Where Everybody Knows You're Numb

Nightowlhoot3 wrote:

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Shoveling the driveway was the last thing Cliff did. He had a heart attack, living life right to the end.
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wow. now that begins a thought. what will our last living act on this earth be? tho sudden and not leaving time for goodbyes which is difficult for those left behind, his departure, going out in an active way, is a pretty good way to go out.

-- Edited by Nightowlhoot3 at 06:36, 2009-01-03

 

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Nightowlhoot3 wrote:

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If you'll bear with me just one more moment ...

It would be cool if I could say few words about him:

Several years ago, at his retirement celebration, he noted that his only regret was that he hadn't spent more time with his kids. He then added: "I was spending it with other people's kids." It's true -- he was, and did, and in a way, he had not three kids, but three hundred or more -- once, bumbling, sometimes shy, usually uncertain, kids who grew up to be ministers, soldiers, stage managers, actors, Toni award-winning scenic designers, theatre administrators, teachers -- a lot of teachers -- and some who didn't become actors but became parents of children who have.

The emails I've been getting are from all over -- New York, Seattle, Chicago, Oregon, North Carolina, Iraq-- and through each of these notes, feathered with memories of special times, I've learned a little bit about the guy -- things I never before knew.

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I found this on a former classmate's blog, and it seemed too perfect a description of Cifford White to not be repeated. It may give you a big of insight into me, too, I suppose. LOL. At least in terms of theatre, and what is "acceptable." (Janice's story) The parts in red have been made that way by me...

Monday, December 29, 2008

FEELING A BIT "LEAR-Y"

I have, in the past on this blog, made one or two comments to the fact that I am becoming, at least psychologically, a "coot."

This past weekend I've been feeling it physically, as well.

Last Friday, I did something really cootish: I tripped over my dog.

It wasn't Dweezil's fault; I knew he was sitting at my feet when I got up out of my chair but somehow, I mispositioned (is that a word? Well, you know what I mean) my feet and toppled right over the pooch. He didn't even move, but I landed squarely on my knees. The right knee took the bulk of my weight and I've been limping quite cootishly ever since. It still hurts but it's getting better.

The thing is, I KNOW people half my age are looking at me and thinking, "man, look at that old limping guy."
This is instead of what they usually think, which is nothing, since once you turn about 40 years old you become completely invisible to anybody younger than that.

Think about it. (This may just be a guy thing; ladies, please weigh in if I'm wrong.) You're walking through the mall, ogling the eye candy (i.e. late teens and twentysomethings). You can stare right at them, and they won't even look you in the eye. Hell, they don't even acknowledge that you're there at all. This is because you are invisible to them.

I take note of nearly everyone I pass in a shopping mall. Their faces say a lot. (Admittedly, other body parts say a lot too, especially in Phoenix, in the summer, when ladies throw caution to the winds and wear well-worn white halter tops or tube tops because the law says you have to wear something.

At least in my cootness I can still appreciate the female form. Regardless of what it looks like. Fat, skinny, tall, short, they're women. And I still like to look at them.

I once heard my 83-year old grandfather, shortly before he died, say to my dad: "Jerry, if I ever stop looking at women, bury me." Ol' Gramps was good to his word; while dying of Valley Fever in a hospital ICU, hooked up on breathing machines and unable to talk, he apparently spent several of his last moments writing dirty notes to his nurses. In other words, he lived life to the end.

So did Cliff White, who died on Friday at, coincidentally, age 83.

Most of you didn't know him. Cliff was a drama professor at Northern Arizona University from 1968 until he retired in 1992. He was so good at what he did, the University named its creative arts theatre after him a year later, and never really let him retire. I would constantly hear stories through the 90s that Cliff was "just filling in" for a teacher who'd left the employ of the university, or "just teaching a class to keep his hand in it," but anyone who knew him knew better. Drama was literally Cliff's life. After retiring, he and his wife, Doris, became the main proponents of community theatre in Flagstaff, and he continued to direct plays on and off pretty much up to the end.

Dr. White was the epitome of perfection in dramatics. As somebody once said of him, you don't have a building named after you at NAU by doing things half-way. To that end, working with, or being taught by, Cliff White could be very , very frustrating, infuriating and irritating, but you know what? You usually came away with something from it that you find yourself using in your daily life without even thinking about it.

I was a drama minor, so I didn't participate in, or even try out for, every show at NAU while I was there (my major saw to that), but Cliff cast me in three of the four shows I was in while at NAU. (The other show was directed by Doris -- no directorial slouch, either.) The first time I tried out for him, I was a freshman, kinda full of myself and he saw that, but told me, "keep trying out. I'm gonna use you one of these days. I'm just not sure where yet." True to his word, the very next show I tried out for, he gave me a very nice part.

