B000FC0RL0 EBOK (23 page)

Since I’ve been called by some the hottest Shakespearean clown in Central Park, I’ll tell you my secret:

In the early stages of rehearsal, my stuff is completely improvisational. I keep changing from rehearsal to rehearsal (always studying the script between rehearsals, of course), but never forcing myself to stay set. When I finish a rehearsal I go over the script and try to find the impulses—call them the needs of the character that forced me to say the line or do something in a certain way. When I can pinpoint these needs, impulses, then the acting becomes set (not set dull, but set in a reasonable architectural layout).

This process takes two to three weeks and Stuart knows this. He goes along with it although I’m the only actor in the company who works this way.

With John Houseman I would be forced to set the improvisation after two or three rehearsals. And so for three or four weeks I would be doing what was essentially my first day’s work. Houseman would say, “What was good yesterday was good; don’t change it.” This would lock up the creative valves and force you to act out what you did yesterday. I gather you gather that I do not like this approach to comedy….

If I have been too flip about my experiences, I guess it’s because I’m letting off steam. Needless to say, I would never have got this far without your great faith in me.

One of the most vivid incidents of the time I spent with you was the morning following the opening of
The Bourgeois Gentleman.
You called us all together and told us we had a great show despite what was said.

This was so important to all of us, but especially to me. You don’t know how responsible I felt, and was, for that matter, but you lifted the burden off me. When you were finished, regardless of how young, inexperienced, and inept we were, we felt like Duses, Bernhardts, and all the rest. Around here, in a similar situation, they’re looking for someone to mutilate when something goes wrong.

I thank God for you, Mr. Falk, and pray you will soon feel well enough to do whatever and go wherever you desire. A small reward for giving so much of yourself to so many like me.

Regards to the family,

Jerry Stiller

Syracuse, New York

November 5, 1957

Mr. Jerry Stiller

153 West 80th St.
New York, New York

Dear Jerry:

Thank you for your long and interesting letter of October 25 … [particularly for its] descriptions of your creative processes as an actor.
And I am most grateful, of course, for the very kind things that you said about me and whatever help I may have given you. The greatest satisfaction that a teacher may have is the knowledge that he has perhaps opened a door.

I enjoyed very much seeing the pictures of the productions you have been in and of reading the press clippings about you. You have done very well indeed, and it is to your credit that you have kept working most of the time. As one of the newspaper accounts says, you have really become a fixture at the Phoenix Theater …

Since writing to you I have improved greatly, although I still have a good part of the thirty pounds I lost to gain back. As I told you before, it is fortunate that I have a sabbatical leave for this semester which allows me leisure for recovery…. It seems that I will be well enough to come to New York sometime in the early part of December. I am counting on seeing you then.

Mrs. Falk joins me in sending affectionate regards.

Sawyer Falk

My connection to Joe Papp came crashing down when I was cast in
Richard III
as the second murderer. The show starred George C. Scott as Richard. The role of second murderer turned into an off-stage feud between myself and the actor playing the first murderer. We hated each other.

I asked Stuart Vaughn to step in. I was shocked when he sided with the first murderer, who was a professional puppeteer. Stuart then went on to criticize my rehearsal process, which he called debilitating. He said this had gone back to
Two Gentlemen
. I was devastated. I called Joe and told him that I couldn’t work with Vaughn anymore.

“Okay,” Joe said, “quit.” I did.

Six months later, Joe called again. He asked Anne and me if we’d be willing to play William and Audrey in
As You Like It
. J. D. (Jack) Cannon played Touchstone and George C. Scott did a magnificent Jacques. Since I didn’t hold a grudge, I agreed. My favorite memory of Scott was him playing bridge in the basement with the other cast members. When he heard his cue, George would drop his cards, walk upstairs to the stage,
deliver the “Seven Ages of Man” speech—there was always applause—and then return to the table and finish his hand. In 1972 Joe called yet once more for the role of Launce in the musical version of
Two Gentlemen of Verona,
the same role I played in 1957. The ‘72 cast included Raul Julia, Clifton Davis, José Perez, Norman Matlock, Jonelle Allen, and Frank O’Brien, and was directed by Mel Shapiro; John Guare wrote the book and Galt MacDermott the score. In the earlier version I had played Launce as a contemporary Brooklyn guy, more like a gofer than the traditional Shakespearean servant. I left out the “Hey nonney-nonneys” and the stylized Elizabethan shtick that most Americans tried to emulate from their English counterparts. To my delight, that interpretation worked. It came off great.

