Friday the Thirteenth

[I’m currently working on a prospective new post—nearing its completion, I hope—and one of the subject’s most traumatic experiences happened to him on Friday the 13th (April 1934).  There are from one to three Friday the 13th's every year (2019 will have had two, today and in December).  Why is Friday the 13th believed to be unlucky?  I found three interesting articles on line that might offer some explanation of that question.

[There are, of course, many superstitions about occurrences and objects that are supposed to bring bad luck—and I’m only familiar with the ones we hold to in the U.S.  Other cultures have different bad-luck signs and symbols.  Most Americans know not the walk under ladders, avoid letting black cats cross their paths, sit 13 diners at a table, play poker with a hand of a pair of aces and a pair of eights (known as the “Dead Man’s Hand” because legend says that Wild Bill Hickok was holding that hand when he was murdered), or light three cigarettes with a single match—especially if you’re the third smoker!  (Excellent reason to give it up.) 

[There are even specialized bad luck-bringers for different professions; I’m a theater guy, so I know not to whistle back stage or, most dangerous, utter the title of “The Scottish Play” within a theater building.  (Okay, I’m not  in a theater now, so I’ll tell the uninitiated that the play is Macbeth.  According to legend and lore, disasters of one kind or another accompany productions of that Shakespearean play, so the belief grew up around it.)  Probably the most common bad-luck taboo in theater is wishing fellow actors and stage crew members good luck—so we tell each other “Break a leg” instead.  Even non-theater folks have heard that one.

[One of the biggest fears for most superstitious Americans (and some others—German, Polish, and Portuguese  cultures) is the appearance of the number 13.  That’s called triskaidekaphobia, as you’ll see below.  (Fear of Friday the 13th is called either paraskevidekatriaphobia, from the Greek words paraskevi,’Friday,’ and dekatreís, ‘thirteen,’ or friggatriskaidekaphobia; Frigga is the Norse name for Freya, the wife of Odin and the source for the name of Friday.   

[My building doesn’t have a 13th floor—at least not a floor with that designation; obviously, the floor numbered 14 is the 13th story in the building—so no one lives in an apartment designated 13A, B, or C here.  Most buildings are that way—though not the Empire State Building, which has a floor numbered 13.  There is, however, a 13th Street in Manhattan, just three blocks south of my apartment building.  There even used to be a 13th Avenue on the far West Side of Manhattan along the Hudson on landfill, but it was removed, along with the landfill, in the early 20th century in order to build longer Hudson River piers for the larger ships being launched at the time.  Brooklyn also has a 13th Street and a 13th Avenue. ]

WHY IS FRIDAY THE 13th CONSIDERED UNLUCKY?

By Sean Hutchinson

[This article appeared on the website Mental Floss on 13 July 2018 (https://mentalfloss.com/article/598432/how-siri-got-its-name).]

Today, people around the globe will feel uneasy about getting out of bed, leaving their homes, or going about their normal daily routines, all because of a superstition. These unfortunate folks suffer from paraskavedekatriaphobia, a common neurosis familiar to us all: the fear of Friday the 13th. But just where did this superstitious association come from, and how did it catch on?

The truth is that no one is absolutely sure where the idea that Friday the 13th is unlucky originated. Donald Dossey, the founder of the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in Asheville, North Carolina, suspects the fear can be traced back to a Norse myth about 12 gods who had a dinner at Valhalla—the fabled hall where legendary Norse heroes feasted for eternity after they died—that was interrupted by a 13th guest, the evil and mischievous god Loki.

According to legend, Loki tricked Höðr (the blind god of winter and son of Odin, the supreme god in Norse mythology [pronounced HOTHR]) into shooting his brother Baldr (the benevolent god of summer who was also a son of Odin) with a magical spear tipped with mistletoe—the only substance that could defeat him. Thus the number 13 was branded as unlucky because of the ominous period of mourning following the loss of such powerful gods by this unwanted 13th guest.

For whatever reason, among many cultures, the number 12 emerged throughout history as a “complete” number: There are 12 months in a year, 12 signs of the zodiac, 12 Gods of Olympus, 12 sons of Odin, 12 labors of Hercules, 12 Jyotirlingas or Hindu shrines where Shiva is worshipped, 12 successors of Muhammad in Shia Islam, and 12 tribes of Israel. In Christianity, Jesus was betrayed by one of his 12 Apostles—Judas—who was the 13th guest to arrive for the Last Supper. Surpassing the number 12 ostensibly unbalances the ideal nature of things; because it is seen as irregular and disrespectful of a sense of perfection, the number 13 bears the stigma of misfortune and bad luck we know today.

WHY FRIDAY?

Friday joins in the mix mostly because all of the early accounts of Jesus’s crucifixion agree that it took place on Friday—the standard day for crucifixions in Rome. As Chaucer noted in The Canterbury Tales, “And on a Friday fell all this mischance.” Yet perpetuating Friday as an unlucky day in America came from the late 19th-century American tradition of holding all executions on Fridays; Friday the 13th became the unluckiest of days simply because it combined two distinct superstitions into one. According to the Oxford University Press Dictionary of Superstitions, the first reference to Friday the 13th itself wasn’t until 1913. (So despite actually occurring on Friday, October 13, 1307, the popular notion that the Friday the 13th stigma comes from the date on which the famed order of the Knights Templar were wiped out by King Philip of France is just a coincidence.)

