'The play's the thing' once again

The greatest loss in being laid off by the newspaper, besides the loss of income, was the loss of opportunity to review local theater productions. With a little academic background, a love of theater and, most importantly, a willingness to do it, I became the default reviewer for local productions by The Playhouse and Barton College. Over nearly 30 years, I saw a lot of great performances and only a handful of miscues. I spent many a late night laboring over a review that would appear in the next day's paper. I can honestly say that only one or two of the dozens of productions I saw were not very good.

I don't know that my reviews did a lot for theater in Wilson, but they did give each production an extra boost of attention from the newspaper, and I think, occasionally at least, might have led some audience to the theater. Paul Crouch, the retired director of the drama program at Barton, told me after he retired that he had always told his students and cast to pay no attention to the reviews in the newspaper because "None of them know what they're talking about." Fair enough.

Saturday night, I went to see "Member of the Wedding," one of two plays on this year's Theater of the American South playbill. I went without a notepad and pen and without a complimentary ticket. If I were reviewing this production, I'd say it was an outstanding staging of a powerful story by Carson McCullers with an honest depiction of interracial relationships in the Jim Crow South and the deep anxieties of a 12-year-old girl.

What was most impressive about the play were the performances of the two main characters, 13-year-old Maddie Taylor of Chapel Hill as Frankie Addams and Yolanda Rabun as Berenice, the family cook, who is also a surrogate mother for Frankie. Taylor, who has numerous film and television credits despite her young age, lived up to her highly acclaimed reputation. She had a stage presence that was gripping and endearing. Rabun captured her role beautifully with all the nuance of a life that is central to white society but outside of it. Rabun's combination of loving care and demanding discipline was perfectly on target, and her singing voice in three brief stagings was spine-tingling. Adam Twiss of Barton College directs a moving production with a more than adequate supporting cast. But it is Taylor and Rabun, who are onstage nearly the entire play, who carry the story and make the drama real.

How far has Theater of the American South, Gary Cole's bold planting of a major theater festival in sleepy Wilson, come? "Member of the Wedding" competes well with "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" from the first year of TOTAS. It was good to see some local performers in the cast, albeit in minor roles, in a festival that has relied primarily on professional actors. The Wilson community remains enthusiastic about the festival, which also attracts patrons from many miles away for its plays, cooking demonstrations, lectures and other events.

With "Member of the Wedding," Theater of the American South is alive and well once again this year as it wraps up its 2010 season tonight.

Two theater patrons upstage Zelda

The Theater of the American South's Friday night opening was a one-woman show, but two women were in the spotlight before the curtain rose. Before Betsy Henderson portrayed neurotic, aging Zelda Fitzgerald on stage, Edna Earle Boykin and Carol Blake Baldwin accepted the ovations of the crowd who gathered for a reception celebrating the reopening of the Edna Boykin Cultural Center, formerly known as the Wilson Theatre.

Arts Council director Barry Page, in a voice that required no amplification, reviewed for the crowd the history of the place where they had gathered and the contributions of the two women in turning the Boykin Center into the showplace it has become. The city-owned theater had recently undergone nearly $100,000 in structural repairs. Page also cited the contributions of local attorney Woody Harrison, who led a small group that kept the theater's dream alive at a time when few people thought its transformation was possible. Donors provided food and drinks for the reception for everyone attending the Friday night production.

Boykin, a retired school principal (and once Page's boss), spearheaded city efforts to preserve and renovate the theater. She recalled the public opposition to the project as a costly boondoggle that would never succeed. As a member of City Council, Boykin got out in front of public opinion and pushed the vision for renovation of the theater, which had recently been an X-rated movie house. Boykin also made the largest private donation to the theater renovation, earning her name a place on the marquee.

Carol Blake, who has since left Wilson, kept the theater project alive in those early years as a part-time director and preservationist. She finagled volunteers and community service workers to stabilize the theater and begin its renovation, even when it had no effective heating or air conditioning, its seats were a wreck and its ornate plaster was falling. Blake and Harrison fought off the naysayers who wanted the 1919 theater sold or bulldozed.

After the recognitions and Boykin's witty comments, it was time for "The Last Flapper." Henderson faced the unenviable task of spending two hours alone on stage, reciting nonstop dialogue as Zelda's schizophrenic mind relives various key events in her life. Henderson made William Luce's script, confined to a psychiatrist's  office at Highland Hospital in Asheville, plausible. The play moves slowly at first as Henderson's extended soliloquy is interjected by announcements over the hospital's public address system. The pace picks up halfway through the first act when Zelda begins recalling and reliving her sometimes-rocky relationship with F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Henderson carries Zelda's perspective through the volatile second act.

