Quaker Religion & Art II
QUAKER RELIGION & ART II
68. Art and Faith (by Fritz Eichenberg; 1952)
About the Author—Fritz Eichenberg, born in Cologne in 1901, emigrated to the US in 1933 [died in 1990] and became well-known as an artist, educator, print maker and illustrator of children’s and classic books. He wrote Art of the Print, wrote and illustrated Endangered Species and Dance of Death. He became a Quaker in 1940. He also wrote Pamphlet #257, “Artist on the Witness Stand.”
[Prints included in the 1962 edition are]: “And the Lord prepared a Gourd”; “And a Little Child Shall Lead Them; “And on the 7th Day God ended His Work; “And their Eyes were Opened”; “And in Her Mouth was an Olive Leaf”; “And she Became a Pillar of Salt.”
A New Preface (1962)—A decade in the Atom’s Age is heavy with changes. We live under the shadow of the Terrible Cloud—expecting the worst, hoping for the best. In the world of art, a decade is little indeed, [when] measured against God’s Eternity. Man creating order, form & meaning out of thought, color, & sound, wages his endless battle for perfection, for immortality, for truth & beauty. It is doubtful that without its vast iconography Christianity could have [impressed] the hearts & minds of people over such vast areas of space & time. Perhaps it was corruption of these arts that turned a few schismatic Christians, the Quakers, against all art. The lack of insight & imagination on the part of leading Friends drove Edward Hicks to despair & Benjamin to England.
Much has happened in [the 10 years since this pamphlet was 1st published]. The world has slipped closer to manmade destruction. The artist’s image of man is deformed & tinged with insanity. Art must be universal, an instrument of peace that brings people together in deeper awareness of their common joys & sorrows. Art has become an international movement, a means of communication crossing racial, ideological & linguistic barriers.
“Every man is a special kind of artist; in his originating activity, his play or work, he is expressing himself; & he is manifesting the form which our common life should take in its unfolding.” Jacob Burckhardt.
“The only hope of saving our civilization lies in the spiritual and psychological sphere. Civilization is dependent on culture; unless we as a people find a new vision we shall perish.” Herbert Read
THE BIRTH OF ART—A hunter stalked his prey with all his animal cunning & killed it. He runs his fingers idly through the blood trickling from [his kill]; before he knew it he had shaped on the rock a crude outline of an animal. It seemed like magic; the idea excited him. Using a few hairs out of the animal’s fur [as a brush], he soon completed an image resembling his prey. What he had done no man had done before him; he had been ordained the 1st artist on this earth.
The head of his tribe [set him to work drawing] all the animals they had hunted. The new-born artist worked feverishly. The practice of this mighty magic spread from valley to valley, was passed on from tribe to tribe, father to son. Critics admit that their mastery of line and form has rarely been surpassed. Modern artists had long been familiar with the arts of the Incas, the Egyptians, the Greeks and Romans. [Technology has made fantastic innovations]. We have sold mind, body and soul to the machine and we seem to have forgotten the formula to stop it. The magic of art seems almost to be forgotten.
Art is a conscience that plagues us, a longing for creative power that can bring us closer to the source of all creation; a power we seem to have lost. [Some of the great modern masters draw inspiration from ancient art. [When we compare the tapestries, sculptures, jewelry of today with those of the ancient past, we realize we have lost not only the spirit, but also the skill. We have hardly had a new idea in type design during the last 2,000 years. As artists, we may rebel against tradition, but we rarely have anything new to say, nor are we more articulate than the artist of the past; we lack the clear objective which makes a revolution succeed. We seem to deny now that man was made in the image of God and that we are meant to be creative too, each in his own way. The decline of the arts came with the decline of man’s faith in his own creative powers. What has changed is the social background against which he works and the patrons on whom he depends.
PATRONS OF ART—It was the tribe, in all probability, which prompted the first artist to paint hunting scenes on the walls of his cave dwellings. In Greece and Rome, the State itself became the patron of the arts, the artist an honored citizen who brought glory to the rulers and received gracious nods from the gods [they fashioned]. The Christian Church needed imagery to stir the faithful to religious fervor. The Church not only fed the artist’s body, she also nourished his spirit. With the rise of industry and the decline of the Church, rich merchants and noble men delighted to play the artist’s benefactor by ordering portraits to flatter their own vanity.
The artist of the 20th century has to serve an industrial purpose; he must help in selling mass-produced merchandise; pretenses are gone, niceties dispensed with. The morality of the artist’s work that helps the salesman is questionable. [If] profit and comfort are the pillars of our industrial age, then the “fine artist” becomes a useless member of society, at best a lovable and impractical bohemian [who must] try to fit in to the profit system to be gainfully employed. The artist who wants to serve God will have to embrace poverty. Those artists are living an integrated life, worshiping as they work, creating when they feel inspired, freely giving of their talent.
We were all born artists; we were all geniuses when we were little. We were born free in mind and spirit. Where does our enslavement begin? A child has: imagination, perception, insight into human emotion, enthusiasm, spontaneity, focus. In the industrial civilization: imagination becomes handicap; perception becomes specialized training; insight become intrusion on privacy; spontaneity and enthusiasm become grounds for being fired; concentration becomes over-focused into one operation. On top of that we lose the capacity to play. The vast majority of adolescents will find little to do as a vocation that satisfies both body and soul.
FRAGMENTATION AND ART—[Industrialization has fragmented crafts into production by specialists]. There was a time when shoemakers, cabinet makers, printers, builders, conceived, designed & executed their work as a unit. [Now] we see man reduced to a tool by the machine which has supervised him; he serves it. Creative man has become a rarity in the office, the factory, & in many of our institutions of learning. The specialist has lost his identity. In most cases he will never see the finished product at the end of the assembly line. He feels a longing to go back to his childhood, when he was creative, playful, imaginative, curious, insightful and enthusiastic. The soul is asking for a home again. Today, modern artists are supposed to entertain. If an artist wants to speak up against human cruelty, he is condemned as an agitator, as a subversive.
WORSHIP AND ART—If the artist’s work is worship, if there is earnest desire to serve God & humans, the artist will, in the end, achieve peace of mind, freedom of the soul, and mastery which will bring the artist to the foot of the Cross. The artist who succeeds in freeing their self from egotism, greed, speed, sex, will have to embrace poverty. Reducing one’s standard to bare necessities is the most effective means of independence.
Within this framework freedom of expression is a necessity. Think of the world without the works of the great composers, poets, artists and writers. How do we repay our great artists of the spirit, who give us so much at such great cost in suffering and unrelenting labor? The artist is the eternal fool, close to the child and close to God. His suffering is not a choice; it is in the nature of all creating. The list of ordeals inflicted upon artists by humankind is appallingly long. A work of art is conceived in joy and agony, it grows in ceaseless toil and is delivered in painful ecstasy. A ceaseless urge sweeps the artist along, prodding, rewarding flashes of insight, then again plunging the artist into darkest despair, leaving the artist short of perfection.
MYSTERY AND NECESSITY OF ART—The mystery of art defies analysis by [any professional]. Greatness is determined by the depth and emotion of the message which the artist is able to transmit through work, down the ages. The mystery becomes magic when we are irresistibly drawn into the spirit of the revelation as experienced by the artist. Persons isolated by their wealth, disappointed by their family life, starved for beauty, color, warmth, will pay enormous sums for art, and never regret it.
If we are eager for [the revival of] art & culture, we must try to create 1st in our homes an atmosphere in which minds, imagination, & enjoyment of the simple things, [is given free rein]. It doesn’t take much to create a home, a place you would like to stay & enjoy peace of body & mind; it can be beautiful & very simple. Harmonious colors and proportions can create an atmosphere in which art can grow and that is where we start. Home is where one can start to create the little things which will deepen ones understanding of the great things in art.
There are many ways of building a church or a meeting house, but they are rarely built with our thoughts, our hearts & our hands. Materially, a meeting house can have everything a 20th century Quaker would want, [& still] chill the spirit. 300 years ago building a church or meeting house was a dedicated communal effort. It can do us a lot of good [now] to think about a whole community combining their thoughts & labors to honor God.
ART—A REFLECTION OF LIFE—It takes devotion to create and reverence to enjoy beauty. We can all become artists if we make our hearts and minds receptive. The Cathedral of Chartres, beginning in 400 A.D. was burnt and rebuilt 4 times in 860 years; the last construction lasted from 1200 to 1260. It was rebuilt on the same site, using parts of the structure left from previous destructions, integrated into one harmonious whole by generations of builders. 2000 figures guard its windows, portals, cornices, each one a work of art. The artists were anonymous and so is their glory. To them art and worship were one and the same thing. Our 20th century minds find it difficult to grasp the spiritual power behind this monument of human devotion to God. While we may write generous checks, we have impoverished ourselves spiritually. [We have not produced any such symbol of devotion in our time]. We have lost faith, and consequently art has lost its power.
How does the modern artist fit into this world? What is the nature of his work and how does he speak to our condition? [When we think a work of art is the product of a sick mind, few of us realize that it is the product of our minds]; we have helped create this world, [which the artists recreates]. [We would rather have] entertaining, pleasant pictures, idyllic music, colonial dwellings.
Modern art reflects our lack of faith. Dadaism created art from bits and pieces of junk left by the mechanization of our lives, by war and its destruction; it was an artist’s revolt. Cubism attempted the organization of the fragments. Surrealism delved deeply into the mind and depicted its fears and follies. Abstract art may well be a subconscious dodging of moral responsibilities. Modern music reflects the dissonance of our lives; the din of our traffic jams, the hustle and bustle of the rush hour, the cocktail party the assembly line.
We must recapture what we have lost, we must fight for our faith, our way back to God; we must become creative again. The 1st command of civilized people is to create order out of chaos. The artist must enhance the value of life and add meaning, joy and beauty to our existence on this planet.
EPILOGUE—Cologne, founded 50 years after the birth of Christ, was reduced to rubble during the last war. One of the young men dropping bombs on Cologne, a Catholic and lover of art, feels embarrassed and apologetic about his role. He is now a Trappist monk entered upon a life dedicated to God, work and silence. The fragmentation and ugliness of modern warfare is undoubtedly reflected in many works of modern art. Life and Art cannot be separated. We are all responsible; we should be seriously concerned. We have to mend our ways and try to bring order into chaos and become whole again, holy again.
We must go back to creative work & significant play [by dropping] empty substitutes. There is enough excitement in our daily tasks if we approach them reverently & creatively, no matter in what medium we work. [We can feel the thrill] of standing up & being counted for all the despised & unpopular causes for which we feel called upon to fight. We can experience the thrill of finding God close to us in the silence of the meeting house, our workshop, or under a starry sky. The child, the fool, the saint & the artist want to believe that humans still have a choice, that we don't want to destroy ourselves, but start a better breed, devoted to Faith, Hope & Charity.
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
257. Artist on the witness stand (by Fritz Eichenberg; 1984)
The artist’s work is a mixed blessing of joy & suffering, of the ecstasy & agony of forging out of the artists’ substance an image that mirrors existence against the background of their time, & our time. Fritz Eichenberg.
About the Author—Fritz Eichenberg, born in Cologne in 1901, emigrated to the US in 1933, became a Quaker in 1940, and became well-known as an artist, educator, printmaker and illustrator of many important books for children and lovers of classics. He wrote Pendle Hill Pamphlet #68 Art and Faith (1952); he also wrote and illustrated his own fables, Endangered Species, and a contemporary Dance of Death. His prints, mostly wood engravings, are in major collections here and abroad.
