- Tonight on our place, our time, a play that won the Pulitzer Prize, but is Hampton Roads ready for its language?

African art in Hampton Roads from yesterday and today, jazz singer Connie Parker and Guy Fredell.

And here is your host, Vianne Webb.

- Good evening.

Welcome back to our place our time.

The only ous words in David Mamet's play, Glen Garry Glen Ross are those in its title and they are among the few words one would use in mixed company, the small time cutthroat salesman who people mammos play talk in a language abrasive and elementary.

Some critics of the New York production praised mammos language calling it All American Music and Bel Canto arias from the lower depths.

A minority of other critics were not swept away by what one critic called the merciless profusion of four letter words.

Last weekend, the Virginia Stage Company in Norfolk opened Glengarry Glen Ross.

And now we're going to have two reports on the play and the production.

I'll talk with Virginia Stage artistic director Charles Towers will begin with a field report from our Tempe Fisk.

- Why go to the theater?

Well, as one critic put it, perhaps it's to crack your head open and let some oxygen in that presumes.

Of course, that theater is at its very best theater at its best makes you sad, happy, uncomfortable can even make you think theater at its very best exposes your nerves and your feelings.

But for theater to be at its very best, a whole lot of elements must combine into one harmonious blend.

Two of the elements necessary to any stage production are the set designer's model of the set and the actual set itself.

The model done to scale creates an environment that the director has imagined and it serves as a reference point for designers.

It also provides the actors a physical vehicle or reference point so that they can better assume their characters in relation to the set.

As the legendary actor John Barrymore was fond of saying, the better the actor on the set, the more completely is he able to eliminate the personal equation.

In Glengarry Gly Ross, the entire first act takes place in a Chinese restaurant and the small booth in the model takes on life-size proportions.

In the scene, shop scene shops do not have the luxury of ready-made set pieces that come preassembled out of a box.

Instead, the transfer of the models scaled inches is adjusted for the demands of the stage and materials are purchased and assembled that meet those needs.

The skeleton of the booth in the Chinese restaurant looks much different when padding and material is added to the finished product.

George Bernard Shaw believes it is the function of the actor to make the audience imagine for the moment that real things are happening to real people, but it is for the author to make the result interesting.

David Mamet is the author of Glenn Garry Glynn Ross and interesting is just one of the words that has been used to describe David Mamet's plays.

Mame is well known for his exploration of America, mythology and business.

His combative raw use of language, turning street poetry into theater is evidenced in this opening scene from Glengarry Glen Ross.

- Four.

You had four lawyers.

One kicked out.

One the judge you said.

John, do you wanna see the court records?

John that?

Do you want to get off time?

No.

You want to get off time?

No.

Then all that I'm saying is you say, shit, what is that?

What is that?

All that I'm saying, what is this?

You say, shit, the deal kicks out.

I gotta eat shit with him.

Some shit.

You MAs Roma.

Look at the sheets.

Look at the sheets.

- And with me is Charles Tower's, artistic director of the Virginia Stage Company and the director of Glen Garry Glen Ross.

Charles, you wrote a fascinating thing in your stage company newsletter and I've been thinking a lot about it, the writer and the words.

That's always been our point of departure.

I wonder if you talked to me about mammo and his words tonight, if you will, since you have saved the direction of Glen Gary for yourself.

- Huh?

David Mamet.

David Mamet is a, a wordsmith and a stage poet perhaps, perhaps America's best at this point.

He's certainly up there in terms of the living working writers for the stage with Sam Shepherd and few others.

All the playwrights that we have chosen and produced over the years have in their own way been stage poets, whether it's O'Neill or Shakespeare or Pinter or Lfr Wilson or even the new playwrights that we work with, Deborah Pryor, Alan Havis.

There's always, they all have a certain bent on language and I think that's really what the theater, the theater's about many things, but I think it really is the last refuge for the art of the spoken word.

I think it's the last art form in which the music of the spoken word really is.

Primary movies really are about visuals, about scenes and action and quick cuts and, and the theater is about what words can - Do.

