New York, New York

As we have just passed the 22nd anniversary of the terrible loss on 9/11/01, I thought about old New York. I was scrolling through social media and saw so many of my friends on both sides of the proverbial aisle (stupid as both sides are) marking their tributes, either with images of the original towers or the building there now.

I suppose we all, unless born after the fact, have a 9/11 story. Mine is perhaps not special, but I began thinking about the place that harbors nearly all the great talent of the theatre and is still, sadly, the only true place where you can make it as a playwright in our country—if you want to be read and performed. I say sad because our country is so vast, it seems wrong that only one town holds the keys to having a career in a certain industry, but what can you do?

I was born in late September and the administrators of Forestdale Baptist School ignored the rules and let me into elementary school a little early, so I was all of 17 when I went to Bennington College, nestled in the Southwest corner of Vermont. My Bennington experience began with tragedy and ended with tragedy. In my “senior” year, we lost four students—some to suicide, others to terrible accidents. But the “freshman” year was marked by one of the darker days of our time.

Cullen Tittle on the right, with Dad and his sisters.

Preceding the attack, however, my grandfather passed away on the first day of college orientation. It was decided I wouldn’t go home—that mom and dad would take care of all that, leaving me a little earlier than they had planned. Cullen Tittle was an elusive figure in my life—always loving, but seldom there. He was a storm chaser, and, as his hobby would indicate, he lived a mostly solitary existence, a bit aloof from the rest of us. I loved him all the same, but we had already made the 24-hour drive to Vermont from Alabama and it was felt it would be better for me to begin my collegiate experience rather than go home to a funeral. I’m not sure it was the right decision, as I’m still unsure Bennington was the right decision, but it’s a little late for regret.

The first day of school arrived. I had an early class that first morning. In the ‘80s, when Bennington was very wild, the class was called (in the course catalogue) “Sex with Betsy.” By the 21st century, it was now called “Biology of the Sexes” and was still taught by Dr. Betsy Sherman, a much beloved figure among the students who I could not stand. Indeed, in that first class, when she took the time to ridicule religion, I stopped listening to her and I am rather proud of failing what was surely an ideologically driven course, had I paid any attention after that first day.

The Barn, Bennington College

Immediately after class, I was expected to begin my work-study job, part of my financial aid. I was to be the gopher and office assistant to the Literature, Languages, and Social Science departments. I was heading toward the old Jennings Dairy Barn, where the main offices are, including that of the Dean and Provost, when I noticed people crying in various corners of various lawns. An international student of indeterminate nationality was standing next to his bike outside the Barn. I asked him what everyone was so upset about. “Someone blew up the World Trade Center.” I didn’t respond, but being 17 and having never been to New York, I wanted to ask, “What’s the World Trade Center?” because I didn’t know that’s what those two towers were.

My first responsibility in the office was to put up signs cancelling all classes. I made my way back to the dorm and offered everyone in Franklin House to join my roommate and I as I had a TV. That dorm room had three windows and pretty good reception, so we all sat and watched the footage. One student was crying her eyes out because her parents worked close to there and, of course, the phones were entirely out of commission. We were still in early cell phone days, and I didn’t even own one. Mom, of course, could not check on me. While we were three hours from Manhattan, I’m sure she worried about me anyway.

Back home, my brother was most likely in tears. As a junior fireman, I know he felt for the first responders and his house has always been adorned with some 9/11 memorabilia. I also didn’t know the resulting war would inspire one of my best friends to join the Air Force. Life was about to change for all of us.

In the ensuing days, what were nominal Jewish students were wearing prayer shawls and cantering in the lunchroom, politically active and disgusted students were watching the then King Bush II mutter his ridiculous responses on national television.

Yes, my first day of college was 9/11. Already we wondered how the world would change. My second roommate, and the man who directed most of my resulting work at Bennington, had read an article that folks would probably turn more to non-fiction and documentaries than fictional movies and conjured up tales. Certainly, that was the tack I took in life, but that had more to do with me trying to catch up with the other Benningtonians, who were so much more intelligent than I was.

Eventually, life had to continue. Classes resumed; I don’t think any student lost a loved one in the fray, and I didn’t realize I was about to get my first taste of New York City. But I had to because Bennington has a built-in mini semester called “Field Work Term” (FWT) where, in the dead of January and February, you had to hold down a job or internship in the field in which you’re interested. Being in the Drama/Theatre concentration, where was I going to go but New York?

I had heard the year previous a student had “shadowed” Edward Albee. I doubted this—he most likely worked for his foundation—but I liked the idea of finding a professional mentor and, after a very short search through the Dramatists Guild website, I knew it had to be Tony-winner David Henry Hwang, who I have devoted much time to on this blog and have loved since I was eleven years old.

