Sleeping Where I Fall: A Chronicle

by Peter Coyote

  We only know what we know when we know it. The environs that shimmered with possibility for me became a crypt for Jessie. I can now remember her sitting forlornly in that very same Laundromat, among the chewed and coverless women’s magazines, wrapping herself in memories as a shield—or perhaps as a shroud—for our relationship. When she gazed absently out the windows, was she comparing the pocky, littered street to the piazzas of Florence, where she’d once lived?

  At the time I was completely unaware that she was unhappy and starving for grace. I was writing poems in the mornings and rehearsing afternoons and evenings at the Actors’ Workshop, where, to my great delight, I had been cast in the lead of their next play. (The founders of the workshop, Herb Blau and Jules Irving, had just moved—with the best actors—to New York to create Lincoln Center, leaving behind the name, the board, a disappointed audience, and a few loyalists eager to recapture the company’s earlier glory. These facts might explain the ease of my admission to this once-august ensemble.) I was happy to be out of undergraduate school, removed from my personal history in the East, and beginning what I expected to be the life of an artist. I imagined myself strolling the crooked backstreets of Paris with Hemingway and Henry Miller; I daydreamed casual conversations with Sartre and Neruda. I was certain that poems were germinating in my synapses and that the patterns of pigeons roosting on a wire could be transcribed as musical masterpieces. I enthused about everything that came into my head, unaware of the assault these juvenile raptures made on Jessie. She tried hard, assembling sumptuous Italian meals, organizing soirees of Kansas City pals, and trying to become interested in our neighbors, a sweet, beaten couple with a chronically unhappy child. For a woman accustomed to being the oracle for the best of the East, her demotion to coffee-klatcher with the depressed in the West must have felt like a terminal downward spiral.

  Jessie changed what could be changed and moved us to the third floor of an elegant Victorian house owned by an elderly Italian woman named Mrs. Beltramo that dominated the intersection of Fell Street and Steiner, a block above Fillmore, the main artery of San Francisco’s black ghetto. Yet as our living standards rose, other parts of my life took a diametrically different course. My work toward a master’s degree in poetry ended. I was spending mind-numbing hours in class deciphering the lectures of Robert Duncan, a poet I had admired as an undergraduate who subsequently became a friend. He bobbed and dashed about the classroom energetically. His magnificent leonine head, topped by an unruly gray mane, featured pronounced walleyes brimming with electricity and humor and animating his flat Slavic face. Those eyes were unnerving; since you could not be sure exactly where he was looking, you never knew whether or not one of his impenetrable questions had just been directed at you. Duncan communicated in waves of association, metaphor, and mythic references in several languages. Students on either side of me nodded sage assent, apparently understanding everything he said, while I remained stupefied and progressively disconsolate at my intellectual failings. (Twenty-five years later I told this story to poet Michael McClure, a good friend of mine and Duncan’s. Michael smiled wryly and of the nodding students said, “They lied.”) I reluctantly decided that my future as a poet was limited. At least I had the theater—or so I thought.

  My initial triumph over being cast in the lead of the workshop’s first post-Blau/Irving production was dashed by the arrival of the company’s new artistic director, John Hancock, an endomorphic Harvard grad with slouching shoulders and ill-fitting clothes. Hancock watched one rehearsal and unceremoniously canceled the production, while I was simultaneously demoted to the status of an apprentice and assistant to an assistant director. I had no idea what acting was about; my experience in college, though serving me well in the rudiments of analyzing a scene into “beats” (emotional moments), had not prepared me at all for the subtle reemphasis of aspects of personality needed to create character—the basic building block of drama. I was adrift.

  Serving as assistant to a man barely older than myself was humbling when only days earlier I had been a rising star. But there were recompenses for my disgrace. As in the days of Samuel Johnson, “the silk stocking and white bosoms of . . . actresses excite . . . amorous propensities,” and occasional love affairs and furtive “green room” couplings during performances softened the wounds to my ego.

