Joe Cillo

WHAT’S SO GREAT ABOUT WORKING 9-5?

 

I don’t mind coming to work,

but that eight hour wait to go home is a bitch.

Anonymous

 

I have always believed that everyone needs a job.  When I hear dire reports on diminishing jobs I think, “How will these people support themselves?”

 

I think there is nothing like steady job with benefits to give your life a solid foundation.  Old values are so comfortable that I for one feel guilty when I chuck them in the wastebasket.  I want to meet the parent who doesn’t say to his college graduate, ”When do you start work?”

 

I figured out that a job didn’t mean happiness in the sixties and I can still remember how frightened I was to dare to forge ahead doing what I loved instead of reporting to an office five grueling days a week.  I decided I wanted to write stories about interesting people and I did just that.  I mailed them out to magazines every day.  Some were accepted and some were not.  I did a bit of baby sitting, tried my hand at dog walking, but always, I came back to the typewriter (what we used in those days) and did what I loved best: write. My parents thought I had committed a sin.  I couldn’t have embarrassed them more if I had stood nude on a busy corner with a sign saying “Available.”  And I agreed with them.  I felt I was being immoral to love designing my days to suit only myself.

 

If you think that attitude went the way of vinyl records, you are wrong.  When my friends Richard and Susan got married five years ago, Richard’s parents were horrified.  “You don’t have a JOB,” they said. “ How can you support a wife?”

 

I know in my head that there are many ways to support yourself that don’t involve a long commute and a desk in one office for forty years. I know hundreds of people who support themselves with a series of part time jobs or do low level work to feed themselves while they do what they love in the evening.   Henry has a degree in nuclear engineering and he is working at a coffee house so he can write his book.  Sean quit his teaching job because he couldn’t stand being confined in a classroom with 30 unwilling students.  Now he gardens for a living.  Paul cooks gourmet meals for busy work people and delivers them ready to eat at dinner time.  None of them are rich and all of them are happy….but if one of them were my kid, I would nag them to death.  “What will you do when the money runs out?” I’d say.

 

I see unhappy men my age who spent so much time working for someone else that they didn’t prepare for a life where they could do what they loved instead of what earned a steady wage.  My friend Tony retired from the business community when he was 65.  He decided that he had enough savings set aside that he could afford to pursue a life in the arts.  He became a successful playwright and in his spare time, (which he has now) he sings with his church choir.  He takes time to go on hiking trails with his wife and he is a happy man.  Yet, when his son was out of a job, he was beside himself with worry.  “How will he take care of his wife and three children?”  he said.

 

It want until I reminded him of how happy he was that he realized he was sentencing his son to the same frustration that he had endured for forty years.  It is another one of those cases of telling you “do what I say, don’t do what I do.”  All of us are concerned for our children’s future.  We all know that the proverb ‘a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’ can sentence our children to a life of thankless drudgery.  But we also know that food and shelter take money and no one wants to think of their children living in poverty.  That wasn’t part of the dream we had for them.

 

I know that no job ends when you leave the office.  I see young people on their computers in coffee shops and on the bus.  The work day never seems to end.  People these days don’t want to  work in one place for one person for forty years just to get a gold watch and a pension. Fulfillment.  Growth.  Experimenting.  That is what your generation is about these days and I think it is wonderful.  Now that I am of a certain age, I want in on the excitement you have every day.  Why not?

 

There are so many things I want to do before I die.  I want to run outside draped in a shower curtain and sing to the stars. I want to climb a flag pole sprayed with glitter singing “wish on a star.”  I want to wear flowers in my hair and do cartwheels on the pier.  If you join me, I will break dance in the middle of the freeway.

 

The difference is no one sends me on a guilt trip or says, “Why don’t you get a job?”

 

My parents are dead.

 

 

 

 

WHY ARE WE SO STUBBORN?

Why do you hit your head against the wall?

Because it feels so good when I stop.

I see so many people my age struggling to carry packages they could put in a trolley if they would only spend the money to buy one or staggering up set of stairs when the escalator is right there across the hall. I know there is a better way.  But just you try to TELL them that.

 

Do not even consider “Mother, if you would walk on the side of the street, you wouldn’t block everyone hurrying to the office” because it isn’t going to work.  Your mother knows that she keeps her balance better in the middle of the sidewalk and avoiding a broken shoulder is a lot more important to her than her social responsibility not to impede the pedestrians on their way to something she already did years ago….and if she wants to wear her bedroom slippers with that horrid coat…so what?  SHE is retired.

 

Just try telling your Dad that if he would have purchased power steering on that huge gas eating clunker he drives, he could parallel park in seconds and not keep smashing his front headlight.    He is going to give you that look you hate and say, “I bought this car used ten years ago and I paid cash for it.   I know how it works and it doesn’t give me any surprises.  If it takes me 40 minutes to park it, that isn’t MY problem….

 

I like familiar things.  I don’t have to learn how to use them.  Silly as it may seem, I don’t like a dishwasher.  It feels better to me to wash each dish and know it is clean.  It is the same with the car I drive.  I can still remember when I bought my Toyota Matrix.  It was bigger than my ancient Valiant, more fuel efficient and had a great CD player. The first year I drove it, I smashed the right fender so many times the auto repair shop recognized my voice when I called. I hit the wall of the garage twice and I drove in the middle of the road for at least 6 months before I figured out that there was plenty of room on the right.  My old car soaked up gas like a drunkard, didn’t have power steering and when it rained water flooded the back seat.  But I never hit anything with it.  It was familiar. You cannot get me to admit that it wasn’t the king of all cars.  I loved it.  I understood it.  And it understood me.

