The Havel Collection: Ela, Hela, and the Hitch

Ela, Hela, and the Hitch is included in the Havel Collection as part of the book the contains The Pig

Ela, Hela, and the Hitch was, in a way, Václav Havel’s first play. It was written for the Artistic Director of the Theatre on the Balustrade, Ivan Vyskočil, as part of a longer evening, entitled Hitchhiking. Along with Ela, Hela, and the Hitch, Havel also wrote a sketch called Motormorphosis. Reportedly, Vyskočil altered Havel’s sketches for the performance, though this text is Havel’s original.

After Havel’s success with his first full length, The Garden Party, these earlier efforts were quickly forgotten. They were relatively recently rediscovered, through the detective work of a Czech theater scholar, Lenka Jungmannová. Motormorphosis was performed at the Havel Festival in 2006, a world premiere of the text as written. Ela, Hela, and the Hitch premiered in English translation following a revival of Motormorphosis at New York’s Bohemian National Hall in 2011.

What is particularly interesting about Ela, Hela, and the Hitch is the way it lays bare Ionesco’s influence on Havel. The rhythms of the play echo everything from The Bald Soprano to Salutations. Like Ionesco, Havel uses comic repetition that culminates in an explosion of language, during which words become meaningless, replaced only by the more visceral meaning one can attach to pure sound.

Another interesting side note is the societal conflict reflected in the main dilemma. Like many older members of the Czechoslovak upper middle class in 1961 (the year the play was written), Ela and Hela spoke German at school, and their behavior is definitely reflective of the German influence on their upbringing. They are separated from society not only because of their age, but because the younger generation had cut its ties with Germany.

So what Havel is doing is using Ionesco’s formal techniques, which Ionesco used primarily to critique humanity’s doomed attempts at communication, and applying those techniques to a societal critique. Which is, in fact, a prelude to what Havel would do throughout the rest of his playwriting career.

20th Anniversary Memories: 24/7 Fest

Dave Hanson looking out at New York

Dave Hanson, a friend and playwright who actually was in attendance in at the first ever UTC61 show, Artist Descending a Staircase (and knows me long enough to call me "Ed"), tells about his experience in our 24/7 Fest, seven straight days of 24 hour plays on different themes.  Dave and I met as interns at New Dramatists.  Now Dave does theater in Kansas City, where I participated in a similar project last year.

Ok, I'll be honest when Ed called me up to participate as a playwright in something called 24/7 I didn't know exactly what to think. You see, I'm not an actor or director or a designer or any of those kinds of theater jobs that would have led me to cross paths with the idea of writing a short play in a night and then fully staging it the next day. I would find out later that lots of people do these things. But at that moment, waiting to get on a plane to go from Kansas City to New York to be in two rounds of the 24/7 festival what I was thinking was who the hell does this? Of course, Ed Einhorn does this. And thank god he does.

I attended the performances the night before my first round came out. I was part of the neuro night. Whatever our play was, it was to be about something in the brain. It also had to include the following: someone had to die, we had to think we were in one place but really be in another, somebody had to sit in a chair, and the last requirement (which was picked from a jar because again it's Ed) was that there had to be a talking animal.

So I go to my room at the YMCA - yes folks, I went to New York and stayed at the West Side YMCA because it was very affordable. I stayed up to like 2 AM that night writing my play - Theater of the Mind. I know the title kind of fit with the whole Neuro theme. I show up at 8 AM at the theater the next morning and that's when all kinds of wonderful and terrible began.

You see it's not just good enough to write a play in less than 12 hours. These puppies were going to be fully staged. You know memorized, blocked, lighting cues, and memorized. I met my director-- Alexander was his name--and my cast. It was a great cast and very, very honest. I'll admit that I wrote a drama and very well difficult scene for the actress who was assigned to my cast. I think it was Nancy Nagrant. She read my play, twice and then ... and I remember this clearly ... looked at the director and then me and said, "You bastard, I'm only doing this part twice. You get once in rehearsal and once in the performance."

Like I said, I'm not an actor but I did know this wasn't the moment to quibble over such things. I remember thinking, I've either written a really great scene or well... it really sucked. We were really too busy to think much about it. Well, to be fair, the director and the cast was too busy. I was floored by what these people could get done. I mean they were really doing it. Well, up to and including complete memorization of the lines. Honestly, the whole memorization thing... well, the cast never actually got through an entire run through of the play before curtain with all the lines memorized. But I liked what I saw and I took my customary seat to watch a play of mine... far back corner on the right with at least two seats between me and anybody else.

