- We are going to tour the art scene of Tidewater.

We'll have theater with actors performing a scene from the play DA currently running at the generic theater in Norfolk.

We'll have painting from Lee Krasner whose retrospective exhibition is now on display in the Chrysler Museum and we'll begin with dance with dancers from the Tidewater Ballet, performing from Capal.

We'll have all of these performances and some lively conversation too.

Join our tour.

We are going to begin our tour with Talk with me are Pat Rell, artistic director of the Tide Water Ballet and Ben Klier.

Ben is an old familiar to these haunts.

He did, he was, did some Macbeth work with us last year, Porter and for the Porter scene.

Right.

And he is going to be Dr.

Alius in their forthcoming production of Capal.

I had the privilege a couple in 1978.

Was that, was it when you first did it?

- Yes, 1977.

By 1978 - I had the privilege of seeing that performance in 1978 and of seeing Benjamin Klier play Dr.

Alius and I have a picture here of it.

There he is and I must say, I must say this, and I mean this in all sincerity, this is one of the finest stage portrayals I've ever seen in Norfolk by anybody for coming in from outside touring company or local.

This is an outstanding performance and you're so lucky to have him back again.

Oh, we are thrilled.

Isn't that nice pieces?

You've never told me that - Before.

- Well, I've saved it just for this occasion.

I wanted to do it in front of so, so the world can know we've - Added many new dimensions to it now.

We have had a lot of good rehearsal time and we've explored the character and I think you will find that it is even better now than when he did it before.

- Well, let me ask you, Ben, have you learned your lines?

- Oh, I don't know how to answer that.

We discussed this before.

A young friend who has seen me on the stage many times did say, Ben, do you have many lines in this Copia thing?

My only answer was, of course the lines are inherent in the music and the character and the choreography.

- The challenge that he's had to meet with this is he does indeed have lines, but he'll be saying with one part of his mind a line like You are my little one.

And at the same time he's having to count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 to say it on the right counts.

- Ah, - That is a challenge.

- It sure is.

Capal.

Let's talk about Capal for a few minutes.

One of the great ballets, I think of it as the kind of the other side, the obverse of Gisele, the come, the comedy, the romantic comedy, whereas Gisele is would be the tragedy.

Tell me about Capal.

Where did it originate and where did it come from?

- It originally came from France.

It was first done in 1870 in May of 1870 - In May 25th, 1870 - Paris.

In fact, that was a very sad time for ballet in general and it had reached rather a new low and I understand that one of the comments when this ballet was done, that was that the emperor actually stayed awake for the entire performance.

It started a revival of ballet and it's a charming score.

It has been changed very, very little over the years.

It was done.

The version on which ours is based was done in St.

Petersburg by Petipa in February of 19 18, 18 84, 84, a hundred years ago, - 100 years ago.

- And then in the 19 hundreds when so many Russians left Russia Sergeev, who was a registrar of the company, took many, many notes with him and staged it for the ballet Rous and Madame Deva came, she had done prayer in Russia.

She came and dance s Sw Elda, the leading female role along with Mr.

Franklin Frederick Franklin for about 13 years with Ballet Ru.

And I was in Mr.

Franklin's company and learned the ballet from him.

So we have a very, very direct tie right back to the Russian version.

- Dan NVA has come here and, and is she coming?

There was some word that she may come, - There is some word.

She may come and we are very hopeful we would love to see her again.

She has been here and worked with our group before - Pat the third act, there's some something strange about the third act, the diver months act.

Wasn't the choreography lost or something like - That?

Yes, the French ceased doing it back in the 18 hundreds altogether, and the Russian original third act is virtually lost.

What we do is we take the entrance Panama, we take most of the finale and dawn and prayer from B Rus version and the other diver Eastmans I've choreographed to fit in with the other choreography, which is what most companies do nowadays.

- Now you danced this with Franklin, right?

- Yes, I danced it in Mr.

Franklin's company.

Okay.

And interestingly enough, my partner is now the Ballet Master of the Boston Ballet, and our guest artists are coming to us from Boston Ballet.

Loretta Dodd is one of our former students, and Alexander Poya is from France.

So it all kind of ties in together.

- It is a small world and the ballet world is very small.

You all - Are, I think all the - Arts are each has to be really because that's, that's the way the ballets are carried on from, they're carried on by through bodies, through human bodies from one to the next - Personal contact.

Yeah.

People remember things.

- One footnote as a soldier during World War ii, about to sail for parts unknown to the South Pacific in 1943.

My last evening was spent in the San Francisco Opera House seeing Coelia with dva.

So I had that wonderful memory to take with me.

Yeah, - Tell me this, Dr.

Coelia, how do you play?

There is, there is.

I've seen capal before and there's a feeling of that Dr.