The repercussions of these phobias reverberated through American culture, particularly in the 20th century. Most skyscrapers and hotels lack a 13th floor, which specifically comes from the tendency in the early 1900s for buildings in New York City to omit the unlucky number (though the Empire State Building has a 13th floor). Some street addresses also skip from 12 to 14, while airports may skip the 13th gate. Allegedly, the popular Friday the 13th films were so-named just to cash in on this menacing date recognition, not because the filmmakers actually believed the date to be unlucky.

So, is Friday the 13th actually unlucky? Despite centuries of superstitious behavior, it largely seems like psychological mumbo jumbo. One 1993 study seemed to reveal that, statistically speaking, Friday the 13th is unlucky, but the study’s authors told LiveScience that though the data was accurate, “the paper was just a bit of fun and not to be taken seriously.” Other studies have shown no correlation between things like increased accidents or injuries and Friday the 13th.

And Friday the 13th isn’t a big deal in other cultures, which have their own unlucky days: Greeks and Spanish-speaking countries consider Tuesday the 13th to be the unluckiest day, while Italians steer clear of Friday the 17th. So today, try to rest a little easy—Friday the 13th may not be so unlucky after all.

*  *  *  *

STATISTICALLY SPEAKING, IS FRIDAY THE 13th REALLY UNLUCKY?

by Remy Melina

[The article below was originally published on the website Live Science on 13 January 2012 (https://www.livescience.com/17900-statistically-speaking-friday-13th-unlucky.html).]

The number 13 is synonymous with bad luck. It’s considered unlucky to have 13 guests at a dinner party, many buildings don’t have a 13th floor and most people avoid getting married or buying a house on a day marked by this dreaded number. Especially superstitious folks even avoid driving on Friday the 13th.

But is there any statistical proof to support the superstition that Friday the 13th — or even just the number 13 itself — is unlucky?

“No data exists, and will never exist, to confirm that the number 13 is an unlucky number,” said Igor Radun of the Human Factors and Safety Behavior Group at the University of Helsinki’s Institute of Behavioural Sciences in Finland. “There is no reason to believe that any number would be lucky or unlucky.” 

Radun might very well be correct, but there are a few bits of scientific research that have given superstitious folk a little more cause for concern, even if the scientists who performed the work aren’t necessarily alarmed by their findings. [10 Weird Things Humans Do Every Day, and Why ]

For starters, a 1993 study published in the British Medical Journal indicates otherwise. Researchers analyzed the traffic flow and number of injuries from car accidents on the southern section of London’s M25 motorway during the five months that the 13th fell on a Friday between 1990 and 1992.

They compared these numbers to data collected on Friday the 6th of the same months, and found that although there are consistently fewer vehicles on the road during the 13th — possibly as a result of superstitious people choosing not to drive that day, the researchers proposed — “the risk of hospital admission as a result of a transport accident may be increased by as much as 52 percent” on the 13th.

But before triskaidekaphobics, or those who fear the number 13, say “I told you so,” it should be noted that although the data were authentic, the authors didn’t mean for their conclusions to be taken seriously.

“It’s quite amusing and written with tongue firmly in cheek,” said Robert Luben, a researcher at the school of clinical medicine at the University of Cambridge and one of the study’s authors. “It was written for the Christmas edition of the British Medical Journal, which usually carries fun or spoof articles.”

Many people took the study at face value and it continues to be cited as valid evidence regarding the misfortune of both the number 13 and Friday the 13th .

“(Some people) clearly didn’t understand that the paper was just a bit of fun and not to be taken seriously,” Luben told Life’s Little Mysteries. “Many also assumed that the authors were ‘believers.’ I’m sure that most of these people hadn’t read the paper, which suggests that people being superstitious affects their behavior.”

Since the 1993 study, other studies have been written showing that it’s just women who have more accidents on Friday the 13th , with further studies determining that that’s actually not the case. Other research results attempting to measure just how unlucky the number 13 is are mixed.

For example, in 2005, the United Kingdom newspaper The Telegraph analyzed the winning lottery balls dating back to when the UK National Lottery began in 1994. They found that the number 13 is the unluckiest ball, since it was drawn a total of 120 times since 1994, compared with the luckiest ball, number 38, which was drawn a total of 182 times. But, “of course, there is no way of predicting which balls will be luckiest in the future,” the article cautions.

Not everyone has found similar patterns.

“Unfortunately, most of studies dealing with Friday the 13th and the number 13 are solely focused on statistical data, such as accident data, stock exchange data, etc., without any attempt to establish a ‘direct’ relationship between belief, or superstition, and behavior,” said Radun, who is co-author of the 2004 study “Females Do Not Have More Injury Road Accidents on Friday the 13th,” which was published in the journal BMC Public Health. “Therefore, it is not surprising that contradictory results may occur … In our study, we did not find that either women or men have more injury road accidents on Friday 13th compared to previous and following Fridays.” [Superstitions Bring Real Luck, Study Reveals ]

Luben agrees that studies about statistics surrounding the number 13 should acknowledge how people’s superstitions influence how they act. He wrote in his study that “superstitions affect behavior in all cultures in all parts of the world in some form or other.” So whether you vow to never play the number 13 in a lottery or declare that 13 is your lucky number just to go against the grain, the stigma surrounding the number still influenced your decision.

