A gentleman sitting next to me introduced himself, and he was an actor here as a young man during Portland's Golden Age of Theater, working on shows with the late Ric Young, Peter Fornara and others who have left us too soon. He was one of the inmates in Fornara's spectacular Marat/Sade when he had a company under a CETA grant. In the most memorable week in the history of Portland theater, Fornara's company opened four shows in rep on four consecutive nights: Marat/Sade, Joe Egg, American Buffalo and Cabaret. You seldom see as much theatrical energy as this.
Fornara did a gesture that helped me considerably during a time of mental grief. I still don't know how it happened. I had just ended my tenure as playwright-in-residence at the New Rose Theatre when the artistic director, Gary O'Brien, abruptly left in a squabble with his board of directors. O'Brien had hired me. So I was theatrically homeless -- and suddenly, at the same time, my father died. I was in New Jersey doing the things the oldest son does when the phone in my father's apartment rang. It was Peter Fornara! He wanted me to be the playwright-in-resident at his new company, the Cubiculo Theatre (Sirius Productions). I said yes, homeless in this part of my life no more. How did Fornara get the telephone number of my father? I must have left it with someone, obviously, but in my state I didn't recall doing this. This was great timing to say the least.
Unfortunately, Cubiculo only got to do my play Waitresses before going under. They had scheduled the four plays of my Quantum Quartet in four years, the first being The Sadness of Einstein. I never finished the quartet, having by then discovered that hyperdrama was really the "quantum mode" of theatrical storytelling. Sadness got scheduled to premier in Seattle, but then its theater, too, lost funding. The play is like a jinx and never has been done.
1 comment:
Your experience of Peter Fornara is typical. He was always a generous and caring man. I had the great pleasure of working with him as an actor in the 70's when he was teaching at Portland State and running the Portland Shakespeare Company (on a shoestring, as usual) out of 75 Old Main (now Lincoln Hall) and The Old Church. Of my compatriots of those days, I think only Johnny Stallings is still active and "hard at it" doing theatre here in Stump Town.
Best regards, Nathan Davis
Post a Comment