INTRODUCTION—Potentially, creativity is dormant in every human mind; it needs nourishment & care. Even if we don’t all become artists, it will bring us closer to the creative arts & their enjoyment. [Many if not most] come to the conclusion that their puny efforts are not worth struggling with an [unruly, resistant] genius. Yet there is no reason to get disheartened. Our tentative activities in the giant mystery may set off sparks that lift us out of anonymity. [Our gifts will at least reach those closest to us]. They may be our most valuable asset.
The artist’s work is a mixed blessing of joy and suffering, of the ecstasy and agony of forging out of the artists’ substance an image that mirrors their existence against the background of their time, our time. All truly great art is universal. Often we enjoy greatness without recognizing it. If you are born with certain convictions and a tender conscience, your path is laid out for you and you have to follow, even if your tender feet object.
EARLY ENCOUNTERS-In tracing my pilgrimage back to my childhood I discovered how early I was affected by the frailty of human life. My first encounter with an artist whose work affected me deeply was Alfred Rethel and his Auch ein Totendanz (Another Dance of Death). [I wrote an essay on it as a school boy, and designed] my own Dance of Death a half-century later.
[A neighbor in my family’s apartment house was an art historian and a museum curator. After asking me a few thoughtful questions he] pulled out of his library 2 volumes of Eduard Fuchs’ History of European Satirical Art; they became my Bible. [I discovered Bosch, Brueghel, Goya ,and Daumier, and the hard-hitting art of the Simplicissimus and the Charvari. There was a lot of political and social ferment] but my own decision to be an artist, to walk in the footsteps of my idols, never wavered. The universal suffering of mankind, made me conscious of the power and the passion of love, and of the agonies and elations of a creative life. The city of Cologne taught me history of art and of faith. Through 2,000 years of war and peace, pillage and prosperity taking turns, it had survived as a living depository of the great arts of the centuries.
STUDENT DAYS; WORD & IMAGE; EARLY INSPIRATION—I was 20 when I graduated from the department store job to student life at the Academy of Graphic Arts in Leipzig. In 1923 I moved to Berlin to marry, working as an artist-reporter, writing and illustrating, cartooning and lampooning. I began to see the world as a stage, directed by an unseen master who analyzed the script, assigned the roles, picked the actors, arranged the curtain calls and decreed the final drop.
I continued to read insatiably, indiscriminately, to bolster my pedestrian, anti-intellectual high school education. Most artists & writers I admired had labored under the problems of all non-conformists. Very few escaped the wrath of the guardians of the status quo unless they [spoke as a mouthpiece of the Church and State, rather than as a prophet]. I was led by intuition to a little book with the mysterious title Tao-te Ching by Lao-Tsu. [His 81 short sayings] became guideposts in the turmoil of my life. Ultimately Lao-Tsu led me through Zen to the “Light Within,” “the Quiet Inner Voice” of George Fox the Quaker and to the Peaceable Kingdom of Isaiah.
TO REFLECT ONE’S TIME—We often think: if only I could have lived in ancient Greece or Rome, during the Renaissance or the Age of Enlightenment. We can and we do, through the great heritage left us in thoughts and images. Holbein’s famous Totentanz (Dance of Death) gives us a vivid insight into the time in which he lived; his Death has no respect [no partiality] for rank and wealth. I followed that concept in my own series on Death in a nuclear age, as a witness to the follies of our time.
Erasmus’ In Praise of Folly gave me the incentive to show in my prints that Dame Folly hasn’t changed her face for 300 years. Facing for the first time Michelangelo’s Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel gave me a jolt—a truly superhuman vision blessed from above by a youthful beardless Christ. [Rembrandt & Bach also influenced my student days in Leipzig]. A Bach cantata will lift your spirits & may save you a few sessions on an analyst’s couch. It’s difficult to determine what [art form] exerted the most decisive influence. There’s no dividing line—genius isn’t bound to any medium. I read Grimmelshausen’s Simplicissimus, admired Bertolt Brecht’s stage presentation of part of it, & studied Jacques Calot’s Miseries of War etchings. These came together in Adventures of Simpliccismus 50 years later. The interconnections, the chain reactions, the cross currents flowing from one master’s medium to the other are alive. The lack of lessons learned by mankind are most discouraging.
Where are the artists eulogizing the grandeur and harmonies of nature, its checks and balances which give meaning to our lives?
The debt we owe great art, accumulated over the centuries is immeasurable. Let’s try to pay it off by listening to its immortal voice. Fritz Eichenberg
ART AND FAITH; HISTORY AS TEACHER—Among decisive chance encounters I think of Giotto, the revolutionary painter imbued with deep faith and in his art defying tradition. He painted the life of St. Francis, who has inevitably appeared in my work, a source of strength, simplicity, faith and beauty we need so badly in our time of confusion and uncertainty. Should not our great artists and writers try to bring the awareness of our problems closer to us, their contemporaries?
A study of the lives of the artists I have mentioned is a lesson in humility, a belief in the supremacy of the spirit which triumphs over difficulties that would cripple most men. In Napoleon, on the other hand, we witness the destructive power of one man, who also inspired Beethoven’s “Eroica,” compelled Goya to create his great series of etchings, The Disasters of the War, & his painting Tres de Mayo, primed the pens and gravers of Gillray & Rowlandson to furious protests in their brilliant cartoons against Napoleon’s planned invasion of England.
Goethe’s Reynard the Fox induced me to do my own Fables, Endangered Species, reinterpreted against the background of the momentous events of our own time, The Atomic Age. Goya, the grand witness of war’s atrocities, died in exile in Bordeaux after Napoleon’s defeat, deaf and poor. Honore Daumier, who worked for newspapers like the Charivari and La Caricature, spent time in jail for offending royalty, and became a beacon for generations of like-minded artists who believed in the remedial power of art as a social and political weapon.
Gogol wrote Dead Souls & The Inspector General in spite of strict censorship in Tsarist Russia. I illustrated Edgar Allan Poe’s stories after reading about his early life, his struggle for recognition & his ignominious death in a Baltimore gutter. [The Bronte sisters wrote] & battled for recognition in a world where women “simply didn’t write.” Heinrich Heine, Charles Dickens, Hans Christian Anderson, & Schumann lived & wrote during the same time]. Prior to illustrating Turgenev’s Fathers & Sons, I learned what I could by studying his life. He fought for & lived to see the Russian serfs freed, 2 years before Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.
THE ARTIST AND THE BOOK—Dostoevsky and Tolstoy overshadowed the 2nd half of the 19th century and entered my life, my thoughts and my work as if I had made myself ready for them. [Their struggles and dedication to their causes] fired my imagination. Illustrating Tolstoy’s War and Peace, his Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, Anna Karenina, and Resurrection, made me feel deeply related to his great and restless spirit. His private life, his ruthless honesty with himself fascinated me. Tolstoy’s correspondence with Gandhi is enlightening if seen in terms of our own war-ravaged time. Dostoevsky’s visionary description of the 2nd coming of Christ in the Grand Inquisitor can be considered a daring challenge to the Orthodox Church. [Through his writing] I felt most keenly his agony, the ceaseless struggle to find the source of his faith, to find God.
Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas, Van Gogh, and Gauguin [were the exception to an otherwise meaningless contemporary art. When WWI ended, foes became friends, A fresh blast blew in from the new Russia—the constructivists, the suprematists, and abstractionists. From France came the Fauvists, the cubists, the new wave with Picasso, Braque, Leger, Matisse—the surrealist, Max Ernst and Dali—and Germany became the birthplace and the center of the Expressionists and the Dada movement with Picabia, Schwitters, George Grosz.
ART AND REVOLUTION—New inspiration came from socially oriented art which prospered under the auspices of a new regime in Mexico, shown in the Rivera & Orozco murals, celebrating the history & the victory of the oppressed. I admired the stark woodcuts of the Flemish Frans Masereel as he joined the fight for human rights. I revered the work of Käthe Kolliwtz, so deeply concerned with the fate of simple people & their struggles for existence. I admired George Grosz cartoons, drawing, & lithographs showing “The Face of the Ruling Class.”
[An unrecognized part of the art world] are the cartoonists of the daily press, who are doing a yeoman’s job to pillory our politicians’ shenanigans, elected or self-appointed. There are always artists champing at the bit to be a witness to their time; they need a forum on which to meet their audience, to let off steam, to prevent the boiler from blowing up. We usually look for stimulation in the wrong sources: drugs, alcohol, parties, sex & violence on the TV or in the papers—thrills of quick impact which wear off quickly. Where are the artists eulogizing the grandeur & harmonies of nature, its checks & balances which give meaning to our lives?
ART AND THE QUAKERS; ART WITH A MESSAGE—2 centuries ago our lone Quaker artist, Edward Hicks, painted his vision of the Peaceable Kingdom over and over again, against the advice of his own Meeting; he found no followers in his time. Rufus Jones said: “We look back with mild pity on the generations of Haverford students who were deprived of the joy of music and art … The strong anti-aesthetic bias in the minds of the Quaker founders was an unmitigated disaster.” Religious leaders of all denominations are beginning to rise out of their lethargy and make use of art’s spiritual power.
Art has survived the cavemen, the Pharaohs, the princes and the popes; it will survive the computer—if we care enough. Sensitive to the illnesses of his time and giving expressions to his concern in any medium, he is bound to run up against the guardians of the status quo. Your conscience and the strength of your convictions must back you up. I feel myself in the spirit of George Fox, John Woolman, and others. Neither jail nor mistreatment would hold them back from their missions, living testimony that love could overcome hatred.
I feel rewarded that my work has been used by so many denominations and groups devoted to peace in our time, and that it finds the intended target, the human heart. For more than half a century I have sent a print to my friends everywhere each year, usually a commentary on the state of the world—and incidentally on my own condition. We are all blessed with different gifts, witnesses ready to be counted. The debt we owe great art, accumulated over the centuries is immeasurable. Let’s try to pay it off by listening to its immortal voice.
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
353. Letting That Go, Keeping This: The Spiritual Pilgrimage of Fritz Eichenberg (by Philip Harnden; 2001)
About: the Author [and Pamphlet; Fritz Eichenberg]—Philip Harnden serves on the program committee of the Upper New York Office of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). This pamphlet's [roots are found in a 1985 article in The Other Side magazine], out of which grew a lecture given at a Fritz Eichenberg retrospective exhibit at Guilford College. Both were further expanded and updated for this pamphlet.
Fritz Eichenberg (1901-1990) was born in Cologne, emigrated to the US in 1933 and became known as an artist, educator, printmaker and illustrator for children's and classic books. His prints are in major collections here and abroad. He became a Quaker in 1940, wrote and illustrated 2 Pendle Hill Pamphlets 68. Art and Faith (1952) 257. Artist on the Witness Stand (1984); he also designed Pendle Hill's Logo.
So the wise soul/ watches with the inner/ not the outward eye,/ letting that go/ keeping this. Lao Tzu
1st Illustration: Riddle of the Peaceable Kingdom, 1977—This black & white illustration uses traditional characters of Isaiah 11, & those used by Edward Hicks in the several "Peaceable Kingdom" versions he painted, to form the side view of a man's face. The leopard lies stretched out at the bottom, with a lion sitting regally on top, his mane forming the man's beard, & his mouth serving as the man's mouth. On the lion's head, a calf is wedged between lion & wolf's tail; the calf's rear forms the man's hooked nose, & the wolf's tail forms an eyebrow. The wolf is wedged in a flat, backwards "S"-shape through the "face's" center. A bear forms the rear, upper part of the head; a little girl huddled within its paws. The top front of the head is an oxen, with a leafy vine forming hair.