“There are no lucky or unlucky numbers; they exist only in our heads – or in the heads of some of us – and they might become lucky or unlucky only if we make them as such,” Radun said.

But many triskaidekaphobics, who count author Stephen King and former president Franklin Roosevelt among their ranks, don’t need statistical evidence or hard facts to back up their conviction that the number is truly cursed. As with any superstition, no matter how irrational it may be, some people will still choose to believe in it.

[This story was provided by Life’s Little Mysteries, a sister site of Live Science.]

*  *  *  *

17 TERRIBLE THINGS THAT HAVE HAPPENED ON FRIDAY THE 13th

by Gabbi Shaw

[The article below first appeared on the website Insider, created, according to its metadata, on 27 December 2017 (https://www.insider.com/worst-things-friday-the-13th-2017-12).]

Friday the 13th is so famously unlucky that there’s even a phobia dedicated to it: friggatriskaidekaphobia.

Even if you personally don’t put stock in this fear, there are a lot of people who do. According to CNBC, the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute estimated that between $700 to $800 million dollars are lost every Friday the 13th because people are afraid to shop, travel, and conduct business.

Still think it’s just a superstition? These events might be enough to convince even the most determined non-believer.

Buckingham Palace was bombed during WWII.

According to the New York Daily News, the German forces during WWII bombed Buckingham Palace on September 13, 1940. The bombs hit both the palace and its chapel.

Even scarier, the King and Queen were both at the residence at the time of the attack. Even though the event was traumatic, Queen Elizabeth merely stated she was “glad we have been bombed. Now I can look the East End in the face.”

Tupac Shakur passed away.

The murder of Tupac Shakur is one of the most famous unsolved cases in recent history. Some say he was taken out by his friend Suge Knight, others are convinced it was Christopher Wallace (a.k.a the Notorious B.I.G.), while others still think the FBI conspired to kill Shakur in order to end the violent East Coast vs West Coast feud.

The details we do know: Shakur was shot four times on September 7, 1996 in Las Vegas. He succumbed to his injuries six days later on Friday, September 13.

A British 13-year-old was struck by lightning on Friday the 13th, at 13:13.

While getting struck by lightning is definitely horrible, this incident ended up being a miracle. According to the Daily Mail, the unnamed teenager was struck by lightning while at an air show in England and was treated only for burns on his shoulder. The hospital stated he was expected to make a full recovery.

Kitty Genovese, a Queens resident, was brutally attacked and murdered.

The murder of Kitty Genovese took place on March 13, 1964. According to the New York times, Genovese was raped and killed by Winston Moseley inside of her apartment building. The crime is famous because, allegedly, 38 people heard the attack, and none of them called the police — making the “bystander effect” a household term.

It was later suggested that the reporting of the crime was inaccurate and greatly exaggerated. But no matter the specifics, an innocent woman died, which is truly tragic.

The Costa Concordia cruise ship ran aground off the coast of Italy.

The Costa Concordia sank into the ocean on January 13, 2012. According to Vanity Fair, it became the largest passenger ship ever wrecked, with almost double the amount of people on board than on the Titanic.

When all was said and done, 32 people died and the captain was convicted of manslaughter in 2015.

Kansas experienced record-breaking amounts of rain and flooding.

On July 13, 1951, the state of Kansas was hit with over 25 inches of rain. The cities of Manhattan, Lawrence, and Topeka were most affected, and over two million acres of land were damaged by the flood.

The storm also affected oil tanks, some of which caught on fire and exploded. There were passengers that were stuck on trains for four days. And, at its highest, the flooding exceeded previous records by four to nine feet.

The people of Kansas were not wrong to call this day “Black Friday.”

The stock market experienced a “mini-crash” in 1989.

After the buyout of United Airlines fell through on October 13, 1989, the ripples were felt throughout the stock market, specifically the junk bond market.

According to CNBC, this resulted in a seven percent sell-off in the Dow, and the S&P 500 lost six percent. Essentially, a lot of people lost a lot of money.

A flight through the Andes ended in disaster and death.

Uruguayan Flight 571 was headed towards Chile when it crash-landed in the Andes on October 13, 1972. In the following days after the crash, the survivors were reduced to hiding in the fuselage of the plane and eating deceased passengers, according to People.

The rescue efforts were called off only 10 days after the crash, so it was shocking when two men appeared 72 days later, and alerted the authorities that there were 16 other survivors trapped in the mountains.

On that same day, another flight crashed in Russia.

At the time, the tragedy of Aeroflot 217 was the worst plane crash in Russian history. All 174 people on board the flight (including the ten crew members) died when the plane crashed while trying to land due to bad weather.

It’s never been confirmed what the cause of the crash was — some speculate it was a lightning strike. The plane ended up just three miles away from the runway.

The Klu Klux Klan’s first Grand Wizard was born.

Nathan Bedford Forrest was born on July 13, 1821. Forrest first rose to fame as a Confederate general and was in charge of the infamous Fort Pillow Massacre, where he and his men allegedly killed over 200 unarmed Union soldiers that had surrendered (many of whom were black).

Forrest is widely believed to have served as the KKK’s first Grand Wizard, though he would later decree that the organization should be demolished.

Computers fell victim to the “Friday the 13th Virus.”

On January 13, 1989, a computer virus swept through the UK. According to the LA Times, hundreds of computers were affected by the virus, which deleted personal files specifically on the unlucky date.