David and me, Winter 2002

Having mentored young playwrights before, David’s agent proposed the idea and we set up to meet in January for my FWT, which is usually the time when many of Bennington’s most famous alums never come back, much like Carol Channing who found a job and started a career while on hers. I was probably never going that route. I was a good Southern boy who didn’t do things like that. Still, I cashed in the last of my savings bonds and prepared to meet David in early January in Manhattan, where I would shack up with Alabamians who were studying at New York University, including a friend I had studied with at the Alabama School of Fine Arts (ASFA). For the first month, I was to have my own room, but in February, I was to be kicked out into an interior hallway with nothing but a futon because his girlfriend moved in.

The winter of 2001-2002 was the winter with no snow. Even Vermont never got a drop, which was never to be the case again while I lived there. So, New York was, obviously, mostly bare, the grey skies casting a pall over everything. I visited Ground Zero, paid my respects. I had taken one of my brother’s fireman patches and swapped them with a group of firefighters I met in the Bowery to bring home to James. But, outside of that, I was too young to be aware how much others were being affected by the whole thing. And I had my internship to do.

David, raising two children, was generous with his time, but I spent most of the time seeing shows—on and off Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway, even shows that didn’t fit into any of those categories. I can vividly remember each moment of the first Broadway show I saw, Thou Shalt Not, an ill-fated musical devised by The Producers’ director Susan Stroman and written by my favorite jazzman Harry Connick, Jr., and the librettist David Thompson.

It had its unfortunate opening after 9/11 after Rudy Giuliani encouraged everybody to get back to their daily lives. Being a show about murder and death, it had a morgue scene in the second act, which was truncated after audience members complained that it was tasteless considering the events of the “big day.”

THOU SHALT NOT Poster

My second day in the city, I picked up an honest-to-God three-inch-thick copy of the New York Times and saw that Thou Shalt Not was having its last performance. I told the cabby (how I thought my money would last taking cabs, I’ll never know) to take me to the Plymouth Theatre. When the cast recording was released two years later, my girlfriend and I listened to it, and I recounted to her every scene, and I still can. I guess you never forget your first Broadway show. And, while a flop, it was generally regarded as an interesting flop, though critics complained of its nude scene and slightly salacious content, being based on Émile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin, but set in post-WWII New Orleans. Being a Tony voter, David got us into see a lot of shows that season and I plopped down change myself to see the New York premiere of Neil LaBute’s The Shape of Things and a Jean Cocteau Repertory production of Robert Fagles’ translation of Sophokles’ Oedipus Rex. I kept every program, but I’m afraid they ended up with my girlfriend after our breakup some years later. Ah, well, I couldn’t win her, and I didn’t win those gems either, but what can you do?

I’ll never forget seeing Stroman’s other then-running show, Contact. A jubilant dance musical, I watched the stage action, but I was mostly watching the audience, who were crying their eyes out. They needed to see people up and dancing to forget their worries. It was a beautiful thing. The theatre is full of beautiful moments.

The internship included David introducing me to a frequent Sondheim collaborator, John Weidman (who wrote the scenario for Contact), who bought me some crab cakes and a Coke while we discussed his work with the Master. I also was introduced to Craig Lucas, another favorite of mine, and I’m sure, looking back on it, he hit on me—as did the clerk at the Cast Album store where I picked up a CD of Flower Drum Song (as David was rewriting it at the time)—but I was too green to notice any of this. I was a rube in New York after all.

I can’t say I had the time of my life. At ASFA, I lived off two hours’ sleep per night and this only started to affect me in college. They call NYC “the city that never sleeps,” and I certainly didn’t. I remember one very troubling night when I went to a local Chinese grocery with a kindly attendant who always had a smile for me, and I bought a package of Nyquil, hoping to knock me out.

I went home, popped the pills, and fell asleep. When I awoke, I was hoping I had slept through the night. But, instead, I had only been asleep thirty minutes. I spent the rest of the night crying, and I realized then New York wasn’t the place for me. Being from the South, I must have greenery and distance when I look out a window. How was I going to be a playwright and not like New York? Sure, I loved being in the theaters, the museums, the cinemas, but when I would go back out into the urine-stenched streets, the reality that I didn’t much care for the place set in and I suppose that’s why I’m still not there, living in a furniture-less apartment and hoping to get a play on.

I’ve lost a lot of years. Perhaps when I lost everything at the end of college, I should’ve moved there and put in my time. I might have had a career of some note at this point, but I didn’t. Insomnia filled nights and I don’t get along. Plus, I would have never been home to nurse my dad through his bout with cancer.