Copius is perhaps too much is done to him.

- Well, he can be a buffoon.

How do - You play him?

How do you do it?

- I try to find the human, the basic human elements in this character, and it's there in the music and it's there in the basic idea of the story and the, and the, the choreography as as we do it.

- Now you, you don't play him as mean or is he?

Well, - Most humans, this is where we want to make him real - Humans - Are not one dimensional people.

We have here a man who is very clever, who is socially inept, very uncomfortable with the peasants around him, misunderstood by them, he understands them, but who has a lot of love in his heart and who is turned to his dolls and to his alchemy and his magic books.

And we try to show his frustrations with the villagers.

We try to show at the end that there is an opening of communication.

We try to show his his love for his doll, especially the capal doll and the others.

We try to make him a many faceted individual.

- I wish I could clip out your words.

I'm going to clip out your words and put 'em on paper.

That's the best description of Dr.

Cappel I've ever heard.

That's wonderful.

May I word?

I can see you really working for all kinds of aspects to the Charact character.

Excuse me, Ben, - Excuse me.

He's a, and obviously very able doll maker because everyone who sees these dolls thinks of them as almost living beings.

He's a doll maker, but he's also a necromancer, a wizard of sorts who imagines that he can take his favorite doll coelia and give her life, turn her into the real loving female that he has come to love as a doll and in the ultimate extremity to turn her once he's thinks he has gotten, instilled her with life to turn her into a ballerina.

I see in the dance that she eventually does, but basically he is a recluse.

Who knows why he was driven to his reclusiveness, but a, a sad and lonely but wonderful man.

- Pat, when is the performance?

- The main performance will be at Chrysler Hall with an orchestra.

Harold Evans is conducting.

We are so pleased about - That.

- It will be on June the second at eight o'clock and people could purchase tickets which range from eight to $12 at the scope box office or through the regular ticket agencies.

We also have a very special open dress rehearsal Friday night, June 1st at seven o'clock where we are having groups in a groups of four or more students.

Under 18 handicapped individuals are senior citizens for every group of four.

Another person not in that category may come with them and those tickets are for $3.

- Okay.

We're going to see a scene from the third act, a little pot ofra and the dancers are Pat quickly.

- They are Michael Baras Gill and Wendy Brewer and Christina Hampton.

- Alright.

A scene from the Tidewater ballet's production of Capal Dancers from the Tidewater Ballet performed a pot tro from Capal, which will be presented by the ballet in Chrysler Hall Saturday night before moving to the final segment of the program during which we will see a scene from the play DA performed by actors from the generic theater.

I wanna say a few words about an exhibition at the Chrysler Museum that I found one of the most interesting and important to come our way in a long, long time.

The exhibition is of the art of Lee Krassner, whom I had known before now only as the widow of Jackson Pollock.

That's the Jackson Pollock, he of the drip and poor and highly energetic and moving paintings.

The Chrysler Exhibition demonstrates that Lee Krassner is an artist of great consequence.

Two.

Krassner is different from Pollock.

Here is a painting by Pollock from 1951 entitled Number 23.

It's black on white.

It is to my mind a disturbing painting for the values.

Pollock has purposefully chosen not to use values such as color.

This painting dates from Pollock's last year is when he was bent on reducing the art of painting to bare essentials.

But in doing so, I think Pollock created a work that speaks more about Pollock than it does about painting or its own subject matter.

The painting clamors for your attention and sympathy its values and meaning lie, I think ultimately beyond art.

Krassner in her paintings restores the borders of the canvas, or I should say Krassner has never diverged from being an artist for whom the discipline of art is as important as the ecstasy of art.

She is the more schooled artist than Pollock.

The Chrysler exhibition shows that Krassner knew the art of her forebears of Picasso, Barack and of Kandinsky.

But more than knowing their art, she had experienced it and was able to transform that experience into her own expression.

There are paintings in the exhibition large and small that generate their own feelings of freedom and form.

Both, I think derived from CRAs Krasner's masterful skill at drawing.

Like the best abstract painters, Krassner can draw like a whip and her paintings, unlike some of Pollocks have a finished look.

She has a sense of humor and several of her paintings demonstrate a delight in the play of colors and spontaneous design.

The more than 60 paintings the exhibition date from the 1940s to 1980, we can see and follow an artist changing, reinvigorating herself, learning, exploring items on her palate and means of organizing and freeing her work.

The Chrysler has given the Krassner exhibit the entire east side of the first floor, including the theater lobby.

The museum staff has opened up the gallery and left as much space as possible for viewing the several wall sized paintings.

The installation shows taste, thoughtfulness, and respect.

The Lee Krasner retrospective will be on display at the Chrysler Museum through June 16th.