 

That is how it is with older people. We cling to what we used to do because that is comfortable and feels safe.  Take credit cards.  When I was a kid they didn’t exist.  I paid for everything with cash.  The idea of shoving a piece of plastic into the wall and getting money was as ridiculous to me as looking up at the clouds and expecting it to rain silver coins.  Now I cannot imagine living or traveling without my credit card but I know a lot of my friends who never use them.  They like to see the cash, pay with it and get the receipt for the same reason they like to watch your face when they talk to you before they give you an answer.  It might not make sense to you, but it does to them.

 

There is a couple across the street in their mid eighties who live in a three story house. Bob has sciatica and Sarah has Multiple Sclerosis.  They both are in so much pain, they had to crawl up the stairs to get to their bedroom.  Finally, after years of coaxing and talking and convincing, they allowed their children to buy them a stair-master so they could both ride upstairs in seconds instead of the half hour they both took, each helping the other.  You guessed it.  The stair-master has been sitting for five years now, in pristine condition at the bottom of the stairs and my neighbors struggle up the stairs to the bedroom they have slept in for almost 60 years.

 

I know just what you are thinking.  Why don’t they move the bed downstairs to the living room?  I asked them that and Sarah looked at me as if I had suggested she dance naked in the street.  “I love my living room just the way it is.  I remember when we redecorated it in 2000 and it took me forever to get used to where everything was.  I sure don’t want to go through that again.”

 

Will and Deborah will celebrate their golden anniversary this year.  It will be a sad celebration because Will’s Cerebral Palsy has gotten so much worse and he is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s.  Their children have been begging them to have a care giver in to help Deborah cook meals, bathe Will and get him into bed but she is adamant.  “I don’t want strangers walking around my house,” she told her daughter.  “They all have butterfingers..”

 

About three months after she said this, she called her daughter and said, ”I just took Will to the doctor and he had the best idea!!! He told me about an agency that will send someone out to bathe Will and get him into bed.  Isn’t that a wonderful idea?”

 

Her daughter had the wisdom to say, “I think so too!” and not, ”Why wouldn’t you listen to ME when I told you the same thing?” The truth is that if we are going to change our minds, we have to hear a reason from what we think is an expert.  That expert is never our children.  Ever.

 

So next time you say to your mom, “Why don’t you order those groceries on line?” don’t expect her to say ”What a good idea!”  I will give you odds that her response would be “I like to pick out my own vegetables and fruit.  Those delivery people don’t care.  All they want to do is make money.”

 

The older we get, the more we do the things we want, not the things we should.  We have earned that freedom and you will too, eventually.  I make my own rules and take my own advice.  When I ushered at The Opera, I seated a 95 year old lady and when I went back to help the next patron, she moved two rows closer.  I came back down the aisle to seat someone in the seat she had moved into and I said, “Mrs. Stoneham, that isn’t your seat. “ She looked up at me her mouth a straight determined line.   “I LIKE it here,” she said.

 

That is what we are about.  We are going to do what we like and the only way you are going to understand it is when you are 95, sitting in a theater in the seat you want.  The usher might have moved you when you were 60 but when you are 95, you’ve earned the right to sit wherever you like.

 

 

WHY DO WE TALK SO MUCH?

If someone would teach the younger generation how to talk,

And their elders to listen, the generation gap would not exist.

Lynn Ruth

People my age talk a lot.  We do it because words are what we are comfortable using to express ourselves.  When we hear it, we can figure it out. You people communicate differently and I think that is great.  I saw a young couple standing together outside a movie theater sending messages to each other on their I-Pads.  They nodded wisely as if they were exchanging very special secrets.    I can’t do that.  I have to use my vocal cords to communicate.  Besides I don’t want to send anyone pictures of what I just did an hour ago. I was on the can.

 

I was in the grocery store and the clerk smiled as he was taught to do and said without looking at me, “How are you today?” and I actually told him.

 

I discussed how hard it was to get out of bed in the morning because of my sciatica, why my shoes didn’t fit because of the heat, the new place I found to shop for vitamins, and my problem with the neighbor’s dog.  When I finished, I looked at him expectantly and he said.  “83.43.  Cash or charge?”

 

When I was your age, I was really careful about everything I said. I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings and I wanted them to love me. Now, I am of a certain age and the brakes are off. Censorship went the way of continence.

 

Being blunt can really mess you up if you are looking for a date.  Not long ago, I enrolled in a new dating service in the states called Table for 6.  The idea is that if you get six people together around one table sharing ideas and talking to one another you will find the love of your life.  I went to one of their events and sat there with five strangers from my generation.  The talk never stopped because that is what we love to do.  One guy discussed his new dentures, the other his hiking trip in the Arctic.  A woman who looked 106 told about her face lift and another talked about her kid with Turrets.  “He shouts obscenities EVERYWHERE,” she said. “Just yesterday I was buying a screwdriver and some fertilizer when Percy shouted I WANT TO SEE THE MONEY SHOT!’

“I was humiliated.”

