What's Happened, Baby Jesus?

program cover by Tarillis J. Seamans

Fifty years ago tonight, What's Happening, Baby Jesus?, a play I wrote and directed, opened in the Studio Theatre at Knox College.

 At some point after I moved here to California in 1996, a then-current Knox student called me, and said she was researching a paper that involved Knox productions in 1968.  She told me that this play was often mentioned by people she interviewed, and had been talked about a lot at Knox for several years after the production.  It was discussed, she said, even with an incoming theatre department professor. This was all news to me.

Perhaps it was remembered because it was the first multi-media production, involving film and music.  It was in other respects as well, very much of its time.

Hue April 1968

 April 1968 was not just another April, just as 1968 was not just another year.  More American troops were engaged in the Vietnam War, more young American men were drafted, and there was more bombing in both North and South Vietnam than ever before.  Early in the calendar year, the Tet offensive by the Viet Cong caused massive casualties on both sides, and while American and South Vietnamese forces ultimately took back territory--with the city of Hue substantially destroyed-- the offensive exposed the quagmire quality of the war.

New York City April 27, 1968

Antiwar protests continued to grow--the march on the Pentagon, first national mobilization, and a huge protest in New York on April 27, the day our show opened.

Earlier that year, Senator Eugene McCarthy nearly defeated President Lyndon B. Johnson in the New Hampshire presidential primary as an anti-war candidate, Senator Robert Kennedy of New York began campaigning for the nomination in following primaries, also against the war. On March 31, LBJ announced he would not be a candidate for re-election.

Chicago April 1968

But that wasn't all.  Racial conflicts continued, with a civil rights protest in February resulting in the deaths of three students.  The Black Power movement gathered strength. Then Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, and the ensuing riots and destruction in an estimated 85 American cities that night and the next day left 30 people dead (11 in Chicago alone), more than 2,000 injured and neighborhoods burned out and in rubble, with martial law and National Guard on the streets of American cities.

Three days before we opened, students at Columbia University in New York began occupying administrative buildings, protesting the university's secret ties to a military think tank and the building of a white-only gym encroaching on the black neighborhoods of Harlem.  There were other student protests in Europe and in the U.S. all year.

And if we needed any reminder of the possibility of instant annihilation we'd lived with all our lives, on the day before we opened the U.S. exploded the largest hydrogen bomb ever detonated in the actual United States, at an underground test site 100 miles from Las Vegas.  It was the 34th nuclear bomb explosion at that site since the start of our school year (the test on February 21 was code named Knox).  There would be six more before my class graduated in June.

(And when I say "all our lives," it was literally true for me--the first big post- World War II US atomic bomb test was exploded the day I was born.)

Sequestered as we were in Galesburg, all of this was part of our lives--and our campus. April 26 was national Vietnam Day but at Knox, April 1968 in fact was Vietnam Month.  Although there was lots of tension between students and administration on various political issues,  Vietnam Month was a consensus project.

Howard Zinn 1968

It began with History professor John Stipp lecturing on the history of Vietnam (and not for the first time.  He and other Knox professors held the first teach-in on campus in 1965.)

 Also that week, English professors Moon, Metz and Douglas Wilson talked about war and literature in the Common Room, while recent Knox alum Stephen Goldberg gave two talks about his experiences with the International Voluntary Services in Vietnam, and the director of the AFL-CIO African American Center lectured.

poet Denise Levertov 1968

The following weeks included at least 9 outside speakers, including the Vietnamese counselor for the Vietnamese Embassy, a Brigadier General, a former Green Beret and current antiwar activist (Donald Duncan), a fairly young Howard Zinn, activist and government professor from Boston; and the poet and activist Denise Levertov.

There were additional faculty discussions, and a faculty and a student debate, and a poetry reading against the war.  Though it wouldn't happen until May, the comic and activist Dick Gregory delivered a memorable speech and answered questions in Harbach Theatre.