I was excited when Joe Papp asked me to recreate my original role. By then, Crab had gone on to a heavenly rest and the new Crab was to be played by a dog who had understudied Sandy in the Broadway musical
Annie
.

I quickly discovered that the musical version of
Two Gents
was completely different. The role I felt so perfect for in 1957 did not work in a Black/Hispanic ‘70s setting. I felt ethnically displaced. Next to Clifton Davis’s Harlem street talk and Raul Julia’s Puerto Rican lilt, I felt at sea.

As opening night approached, I said to Mel Shapiro, our director, “Mel, what I do in the part doesn’t seem to mean anything. You don’t need a white guy in this cast. You need Godfrey Cambridge. I want out.”

“Stick with it,” Mel said.

My frustration grew. Even the new Crab was wrong. He was a well-groomed wirehaired terrier with a Broadway credit, and did everything on cue. I hated him.

After a particularly frustrating rehearsal, I said to Mel, “I’ve got it!”

“What?”

“I’ll play him like an Italian. The show takes place in Verona. Everybody in it is supposed to be Italian, but they ain’t, so I’ll do Launce as Chico Marx.”

“Try it,” Mel said.

That night at dress rehearsal with an invited audience, I came out doing Chico. I remembered the scene of Chico selling ice cream in
A Day at the Races
. “Get your tutti-frutti ice cream here.”

I made my entrance and with great confidence said, “My momma cryin’, my sista wailin’, and my entiah household in tears—disa dog did notta shedda one teah.”

Not a laugh from the audience. Total shock. It was Hiroshima in Central Park. I couldn’t wait for the end of the show. I wanted to sneak out of my body and disappear from the face of the earth.

Shapiro, who never seemed to show any upset, said, “Listen, we’ll just have to cut one of your monologues and you can go back to doing it straight.” I was totally destroyed, but I knew that he had no recourse. He was right.

The day of the first preview, I was still searching for some hook into the character. I refused to accept what promised to be an empty performance. At about 4:30
P.M.
I felt a little tired. I returned to our apartment a few blocks from Central Park. I lay down on Amy’s bed for a nap. I closed my eyes, and as I felt myself dozing off I heard myself doing my opening lines, “My sister weeping, my mother wailing, my nurse … yet did not this dog utter one word.” I also heard myself reciting the
Fier Kashes,
the Passover ritual known as the Four Questions that are asked at the Seder each year by the youngest member of the family to commemorate the Exodus from Egypt. “Why is this night different from every other night?” the child asks in Hebrew. The questions and answers, done part song and part verse, strike a familiar chord in every Jewish family.

As my eyes closed, I could feel myself slipping into the stages of sleep, first the drowsiness and then slumber. I was aware of sounds entering my consciousness. I heard Shakespeare’s lines in the meter of the
Fier Kashes
. I was doing Shakespeare like a Jewish chant. The sound made me laugh, even in my half sleep. I could hear myself listening to my own performance. I wanted to stay asleep, to enjoy my dream, but I knew that next I would fall completely asleep and forget whatever was spinning around. I woke myself up and went over what had just occurred in the dream stage.

I looked at my watch. I had been asleep a total of seven minutes. Now I knew what I had to play that night. Launce was the Jewish servant to Proteus, his Puerto Rican master, the switch I needed to bring my once-buried character to life. That night, the monologue worked for the first time. Being part of
Two Gentlemen of Verona
from that moment on was one of the greatest theatrical experiences of my life.

“To sleep, perchance to dream….” Ahh, that Shakespeare really knew what he was talking about.

