CLAY SERA SERA

Hey, folks, check out The Colour Room, now streaming on Amazon Prime. It's a drama about the early career of the wonderful Clarice Cliff, a working-class factory girl in the north of England who became one of the most renowned ceramic artists of the Art Deco '30s.

 

Her work is distinctive, not only for the vivid colors on her hand-painted pieces, but the abstract geometrical shapes she pioneered for everyday household items like cups, plates, teapots and creamers.

 

The movie is long on atmosphere — those giant kiln chimneys belching smoke into the sky day and night — and cheerworthy in the way the audacious young Clarice rises above her station painting pottery on an assembly line at the Wilkinson company to become one of the company's top designers. 

 

And while her work confounds most of the stodgy male board members, she perseveres by rallying her fellow "paintresses" to produce her line and market it to an enthusiastic demographic of women. (Not unlike the Girl Power motif of the Barbie movie!)

 

 But beyond that, the movie was nostalgic for me (or possibly triggering), since my first summer job out of high school was painting bisque ware on the line at the funky Metlox Potteries factory in Manhattan Beach. Company designs were stamped on the pieces, which we girls had to paint in, not only in preordained colors, but in a precise number of brush strokes. Mess up, and your work was relegated to the (dreaded) seconds store. 

Not all that creative, except that it prompted me to start drawing a comic strip about my adventures in the working world, which I just dug out to look at for the first time in (ahem) 50 years.

 

In the strip, I called it Hotbox Pottery because it was always sweltering in the workplace in summer, with the kiln roaring away. The paint room was a couple of rooms away, but the bisque grading department, where my mom worked, adjoined the kiln room and was blistering in all seasons; the foreman handed out daily rations of salt tablets to keep the work force up and running.

The owner's initials were ES (Evan Shaw, who had bought the company from its original founders), so we always referred to him as Ebenezer Scrooge for his miserly policies. But looking back, it wasn't such a bad place to start my working life, earning my own paycheck (such as it was ), and doing my own banking. Except for the heat, painting pottery was more fun than slinging burgers at McDonald's or any kind of retail job where I'd have to confront a cash register.

 

Sadly, nothing I painted is ever likely to turn up on Antiques Roadshow (unlike Clarice Cliff). We never got to paint any of the cool Atomic '50s designs; most of our work was the prosaic Rooster or Fruit Basket patterns. Still, newcomers were allowed to sign and keep their first successfully painted plate, which I still have. And in retrospect, I'm pleased to think I had some connection, however tenuous, to what I realize now was the fabled Mid-Century California art pottery scene. 

 

Who knew?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WORD PLAY

 SCS stages smart, witty story of the actors who saved Shakespeare

You couldn't imagine a better production to capture the spirit of this pivotal Santa Cruz Shakespeare season than The Book of Will. Lauren Gunderson's contemporary play about the creation of the First Folio of Shakespeare's texts is all about the power of words — to inspire and excite, to celebrate and educate, to comfort and heal. And it provides the perfect vehicle for outgoing Artistic Director Mike Ryan to hand over the company reins to incoming AD Charles Pasternak, playing the two real-life actors whose persistence, against all odds, preserved Shakespeare's splendid words for all time.

Ryan and Pasternak play John Heminge and Henry Condell, two Elizabethan actors, friends and colleagues of the recently deceased Will, who hatch a scheme to collect and transcribe all the scribbled-down versions of Shakespeare's play texts they can find to produce a single, official volume of his work in print. This is no easy task. Complete playscripts were rare in this era; normally, actors only copied out their own parts to learn, partly to save on time and the expense of materials like parchment and ink, and partly to prevent other companies from stealing a complete script and producing their own versions. Not that it worked very well, as companies who only had a few scenes of a play to work with cheerfully made up the rest.
 

This point is made painfully clear in the very first scene as a young actor from a rival company (Mariana Garzon Toro) energetically murders Hamlet's "To be or not to be" speech with some random improvised filler. Heminge and Condell, of the King's Men theatrical troupe, and celebrated actor Richard Burbage (played with bombastic verve by Rex Young) gather in a tavern run by Heminge's daughter, Alice (winsome and spirited Allie Pratt) to bemoan the evident deterioration of Shakespeare's plays in performance some seven years after the author's death. Some ardent players like Burbage have memorized entire plays as written, but their generation is aging out, to be replaced by their less-well-schooled heirs.