In the midst of this came the news that Glenn L. Moller, Jr., a 21 year old former Knox student had been killed in combat in Vietnam.  He'd left Knox the previous year, and otherwise would have graduated with our class in June.  He was the third Knox student killed to that point (after Merriman Smith, Jr., son of the distinguished United Press White House correspondent, and Thomas Dean, brother of one of our classmates, Willard Dean.)  He wouldn't be the last.

Meanwhile, the world flowed through by means of newspapers, television, magazines.  The Knox Student weekly newspaper, as edited by Peter Stetson and Jeremy Gladstone, funneled current Liberation Press Service releases and other material like the notorious "Channeling" document of the Selective Service, outlining how the draft and deferments are used to channel men into careers in "the national interest." Draft resistance was a hot topic in 1968.  Knox student Jim Miller ('68) wrote a series of articles on Canada as a haven, for instance.

  Needless to say, complaints appeared in the letters columns.  But the newspaper did not neglect ordinary campus news--in fact, it did a better job of it than many students newspapers that I've seen do now.

So in the bright and wet warmth of April, our campus was sad, conflicted, bewildered, frustrated, angry and helpless all at once, together with the other emotions and experiences of the campus spring.  Games were played, movies were screened, concerts and recitals were given, art work was exhibited, and plays were performed.

A preliminary and editorial word about the Studio Theatre.  There were a few big productions on the revolving stage in Harbach each year, directed by theatre faculty.  But in the Studio Theatre downstairs, there seemed to be student productions every weekend and sometimes during the week.  The plays were usually directed by theatre students.  Many--though not all-- of the plays were by contemporary playwrights, and many--but not all--were in some sense experimental.

Donald Davis, the original American Krapp
in 1960.  There was likely another actor in
the role when I saw this production in 1965.

Theatre students got experience in directing, acting, scene and costume design and all the technical areas.  Campus playwrights could also get productions.  But all of us got the experience of seeing these plays, that we simply otherwise would not have seen.  It's where I saw my first Albees, Becketts, Pinters, Ionesco and Genet (I remember Joelle Nelson in a Genet play I didn't understand and still don't) and many more, as well as my first Kiralys and Petersons.  I saw seldom produced plays by Yeats and Eliot.

 There are some plays I saw only in the Studio Theatre at Knox, and some that remain in my memory despite seeing them in more professional settings elsewhere.  For example, I saw the original New York production of Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape together with Albee's first play The Zoo Story (the summer between my first and second years at Knox) and just a few years ago, another production of the Beckett.  But the performance I remember most vividly was George Otto's Krapp's Last Tape in 1968 in the Studio Theatre--the Expressionist lighting on his hollow cheeks as his long arms reached for the tapes are indelible images.

I've since also observed that these opportunities for students to make theatre as well as to experience it are not found everywhere.  It was free-range theatre of a kind that I doubt exists much at all anymore.

me in senior year,the fall of 1967 in the Gizmo.
Photo by Bill Thompson.

A play of mine had appeared in the Studio Theatre the previous spring, directed by Richard Newman.  By the Sea By the Sea By the Sea By the Sea was a pastiche comedy, heavily influenced by TV sketch comedy, the Beyond the Fringe LP, British movies (namely Morgan! and the Richard Lester Beatles films), the Liverpool Poets and other aspects of Swinging England, as well as by James Joyce and Marshall McLuhan.  Its theatrical highlight was a scene done in pantomime while the entire Beatles song "The Word" played at full volume, climaxed by Willard Dean driving his motorcycle into the theatre and onto the stage, playing a police officer arresting an elderly protester.

In my senior spring, I directed as well as wrote What's Happening, Baby Jesus? I'd never directed anything, so I made not-even-rookie mistakes like casting it without callbacks to actors who auditioned. But I had a Vision, of a multimedia collision of myth and the moment.  So everything about 1968 at Knox I described here, and a lot I didn't, was involved.

