Interview with Utah Phillips

I was saddened, like many others, to hear of Utah Phillips passing. The warmth of his gravely voice rides deep in my heart. In June of 2002 I interviewed him backstage at the Kate Wolf festival on the Black Oak Ranch in California. We had crossed paths numerous times at folk festivals. I was aware of his connection to old time Vaudeville, and new time Vaudeville. I wanted to ask him about clown, how the profession was regarded in Vaudeville days, and his thoughts on humour. I received a lot more than that, including an in depth discussion of how he worked the stage. I would like to share his words with the world at large. Here is the interview that I recorded :
Moshe: What I’m looking at is funny. What’s funny, what does funny mean to people and do people relate clown to funny. I’m also interested in a historic perspective, specifically did you go to see vaudeville when you were young?

Utah: Yea let’s start with vaudeville and let’s examine it. My father, I was adopted when I was five by Sid Cohen and moved into a Jewish neighborhood. My father very briefly managed the last vaudeville house in Cleveland called the hippodrome. That was the end of vaudeville, that was right after the second world war 45-46 and then it was a few decaying vaudeville acts and then Nat King Cole trio, whatever else he could find to book there. Then we got to Salt Lake of course the lyric theater was still doing vaudeville. Probably a pale form of it, maybe two nights a week, no matinees that I recall. Gosh I loved that too. My father really worked hard to get live entertainment on the stage. The theaters in Salt Lake were big vaudeville houses, 1500 seats, in Salt Lake City because that was the end of the Pantages circuit. They could fill those houses.

So he looked at them, saw the 74 foot catwalks, for hanging your backdrops, the dressing rooms most of which had caved in…there were all these old posters down there of the playbills. He really brought live music, live theater, live entertainment back to those houses because that is what they were built for, they weren’t built as movie palaces.

Moshe: Your father was doing that in Salt Lake City?

Utah: Yea, but I dug into vaudeville and there came up at that Vaudeville Nouveau conference that Jeff Razz put on in San Francisco the difference between vaudeville and vaudeville nouveau and that’s where I come into it. I’m certain of this that the vaudeville nouveau was defined as funny. That if you are not making people laugh or go “cho” (exclamation of being impressed by a marvelous feat) that you’re not doing well.

Vaudeville had the monologists, vaudeville had people singing ‘ the Baggage Coach Ahead’ and ‘Mother, Queen of my Heart’ and ‘Daddy, Come Home with me Now’,; it had people weeping, from sentimentality and feeling heroic with the great monologues. That’s what was missing ( in vaudeville nouveau) that was the difference, you still had the comedy, you still had the song and dance but there was this full play of human emotions. I guess the reason that I was invited to that conference is because some of the vaudeville nouveau people saw that I was doing that : that in the characterization that I create known as Utah Phillips, that I was doing things with some passion, stories with some passion and definitely story-telling, but that there was pathos connected with it.

I could sing ‘The Blind Boy’s Dog’ or ‘The Drunkard’s Son’ and at the same time talk and sing with great passion about Everet massacre, the Centralia massacre, these enormously powerful events in American labor history, just American history-the part that never gets talked about much. After that I always felt invited in to that circle. Paul Maggid, from the Karamozovs’ said you’re included in this because he understood. That’s the way he understood it the same.

The live part of it, is the part that I like the best. Call it accessibility, the difference between the trade and the industry. I work at a sub-industrial level, I have nothing to do with the entertainment industry because it’s isolating and alienating and it robs you of control over your creative process. In the trade, you make all the rules, you’re completely in control of what it is you create. You take a stiff price break for it, you know. You make an honest living but you don’t make a killing and that’s fine with me as long as you can be free but you got to work at it you know. You’ve got to work at it more because you don’t have people in the front office hustling you.

That’s why I learned pretty early, that with marginal vocal and instrumental skills, I was going to have to do other things. That’s where the stories happen.