I spent one more winter in New York, again with David, attended the opening night of his version of Flower Drum (a real treat), was introduced to other luminaries of the stage, like James Lapine. But, aside from a trip at the end of college to see The Lion King (a great opening number and then the rest of it’s just The Lion King), I’ve never been back, nor cared to. Sure, I would have loved to have seen the 2012 revival of Philip Glass and Robert Wilson’s Einstein on the Beach or to have seen the most recent revival of Sondheim’s Follies, but I mostly get along without it.

New York is a place I admire without loving. Watching Spike Lee’s most recent documentary masterpiece, NYC Epicenters-9/11-2021½, I admire its people and the way they make it through together in hard times. But it is admiration I can appreciate from afar. Sure, I hope to have a play on there, some day. I’ll make the trip, but I must have my rural home in which to write.

I’m sure this week brought back many terrible memories for its residents. I mourn with them. I think 9/11 has a lot more to do with our current troubles than is immediately obvious. The point of terrorism is to strike at the ideals, the very heart of a country’s people. Now we are a divided mess in another age of mass hysteria. Bin Laden got what he wanted. America has not been the same since and it may take even more time to truly see how that day ricocheted us into our present state, even considering the events that have proceeded. We don’t know who we are anymore. The terrorists won, in a way. I was just too green to see it back then and I’m too old now to help find a way to fix it, if it can be fixed.

New York, New York—keep trudging on. I wish you had a bit of the kindness that we have in calmer parts of the country (if there are any anymore), but I know why you’re so tough and resilient. I know how you can make or break people. It is to be admired and looked at with a bit of a wry eye. The greatest city in the world? I can’t be sure. I don’t much like cities. I’ve seen cleaner ones, I’ve seen worse. I suppose you must be thanked for keeping theatre alive if you can still dare to do it. So, my gratitude and my commiserations on this anniversary of a terrible day in our nation’s recent past.

Jimmy Buffett (1946-2023): A Legend

After seven weeks of hashing out words (when I was able) about the rehearsal process for a production of Waiting for Godot I’m currently co-starring in at Birmingham Festival Theatre, it is refreshing to sit down at the old computer and write about something else for a change. But boy oh boy, do I wish the subject were a happier one.

I woke up this last Saturday morning in my usual fashion. I don’t watch or read the news. It depresses me too much. But what I do to keep current on recent events is, first thing in the morning, I check out the topmost-read articles on Wikipedia from the previous day. If I see something that piques my interest or makes me wonder why it piqued so much interest from others, I may google the news on the subject. Saturday morning brought with it, for me, terrible news.

I wasn’t quite prepared for my reaction. When I read that Jimmy Buffett had passed away, I reflexively, instinctively cried. The man seemed so ubiquitous—I don’t know if I thought he’d live forever or what, but his death hit me like a ton of bricks. There was a moment, too, where I wondered where such emotion had come from. After all, Mr. Buffett had not produced new music of note in many years. I had even recently re-watched the “Tonsil Trouble” episode of South Park where Buffett was ridiculed in the way most people ridicule him—as a novelty hitmaker, a one-trick-pony.

I suppose I know him almost exclusively from the songs anthologized on the record Songs You Know by Heart. But, boy, do I know them by heart—and so do millions, not just the “Parrotheads” who would attend his concerts, which were more like parties I’m told. My brother, having been born in the late sixties, had the greatest music collection. When I was growing up, I would rifle through all his audio cassettes, LPs—yes, even 8-track tapes—and would always come up with something worth listening to. I probably wore out Songs You Know by Heart more than any of his other tapes. My sister-in-law joked it was probably just for “Cheeseburger in Paradise” because I was so young, but it wasn’t.

Like so many, I was lulled into a kind of island peace with songs like “A Pirate Looks at Forty,” “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes,” and I was most affected by what is perhaps his greatest song—the Country/Western-twinged “Come Monday.”

Buffett indeed straddled many styles. Being born in Pascagoula, Mississippi and partly raised in Fairhope, Alabama—easily my favorite place in my home state—you could most certainly hear Country, but also the famous tropical rhythms he became famous for while busking for drinks down in Key West, Florida.

Of course, there is no one on God’s green Earth who doesn’t know his most famous hit—“Margaritaville”—said to be written within a six minute span. (Boy, I wish I could write something in six minutes and be set for life financially.) His style may have seemed easy, the persona perhaps a bit affected, but the music was always tuneful, reflective, and spoke to the common person. Perhaps it was this universality that was so much disliked. Some music fans are snobs—what can you do? But Buffett fans span the gamut from rednecks in back waters to anyone who is able to afford a tropical vacation. His music has been the soundtrack to not just many a vacation, but many lives in general.