It's Condell who first proposes the crack-brained idea of collecting Will's plays into a single volume, in his own authentic words — while people still remember what they are. Heminge, who has also become the troupe's business manager, is more tentative, cost-wise. But the enthusiasm of not only Condell and Alice, but Condell's amiable wife, Elizabeth (Paige Lindsey White) and Heminge's own wry, stout-hearted wife, Rebecca (Amy Kim Waschke) convince him of the urgency of preserving Will's thrilling words.

It all comes home to Heminge in a deeply moving late-inning monologue about the power of words to express the inexpressible and give vent to the otherwise unbearable burden of heartbreak.

The supporting cast is terrific, as usual. Young doubles in the role of the publisher, Jaggard, who's been blithely profiting off  the sale of bastardized version of Shakespeare's plays. Ben Jonson (a suitably flamboyant David Kelly), Shakespeare's friend and rival, makes a guest appearance.

Director Laura Gordon is also an actor (she was Prospero in last season's The Tempest),  and her staging makes the most of all the comedy and dry wit, as well as the more subtle, poignant moments in the plot. And for us grumpy traditionalists who pine to see Shakespeare performed in Elizabethan-style dress once in awhile, B. Modern's costumes evoke the period while retaining an unfussy, lived-in aesthetic.

Believe it or not, this is the 10th anniversary of Santa Cruz Shakespeare (emerging phoenix-like from the ashes of the well-beloved Shakespeare Santa Cruz), and the company's 8th season in the lovely Audrey Stanley Grove up in Delaveaga Park. We have Mike Ryan to thank for shepherding the company through these most tumultuous times to bounce back stronger than ever, even now, when the pandemic and its ongoing aftermath continues to wreak havoc in the arts. With Charles Pasternak at the helm (who acted as co-Artistic Director with Ryan this season, before stepping into the job full time next year), we can expect the festival to continue to build on its impressive past while eagerly embracing the future.

Top photo: Kevin Lohman

Above: R. R. Jones

LOVE CRAFT

Complicity, not compliance, highlights spirited SCS offering

There's a telling moment near the end of Santa Cruz Shakespeare's current production of The Taming Of the Shrew. It occurs in the climactic speech by Kate, the designated "shrew," delivering her manifesto on the state of her consciousness after having been "tamed" by her new husband, Petruchio, and it involves the tiny alteration of one single word.

In the line that has given feminists fits at least since the "Women's Lib" '70s, Kate declares,  "I am ashamed that women are so simple." Except, here, director Robynn Rodriguez swaps out the word "women" and replaces it with "people," which, coupled with the rest of Shakespeare's verse, "To offer war when they should kneel for peace," seems less like a call for female subservience to men than an observation on the regrettable human instinct to lash out in the face of any perceived opposition. Kate advocates for the gentle art of compromise — in love, in marriage, in society in general — as a means of achieving one's goals. Which are, in the case of Kate and Petruchio, individually, and, finally, together, the subversion of social conformity in pursuit of a more authentic life.

This SCS production gives us an exhilarating pair of non-conformists on this collision course. Boisterous Petruchio (M. L.  Roberts) has come to town to snag himself a rich bride and expand his own substantial properties. Katarina (Kelly Rogers) is a caustic young woman whose wealthy father, Baptista (Derrick Lee Weeden) has decreed that his pretty and obedient youngest daughter, Bianca (Yael Jeshion-Nelson), can't be wooed or wed until her older sister, Kate, is married off. To this end, Bianca's many would-be suitors conspire with Petruchio to woo Kate and clear their path to Bianca.

 But what begins as a business proposition levels up as soon as Petruchio gets his first look at his quarry — and feels her first verbal sting.  In Kate, he recognizes a fellow iconoclast, despite their different approaches; he cheerfully flaunts the rules of polite society to declare his plan to "wive it wealthily in Padua," while she resorts to waspish sarcasm. Profoundly unhappy in her domestic role from which there is seemingly no escape, she's so used to being mocked for her sharp tongue and unvarnished opinions, she assumes Petruchio's attentions are another cruel joke and launches a preemptive verbal strike in self-defense.