Watching Henderson's monumental challenge of recreating the nonstop thoughts of a deranged woman for two hours, I began to wonder why playwrights have so taken to one-person shows. We've gone from a minute or two of Shakespearean soliloquy (Hamlet's "To be or not to be ..." or Lady MacBeth's "Out, out, damned spot ...") to two full hours of monologue, which has to challenge even the most skilled actors and the most effective and efficient memories. Last year at Theater of the American South, Quinn Hawkesworth did an amazing job in spending two hours on stage in Lee Smith's "Fair and Tender Ladies" (she had been Allan Gurganus' "Oldest Living Confederate Widow" the year before). The only thing that makes Hawkesworth's achievement overshadow Henderson's this year is that Hawkesworth also had a major role in the theater festival's other production last year, "Steel Magnolias," which ran in repertory. That anyone can remember that many lines and deliver them flawlessly,  as both Hawkesworth and Henderson did, absolutely amazes me.

The one-person show trend seems to have started, at least in my memory, 30 or so years ago with Hal Holbrooke's highly successful "Mark Twain Tonight." Other historical figures, including Harry Truman, have been portrayed in one-person shows, and playwrights seem to like the genre. But these scripts have to be a challenge for actors, and the audience is subjected to a performance that is, in essence, a two-hour lecture, no matter how well performed. I'll confess to having to fight to keep from nodding off deep into these one-person shows, and I've noted many others making the same struggle.

Shakespeare knew that good theater was about action, and that requires more than one character on the stage, so he kept his soliloquies mercifully brief. And that was long before our attention spans were decimated by news briefs, texting, Twitter and sound bites.

Tour validates Wilson's artsy reputation

One transplanted Wilsonian proclaimed last Saturday's first Visual Arts Studio Tour "as good as anything we ever saw in New York." The day-long open house at the studios of dozens of artists was proclaimed a success, one that is likely to become an annual event.

This success enhances Wilson's status as an oasis for artists and bolsters Lindsey de Guehery's suggestion that Wilson promote itself as the "City of the Arts." If Durham can transform its image from rough-and-tumble Tobacco Town to City of Medicine, Wilson can effect a similar transition.

Saturday's tour truly did validate the art proponents' claim that Wilson is an art-friendly and art-supportive community. From Studio One, an artists cooperative in the Walston Center, to world-renown photographer Burk Uzzle's studio home on Vance Street to celebrated whirligig artist Vollis Simpson's whimsical creations near Lucama and in downtown Wilson and to the numerous other painting, sculpture, pottery, woodworking and fabric artists around town, local artists give Wilson a distinctive patina. One of the delights of last weekend's tour was that most studios were not crowded, giving patrons an opportunity to talk to the artists about their art. The Wilson Arts Council's holiday art reception is often so jam-packed that it's difficult to see all the art on display and for sale.

Wilson can leverage this acknowledgment among the arts community of the town's receptiveness toward artists by continuing to support the Arts Council (an object of frequent criticism among the angry philistines) and by promoting art on the city's, county's and Tourism Authority's Web sites.

Next month, the Theater of the American South makes its third run in Wilson, bringing top-rated professional theater, along with cooking demonstrations and lectures on Southern culture and literature, to Wilson. By the fall, Barton College should be ready to dedicate its Lauren Kennedy and Alan Campbell Theatre, giving a decisive boost to the college's drama program.

Promoting Wilson's artistic potential could pay big dividends for the city, but that promotion has been largely limited to local artists, such as Uzzle, who have been acclaiming this community to artist friends in places such as New York. Local organizations, such as the Arts Council, Downtown Development Corporation and the city need to take up the banner. The local Tourism Authority would ordinarily be a key promoter, but the tax-supported agency is ridiculously ensconced in a nondescript storefront next to a tobacco retailer off Interstate 95, miles from the artists who give Wilson a distinctive persona.

One theater giveaway; one news story underplayed

Looks like the Arts Council of Wilson owns a theater, whether it likes it or not. The Wilson Daily Times is reporting today that Arts Council officials are pretty much speechless over the donation of the city-owned Edna Boykin Cultural Center to the nonprofit agency. They don't know what to say. While it's not nice to look a gift theater in the footlights, this gift could turn out to be an albatross.

Wilson City Council agreed to be generous in one fell swoop in a meeting earlier this month, voting first to repair the landmark theater's roof trusses (damaged by a leaky roof) and then agreeing without warning to donate the theater to the Arts Council. Doing so gets the asset, which can be a big liability, off the city's books, and it saddles the Arts Council with unknown future maintenance costs. At a minimum, the Arts Council will have to take out an insurance policy on the building. Councilman James Johnson made the unexpected motion to make the gift, and his motion passed quickly and without any input from the Arts Council. It seems obvious that Johnson had done his homework to line up  the votes to support his plan, but it also appears that he did not seek the approval of arts advocates who may justifiably worry how much of a burden this gift will turn out to be.