The virus also slowed computers down, but fortunately didn’t cross the Atlantic Ocean.

The Bhola cyclone hit Bangladesh.

The storm officially ended on November 13, 1970 but the effects are still being felt to this day. The Bhola cyclone is still the deadliest storm in the Bay of Bengal — the death toll is estimated to be from 150,000 to 550,000, according to NBC News. A specific district in Bangladesh lost over 45% of its population, Hurricane Science reports.

In addition to being deadly and extremely costly, the cyclone is credited with jump starting a civil war. At the time of the storm, the area was called East Pakistan. The Pakistani mismanagement of the relief efforts are considered to be a huge event in the fight for Bangladeshi independence.

Swedish flight DC-3 vanished and was never heard from again.

According to National Geographic, a Swedish flight disappeared while flying over the Baltic Sea on June 13, 1952. And for 40 years, the Swedish government stuck by the story that the plane was merely performing training exercises.

However, National Geographic reported that in the ‘90s it was leaked that the crewmembers were actually spying on the Soviet Union for NATO — even though Sweden was officially neutral during the Cold War. And Russia responded with its own confession. A Russian pilot told a Swedish diplomat that he had shot the plane down.

The city of Buffalo was hit with a freak blizzard.

It’s been called the “October Surprise.” From October 12 to October 13, 2006, western New York was hit with two feet of snow. Over 300,000 people were left without power, thousands of trees were damaged, and the Governor of New York declared a State of Emergency for the Buffalo region.

The Black Friday bushfires consumed Victoria, Australia.

Victoria from 1939 to 1940 were the culmination of a long, dry summer. But on January 13, 1939 the Black Friday bushfires consumed the area: 71 people died and 575,000 hectares of land were burned to a crisp.

The ash that resulted from the two days of flames was intense. There were reports of it reaching as far as New Zealand.

Sam Patch plunged to his death in the Genesee River.

Sam Patch was America’s first professional daredevil. Throughout his life, he jumped from many great heights, including Niagara Falls twice.

So, when he decided to jump from the High Falls into the Genesee River, no one thought to be concerned. But it became apparent quickly that something was wrong. While some speculated that he was drunk, it’s never been known for sure what exactly happened to Patch when he jumped into the river. But on November 13, Patch took his eerily predicted last jump — his body was found four months later.

In 2029, an asteroid will come extremely close to Earth.

According to Geek.com, an asteroid will come within 22,000 miles of the Earth on April 13, 2029. This might not seem like a big deal, but it’s actually extremely close in relation to space.

Although it’s not expected to actually hit our planet, the closeness of the asteroid could cause damage on its surface — the gravity of Earth might cause avalanches on Apophis.

So it’s not time to call these guys in yet, but there is a one-in-100,000 chance it could collide with us.

[Today isn’t just Friday the 13th, but across the country, tonight is also the night of the “harvest moon.”  There’s nothing ominous about this phenomenon, although it’s rare for it to happen on a Friday the 13th.  A harvest moon is just a full moon that occurs around the fall harvest time.  Because this one is at the farthest point from the Earth in the moon’s orbit (lunar apogee), it appears smaller that the full moon of any other point on its loop; it’s called a “mini moon,” as distinguished from a “supermoon,” when the Earth’s satellite is closest to the Earth (lunar perigee) and seems larger than normal.  This is the first time the harvest moon coincided with Friday the 13th since October 2000 and will be the last time until August 2049.  In the Eastern Time Zone, the moon will be fully visible after midnight Friday/Saturday; in the time zones west of here, the harvest moon is visible earlier this evening.

[So we’re getting two . . . two . . . two phenoms in one!  (Sorry.  I’m old.  Old enough to remember that TV ad!)]

"With Newly Expanded Campus, Kennedy Center Aims to Make Art an Experience for All"

by Jeffrey Brown

[On 5 December 2014, I posted “The Kennedy Center Expands” (https://rickontheater.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-kennedy-center-expands.html) on Rick On Theater.  It’s a report on the plans, conceived in 2013, for the expansion of the campus of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in the Nation’s Capital.  At the time of my report, the project was scheduled to be completed and the new additions opened in May two years ago, to mark the centenary of President Kennedy’s birth.  The newly-expanded Kennedy Center, however, actually opened to the public last Saturday, 7 September. 2019 

[On Friday’s broadcast of the PBS NewsHour, 6 September, correspondent Jeffrey Brown presented a backstage tour of the new parts of the Center with KCPA president Deborah Rutter; below is the transcript of the segment (a video is available at https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/with-newly-expanded-campus-kennedy-center-aims-to-make-art-an-experience-for-all).]

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., is expanding its vision and offerings as it enlarges its physical footprint for the first time in its 50-year history. The institution hopes to showcase a range of arts, provide a “campus” feel and illuminate art as it’s created. Jeffrey Brown reports on “Reach,” the effort housed in three newly constructed buildings.

Judy Woodruff: The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts here in Washington has expanded for the first time in its 50-year history.

Jeffrey Brown takes us behind the scenes, as the national arts institution launches weeks of free public events tomorrow.

The report is part of our ongoing arts and culture series, Canvas.

Jeffrey Brown: A weekday rehearsal by the National Symphony Orchestra under the baton of music director Gianandrea Noseda.

And one floor down, dancers finalizing their choreography for an upcoming performance.