But also I was going to have to do things like come into town early and beat the streets: go to the organic food store, go to the battered women’s clinic, go to the local union headquarters. Arrange in advance to go visit those people and find out what was going on in this town. I always had the local newspaper sent to me a week before I got there so I could read the want ads, see what people were selling. Get some place names, hooks to hang things on. People needed to understand when I got to their town I wasn’t doing the same show I did the town before. That I really knew where I was and who I was with. Really paying attention to them and who they are and if there was a hold-out line, and in later years there got to be hold-out lines, even in the dead of winter I’d go out and stand in line and kind of make jokes about this schmuck….you know “Who is this guy?” for the benefit of people who didn’t know who I was and to amuse who did, and that way I had done my warm-up by the time I walked on stage- (voice of a spectator)”That was that guy!”…see cheap theatrical tricks.

The idea was that the performance didn’t begin when I hit the stage and when I left the stage. It began when I hit the city limits and then when I left the city limits. And that’s the way that I would work it. I would read about each town, the demographics. I want to be boarded, not in a hotel, I want to be boarded. I would make sure people would understand this, people who were booking me; somebody who is familiar with the politics and the culture and the authenticity of the town and it’s history. That can take me around and show me this stuff so I can ask questions, like being paid to go to school. And that gives me the substance of songs and the substance of stories-it’s got to come form somewhere.

I learned this really early when I got into the trade when I left Utah where it was a habit of people who were doing $25 a night, sleeping on floors-we’d all get together in a bar and sing until sunrise until it was time to move onto the next town. I might as well stay in the same town if I am doing that . I am not learning anything, I’m not getting enough to make the stories, the make the songs out of. It got to a point, finally, and I only learned this when I had to stop touring because of the congestive heart failure that some other folks decided that the stories stood by themselves, so I was invited to storytelling festivals-it felt really odd to tell the stories and then not have a song, just kind of leave, really peculiar but that seemed to work OK. People asked me see, feel like making a record of just the stories? We want just the stories. They were probably music critics, and so I did that.

Now I feel that the stories are really working better, and I would rather do that than sing. I feel a strong kinship with old vaudeville, that the work that I am doing now was possible then and that the only medium that it is possible now is in the folk music world.

Moshe: Right, I don’t really see a circuit for what I do in today’s culture. I guess vaudeville just kind of disappeared really.

Utah: Well vaudeville got killed, it didn’t just pass away. It was killed off by the depression, by motion pictures, by people…part of vaudeville was that people could go there and sing. The latest song that the publisher was flogging from bar to bar would show up on stage. You wanted to take that song, that was hot off the presses, sheet music; people would go into every bar and get somebody to sing it, then soon it is going to show up on the ‘vaud’ stage and the whole audience is going to sing it, then you’re going to sell sheet music. That whole thing collapsed with recorded music and with radio.. It was no longer the piano with the sheet music n the living room, people singing those songs.

Vaudeville was killed essentially by technology. And isn’t it true that the role of the clown back then was much broader than it is now. That today people say kids….

Moshe: Right. Birthday parties.

Utah: Yea, stuff like and that is really unfortunate because it demeans the trade.

Moshe: Right that is what I was going to ask you about. Back then clown meant something else. What did it mean back then. Were there performers in the vaudeville circuit doing non-verbal comedy?

Utah: Oh yea, sure, there were also the tableaus which were a unique kind of mime. Did you ever see those?

Moshe: no

Utah: Oh that is where you would take the sinking of the battleship Maine and the curtain would open and there would be a tableau of living human beings and props and it would be there for about five minutes and people would look at it and study and the curtain would close and that would be it.

Moshe: and it wouldn’t move the whole time?

Utah: No, it was like a three dimensional painting, and then it could be something else, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The curtain would open, it would be a whole, people in every attitude.

Moshe: Were people laughing when they saw this?

Utah: No, no , you could have Willie the Weeper who was pathetic. And a clown-he would be called a clown but he wasn’t making people laugh, he was making people cry.

Moshe: Clown, just like you were saying, it can cover the whole spectrum.

Utah: Well the whole range of human feelings. I think that if a clown isn’t studying to do that, isn’t trying to do that, I’m not saying that it is mandatory, but I think that you are missing a whole lot if you are not trying to move people in every possible way. That’s the way I feel about it when I’m on stage. I want to move people in a variety of different ways and laughing a part of it.

Moshe: In those days there would be performers in the vaudeville circuit who would be called clown or considered clown?

Utah: Yea

Moshe: So that was a term that meant somebody…so like Charlie Chaplin in those days, I mean he was a clown as far as I can tell-I mean much more he was a wonderful great spirit. I mean would people call him a clown?