  In retrospect I can see that there was more to these sexual diversions than Johnson’s business-as-usual in the life of actors. Unfaithfulness to Jessie never appeared on my moral radar screen as an issue, nor would sexual fidelity to anyone become either a consideration or a remote possibility for many years. My eagerness for adventure and sensation, my desire to live as I imagined artists and creative people lived, disguised to myself an unsteadiness and an indulgent streak in my character that would not become apparent to me until they had wreaked much more havoc in my personal relationships.

  Near the end of 1965, the company was preparing the world premiere of Bertolt Brecht’s Edward the Second—the story of a mad, murderous, homosexual king who refused to forswear his lover and was dethroned by the populace and imprisoned in the sewers. The lead was played by an obsessively heterosexual actor named Barton Heyman, one of the new players imported by Hancock. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Barton was crazy, but he was definitely not wrapped too tightly. Perhaps one small anecdote will defend this assertion.

  In the second act of Edward the Second, the king escapes from the sewer and gives a moving soliloquy. Barton decided to heighten his performances by taking LSD during the intermission so that when he emerged from below the street, in rags and smeared with offal, he was, in fact, like the king, quite mad. His dedication to Method acting disadvantaged the other actors who, perhaps lacking Barton’s dedication or inventiveness, relied for their dialogue on the script. No one knew what Barton would say, when he would say it, or at what point he might stop. When he did stop finally, it was incumbent on his fellow players to invent logical segues from Barton’s last utterance back to the main body of the play. Cast members were not judgmental about Barton’s use of drugs. Most people I knew smoked marijuana occasionally, and by 1964 it was ubiquitous. LSD was becoming more prevalent, although I had yet to take my own first trip. What really bothered me about Barton’s drug use onstage was how it made him appear brilliant at my expense.

  The workshop constructed a revolving stage for the Brecht production, to spin battle scenes offstage and return court scenes onstage. It was a balky, cumbersome behemoth that created innumerable delays in rehearsals, and during one such delay I ambled down the hill from the Marines Memorial Theater to the company’s second stage, the Encore Theater, rented to a funky little acting ensemble called the San Francisco Mime Troupe. I was intrigued by the manner in which they had transfigured our tiny lobby, filling it with photos of the company laughing, cavorting, and performing, interspersed with blowups of reviews and news stories chronicling their arrest for performing in the parks without a permit. They had transformed the space from a bleak transition between the street and the theater into an engaging promise of delights to come. Their colorful commedia dell’arte masks and costumes were bold and provocative, their display radiated irreverence, energy, and fun—and two of the women in the photos were extraordinarily attractive. My curiosity was piqued, and once again, a physical attraction to women was unconsciously organizing a major decision in my life. I never once considered that this might be a problem.

  I convinced the authorities at the workshop that a comparable photo exhibit would enhance our opening night. They agreed to reimburse my out-of-pocket expenses, and I labored mightily to shoot, develop, print, and mount almost eighty images capturing the labor, frustration, humor, and dedication required to create a major theatrical production. On opening day I hung my enlargements in the barren foyer of the theater, proud of the change they wrought in the sterile environment. It now seemed ready for the event.

  The performance was well received, and the postshow gala buzzed with enthusiasm. Can
apés disappeared, glasses were filled and emptied with gusto, the roar of conversation swelled the room, gestures were large and emphatic. The reception suggested that the company had recaptured its earlier glory.

  The next day passed and the next, and finally several weeks, without a thank-you or any mention of my efforts at all. I had felt stifled and underappreciated since my demotion to apprentice and had hit upon this photo display as an opportunity to express my creativity and distinguish myself in the company again. Still no one had noticed. I concluded that the Actors’ Workshop and I were not a good match and that since the Mime Troupe had been the inspiration for my photos, perhaps they might be a source for an idea about what to do next. That day I went to see them perform for the very first time.