[Introduction]—The Depression was raging when young & green Fritz Eichenberg emigrated from Germany to the US in 1933. He only had an art school education & a longing to be an artist. A NYC fortune-teller "saw" him "working with wood," & thought he "must be ... a violinist." By 1985, Eichenberg's wood engravings & lithographs had received international acclaim. Critics admired his sense of drama, & ordinary people loved his [honest & easily understood] portrayal of hopes & troubles. His work was found in museums & art galleries, tenements & soup kitchens. Eichenberg wrote: "I seemed to have been destined to work with, on & around wood all my life." Place names involving "wood" & "forest" filled his life; his name meant "oak mountain."
Of his spiritual journey, Eichenberg told, "We were more German than Jewish. We didn't practice anything, no religion in my home. Spiritual guidance I did not have. I've lived my life more or less on guidance from some unknown power ..."; he spoke of a "guardian angel. What forms might a guardian angel take?
2nd Illustration: Pax Bestiarium [Peace Bestiary], 1965—A black & white, tightly packed animal-collection. Clockwise from upper right corner: tree with small dove in branches & snake just below the dove. Lion's head. orangutan (lower right corner); lamb & rabbit on bottom. Wolf (lower left corner); moose; Native American depiction of bird spirit (upper left corner). Vertically through center & length of the picture is elephant's head.
The Animals—[Eichenberg]: I've always loved animals. As a child growing up in Germany my dream was to have a dog ... [and] a mouse. Out of the question ... I spent endless time at the zoo with my sketchbook. The animals were my intimate friends. I knew them and they knew me ... [I was] an artist who spent ... [a lot] of time sketching and studying animals, finding comfort in their company, and learning from them."
His school's teachers were stern and often use whipping for even tiny infractions; his only enjoyment was the art class. The hours he spent with animals were an important influence and teacher on his spiritual journey. The Peaceable Kingdom was an important image, [a symbol of the restoration] to a beloved community. We also find Noah and St. Francis among his depiction of animals.
The Chinese Sage—[Eichenberg]: "My mother was too busy. I went either to the zoo or the bookstore. I found in Cologne a bookstore with an edition of Lao Tzu's Sayings, 81 sayings by a Chinese sage who lived 600 years before Christ. I bought this book and fell in love with it; I always carry it when I travel."
3rd Illustration: Lao Tzu, 1966—Black & white illustration of an elderly Chinese man, bald on top & long hair on the side of his head, long beard, sitting side-saddle with an open scroll on his lap, on an oxen plodding up a mountain trail, with a rugged mountain in the background.
The Tao Te Ching is Taoism's spiritual classic, probably written 2500 years ago, possibly by Lao Tzu. It speaks to people everywhere as if it were written yesterday. One of the fundamental metaphors of Taoism is "Uncarved Block," a Taoist symbol of original state of humanity before greed took hold; simplicity was also a Taoist symbol. Eichenberg's reaction to Lao Tzu was, "The artist who wants to serve God will have to embrace poverty ... Those are the happy ones, happy as only those can be who live an integrated life, worshiping as they work [& create] ... without counting pennies of their reward ... We were all born artists [&] genuises ... We were born free in mind & spirit. [we become enslaved] to] conformity & practicality [&] the grinding process of drab mechanical labor." Eichenberg watches with the inner eye, & has "instinct for hidden life in the world around us." [Woodcarving is a process of letting that go,/ keeping this]. Where is the art in Fritz Eichenberg's work? Is it in what is there—or in what isn't there; in what's kept or what's let go; inked or the uninked?
[Lao Tzu]: [One should live simply] contented with one's food, pleased with one's clothing, satisfied with one's home, taking pleasures in one's rustic tasks.
... what works reliably/ is to know the raw silk,/ hold the uncut wood./ Need little/ want less./ Forget the rules./ Be untroubled.
The 5 colors/ blind our eyes./ The 5 notes/ deafen our ears./ The 5 flavors dull our taste.// Racing, chasing, hunting,/ drives people crazy./ Trying to get rich/ ties peoples in knots.// So the wise soul/ watches with the inner/ not the outward eye,/ letting that go,/ keeping this.////
30 spokes/ meet in the hub./ Where the wheel isn't/ is where it's useful.// Hollowed out,/ clay makes a pot./ Where the pot's not/ is where it's useful.// Cut doors and windows/ to make a room./ Where the room isn't,/ there's room for you.// So the profit in what is/ is in the use of what isn't.///
The debt we owe great art, accumulated over the centuries is immeasurable. Let’s try to pay it off by listening to its immortal voice. Fritz Eichenberg
ART AND FAITH; HISTORY AS TEACHER—Among decisive chance encounters I think of Giotto, the revolutionary painter imbued with deep faith and in his art defying tradition. He painted the life of St. Francis, who has inevitably appeared in my work, a source of strength, simplicity, faith and beauty we need so badly in our time of confusion and uncertainty. Should not our great artists and writers try to bring the awareness of our problems closer to us, their contemporaries?
A study of the lives of the artists I have mentioned is a lesson in humility, a belief in the supremacy of the spirit which triumphs over difficulties that would cripple most men. In Napoleon, on the other hand, we witness the destructive power of one man, who also inspired Beethoven’s “Eroica,” compelled Goya to create his great series of etchings, The Disasters of the War, & his painting Tres de Mayo, primed the pens and gravers of Gillray & Rowlandson to furious protests in their brilliant cartoons against Napoleon’s planned invasion of England.
Goethe’s Reynard the Fox induced me to do my own Fables, Endangered Species, reinterpreted against the background of the momentous events of our own time, The Atomic Age. Goya, the grand witness of war’s atrocities, died in exile in Bordeaux after Napoleon’s defeat, deaf and poor. Honore Daumier, who worked for newspapers like the Charivari and La Caricature, spent time in jail for offending royalty, and became a beacon for generations of like-minded artists who believed in the remedial power of art as a social and political weapon.
Gogol wrote Dead Souls & The Inspector General in spite of strict censorship in Tsarist Russia. I illustrated Edgar Allan Poe’s stories after reading about his early life, his struggle for recognition & his ignominious death in a Baltimore gutter. [The Bronte sisters wrote] & battled for recognition in a world where women “simply didn’t write.” Heinrich Heine, Charles Dickens, Hans Christian Anderson, & Schumann lived & wrote during the same time]. Prior to illustrating Turgenev’s Fathers & Sons, I learned what I could by studying his life. He fought for & lived to see the Russian serfs freed, 2 years before Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.
THE ARTIST AND THE BOOK—Dostoevsky and Tolstoy overshadowed the 2nd half of the 19th century and entered my life, my thoughts and my work as if I had made myself ready for them. [Their struggles and dedication to their causes] fired my imagination. Illustrating Tolstoy’s War and Peace, his Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, Anna Karenina, and Resurrection, made me feel deeply related to his great and restless spirit. His private life, his ruthless honesty with himself fascinated me. Tolstoy’s correspondence with Gandhi is enlightening if seen in terms of our own war-ravaged time. Dostoevsky’s visionary description of the 2nd coming of Christ in the Grand Inquisitor can be considered a daring challenge to the Orthodox Church. [Through his writing] I felt most keenly his agony, the ceaseless struggle to find the source of his faith, to find God.
Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas, Van Gogh, and Gauguin [were the exception to an otherwise meaningless contemporary art. When WWI ended, foes became friends, A fresh blast blew in from the new Russia—the constructivists, the suprematists, and abstractionists. From France came the Fauvists, the cubists, the new wave with Picasso, Braque, Leger, Matisse—the surrealist, Max Ernst and Dali—and Germany became the birthplace and the center of the Expressionists and the Dada movement with Picabia, Schwitters, George Grosz.
ART AND REVOLUTION—New inspiration came from socially oriented art which prospered under the auspices of a new regime in Mexico, shown in the Rivera & Orozco murals, celebrating the history & the victory of the oppressed. I admired the stark woodcuts of the Flemish Frans Masereel as he joined the fight for human rights. I revered the work of Käthe Kolliwtz, so deeply concerned with the fate of simple people & their struggles for existence. I admired George Grosz cartoons, drawing, & lithographs showing “The Face of the Ruling Class.”
[An unrecognized part of the art world] are the cartoonists of the daily press, who are doing a yeoman’s job to pillory our politicians’ shenanigans, elected or self-appointed. There are always artists champing at the bit to be a witness to their time; they need a forum on which to meet their audience, to let off steam, to prevent the boiler from blowing up. We usually look for stimulation in the wrong sources: drugs, alcohol, parties, sex & violence on the TV or in the papers—thrills of quick impact which wear off quickly. Where are the artists eulogizing the grandeur & harmonies of nature, its checks & balances which give meaning to our lives?
ART AND THE QUAKERS; ART WITH A MESSAGE—2 centuries ago our lone Quaker artist, Edward Hicks, painted his vision of the Peaceable Kingdom over and over again, against the advice of his own Meeting; he found no followers in his time. Rufus Jones said: “We look back with mild pity on the generations of Haverford students who were deprived of the joy of music and art … The strong anti-aesthetic bias in the minds of the Quaker founders was an unmitigated disaster.” Religious leaders of all denominations are beginning to rise out of their lethargy and make use of art’s spiritual power.
Art has survived the cavemen, the Pharaohs, the princes and the popes; it will survive the computer—if we care enough. Sensitive to the illnesses of his time and giving expressions to his concern in any medium, he is bound to run up against the guardians of the status quo. Your conscience and the strength of your convictions must back you up. I feel myself in the spirit of George Fox, John Woolman, and others. Neither jail nor mistreatment would hold them back from their missions, living testimony that love could overcome hatred.
I feel rewarded that my work has been used by so many denominations and groups devoted to peace in our time, and that it finds the intended target, the human heart. For more than half a century I have sent a print to my friends everywhere each year, usually a commentary on the state of the world—and incidentally on my own condition. We are all blessed with different gifts, witnesses ready to be counted. The debt we owe great art, accumulated over the centuries is immeasurable. Let’s try to pay it off by listening to its immortal voice.
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
353. Letting That Go, Keeping This: The Spiritual Pilgrimage of Fritz Eichenberg (by Philip Harnden; 2001)
About: the Author [and Pamphlet; Fritz Eichenberg]—Philip Harnden serves on the program committee of the Upper New York Office of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). This pamphlet's [roots are found in a 1985 article in The Other Side magazine], out of which grew a lecture given at a Fritz Eichenberg retrospective exhibit at Guilford College. Both were further expanded and updated for this pamphlet.
Fritz Eichenberg (1901-1990) was born in Cologne, emigrated to the US in 1933 and became known as an artist, educator, printmaker and illustrator for children's and classic books. His prints are in major collections here and abroad. He became a Quaker in 1940, wrote and illustrated 2 Pendle Hill Pamphlets 68. Art and Faith (1952) 257. Artist on the Witness Stand (1984); he also designed Pendle Hill's Logo.