Roberts gives us a roistering, irreverent Petruchio, antic enough to wear a suit of Harlequin motley to his own wedding, yet seriously delighted to find in Kate a temperament so well matched to his own. (Kudos to Pamela Rodriguez-Montero's costumes that aren't rooted in any particular time or place, but are consistently true to the comic and narrative undercurrents in any given scene.) Rogers' Kate is an uncut gem of wit and passion whose only outlet is anger. In sparring with Petruchio, she is not so much "tamed" as liberated from the habit of mistrust. Even his most ridiculous commands — his insistent that the sun is, in fact, the moon, for example — become a test not of Kate's compliance to his whims, but her complicity in his vision of a less conventional and more rewarding alliance. It takes her awhile to learn to trust the one person who understands and values her, but there's great fun and blossoming joy in her discovery that they are kindred spirits, and that their best escape from restrictive social conventions is each other.

Scene-stealing Patty Gallagher shows off her flair for physical slapstick as Petruchio's loyal servant, Grumio (in one scene, she stands, er, gallops in as his horse),  and Sofia K. Metcalf's Tranio is our stalwart guide, helping to keep track of the busy plot; he disguises himself as his scholarly young master, Lucentio, while the real Lucentio (Junior Nyong'o) disguises himself as a humble tutor to Bianca in order to court her in secret.

On the night I went, there was also a special guest appearance by Jewel Theatre Artistic Director and founder Julie James in a featured role as both a hapless tailor, and a scornful widow who foolishly attempts to match wits with Kate. The lively ensemble keeps the action fast and funny right through to the spirited finale that will have you cheering for the art and craft of love.

Photos by RR Jones

KING of FOOLS

Shakespeare season is now in full swing in Santa Cruz, with the premiere of King Lear last week joining The Taming of the Shrew and The Book Of Will in repertory at Santa Cruz Shakespeare (through August 27).

This is a milestone season for the entity formerly known as Shakespeare Santa Cruz, celebrating ten years since it re-emerged, phoenix-like, in the Audrey Stanley Grove at DeLaveaga Park, under the stewardship of Artistic Director Mike Ryan. It's also a milestone production of Lear. As the rampaging old king driven mad by his duplicitous, ungrateful daughters, longtime SSC Artistic Director Paul Whitworth is making his debut on the Grove stage. It's interesting to note that way back in 1995, when the company was still Shakespeare Santa Cruz, it mounted a production of Lear with Whitworth in the small but plummy featured role of the king's Fool. So it's fascinating to see how Whitworth has aged into the role of Lear in real time, almost 30 years later.

Whitworth brings his entire range of vocal acrobatics to the part; he's particularly effective in the first act, shamelessly wheedling empty flattery out of his two eldest, false-hearted daughters, and in the mad scene in the second half, his wits flown, barefoot, dragging around a few meagre possessions in a cart, vocally caressing each antic observation.

In this production, the philosophical young Fool banished from court with the mad old king is played with tremulous wit and tenderness by Sofia K. Metcalf. In a parallel story of parental foolishness, the Duke of Gloucester's scheming bastard son, Edmund, convinces him that his legitimate son, Edgar, is plotting to kill him, so Edgar flees into the wild with a price on his head, disguising himself as raggedy madman Tom O'Bedlam. Junior Nyong'o is terrific as Edgar/Tom, his madcap exuberance layered over a foundation of aching nobility. 

 

Metcalf, Nyong'o, Whitworth, Gallagher: heart and soul

 

The ever-reliable Patty Gallagher pops up as Kent, the loyal courtier who disguises herself as a rustic to tend to Lear in his wandering exile. This quartet of the keenly observant Fool, the king sliding into madness, the pretend lunatic, and the stubbornly sensible shepherd of this mismatched flock is the heart and soul of this production. Derrick Lee Weeden deserves honorable mention not only for his formidable presence and pathos as the duped and repentant Gloucester, but for having the most majestic and commanding voice in the Grove.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, I attended the first pre-premiere performance of Lear at a 2pm matinee, which I do not recommend. The production was not lacking in luster, quality or intensity, but if ever a Shakespearean play needed to be staged and seen at night, it's Lear, with its raging midnight storm mirroring the imploding disintegration of the old king's wits at the betrayal of his daughters and his own foolishness.

Watching it in full, simmering sunshine is an entirely different experience — especially when the characters onstage complain about the bitter cold. Yes, awnings erected at the Grove for matinees provide intermittent shade for the audience as the sun moves, but the shifting sun and absence of stage lighting for daylight performances leaves some key scenes to play out in shadow onstage that would likely be spotlighted in the dark of night.