 

When the evening was over, we all knew all about each other and we knew we never wanted to see any of these boring people again.

 

I looked over at the next table. It was filled with 6 people in their thirties.  Everyone there was absolutely silent except for the clink of their wine glasses and the sound of their forks picking up their stroganoff.  Each had his I Pad in his hand and now and then one would tap his neighbor on the shoulder and point to a picture or hold it to her ear to listen to a song.  At the end of their meal, while everyone at my table went his separate way, the 6 of them paired off holding hands and staring lovingly into each others eyes.

 

My generation likes to hear the words you say, even though we don’t really hear that well.  Our eyes are shot and we forget how to end the sentence we just began.  I went to the funeral of my friend’s husband and she was standing by the coffin talking a mile a minute to the corpse.  “I TOLD you not to take that aspirin,” she said.  “But you never listen…and now look at you! Dressed in a suit you never wore on your way to God knows where with a mortgage that is sky high and a house underwater…”

“Millie,” I whispered “He can’t hear you anymore….”

“He couldn’t hear me when he was alive, either,” she said.  “But now he can’t walk away.”

 

The truth is talk was our style of communication even though I have to admit we really don’t say much that is memorable.    I think we want you to know we are still alive and we want to convince ourselves that we matter to you because believe me, you matter to us.  You are the ones who will care for us when we fall apart.  The thing is, when you can’t hear, your sight is blurred and your arthritis is killing you, it feels good to talk about it. The more you chatter the less you notice the pain.

 

I have tried your way of communicating and sometimes it works really well.  When I have a headache I would rather text my buddy to complain, but on the other hand, there is no way any computer message can ever make me feel as good as someone’s hand on my forehead saying.  “Let me put some ice on your head and make it better.”

 

Everyone has their own way of getting their point across and all of us need to feel we are heard.  I don’t mind reading what you say to my computer, but sometimes, when you aren’t running from one business meeting to a mixer or a concert, I would really love it if you’d answer the telephone.

 

 

 

WHY DO YOU GIVE US THE WRONG ANSWERS

Better be wise by the misfortunes of

Others than your own

Aesop

In the beginning, my generation heard exactly the same propaganda that your parents fed to you.  For example when I was a child I was taught that mother knew best.  “Look both ways before you cross the street,” she said.  If I didn’t listen, a car hit me.  Very effective.  Right?  I am willing to bet your mom told you the same thing.

 

When I was in my teens, this faith that my parents had all the answers began to fade.  “Stop smoking those disgusting cigarettes,” said my mother. This time I ignored her.  What did she know?  SHE was addicted to alcohol and you know what that did to her.

 

Once I began school, my teachers said, “Cheaters don’t prosper.” I knew that was rubbish.  If I looked at the guy’s paper next to me, we both passed the exam and who remembered the answer to those ridiculous tests the next week anyway?  In those days, if you complained about your teacher, you had to sit outside in the hall.

 

Those lessons we learned then were pounded into our heads over and over and we believed them.  The policeman is your friend.  Evil is punished.  Pretty is as pretty does.  That is where we are coming from.

 

Today, most of us know in our heads that these are ridiculous assumptions, but they guided us when we were young and we cannot let them go.  That is why your mother’s advice won’t help your social life.  Your mother grew up in a time when a girl’s looks determined her future.  If you didn’t look like a magazine centerfold, you were destined to live a barren life alone as a librarian, a secretary or a nun.  Catching a man was a fundamental life skill for your mom.  Looking gorgeous wasn’t a choice for her.  It meant her survival.

 

YOU don’t need to worry about silly things like that.   You are free to use your mind.  Marriage is an option, not a goal.  You can run a marathon and sweat…. You don’t have to wear a bra.  Your mother didn’t have that freedom.

 

The worst response you can give to your mother’s advice is “Are you out of your mind?”  Because the truth is, she isn’t. She is living in her own past, not yours.  Getting a guy is not a major goal these days.  Living a life is.  You can have sex and never see the guy again. You have the pill.  All she had was a coat hanger.

 

We love to give you advice that worked 30 years ago because we want you to avoid the mistakes we made. We love you, remember?   The catch is that now isn’t 30 years ago, is it?   I mean 30 years ago we ate rich, goopy potatoes dripping in fat and didn’t feel guilty; when we acted funny, they locked us in the attic, and being an altar boy was our first sexual experience.  You were a slut if you had sex on the first date. Now you’re a slut if you don’t.  Times have changed.

 

Look at the workplace.  The one we knew doesn’t exist.  Your dad is not going to be able to help you find a job because he doesn’t know about on line applications.  He read the want ads.  His advice won’t work because the job he had doesn’t exist anymore.  You dad believes you need a pay check you can count on because HIS parents told him that is what honorable men had.  Girls stayed home, had babies and cooked dinner.  My buddy Charlie Gunther told me, “I’d never send my girls to college.  It is a waste of money.  Why did you bother?”

 

See what I mean?

I can still remember complaining to my mother because my social life was dead.  She said, “Sign up for a modeling class.”  This was back in the fifties and I knew there were better ways to spark up my night life than learning to walk with a book on my head.

 

My mother was telling me how she got my father back in the early thirties.  My father was a workaholic who played golf every day. He left before I woke up and came home after I was in bed.  I was certainly NOT going to toddle with a book on my head for THAT kind of relationship.  I opted to sample everything out there and keep my relationships brief and interesting.