So the wise soul/ watches with the inner/ not the outward eye,/ letting that go/ keeping this. Lao Tzu
1st Illustration: Riddle of the Peaceable Kingdom, 1977—This black & white illustration uses traditional characters of Isaiah 11, & those used by Edward Hicks in the several "Peaceable Kingdom" versions he painted, to form the side view of a man's face. The leopard lies stretched out at the bottom, with a lion sitting regally on top, his mane forming the man's beard, & his mouth serving as the man's mouth. On the lion's head, a calf is wedged between lion & wolf's tail; the calf's rear forms the man's hooked nose, & the wolf's tail forms an eyebrow. The wolf is wedged in a flat, backwards "S"-shape through the "face's" center. A bear forms the rear, upper part of the head; a little girl huddled within its paws. The top front of the head is an oxen, with a leafy vine forming hair.
[Introduction]—The Depression was raging when young & green Fritz Eichenberg emigrated from Germany to the US in 1933. He only had an art school education & a longing to be an artist. A NYC fortune-teller "saw" him "working with wood," & thought he "must be ... a violinist." By 1985, Eichenberg's wood engravings & lithographs had received international acclaim. Critics admired his sense of drama, & ordinary people loved his [honest & easily understood] portrayal of hopes & troubles. His work was found in museums & art galleries, tenements & soup kitchens. Eichenberg wrote: "I seemed to have been destined to work with, on & around wood all my life." Place names involving "wood" & "forest" filled his life; his name meant "oak mountain."
Of his spiritual journey, Eichenberg told, "We were more German than Jewish. We didn't practice anything, no religion in my home. Spiritual guidance I did not have. I've lived my life more or less on guidance from some unknown power ..."; he spoke of a "guardian angel. What forms might a guardian angel take?
2nd Illustration: Pax Bestiarium [Peace Bestiary], 1965—A black & white, tightly packed animal-collection. Clockwise from upper right corner: tree with small dove in branches & snake just below the dove. Lion's head. orangutan (lower right corner); lamb & rabbit on bottom. Wolf (lower left corner); moose; Native American depiction of bird spirit (upper left corner). Vertically through center & length of the picture is elephant's head.
The Animals—[Eichenberg]: I've always loved animals. As a child growing up in Germany my dream was to have a dog ... [and] a mouse. Out of the question ... I spent endless time at the zoo with my sketchbook. The animals were my intimate friends. I knew them and they knew me ... [I was] an artist who spent ... [a lot] of time sketching and studying animals, finding comfort in their company, and learning from them."
His school's teachers were stern and often use whipping for even tiny infractions; his only enjoyment was the art class. The hours he spent with animals were an important influence and teacher on his spiritual journey. The Peaceable Kingdom was an important image, [a symbol of the restoration] to a beloved community. We also find Noah and St. Francis among his depiction of animals.
The Chinese Sage—[Eichenberg]: "My mother was too busy. I went either to the zoo or the bookstore. I found in Cologne a bookstore with an edition of Lao Tzu's Sayings, 81 sayings by a Chinese sage who lived 600 years before Christ. I bought this book and fell in love with it; I always carry it when I travel."
3rd Illustration: Lao Tzu, 1966—Black & white illustration of an elderly Chinese man, bald on top & long hair on the side of his head, long beard, sitting side-saddle with an open scroll on his lap, on an oxen plodding up a mountain trail, with a rugged mountain in the background.
The Tao Te Ching is Taoism's spiritual classic, probably written 2500 years ago, possibly by Lao Tzu. It speaks to people everywhere as if it were written yesterday. One of the fundamental metaphors of Taoism is "Uncarved Block," a Taoist symbol of original state of humanity before greed took hold; simplicity was also a Taoist symbol. Eichenberg's reaction to Lao Tzu was, "The artist who wants to serve God will have to embrace poverty ... Those are the happy ones, happy as only those can be who live an integrated life, worshiping as they work [& create] ... without counting pennies of their reward ... We were all born artists [&] genuises ... We were born free in mind & spirit. [we become enslaved] to] conformity & practicality [&] the grinding process of drab mechanical labor." Eichenberg watches with the inner eye, & has "instinct for hidden life in the world around us." [Woodcarving is a process of letting that go,/ keeping this]. Where is the art in Fritz Eichenberg's work? Is it in what is there—or in what isn't there; in what's kept or what's let go; inked or the uninked?
[Lao Tzu]: [One should live simply] contented with one's food, pleased with one's clothing, satisfied with one's home, taking pleasures in one's rustic tasks.
... what works reliably/ is to know the raw silk,/ hold the uncut wood./ Need little/ want less./ Forget the rules./ Be untroubled.
The 5 colors/ blind our eyes./ The 5 notes/ deafen our ears./ The 5 flavors dull our taste.// Racing, chasing, hunting,/ drives people crazy./ Trying to get rich/ ties peoples in knots.// So the wise soul/ watches with the inner/ not the outward eye,/ letting that go,/ keeping this.////
30 spokes/ meet in the hub./ Where the wheel isn't/ is where it's useful.// Hollowed out,/ clay makes a pot./ Where the pot's not/ is where it's useful.// Cut doors and windows/ to make a room./ Where the room isn't,/ there's room for you.// So the profit in what is/ is in the use of what isn't.///
4th Illustration: The Grand Inquisitor, 1949—Black and white illustration of looking out the doorway of a friar's study. A friar stands near the doorway, head in hands. A Jesus-like figure climbs up the worn, stone steps. Between friar and figure looms a half-face the length of the 2 people portrayed. It is the sorrowful, care-worn, thorn-crowned face of Jesus, a black hole representing his eye.
The Russian Novelists—I believe he found his next spiritual guide among Russian novelists, especially Fyodor Dostoyevski, who had been his spiritual companion for years. Eichenberg illustrated numerous Dostoyevski classics. Eichenberg told me, "I have no Russian roots [or language skills] of any kind. I understand the Russians and they understand me. Eichenberg once said that he was attracted to the idea of redemption through suffering, as portrayed in Russian novels. [Pamphlet author offers quote from Dostoyevski's character Father Zossima (The Brothers Karamazov)]: "Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand of it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, everything ... Once you [love and] perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day ..."
The Russian Novelists—I believe he found his next spiritual guide among Russian novelists, especially Fyodor Dostoyevski, who had been his spiritual companion for years. Eichenberg illustrated numerous Dostoyevski classics. Eichenberg told me, "I have no Russian roots [or language skills] of any kind. I understand the Russians and they understand me. Eichenberg once said that he was attracted to the idea of redemption through suffering, as portrayed in Russian novels. [Pamphlet author offers quote from Dostoyevski's character Father Zossima (The Brothers Karamazov)]: "Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand of it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, everything ... Once you [love and] perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day ..."
"God has given animals the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Do not trouble their joy, don't harass them, don't deprive them of their happiness, don't work against God's intent."
The Brothers Karamazov is a novel of great darkness & great light. The very name Karamazov [means "black smear."]; many of the scenes take place at night. This novel is the most symmetrical of Dostoyevski's novels, where the many apparent opposites intermingle [e.g. candlelight in the night]. Dostoyevski [illuminates] a grand struggle to embrace all, the darkness & the light, to acknowledge dark within the light—and love it all.
Eichenberg worked mostly with white and black, and wrestled in his art and his soul with what is there and what isn't there, what is seen & what is hidden, what is lost and what remains. He writes: "Wood engraving and lithograph ... let you create light out of the dark as you face the black woodblock or the darkened surface of the lithographic stone. You spread light by the first touch of the graver or etching needing. You create a source of light which spreads over the "stage," picks out ... actors and sets the scene ..." [His work encapsulates the art, sorrow, loneliness, hunger, loss, dread, and friendship, of his whole life]. This is the work of an artist unafraid to embrace the shadows, [to bring them together] in the black and white Taoist yin-yang circle. Fritz Eichenberg takes nurture [and spiritual guidance] from Dostoyevski's great struggle with light and darkness.
5th Illustration: The Dove and the Hawk, 1980—Black and white illustration of a dark hawk and a smaller white dove in a dive, their heads downward. They both appear angry and in a struggle with each other.
The Quakers—Perhaps it was inevitable that a man drawn to the light metaphor would make his way to Quakerism. But Eichenberg's journey to Quakerism began, not with light, but with darkness. He, his wife and infant daughter fled Germany. In 1937 his wife developed a tumor that required surgery, and she died on the operating table. He went into seclusion in the basement of a friends home and stayed there for months.
A young teacher interested in Zen Buddhism came to visit & began reading to Eichenberg, who said, "I was lying in a horizontal position, listening ... [as he] read to me from a Zen Buddhism book"; it was Eichenberg's "apprenticeship with silence." He emerged from the basement, & began exploring Zen, but found it too foreign. He said, "I got to Quakerism through Buddhism [& its concept of] emptying your mind & letting the Great Tao stream's spirit into you & fill you." The book read to him during his illness mentioned Quakers & silent worship.
Eichenberg traveled to Philadelphia and queried a Swarthmore professor with hard questions about Quakers. Eichenberg told me, "When he was finished, the professor said, 'Not that I think Quakers are so great. Show me a better group and I'd join tomorrow.' I felt sure that if they allowed skepticism, then this was for me too." He joined Quakers in 1940, and remained an active Quaker for 50 years until his death in 1990. He referred to himself as a "convinced Friend and a convinced artist." Of his skepticism he comments: "I have never been without my criticisms of Quakerism. I find Quakers in general too polite, too genteel. [Most] would rather have the AFSC respond to crisis than respond themselves, and they have little understanding or appreciation of art ... [still], it was what fit me best. A Quaker introduced Fritz Eichenberg to another of his spiritual guides.
6th Illustration: Christ of the Homeless, 1982—Black and white illustration of a cross from the cross-bar down, with the cross-bar in the form of an arrow pointing left. Below the cross is huddled a care-worn Jesus, with his arms around a homeless couple.
The Catholic Workers—Dorothy Day, a devout Catholic, stalwart pacifist, holy troublemaker, and the co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, was invited to Pendle Hill for a conference on religion & publishing. She and other Catholic Workers lived among America's urban poor. She published Catholic Worker, the news-paper; she comforted the afflicted, and afflicted the comfortable. Day and Eichenberg were intentionally seated next to each other. Day asked Eichenberg to work for her for nothing; they become very close friends. Over the years, other prints have appeared showing Christ among the disenfranchised. I asked Eichenberg why Christ incarnated was a theme for him. He replied, "What I have been trying to show ... is that Christ is with us as a living force ... [This should] prohibit killing, prohibit war and destruction, [and] establish the sacredness, the sanctity of human life." Day often found his Christ incarnations clipped from her newspaper and pasted to the walls of the poor homes she visited. He was equally pleased when the AFSC used his Bible prints depicting scenes from the Hebrew Scriptures, to raise money for rebuilding a Vietnamese hospital. Artists must be on the witness stand, [and] lend their talent to the causes they hold dear. When Dorothy Day die in1980, Eichenberg lost a friend, a colleague, and spiritual soul-mate; her laughter was one of the great rewards of his life.
7th Illustration: The Long Loneliness, 1980—Black and white illustration of a pregnant woman reclining, eyes closed in apparently troubled sleep. Hovering in the air, and "crouching" above her is a dark angel. In the upper right corner is a "dark dove," surrounded in white, with 5 white rays radiating from the "dove" to the pregnant woman's belly. In the background at the end of a winding road, on 3 hills, are 3 crosses.