Nothing unusual, but here at the Kennedy Center, as at most other major performing arts centers, all this is typically behind the scenes off-limits to visitors. Now opportunities to watch artists at work, hear lectures, participate in workshops on a regular basis are all part of what Kennedy Center president Deborah Rutter calls a 21st century arts campus.

Deborah Rutter: The Kennedy Center was opened in 1971, when the world was different. [The 2014 ROT report includes a brief background on the original planning and construction of KCPA.  ~Rick]

The way in which the society and our culture was engaging with the arts was different. It was much more of a spectator sport. In this time, and as we look forward, we know that people want to be more connected to the art and the artists, to be more immersed in it and to participate more in it.

Jeffrey Brown: The response here, the REACH, named in honor of President Kennedy’s aspirational vision of the arts and in capital letters to signal something big in the nation’s capital.

A new nearly five-acre expansion that we visited as construction was being completed, three pavilions containing 10 interior multiuse spaces above and below ground, and double the outdoor spaces for community and arts programs, including films on a large video wall, also garden walks and paths that lead to a pedestrian bridge connecting the Kennedy Center campus to the Potomac riverfront.

The project cost $250 million from private philanthropy. It was designed by architect Steven Holl, known for his use of light and angled walls.

Deborah Rutter: We wanted them to be very porous and very open. And our architects were just in line with us. And so every single space has a window that allows you to peek in and see what’s going on.

Here, we have the skylight.

(CROSSTALK [from Brown and Rutter])

Jeffrey Brown: Interesting space.

Deborah Rutter: It’s really a beautiful space.

One of the things that I loved about Steven Holl’s design is how he changes the ceiling, as well as the floor and the walls. So you’re having a new experience no matter where you’re working.

Jeffrey Brown: I can hear a little music in the background too.

Deborah Rutter: I know. Well, that was the moment.

Jeffrey Brown: Orchestra rehearsal.

Deborah Rutter: So you will know things are happening here as well.

Jeffrey Brown: A big idea here: Find new ways to welcome younger audiences and others who may have felt left out.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts opened in 1971 as a living memorial to the slain president. It was and is imposing, the grand hallways and theaters housing traditional high arts, such as the Washington Opera and the National Symphony.

It regularly presents the world’s greatest artists, as well as special nationally recognized programs, such as the Kennedy Center Honors and the Mark Twain Awards.

But it’s also faced its [share] of criticism. When it opened, The New York Times architecture critic dubbed the building designed by Edward Durell Stone a pompous embarrassment and national tragedy.

And it’s long struggled with a sense of isolation, a geographic and elite island apart from the surrounding city. To counter that, the center began its popular and free Millennium Stage performances and has widened its programming with the help of prominent artists, such as jazz pianist Jason Moran and rapper and producer Q-Tip, as well as classical stalwarts [cellist] Yo-Yo Ma and [opera singer] Renee Fleming.

The REACH is intended as the next big leap forward.

Marc Bamuthi Joseph: The REACH has formal studio spaces, classroom spaces that invite a different level of community interaction. So now we you have a space that’s more of an incubator, that’s more of a laboratory.

Jeffrey Brown: Marc Bamuthi Joseph is a dancer, poet and theater artist, and also a leading arts administrator.

He recently left the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco to join the Kennedy Center. We talked in the so-called Moonshot experimental art space about his hybrid role as vice president and artistic director of social impact.

Marc Bamuthi Joseph: That’s the transition between a performing arts center that shows art and a performing arts center that sees itself as an agent for making culture itself.

And so part of my gig is to design and administer programs that maximize cross-sector conversations and maximize this idea that we don’t just watch culture, we make culture. So it becomes more of a workshop space than a place for witness, although you can witness lots of great art here, too.

Jeffrey Brown: Indeed, the REACH is opening with a 16-day free celebration of performances featuring prominent artists.

But it’s also offering new programs for the local community to allow students like rising high school senior Anna Irwin to work with professional dancers.

So how’s the new space?

Student [Irwin]: Oh, I love it. Personally, like, it is the biggest studio I have ever seen. Wow.

Jeffrey Brown: A new culture caucus will bring in 15 area artists to brainstorm new art to showcase. And a social practice residency will create art in and for communities in the Washington, D.C., area, all ideas to address problems many arts organizations are wrestling with today, as traditional audiences age and younger generations spend more time alone on their screens.

What’s the central problem for performing arts institutions today in American culture?

Deborah Rutter: I think that we need to underscore the joy of being together, that social infrastructure that is so important and that, in some ways, is missing in our lives.

Jeffrey Brown: Inevitably, too, when it comes to the arts in the nation’s capital, the political divisions that seep into everything today.

I asked Marc Bamuthi Joseph how that impacts his thinking about the REACH.

Marc Bamuthi Joseph: Truth and memory are tenuous resources in the current climate, and that does make me sad.

So, in that vacuum where memory is little more tenuous and history is more vulnerable is a realm of ideas that somebody has to propagate. Someone has to be responsible, not only for the moral infrastructure of this country, but the infrastructure of imagination.

And if it’s not going to be an arts center, then we’re doomed.

Jeffrey Brown: To which one might say, in hope, let the festivities begin, which they will this weekend.

For the “PBS NewsHour,” I’m Jeffrey Brown at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

Judy Woodruff: It is a special place.