Utah: I think so, that he was clowning around.

Moshe: That he was clowning around?

Utah: You see clowning around was part of what he did.

Moshe: So hold out line, does that mean people who couldn’t get into the show because it was sold out?

Utah: People just waiting to get in, because see you’ve sold out the house, and so you know there’s a hold-out line and some people aren’t going to get in. I might go out, if I know there are people who aren’t going to get in, I might go out and sing a song just to say hi, to say I’m sorry that you can’t get in.

Moshe: You were on the bill solo then?

Utah: Yea, oh yea. I’ve worked the single and after some years moved it away from the bars, and into the concert setting. For me that is a two act play called “Utah”. I do act 1 and act 2 with an intermission.. Each half is a little better than an hour. I do a long show. Everything is strung together in a very specific way. Can I describe that to you?

Moshe: Sure if you feel like it.

Utah: Sure, it’s an interesting process, and I think that a ‘vaud’ act is constructed in a somewhat the same way although of course in vaudeville you are talking about 12 minutes of boff material and here I am talking about two hours so I have a little more time with it. OK here is a pure vaudeville concept.. Max Sennett, who was in vaudeville before he made movies. Here is the Sennett formula, the Sennett formula was used by Jack Benny, by Fred Allen, the great radio comedians; but he (Sennett) was using it in vaudeville.
You’ve got four kinds of laughs. You got a chuckle, a guffaw, a belly laugh and a boffo. A chuckle just ripples through an audience, a guffaw is so absurd that everybody just gets it at the same time so that the laugh curve is blup blup (Utah’s hand rises straight up in the air and then straight down). A belly laugh goes off like flash bulbs. You wait for a while because it is going to ripple through the crowd and then as soon as that dies you use the laugh that kills, the boffo, that takes all the energy out of the audience and you start over again with your chuckle because you can’t build energy unremittingly-you know this –you’ve got to start over again.
So, the Sennett formula I ran into listening to Myron Cohen in Las Vegas. My father used to take me down there in his old Buick when I was a kid just to listen to Myron Cohen, my who was my idol. Myron Cohen was the one said to me when I asked him how he chose stories, he said I only tell stories that have no victims, because I don’t want to hurt anybody, that’s not what I ‘m getting paid for. He said’ I’d hear these dumb bar jokes and these dirty jokes, I hear racist-he didn’t call them racial jokes you know-I hear these Negroe jokes. I take out what is funny, the comic value and I reshape it into another story that is more benign, that has no victim. Unless the victim is myself he said, I make fun of myself.
That is a good lesson too. So how do you know what you’ve got? If I come across a line, hear somebody use a line, if a line occurs to me or I hear a whole story, how do I know whether that’s a chuckle, a guffaw, a belly laugh or a buffo? Well you work it out socially. My friends always know when I am going to leave town ‘cause they say “Oh God, he’s doing it again”….you try it out socially so you can put them in the right place. Having done that, you’ve got your material and you know what sequence it is supposed to be in, how do you time your audience?
Well there about four different audiences. Say, the New England or eastern seaboard is really authority over conscious, they respond to anything done with a modicum of authority. Then there is the mid-western audience who really don’t care how you get there. You see the west coast audience is full of refugees from authority, so they want You, they want to know more about you when you leave the stage then when you walk on. That’s why I know people like the great Gamble Rogers who didn’t work well in California, because they didn’t know more about him…he was great but he was the same, they knew the same when he went off as when he came on. There is that, that I am dealing with three types of audiences, one that avoids intimacy, one that embraces intimacy, and the middle one who doesn’t care how you get there.
But then given the evening and the condition of reality, the news, how is this particular audience time. You see me at the beginning do a song, “Railroading on the Great Divide” and I am going to do three stories in-between the verses, and those stories are going to time that audience, so I can adjust the timing through the whole program you see.
Now I want to get people to laugh and to sing together who are friends. There is nothing more lethal than an evening of political music. Now I am going to give myself in a six song set, I do two six song halves; I’m going to give to myself two songs right towards the end, the fourth and fifth song to do what I am there to do, politically. That window, that intense thing, and then I am going to come out of it. And we’re going to sing and we’re going to laugh some more. That’s the only way the politics take. Because it’s like I say, unremitting tension, you can’t do that you know. You’ve got to break the tension so you can build it again. And that’s essentially how it is constructed. Through the intelligence I get through the newspapers, through asking questions, through studying the town I’m going to, working the line, the hold-out line, timing my audience and then creating windows when I can deal with them seriously.

