So in my last post I said that we would next be discussing the super-secret, mystery-history, “Why does no one know this anecdote because it is so sad and hilarious and good?” backstory behind “Waiting For Godot.”

That was not a lie. That is exactly what we are doing right now.

So let’s start with a theme in American Cultural History that is mosy relevant to this story. I like to call it “Foreign Exchange Student Syndrome.” This is when something is really cool in another country (usually a country in Europe, but Asia can work too) and then it comes to America and we’re all “Wait, whaaa? But I don’t get it…”

Now I am not a social scientist or foreign affairs expert, so I have no idea what it is that makes Americans not “get it.” It could be that there’s something in the  Thames and Seine just makes Europeans sharper, cooler, and way more fun at parties. It could be that we as Americans are only truly comfortable colonizing, and don’t like being colonized ourselves, even if what’s taking us over is something as simple as a passing fad. Or it could be that we are just not as smart as we probably should be.

Of course, there are foreign trends that blow up huge on the American cultural stage and get an instant popularity pass (See: The Beatles, Pizza, and Any Japanese Anime Show Featuring A Kid Going on a Quest Alongside Magical Creatures and a Simultaneously Catchy and Irritating Theme Song).

But we’re not talking about the free-pass-to-cool foreign exports today.

No, today, we’re talking about “Waiting For Godot.”

So let’s first take on Godot in Europe.

It’s  the fall of 1948 in post-war Paris (The same year “Death of a Salesman” was written! Postwar Western Theater, you are such a G!), all around birds are chirping and children are singing because the Germans aren’t bombing them anymore, and amidst all of this song and joy, Irish expatriate Samuel Beckett is down to write a play.

This is Samuel Beckett.

I mean, he’s no Arthur Miller (who is?) but I give him points for his mysterious grin and oddly placed spectacles. The way he’s wearing his glasses makes me think that Beckett should wear classic black Chuck Taylors and listen to Arcade Fire on the A Train while sketching pictures of The Girl That Got Away on a piece of newspaper that just fluttered by. He’s like a character in a Fox Searchlight picture. I’m right about this. Also, Gene Hackman or Alan Arkin should totally duke it out to play Beckett in the biopic and whoever wins the role can never wear his glasses right and this will win him a Best Actor nomination and maybe even a surprise dark horse victory. I’m also right about this.

(One more quick fun fact about Samuel B-Town before we continue on-Beckett, a middling academic, novelist, essayist, and poet at the time, had a revelation a few years earlier in his mother’s bedroom where his entire future literary career was revealed to him by God or something like that. Now whenever I go home, I hang around my parents’ bedroom hoping the same thing will happen to me. It hasn’t worked so far, so I think I’m going to try the kitchen next…)

Anyhow, what starts as a writing exercise for Beckett lights a creative fire under his posterior and in the autumn months of 1948 he completes “En attendant Godot,” which even though he’s English (well, Irish, but speaks English) he writes in French.

(Two things.)

(One, “Waiting for Godot” was a WRITING EXERCISE??!?! Between that and Miller writing the first act of “Death of a Salesman” in a day… I don’t even know you guys.)

(Two, how gangster is it that Beckett wrote in French? French is so much prettier than English and it’s not fair. I wish I could write the rest of this blog in French, but I can’t because I don’t speak it.)

So in early 1949 Beckett finishes “Waiting for Godot” and gets hocking.

And no one wants the play.

Where have we heard this story before?

Oh, right, last blog post.

Seriously, it seems like the best litmus test to see if a play is going to be a classic is if everyone hates the play’s guts before said play even happens. It’s working so far…

But eventually they do get “Waiting For Godot” up and running in 1953 and it’s a critical and commercial success in Paris, because Parisians are all like “A play about the meaninglessness of life? We’re in!” The play was also apparently quite controversial, but man, it’s France where they wear lingerie that would be considered torture devices here in the states, what isn’t controversial over there?

“Waiting For Godot” opens in 1955 (that’s two years later for those of you keeping score at home) in London. At first the play gets a bunch of bad reviews and the audiences are like wanting to smack Beckett upside the head for making them sit through two and a half hours of theater they don’t understand. But THEN the Sunday Times and the Observer give Godot super-glowing reviews, and all the Brits who didn’t get it is like “Oh, no, wait, I do get it. Ha ha ha! Just kidding. Tricked you good!”

So now the producers are like “Paris, check, London, check. America? Let’s get it on.”

And get it on they did on January 3rd, 1956 at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Miami, Florida.

Wait, wait— they went from London and Paris to MIAMI?

I’m confused.

But I’m not alone. Everybody else was too.

