January 1966 Red Cross (Obie) at Judson Church with a new adaptation of Antigone.
1966 Yale and Firehouse Theatre in Minn 1400 Thousand on PBS.
Theatre Genesis particular in a small group of writers Leonard Melfi, Murray Mednick, Tony Barsha (The Hawk about junkies and drug dealers developed by the company including Scarlett Johnson and O-Lan from Calif. and Tom Sankey. A deeply subjective kind of realism...an almost conspicuous heterosexuality".
These early plays take place in real time continuous from beginning to end with no illusion of days passing. And the characters change a lot, play different roles and moods.
"Abstract collages consisting of lyrical monologes, stunning imagery and a sense of paranoid despair. "
The Moment we do not stay the same.
No rewrite on the conceptual framework banal dialogue to stitch together images, actions and poetically extended monologues pure spirit...
Smith uses the stage to project images: They do not relate to the spectator by reflecting outside reality, rather they relate to reality by operating directly on the spectators' minds and nerves."
"Dialogue going on inside of the character, the dialogue comes out of what's going on inside all those people...on writing--you get to speak all that stuff that's going on in your head: more biographical a theatrical snapshot of what it's like to be living hand to mouth in a crummy E. Village apartment in the early 60's." Up to Thursday in Best Plays of 1964-65 dodging the draft.
Open Theatre--went because he hung around with Aaron (The Serpent) Joseph Chaikin to develop tech for performing nonnaturalistic material the Brect plays and verse dramas. His effect was like that of Lee Strasberg on the gospel. Influence on opening up the attitudes within...and on faith in the priority of art over glamor...Shep insistance on keeping tight control over his work and his hostility toward publicity = Chaikin's artistic integrity. Acting workshop based on Mola Chilton with sound and movement improvisations to express emotional undercurrents that accompany everyday behavior finding a different language to distinguish the inside world from the ouside. Gilman on Shep: "a James Dean-like youth with an un-Dean like intellectual glint in his eyes." Transformations switch to ane(?) with scene and character.
Open Th actors in early work like O'conner, Aaron, Chaikin like the Magic Th folks in movies he is connected with.
Goffman's Presentation of the Self,...the "post Freudian that human personality is built up through a succession of circumstances one finds oneself in. Essence to each person and one creates oneself for different situations...like Mingus moving in and out of different voices...transformation of personality. Van Italiie, Megan Terry and exercises Shep came to rehearsals and workshops, Aaron introduced him. Levy was there "Immersion only to a point he would observe, take what he could use and make it his own. He resisted some elements of the Open Process. Unlike the work on America Hurrah created with actors they did not change Shep stuff".
On improvisation. "He likes a certain kind of improvisation in the way he wrote."
Levy on the monologues..."Sam wanted them to be treated like musical solos, but that doesn't help an actor-they don't see it from that point of view...funny person, he could get brutal, crucial scary...different from Pinter or Beckett. Not wry, it's a certain abstraction in his humor always, something to do with a certain cool imagination that was in the air in the 60's. Jack Nicholson should be in a Shep play".
On the ending: "He had an intuitive grasp of structure, but with improv there is often not an ending, only a vague idea of where he was going. The notebooks indicate his improv style. Blood fog, explosions, theatrical endings. Levy credits himself with the ending for Turista. No major rewriting until La Turista Orig a 3 act play throws out the second and third acts and writes a new second act which actually takes place in time before the first act...kill a live chicken...NY law prohibits that so they settle for a "sleight of hand."
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