Moshe: That sounds great! It brings up a thought-I’m thinking about a conversation I had this morning with a woman from adult camp (Winnarainbow) whose wanting to take this character out on the street and play it. It is a parody of a military figure and she is very upset, not upset, but angry about the war, the supposed war on terrorism-the shift that the country has taken in terms of repression of expression or encouragement to tow the line and not break it. I brought up the thought that you can go into certain venues where you are preaching to the converted, not in a negative sense-that that is a negative thing to do –but if that image if you are trying to change the minds or at least affect the minds of the people who aren’t going to go into those venues, and you at the same time you don’t want to piss them off, and you want to reach through to them, well humor you can try to bring it to them through humor rather than trying to tell them off or tell them that this is the way it should be…do you have any comments about that?

Utah: That’s my whole game. I never, in fact I’ve resisted vigorously, being typed as a political singer, I want to be a folk singer. I want that general folk music audience, I want people who’ve been working all week and say ” Honey let’s go see this guy” or “we’ve heard this guy’s pretty good.” I want to make friends with them, first, and then I’m going to deal with them seriously, yes! Over time people have turned around some and said “yea, that’s worth thinking about” or “I’ve rethought that some.” I’ve seen that happen. It’s a slow careful kind of surgery.

People have to change their own minds, you can’t change people. They change their own…you just give them the tools to do that and the time and the space to do that. And then change is going to happen. Beatin’ people over the head or saying you’re wrong, yelling at them, I see that doesn’t work. I want a general audience, the mainstream folk music audience out there, Manisty, Michigan or whatever, the folk society of Columbus, is right in the middle, or a little bit to the right. (Those are the) People I want. The worst times I have, in fact the worst organized concerts I have are done by political people because the political people treat me like an organizing tool and not an American worker, and then I have to yell at them. You know: ”here’s my union card, now treat me like a human being”; and they’re the worst audiences as far as that goes because everybody expects me to do their political agenda. I know people who can do that like Fred Small, I can’t. So, I avoid that kind of situation.

Moshe: that’s wonderful to hear you talk about that. It sheds some light.

Utah: OK. Well I’m going to go find my wife and my dog. Hey thanks a lot for getting that out of me. I don’t talk about that much.

Amsterdam Vondel Park offers up SAcred Mischief

of sorts one could say…a bicycle ride through the park, finding a quiet stretch of green to stretch out next to a small canal and a willow tree, and what should I see?

A performer taking in some practice with metal objects….

not your average juggler…especially when he was swirling these major metal massage tools around…

that proved to be of interest to the woman making the abstract film across the way…

she moved her operation across the way to be filmed sleeping on her big pillow with the juggler swinging his sticks neaby….