So this American premiere has been hyped into outer space. It was famously heralded as “the laugh hit of two continents.”

“Hold up, ‘Waiting for Godot’ is what you are talking about in relation to this pull quote?” you are wondering in confusion.

You are not alone. This is what everyone else was wondering in confusion too the night of the premiere.

People were so confused in fact, that they forgot where they parked their manners and started acting like total jackasses. Within minutes people were getting out of their seats and leaving

(Do you remember what happens in the first few minutes of “Godot” It’s just Estragon taking off his shoes and chilling with Vladmir. Do you know what it would take for me to leave a theater in the middle of a performance? It would have to be like a burning swastika or truly unforgivable singing. These Americans of the 1950’s, their hat brims and poodle skirts must have just been on too tight and prevented blood from circulating up to the part of the brain that thinks legitimate thoughts.)

So people are leaving by the droves. You couldn’t get them to leave faster if you started a fire in the wings. By intermission three-quarters of the audience have packed their bags and by the end of the show there’s like, pretty much nobody left.

EXCEPT the young college-aged ushers who are there running the house. These kids are still in the theater and they are BAWLING. No they’re not crying because they had to stay. They’re ACTUALLY having their emotional breakdowns because they totally get the existential crisis of “Godot”, it’s a feeling these Beatniks-to-Be experience every day of their lives.

(NOTE: This is what is so awesome about being young. You always get the “crazy new thing” and it’s really fun rebelling against the stodgy and narrow-minded “old guard.” I’m really not looking forward to getting old and not getting the newfangled ways of the young. Already I don’t get Lady Gaga, Twitter, and Anyone in the Twilight Movies. Oh God, it’s happened. I’m old already.)

Also, Tennessee Williams and William Saroyan are both in the audience and they stay through the entire play as well. Not just because they’re playwrights and they have to give Beckett the professional courtesy of not being professional a-holes. No, they actually really like the play too.

So this is the life that “Waiting For Godot” ends up leading. It is made a classic by two kinds of people. First, the intellectuals, the Parisians and playwrights, who get the historical and cultural value of this groundbreaking piece. Then there are the oppressed, who respond emotionally to the chords of imprisonment and life’s meaninglessness  ring through the play. “Waiting for Godot” has been successfully performed in German prisons since shortly after its French debut. There was a famous production sponsored by a black church in the American South shortly after the Miami premiere. Post-Apartheid Johannesberg has been home to several productions. “Waiting For Godot” is one of those few pieces of literature that bring the intellectual elite and the socially outcast together, if not in body, then certainly in spirit.

The middle-class bourgeouis never end up saddling on for this particular ride.

But they’re never much fun, anyway.

So WHAT did we learn from this post?

1.) Wearing your glasses wrong makes you look a.) smarter, b.) cooler, and c.) more important.

2.) French is prettier than English.

3.) If everyone hates your play… you’re probably on the right track.

I think we’ll do one more post in this series. It’s going to be a secret for now, mostly because I don’t know what it’s going to be yet…

Here are a couple more indie pictures of Samuel Beckett.

Wearing all black.

Smoking and thinking about the Universe.

Having coffee by himself.

You guys, the facts speak for themselves!

So I’m a huge fan of “Before Famous People Were Famous” stories.

You know, like how Stephen King eked out a living washing maggotty bedsheets before “Carrie” sold and made a kajillion dollars.

Or how Tom Cruise was enrolled a seminary and was planning on becoming a priest (which would have been so weird and awesome I just might have had to become Catholic in that alternate universe…)

Ashton Kutcher was enrolled in a biochemical engineering program (this is real, but it feels made up), Ice Cube completed a degree in architectural drafting ( also real, but feels, if possible, even more made up), Steve Martin was a magician at Disneyland (which is so adorable it made me forgive him for his remakes of “Cheaper By The Dozen” and “Pink Panther,” but not the sequels) and Hugh Jackman was a clown (Can we nominate him for Ahimsa’s Everybody Nose Clown Troupe’s Cute and Famous Patron Saint?)

So we do this all the time with famous people, but we never have tabloid-style fun with famous plays! We either treat classic plays with this snivelling, suck-uppy, gross fawning reverence or we get all fidgety and bored like we’re elementary school kids on a bus and we’ve just run out annoying songs to sing. This is so sad, so, so, so sad, because some of the most famous plays and theatrical events have some of the most fascinating backstories. They didn’t just come out of creative womb all pretty, special and famous. There were hurdles to jump, mountains to climb, problems to solve, then resolve once the first solving didn’t work out, and sometimes there was even more solving required!

This is all to say there was so much DRAMA!

Pun totally intended, but in an ironic way so I can still cling to vestige of coolness.

