From A Director’s Notebook: HOW THE CURTAIN DID COME Conflict and Change: The Theatre of Gertrude Stein

FROM A DIRECTOR'S NOTEBOOK: Lawrence Kornfeld HOW THE CURTAIN DID COME Conflict and Change: The Theatre of Gertrude Stein Very Fineis my Valentine veryfine and verv mine very mine is ny valentine very m!ne andverY fine very fine is my valentine andmine veryfine very mine andmine is my valentine. Gertrude Stein Since 1957 1 have been the director of at least sixty plays. Six of these are by Gertrude Stein: In a Garden(1957), What Happened(1963), Play IPlay 11 Play III (1965), A Circular Play A Play in Circles (1968), The Making of Americans (1972), and Listen To Me (1974). These six productions are "very mine" even though they are by Gertrude Stein and Al Carmines and Leon Katz and Meyer Kupfermann and especially the performers who acted and sang and danced them; but they were all very mine even though they were by the people who wrote them and played them. What happened in these productions was what happened to the people who did them; the words and music were not what happened: what happened was that the people who acted and sang and danced were the action the music and the dancing. Only The Making of Americanswas a little different: it was a story about something remembered and continous most of the time: a story that was about what it was saying it was saying (most of the time) so the actors had to often be pretending : they were pretending most of the time that they were other people being remembered and living in this time, but not themselves, I mean not themselves, the real actors on the stage, but people from another place. The other five productions are about what the actors singers and dancers did on the stage when they were on that stage at that time they were doing it. Many of them don't know this or don't believe this, but it is true and they are mistaken : they were only doing what they were doing at that moment on that stage, even though they repeated the same thing night after night and were not improvising. Even though sometimes the actors thought they were pretending, except sometimes in The Making of Americans, they were not pretending. They were saying the words and singing and feeling many deep and beautiful things, and also fighting a lot, mostly with me, and sometimes with each other. Also, they moved around beautifully and were sometimes happy. Most of the time they were fighting with each other and with me; but they were always mine. When they spoke what they felt, and sang what they felt, even if 33 I didn't know what they actually meant or felt, it was still all mine, and the more they fought the better it all was; and all this time I moved them around into pictures and pushed them into fights: fights on the stage, not fights with each other, although that happened too, but not on purpose, only because we were always very volatile. The pictures I made on the stage were always about fighting or not fighting. That is why I have the belief that if Gertrude Stein saw them she would find these plays mostly exciting and not boring; even though she said she didn't like plots, I know she liked fighting because I know that her life was a fight and her Susan B. Anthony in The Mother of Us A// says, "Life is strife, I was a martyr all my life not to what I won but to what was done." What we did with our fighting was always joyous and tragic, that is, we felt many things around us, and our times are tragic and joyous. I am happy about the fighting, the strife, in the plays, but of course I am saddened by the fighting that was not on the stage, but that's what we were doing and it seems that what was happy and loving in these plays was when our fighting stopped for a while. For me, the real play is the process. When I say fighting I mean strife; not just being angry, but also...