The energy in the theater was crazy as the curtain came up. My play wasn't first and it wasn't last, but I still remember when it happened. It truly was the magic of the theater. The performances sparkled. The big scene... memorable. One of those moments when the whole theater goes really, really quiet. Then... then it was over.

The cast and I went to drinks that night and it was clear we had all bonded a bit over the day. Not like I'd donate my kidney to you... although I would consider it - especially for Nancy because you owe something to someone who calls you a bastard. What I think we all realized around that table was there was a feeling that we didn't really want to let go.

Doing theater is one of the hardest things in the world to pull off. You can't fix it in editing. You don't get to redo a performance in front of an audience. Usually, you don't get to do it period. And we did it all in less than 24 hours. Now, it is interesting to note that for most plays the prevailing theory is that they must be developed for months and months before they are ready for the light of day. I participated in two rounds of the festival and can report that both plays received full productions later on in my writing career. Maybe there is something to the madness. A madness that really could only be pulled off by Ed Einhorn. So to Ed, I have only one thing to say...

You bastard. I know it's odd but it really worked out for me last time so it's my new term of endearment.

Thanks Ed for 20 years and thanks for 24/7.

Iphiegnia in Aulis: The lives of 10,000

Laura Hartle as Iphigenia
Photo by RIchard Termine

Every night in the theater, there is a moment which I know will get an audible reaction, sometimes a gasp, sometimes a snicker. After she has made the decision to let herself be sacrificed, Iphigenia proudly declares: "One man’s life is worth more than the lives of ten thousand women."

Of course, it sounds ridiculous to us. It sounded ridiculous to me, as I translated the play, and I briefly considered if there was a way to make it more...palatable.

There wasn't.

But in rehearsals, I became fond of the line, in a perverse way.

In order for Iphigenia to make the transition from sacrifice to willing martyr, she has to truly believe and buy into everything she has been taught by her father and her society. That the Trojans are barbarians. That war means freedom. That a human sacrifice is a heroic martyrdom. And that a man's life is worth ten thousand women.

Somehow, we accept the other statements, because they are closer to statements we hear in our own society. But when we hear a statement that is clearly from another era, another mindset, it is jarring. It should be jarring. But it is of a piece. Just because some propaganda is longer lasting than others doesn't mean it isn't equally propaganda. Snicker at it, perhaps, but then ask whether in a thousand years someone will be snickering at us.

Is Iphigenia in Aulis misogynist? Perhaps. It certainly is from a somewhat misogynist society, though there are aspects of the play, from Klytemnestra to the chorus, that have a more feminist outlook. The blaming and shaming of Helen has a sexist tinge, though it is of a piece of the societal shaming of adulterers; even Jason suffered for his betrayal of Medea.

But that one line, to me, isn't misogynist. That line is a wake up call. Clearly, we see before us a woman whose life is worth at least as much as any man, perhaps more than many. Yet she has been formed by the society she is in, and she believes what the society believes.

In a play about the power of the mob, this is in fact the mob's greatest power. It lies not in its strength of arms, but in its conventional wisdom, in the banal but dangerous things everyone accepts, without questioning. Unless, perhaps, one had two and a half thousand years in which to reflect.

20th Anniversary Memories: A Shylock

Uma Incrocci and John Blaylock in
Fairy Tales of the Absurd

John Blaylock, who first performed with us back in 1996, when he played the lead, Jacob Levy, in A Shylock, tells of his memory of his first day with UTC61.  In a side note:  I had been listening to actors read a monologue from the play all day, and I was feeling in despair by time he arrived, thinking perhaps it was the fault of the monologue, not the actors.  Then John came in and let me live longer in the delusion that I should be a writer...