now how often do you see that?
yoowho

Amsterdam 4.23.08

St Stupid’s Day

Nothing like an unexpected fall to cut your celebration short. That it should happen right outside your building on April Fool’s Day on your way to the Saint Stupid’s day parade. That it should happen as you gingerly lift your leg over the bicycle bar and give full weight to your positioned pedal. Should it be that there is not the expected traction of the pedal to the chain, and the pedal swings freely down sending said rider giving his full weight to pedal falls right over the handlebar falling unrestricted onto the cement sidewalk. Left elbow right knee take the impact. OUCH!.
Should it happen when you are already more than a little late. Funny thing that it should happen after masterfully navigating said bicycle upright walking it on it’s rear wheel, Amsterdam style, controlled bouncing it down the stairs past all the scaffolding and construction obliterations that have created narrow passageways in the stairwell.
How stupid! I had been remarking to myself, the last 10 minutes getting ready for the big event. St Stupid’s Day in San Francisco on April Fools’. Big parade downtown. Great celebration.
So when I realize that I am going to be late I remark to myself ‘how stupid!” Then I start getting in the spirit of it. How stupid! as I look to find my keys, how stupid! as I decide to change my hat. How stupid! as I unlock my lock just as I realize that the bicycle isn’t locked in the first place. How stupid! as the plastic sheeting that hangs from the ceiling to keep the construction dust out of the hallways gets caught in my bicycle wheel.
How stupid! Is it all? Well I’m not thinking that lifting myself off the sidewalk after a hard bonk on the left shoulder and right knee. I’m feeling for the immediate pain and looking for the rip on the elbow of my favorite suit jacket. There is none, but my knee sure is sore. No holes anywhere, but definite strong bursts of ouch. HOW STuPID I finally say as I realize it hurts to bend my knee. How stupid would I be to miss the parade. So I’m off to ride towards downtown. ‘ride it off, you’ll be fine’ I’m telling myself. Nothing is broken, everything is working.
Feeling actual shock of the fall I stop a leisurely block away, to check on the sources of pain at skin level. Knee shows some scrapes, but a lifting the sleeve reveals the crimson red of an open wound, to the very least threatening my suit from another angle. It’s far more than a scrape, skin has torn and there is a strange little white protruding. after a panicked twisting around inspection of arm parts realize that it’s not that bad, not the bone,
Well it’s an hour later, two rounds of arnica pellets, multiple cleansings with alcohol tabs, kleenex and water. Slabs of bactoban spanish salve to dirge the mighty bacteria that threaten the land. any attempts at bending sore elbow to a right angle results in serious leaks of fluid, not just the red crimson kind. The Japanese kleenex packs that have found their way from cheery Japanese marketing hands to my bathroom counter come in handy, and a few crumpled issues are by the typewriter pad are at hand as I
How Stupid is it all? That I didn’t make it to toss pennies at the banker’s heart, to throw socks up in the air, my favorite thing to do on the steps of the stock exchange, my favorite since I used to step out of the options exchange floor with my clerk’s jacket on and 5 tennis balls in my hand for my 10 minute break.
Omm to the SOCK exchange and the glory of myriads of socks falling from the sky. I had mine saved up and in my jacket pocket. They must wait another year I am afraid.
How stupid! That when I try to bend my elbow , it to start bleeding again . how can it be that one who professes clown to a deep rhythm of life could have such a mishap on the way to the April Fool’s parade. Right on the doorstep to one’s house. Is it a bad omen, am I out of synch with my clownedness or are the clown god’s up there laughing at this glorious human joke. There is no answer of course. Perhaps there is a need for meditation. in the past 29 years I have missed a few of the St Stupid’s days, but usually because I was out of town.

Photos and video on SFGAte

Torbeck DEc 11th evening

the rain is coming down, and outside under the balcony, a group of the local residents, along with SarahLianne, Elisa and Brandon are singing songs in beautiful harmonies.  Here is a story that I wrote earlier this evening. No doubt in the next few evenings, the others will start adding their stories to mine…

Dec 11th, Torbeck evening.
We are staying at the rectory in Torbeck where on the balcony we create and rehearse the show that we are going to play tomorrow.  We will be winging it but we have been able to put together a loose structure that should be fun and full of humor. At 5pm we take a walk down the rocky dirt road through the neighborhood doing a little parade to announce our presence and invite the kids of the neighborhood to the rectory courtyard for a little play and workshop, which we intend to do every evening between 5 and 6 pm by which time it is completely dark.  As I type away on the balcony, Brandon is downstairs playing mandolin with hand claps accompanying alongside a local teenager who has brought a conga drum out of somewhere. We had the big parachute up which was exciting for the 40 or 40 kids and young adults who have come in. Our intent is to do a bit of the show every day and to teach little mini workshops, and on our last day here to get some of the kids to perform as well. I get surrounded by kids after doing a simple disappearance of a rock and sneezing it out my ear. I soon find myself with 20 little hands asking me to pull it out of their ear, out of their hair, out of all kinds of different places. I balance my baseball cap on my head, and then tell them that tomorrow I will teach them how to balance things. We have created some momentum that no doubt should continue through the week we are here.
There is a rough moment in our parade when a man comes up to us very upset and angry demanding to know where is our legal authorization to do our manifestation-our parade. There is strong alcohol on his breath.  He doesn’t really want to hear any explanations, he is convinced that we have invaded his country and made it our playground, basically that we are not respecting his country. He starts telling me that he cannot come to our country and do this without legal permission, so what gives us the right to do that here.  Of course he has a point, and he knows it as he tells me that he worked for 23 years abroad.  No one is going to simply let him into the US and allow him to parade down the street making music, or at least so he feels.  No doubts about it that first he would need a visa and a passport, have to get fingerprinted, photographed just to get in the country. His confrontation has gathered a little crowd.  Eventually I am able to explain to him that we are here to do shows in the schools for kids for noel (xmas)., and that we were simply coming out to play with the children and to invite them to the rectory.  He accepts my explanation, walks away telling us to go play there then. Which we do.