Conclusion—From the 5 preceding groups—& others—that were Eichenberg's spiritual directors, he drew inspiration, & nourishment. They were present in his artwork, which "speaks to our condition." The most interesting [engraving, etched by the life Fritz Eichenberg led], was his face. In his 80's, his face was smooth, like polished end-grain boxwood, framed in wispy, white hair. From his eyes' corners radiated tiny lines, the kind he might have etched with a fine-pointed tool. When he smiled, lines burst forth, evidence of a lifetime engraved by laughter & warmth, sorrow & loss, darkness & light. The "oak mountain" is gone, traveling further along on his pilgrimage some where else. I invite you to enjoy them, to wrestle with, and engrave them on your own hearts.
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
162. Black City Stage (by Jack Shepherd; 1968)
About the Author—Jack Shepherd (1920-2010 ) worked for most of his life in the theater, both for the Religious Society of Friends and the larger world. He joined the Theatre Royal in Portsmouth, England, when he was nine years old, an age at which most children are being encouraged to keep quiet rather than speak. This was in 1929. He came to Pendle Hill in 1966, & continued to work and study at Pendle Hill for 8 years, He retired to Kendal in 1992 and died there in 2010. This pamphlet explores a Philadelphia spontaneous black theater.
Joy comes when you share the curtain-call with your new family, and you are so far in, they do not have to be polite to you any more. Jack Shepherd
PROLOGUE—The trade where the dyer’s hands received a shading toward black was entertainment. Involvement in race relations was unplanned, incidental & [surprising]; the telling carries some good entertainment. You may be anxious to know real black people; you may have gone to black-white seminars, & come away more discouraged. [None of these were my concern] when I arrived in Philadelphia in September 1965.
I told the custom’s official, “I’ve come to visit my wife’s family, & teach for a term at a college.” In January 1966 we began an exploration into random grouping of imagination expressed in spontaneous drama. In the autumn American Friends Service Committee asked me to conduct a drama workshop for high school students; they happened to be black. My Anglo-Saxon conditioned ideas didn’t speak to their world at all. When their ideas & interests began to fill the action, we began to move. Once the purely human element of a story or situation broke through they could do revealing things with it.
Shakespeare’s Richard III story produced about a frustrated young man hacking his way to control of big business, [exploiting weakness & being brought down by his own]. In order to [get something other than polite pedestrian responses, I had to] touch a nerve, [which I did through] trial & error. We were on television, & the group rose splendidly to the occasion. At the project's end in early summer 1967, I felt bereft.
The Brothers Karamazov is a novel of great darkness & great light. The very name Karamazov [means "black smear."]; many of the scenes take place at night. This novel is the most symmetrical of Dostoyevski's novels, where the many apparent opposites intermingle [e.g. candlelight in the night]. Dostoyevski [illuminates] a grand struggle to embrace all, the darkness & the light, to acknowledge dark within the light—and love it all.
Eichenberg worked mostly with white and black, and wrestled in his art and his soul with what is there and what isn't there, what is seen & what is hidden, what is lost and what remains. He writes: "Wood engraving and lithograph ... let you create light out of the dark as you face the black woodblock or the darkened surface of the lithographic stone. You spread light by the first touch of the graver or etching needing. You create a source of light which spreads over the "stage," picks out ... actors and sets the scene ..." [His work encapsulates the art, sorrow, loneliness, hunger, loss, dread, and friendship, of his whole life]. This is the work of an artist unafraid to embrace the shadows, [to bring them together] in the black and white Taoist yin-yang circle. Fritz Eichenberg takes nurture [and spiritual guidance] from Dostoyevski's great struggle with light and darkness.
5th Illustration: The Dove and the Hawk, 1980—Black and white illustration of a dark hawk and a smaller white dove in a dive, their heads downward. They both appear angry and in a struggle with each other.
The Quakers—Perhaps it was inevitable that a man drawn to the light metaphor would make his way to Quakerism. But Eichenberg's journey to Quakerism began, not with light, but with darkness. He, his wife and infant daughter fled Germany. In 1937 his wife developed a tumor that required surgery, and she died on the operating table. He went into seclusion in the basement of a friends home and stayed there for months.
A young teacher interested in Zen Buddhism came to visit & began reading to Eichenberg, who said, "I was lying in a horizontal position, listening ... [as he] read to me from a Zen Buddhism book"; it was Eichenberg's "apprenticeship with silence." He emerged from the basement, & began exploring Zen, but found it too foreign. He said, "I got to Quakerism through Buddhism [& its concept of] emptying your mind & letting the Great Tao stream's spirit into you & fill you." The book read to him during his illness mentioned Quakers & silent worship.
Eichenberg traveled to Philadelphia and queried a Swarthmore professor with hard questions about Quakers. Eichenberg told me, "When he was finished, the professor said, 'Not that I think Quakers are so great. Show me a better group and I'd join tomorrow.' I felt sure that if they allowed skepticism, then this was for me too." He joined Quakers in 1940, and remained an active Quaker for 50 years until his death in 1990. He referred to himself as a "convinced Friend and a convinced artist." Of his skepticism he comments: "I have never been without my criticisms of Quakerism. I find Quakers in general too polite, too genteel. [Most] would rather have the AFSC respond to crisis than respond themselves, and they have little understanding or appreciation of art ... [still], it was what fit me best. A Quaker introduced Fritz Eichenberg to another of his spiritual guides.
6th Illustration: Christ of the Homeless, 1982—Black and white illustration of a cross from the cross-bar down, with the cross-bar in the form of an arrow pointing left. Below the cross is huddled a care-worn Jesus, with his arms around a homeless couple.
The Catholic Workers—Dorothy Day, a devout Catholic, stalwart pacifist, holy troublemaker, and the co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, was invited to Pendle Hill for a conference on religion & publishing. She and other Catholic Workers lived among America's urban poor. She published Catholic Worker, the news-paper; she comforted the afflicted, and afflicted the comfortable. Day and Eichenberg were intentionally seated next to each other. Day asked Eichenberg to work for her for nothing; they become very close friends. Over the years, other prints have appeared showing Christ among the disenfranchised. I asked Eichenberg why Christ incarnated was a theme for him. He replied, "What I have been trying to show ... is that Christ is with us as a living force ... [This should] prohibit killing, prohibit war and destruction, [and] establish the sacredness, the sanctity of human life." Day often found his Christ incarnations clipped from her newspaper and pasted to the walls of the poor homes she visited. He was equally pleased when the AFSC used his Bible prints depicting scenes from the Hebrew Scriptures, to raise money for rebuilding a Vietnamese hospital. Artists must be on the witness stand, [and] lend their talent to the causes they hold dear. When Dorothy Day die in1980, Eichenberg lost a friend, a colleague, and spiritual soul-mate; her laughter was one of the great rewards of his life.
7th Illustration: The Long Loneliness, 1980—Black and white illustration of a pregnant woman reclining, eyes closed in apparently troubled sleep. Hovering in the air, and "crouching" above her is a dark angel. In the upper right corner is a "dark dove," surrounded in white, with 5 white rays radiating from the "dove" to the pregnant woman's belly. In the background at the end of a winding road, on 3 hills, are 3 crosses.
Conclusion—From the 5 preceding groups—& others—that were Eichenberg's spiritual directors, he drew inspiration, & nourishment. They were present in his artwork, which "speaks to our condition." The most interesting [engraving, etched by the life Fritz Eichenberg led], was his face. In his 80's, his face was smooth, like polished end-grain boxwood, framed in wispy, white hair. From his eyes' corners radiated tiny lines, the kind he might have etched with a fine-pointed tool. When he smiled, lines burst forth, evidence of a lifetime engraved by laughter & warmth, sorrow & loss, darkness & light. The "oak mountain" is gone, traveling further along on his pilgrimage some where else. I invite you to enjoy them, to wrestle with, and engrave them on your own hearts.
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
162. Black City Stage (by Jack Shepherd; 1968)
About the Author—Jack Shepherd (1920-2010 ) worked for most of his life in the theater, both for the Religious Society of Friends and the larger world. He joined the Theatre Royal in Portsmouth, England, when he was nine years old, an age at which most children are being encouraged to keep quiet rather than speak. This was in 1929. He came to Pendle Hill in 1966, & continued to work and study at Pendle Hill for 8 years, He retired to Kendal in 1992 and died there in 2010. This pamphlet explores a Philadelphia spontaneous black theater.
Joy comes when you share the curtain-call with your new family, and you are so far in, they do not have to be polite to you any more. Jack Shepherd
PROLOGUE—The trade where the dyer’s hands received a shading toward black was entertainment. Involvement in race relations was unplanned, incidental & [surprising]; the telling carries some good entertainment. You may be anxious to know real black people; you may have gone to black-white seminars, & come away more discouraged. [None of these were my concern] when I arrived in Philadelphia in September 1965.
I told the custom’s official, “I’ve come to visit my wife’s family, & teach for a term at a college.” In January 1966 we began an exploration into random grouping of imagination expressed in spontaneous drama. In the autumn American Friends Service Committee asked me to conduct a drama workshop for high school students; they happened to be black. My Anglo-Saxon conditioned ideas didn’t speak to their world at all. When their ideas & interests began to fill the action, we began to move. Once the purely human element of a story or situation broke through they could do revealing things with it.
Shakespeare’s Richard III story produced about a frustrated young man hacking his way to control of big business, [exploiting weakness & being brought down by his own]. In order to [get something other than polite pedestrian responses, I had to] touch a nerve, [which I did through] trial & error. We were on television, & the group rose splendidly to the occasion. At the project's end in early summer 1967, I felt bereft.
The students were not conscious rebels; their attitude toward power structures was not so much hostile as excluding. They would be polite and quiet, and not in touch. In September I heard about Wharton Center, called and was asked to stop by. I found myself in [North Central Philadelphia, in a ghetto] by a settlement house. [The program director hired me after 20 minutes. In the back was a crumbling building with a small stage which had once been a silent-movie theater. [I felt I had found something really special].
THE COMPANY—At times the chaos reached riot proportions, but my black colleagues seemed unworried, so I just got on with it. 20 picturesque lively, noisy young black Americans faced a strange Englishman with graying beard & shaggy head, propped up with a cane. It didn’t occur to them to identify me with the white power structure. I had come packed with ideas & knew at once I would have to ditch them all.
I said: “You are in London airport in 1977,” and started to interview them, beginning with Tony. They all rose to the bait willingly and with widely various sharply-etched characterizations. From faceless strangers they shaped into personalities, full of unique potential. As they left 2 hours later, one expressed fear that I might try to subdue a heart-beat in which they felt confident to an alien elegance belonging to white society. I learned later that if that 1st taste had not been intriguing, they wouldn’t have worried; they would just disappear.
It worried me that the company never seemed to settle down to listen quietly. Few had ever been spoken to quietly, at length, & with a new idea in all their normal social or family exchanges. Ways of getting across what I wanted them to know had to be instant, ad hoc, & instinctive. I happened to mention the 400-year-old morality play Everyman. Surprisingly, it caught their interest. They argued noisily about the notion of Death arresting somebody & that person’s struggles to make the best of it; Time to Go Joe was in the stocks. I hovered like a midwife [& referee]. Scene by scene they built up the play, in their own terms & language; there was no script.
I had to discard any dependence on patterns of behavior taken for granted in similar but Anglo-Saxon groups (e.g. attendance at rehearsal according to plan). If I tried to explain the inconvenience, quite honestly they would not understand what I was trying to say. On arrival I would have to take who ever was at hand, and play things by ear. The assembled company would sometimes leave suddenly, cheerfully and without explanation.