Well, although I go back pretty far with UTC61, there are certainly folks who go back farther than I do, and also have done far more than I have with the company. Still, I guess it's best to start RIGHT at the beginning, and it's not a stretch for me to do so with, literally, my first day on the job…

I had been cast as Dr. Jacob Levy in the UTC61 production of A Shylock back in 1996. As fate, (or perhaps more accurately, my own particular reverse luck) would have it, I had only just recently moved to Brooklyn from the Upper West Side. The first rehearsal for A Shylock was to be held at a location on, you guessed it, the Upper West Side. Had I still lived on West 75th Street, I could have taken a leisurely stroll into the 90's for the rehearsal. Instead, on this Saturday morning, I had to hike it in from the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. Not that this is a big deal, but we all know what the subways can be like, particularly on the weekends. Good native New Yorker that I am, I allowed PLENTY of extra travel time but, needless to say, to no avail. At 5 minutes after the appointed time for our first reading, I'm fast-walking down the block to the rehearsal location. Just as I spy the correct address, I also notice a tall, chisel-featured gent dismounting from a motorcycle in front of the same address. He calls out to me when I turn onto the steps, asking if I'm there for the Shylock rehearsal. When I reply that I am, he introduces himself as Dan Leventritt, who will be playing the titular character. I introduce myself along with my own character name, and we enter the building together. Naturally, I'm silently pleased that while I still feel like an idiot for being late to the first rehearsal, at least I'm not alone. Once we're in the rehearsal room, Edward Einhorn greets us both pleasantly and it's clear that he and Dan have worked together before. I'm thinking this is more good luck, because Edward's not going to chastise me for being late when here I am walking in with someone who is clearly both friend and colleague. As we are settling ourselves down at the table with the rest of the cast -- no mention whatsoever having been made of our tardiness at this point -- and I am breathing a SERIOUS inner sigh of relief, Mr. Leventritt announces to the group, "Sorry we were a bit late, everyone. Actually, I would have been on time, but Blaylock over here was talking my ear off outside, like, forever and so, well, here we are." To this day I hope that the laughter that ensued masked the redness of my face, but that little episode set the tone for the work on that show and every one that I've done with Edward Einhorn and the UTC61 since that day. Namely, that it's always been that all-too-rare combination of some of the best fun and most rewarding theatrical work that I've had the pleasure to experience in my career.

20th Anniversary Memories: Linguish

Jospehine Cashman, Max Zener, and Ken Simon in Linguish

Actor and Artistic Board member Josephine Cashman writes about Linguish:

My friends have often (and fairly) accused me of being a word nerd. It is fitting, therefore, that I was cast in Untitled Theater Company’s play about language and communication. I cheerfully told my friends that Linguish was like No Exit with a dash of The Outer Limits, but it’s core, I believe that this play is about the need for human communication. That need is so strong that in the absence of one language, humans will create another one.

In Linguish, (part of UTC’61s Neurofest), four people catch a contagious form of Aphasia and are quarantined together. I enjoyed investigating the precise and delicate text of Edward’s delicious word salad, and playing Beth became a very rewarding experience for me. Our characters may have been unwillingly forced to deal with each another, but I think it’s safe to say that the cast bonded quite happily. Onstage our characters tickled, kissed, fought, laughed and quibbled over Latin pronunciation (classical or medieval?). Offstage we had fiery conversations about the rules of our onstage card game “pinochle” (nothing like the actual game). Even though Edward told us there were no rules to the game, we made them up anyway. During one rehearsal, the “Linguish” language took on a life of its own as one day I mistakenly renamed our “Pinochle” game as “Neepocle.” Somehow, the nickname stuck and became a part of the show. It was a hilarious but telling moment about how fluid language can be, and how easily we took to the new name.

Linguish also had a second life, when we went to Chicago to perform for rooms full of neurologists. A heady experience indeed. Imagine performing the different forms of aphasia for a room full of experts, studying our every movement and the language we used. Happily, they not only understood what the play was about, but they enthusiastically participated in the discussions afterwards. I remember having a talk with a doctor after a performance, trying to explain the rules of our fictional; Neepocle/Pinochle game, simply because he thought it looked fun to play. From Mirroring Neurons to made-up card games, acting Linguish was an amazing experience; I got to work with actors I admired in a play full of delicious challenges. What more could an actor want?

20th Anniversary Memories: The Velvet Oratorio

Tony Torn and Peter Bean in The Velvet Oratorio

Tony Torn (soon appearing on Broadway in Breakfast at Tiffany's) tells his memory of The Velvet Oratorio, performed in honor of the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution.  We had a performance at the Walter Bruno Theater at the Lincoln Center Library, then at the beautiful Bohemian National Hall, for a Czech audience.  We plan to revive the show for the 25th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution!