Appropriately, I first fell in love with his music on the water. We would blast his cassettes in a boat, roaming around Lewis Smith Lake, which straddles Walker, Winston, and Cullman counties. That music is perfect for the rocking back and forth of a sea vessel with nothing to do but roll with the waves while getting burnt by the sun. In some ways, Buffett’s style speaks to the lackadaisical in all of us—the part of us that feels rich lying on a beach even though we go home to being broke, work-a-day folks.

My iPhone is loaded with my entire music collection. On the way to work, I will typically skip a lot of tracks—mostly the weird French classical music, the Mendelssohn, the Broadway tunes—but I never fail to let Buffett’s “Volcano” play all the way to the end. A true example of his tropical rock, the song remains a song for our times. The lyrics speak of a volcano about to blow. Don’t we live in such a world? There is this uneasy feeling, at any moment, that everything could go up in smoke and “Volcano” (“Mr. Utley!”) always gives one comfort that everything’s going to be okay, even though that seems less feasible as the days trudge on.

On the boat, I remember my mother being particularly upset when “Why Don’t We Get Drunk (and Screw)” would start up on the tape. You could fast forward in those days, but not fast enough for an eight-year-old boy to still marvel and wonder at the lyrics, which are low-brow, yes, but also unbelievably funny. And Buffett was funny. The ultimate feeling one has when listening to his music is joy, a commodity rare in our day and time.

I don’t know if the man was as care-free as his image. Certainly, the last days couldn’t have been. There has been this trend among celebrities recently to not disclose their illnesses to the public. That just wasn’t the case ten years ago. I’ve lost so many of my idols recently to secret battles with cancer. There’s a part of me that wants to say, “Why didn’t you tell us?” and a part of me that says, “No, I get it. You don’t want us worrying—you want us to remember who you were.” And, yet the ka-blam that happens when they go—is it more painful for it be sudden or would it be better if we were prepared? Ah, well, that is the prerogative of the ill, I suppose. I don’t know what I’d do in the same situation, so I can’t judge. All I can do here is write a tribute to the man.

When you saw pictures of him, he didn’t seem to match the voice on the records. I don’t know what it was, but that moustache just didn’t jibe with the image I had in my head as I listened to him. Of course, in his lifetime, Buffett was criticized for not living up to his image. The equally legendary David Allan Coe, who was criticized for plagiarizing Buffett’s style with his minor hit “Divers Do it Deeper,” wrote a rather cold-hearted song called “Jimmy Buffett,” in which he opined that “Jimmy Buffett doesn’t live in Key West anymore,” calling the singer a sell-out to Malibu after making his money dropping “island beats.” Ah, well, if you know Coe, he was, as Johnny Cash put it, “different,” to say the least.

Buffett’s interests were diversified in many different commercial directions. For those of us who’ve made trips down to Florida, there are “Margaritaville” “restaurants” that certainly don’t live up to the music’s reputation. I’ve never been much for frozen margaritas anyway, but those cheeseburgers are certainly not paradisical. Sorry, Jimmy, but “medium rare” is great for filets, but not burgers, and those burgers don’t do your song justice.

He even had some forays into the theatre. In Miami, he and novelist Herman Wouk collaborated on a musical called Don’t Stop the Carnival, which failed. All that resulted was a concept album with a few good tunes. Most pop song writers don’t do well in the theatre and Buffett was no exception. Eventually, La Jolla Playhouse did a jukebox musical of his, Escape from Margaritaville, which may be exceptional only in that it recalled another of Buffett’s projects: writing books.

My copy of Tales from Margaritaville is certainly a guilty pleasure. Buffett wrote at least one good story in it, “Take Another Road,” which introduced his doppelganger Tully Mars, who is the lead character in the musical. A story of giving up the work-a-day life for travelling the high seas, it is a distillation of all Buffett’s music signified—he wrote songs perfect for vacations, those weird moments where we feel invincible and away from our real lives.

Buffett, in fact, perfected the idea of escaping reality. Perhaps this is why his music is so everlasting and we do know his songs by heart. We all want to throw away the shackles of corporate or blue-collar life and take to the high seas, finding women and rum along the way. Perhaps that is why I cried when he died. We feel shackled to our jobs, slaves to our everyday lives. We all want escapism and his music provided that.