Gate-crashing began and added to the confusion. I ranted and roared, and vowed I would walk out and never return. I was on my way to the door, when suddenly the cast came running after me and held my arms. We went back to work. I had to risk trusting their sense of overall commitment [and let go of individual rehearsals]. Never once was it possible to hold a full rehearsal with everybody present and the play in proper order. Just before curtain rise I was in a greater state of panic than at any time of my professional life, with a front row of formidable young men loudly announcing their intention of barracking [i.e. heckling].
TIME TO GO, JOE—All these characters are young black Americans. They are on their way to a party, but they have forgotten the drinks. [Joe rushes off to get drinks & is hit by a car & taken to the hospital]. What goes on now is inside Joe’s mind. Joe is appalled to find out he must be on the 11:59 tonight. The 2 undertakers, Mr. Graves & Mr. Tombs are lost & following Harry by mistake; Harry gives them the slip. Joe, meanwhile, comes to Barney’s Bar. Lola, the alcoholic, staggers in. If Joe once helped Lola, maybe she would go with?
On the coast-to-coast show, MAN OFF THE STREET, random people are taken in, and their problems are solved. A singing group comes on 1st and Mr. Graves adds himself to the group. When Joe tells them his problem, the studio clears of people. Outside, Joe finds Doris of Traveller’s Aid. They hurry to the station. Joe’s friends assemble to see him off. Suddenly barkeep Barney hurries across the concourse with Lola, who is bedraggled, unsteady, but relatively sober; she will go with Joe. Professor Doom roars: “Change of plan! Lola, Judge Midnight says all this reminds him of your case. You need more help and he reckons Joe’s the only one who can try.” [Lola and Joe’s friends are overjoyed]; the friends leap and dance all over the station.
For the record, Time to Go, Joe was created in a few weeks by the young black Americans and performed in December 1967. It was the 1st and probably the last performance in the world. The formidable young men laughed and applauded in the right places. Our audience loved it; so did the company. The happiest guy around was me: middle-aged, Caucasian, English, and exhausted.
INTERVAL/STREET SCENE—Center Stage, as our venture was now called, was launched and viable; & my hands were several shades darker. The agency director told me that as the play proceeded, a vision grew in his mind of a neighborhood theatre, indigenous, original, & exciting. We discussed it with enthusiasm. I knew that its fulfillment would need a young, talented, dedicated black person; eventually I would have to bow out. The program director said: “Every February we have a Black-Heritage Festival. There will be 2 directors, Nickie and you. [I wondered] whether any Englishman had ever before been asked to be co-director of a Black-Heritage Festival. Nickie was from Louisiana, in her early 20’s, a Howard graduate and a social worker.
The Center Stage company chose the theme of gang warfare in the streets for their next original play. The idea did not enchant me at first, but I realized that more could be done with their instincts than with my sophistication. I suggested a central event, such as the killing of a character, about which the story would grow. The victim was [chosen by chance. The killer was not known or the ending written until late in the story].
Street Scene by Night became a kind of serial, twice-weekly, running through January and February. The demands of the story began to bring home to its creators the bones and sinews of authentic tragedy. [The characters are]: Mr. Pocket, the seedy lawyer, stops for a drink and unwittingly starts a train of events that [causes a lot of trouble for a lot of people]. Machine runs the bar and a gang moving into the protection racket and challenging another gang run by Duchess. Toni is a nice girl who falls for the crook Marlo.
Machine is attacked in the street by rival gang & found dead. Nobody is sure if he or she is free of guilt. The play involves the interesting device of playing the crucial attack scene over several times [with different details depending on] whoever is explaining what happened. There is unbearable sadness in knowing, even while applauding Toni’s courage [in standing up to the police], that she is doomed to an awful suffering—because she fell in love with someone whom the system has doomed. Out of a climate of greed, mistrust, & fear, a storm has broken which will grow in fury until innocent are brought down with the guilty. The theme, development and values are all distinctly human, and not particularly black. The fire catches when the humanity flashes through.
FAMILY TREE—[A black person might ask]: “Who am I? Am I American, African, or emotionally stateless? Authentic drama doesn’t attempt to draw conclusions or make partisan points, but shares experience & leaves all to their own conclusions. It occurred to us both that the action of the drama should be inside a family. I wanted to give the players the evolution of their own thoughts. I tried the group in sundry spontaneous arguments, but they didn’t respond as I anticipated, but with catch-phrase attitudes [meant only] to please me.
[I felt forced to do a script] What should the central crisis be? [I thought about & dismissed a pending inter-racial marriage]. Nickie & I then thought of a young man, troubled by his uncertain identity, who plans to live & work in Africa to find his roots. Still I hesitated to writing a script. 1 day Nickie handed me her script. Chastened, but pleased, I read words I would have groped after hopelessly. I gave it the title: Family Tree.
She had instinctively, & with sound dramatic sense, drawn up differences of opinion inside the “Smith” family. I questioned the roles she gave each family member. But I liked the black American vernacular, & the authentic family warmth. I found that most of my players weren’t comfortable with scripts. They quickly grasped the significance of the words & attitudes offered them. The written words, rightly chosen, sparked the humanity.
We were still hampered by chaos. But Nickie would get them together on the days I was not there, [be the firm mother], and crack the whip. Everything was moving together beautifully, and I began to understand that I was having very little to do with it. I drifted around backstage on opening night. The average theater critic would have been dazed. Our audience loved it and asked about repeat performances.
The “Who am I?” theme was stated against recorded voices singing of Angry People. The 1st slave ship came in 1619; Sonny Smith listened to his great-grandfather talking wistfully of their roots in Africa in 1968. [Sonny feels a guest who owns nothing, & despises those held up as blacks to be proud of. His great-grandfather, uncle, and father feel pride in black accomplishments and their own. Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King speeches are used. Sonny asks questions about his identity and] the narrator turns the questions to the audience. Who can ever define precisely an audience reaction? Each person carries something away.
Whatever it did for the house & players, Family Tree rewarded me with much learning & much self-chastening. I thought my problem would be how to share my experience. My [actual] problem was to find graceful ways of accepting enlightenment. The process was less painful because we shared in a creative work, and be-cause of the sweet and full humanity of my black co-workers. In this setting, the difference their full and my partial humanity was more clearly defined. I could be part of this family through a sort of hand-hold adoption.
[I was devastated by Martin Luther King’s death] Nickie called me and said: “You know this had to happen. A man who chooses to live like Christ—well …” True. The world cannot bear the Word made flesh.
At staff meeting, we talked of general things, and a kind of healing came over me. Without specific words, to be simply in their presence and questionless acceptance was healing. A few nights later, policemen armed for battle waited at a quiet intersection. Nickie said: “I don’t think I’d ever riot, but when I see that—I’d cheerfully pass the bricks.” I knew what she meant. We are expert at adding insult to injury and not knowing it.
I was fortunate in finding healing at the best possible source—the human compassion of those injured and bereft. Outside observers would find it hard to equate the future of humanity with the future of Center Stage; but perhaps my tendency to do this is now partly understandable. And it is not news to be told that humanity is the healing factor in racial difficulty, that both races must transcend their racialness to a human unity. Rebirth into the other race—especially if that race is already richly human—can open the way. Joy comes when you share the curtain-call with your new family, and you are so far in, they do not have to be polite to you any more.
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
180. Apocalypso: revelations in theater (by Jack Shepherd; 1971)
About the Author—Jack Shepherd joined the Theater Royal in Portsmouth, England at 9 years old; [he watched popular theater vanish from the inside]. He has learned how to cope with the hazards of spontaneous drama. He served in the navy in WWII, and joined the Religious Society of Friends in 1954. In Hong Kong in 1957, he produced the 1st television play in Chinese. He came to Pendle Hill in 1966 and [sojourned until 1971].
I-II—Note the implications of the [made-up] word apocalypso: [musical] entertainment & story; improvisation; hints of revelation & discovery. The final production of Center Stage at the Wharton Center in Philadelphia was Reasons for a Rainbow, a live reconstruction of a silent-movie. Action, rather than words had always been the dominant factor in Center Stage [productions]. I filled in for someone at the last moment, enjoyed [acting like a] Keystone Cop, & received acclaim afterwards in the streets. At Pendle Hill I first wrote Black City Stage. We experimented with improvisations, but mostly had not found a way of bringing [much] spontaneity to an audience. [We were almost always comic]. How could we be [entertaining], spontaneous, and serious?
The next year became mostly Greek. We experimented with The Trojan Women. We worked out the shape and sequence of events, but did not rehearse actual scenes. We turned Euripedes’ 2 Gods into a top CIA & Kremlin agent, [who discussed] the disposal of Hecuba, Andromache, Cassandra, & Helen. They tried to explain to the wretched women that their fates of slavery and worse implied nothing personal; merely the logic of war. The experience was powerful, but could never be repeated, because much of its power came from spontaneity.
After the comic The Frogs by Aristophanes, we were ready for Pavene for a Dead Princess, following the theme of Oresteiad. Agamemnon sacrifices Iphigenia, Clytemnestra murders Agamemnon, Orestes murders Clytemnestra. Helen appears. [Trapped in this cycle], they appeal to the audience for help. The scripted material played for about half an hour, and the audience participation for about 10 minutes. The players needed to be able to grow together in the performance, anticipating thoughts and feelings while still remaining in character.
The Apocalypso Repertory was born in April 1970. The newness [of this idea] lies latent in each performance. The players bring their own humanity, talent, [and feelings]. Each of the audience members brings their own humanity and current mood. Between the alchemic compounds [of actors and audience], communion is generated which is more than the sum of its parts; no performance is the same as the next. We reckon ourselves well applauded when people report a sleepless night after the show.
III—Suddenly ideas and scripts began to pour forth; the problem was to find occasions to bring them to life. In the summer of 1970 we did The Gods Out at Elbow, where the gods Hera, Vulcan, and Persephone discuss what gods should do when human needs change and humans stop paying their dues. Vulcan comes up with the idea of doing theater. Hera wants to know, “What was our [godly] function?” Persephone answered, “Helping people understand themselves.” The audience was invited to help in shaping the theater. The 2nd play the same night, Help and Holy Physic, was about the daughter of Romeo and Juliet, who objects to the [safe choices her parents made] and the “comfortable and cautious dreams they settled for.” [She wants her parents’ original dream back]. The audience provides her with answers; this play was shared with all kinds of audiences.
We could not lumber ourselves with scenery, furniture, or props which could not easily be carried or found on the spot. We learned to achieve a timelessness in dress and properties. [I do not choose to write a play on a certain, chosen topic at a certain time]. Plays are born when they are ready. [The seed for the above play was planted one Monday at lunchtime; by Wednesday the script was finished]. The played touched on the problem of the generation gap, and how a vision can decline into a dream.
IV-V—One Sunday I was thinking of 2 young women [& put them together as] Mary & Martha; & I felt like a tired Lazarus. By Tuesday morning Fire and Fleet and Candlelight was written. [The story takes place] 10 years after Lazarus’ resurrection. Mary is off on her own; Martha is managing Lazarus on lecture tours, but demand has fallen off. [Lazarus is afraid death must be due again]. All 3 of them are tired, discouraged, on the edge of despair and do not want to admit it. They have to appeal for help, for some kind of wisdom.