[In the spirit of full disclosure, let me repeat what I’ve said many times on ROT.  Though I haven’t lived in Washington since 1961 and have resided in New York City since 1974, I still consider Washington, D.C., my hometown.  While my parents were still alive, they lived in Washington and I visited often and attended performances at the Kennedy Center scores, perhaps even hundreds of times over the years since it was built.  As I wrote in “The Kennedy Center Expands,” “I’m a self-proclaimed D.C. chauvinist.”

[Jeffrey Brown is a senior correspondent and chief arts correspondent for the PBS NewsHour.]

Two Stage Adaptations of Prose Works from the Archives

[On 24 August, I posted my report on The Acting Company’s production of an adaptation of the Richard Wright novel Native Son.  In addition to my critique of the performance, I made some remarks about the adaptation and my problem with conversions  of novels and other non-dramatic material to stage scripts.  I seldom go to plays based on novels or stories—I don’t have the same issues with stage plays drawn from films—and occasionally I’ve found ones that even work well as stage plays.  Certainly, a number have become successful as stage properties and even become theater standards; I think of Carson McCullers’s own adaptation of The Member of the Wedding and John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. 

[Looking through my archive of past theater reports, written before I started Rick On Theater a little over 10 years (and 798 posts) ago, I found that I had written up my impressions of two adaptations.  In both productions—and both reports—the fact of their having originated as non-stage prose works was a significant factor in my overall judgment of the presentations.  So now, published below, I’m presenting those archival reports as another look at my receptivity to plays adapted from prose material.  Looked at another way, these old evaluations, one 15 years old and the other 10, may explain a little why I generally object to such reworkings.]

A PASSAGE TO INDIA

Shared Experience (London)

Brooklyn Academy of Music

8 November 2004

I went to the Brooklyn Academy of Music on 5 November [2004] to see A Passage to India, a stage adaptation of the 1924 Forster novel (which was made into a David Lean spectacular back in 1984, you may recall).  Charles Isherwood’s Times review the previous day gave an excellent idea how I found the production.  (Isherwood, who used to do only occasional reviews of Off- and Off-Off-Broadway shows, seems to be moving up lately—and, unlike Brantley, I find he has been capturing my own responses pretty regularly.  [Isherwood was fired from the New York Times in 2017.])

I hadn’t realized it until after I got back home and found the review (I hadn’t read the whole arts section of the Thursday paper, so I missed the review before I saw the show), but I’d seen an earlier production by this British company, Shared Experience.  They specialize in staging adaptations of literary works and brought Jane Eyre and Anna Karenina to BAM before.  It was the Anna Karenina that I saw back in 1998, and I remember not caring for it much—and if I’d remembered that, I might have passed on this show, too. 

Shared Experience likes minimal staging—unit set, few props, basic costumes (which don’t change much over the course of the performance), which isn’t bad in itself, but when it connects with the company’s tendency to try to compress too much novel into a stage adaptation (this one lasted 2³/₄ hours), cramming a lot of narrative into the script, it all makes the show seem like Masterpiece Theatre channeling Reader’s Digest.  I vaguely remember that the Anna Karenina Shared Experience did in 1998 turned into one of those shows that was about a piece of the set or something.  (That’s really vague, I know, but I can’t remember what it was exactly, but it’s like Cheek by Jowl’s December 1995 production at BAM of The Duchess of Malfi that became a show about moving a chair.  Sorry about my memory—that Anna Karenina was six years ago, you know.)

Passage didn’t devolve into that, but it felt like a race to get through all the important points of Forster’s story without pausing along the way to develop any characters or examine Forster’s main (I think) point about the clash of cultures and the imperiousness of the British Raj’s attitude toward the Indians.  I am aware of the proclivity of the British to a) try to Anglicize the peoples and societies they colonized and b) to wall themselves off from them even as they live in their midst.  I think this was part of Forster’s point in Passage, but it was given only lip service in the Shared Experience version. 

In fact, that was my real main complaint here, not that the production was sort of simpleminded—but that it had no real point to make beyond telling (or retelling, as the case was) Forster’s story.  Any point Shared Experience made here was already there in Forster’s novel, so they didn’t add or enhance anything.  (Actually, they diminished it by whizzing past it.)  My big question here is, since there’s the excellent 1984 movie—still available on video, I’m sure—what’s the point in adapting the same material (less effectively) for the stage?  At least 1981’s Nicholas Nickleby (to which my companion compared this production) hadn’t been a successful movie.  (I’m ignoring the fact that Nicholas Nickleby had better actors and was somewhat more cleverly staged, too.) 

Which brings me to the matter of staging.  I guess I’ve already hinted (!) that the production wasn’t all that terrific.  It was way too literal (which Isherwood also said, in the context of one specific bit)—not just in the text, but in the acting and production style.  Yes, they didn’t have “literal” realistic sets (more out of practicality, I think, than artistic choice), but everything was realistically presented and depicted, even in the cases of the mime they used for anything slightly technical or otherwise beyond the scope of the company’s stage. 

Cars were always four chairs lined up in a double row of two and facing front, for instance, and the actors did the perfectly conventional miming of bouncing along and jerking to a stop.  When one character rides an elephant, the ensemble forms the body as a sort of human pyramid, with some sort of fabric or other as the trunk.  (Isherwood liked this bit, but I found it in line with the literalness of the rest of the production since they really tried to “make” an elephant for us.) 