Some history is needed: In the early 1980s, City Council members were embarrassed to have X-rated  movies advertised on a marquee little more than a block from City Hall. To get rid of the embarrassing eyesore, the city bought the Wilson Theatre (I recall the purchase price being $100,000), shut down the projectors and cleared the marquee. Little was done to rehabilitate  the historic 1919 theater until some years later. The city again put up most of the money, matching private donations (including $150,000 from Edna Boykin) to restore the theater. Management of the theater was turned over to the Arts Council, but the city kept the deed and responsibility for major repairs.

Today's news story appears to be a compensation for the grossly underplayed original story. On Jan. 16,  the WDT reported, far down in a story with a headline that made no reference to the theater or Arts Council: 

"In other business, The City Council also made a decision on repairs to the downtown Edna Boykin Cultural Center. The council decided to have the ceiling trusses repaired for $91,750. Councilman James Johnson III recommended that the city turn over the property deed to the Arts Council of Wilson after the repairs are complete. The council voted in favor of the move." 

That's it? More than 25 years of city ownership of one of Wilson's most visible and most-used historic structures ended in a quick and surprising vote, and all it's worth is a two-sentence mention under the "other business" rubric? City Council drops a new liability on a nonprofit organization that attracts thousands of members, donors and patrons and earns Wilson a reputation as an arts-oriented city, and it's only worth two sentences? The city gives away a historic theater that is home to the Theater of the American South, and it's not even worth a separate news story in what is supposed to be a local, local, local newspaper? What could be a bigger local story than the city's giving away (without negotiation) the theater it has owned for more than 25 years? And why did it take nearly two weeks for the folks at the WDT to realize they blew this story the first time around?

The city's gift might result in a workable arrangement in the long run. The newspaper's downplaying of City Council's action will remain an egregious shirking of its watchdog role.

Raleigh editor gives Wilson arts a plug

News & Observer executive editor John Drescher's front-page column today is ostensibly about the impact of N&O photographs, but it also gives a huge plug to Wilson as an arts community. Drescher quotes Burk Uzzle, a former N&O photographer who went on to work for Life magazine and establish a legend as a photographer, about Wilson. Uzzle, who only recently moved to Wilson, tells Drescher, "I keep turning up people who are active in the art world here. It's a great place to live. I just love it."

Wilson has welcomed Uzzle to the community. I attended a reception welcoming Uzzle to Wilson, and his photos are now on exhibit at Barton College's galleries. I have not been to see the exhibit, which also includes the work of other photographers, but I hope to make it this week.

And now the editor in Raleigh has taken notice and given Wilson a nice promotion.

Several months ago, Lindsey de Guehery, a Wilson physician, suggested in a letter to the editor that Wilson promote itself as The City of the Arts. (Don't bother looking for this letter in the Wilson Times online archive; I just did, and I couldn't find it.) As opinion editor at the time, I endorsed the idea, but Wilson's claim to such a lofty title seems endangered now. The last two theatrical productions in Wilson — Barton College's "Crucible" and Wilson Playhouse's "Christmas Belles" — were not reviewed by the local newspaper. The Edna Boykin Cultural Center, venue for most live performances in Wilson, is closed for ceiling and roof repairs. Unless the repairs are done quickly, the 2009 Theater of the American South festival could be jeopardized. Wilson has a plethora of visual artists, such as Oona Lewis, Keve Clayton, Vollis Simpson, Mark Gordon, J. Chris Wilson and dozens more, but these people who give this old tobacco and agriculture community a patina of beauty and sophistication get little recognition in their own town.

Wilson has a vibrant arts community that can set this town apart. Too bad that, like a biblical prophet in his own town, these artists don't get much local respect or recognition.

Wilson's Cultural Center needs repairs now

Playhouse's production of "Christmas Belles" was performed over the weekend at the DelMastro Auditorium at Wilson Community College. Although the Thursday night crowd (when I attended) was respectable and appreciative, the college auditorium lacked the ambiance and the capabilities of the Edna Boykin Cultural Center, where Playhouse usually stages its productions.

The ceiling in the city-owned 90-year-old theater is sagging and needs extensive repairs. Concerts, plays and other events slated for the Boykin Center have been moved or rescheduled. The latest, unofficial word I heard was that it could be months, even up to a year, before the Boykin Center is ready for showtime again. A delay of that duration would deal a serious blow to entertainment in Wilson.

Even six months of delay would jeopardize the Theater of the American South, scheduled at the end of May. Moving TOTAS to another location would break the theater festival's continuity and its focus on Wilson's historic downtown. TOTAS, in its third year, has begun to develop a strong fan base and attract patrons from other cities. Wilson businesses and individuals have supported the festival financially. Founding director Gary Cole exudes his love and appreciation for Wilson, but this festival could go anywhere in the region. And plenty of cities would love to be known as home to Theater of the American South.

Wilson officials had better get on the ball and finish the repairs to the Boykin Center — and do so while retaining the 1920s charm of its plaster work on walls and ceiling. Wilson's claim as a host of vibrant theater and performing arts is in danger, and the two decades it took to restore the theater initially, could be lost.