We [did the play] to a conference of about 200 non-violent-revolution activists, [who happened to feel the same way as the characters], so our play touched a nerve. When we appealed to them for help they could only share their own suffering with us. None of us wanted to talk to anybody, only to live silent for while with that agonizing and healing communion. [If that play was designed to be performed for that group], it was beyond our awareness [and planning]. We gave it 3 performances, each different from the other because the audiences were different. The experience confirmed for me that despair must be engaged not by resisting it but by going right through it to the point of accepting bankruptcy; then one is on its far side, and closer to the truth than before. [We also learned that] to bother about production pedantries is a waste of time as long as the story, idea, and passion are authentic. Even in theater you can’t keep smiles out of tragedy, nor sadness out of comedy.
Shadow Play wrote itself in a single sitting overnight after [spending] time with someone struggling with unhappiness & hurt. [In it] a poll-taker wanders around trying to work up courage to ask strangers dumb questions, while a man lurks about furtively. The man is shadowing her & neither of them knows why. [It was a comedy the first 3 times. In the 4th it turned into] a close & painful session of soul-searching about [how we] prey on others. How could the comic idea, same story, same sequence of words, suddenly become serious?
The idea for Something Rich and Strange began as an excuse to enjoy some of Shakespeare’s sonnets, especially the Dark Lady sonnets. Fred the window-washer starts writing poetry, but it’s poetry Shakespeare has already written. The play transmuted into a parable. The lesson was to never have reality or illusion without the other. Just live with the ongoing dance.
The Sleep of Wild Horses began as an intentional experiment in the positive use of silence and darkness. A woman journalist, burdened by crazy politics and insane violence, is anxious to start writing a book called “The World’s End.” The inn she is staying at has a power breakdown, and there is the unaccountable sound of galloping horses. In the play there are only 3 people, 3 candles, and a Bible. It becomes evident that the 4 Horses of the Apocalypse have returned to the inn’s stable, and the time is at hand for opening the 7th seal (Rev. 8:1); [silence descends]. The audience is asked the question “How is the silence to be used?” The other woman says “What is written is written” and disappears into the darkness. The mute stableman retreats into the dark. The journalist, by the light of her solitary candle, walks off to begin her book.
VI—[Even though I said that plays often write themselves, and only when they are ready] I thought about [suggested topics] of welfare-rights, poverty, and the strange American notion that poverty is a crime calling for the punishment of the poor and it began to look like a play, after all. Suppose a rich man invites wealthy friends to dinner to discuss relieving the poor of hardship. His wealthy friends don’t come and he invites the poor. The friends try to suppress his efforts and prevent a poor man from coming. Title? Be My Guest.
The 1st performance of Be my Guest took place at Philadelphia’s Arch Street Meeting House in January 1971 and was wholly improvised. The action was a series of attempts by the guest, aided and abetted by the kitchen-help, to get through the doorway into the feast to which she had been invited. The attempts were countered by technicalities produced by the doorman to keep her out. We intended the audience to argue with the doorman, but they took direct action instead, out of frustration with the situation. There were ingenious touches on the part of the audience. There were plenty of laughs in Be My Guest, yet what theme could be more serious.
[In the 1st year there were more than 30 scripts available; Devices and Desires was only one of them. We were learning that scripts open to audience involvement can contain unexpected dynamite; the explosion could be laughable, grave, or not come at all. [After discussion of it], we could not help wondering what the 7 Deadly Sins thought of the New Morality. [We choose Lechery, Envy, and Sloth]. [They decided that New Morality was the creation of theologians]. Their slogan to counter New Morality was “Absolution is made meaningful by Sin.” After discussion with and suggestions from the audience, the Sins decide to change their names. Envy becomes Criticism, Sloth becomes Rapture, Lechery becomes Celebration.
VII-VIII—In life, we often make attempts to be serious, but have to surrender to hilarity. And yet at that point, the seriousness strikes home swiftly & relentlessly. [We were led to the 6th Beatitude: “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God]. Sixth Beatitude was 1st produced in May 1971, the scene is a professor’s farewell speech, with an unknown woman & her little girl, who insists on dancing about the room during the speech. [The mother is seeking responses to her parenting fears & her “comfortable grey life.” Could purity of heart be the answer? The professor has great enthusiasm for next year’s course, shaped by the audience. The proof of the course is] “. . . THEY SHALL SEE GOD!” God does show himself, but only to one person in the room. The last, apparently absurd glimpse of the professor shows him lurching towards the truth about purity.
[I am unable to] describe with any precision these experiences of shared creation. It is the nature of experience to be indescribable, and only shareable. Writing about the experience might serve to encourage readers to taste, and share. Laughter and tears, light and darkness, sound and silence; in each pair the latter is thought of as the absence of the former; the first is positive, the second negative. Apocalypso takes place when the apparent positives and negatives are held in an embrace—a dance—wherein it is not certain which is leading or following, or where one ends and the other begins. Much of [the results] lies at the disposal of the audience.
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
THE COMPANY—At times the chaos reached riot proportions, but my black colleagues seemed unworried, so I just got on with it. 20 picturesque lively, noisy young black Americans faced a strange Englishman with graying beard & shaggy head, propped up with a cane. It didn’t occur to them to identify me with the white power structure. I had come packed with ideas & knew at once I would have to ditch them all.
I said: “You are in London airport in 1977,” and started to interview them, beginning with Tony. They all rose to the bait willingly and with widely various sharply-etched characterizations. From faceless strangers they shaped into personalities, full of unique potential. As they left 2 hours later, one expressed fear that I might try to subdue a heart-beat in which they felt confident to an alien elegance belonging to white society. I learned later that if that 1st taste had not been intriguing, they wouldn’t have worried; they would just disappear.
It worried me that the company never seemed to settle down to listen quietly. Few had ever been spoken to quietly, at length, & with a new idea in all their normal social or family exchanges. Ways of getting across what I wanted them to know had to be instant, ad hoc, & instinctive. I happened to mention the 400-year-old morality play Everyman. Surprisingly, it caught their interest. They argued noisily about the notion of Death arresting somebody & that person’s struggles to make the best of it; Time to Go Joe was in the stocks. I hovered like a midwife [& referee]. Scene by scene they built up the play, in their own terms & language; there was no script.
I had to discard any dependence on patterns of behavior taken for granted in similar but Anglo-Saxon groups (e.g. attendance at rehearsal according to plan). If I tried to explain the inconvenience, quite honestly they would not understand what I was trying to say. On arrival I would have to take who ever was at hand, and play things by ear. The assembled company would sometimes leave suddenly, cheerfully and without explanation.
Gate-crashing began and added to the confusion. I ranted and roared, and vowed I would walk out and never return. I was on my way to the door, when suddenly the cast came running after me and held my arms. We went back to work. I had to risk trusting their sense of overall commitment [and let go of individual rehearsals]. Never once was it possible to hold a full rehearsal with everybody present and the play in proper order. Just before curtain rise I was in a greater state of panic than at any time of my professional life, with a front row of formidable young men loudly announcing their intention of barracking [i.e. heckling].
TIME TO GO, JOE—All these characters are young black Americans. They are on their way to a party, but they have forgotten the drinks. [Joe rushes off to get drinks & is hit by a car & taken to the hospital]. What goes on now is inside Joe’s mind. Joe is appalled to find out he must be on the 11:59 tonight. The 2 undertakers, Mr. Graves & Mr. Tombs are lost & following Harry by mistake; Harry gives them the slip. Joe, meanwhile, comes to Barney’s Bar. Lola, the alcoholic, staggers in. If Joe once helped Lola, maybe she would go with?
On the coast-to-coast show, MAN OFF THE STREET, random people are taken in, and their problems are solved. A singing group comes on 1st and Mr. Graves adds himself to the group. When Joe tells them his problem, the studio clears of people. Outside, Joe finds Doris of Traveller’s Aid. They hurry to the station. Joe’s friends assemble to see him off. Suddenly barkeep Barney hurries across the concourse with Lola, who is bedraggled, unsteady, but relatively sober; she will go with Joe. Professor Doom roars: “Change of plan! Lola, Judge Midnight says all this reminds him of your case. You need more help and he reckons Joe’s the only one who can try.” [Lola and Joe’s friends are overjoyed]; the friends leap and dance all over the station.
For the record, Time to Go, Joe was created in a few weeks by the young black Americans and performed in December 1967. It was the 1st and probably the last performance in the world. The formidable young men laughed and applauded in the right places. Our audience loved it; so did the company. The happiest guy around was me: middle-aged, Caucasian, English, and exhausted.
INTERVAL/STREET SCENE—Center Stage, as our venture was now called, was launched and viable; & my hands were several shades darker. The agency director told me that as the play proceeded, a vision grew in his mind of a neighborhood theatre, indigenous, original, & exciting. We discussed it with enthusiasm. I knew that its fulfillment would need a young, talented, dedicated black person; eventually I would have to bow out. The program director said: “Every February we have a Black-Heritage Festival. There will be 2 directors, Nickie and you. [I wondered] whether any Englishman had ever before been asked to be co-director of a Black-Heritage Festival. Nickie was from Louisiana, in her early 20’s, a Howard graduate and a social worker.
The Center Stage company chose the theme of gang warfare in the streets for their next original play. The idea did not enchant me at first, but I realized that more could be done with their instincts than with my sophistication. I suggested a central event, such as the killing of a character, about which the story would grow. The victim was [chosen by chance. The killer was not known or the ending written until late in the story].
Street Scene by Night became a kind of serial, twice-weekly, running through January and February. The demands of the story began to bring home to its creators the bones and sinews of authentic tragedy. [The characters are]: Mr. Pocket, the seedy lawyer, stops for a drink and unwittingly starts a train of events that [causes a lot of trouble for a lot of people]. Machine runs the bar and a gang moving into the protection racket and challenging another gang run by Duchess. Toni is a nice girl who falls for the crook Marlo.
Machine is attacked in the street by rival gang & found dead. Nobody is sure if he or she is free of guilt. The play involves the interesting device of playing the crucial attack scene over several times [with different details depending on] whoever is explaining what happened. There is unbearable sadness in knowing, even while applauding Toni’s courage [in standing up to the police], that she is doomed to an awful suffering—because she fell in love with someone whom the system has doomed. Out of a climate of greed, mistrust, & fear, a storm has broken which will grow in fury until innocent are brought down with the guilty. The theme, development and values are all distinctly human, and not particularly black. The fire catches when the humanity flashes through.
FAMILY TREE—[A black person might ask]: “Who am I? Am I American, African, or emotionally stateless? Authentic drama doesn’t attempt to draw conclusions or make partisan points, but shares experience & leaves all to their own conclusions. It occurred to us both that the action of the drama should be inside a family. I wanted to give the players the evolution of their own thoughts. I tried the group in sundry spontaneous arguments, but they didn’t respond as I anticipated, but with catch-phrase attitudes [meant only] to please me.
[I felt forced to do a script] What should the central crisis be? [I thought about & dismissed a pending inter-racial marriage]. Nickie & I then thought of a young man, troubled by his uncertain identity, who plans to live & work in Africa to find his roots. Still I hesitated to writing a script. 1 day Nickie handed me her script. Chastened, but pleased, I read words I would have groped after hopelessly. I gave it the title: Family Tree.