We understand from many writers talking about David Mammot that perhaps if he has a subtext or a point to make even more importantly than a subtext in his own writings, somebody referred to it as the demystification of the American dream.

Don't you think he does that with the language I of the two mammo plays I've seen, I was telling someone the other day that I, you do ride on those words and and we need to come back to the words having made a reference to them.

But you, you get like this with David Mammot.

- Yeah.

- And what, how do you think he fits in your season and in what way is he approaching the American dream?

- This is interesting because Shepherd actually is about the demystification of the American dream and so is David Rae and I'm beginning to pile up most contemporary playwrights and I'm beginning to wonder aloud what that says.

- Interesting, isn't it?

- I mean, if, if Death of the Salesman was the first trip over the American dream and what happened to Willie Lowman?

- Good way.

- Glen Garry Glen Ross, which is about Chicago real estate salesman in, in the eighties is, is about the further unraveling I think of that same dream.

And, and I, I don't think in spite of whatever advancements the women's movement has made in the past 25 years, when you're talking about the American dream and if you're really going back into his roots, you're talking about a male thing.

- A male dominated, yeah, - It's been male dominated, but there's no question that it has been business, politics, military, government.

Exactly.

I don't think we - Core with that.

- Exactly.

And so when you begin to unravel that, you begin to unravel the American male soul, which is really what he's sticking his pins into.

- Tell me what you expect from the particular audience that you have at the stage company seeing this play.

- Well, I don't expect much of an audience except just to go with it and, and Mammot would quarrel about MAM's not really a political writer.

He's not a didactic and he's not preachy and he himself would argue against almost any sense of politics, ironically.

- Social statement obviously.

- Yeah, of course it's there.

Yeah, but I mean, he's not gonna, he's not gonna agree to that.

It's there.

He just says, he writes the stories and he writes the characters and they come up and that's it.

Well, he's a very thoughtful individual.

Even when he writes something like The Untouchables, which is the screenplay he wrote popular movie, very cartoon, very, you know, Chicago gangsters, 1930s, Al Capone, Elliot Ness, even that he couldn't help but but take apart pieces of America and look into the gangster soul of our nation.

And not that, not that the nation has a gangster soul, Glen Garry, Glen Ross.

It's about a specific group of people in a specific city in a specific situation.

It's not about all real estate salesmen, it's not about all businessmen, it's not about all of anything.

It's a portion.

It's a piece.

And yet those same men in some ways worked their way up to the Oval Office in the Nixon administration and we had the same broken sentence structure.

We had the same expletives deleted, we had the same disdain for the public or disdain for the customer in the salesman case that is revealed in Glengarry.

Now, that was a specific administration, a specific time, a specific piece also that doesn't say all politics are that way, but there are a lot of pieces that fit together.

- I think when you see mammo and, and a lot of the theatergoers here is that one of the ways that mammo can get by with that really strong language, it fits the time and the place because he is specific.

Sometimes O'Neill, when O'Neill is writing about the father that is the alcoholic, it could be anywhere any time.

And there is true personal identification, - Ma butt also gets away with it because he's just so electric.

I mean, - Yes, - He just cooks.

- There's energy - On it.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean it's not laborious or or or ponderous.

It just, it's charged.

It's like that the thing, just the thing just zooms along.

- Tell me how personal, as a last question you think the impact of this will be given the stock market uneasiness.

It's, I hate to say it's, it's crashed, certainly it's fall and the economic climate here and this statement on American business life.

- It's a bit of a question mark that's been raised by the stock market by Black Monday.

- Did you plan that?

It's not a bad - Opening?

No.

In fact, in fact, when I chose it and then this happened, I actually wondered if it was, if people would not want to therefore see this, but I think it's, I dunno, I think it's even more, more powerful, more relevant and, and and, and funnier.

The thing is an incredibly funny play just because of his sharp view of things.

- You've got an interesting season.

I hope you, we all wish you well with it.