For the multimedia, we used a film collage of mostly World War II newsreel footage that Todd Crandall made.  We had about a fifteen minute pre-show as people were coming in, comprised of a music mix, film projection and a kind of light show.  I created the music tape, interjecting periodic taped announcements of "the next show begins in x minutes" as they used to do at drive-in movie theatres. 1968 was a great year for music: Beatles, Stones, Creem, Hendrix, Doors, Airplane, Dead, Janis with Big Brother, Buffalo Springfield, Country Joe and the Fish, Dylan, Donovan, early BeeGees and so on.

Todd's film ran throughout the show, projected on the wall.  I believe we had more than one film running on more than one wall.  Something like that.  My housemate and friend Bill Thompson ran the light show and did the light cues during the show.  I did the sound cues, so we were together in the booth each evening.  Bill Thompson died suddenly almost exactly a year ago.

We also had music cues during the show, including pieces of "The Baby Jesus Song" which I wrote, sang and played, with additional vocal and instrumental accompaniment by Joni Diner, Marilyn Bell and Ric Newman.  We recorded it on one take by sneaking into the band room and taking covers off a few keyboard instruments, plus whatever percussion we could find.

Bill Thompson was in charge of lighting but he knew as much about theatrical lighting as I did about directing, so without a word, the student previously known as Guy Morose got up in the rigging, fixed our lights and gave us our lightboard cues.  He was a hero by any name, though years later I was so happy to hear (from the wonderful Valjean) that he'd changed it (back) to Guyatano Amorosi.

Our set and costumes were designed by dear sweet Charlie Rice, whose murder in Chicago just months later was a terrible shock.  The absolutely perfect program cover design was by Tarillis J. Seamans, Jane.

Marilyn Bell and Jean Rabinow did the costumes, including a yellow flowered shirt (think Magical Mystery Tour, or Donovan) for me to wear in the booth.  I still have it.  Sandy Berger did props, Steve Clark makeup. (Peter Overton, a star of the show, showed up at rehearsal with a shirt with those shiny ivory buttons he found at the western store in Galesburg.  He wore it in the show, and I liked it so much I went down and bought an identical one for myself.)

Ric Newman was technical director and Joni Diner was the stage manager.  Lucy Mitchell chaired the house committee of ushers: Sherwood Kiraly (whatever happened to him?), Larry Baldacci, Jan Byhre, Bruce Hammond, Henry Keighley, Judy Major, Julie Machnicki, Janie Langer, and two other first years who would be part of my later life, Carol Hartman and Mike Shain.

What's Happening, Baby Jesus? was set in a timeless Old West town, simultaneously a familiar tv western set and the paradigmatic locale of the American myth.

The town was run by Marshall Power, played to perfection by Peter Overton.  At that point, the Vietnam War was owned by LBJ, who had a way of pronouncing it "Amurican." He was an overpowering personality in those days, and his cruder aspects became identified with his war policy.  Many people--especially of my generation, and including me, who worked to elect him in 1964--felt betrayed by his escalation of the war.  He'd expressly said he wouldn't do what he did--send American boys to fight in Vietnam.

So he was the western Marshall, who was also a God the Father Figure.  My Catholic education came home to roost with this play, for sure.  Some of the speeches I copied right out of scripture.  His prodigal son (Sonny), played by Ric Newman, was a go-getter salesman of everything commercial.  The real power however was the sexually aggressive Virgin (Celeste Manking), accompanied by her hapless and frustrated husband Joe (Steve Clark.)

When the Marshall and Sonny have their showdown, their violence creates a third figure: Breath, or The Drifter.  He was sort of the Holy Ghost in Catholic mythology of the Trinity, and sort of the human caught in these rivalries, and becomes the object of their projections (though I would have been unable to describe it that way at the time.)  My biggest failure as a director was not being able to give Sandy Simon much help in developing his character as the Drifter.