She had instinctively, & with sound dramatic sense, drawn up differences of opinion inside the “Smith” family. I questioned the roles she gave each family member. But I liked the black American vernacular, & the authentic family warmth. I found that most of my players weren’t comfortable with scripts. They quickly grasped the significance of the words & attitudes offered them. The written words, rightly chosen, sparked the humanity.
We were still hampered by chaos. But Nickie would get them together on the days I was not there, [be the firm mother], and crack the whip. Everything was moving together beautifully, and I began to understand that I was having very little to do with it. I drifted around backstage on opening night. The average theater critic would have been dazed. Our audience loved it and asked about repeat performances.
The “Who am I?” theme was stated against recorded voices singing of Angry People. The 1st slave ship came in 1619; Sonny Smith listened to his great-grandfather talking wistfully of their roots in Africa in 1968. [Sonny feels a guest who owns nothing, & despises those held up as blacks to be proud of. His great-grandfather, uncle, and father feel pride in black accomplishments and their own. Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King speeches are used. Sonny asks questions about his identity and] the narrator turns the questions to the audience. Who can ever define precisely an audience reaction? Each person carries something away.
Whatever it did for the house & players, Family Tree rewarded me with much learning & much self-chastening. I thought my problem would be how to share my experience. My [actual] problem was to find graceful ways of accepting enlightenment. The process was less painful because we shared in a creative work, and be-cause of the sweet and full humanity of my black co-workers. In this setting, the difference their full and my partial humanity was more clearly defined. I could be part of this family through a sort of hand-hold adoption.
[I was devastated by Martin Luther King’s death] Nickie called me and said: “You know this had to happen. A man who chooses to live like Christ—well …” True. The world cannot bear the Word made flesh.
At staff meeting, we talked of general things, and a kind of healing came over me. Without specific words, to be simply in their presence and questionless acceptance was healing. A few nights later, policemen armed for battle waited at a quiet intersection. Nickie said: “I don’t think I’d ever riot, but when I see that—I’d cheerfully pass the bricks.” I knew what she meant. We are expert at adding insult to injury and not knowing it.
I was fortunate in finding healing at the best possible source—the human compassion of those injured and bereft. Outside observers would find it hard to equate the future of humanity with the future of Center Stage; but perhaps my tendency to do this is now partly understandable. And it is not news to be told that humanity is the healing factor in racial difficulty, that both races must transcend their racialness to a human unity. Rebirth into the other race—especially if that race is already richly human—can open the way. Joy comes when you share the curtain-call with your new family, and you are so far in, they do not have to be polite to you any more.
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
180. Apocalypso: revelations in theater (by Jack Shepherd; 1971)
About the Author—Jack Shepherd joined the Theater Royal in Portsmouth, England at 9 years old; [he watched popular theater vanish from the inside]. He has learned how to cope with the hazards of spontaneous drama. He served in the navy in WWII, and joined the Religious Society of Friends in 1954. In Hong Kong in 1957, he produced the 1st television play in Chinese. He came to Pendle Hill in 1966 and [sojourned until 1971].
I-II—Note the implications of the [made-up] word apocalypso: [musical] entertainment & story; improvisation; hints of revelation & discovery. The final production of Center Stage at the Wharton Center in Philadelphia was Reasons for a Rainbow, a live reconstruction of a silent-movie. Action, rather than words had always been the dominant factor in Center Stage [productions]. I filled in for someone at the last moment, enjoyed [acting like a] Keystone Cop, & received acclaim afterwards in the streets. At Pendle Hill I first wrote Black City Stage. We experimented with improvisations, but mostly had not found a way of bringing [much] spontaneity to an audience. [We were almost always comic]. How could we be [entertaining], spontaneous, and serious?
The next year became mostly Greek. We experimented with The Trojan Women. We worked out the shape and sequence of events, but did not rehearse actual scenes. We turned Euripedes’ 2 Gods into a top CIA & Kremlin agent, [who discussed] the disposal of Hecuba, Andromache, Cassandra, & Helen. They tried to explain to the wretched women that their fates of slavery and worse implied nothing personal; merely the logic of war. The experience was powerful, but could never be repeated, because much of its power came from spontaneity.
After the comic The Frogs by Aristophanes, we were ready for Pavene for a Dead Princess, following the theme of Oresteiad. Agamemnon sacrifices Iphigenia, Clytemnestra murders Agamemnon, Orestes murders Clytemnestra. Helen appears. [Trapped in this cycle], they appeal to the audience for help. The scripted material played for about half an hour, and the audience participation for about 10 minutes. The players needed to be able to grow together in the performance, anticipating thoughts and feelings while still remaining in character.
The Apocalypso Repertory was born in April 1970. The newness [of this idea] lies latent in each performance. The players bring their own humanity, talent, [and feelings]. Each of the audience members brings their own humanity and current mood. Between the alchemic compounds [of actors and audience], communion is generated which is more than the sum of its parts; no performance is the same as the next. We reckon ourselves well applauded when people report a sleepless night after the show.
III—Suddenly ideas and scripts began to pour forth; the problem was to find occasions to bring them to life. In the summer of 1970 we did The Gods Out at Elbow, where the gods Hera, Vulcan, and Persephone discuss what gods should do when human needs change and humans stop paying their dues. Vulcan comes up with the idea of doing theater. Hera wants to know, “What was our [godly] function?” Persephone answered, “Helping people understand themselves.” The audience was invited to help in shaping the theater. The 2nd play the same night, Help and Holy Physic, was about the daughter of Romeo and Juliet, who objects to the [safe choices her parents made] and the “comfortable and cautious dreams they settled for.” [She wants her parents’ original dream back]. The audience provides her with answers; this play was shared with all kinds of audiences.
We could not lumber ourselves with scenery, furniture, or props which could not easily be carried or found on the spot. We learned to achieve a timelessness in dress and properties. [I do not choose to write a play on a certain, chosen topic at a certain time]. Plays are born when they are ready. [The seed for the above play was planted one Monday at lunchtime; by Wednesday the script was finished]. The played touched on the problem of the generation gap, and how a vision can decline into a dream.
IV-V—One Sunday I was thinking of 2 young women [& put them together as] Mary & Martha; & I felt like a tired Lazarus. By Tuesday morning Fire and Fleet and Candlelight was written. [The story takes place] 10 years after Lazarus’ resurrection. Mary is off on her own; Martha is managing Lazarus on lecture tours, but demand has fallen off. [Lazarus is afraid death must be due again]. All 3 of them are tired, discouraged, on the edge of despair and do not want to admit it. They have to appeal for help, for some kind of wisdom.
We [did the play] to a conference of about 200 non-violent-revolution activists, [who happened to feel the same way as the characters], so our play touched a nerve. When we appealed to them for help they could only share their own suffering with us. None of us wanted to talk to anybody, only to live silent for while with that agonizing and healing communion. [If that play was designed to be performed for that group], it was beyond our awareness [and planning]. We gave it 3 performances, each different from the other because the audiences were different. The experience confirmed for me that despair must be engaged not by resisting it but by going right through it to the point of accepting bankruptcy; then one is on its far side, and closer to the truth than before. [We also learned that] to bother about production pedantries is a waste of time as long as the story, idea, and passion are authentic. Even in theater you can’t keep smiles out of tragedy, nor sadness out of comedy.
Shadow Play wrote itself in a single sitting overnight after [spending] time with someone struggling with unhappiness & hurt. [In it] a poll-taker wanders around trying to work up courage to ask strangers dumb questions, while a man lurks about furtively. The man is shadowing her & neither of them knows why. [It was a comedy the first 3 times. In the 4th it turned into] a close & painful session of soul-searching about [how we] prey on others. How could the comic idea, same story, same sequence of words, suddenly become serious?
The idea for Something Rich and Strange began as an excuse to enjoy some of Shakespeare’s sonnets, especially the Dark Lady sonnets. Fred the window-washer starts writing poetry, but it’s poetry Shakespeare has already written. The play transmuted into a parable. The lesson was to never have reality or illusion without the other. Just live with the ongoing dance.
The Sleep of Wild Horses began as an intentional experiment in the positive use of silence and darkness. A woman journalist, burdened by crazy politics and insane violence, is anxious to start writing a book called “The World’s End.” The inn she is staying at has a power breakdown, and there is the unaccountable sound of galloping horses. In the play there are only 3 people, 3 candles, and a Bible. It becomes evident that the 4 Horses of the Apocalypse have returned to the inn’s stable, and the time is at hand for opening the 7th seal (Rev. 8:1); [silence descends]. The audience is asked the question “How is the silence to be used?” The other woman says “What is written is written” and disappears into the darkness. The mute stableman retreats into the dark. The journalist, by the light of her solitary candle, walks off to begin her book.
VI—[Even though I said that plays often write themselves, and only when they are ready] I thought about [suggested topics] of welfare-rights, poverty, and the strange American notion that poverty is a crime calling for the punishment of the poor and it began to look like a play, after all. Suppose a rich man invites wealthy friends to dinner to discuss relieving the poor of hardship. His wealthy friends don’t come and he invites the poor. The friends try to suppress his efforts and prevent a poor man from coming. Title? Be My Guest.
The 1st performance of Be my Guest took place at Philadelphia’s Arch Street Meeting House in January 1971 and was wholly improvised. The action was a series of attempts by the guest, aided and abetted by the kitchen-help, to get through the doorway into the feast to which she had been invited. The attempts were countered by technicalities produced by the doorman to keep her out. We intended the audience to argue with the doorman, but they took direct action instead, out of frustration with the situation. There were ingenious touches on the part of the audience. There were plenty of laughs in Be My Guest, yet what theme could be more serious.
[In the 1st year there were more than 30 scripts available; Devices and Desires was only one of them. We were learning that scripts open to audience involvement can contain unexpected dynamite; the explosion could be laughable, grave, or not come at all. [After discussion of it], we could not help wondering what the 7 Deadly Sins thought of the New Morality. [We choose Lechery, Envy, and Sloth]. [They decided that New Morality was the creation of theologians]. Their slogan to counter New Morality was “Absolution is made meaningful by Sin.” After discussion with and suggestions from the audience, the Sins decide to change their names. Envy becomes Criticism, Sloth becomes Rapture, Lechery becomes Celebration.
VII-VIII—In life, we often make attempts to be serious, but have to surrender to hilarity. And yet at that point, the seriousness strikes home swiftly & relentlessly. [We were led to the 6th Beatitude: “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God]. Sixth Beatitude was 1st produced in May 1971, the scene is a professor’s farewell speech, with an unknown woman & her little girl, who insists on dancing about the room during the speech. [The mother is seeking responses to her parenting fears & her “comfortable grey life.” Could purity of heart be the answer? The professor has great enthusiasm for next year’s course, shaped by the audience. The proof of the course is] “. . . THEY SHALL SEE GOD!” God does show himself, but only to one person in the room. The last, apparently absurd glimpse of the professor shows him lurching towards the truth about purity.
[I am unable to] describe with any precision these experiences of shared creation. It is the nature of experience to be indescribable, and only shareable. Writing about the experience might serve to encourage readers to taste, and share. Laughter and tears, light and darkness, sound and silence; in each pair the latter is thought of as the absence of the former; the first is positive, the second negative. Apocalypso takes place when the apparent positives and negatives are held in an embrace—a dance—wherein it is not certain which is leading or following, or where one ends and the other begins. Much of [the results] lies at the disposal of the audience.
http://www.pendlehill.org/product-category/pamphlets
www.facebook.com/pendlehill?fref=ts
Comments
Post a Comment