I always got along with him, perhaps because I wasn't a drama major. For all the stories I have been reading from other folks who knew Cliff, for every fun story, there's one where he quite simply pissed somebody off to the point of near fisticuffs.

I met Janice trying out for a Cliff White show. She ended up being head of props for the production ("Paint Your Wagon").
Her favorite Cliff White story is one of frustration.

"It's a play about miners," Jan said the other day, "so if you're a miner, you're going to need a shovel. But Dr. White didn't want just any shovels for the miners. He wanted PERIOD, 1848 shovels. Oh, and they had to be BRAND NEW, 184eriod shovels, because in the play, the miners are coming out of a store where they just bought the shovels.

" We went to, or called, every place in Flagstaff that might have sold shovels. I brought in many different perfectly good shovels that Dr. White refused to use. 'Too new. Not period.' 'That's better, but it's used! It has to be new!' I got so desperate I went to another drama professor and asked what I should do. 'Stick to your guns,' she said. 'Sometimes Dr. White forgets that we're in Flagstaff, Arizona and not on Broadway.' We eventually reached a compromise, but it took a long time to get there."

Cliff never stopped calling Janice "Props." Thing is, he probably left a mark on her, too. Since we're both now members of Romantasy Cabaret, a variety show with ever-changing skits, Jan has become one hell of a prop maker. There is a streetlight in our house at the moment for a skit we have yet to AUDITION. Jan built it. Agonized over the exact height for a week. That's Cliff White working in there.

Like I said, Cliff White was a perfectionist. Apparently right down to when it came to stuff like shoveling snow off his driveway. "Why let some kid do it?" I'm sure he was thinking. " I'll do it, and I'll know it's done to my satisfaction."

Shoveling the driveway was the last thing Cliff did. He had a heart attack, living life right to the end.
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I was also in that production of King Lear, and in that scene with Tom. I was the evil B-word Reagan, who got to say "PLUCK OUT HIS EYES!" whereupon the old man was surrounded by dark cast members, (to cover the makeup change the applied) howled, and then, when they stood back, his eyes were gone. Mind you, this was a stage production in a proscenium theatre, where the nearest audience member was too far away to see them, but even so, Dr. White insisted we have two grapes every night which played the role of "eyeballs." Yeah. Grapes. People on the other side of the stage couldn't see them, but we could. Oh, and not "just" grapes, but grapes in makeup. "Bloodied" grapes. 

I was a little crushed that show because it seemed I was the only cast member who didn't get to have a big death scene on stage. Everyone else, it seemed, had these glorious blood packs under their costumes they got to unleash at the appropriate time (usually) and have these scenery chewing, glorious and gory moments on stage. Not me, though, Noooooo. I had to go into a stupid tent and commit a tepid suicide. Hardly seemed fair at all. At one late rehearsal, though, I had my moment of glory ... I went into the tent, did my ... whatever audibles there were, if any, and then EMERGED from the tent in the throes of death. I'd hit Mickey D's earlier in the day, and scored a ton of Ketchup packets, and poked holes in them, taped them to my body, and had (literally) a delicious death scene on stage (with excessive patting of myself, to produce the horrid wounds.) Sans the fries.    

And it's true, Cliff always wanted as many people to participate as possible whenever possible. King Lear was played by the brilliant guest artist Gordon Gould, with whom working was a never-ending jaw dropping delight. The man didn't breathe -- he eloquently consumed air. And what a generous performer he was, too. Anyway, Cliff decided to double cast this show, and rotate casts. Was a bit of a pain in the ass for everyone involved, and I don't know that he ever did it again, but he did for Lear. Inasmuch as he wanted to keep his casts involved, (and unable to have an actual night off, or prepare for finals...) they would play minor roles the nights they weren't in their more major roles. This provided built-in understudies, of course, which might have been a perk to him, as well. So the nights I wasn't Reagan, I was Reagan's attendant. Now, "King Lear" ain't no 15 minute sketch. Three long hours of performance -- and that didn't include hair, makeup, and costumes. Because Cliff was so detail oriented, all the women had to have these bizarre eyebrows that looped up high sorta like Betty Boop, or something. That meant we had to hide our own eyebrows with tons of nose putty every night, and then makeup on top of that. Never worked right for me, though. My eyebrows were always popping through, and the painted putty would too often sort of slide, slow-motion avalanche-style, down my forehead at some point in the performance. Slightly distracting. One late night, having had enough of it all, I went into the dressing room and sat down with a pair of tweezers and plucked out every eyebrow hair I had. Not an easy feat, since the only available pair of tweezers were the ones in the first aid kit for removing splinters, and were shaved down to nothingness, which meant I had to do it basically one hair at a time. I didn't tell anyone I was doing this, and penciled in (quite well and believably, if I do say so, myself -- well, we'd all had PLENTY of makeup classes by that time) eyebrows. 