There were also a lot of bits.  The play began with a brief Beckett parody of two bums (Bill Daniels and Dan Murray) talking, which went nowhere except for the payoff:  "We're waiting."  "Waiting for who?"  "Waiting for Godard."

Because the next scene was a gunfight between the two masters of the French New Wave, Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut (played by Todd Crandall and Steve Phillips.)  Thanks to David Axlerod and Todd Crandall's Cinema Club, we'd seen a number of their films over my years.  Truffaut and Godard had a bit of a feud after Godard got more political.

I don't know how funny the audience thought this was, but a little more than a decade later I interviewed Truffaut in Hollywood, and I actually told him about this scene.  He laughed.

A scene that did get a big laugh was set up by a couple of blackouts--Mike Shain in a business suit would appear and start to say something but the lights went out immediately.  The third time he did get to say his piece.  It was a pitch by a certain chewing gum company (American Chickle) to recruit Knox students, which I found in my student mailbox.  I literally stapled it into my first draft and added the line: "So come on out and keep America chewing."  Biggest laugh of the night.

One of the other interpolated scenes was a sweet but awkward conversation between a male and female student.  Steve Phillips was the Guy, and Shirley Covington was the Girl.  I don't think Shirley was a Knox student, she may have still been in high school. She was the daughter of an African American minister in Galesburg.  He was head of the church that sponsored at least one Civil Rights march or demonstration there that I participated in.  She just showed up at the tryouts, and I cast her.

When I entered in 1964 Knox had, as far as I know, only one black student.  In 1968 I believe there were about 20.  I may be wrong, but she may have been the first African American to be cast in a Knox production.  At least I don't remember another such instance in my time there.  Not to mention the first portrayal of an interracial relationship.   Her father came to the show, which worried me, given my less than orthodox approach to religious doctrines.  I was also embarrassed by how small the part was.  But they both seemed pleased.

Other actors in the show were Cathy Thompson, Howard Partner, John Hofsas and Bonnie Lucas.  Jeremy Gladstone and Charlie Rice captained the construction crews.

Joni.  Photo by Bill Thompson

Eventually the Marshall and Sonny put the the Drifter and his young disciples on trial (for "self-possession") and they are imprisoned. It's pretty clearly a stand-in for the draft: having them dance to the Country Joe and the Fish song, "I Feel Like I'm Fixin to Die Rag" was a big clue.

In their cells (pools of light) they made quiet statements and restatements ("Try Paradise Apples.  Paradise Apples Get You Off") including a haiku or two, and part of "Rules and Games," a speech written by Fred Newman, a philosophy professor who left Knox after my first year.  (I dedicated the play to Fred, and to Joni, my--what word do I use?  I prefer "sweetheart."  And Muse. )

(Later, after we'd parted ways, Joni left behind the role of supporting the creativity of others and went on the stage herself, acting in Providence, RI.)

The play ended with the Drifter finding apples and sharing them with the other prisoners, a blackout, while last lines of Dylan's song "The Drifter's Escape" played:  "Just then a bolt of lightning struck the courthouse out of shape/and while everybody knelt to pray, the drifter did escape."  Then lights up to an empty stage.

In those years, the Knox Student reviewer came to a run-through and wrote a review that appeared the Friday before the production.  Our show was generously reviewed by Rod Barker ('68), especially considering we were ridiculous rivals in our testosterone-riven writers workshops.  He was right that the production and the script were experimental, and a lot didn't work; that some lines were good and some were dumb. He was right that it was an unfinished work.  But he said it was a fun experience for an audience.  "The play and characters are multi-faceted and multi-dimensional and can be appreciated on many levels.  Everyone, I'm sure, could find at least one."

One of those levels was the one--or ones--appreciated by seeing the show stoned.  Smoking or ingesting the substance now known as cannabis had arrived on the Knox campus secretly a year or two earlier, but it was more open and much more widespread in 1967-68.  And it was a factor in the show's effects (including strobe lights) and multimedia.