So without further ado, let’s get to our first play.

Death of a Salesman, guys.

As if we could start with anything else.

So here’s the set-up. This is Arthur Miller.

Sneaky cute, right? Now I totally have a crush.

So it’s 1948 and wow-you’re-actually-hot Arthur Miller has just hit it out of the park with his mega-smash “All My Sons” which premiered on the Big White Way the previous year to commercial and critical supernova success.

So Arthur Miller ( I still can’t get over how cute he is in these glasses!) is like “Awesome, I want to write another crazy-amazing play and have everyone in the American theater community dance around me like I’m the Golden Calf of the Israelites.”

So he goes off and builds himself a little Writing Hermit House in Nowhere, Connecticut (okay, really it’s Roxbury, Connecticut, but same difference, right?) and proceeds to write the first act of “Death of a Salesman” in what was essentially an afternoon.

AN AFTERNOON!

This makes me want to marry him even more than I already did.

Within six weeks he had completed the play.

This makes me want to marry him just as much as I already did.

So I-hope-he-doesn’t-know-how-cute-he-is-because-that-would-make-him-maybe-not-as-cute Arthur Miller’s all “Banging. I got a play.”

Right, he doesn’t actually say “Banging” because this would be anachronistic. He probably said something like “Terrific, fellas!” or “Well, that’s just swell!” but the fact remains that Miller wrote “Death of a Salesman” in a month and a half and if that is not banging, then I don’t even know what is.

So of course, after the play is all written and pretty, Miller next proceeds to show his new play, “Death of a Salesman” to his agent.

This is where I really wish this blog had that disastrous “Da Da DUHHHH!” sound effect.

Miller’s agent vetoes the play. He says it will never sell. He says that people won’t get it. He tells if-only-I-had-been-born-seventy-years-earlier-maybe-he-could-have-been-my-husband Arthur Miller to completely rewrite the play.

I think it would be worth reminding everyone at this point that this is “Death of a Salesman” we are talking about here.

Everyone reminded?

Cool!

On we go.

So Arthur Miller tries to rewrite “Salesman”. He really, really tries.

He turns in a new draft to his agent, who is happier with “Death of a Salesman, Take Two.” But Arthur is not happier. He is miserable-er. Way, way, way miserable-er. He really believed in that first draft of “Salesman.” God gave him the gift of a first act in a day. Heaven smiled down on him and let him crank out a play in a flipping month and a half. Now he’s throwing this gift of inspiration away because some putzy agent doesn’t get it and said agent is getting away with acting like a mouthpiece for the rest of the world.

This is when Arthur Miller has his “Dark Night of the Soul.” This is a screenwriting term for that part in movies where all hope is lost and the main character looks outside the window and it’s raining and/or takes long, depressing walks around in a park during a montage set to the music of a morose female country singer or, interchangeably, sad Scandinavian pop.

But then Arthur Miller rallies (come on, it’s Arthur!!!!) and decides to show his original draft of “Salesman” to other people.

People like Elia Kazan, who is most famous for directing the films “On The Waterfront” and “Streetcar Named Desire” and selling-out-all-of-his-friends-who-ever-attended-one-communist-party-meeting-because-communism-sounds-cool- in-theory-and-also-there-was-nothing-better-to-do-that-night to Senator McCarthy and his scary Senate subcommittee hearings, which Arthur Miller later allegorically chronicled in his “Crucible.”

See, theater history, you guys, it’s all coming together!

Anyway, back in the late forties, before Kazan turns bad and is still kicking it like Anakin Skywalker, Kazan and Miller are really good friends. So good that Kazan directed Miller’s previous smash “All My Sons” and so good that he is all about directing “Death of a Salesman” AS IS! First draft, take one, le original!

“Death of a Salesman” goes onto win the Tony for Best Author, the New York Drama Critic’s Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Note that this is the first play to ever win all three awards (Of course it is, it’s by Arrthhurrr….)

“Salesman” is also today considered one of The Best American Plays Ever by Almost Everybody, and The Best American Play Ever by a lot of people in that Almost Everybody.

So what does this story teach us?

1.) Being true to your heart and sticking by your guns can result in you writing the most famous and best play ever as opposed to…not!

2.) If one of your friend’s is going to turn out to be a Great American Traitor, be friends with that person before they turn bad, and then write an allegorical play about Puritans and witchcraft that will turn out to be another most famous and best play ever and will be performed by every American high school theatre department there ever was.

3.) You shouldn’t feel bad about having any of the following a.) a receding hairline, b.) a big nose, c.) really big glasses, and d.) ears that stick out. Or even a combination of these traits. Or even all of them! Because you could still turn out to be super sneaky cute like my-husband-that-could-have-been Arthur Miller.