This it's always more vital, I think to see ourselves, to be seen among ourselves, American playwrights looking at us as we see ourselves.

Charles, thank you for being our guest.

Every week at this time in our program, we look ahead to important concerts, stage productions, exhibits and cultural events scheduled throughout the next week.

These are choices This week, two exhibitions of African art in Hampton.

Roads are attracting large audiences.

We'll have reports on each.

The exhibitions are a pair at the Chrysler Museum, the exhibition from the State Museum for Folk Art in Munich, west Germany is of older and traditional African art.

The exhibition at Hampton University, taken from that university's large collection of African art links the story to today.

We'll begin with Tim Morton's report from the Chrysler Museum and then go to Hampton with Kim Simon Fink.

- We very much hope that visitors will lead the exhibition with a new and deeper appreciation of just how integral traditional African art is to the lives of those who created it and those who appreciated it.

Because it is very much an art that is rooted in the traditions of African life, religious, cultural, and social.

And it is also an art that expresses in a very deep way, very essential human needs and ideas.

At the same time, it can often be amusing and in many cases is suffused with a wonderful sense of elegance.

- Once upon a time art from Africa was called primitive, naive or tribal art.

No one calls it that anymore.

African art appears to us today more like an ideal, an ideal that finds us in the West wanting.

We too often think of art as a commodity, another thing to be bought or sold to The traditional African artist.

Art arises everywhere to permeate and dignify everything to link us to a collective past and consecrate our living.

Joyce Zebo, the Chrysler Museum's curator for this African exhibit - Among many African people, symbols of royalty are extremely important.

The royal leadership establishing continuity, maintaining the tradition of life.

The head is seen by many people as a repository of the soul, the spirit, the real essence of a human being among the Benning people of the present day area of Nigeria.

Between the 14th and 19th century, they cast commemorative brass heads of royal ancestors of the king and his family with intricate detail and exquisite casting techniques that provide details of that royalty, including the coral beads that that form a high collar here coming up to the chin, the long coral beads that hang from the head, the rosettes about the head, the tight fitting cap, and the exquisite details of mud fish and frogs and other emblems that are specific signs of banging royalty.

While the Ben mean metal metalworks that we examined were commissioned by and created to be used in conjunction with royalty as signs of status and prestige.

Much of the art of Central Africa is not involved with royalty, but is rather art that everyday people use to help to overcome the evil and potential misfortunes of everyday life in present days.

Zaire among the Yaay people, when someone feels that something evil is upon them, they commission a sculptor to carve a wooden image of a human or animal form.

When the sculptor finishes, he gives the piece then to a spiritual specialist or diviner who attaches inorganic and organic other substances to the peace imbuing the peace with power to overcome the evil.

- Why the mirrors.

- The mirrors enclosed the central cavity or the boxes that contain the organic and inorganic substances that the spiritual specialist adds.

But the mirrors are also believed by many to repel evil.

Either the evil doer sees his reflection in the mirror and is then repelled away.

Or in some people believe that the mirror actually captures the soul or the essence of the evil doer rendering him powerless.

- The Chrysler exhibit includes art from all the major regions of Africa south of the Sahara masks.

This one from the Fang Group in Gabon is supposed to represent the spirit of a dead person.

The heart shape is characteristic.

This is the kind of mask that so influenced European artists like Picasso from earlier in this century, from the Ivory Coast.

This face with the bird's wings and a bird's head in an artful combination is called an entertainment mask.

The abstract design of these wooden figures is intentional and the result of a long stylistic development from the southern Cameroon forest.

They're thought to be ancestral figures, possibly a clan founder and his wife, and therefore objects of worship.

The Chrysler exhibit of traditional African art will continue December 13th.

As we will see, African traditions have continued well into the 20th century.

- Interesting.

Contemporary African art has been overshadowed by the growing popularity of the more familiar traditional African art.

Though to get to know a people and their heritage, the present cannot be separated from the past.

This show is a selection from a larger body of work donated to the Hampton University Museum from the Harman Foundation.