Jane Langer and Carol Hartman, among the
first year ushers for the play

But it was also a factor that productions had to face.  At the time, those students who indulged tended to know each other, even if they didn't look the part.  There were "freaks" and "straights."  So I pretty much knew which members of the cast indulged.  I got them together at the first rehearsal and asked them to refrain from coming to rehearsals stoned, and if they did that, we would have a "stoned rehearsal" late in the process, so we would all be on the same "level."

Which we did--one of our last rehearsals before we moved into the Studio Theatre.  We held a run-through in the lobby space.  It was a bit confusing for those cast members not in the know, though at least one responded to the vibe by loosening up his performance.  I asked him later to keep those moments in the show, but it was never quite as good.  The rest of us had a great time, and we all saw new dimensions in what we were doing.  (One cast member, however, confessed he didn't understand the show until running it again in his head at the cast party  closing night.)  This rehearsal ended with an unscheduled blackout--the lights just all went out at precisely the right second.  We all praised our stage manager for an inspired effect, but she claimed that she had simply collided with the light switches by accident.  So in other words, it was perfect.

Also on campus on that Sunday, our second and closing night, was poet, translator and columnist John Ciardi.  He'd finished his talk early enough to get to our show, and came down to the green room afterwards to say how much he liked it.  He'd especially enjoyed the line "Why are all my friends allegorical figures?"  Since he'd translated Dante--I read at least some of his Inferno my first year, along with his Saturday Review column-- I could understand that.  He surprised me--he was known at that point to be unsympathetic to the growing counterculture--and I regret not being more welcoming.  But in general I was a jerk way too often anyway.

What's Happening, Baby Jesus? was of its time in maybe another way.  At about the same time as we did our show, a little musical was opening called Hair.  In 1969 I attended a performance of the now big hit Hair in San Francisco, because Ric Newman was in the cast.  I was standing in the lobby afterwards when suddenly he was embracing me, and babbling about how we should revive Baby Jesus somehow, it was the perfect time.  I was skeptical.  Even though Jesus Christ Superstar would open in 1970, I didn't see much resemblance to these pretty conventional musicals, however daring their subjects or themes.  But it's nice to think we might have done a better version of it.

Richard Newman (right) in the 2005 film Supernatural

I saw Ric a time or two more in San Francisco that fall but lost track of him.  Then late one night in the mid 1980s, on the other side of the continent, I was half asleep with the television on a cable movie channel.  My eyes were closed and I wasn't following the movie at all when suddenly I heard this voice: I knew immediately it was Ric.

 But by the time I opened my eyes, the scene was over. I made myself stay awake till the credits when I could confirm it.  It was Finders Keepers, an obscure movie my old favorite Richard Lester made between his Superman and Three Musketeers films.  And there was Richard Newman in the credits. Now thanks to the magic of the Internet Movie Data Base, I found all 181 (and counting) of his credits as primarily a voice actor but also onscreen actor.

It's pleasant to be nostalgic about a common enterprise 50 years ago, with fond memories of people and good moments.  But memories of that time and this play in particular aren't real without the complicated context, and I've barely scratched the surface here.

Looking back on the experience, I enjoyed the collaboration within the process of finding my production.  I recall very early in the process, when I was going over casting possibilities, probably with Ric and Joni, someone suggested that two characters could be combined.  I instantly saw that possibility, not only to solve a casting problem but to strengthen the play.  Later, it was watching what the actors did, and guiding and selecting.

Looking back on the only draft of the script I could find (an early one), I see that it was an awkward search for a way out, past despair, joking all the way.  It blundered towards integrity, freedom and human warmth, not often reconcilable.

So I've gone on at length, on something that not many could write about--in some ways, only me.  The other side of that coin is that it is quite possibly of interest to only myself.  In general, I am reconciled to that.