The next day I was sitting in the theatre management class, up front, listening to my Lear "sister" Katherine give a presentation. Without making much movement at all, I nonchalantly reached up, and wiped off my eyebrows one at a time. No one could see this, except Katherine. I can still hear her (completely quizzical and anachronistic, for the rest of the class) musical giggle while pointing out where the access to the handicapped rest rooms would be in her theatre. :) She was actually the first of our "family" to pass, from I think cancer a year or so after we graduated. She was, though, managing a theatre in NY at the time. Another of our classmates named their daughter after her. Anyway, nose-putty problem resolved. Never had decent eyebrows after that, though, so I'd not recommend it. 

Now that Cliff it gone, it may finally be told aloud (and I really need to get this off my chest, anyway.) 

The nights we sisters were "our" attendants, our onstage participation in this three hour production consisted of two scenes: the opening scene, where we mutely stood behind our alter egos, and the curtain call. That was it. IT! In between those two scenes, we had roughly 2.5 hours to kill.

Now ... there was a little bar just up the road a bit, where a friend from the department was the night bartender ....  (It's still there, btw -- I saw it when I was up there month before last.) One night, Katherine and I piled into my little VW bug, and zipped over there, and had one -- I can't imagine us braving more than one, really -- adult beverage during the show, and then high-tailed it back in ample time for the curtain call scene. It's the only time in my life I've ever done anything like that, I thank "ye immortal gods" we were never busted, and it's one of the things which to this day gives me tremendous pleasure in remembering.  It's also a story I never could have told as long as Cliff was alive. Oh, and we stayed in full costume and makeup ... LOL. I wonder how many people in there thought they were having the DT's when we sauntered in, (tiaras, arched eyebrows, and all,) and checked themselves into rehab the next morning. LOL. 

That was at the end of a long season, which had begun with his production of "The Little Foxes." It's hard enough, sometimes, to just embody a role ... find the character. And then there's memorizing those lines and blocking thing, too. For Little Foxes, though, I was also assigned "tutoring" sessions with a woman who taught at the university who hailed from the same Southern town where the play was to have occurred. Why? Because just the STATES dialect wasn't good enough. I had to have the nuances of that particular town, as well. Nevermind that we're talking about FICTION. Also, since Hellman had written a companion piece, I also had to study (in my spare time between the show, my class load, the two theatre organizations to which I belonged -- president of one, and vice president of the other, and working full time) the OTHER play, for which "The Little Foxes" was the sequel, "Another Part of the Forest." "Just because." Just because there might be some nuance in that other play which might bring me that much closer to my character in this one. Who knows whether I did or not. Might have. The point is ... all of us who were "department regulars" during that time were all in sort of an immersion program, and it was all about theatrical education. It was a demanding and ultimately beneficial foundation. So yeah, I can relate to Janice building that streetlight today. When I look back, I see it reflected in all my work in the theatre, both onstage and off. 

The show right after "The Little Foxes" was cast opening night of Foxes. It was that show which was our American College Theatre entry, and for which I was honored to be selected at one of ten students in our region to participate in the Irene Ryan festival of scenes. This meant going to LA, and performing before an audience and board of Judges which included, among others, John Houseman, who was every bit as intimidating in person as he was when he played the stern professor on "Paper Chase." (Years later, I got to work closely with the guy who played "Ford" on that show -- a truly charming man; sweet, gentle, and not at all like his character, so the show was not totally type cast.) Anyway, this was sort of a big deal ... for the whole town, actually. Then, a weird thing happened. The ACTF called the university, and said that I couldn't participate, because I wasn't actually a student. What the HELL!?!?! Of course I was a student! I'd paid my tuition and attended classes somewhat faithfully all semester long. Ah, but unbeknownst to me, months before, my Dad had not signed the piece of paper which said simply he was my Dad. (This was the only thing I'd asked of him for decades.) He was a prof at another university in the same state, which mean that I, as his offspring, got a reduced tuition rate, which with combined with my donut shop earnings and the partial scholarship, should have placed me in good standing. It was literally a week before the end of the semester, and now, I was being told that I would receive NO credit for all my classes, and that I couldn't go to the festival?? I don't know how many phone calls Cliff made that week (he was all about very important phone calls which was probably his "escape scheme" when he tired of a conversation) or to whom, but when he had finished, I was again invited to the Festival, and got my college credit for the whole semester. That never would have happened without him. No way. He did it, and all by himself, without my even asking. Why? Because I was one of his kids, and even though he kept it very secret from all of us, no one messed with one of his kids.   