  The Panhandle of Golden Gate Park is a Popsicle stick of green attached to the eastern edge of the park’s rectangular main body. It is bordered by two broad, busy, one-way streets that are flanked by faded Victorian houses. I arrived in the Panhandle early, drawn by a canvas banner announcing the coming performance. I watched a group remove and assemble a prefabricated stage from the back of a flatbed truck. Stakes were pounded in to secure the guy wires that anchored the frame of a proscenium; then the stage, constructed of large rectangles on a lattice of two-by-fours, was placed on top of overturned wine-barrel halves. An abstractly painted canvas curtain with a slit in the center formed the back wall.

  While construction proceeded, actors dragged costumes and musical instruments from battered trunks. Some changed clothes and applied makeup; others sang, played the recorder or tambourine, joked, and did gymnastics to attract a sizable crowd. Finally, the company warmed up together (unheard of at the workshop) by singing and dancing, generating a palpable energy that flowed among the players and over the stage. During this warm-up, which was a calculated part of the performance, the company members exuded the assurance and bawdy humor of a beggar’s opera.

  Commedia dell’arte was the sixteenth-century Italian form of street theater—living headlines, Renaissance rap. Masked stock characters such as Pantalone, Arlecchino, and Dottore were recognizable types distinguished by their exaggerated personalities: crankiness, ebullient foolishness, and pomposity. These archetypes had been lovingly researched and resurrected by the troupe to serve radical agit-prop theater. The company spoofed hypocrisy, misuse of power, and official venality with barbed wit, sexual innuendo, and gusto. They were enthralling. The men were physically tuned and athletic, dressed in tattered cloaks and tights. The women’s shoulderless bodices exposed tantalizing cleavage they used playfully to befuddle and seduce the male characters, to whom they were clearly superior. Characterizations were as transparent as Punch and Judy, and just as outrageous and wickedly funny. Performances appeared to arise in the moment: if a car horn honked or a voice cried out in the street, it was acknowledged onstage and immediately worked into the show.

  At the end of an hour, the troupe leaped off the stage to wild applause and shamelessly exhorted the audience for money. They made ludicrous promises, obscene proposals, scathing observations, and were as entertaining offstage as on, urging the grateful crowd to give more. They became my heroes on the spot, the closest thing to the primal energy and intellectual acuity I had always imagined theater might possess. They articulated issues that I confronted in my own life, and they expressed them in a direct and passionate manner. Ideas and political positions were analyzed and expounded with partisan fervor, great humor, and few subtleties.

  As Sandy Archer and Kay Hayward took their deep, sweeping bows, I decided then and there that anything that simultaneously allowed for this kind of free expression and the company of such women was irresistible. I was psychically shanghaied.

  Within a few days I had arranged to meet R. G. Davis, founder and organizing genius of the troupe. I dressed in my best “actor’s” clothes, a dandyish three-piece houndstooth suit custom-made on the cheap by a drunken Ivy League con man tailor who shipped his measurements off to Hong Kong for assembly. I polished my cumbersome English shoes and pointed them toward the troupe’s address on Howard Street, in the city’s grimy industrial district.

  The company was housed in a raisin-colored two-story brick building. Each end of the large space had been walled off to make an office and a costume and prop room. The rest had been left open for rehearsals. Light entered slantwise through a wall of sooty windows, illuminating the unpainted girders, the tatty cinderblocks, and the well-worn dance floor. Women flowed to and fro in faded sweats and leotards. Men carrying gigantic papier-mâché animal heads referred me to the office door.

  I entered a gloomy room with a pitted floor and three stained wooden desks. The windows afforded a view of a tangle of trolley and phone wires. R. G. (Ronnie) Davis rose to meet me. He was a compact, precise man bristling with energy and intelligence. His hair was close-cropped and combed forward like Napoleon’s, and he was dressed in some variant of a Mao suit in blue denim. He had a large nose and a wacky, erratic way of moving, as if his body were commenting on his speech like an independent critic. His no-nonsense, total dedication might have been oppressive if it had not been frequently punctured by a manic giggle whenever he found something amusing. What made the greatest impression on me, however, was Sandy Archer, the beauty I’d seen performing in the park. She sat at her desk typing, her large, expressive eyes fixed levelly on her work, lips relaxed and perfectly shaped. High cheekbones stretched the skin on her face so that it was tight as a drum. I had seen that face onstage, radiating light, switching instantly from pure buffoonery to intelligent, sexual power. Young Anne Bancroft was already a movie star, but here was the prototype from which she had been struck, laboring in obscurity, shimmering a few feet away from me. The dedication of such beauty and talent to this impoverished company only increased my interest and curiosity.

