She, like my mother, was discouraged from the pursuit of any acting career by her father, and then later by her colleagues and peers in film and commercial production. "Actors become producers, not the other way round."

    My wife and I first met as extras on the set of Martin Scorcese's short film, "Life Lessons." It was one of three short works that comprised an anthology film, New York Stories. The other segments were directed by Francis Ford Coppola and Woody Allen.

    I have a letter from Woody, after my one-and-only SAG day player gig wound up on the cutting room floor, but I will leave the telling of the Scorcese episode until a later date.

For tickets click this link: https://Marriage Play_Albee_Tickets

First Satori

My teacher, Basho said:

Begin again

Over and over again

Always a new beginning.

Fear not the flames

Be as the Phoenix”

 

My reply:

I am the last son

of the MacFilidh clan, 

the son of the poet

gone up in flames.

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What was it I wanted?
to say, to do
now standing at the abyss
to see who, how or what I am?
 
To see the self
touch where the heart resides
And, when fear gathers
Will, the turning of the tide.
 
I sat down
Trying to apprehend the truth of my existence
I sat a lifetime and still the door was closed
 
Knock again.
 
Clever speech is gone
Standing naked to the wind
A fire grows in the belly
a hunger, and a thirst
in search of the bull
no glimpse of eternity?

Speak for no faiths

No ism, no cause, save one

The celebration, the sustenance

And the surrender of life

It is the last hope

To be thrown away

Till tears bitter, bittersweet

joy and sorrow abide

Then speak but one word

 

Love

Now forget this too

It is too much this peace

Too sublime, too clinging

Too late for tears, too soon

We are the dust.

Excerpted from The Phoenix Chronicle (c)1988, 2021 by Joe B. McNeely Jr. 

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