 

NOW I am 79 years old, and my goals for romance have changed because I have changed.  These days, I look for someone with a fat wallet and a full head of hair.  So don’t ask ME for advice on how to find a lover…I would tell you to shop for survivors at funerals.

 

If you want the right answers to help you solve the challenges you face in life, ask someone your age.  They have been where you are and they will tell you what they did to make it all work.  If you want a glimpse into the past so you can see how lucky you are to be living in today’s world, ask us, but for heaven’s sake don’t do what we say.  It’s not that we’re stupid…just out of date.

 

By now, most people in the Bay Area theatre community are aware that The Willows Theatre Company, after a run of 35 years, is out of business.  The Willows Board filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on August 16.

Cast members of The Willows latest (and last) production, Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, were notified on August 13 that the final week of the show, August 15-18, had been cancelled.  Cast members reported receiving a phone call giving them thirty minutes to remove their belongings from the theatre in Concord.

I am, that is, I was the publicist for The Willows, on and off, from 2004 until the sudden closing two weeks ago.  The first I heard of the shut-down was when I read Lisa White’s Contra Costa Times online article, “It’s Curtains for the Willows Theatre,” on Monday afternoon, August 13.  Thank God for Google Alerts.

Many people knew that The Willows was on shaky financial ground, but what theatre isn’t?  The Willows had been through serious money problems before, closing its 210-seat Concord mainstage in 2009 and moving everything to its second space, the 150-seat Campbell Theatre in Martinez.  A new artistic/managing director team took over in 2010 and reopened the Concord stage in 2011.  The shows, as they say, went on – in both venues.

And then the lights went out.

How could this have happened?  Potential culprits abound: declining and ageing audiences, hard economic times, misjudging audience preferences, cannibalizing the same base of supporters with two theatres, fiscal mismanagement and overspending, corporate funding drying up, lukewarm community support, a board beset by too many problems coming at them too fast, perhaps even a publicist who couldn’t build a case for 9 to 5, the musical version of a 1980s Dolly Parton film – you can choose any or all of them all of them.

It’s probably too early for the autopsy, but in my view, at least right now, the demise of The Willows was caused by a series of Big Ideas that proved to be unsustainable.

“A Brief History of the Willows Theatre,” which appeared in each printed program for many years, recounts that “in the spring of 1977, Theatre Concord, a program of the City of Concord, began producing plays and musicals in the new Willows Theatre.  Nine years later, Theatre Concord became CitiArts Theatre, the first company in Contra Costa County to operate under a seasonal contract with Actors Equity Association.  In 1994 CitiArts Theatre became an operation of The Benefactors, a non-profit corporation organized in 1974 to support quality live theatre in Concord, and the company is now known as The Willows Theatre Company.”  In later years, The Willows estimated that it served over 70,000 patrons annually.

The Willows was dedicated to developing and producing “contemporary American plays and musicals,” although it extended its reach to include works originating in the U.K., as well.  It was, therefore, a real stretch for them to stage Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, the only non-US/UK show in their history.

As for Shakespeare, records indicate a production of The Taming of the Shrew in 1987. Former artistic director Richard Elliott once told me, “there are enough companies in the Bay Area doing Shakespeare.  We leave the Bard to them.”

The Willows’ stated mission was to “strive to perpetuate the art form of live theatre by creating relationships with playwrights, designers, actors, students and other theatre artists whose work will impact current and future audiences.”

The next part of the mission hints at why the Willows’ demise hurts the theatre community: “We provide a valuable opportunity for first employment for many developing theatre artists.”  In addition, since the Willows was an Equity house, many actors over the years were able to work their way toward their Equity card by performing there.

My wife and I became Willows subscribers in 1994, not long after moving to Clayton.  The Willows was, in essence, our local theatre, and we found the shows well cast, well directed, and quite simply, fun.  For my money, four or five of the best pieces of theatre I’ve ever seen were at The Willows, thanks to excellent casts and direction by Andy Holtz (Cabaret), Richard Elliott (On Golden Pond), Jon Marshall (Avenue Q), and Eric Inman (Chicago).

In our early subscriber days, my wife and I volunteered at the theatre. I read through stacks of unsolicited manuscripts, looking for the next blockbuster in the rough.  Kathy organized the mailing lists, using floppy disks that Rich or Andy would drop off at the house.  That was the state of technology then: no email, no Zip files, and disks that were truly “floppy.”

In 2004, after I’d started Rising Moon, Andy Holtz, the managing director, and Rich Elliott, the artistic director, contracted with me to do publicity for the revival of the theatre’s outdoor musical, John Muir’s Mountain Days, at the amphitheater in Martinez.  I was asked to stay on to publicize the next show, the musical version of The Night of the Hunter.  Both were stretches for a small East Bay theater – Mountain Days was a huge undertaking, with more than 50 in the cast, along with a team of horses. Hunter was based on the very creepy film that starred Robert Mitchum as an itinerant preacher who menaced two children and killed their mother. It’s the movie where Mitchum has the words “Love” and “Hate” tattooed on his fingers – hardly a show for the Hello, Dolly! Crowd, but it showed The Willows wasn’t afraid to take chances on a show that its Los Angeles producer was planning to take to New York.