AYiti, don’t call it Hate-i

Just a short short note here from Port au Prince, to say that I have started a new blog where for the next two weeks, you can read about the Clowns Without Borders expedition. I am here with three other performers, Elisa, Brendon and Sarah Lianne.

So if you want to read on, click on in on clownsinhaiti.wordpress.com

clowns without borders, Ireland-In Uganda

I was just reading the accounts of Clowns Without Borders-Ireland, their blog from the trip to Uganda where they are performing for Sudanese refugees in camps mostly run by the UNHCR. If you are wondering what the concept of sacred mischief can be, here is one extreme. There is little I can say to put it in perspective more than urge you to click on the link and read on. Amazing work, hard work, work of wonders. Here is a brief excerpt. They are my heroes this week, and showing me the way, as I get ready to fly to Haiti to go on expedition myself to perform there with 3 other wonder clowns….we will blog too, check the Clowns without Borders-USA website for updates.

Thursday 6th December

These IDP and refugee camps we are visiting each day are full of so many untold stories. We sometimes go into them expecting misery, braced for the appalling; these places where happiness seems unthinkable yet the camps are full of hope, comedy and sweetness. We clowns each have our special moments with people in the camps; we connect, interact, play and just be with these amazing warm children who melt you with their eyes and big smiles.

Mitrovica Poem (2000)

this winter I will be combing through journals and writings from Clowns Without Borders Expeditions, and posting some of them here. Here is one:

Rom Camp. Skenderaj Mitrovica, Kosovo. (2000)
(photo is the bus cemetery next to the camp, by Phillipe Martinez)

Foraging for firewood. 

Brilliant face blazen in winter’s sun.
Defiant teeth glimmer
conquerer’s grin.
Barebacked heroe’s pose
For the camera,
One foot upon his prize
A tree branch 4 times
his 6 year old size.

Clowns Without Borders in the Congo!!!

Just reading the blog about what Zoe, Lars and Malo (Clowns Sans Frontieres, Belgique ) are experiencing in the DRC (Congo) as they perform in areas where there has been a lot of conflict. Stories about performing for, and doing workshops with former child soldiers and in the schools. Lots of photos and text,mostly in French but some in English. Check it out!!!

Warsaw: Prison in the morning, film stars in the afternoon

Warsaw. October 24th, 2007

Morning.