Later this week, another super-secret-mystery “Classic Plays- They’re Just Like Us!”

Oh, who am I kidding, it’s totally going to be “Waiting For Godot.”

Since there’s not fun theme song or bloopers to end with, here are some more hottie pictures of Arthur Miller!

Yes, you’re still cute.

You can not take a bad picture!

You are just sitting at your desk being thoughtful and smart and it is pretty much impossible for me to love you more.

So tonight was the second night of my introduction to clowning, and I think I deserve a pat on the back.  (In case those of you who don’t know me are unaware, performing is not something I tend to do – ever.)  But my own insecurities, and habitual fears aside, I had a hell of a time!

To clarify, The Ahimsa Collective has a subsidiary branch that operates as a clown troupe appropriately titled Everybody Nose. These brave souls have undergone intense mental, and physical training to bring to you, the audience, an unique and individual clowning experience.

And although I am nowhere near troupe ready, my eight hours of clowning have given me a window into my psyche, and helped me unleash my inner clown.

Now if this sounds totally nuts, that’s because it is.  In truth, you spend hours cooped up with a bunch of crazies wearing red rubber noses, dancing around trying to be birthed.  I don’t think an experience can get more absurd.

And that’s why I had such an awesome time!!  I was able to let loose in ways I don’t even fully understand, and I only really remember 30% of what I did while “in clown.”  Everything else is blotchy and far away, but all that really means is that I, the non-performer, was able to act in the moment, feel a flow, and work my inner clown.

Two thumbs way up!!!  And although this may seem like a biased review (me being friends with everyone in the troupe, and a member of The Ahimsa Collective) I was as skeptical of clowning before taking the workshop as some of you may be reading this blog.  Trust me, clowning is cool, and if my typing hasn’t convinced you, find me at the next community pool.  We can talk about it in person : )

-Jeremy D. Hill (New Media Director)

October’s Community Pool was simply incredible.

The most amazing aspect of this October’s Community Pool is that it doubled as a wedding reception. That’s right, we do weddings now. It couldn’t have been a better time to celebrate a marriage too. There has never been a more amazing collective of artists at a Community Pool. The quality of the work presented was inspiring.

Everyone should be proud of the work they did at the Community Pool. All of you made it a night our happy couple will surly never forget.

Here’s some of my own work that was presented in somewhat of a rush at the Community Pool. I figured it would have more of a chance to breathe here.

:

Pressed concentration…
The dress burns
Her lackluster skin
Wanting the movement
It had
When inhibitions
Receded behind music.
She is now
A sitting mold;
What a student should be.
Laughter itching
Her throat
In soft containment.
What was it
That introduced
My meek witted child
To unbridled
Living?
Why did she not stay
Within her trance?

-

They wed you here;
Scattered lace and ideals
Of what it would be to unify.

The lattice fence
Boasted less ivy than expected.
Miss matched linens…
The texture
Of picnic tables
Escaping their cover…

We were twenty-something.
The grass was nobler than us.
They wed you here
To an idea of what I would be.

We danced here.
When tradition bid us
To move together,
We synchronized our
Steps here.
A trance erupted into -

This is real now.

We are the concept
That flooded our dreams.

-

The need for contraband
Stifled middle class living.

Georgia-Sue and her middle class living:

If you buy silver forks and silver knifes,
No one will know if you have steel spoons.
Georgia-Sue loves middle class living.

What sort of child represses dreams?
Tell him it was only a dream.
No one is harmed in middle class living.

The hyphen in American creates specificity,
Public Appropriate specificity.
Georgia-Sue is a middle class-American.

Remedies are profitable for the poor;
Their perception profits with your pocket-book.
Georgia-Sue is a middle class money maker.

She says, “African-American,” and smiles.
Georgia-Sue and her middle class living.

-

His habitat:

A mountain of a valley,
Repeated, imitated
Across the holding place
For his spirit.

What doubt lies there
Fallen within the crevasses,
So my hands cannot
Attempt to make contact.

Cancerous streams;
Rapids carving valleys
Further from my reach.

The imitation of misperception
Breeds without sexual intercourse.
Bacteria learned
To reproduce this way.

I’ve boulders to tumble
Into the basin
Where his water
Should erode them away.

Temporary pavement
May be made there,
Should he refuse
The workings of disease.

Much love,

Shea.

Hey! We have a blog! (I hope you didn’t click that. It’s a link to itself. That’s ridiculous.)

Thanks for joining us here; we’re hoping to share a lot of great new art and hopefully a lot of ideas about art on this blog here. I think it will be exciting, and I hope you do too.