Through the years Anne and I stayed in touch with the Public Theater and Joe Papp. In the late ‘80s we received a call from Yivo—the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research—which was throwing a tribute to Joe Papp at the Shubert Theater on Broadway. Would Anne and I be part of the evening? It was a kind of reunion. We’d be part of an elite regiment of artists who had all worked for Joe at some time. Mandy Patinkin, Peter Bogdanovich, Meryl Streep, Kathleen Turner, David Amram, and many others would be there.

“We need someone to lighten the evening,” Fred Zollo said. “Could you two do a scene?”

“Of course. Let’s talk.”

We met at the Public, the beautiful old HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) building on Lafayette Street that Joe had turned into a huge, buzzing creative beehive of American theater.

“You can do something out of
Romeo and Juliet,
” Fred said.

“Yeah,” Anne said, “we could do the balcony scene with Jerry trying to climb the balcony and hurting himself.”

“Anne could climb the balcony,” I interjected, but then the idea suddenly fell flat in my own head. “No, the joke’s over after the first couple of lines.”

“You don’t have to do anything like that,” Fred said. “You can do something else.”

“We’ll think about it and call you.”

As the list of stars grew, all of them performing something, Fred called back and asked if we would mind just coming out, introducing people, and saying a few words. “Joe really feels you are a part of all this.”

“Of course,” we said. Anne and I sighed a breath of relief. “We’re good at that,” Anne said, running an eye over the names whose credits included Pulitzers, Tonys, and Academy Awards.

To “say a few words” meant to say lines that would relate to Joe, Shakespeare, and Yivo, an organization dedicated to the preservation of Yiddish heritage. Joe had once himself taken to the spotlight in some heartwarming cabaret renditions of the Yiddish songs of his youth.

For two days I worked on making humorous analogies between Shakespeare and Yiddish. I finally bounced some stuff off Anne.

“What do you think of this? Joe is an Anglophile. He loves the English language, especially Shakespearean words like ‘forsooth,’ ‘methinks,’ ‘perchance,’ ‘henceforth’ … but he also loves his mother tongue, phrases like
paskudnyak, nudnick
.”

“What does that mean,
paskudnyak?
” Anne asked.

“Just listen,” I said, quieting her. “Joe went to the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he studied the ancient texts.”

“Joe was a Yeshiva Bucha?” Anne asked.

“That’s funny, use that,” I said. “He was a scholar. He discovered certain phrases in Shakespeare that were interchangeable with Yiddish. Take the word ‘perchance.’ It could be
efsher
.”

“Efsher?”
Anne asked.

“Yeah, like in
Hamlet,
Act I, Scene 1, when Horatio sees the ghost of Hamlet’s father and says: ‘
Efsher
it’s the King.’”

Anne repeated this. It was funny, her saying the Yiddish.

“And the word ‘methinks’ is
ver veist
.”

“Ver veist?”
Anne said.

“It means, ‘Who knows?’” I said. “Or
veir viest
if you’re a Galitzianer.”

“Joe is a Galitzianer?” Anne asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “We’re making this up.”

“Wasn’t your mother a Galitzianer?” Anne said.

“No, my mother was a Litvak. My father was a Galitzianer. There were a lot of problems there.”

“Because of the ethnic difference?”

“No, because my grandmother never invited my mother to Friday-night dinners,” I said.

“That’s a
shonder,
” Anne replied.

“Yeah, there was a lot of alienation there.”

“Alienation?” Anne said.

“Yeah, of the way my mother made gefilte fish. She made it sweet, and Galitzianers make it with salt.”

“And that’s why your grandmother never invited your mother to dinner?” Anne asked. “Jerry, we shouldn’t be talking about our own
mishegaas
. This is Joe’s night.”

“Hey, I think the thrust of the evening is that Joe Papp is convinced that William Shakespeare was Jewish. His real name was Velvel.”

“Velvel Shakespeare?” Anne asked. “Shakespeare’s name was Velvel?”

“Yeah, it’s my father’s name. His first name. It’s Willie, short form. Good—that’s a good line, isn’t it?”

Anne shrugged.
“Ver veist,”
she said.

H
ow did Anne and I ever survive? Actors must be the craziest breed of the human species. If we did on the streets what we do on the stage, we’d be locked up. We were each other’s keepers.