Forster’s novel, I believe, is told from the point of view of the Brits—especially the two women—Mrs. Moore (Susan Tracy; Peggy Ashcroft in the flick), plus her prospective daughter-in-law Adela Quested (Fenella Woolgar)—but Shared Experience (the adaptation is by playwright Martin Sherman) took the tack of creating a narrator out of the character of Dr. Godbole (Antony Bunsee), the Hindu professor at the local college.  Aside from the fact that they made him a bit of a dodo—a comic-book Hindu mystic of sorts—this wasn’t a terrible idea (also aside from the fact that a narrator in a stage show is kind of anti-theatrical to start with), but it laid open a production concept Shared Experience ignored (or rejected) that might have made the show much more interesting as theater—at least for me. 

Director Nancy Meckler (Shared Experience’s Anna Karenina) could have used some Indian performance techniques to reduce the literalness of the production and to add some much-needed theatricality to it.  (Remember my two-pronged goal for a good theater experience?  Do more than just tell a story, and do it theatrically.  [A longer discussion of these notions appears below in the following report.])  I mean, if they’re going to violate Forster’s original perspective anyway, why not take it further and do something that makes the show substantially different from the novel and the movie—justify making the adaptation in the first place. 

It might even have enhanced Forster’s point about the alien sense the Brit’s had of the Indian culture—if, say, the Indian characters acted in a (modified, perhaps) Indian performance style—there are lots to choose from; India has a rich performance tradition from classical to many regional folk styles—while the Brits did Stanislavsky.  (Oh, the production had live Indian music, performed by on-stage musicians (Sirishkumar and Chandru; music composed by Peter Salesm), so there’s is a basis for some Indian performance work already laid.) 

I kept thinking of two other really successful shows I saw in the past that were vaguely related to this.  First, back when I went to Baltimore in June 1986 for the Theatre of Nations [see my report posted on Rick On Theater on 10 November 2014], one of the performances I saw was the Theatre Academy of Pune that did a piece based on a local story of government corruption and deception.  It was all told in a style adapted from the local folk performance.  The company spoke Marathi, but since I didn’t understand it, it hardly matters.  But the play was completely comprehensible without language (TON didn’t use any translating devices—just synopses in the programs) and also without knowing the performance codes. 

It was a truly wonderful experience, and I remember hearing (I interviewed the company leader as part of my coverage of TON) that when they did the play in Holland, the Dutch audience connected to it so completely, they were sure it was a Dutch story the company had adapted.  Now, that’s communication!

The other show—or shows—was the October 1992 BAM presentation of Ariane Mnouchkine’s Les Atrides, the four-play series of Greek tragedies about the house of Atreus which Théâtre du Soleil did in classic Indian style.  That was magnificent!  Once again the performance language was foreign—I forget now if they used the Greek text or, like Peter Brook, mixed up some obscure or ancient languages, or maybe they just used French and it was too much for my rusty skills, but it makes no difference in the end since the point is that I couldn’t rely on verbal text to follow the show and it made not one lick of difference. 

Not only did the company communicate perfectly well by acting and gesture (I guess that’s also acting, isn’t it?), but it worked marvelously with the Greek texts.  I wouldn’t call it Brechtian in a literal sense, but it did what Brecht wanted—it made us reconsider familiar material by making it seem strange and new.  (I always think of that Charles Marowitz Hamlet collage I saw in London in 1969.  A perfect example of making the audience look anew at very familiar material.) 

I suppose I need to say a word or two about the acting as well, since I said above that Nicholas Nickleby had better actors than Passage.  I’m afraid it’s true—the Shared Experience company didn’t have one person in the cast who created a stunning persona on stage.  I don’t know if they’re just not capable or if Meckler ironed out all their quirks and idiosyncrasies and left nothing but bland, or if the material defies good acting the way TV soap operas do. 

Once again, it was more like watching someone tell me a story than watching anything dramatic.  I can get that from the novel—and my imaginary actors are better!  Adapter Sherman (Bent, The Boy From Oz) and/or director Meckler seem to have reduced everyone to a one- or two-dimensional figures with a salient character trait or two, and the actors never went beyond this.  I already said that Dr. Godbole was turned into a cartoon Hindu mystic, but all the Brits were portrayed as twits to one degree or another, from Ronny Heaslop (Simon Scardifield) the son/magistrate—the main twit—to Adela, the prospective daughter-in-law, who couldn’t make up her mind if the Indians were scary foreigners or fascinating exotics. 

Even Tracy’s Mrs. Moore, who was supposed to be a genuine open soul who can be friends with an Indian without condescending, had very little presence on the stage.  And I could never decide if there was really supposed to be some homoerotic thing going on between Cyril Fielding (William Osborne), the English professor, and Dr. Aziz (Alex Caan), the Muslim doctor, or if their friendship was just supposed to be one with an open and free familiarity that ignored sexuality.  No one ever seemed to commit one way or the other—not the actors, not the director, and not the script.  (I don’t remember from the movie if this was part of the story, but Isherwood does mention it in his review, so I suspect it was timidity or incompetence on the part of the company that left this ambiguous.)  It wasn’t bad acting—it just wasn’t very good.  More like animated illustrations or something.  (So much for a word or two!)