And now I wanna turn to the play DA by the Irish playwright Hugh Leonard.

Presently being performed@thegenerictheater.is a memory play.

It takes place in the memory of Charlie, a middle aged playwright.

We meet both Charlie as himself, the middle aged playwright, and as the, as a young teenage man.

The play takes place on the day of Charlie's father's funeral.

The father is known as da.

The scene we're going to show you takes place in a park.

It's a spring day.

Young Charlie, teenage Charlie is eager to make his way in the world and wants to meet young women.

And he's fortunate this day because sitting on the park bench is a young lady known around Dublin as the yellow peril and Charlie wants to make some hay with her.

The scene now from DA by actors from the generic theater - Lust tied granny knots in my insides.

I wanted the yellow peril like no girl before and no woman's sense.

And what was worse?

I was wearing my new suit and I had to do it now, now or never before the newness wore off.

- Ethan, - You said that sit didn't ask you to sit down - Free country, - Nothing doing for you here.

- Never said the was - Ought to have gone off with that friend of yours - Who?

What yacht what for - Nothing doing for you here.

- Never said the was - What's your name anyway?

- Bruce?

- Yeah, - It is - Bruce.

Nice name.

- He's Oliver.

- That's - He's from the town.

- Where are you from?

- Trinity College.

- That right - English literature - Must be hard.

Hmm.

- Bits of it.

Well ask her.

She's not on Ask - Wouldn't Edward G. Robinson put you in mind of a monkey?

- Let's see.

Do you know he does - One of them baboons?

- Yes.

- Yes, yes, yes.

You insidious Devil you - It doesn't screw off.

What?

Me, me leg.

- I think you're getting her money.

All excited.

- You didn't think there's anything doing for you here?

- I don't - Dunno what you take me for.

Start a person who'd sit here and be felt with people passing.

If you won't stop, I'll have to go down the back if you won't stop.

- Alright.

- Wait till that old fell goes past.

- Who - Am not that you're getting anything.

- Oh, I know.

My silver tongue eloquence had claimed its helpless.

Victim deforestation stared me in the face.

My virgin hood swung by a slender thread and then - Come to the backseat.

I go More power to use Jesus.

Maryanne Joseph.

Hello?

- Don't talk to him.

- Yeah, the whole word is gone mad.

- Don't answer him.

- The we try was canceled bad scran to it says say to myself and I'm at a loss tramp there down, but I won't be for a loss of it.

Back for our walk.

If my hand had been free, I would've slashed my wrists.

Ho ho.

The young ones that's going on nowadays would each, I don't know, - He doesn't know much - Now he knows too shagging much.

If your mother was here and seen the art from Martins, see there'd be Bloods, spillt - Mat care.

- Machu care me.

- He's talking to me.

- Certainly I'm talking to him.

Who else?

That's my young lad.

You're frick acting with, - Is he ya?

- Oh, that's Charlie.

Who?

Bruce - Is my middle name.

- That's Charles Patrick.

Oh, thanks You mind me.

Now what does it say?

Carl, you - Mary Tate.

- From where?

Ah, you hold your interference from where?

- Glass two the dwellings.

- You mother was one of the henigan of Sara Ngan.

Did you know that?

- Yes.

- And you know Udin and me was comrad the time its rebels.

And you had a sister that died a consumption above in Lanston.

- Me, sister Pat - And another one in England.

Josie.

Well, to I know the whole seed and breed is Yeah, this is a grand girl.

Tell me child, is there lose of your father itself?

- No.

- That's hard lines.

- We don't want news of him.

Let him stay wherever he is.

He didn't give a curse about us then.

We don't give a curse about him.

Now - There's some queer people walking the ways of the world - Blast him.

- And before my - Very eyes, you turned the yellow peril into Mary T of Glass.

The last thing I wanted that night was a person, - Actors from the generic theater performed a scene from the play by Hugh called da.

I think another title of that play might be the Father of Us All.

You know, the opera, the Mother of us All.

Well, this is about the father in everybody's life and it's quite a moving little play.

Quite a moving play.

Very big success on Broadway.

Just a couple of years ago.

Now I want to talk to Montague Gammon, producing director of the Generic Theater.

Mague.

This is the last play of your first year at generic theater.

How has it worked out this year for you, do you think?

- I've been very pleased.

We've gotten a lot of support from the community, from the actors, and especially from the city of Norfolk and the Department of Parks and Recreation of which we are a subset.

I've been very pleased from coming into our new space in October.

We had a full production up two months later and have completed a season of six full productions starting from scratch.

- What about your plans for next year?

- We have five full-length plays planned next year, and we're gonna start the season off the first two weekends of September with a new plays festival.

Six nights of staged readings of works by local authors that have never been produced before.