In 2008, I was again contracted to do publicity for The Willows.  By this time, Andy Holtz had left for the Arizona Theatre Company in Tucson, and I worked with Rich Elliott and general manager Chris Marshall, the lady who wore a dozen hats and held the place together.  I was there from Brighton Beach Memoirs and Pageant, to the closing of the Concord theater in 2009, the restructuring under David Faustina and Eric Inman, the reopening of the mainstage in 2010…to what would be the last shows, Vaudeville at the Campbell and A Doll’s House at the original Willows Theatre.

So, The Willows is gone, joining the now defunct American Musical Theatre of San Jose, which died in 2008.  SF Chronicle critic Robert Hurwitt points out that, “a few years earlier AMTSJ had more subscribers than either A.C.T. or Berkeley Rep.” More recently, we’ve seen the departure of the Hapgood in Antioch, Arclight in San Jose, and Woman’s Will in Berkeley.

For many theatre companies, survival is day-to-day, show-to-show.  As one artistic director I know told me, “you’re only one flop away from closing the doors.”

Why did The Willows close?  Earlier, I listed a series of “culprits” that might have led to its going under, and to varying degrees, they are all probably to blame.  But I see the major problem as more than just running out of money.  That’s a symptom, not the cause.  In my opinion, The Willows went under because it was too ambitious, perhaps even too creative, and certainly too willing to follow a Big Idea.

The first Big Idea was getting a theater space of its own.  The Willows had for years been leasing its space in Concord’s Willows Shopping Center and grew tired of paying rent, along with all the associated issues renters face.  (Side note:  one positive for a theatre in a suburban shopping center – it solves the parking problem.)  As early as 2006, they were negotiating to move to the YMCA building in Danville.  While that idea remained on the back burner, Willows management looked north to Martinez and made plans to convert the old train station into a theatre, a plan that at the time found favor with the city of Martinez.  The Willows got as far as hiring an architect, developing blueprints and renderings, and starting a fundraising drive.  Why Martinez?  Rich Elliott and Andy Holtz lived there, liked the town, and thought it –and the train station – would be the ideal place for a theatre.

After the train station idea stalled, the Big Idea focused on another location – an unused auto parts warehouse on Ward Street. Thus, the Campbell Theatre came to be, thanks to a raft of donors led by the very generous Campbell family.

Every successful theatre has (or should have) a guaranteed moneymaker, a “Christmas Carol,” a “Nutcracker,” a “Sound of Music.”  Or an “Annie,“  the show that guarantees that every parent, grandparent, aunt, and uncle of the kids in the cast will buy tickets – and twice that number if you double-cast.

For The Willows, it was the Nunsense series, seven slapstick musicals by Dan Goggins (Nunsense, Nunsense Jamboree, Mushuga-Nuns, etc.) featuring five loony nuns. Ending the season with a Nunsense show pretty much paid for the rest of the year.  Nunsense became part of the Big Idea – the original proposal for the Campbell Theatre was for it to showcase nothing but Nunsense, year ‘round.  It would make money.

The all-Nunsense idea was soon abandoned, but the cabaret concept at the Campbell remained.  Was Martinez the right town for it?  Would Willows’ subscribers attend both theatres?  Or would the finite audience pie be divided in two?  Would a cabaret concept have to be marketed differently than a standard theatre?

As the theatre’s fortunes spiraled downward in 2009, the board and management decided the only way to save the company was to close one of the theatres – they chose to shutter the mainstage and move everything to the Campbell.

This turned out not to be a solution.  By 2010, a new management team was in place, led by managing director David Faustina and artistic director Eric Inman.  They saw that the only hope for sustaining the company was to return to Concord and reopen the theatre there, where the bulk of their patrons were.  Which they did, thanks to a fundraising campaign and a lot of volunteer hours, along with a big boost from the local IBEW, who donated the rewiring of the entire mainstage venue.

But for many reasons associated with the city of Martinez, the company wasn’t able to leave the Campbell behind; it had to sustain both theatres.  The Campbell was starting to find its audience, but it was too late.  What began as a Big Idea ended as Too Big a Task.

Another Big Idea was the amphitheater in Martinez, which was planned to be home to a whole series of outdoor historical musical dramas.  John Muir’s Mountain Days was only the first, and at first it was extremely successful.  It attracted a large audience when first staged at the amphitheater in 2005, but it was very expensive to produce.

Nevertheless, plans took shape under Andy and Rich for a series of seven musicals that would play in repertory at the amphitheater.  The next was Sacajawea, the tale of the Lewis and Clark expedition centering on the Native American woman who was their guide.  The book and lyrics for Sacajawea were by New York playwright  Mary Bracken Phillips, with music by San Jose native Craig Bohmler, the same team who had done Mountain Days.  Sacajawea was staged in 2008, but at the Alhambra Arts Center in Martinez, because the amphitheater was in disrepair.

The next in the amphitheater series was to be about the “Big Four,” the industrial barons (Leland Stanford, Collis P. Huntington, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins) who brought the railroads to California.  However, the script for it and the other four shows in the series was never commissioned.  The amphitheater remained, however, as a continuing burden.  The upkeep was too much for the Willows, and the city of Martinez shied away from pumping municipal funds into the venue.  Another Big Idea foundered.  In retrospect, the historical drama project would have needed a Disney Corporation to make it work.