But not at the expense of sometimes bringing us back to earth. Introspective songs like “He Went to Paris” and the aforementioned “Come Monday” speak to basic life truths—longing, heartbreak, wishing, hoping, plus the dreaming of orange-bathed sunsets and endless glasses of tequila, rum, or “Boat Drinks.”

A toast to Jimmy Buffett! who was a thousand times more tuneful than his peers, who carved out his own niche in the world, and made us feel better about the troubles in our dailies.

The first person I thought to contact when he died was my brother, whose tape is probably unplayable now. He wrote back, simply but to the point (as always), “He was a legend.” He was.

To legends! And to joy! And to happiness! And to Paradise (with or without cheeseburgers).

The following is a taste of “Volcano.” I don’t know where I’m a-gonna go when the volcano blows, but I wouldn’t mind landing next to Jimmy and having a party out of nothing but the feeling of goodness and laughter.

An Actor's Journal- Part 7

I’m still vertical. It’s a low bar for living, but there you are.

After this experience—rehearsing for my first stage role in nearly 20 years—I wish I had something profound to say about the craft of acting—preferably something that hasn’t been said before. The truth is, although this is the last of the actor’s journals, it may be a while before I can express in words how my Estragon came to fruition and whether it will ultimately be successful. It’s hard to have eagle eye vision when you’re still standing in the middle of the flames of production.

As I write this, we are preparing for a preview for members of the Board of Directors of BFT and selected invitees. The night previous, all costumes, props, lighting, and set were finalized. A well-known photographer of Birmingham Theatre, Steven Ross, came to document the show during that Final Dress Rehearsal. Earlier that day, Ray and Cliff did a great job promoting the show on Talk of Alabama.

It’s here. After nearly a year, the show is here.

I’m still standing. Or stooping, as so often is Gogo’s stance.

The sheer physical demands of the show are as such that one element will not even be present in our production—that of makeup. Lucky might wear some, but for the rest of us, we would simply melt in our heavy winter costumes under a wash of stage lighting in what will still be a very humid September; the air conditioning will most likely be set for the comfort of the audience, not us. We more peel our costumes off than remove them after a run.

But the Wednesday night performance, for all intents and purposes, was Waiting for Godot, a show I thought would never happen. Through the postponements, an arduous rehearsal process, the letting-go of a cast member, acclimating to a new one...As BFT’s slogan for the show reads, the wait really is finally over. All that is left are the audiences. So far, we have sold a little over a hundred tickets.

One must remember it is the beginning of football season in Alabama. So, not many wives who might be predisposed to do something cultural can pry their husbands away to theaters. That, and the absurd nature of the play might keep many away. But I have been surprised at the number of seats sold for our opening weekend which is, after all, a long holiday weekend for most 9 to 5ers.

It seems Labor Day has a healthy advance and the second weekend too. Perhaps with word of mouth, the final weekend will begin filling up. I have seen packed shows at BFT (a 108 person capacity) and I have seen them with relatively few, as some of their productions have been demanding on an audience more and more leery of being provoked.

Que sera sera: it’s here and there’s nothing else but to give each audience, no matter how large or small, their money’s worth.

I hope through this process I have been generally good to my fellow actors and director, not been too much of a diva or a snob. I regret not being more demanding of myself re: the memorizing of the lines. But, on the other hand, I have not missed a single day of work (or a single day of reading plays or a single day of working on this journal), so it’s been a full plate. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. You know how to eat an elephant, don’t you? One bite at a time. But this has been a pretty damned big elephant.

So, we’re back at the beginning. A few colleagues converge to tell a story for an audience. Each audience member will walk away with their own interpretation of the play. Our costume designer, Martha Summey (an old friend from my teaching days) has only ever read and seen the play in French, so this is quite a different experience for her. I wonder what she’ll think of the English rendering, which I’ve read more and more has startling differences and contains language the English-speaking world wouldn’t have accepted in the mid-1950s.

I wonder what my family and friends will make of it. In order to be grounded in reality, my friends and family are earthy people—simple but not simplistic, easy-going, not artsy. They make life normal for me which aides in my process of creating art. (I would hate to be surrounded by a bunch of neurotics like me. I’d never get anything done.) Will they have any clue what’s going on on the stage? Often, we actors don’t even know and I’ve known this play since middle school. Or, sharp as most audiences are, will they get the main thrust or just enjoy the physical gags? Or stay long enough to see them?

I wonder all these things, but I can’t dawdle on them.

The cliché of clichés: the show must go on.

We’re here. We wait. We go on waiting. At least for three weekends.

Godot, you magnificent bastard, I’ve read your book, taken your name, and I set to work.

Wish me the breaking of the legs.