The ride out turns into cobblestone roads past urban country railroad tracks, there is rust in driveways; a forbiddingly long railcar hangar scarred with dark overhanging; a graveyard pit where heavy ancient wrenches cranked and creaked, and railcars hibernated briefly before charging down the almost straight rails of yesteryear. The ancient illuminated by nearby newness of a larger structure, halogen light bright insides, the sheen of aluminum white walls topped by muddy turquoise roof façade.
Our white VW travel van, not used for prisoners, crosses series of tracks, with yards of coupled rail cars on the horizon, past a rundown neighborhood of roadside businesses, finally leading to a small gathering of parked cars. The entrance to the prison is a small brick building, around which long lines of wire and chain linked fence stretch out, defining a wide area of surveillance intensity. Airport security machines as we enter. Behind a small glass hole in the window, we slip passport cell phones and cameras, in exchange for a small numbered disc corresponding to a slot in a wooden box.
There is no clang of heavy prison doors but a series of chain linked doors opened by a succession of buzzes leading finally inside a rundown building and a beige hallway decorated by occasional framed assembled puzzles of Monet paintings. The paint on the walls is thick and dull, not just with age. A succession of dark brown closed doors with extra locking mechanisms and a sense of forbodden hidden inside.
There are paper signs in slots defining each purpose, on red construction paper, in Polish of course leaving my curiosity uninformed as to the nature of activities hidden inside. Down a T at the end of the corridor to an open door, same drab colors inside the empty room, one table naked alone in a corner, fifteen women holding stools file in along the outline of the wall, and sit down in slightly un orderly fashion. There are quips and comments jumping out of their present minds in staccato bursts, in Polish of course. In a moment’s eye contact, I offer a humorous gesture. A little snicker of response, a dominos line series of quips and comments travels amongst the women dressed in normal clothes, obviously theirs, no evidence of prison uniform in any direction. Another group of women come in which I play on as they file in looking for humor in the call and response amongst the two groups of women as they settle in.
The show is already in progress in an informal way, looks and responses jumping around the room that quiet down as our accompanying prison official gives me some kind of introduction. No way of knowing if she is telling them the appropriate rules, or explaining the nature of my presence and what I have to offer.
I carve open a few roads, broad pathways of communication amongst the women sitting against three sides of the wall. I develop interaction amongst them as they quip back and forth about situations and exchanges that develop between my play and their presence. I beckon a younger woman to help recuperate a dropped coin from my position standing on top of my suitcase. She refuses generating significant laughter, and corresponding quips. I have no idea what the words say, but the tone is playful, and the subject undoubtedly something not meant for my ears. A small squirrelly elder woman, in faded home knitted sweater takes the relay to respond to my plea. She has short boy cut hair, her face telling wrinkled stories, darkened submitted eyes telling of late night struggles crossing many boundaries of innocence. There is a little sense of play in the way she scurries away. Diverse energies are bouncing off the walls. There are two very clear couples In the room, strong alpha’s alongside prettier counterparts. One twosome in the corner are in strong physical contact and conversation, only halfway engaged in the show, perhaps this being their meeting point.
Later I find out that these women are all prisoners waiting to be sentenced, or go to trial, women accused of lesser crimes, hence the informal atmosphere and casual security of the room that slowly fills with warmer spirits and laughter. I beckon the elder woman’s help a few more time, each time drawing her out a little more out of her tortoise shell, a little hunch which she never fully drops. Playful interaction leads to me admiring one of the macha woman’s buzz cut, my hand running the top of her head, finally plucking one of her hairs to attempt to paste it onto my bald palate. She plays along.
My attention gets caught by a stout blond woman sitting almost behind me, a matronly strong woman, her face is full of very present not afraid energy, a bully perhaps. She is sitting nearly behind me and it is only a good part through the show that I hone in or her non committal gaze, an impenetrable arms crossed leaning back on the wall stance despite considerable levity surrounding her. Wanda could her name. I start knocking on Wanda’s door purposefully looking for a little love and affection. No success after some ten minutes now. Not a crack in the ‘don’t even try’ face despite several choice asides.. Approaching the end of the show, I pull out the ukulele. My uke has an untraditional shoulder strap allowing me to move around with greater ease. Launching into ‘Love is a Rose” a country folk tune, I choose a choice moment saddling up next to Wanda against the wall, getting down to one knee, singing “ I want to go to an old hoedown, long ago in a western town; pick me up when my feet are dragging, send me a lift and I will hay your wagon; love is a rose…” . Wanda cracks open a big smile, then playfully flirts back. She fakes an amorous lunge which sends me scurrying to hide next to my elder helper. Laughter fills the room. The women give me a standing ovation afterwards, and good humor floats out of the room with the women as they single file out, stools in hand. The beige and brown walls enamel gleam walls in the green fluorescent light remain. It’s back out through 5 security gates, clown nose now out of the pocket, looking for the opportunity to clown the prison yard rigidities.