Still, even if I wasn't getting the optimum viewing experience, most of the upcoming performances of King Lear are at night, where dark and possible fog and chill will complement the action onstage. While audiences are unlikely to experience an actual thunderstorm in the Grove in August (although the way the weather has been acting out this year, who knows?), this production generates its own atmospheric river of dramatic turbulence.

Photos by RR Jones
 

HE THOUGHT HE COULD

I was clearing out James' toy cabinet when, just like a box of Crackerjacks, I found a surprise inside. Tucked away behind the monster models, robots and ray guns was this unassuming little red story book from his childhood: The Little Engine That Could. 

 It wasn't something he picked up the flea market. Right there inside the front cover, somebody had written in, "Jimmy 1953." He'd had it since he was two years old. 

 I don't know if he brought it with him the first time he drove out west to California from Illinois, or whether he snagged it from his mom's things in storage when the family moved her into assisted living. I never really noticed it before, but what surprised me was that of all the storybooks he must have had as a child (and since he was the fourth of five siblings, the house must have been full of them), this was the one he decided to keep. It's about a train; there are no cute or funny animals, no spunky children, no magic, no whimsical trips into outer space. The illustrations aren't especially beguiling. Why this book? 

So I read it. And now I think I get it. 

To refresh, a train carrying toys and "wholesome food" to children waiting on the other side of a mountain suddenly breaks down. A snooty Shiny Passenger Engine and an arrogant Big Strong Freight Engine refuse to help, and a Kind Engine is too old and rusty. Then along comes a Little Blue Engine that has never been over the mountain and is only used for switching in the yard. But she hitches herself to the train and pulls it up the mountain, chugging along to the refrain, "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can . . . ." 

 Consciously or not, I can see how my Art Boy might identify with that plucky Little Blue Engine. Consider the parallels! 

As an incoming college freshman, he declined his counselor's advice to start with introductory classes and signed up for advanced courses instead. Seemingly on a whim, he shocked his friends and family (who had lived in the same Chicago suburb for generations) by moving to California when his girlfriend at the time got accepted to UCSC. For a year, he made a living scouring the flea market for paperbacks to sell to his mail-order client list of collectors. Until he met singer, musician, and comics fan Joe Ferrara; together (with zero retail experience between the two of them), they decided to open a comic book store. 

A year after that, I met him, and a year after that, we were married. Four years later, when the landlord of our (two-bedroom, one bath, plus office and breakfast nook) rental house in Live Oak threatened to raise the rent from $400 a month to a whopping $500, James decided we should buy a house. He sold comic books. I wrote movie reviews. Interest rates were almost 20%. You'd think any self-respecting loan officer would laugh us right out of their cubicle. And yet, not only did we persist, we put on an addition, refinanced, and paid off the mortgage in six years.

 At which time, he decided to sell his half of the (now thriving) comic book business to Joe and become an artist. He wa 40 years old. He had no art training whatsoever. He was always the first to admit he didn't know how to draw; he had never even doodled in the margins. 

 He just thought he could. 

(Years later, people often asked me if I freaked out when he told me he was quitting his business to make art. I could honestly say, nope. It never even occurred to me to doubt him, given his track record for bucking the odds and making it work.) 

As an artist, he floundered around for awhile until he came up with the technique of layering acrylic paint over oil-based spray paint. Had he ever taken an art class, he would have been instructed that you can't mix oils with acrylics, but since he didn't know the rules, he was free to break them as he invented a style that was so distinctly his own. 

Ten years into his art career, he was commissioned to create his first public mural in Plaza Lane, in downtown Santa Cruz. He tried to hire a professional muralist to paint his design, but when he found out the muralist would charge as much as James himself was making on the project, he figured out a way to transfer the design himself, and employed a much cheaper crew — me — to help him paint it. A technique he perfected over the next ten years, painting murals at schools and public buildings all over the county. 

It's not that he had so much arrogant hubris that he couldn't even imagine failing. Rather, he had no fear of the possibility of failure. If one plan didn't work out, he figured he could always do something else; he had the confidence to adapt. He never paid any attention to people who told him he couldn't or shouldn't do something, so it never occurred to him not to try. 

He thought he could. And he did.