A third Big Idea is banking on a show to be a hit, or even artistic triumph that will lift the company to new heights and at least break even…and then seeing the show fail.  The Willows suffered its share of “one flop away from closing” events. The Kentucky Cycle, a two-part, six-hour production asked the audience to come to the theatre twice to see the story work out.  It was a wonderful piece, but it asked too much of its audience.  On another level, there was the afore-mentioned 9 to 5: the Musical – Dolly Parton brought no cachet.  Neither did two other musicals based on movies, The Night of the Hunter and The Wedding Singer.

Ironically, two weeks before The Willows closed, it was named one of the “Best Theatre Companies in the East Bay” by critic Charles Kruger in the Examiner.com and the CBS-5 web site. Kruger placed it in the company with Berkeley Rep, Shotgun Players, Aurora Theatre, and Central Works. Indeed, The Willows has, over the years, won more than its share of Drama-logue, Shellie, and Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle awards.

Kruger praised the theatre for “specializing in the great American tradition of the Broadway musical…delivering the old razzle dazzle with grace and style, presenting both classics and new musicals…constantly trying to take theatre to the next level.”

But it’s difficult, if not impossible, to rise to a new level when you’re tied to three very disparate venues – a proscenium house, a cabaret, and an outdoor amphitheater – at a time when the political and economic cards are stacked against you.

It will be interesting to see what rises from the ashes of The Willows…which shards will be reassembled, and by whom.

Like Ishmael in Moby Dick, I am only here to tell the tale from my perspective.  Others with deeper experience on the voyage of the good ship Willows are welcome to add their comments, corrections, and insights. – GC

Contact: Gary Carr, (925) 672-8717, carrpool@pacbell.net.  Learn more about Rising Moon Marketing & Public Relations at www.risingmoonarts.com.

Dreama Walker as Becky being questioned by Sandra and Marti.

COMPLIANCE,   film based on true events, written and directed by Craig Sobel, starring Ann Dowd, Dreama Walker, Philip Ettinger, and Pat Healy.

                                                             UNSPEAKABLE ACTS

                                                            By Gaetana Caldwell-Smith 

The shocking, cringe-worthy film, “Compliance,” has the look of a cinema verité documentary.  It takes place during winter in a small-town strip-mall fast-food restaurant with problems of spoiled food due to employee negligence and an illness related short-staff.  Sandra (Ann Dowd), the manager, a stressed-out, heavy-set, middle-age woman, gets a phone call from a man saying that he’s Police Officer Daniels (Pat Healy) who unfortunately can’t take the time to go out there in person because he’s very busy.  He tells her that one of her customer’s complained that an employee, Becky (Dreama Walker), stole money out of her purse an hour ago; she’s with Daniels now along with Sandra’s boss, the franchise owner.  The mostly young staff is on edge as it is; Sandra has warned them that a company “secret shopper” is coming in to rate the place.

When Daniels asks Sandra to take Becky into the break room and search her purse, you know something is not kosher.  From merely rummaging through her purse, the search escalates incrementally, orchestrated by Daniels as the rest of the oblivious staff out front continues serving the steady stream of hungry customers.  He cows and intimidates Sandra, flatters her so that she’ll do anything he asks.  A foreshadowing scene occurs early in the film between Sandra and Becky so that when she takes his side, even referring to Becky as a thief, it rings true.  The cook, Kevin (Philip Ettinger) and a grizzled supplier (Matt Servitto) are the only ones who aren’t fooled.  Sensing things are not right, they make phone calls.

The fact that the entire film is based on telephone dialogue neither constricts nor undermines the suspense and pace.  Plus, the camera breaks it up with shots of customers chowing down in booths; rusted, greasy equipment, dirty dishwater, piles of discarded cartons and wrappers (Chef Ramsey would be appalled), and a parking lot rimmed with melting snow-drifts.  Soon scene will segue to a bland-looking, early fortyish man in sweater and slacks, sitting in front of a littered desk, or making a sandwich, with a phone to his ear.

Daniels threatens Becky with jail-time and fabricates drug deals, implicating her.  Confused, she denies everything, protests his demands, and insists that she’s innocent. He tells her frequently to calm down and insists that she address him as “sir” or “officer.”  He ensures that there is only one person at a time in the room with her. Becky, who now sits naked, covered only by an apron, ends up allowing Sandra, her assistant, Marti (Ashley Atkinson), as well as Sandra’s balding, sheepish, beer-drinking fiancé, Van (Bill Camp), to carry out Daniels’ phone directed, step-by step searches tantamount to those perpetrated on prisoners suspected of concealing contraband in bodily orifices.  Daniels rewards Van for conducting the most egregious search with a sex act by Becky. 

            You ask yourself why Sandra and the others allowed this to happen.  People are conditioned through religion, education, and government to obey the law and not to question authority.  The man spoke convincingly, repeatedly stating that he was an officer of the law, asking, “Don’t you want to do the right thing?” “Help me out here,” and “The sooner you do this, the sooner it’ll all be over,” interspersed with threats.  Also, he had done his homework on these people, knew their weaknesses and used the information to his advantage.

 Can we use the message of the film to explain how tyrannical, imperialistic governments gain control of its citizens?  How 100s of thousands of people are coerced into leaving their homes and boarding freight cars that will take them to their deaths?  How millions of innocent people are driven from their lands, herded into reservations, or concentration camps as were Japanese citizens in California?  Can it explain the exploitation of women?  Minorities?  The undocumented, and so on? 