It exhibits a variety of paintings and sculptures done by pioneer artists of the mid 19 hundreds.

This collection marks the first transitional movements away from the functional application of traditional art to the modern aesthetic of contemporary works.

- African contemporary artists were involved in the process of changing from the traditional approach to the contemporary style.

The challenge was more of challenge of continuity and preservation to preserve the traditional art forms and at the same time to continue with new ideas, new techniques, and new subject matter that would reflect the contemporary experiences.

The works of Peter Clark from South Africa are examples of this kind of transition from the traditional to contemporary.

Here he is using such traditional African icons that are familiar on on the continent, such as a Luba stool and a mask and interpreting them in traditional, I mean contemporary mode, - Concerned with content, but moving away from prescribed symbolic forms.

Neo traditionalists packaged their past in paintings characterized by a western aesthetic for realism.

Vanessa Thaxton, student curator of the Hampton University exhibit, - First generation pioneer at canola Laskin of Nigeria, is considered a representational painter.

His strict style of painting is influenced by western medium and style, and he basically served to document and record the everyday activities of village life.

- From the first evolved, a second generation, the modern expressionist artists such as Ben Iru took new initiatives to go beyond the limitations of traditional guidelines.

Even in wa, Ru sculptures emphasized the new aesthetic idealism.

This piece is fashioned after the prophet Mohammed.

It has no purpose in the traditional sense.

It is merely an artistic expression.

Even as expressionistic styles changed, artists remained committed to documenting their heritage.

Ethiopian painters, Kunda Boian recorded his recollections of village life with an interpretive flair.

While the subject matter became more abstracted, the rounded faces and shrouded figures remained distinctively.

Ethiopian, today's art has a new freedom of expression.

Artists borrow and blend from both the traditional and the contemporary in an effort to translate the mystical aesthetic of their culture - Into their own work.

And you will see multiple of forms and styles of art from the continent today.

And that's what makes the African contemporary art world very, very interesting because we have not seen, we have yet to seen what is to come in terms of the development of contemporary African art.

- We are going to turn next on our program to music and to a jazz singer and pianist.

I've long admired Connie Parker.

Connie and her trio are appearing on alternate weekends at the airport Hilton and at Abington's Restaurant and Lounge, both in Norfolk.

The song they're going to play for us is George Gershwin's.

Our Love is Here to Stay.

- It is very all not for nor ever am the day the radio and the telephones and the movies that we know, hey, they just may be passing fancies, but in time, you know, the Rockies may crumble.

They're only made of Frankie not for a year and the day, the radio and the and the that.

We know just passing the, you know, the Rockies May Cter, they're, - Thank you Connie, please come back.

Is there anyone in Hampton Roads who doesn't know and admire?

Guy Friedel columnist for the Virginian pilot.

Speaker, author guy joins us tonight with a commentary - If I'm more of a mass than I seem to be, than I usually am.

Notice I said mass and not mess.

It's because I've had to eat by myself.

$26 and 85 cents worth of Halloween candy that was left over.

We had failed to note that all the trick or treaters in our area were in college or off in a job in Yuma or Hu Houston somewhere and weren't coming back in bedsheets to eat the candy that we bought.

I volunteered to eat it all, sacrificing myself.

It has extended Halloween the consequences of Halloween.

And when you think about it with Halloween and November, Thanksgiving and December, Christmas, it's no time for Weight Watchers.

I think I'll probably be the last fat man in the world, but that's something of a service because all the people that are so bent on being fit and fitness has almost become fattest these days, won't know how thin they are unless they have a fat person to whom they can compare themselves when you get right down to it, they also serve who only stand and wait, and that's spelled W-E-I-G-H-T. - Next week on our place, our time, we'll take an inside look at the staging of what is probably the most beloved of all operas, Puccini's la.

We'll visit and celebrate the lovely homes of Smithfield where there's more than ham.

And since it'll be Thanksgiving night, we'll take you back to what is honestly the first American Thanksgiving.

Good night.

I hope we'll see you next week.