When we performed The Velvet Oratorio at the Bohemian National Hall, we were all very nervous to perform before a Czech audience, many of whom had lived through the events depicted. The show itself was full of gremlins that night. Lots of small things went wrong.  In my scene as a drunken police interrogator, I set down my glass of beer a little too hard and the entire table flipped over. Fortunately the glass was plastic and the smell of spilled beer gave the whole scene a atmospheric veracity. But later, in a climactic moment, the chorus in which I was part got confused and completely lost the choreography that Henry had so painstakingly mapped out. It was a hair raising night on stage for sure. But the ovation was so warm, and the gratitude of the crowd so overwhelming, that this performance became one of my most cherished experiences in the theater.

20th Anniversary Memories: Ken Simon

Ken Simon in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Actor and Artistic Board Member Ken Simon shares his memories of Rhinoceros, Linguish, The Memo, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

My association with Untitled Theater Company #61 began in 2001, with the production of Rhinoceros as part of UTC61's Ionesco Festival (my first of three UTC61 festivals [actually four, if you count the 24/7 Fest - EE]). From a carnival-looking Cafe Proprietor to an officious Office Manager to a green-skinned rhinoceros (don't ask), it was a very enjoyable show (as was the reading we did of translated French conversation lessons that Eugene Ionesco had written for a friend...when UTC61 festivals, it festivals) and the start of an important part of my performing career.

There was the production of Linguish in January 2006 written and directed by Edward Einhorn, Artistic Director of UTC61 (and for whom people have been mistaking me since I have known him) as part of UTC61's NeuroFest, a festival of original plays about neurological conditions. It was a play about four people quarantined with a virus (fictional) that caused various types of aphasia (real neurological disorder). I was cast as Michael, a lawyer so snarky and sarcastic that after one scene rehearsal, I told my other castmates that I didn't understand why they just didn't kill me and eat me. In fact, a castmate, Uma, told me that one of her friend's said, "That guy who played the lawyer, he must be a real jerk." To which Uma said that she told them, "No, he's really very nice." Which is an amazing things for an actor to hear...and maybe why non-actors have a hard time knowing how to compliment actors. And we were invited to perform the show again at the American Academy of Neurology's 60th Annual Meeting in 2008. You just never know where UTC61 will take you.

In the same year as Linguish, November 2006, I had the privilege of working on an original translation of The Memo by Vaclav Havel as part of UTC61's Havel Fest (did I mention we've done a number of festivals?) The Memo was my first introduction to President Havel's work and even more, to President Havel himself, as he was an audience member for one of our performances. I was at first confused why everyone else was running to the dressing room when the show was over...until I heard the former President of the Czech Republic had been in the audience and then I joined the running mob (it was a large cast) for him to sign my script as well. I've had the opportunity to meet Elie Wiesel (late '90s) and formed a theory then about truly great people; that theory was further cemented in meeting this playwright/world leader: a distinguishing characteristic of the truly great is their humility and appreciation of people. So not only do you not know where UTC61 will take you, but you don't know who will be brought to you by UTC61.

In December 2010, I was part of the Edward's original adaptation of the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (the basis for Ridley Scott's movie, Blade Runner) by Philip K. Dick. I played Isidore. A shorthand way I described him was as "a radiation-affected moron" (which is actually kinder than the nickname given to him throughout the script, ie, "chickenhead", which was used to great delight during rehearsal by one of my castmates, Alex, who played Deckard. But underneath this bantering, and possibly to offset the necessary approach, was a great affection I felt for my character. Part of his backstory that led to these terms was that he is a man degraded by the radiation of the Earth's last world war to the point that his cognitive abilities are weakening and likely to grow weaker. But what I loved about him, and the way Edward had written him that fed into portraying him, was a sense of ever-present courage that expressed itself in optimism and perseverance. Of all the characters I've portrayed, I think I care most about Isidore. And that may be why it was also easy, and maybe necessary, to joke about him, because getting too caught up in pathos for one's character actually detracts from it. I wanted to honor the character by making sure he stayed a human being, who lusted and eventually fell in love with the android using him; who experienced anger and despair when he found out the philosophy upon which he based his whole life and hopes was a lie; who with all his limitations and the pain he experiences, ends the play sadder but maybe a little wiser. Which is a pretty amazing thing when you're degrading from the radiation around you. It was an honor to play Isidore, a transcendent experience for me as a performer, and I will be forever grateful to Edward and UTC61 for the opportunity.

Happy 20th Anniversary, Untitled Theater Company #61. As my relatives would say, "May you live to be 120, and never know a day of suffering."