I know the female professor mentioned in Tom's piece, and I think she was wrong in some ways. I don't think it's that he "forgot" that we were in Flagstaff, and not on Broadway, it was just that he didn't see any difference between the two. I mean .... it just didn't matter to him. There was only one way to do a play, and that was "the right" way, whether it meant brand new 1948 shovels, or grape eyeballs. And besides -- we knew, so perhaps that shaded our performances, whether or not the audience ever noticed. The guy was exasperating to the point of distraction at times -- and I'm beyond thankful he was; he placed in my hands a trade which served me well decades after the fact, and perhaps continues to so do, in non-related work. Of course... I realize sometimes I'm now often the source of that same exasperation... but it was an honor, when I was directing, to have actors tell me that they didn't care what role they had in the play -- that they just wanted to be in it because I was a "teaching" director, and they learned a lot from me just sitting in on rehearsals. What they didn't know, of course, is that really, I was just walking in a shadow, and never really filling those big footsteps laid out before me, but I did try, and in the end, our best effort is still our best, regardless of the product.     

The memorial service will begin in less than four hours without my physical presence in that theatre, but there will be, I'm sure, many spirits, from both living and dead, floating up the staircase which leads from the dressing rooms to the stage, upon which someone had once chalked "stairway to the stars," and which had remained there my entire tenue, and circling the crows nest, and there will be blobs of oil from long forgotten nose putty rising from the boards under the eulogizer's feet; perhaps in the very back row of the venue, a clipboard light will click on, and there will be a collective audible groan of recognition, each voice just knowing they've been "caught" and that note being furiously scribbled with be hurled at them in an hour or so. There will be tears, I'm sure ... nothing new to that venue, but there will, I hope, be laughter, too, because the two always went, and must go, really, hand in hand -- then, now, always. I am, I realize, just an infinitesimally small thread in the fabric creating the tapestry which is Clifford E. White's legacy. My color is, I suppose ultimately uniquely me, and mine, but on this night when sleep eludes me, I'm filled with an awareness of the hand which held a brush and added an indelible hue to me, and am filled with gratitude, and bowled over by the recognition of my incredible good fortune to have known this time, this man. Too many words have been expended here, I know, and really, there just aren't words enough to express all I feel this pre-dawn moment which wil usher in this day. It fills me with a sense of "wealth," really. "Richness." "Connectedness" really, too, maybe. Earlier, I stepped outside, and cast my gaze towards that town of my youth, and the sky became busy with "shooting stars." Eerily so. I came inside and googled it, just out of curiosity, and found this:
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by John Stanley - Jan. 2, 2009 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

One of the strongest and most reliable annual meteor showers will arrive before sunrise Saturday, bringing an unusually good display of celestial fireworks to sky watchers across western North America.

Astronomers expect the Quadrantid meteor shower to peak at about 6 a.m. Arizona time, when observers may spot several dozen meteors an hour, weather permitting.

Although generally regarded as one of the premier meteor showers, the Quadrantids have a reputation for being elusive, said Alan MacRobert, a senior editor at Sky & Telescope magazine. 

That's partly due to the shower's brevity. Unlike most meteor showers, which can last several days, the Quadrantids usually last only a few hours. That means peak activity often occurs during daylight hours, when only the brightest meteors can be seen. Other times, glare from the moon washes out fainter meteors.

But this year, the peak of activity comes at just about the best possible time for observers in the western U.S. and Canada, and the moon sets well before the shower peaks.

"If there was ever a good time for you folks (in Arizona) to get out and look for meteors," MacRobert said, "this is the time."

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Of course, some of us know it's just Clifford ascending, one last time, that stairway to the stars, and heaven knows (literally) he'd not to it without sufficient lighting and theatrical effect.

  And now, I'll heed the sparce words Clifford White set on paper in the package alongside the doctorate hood he proudly gifted a former student upon completing his work at Dr. White's alma mater: "Now get off your fat ass and do something!"    Okay. Like the cliche admonishes ... "the show must go on" and so it shall. I'll first, if it's okay, though, make a pot of java, and the first cup poured from it will be raised to you, though, Dr. White. Pay no attention to what you think smells like kaluah. It's just a new makeup line I'm trying out ...