- Goodness say, Hmm, that's adventurous.

- We wanna start off each season with something new to, to entice our subscribers and to get new people into the theater.

- What else?

- We go from that to the opening full scale production ladies at the Alamo by Paul Zindel.

Then we will have a production called Nelson County Blues by local playwright, Barbara Allen.

Het Steal Away by Ramona King is our third play.

That's a folk tale of Chicago in the Depression.

We're gonna do an Elizabeth and drama after that and then close out with David Mammoth's appropriately titled, play A Life in the Theater.

It's about two aging actors and I referred to it in my writeup as being a look behind the masks of comedy and tragedy, - An Elizabethan play.

I presume you have not picked the play yet.

- Correct.

We've got a couple in mind.

David and Beth Sabi by George Peele is one, and Christopher Marlow's.

Dr.

Faustus is is another.

I wanna hold off on that decision until we see exactly what sort of talent pool we're gonna be drawing from next year.

- Mont, where does your theater, or where do you conceive that your theater fits into the theaters and Tidewater?

Where, what's, what's your role?

- We produce only plays which have never been done in this area before.

We concentrate on smaller cast plays.

In part because of our space.

We seat no more than a hundred people and have a stage maximum 20 by 20 feet.

We want to do works, which would not be likely done by other theaters for either reasons of economic necessity.

The little theaters have to make their budget as do the professional theaters or because they would not be particularly popular with large segments of the audience.

For example, we did a Sam Shepherd play last year, one of the first to be done in this area.

We took the title Generic Theater three years ago and we were founded because it was such a small, low budget operation.

But I wanna make that a philosophical viewpoint as well.

What's essential to theater is the communication between the actor and the audience and the communication between the performers on stage.

That's the generic side of theater, and we're looking at plays mostly, which devote themselves to the basics of that communication rather than flashy production, for example.

- Now, ma, let me ask you, you are a part of the city of Norfolk.

I mean, you're in the part of, in the recreation department, - Right?

- What does that mean?

How does that enter into your equation in choosing plays and do and what you do with your plays?

How what?

How does that work?

- We have been given a very free reign.

There's some things I think that we probably shouldn't or couldn't say on stage because they might annoy people.

But as I said, if, if the Recreation Bureau can encourage us to do Sam Shepherd's, the tooth of crime, violent, bloody crude, but a top-notch script.

I think when I submitted it to the bureau for approval, my supervisor called me in her office and said, see me on the copy of a script.

What she wanted to tell me was how great she thought the script was and how excited she was about the fact that we were gonna do it.

That's the kind of enthusiastic support the city does give us.

It's a plus, not a minus.

- I used to have backers that look at the theater in that way.

That's, that seems like a very enlightened attitude on the part of the city need to be complimented I think.

- I think so too.

I, I try to make that point every chance I get.

- Mont, where are you drawing your actors from?

Where are your people coming from?

- They're all volunteers.

They come from around the community.

Many of them are people who have not had much community theater exposure here to fore John Simmons, who we saw as Young Charlie as an example.

He was in my production of Night of the Burning Pestle, the first thing he'd done in terms of legitimate theater around here.

Then he was picked up to do a king over the water and he's doing dough for us now.

Another character who was in night of the burning pesto went on to do two shows at the Tidewater Dinner Theater immediately thereafter.

We have some of the established community theater actors and a lot of new people coming to us.

- Okay.

Anything, any plans for this summer?

- We are doing two children's productions.

One performed by adolescents will be a serial melodrama down at Town Point Park, 11 weekly perform 11 performances succeeding.

Weeks of 11 different segments of this serial melodrama that I'm writing.

It's called The Heart of Fog.

It's about four teenage adventures who find themselves stranded in the Bermuda Triangle.

The other show we'll be doing will be touring to Norfolk Recreation Centers performed by three of our staff members.

Also, my authorship, it's called Where Vitamins Hide.

It's an audience involvement play, dealing with obviously nutrition in the value of a balanced diet.

- Ma, you've spent a lot of, as young as you are, you've still spent a lot of years around.

Here.

Is the theater ch, how do you see the theaters having changed quickly?

Oh, back for a couple of minutes - In - Theater.

So - It has grown and improved immensely since 68.

When I started out in high school, we had three little theaters and one Thrive, struggling Rather Community, quasi Repertory company, the Norfolk Theater Center.

Well, the theater Center grew into stage down under, and then our professional company, Virginia Stage Company.

Indirectly it spawned the Virginia Opera Association, which has gotten us New Yorker and national news.

We still have our thriving little theaters.

We have a Tidewater dinner theater doing very well, and we have a generic, I think it's a a remarkable community for theater around here.

- Ma, thank you and thank you for bringing your play to us, and thank you for watching.