Afternoon

Whereas the morning’s destination took me to a remote outskirt of Warsaw, on the other side of the railroad tracks so to speak, the afternoon destination is the 7th floor of a brand new building in an international development complex. The word ‘International’ is in big letters on a prominent sign of the outdoor courtyard, modern sculpture, circular driveway, amongst large glass surfaces in outlining buildings. There are cobblestones here too. Unlike this morning’s deep bumpy of ancient age, these are in smooth refined lines of beige brick and stone. Glass entrance doors graced with institution dark green plasticky push handles. A little chuckle inside as I notice black decals on the doors say “Push”, no Polish to be seen. Indeed a glance to the backside of the doors reveals little black ‘Pull” signs.
The hallways glitter with signs of 21st century architecture, brushed aluminum, polished steel, elevators by Otis. International Film Academy on the 7th floor a hotel like lobby sign proclaims. Their film school lobby walls house an art exhibition of striking black and white prints, models and actors. Avant Garde theater scenes. Well lit, young groomed faces parade, hover and discuss in earnest around coffees at a few of the tables populating the area. Glass enclosed offices and discreet doorways
My classroom echoes the morning room in only one aspect, there are chairs positioned along the walls around the room. Otherwise, there is not a sign of aged creamy paint, all is plastic and metal, shiny and new. There are floor to ceiling velvet curtains, gym mats and other accoutrements stashed along the walls, even a grand piano at one end. The students slowly fill the room. Many college age and a scattering that might occasionally break the 30 mark. It is a voluntary class I am told, and some 20-25 students have shown up. Quite a few are dressed in finery right out of the fashion pages. There are leather studded boots, skin stuck jeans, and provocatively cut blouses of young blossoming actresses. My mind flashes back to the train compartment heading down from Wroclaw, and the stack of glossy fashion magazines that two young women studied during the 5 hour train ride, page after page of camouflage tips. A few of these woman have stepped right off one of those pages.
I sense a bit of discomfort beginning the four hour workshop. I have only English in my language basket, almost all understand, one young woman looking like she stepped out of an diner in Utah doesn’t speak a word of English, another young woman will translate. I see a certain amount of arms folded what have you got to teach us attitude. Perhaps it is because I lack the Hollywood credentials. I give a little pep talk about the work I would like to offer this afternoon. My pep talk is not generating the anticipated enthusiasm.
Some of the group are not eager to get off their chairs when I propose to begin moving around the room. A young princess model in stirrup boots and black lust inspiring body clinging clothes balks at my request to take off her shoes. I am not prepared to work with her stiletto heels. I have unknowingly crossed some forbidden line, that has her quite uppity. The fashion scan clan become resistant to my requests as I put them through neutral walk paces. Perhaps it is kids play for a few of them. Most likely they came expecting to work with a Woody Allen on a brilliant approach to comedic acting, and I am a serious letdown clown. Who knows. It just doesn’t feel right, quite unlike yesterday’s workshop at the Montowia Theater, where I worked with a group of actors who delved right into that absurdist universe, creating quite a flow of ideas.

The response amongst the cinema crowd to what a neutral walk might mean is rather dismal, evidently, despite this being the land of Grotowsky, there is little physical acting in the curriculum here. I realize only too late, that the well dressed set are indeed the models, and already on their highway to superstardom Polish style. They don’t really have great interest in expressing emotions such as curiosity, or seriousness, with their own twist of humor thrown in.
One man glares at me openly as I actually attempt to correct his neutral walk, having asked for parallel neutral walks in the room. The boots woman is conferring in whispers with a girlfriend as they both look hesitatingly in my direction. A tall dark and handsome man who looks like he walked out of an esquire magazine has his shoulders hunched while throwing a questioning glance to the other movie man across the room.
An hour and twenty minutes into the four hour class, a woman interrupts to ask if she can take a bathroom break. I figure it is a good idea to take a break and reassess how I am leading this group. Obviously I have not won them over, nor succeeded in shedding light on the benefits of opening up their humor chops.

Indeed the break is a good idea, allowing a mass exodus to take place, a good portion of the students don’t return, the twenty something has becomes 12. The remaining group however discovers a syncopated harmony. We have a great time as they jump into creating, opening up channels of humor. The ones who have stayed are the ones that came with work clothes, and put on their dancing shoes. One young woman breaks down crying in the midst of a relatively benign exercise. She had been a bit stuck, unable to let go, something bottled up inside. The crying subsided, a little while later, her eyes are beaming bright, and she jumps back into the game, her inside smile all of the sudden broadcast for all to see. There is warm, friendly fun bouncing around the room, the students at the end jazzed and enthused. Is today is the only day I am coming to their school?
Later that evening, back at Andrzej and Malgosha’s house, I tell Andrzej, who has arranged my day, and indeed all of my Polish interventions, that I think that I bombed at the school, and was not able to offer what they thought they would be getting. The word back from the academy the next day is that they are looking forward to working with me the next time I come to Poland.