  Ronnie greeted me cordially, and somehow we began a discussion of Marshall McLuhan, whose writings on media were beginning to attract attention. This was a lucky break for me. I had a mentor at that time, an advertising guru named Howard Gossage whose wife, Sally Kemp, was an actress in the Actor’s Workshop. Howard’s insight that people would actually read advertising copy if it contained real information had made him wealthy. He had often talked to me about Marshall McLuhan, had introduced him to U.S. audiences, and had even arranged for me to escort one of McLuhan’s daughters on several dates.

  Fueled by the desire to impress Sandy Archer, I launched into a blitzkrieg of information and opinion—I was swinging. Ronnie poked and probed at my monologue with his combative intellect, clearly delighted to be tossing around ideas with someone as ardent as he was.

  I have no idea how long we debated, over the click-click of Sandy’s typing, but suddenly Ronnie wheeled away and asked her, “Well, Sandy, whaddya think of this guy?”

  Sandy never blinked. Click-click, she continued while I waited for her verdict.

  “Mmmmm,” she said finally, without lifting her eyes from the page. “He talks a lot.”

  Ronnie broke the awkward silence that followed by ushering me out to meet the rest of the troupe, and I followed, suddenly acutely aware of just how large and noisy my shoes were.

  First he introduced me to John Robb, one of the group’s stars, who was dressed in Pantalone’s tattered long red underwear. John was my height, rail-thin, with hickory-tough, Marlboro-man good looks. He took a Pall Mall from behind one ear, broke it in half contemplatively, returned half to his ear, and lit the other as he scoped me up and down. He exhaled luxuriously, then turned to Ronnie: “Pretty fancy for the troupe, isn’t he?”

  Ronnie mumbled something and asked John to show me around. I stumbled along behind him, now feeling ludicrous and clammy in my thick suit and graceless shoes.

  This was not the Royal Shakespeare Company, nor was it any manner of theatrical company I had encountered before. This was the abrasive, cutting voice of the 1960s, edgy heirs of Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl—a sensibility I was soon to internalize and propagate. On this
day I received my first lesson: “How you look is part of it.”

  The San Francisco Mime Troupe—uncompromising, fearless, rude, truthful, iconoclastic, and unswerving—was shock therapy and a crash course in a new curriculum. It would be the portal through which I would enter my adulthood.

  2

  the perpetual present

  If I had felt underused at the Actors’ Workshop, I was running to keep up at the Mime Troupe, leaving Jessie increasingly alone and isolated. Obligatory movement classes, workouts, training in mime, political discussions, playwriting sessions, performing, and of course earning a living (since the troupe paid performers only five dollars a show) dominated every day. I had been back East to visit my father earlier in the year, 1965, and he had “broken my plate,” as he put it, telling me it was time to survive on my own. I managed this as a driver for Yellow Cab.

  I was learning that mime was not pantomime. Ronnie’s teacher, Etienne Decroux, the great Parisian master, came from a very different lineage than Marcel Marceau—to Americans, the quintessential whiteface. Decroux had refined the ability to present the weight distribution of ordinary activities through isolating the parts of that activity. His minute examinations of the precise details of movement contributed to the powerful visual images he created onstage.

  Pantomime presents the illusion of physical reality to suggest things that are not there: a glass of water, a horse, or a kite at the end of a line. Mime, on the other hand, uses physical reality to suggest concepts: a cane becomes a pool cue, a rifle, or a crutch, and rather than disappearing into its function as an indicator, it remains simultaneously what-it-is and what-it-is-supposed-to-be, offering the possibility of commenting on both simultaneously. It is difficult to communicate ideas in pantomime because it is silent, whereas mime, at least our school of it, was very, very verbal.