Though this cringe-inducing film takes place in the restaurant, mostly in the back room, it is not claustrophobic.  The acting feels natural, you sense that these are real, hardworking people asked to carry out unspeakable acts on an innocent person.

 

COME TO THE MASQUERADE

By Lynn Ruth Miller

People are so busy dreaming the American dream,

Fantasizing about what they could be or have a right to be,

that they’re all asleep at the switch.

Florence King

Back in the dark ages when I was a child, I wanted to be a fairy princess.  I wanted to sprinkle everyone I met with fairy dust and create a golden paradise.  As I grew older, I wanted to become a beautiful dancer, a brilliant student, a sugar plum.

 

Little boys had fiercer dreams.  They wanted to be cowboys and bare-chested Indians with feathers trailing down their backs.  They wanted to shoot guns, kick puppies and punch each other. That was what little boys were supposed to do.

 

Those were the days when we all believed our streets were paved with gold and hard work could earn you a rainbow. We believed love and marriage was a right.  Every future needed lots of babies, a cute puppy and two cars in every garage.   That was the American way.

 

Attitudes have certainly changed, haven’t they?  These days, little girls want to be witches, vampires and black swans; little boys dream about pirates and fierce aliens. No one believes in miracles or magic.  We want power, money and lots of bling.

 

Little girls realize that to sprinkle themselves with fairy dust reduces them to sex objects.    Little boys know that muscles only get them jealous looks at the gym.  Healthy bank accounts, gas guzzling cars and a hot tattoo are in.  After all,  Galahads can’t pay the mortgage; and maidens don’t want to be saved.  It demeans them.

 

When you visit America, what do you see?  You see overweight human beings guzzling MacDonald’s hamburgers and Kentucky Fried Chicken while they listen to music on their I-pods, texting on their cell phones. You see huge shopping centers, clogged streets and no children playing on the streets. We put our children on school buses and worry that they will be kidnapped if they walk home from school. And no wonder.  2,185 children disappear every day in this country.

 

Americans awake before dawn to drive on packed freeways for hours to a job that pays too little and demands too much.  They battle traffic jams to get home too late to say good night to their children, turn on TV with a beer in one hand and a remote in the other. There is no time to admire the daisy that bloomed in the garden or the pink dragon their child made in school.  I see women dropping off their children at day care so they can go to an office, work until five, pick up the children, do the grocery shopping, clean the house and make dinner with no time to enjoy the money they have earned or get to know the children they have created. I see families buying gadgets they don’t need, wearing clothes that turn them into carbon copies of everyone else and I wonder if they know what they are missing.

 

There is a lot of good in the American way, of course.  I love that women have choices and men do the dishes. I love that, in California at least, you can be gay or straight, black, white or yellow and still have a shot at grabbing the gold ring.  I love that little girls play football and little boys are allowed to cry.

 

Not long ago, I was visiting a family in Edinburgh and when I opened the front door, their little girl was sitting in the hall singing to her dolls.  The first thing that occurred to me as I watched that child so wrapped up in her fantasy she didn’t know anyone else existed, was ”This could never happen in America.”

 

Just last month, I lost my way on a Brighton street and a woman I did not know walked me several blocks to my destination.  If you are lost in my town, it is your bad luck..  People here have deadlines.  They do not have time for compassion.

 

I wonder if California dreaming is fun anymore.  We make headlines every day. You can’t beat us for glitter, but something awful has happened to the gold.

 

We must stop talking about the American dream

And start listening to the dreams of Americans.

Max Beerbohm

LOVING MY IMAGE

 

There is nothing more rare, nor more beautiful,

Than a woman being unapologetically herself;

Comfortable in her perfect imperfection.”

Steve Maraboli

I became conscious of my body when I was 16 and I hated it.  This was 1946 when the image was a flat tummy and big breasts.  The goal was the “sweater girl” look:  a slender, pegged skirt with a slit so you could walk and a filled tight sweater.  I was flat- chested, with tiny hips and a bloated tummy that made my shape look more like a Shmoo than Marilyn Monroe.

 

Through the years, as fashions changed and my body modified, I never seemed able to diet it down or corset it into the shape I saw in magazine centerfolds.  I knew instinctively that if I wanted to catch a man (and in those days, we all wanted to do that) I would have to look tempting enough to excite him.  No man with a decent level of testosterone would look twice at a woman shaped like a tube with over-sized feet that turned out when she walked.   I was convinced that my poor social life was the result of high intelligence and a lousy figure.

 

It never occurred to me that the first step to becoming a beauty is to love who you are.  I saw homely, dumpy, fashion-less girls snap up all the eligible men and I never understood how they did it.  Even I, with my sallow coloring and wispy hair looked better than they did.  Besides I didn’t wear glasses and my complexion was clear.

 

Years passed and my body parts reshaped themselves with each decade, but no matter what happened to them, I hated the look I had.  For as long as I can remember, I have either worn baggy pants and extra large  shirts, or long loose dresses, starting with the waist-less shifts in the fifties to the loose flowing gowns I have adopted since I came to California in the eighties.  I have always been thankful for clothes that conceal and it never occurred to me to lower my turtle neck to anything décolleté.

 

About 6 years ago, I added a mock strip tease to my comedy act and for the first time in my life, I exposed my legs and my collar bone.  The costume I wore was hardly salacious (I had given that up years ago) but it certainly revealed a lot more of me than had ever been exposed before.  I pranced and posed through the next few years, never exposing more, but adding new and more daring costumes until bit by bit, I devised the blinking tit routine which flashed as I sang and was disconcerting, funny and not very provocative at all.

And then two years ago, I started doing my songs in real burlesque shows.  I would go into the dressing room and watch women of every size and shape get themselves into gorgeous and revealing costumes and instead of dressing behind a screen (as I had done for a minimum of seventy years) I was undressing in a room filled with naked men and women…..(boys do burlesque too) and no one looked askance at me or at each other.  In fact, we all helped one another hook, pin and embellish our costumes ready for the stage.

I noticed that the women who were the best performers did not necessarily conform to any “look” but they all shared a wonderfully confident attitude and it was then I realized what those homely girls in the forties had that I didn’t have.  They loved who they were.  They never thought twice about the circumference of their waists or the size of their brassiere.  Their concern was how to show off what they had…and how to put it to the best and most pleasurable use.

I think that is wonderful.  I am past worrying about pleasurable use but I am certainly interested in using what I have to the best advantage.  I LIKE being saucy and even sexy…..no I LOVE it….and I love the body I have to do it with.  Both hips are mine, the knees bend, the boobs are saggy but they can twirl….sort of.  But who cares?  I am the only me I can be and I am unique. That is plenty good enough for me.

 

You are imperfect, permanently and inevitably flawed.

And you are beautiful.

Amy Bloom

WHO IS WATCHING YOU ?

Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like
asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds.
John Perry Barlow

You decide to buy a book about surfing and find just want you want on bargains.com.  You type in your credit card details and send them off to the company which has assured you that your information is safe with them and goes nowhere but to their secure site. You have every right to believe that the only one who is aware of that number (which is a direct link to your checking account) is an impersonal machine that automatically checks to see if your card is valid.  Two months later, you order something else from the site and discover your card is on file.  How did that happen? What right have they to save it?  Worse: can someone who works there use your details for their own purposes?

Ah, but the real surprise is that your card details are not only on file with Bargain.com but with several hundred other sites with ads on Google.  AND when you send an e mail mentioning surfing, you get twenty ads alongside your e mail telling you that they have spiffy surfboards at half the price you paid at bargain.com.  As you look down the list of vendors, you also find new places to surf, hotels to stay at and places to eat especially for surfers.  How did Google know you surfed?  You haven’t even discussed it with your mother.

You go to another site to look up books on calligraphy and when you start to type in your contact details to purchase the book you want, you discover that somehow, this omniscient site recognizes you as soon as you type the first letter of your name.  How did that happen?  You were never interested in calligraphy until an hour ago.

“There are hundreds of web-based email services that appear to offer anonymity. Few really do. These include names such as Hotmail, Yahoo, Excite and many more that could be listed. In each of these cases, the user is allowed to create a personal username that he uses for his messages. Unfortunately, through sign-up procedures and logging, it is amazingly simple to determine your ISP, and even your true identity, when you use these services,” says A. Brown on www.e/cheat.com.

At first, all this seems to heighten the convenience of shopping or searching on line.  We tend to forget that ordinary people are entitled to privacy. Refusing to reveal the amount of money we have, where it is deposited and the special interests we have unpublished does not make us terrorists.  (Although the way this information is bandied about certainly does make us terrorized.)

 

Mike Butcher explains this practice of real time web disclosure:  “The idea behind a real-time Web is to create technology that doesn’t require an Internet user to actively seek out something they’re interested in. That could mean anything from getting pinged when an article about your favourite sports team is posted to an alert when you’re mentioned in someone’s blog.”

There is something decidedly uncomfortable about the world knowing you like surfing or are interested in pursuing calligraphy…but it is a lot MORE disturbing if your partner finds out you have just joined e harmony to see if someone more exciting awaits or that you like to watch porn while he is selling computers at Frye’s. That is all YOUR business,…or is it?

A Brown has more to say on the subject: “There are more reasons to want to protect your privacy than can be named. The important principal is that you have a right to privacy as long as that right is used within the bounds of the law.  Seeking privacy should not make you feel guilty. Privacy should be expected, and demanded. The reasons might be as simple as preserving your right to express unpopular opinions without being subjected to persecution, or as serious as communicating sensitive business information, revealing credit card numbers, legal discussions with your accountant, or hiding your true identity from a secret government. Regardless of your reasons, privacy is your right. Contrary to what some governing bodies might want the public to believe, not all those concerned with security and privacy are hackers or terrorists.”

The fact that A Brown is just another computer user who has made these observations on a non-technical site is even more unsettling.  The “experts” in computer technology probably know how to find out your eating habits, your sex addictions and your regularity….Why do they care?  Perhaps it is to use the information to tempt you to buy a product.  It could be to garner statistics on the potential success of a new product.  Or it could be to harass you and accuse you of something they think you might do…such as drug dealing or behaviour that “disturbs the peace.”

Facebook says, ‘Privacy is theft,’ because they’re selling
your lack of privacy to the advertisers who might show up one day
Jaron Lanier