Anyway, I guess I don’t have the right to redirect Shared Experience’s show, but if I could . . . .  (It seems I’ve done this before, too, haven’t I—with that Tex-Mex musical at the Contemporary American Theatre Festival in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, Keith Glover’s The Rose of Corazon, for one.  [See my report on CATF on 8 July 2015.]  I think I wanted them to use more Mexican motifs—and especially music—to theatricalize the play more.  It’s a thing with me, isn’t it.)  The bottom line, I guess, is that even if using Indian techniques isn’t the right answer, Sherman and Meckler needed to do something to make the adaptation more . . . well, more not like the movie, I guess. 

If I want literal, I can read the novel—or see the movie.  (The company did have a “mission statement” in the program.  I won’t type in the whole paragraph, but in it they say: “At the heart of Shared Experience’s work is the power and excitement of the performer’s physical presence and the collaboration between the actor and the audience . . . .”  Shared Experience never came near meeting this goal as far as I was concerned.  They also assert that they are “dedicated to innovation and exploration.”  NOT!)

*  *  *  *

SHIPWRECKED! AN ENTERTAINMENT: THE AMAZING ADVENTURES

OF LOUIS DE ROUGEMONT (AS TOLD BY HIMSELF)

Primary Stages
59E59 Theaters

22 February 2009

In 1898, Henri Louis Glin (1847-1921), born in Switzerland, published the tale of his 30-year adventure in the Coral Sea, New Guinea, and the Australian Outback in the London popular periodical The Wide World Magazine.  He called himself Louis de Rougemont, and the story was entitled, in 19th-century style, “The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont as told by Himself”; in 1899, it was republished as a book, making Glin an early link in the chain of dubious and discredited memoirists, a sort of proto-James Frey or -Herman Rosenblat. 

After his story became irresistibly popular across Britain and he became a lecturer and storyteller in great demand (becoming very wealthy), people who claimed to have known “de Rougemont” began to come forward and expose him as a liar and fabulist, and naturalists and geographers questioned the veracity and even possibility of his accounts.  (Most famously, he claimed to have ridden on the backs of sea turtles for recreation.  Herpetologists asserted that such a feat was impossible because the turtles would simply sink if someone sat on their shells.  In 1906, however, he demonstrated his turtle-riding achievement at the London Hippodrome.)

Along about 2007, playwright Donald Margulies, a Pulitzer Prize-winner for Dinner With Friends (2000), decided to compose a stage adaptation, which he called (also in 19th-century style) Shipwrecked! An Entertainment: The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (As Told by Himself) and it premièred at the South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, California, which commissioned the work for its young audiences series.  (Shipwrecked! starring Gregory Itzin and directed by Bart DeLorenzo played on the Julianne Argyros Stage of SCR from 23 September-14 October 2007.)  My friend Diana and I went over to 59E59 Theaters on Friday evening, 20 February [2009], to see the Primary Stages production, the New York première of Shipwrecked!

I’ll get back to that next-to-last bit in a moment, but first let me remind everyone of something I’ve probably said a time or two over the years.  I have two minimal criteria for good theater (in my opinion, of course; I don’t impose this on anyone else): For one, a performance must be theatrical.  That is, it must use the stage and the stage’s unique attributes and capabilities to create its magic.  (That doesn’t, by the way, eliminate stage Realism, which, when done well, is true magic in my book.)  I don’t want a theater performance to duplicate a rock concert or a movie (though it may steal their techniques—and technology—of course!); I want it to be theater. 

For the other, it must do more than just tell a story.  Movies and TV—and, of course, novels—do that quite well, thank you.  It must reveal something about life, the human condition, truth, whatever.  But if all the performance does is spin a yarn for me . . . well, I’d just as soon read the book!  (This criterion needn’t be a heavy one: I accept entertainment as a worthy goal in itself.  The Boyfriend is not a shameful achievement.  Many of my grad school classmates, both at NYU and at Rutgers, would be—and, indeed, were—aghast at this concession!)  So, now you know my biases and prejudices when I comment on Shipwrecked!—because they come into play here.  

What Margulies wrote isn’t a play, strictly speaking.  It’s almost all narration, with three actors (one, Michael Countryman, playing de Rougemont and two others playing everyone—and everything—else) acting out bits as de Rougemont tells us his story.  (We are apparently present as the audience for one of his animated lectures.  It’s a storytelling about a storyteller telling his story.  Huh?)  Margulies (or Lisa Peterson, the director) even works into the adventurer’s opening remarks the standard admonitions about cell phones (called “distracting devices” here) and wrapped candy (“lozenges”). 

It was a clever enough way to start the evening off by evoking de Rougemont’s fin-de-siècle milieu and keeping the bubble sealed.  (De Rougemont also enumerates each chapter, complete with title, as it goes by, stressing the literary nature of the production.)  In any case, this was storytelling, which I maintain is a different art form from theater.  It may have performative elements and even take from theater in many ways, but storytelling, a venerable custom in many cultures (though we in the industrialized West have lost it for the most part as a performing tradition), isn’t a play to me; it’s something different the way ballet is different.

My other criterion, theatricality, was met well enough.  Neil Patel’s set of Shipwrecked! was minimal, with a large, raked circular platform in the middle of the stage which served variously as the deck of the ship, the shore of the island on which de Rougemont is marooned, or the lecture stage, among other locations.  It was surrounded by the detritus and effects of a theater—props, set pieces, tech equipment, and so on—some of which were used in the performance and others served as just obstacles and dressing.  There was a sort of balcony running along two walls, stage left and the rear, reached from the stage below by a staircase at the right end of the rear extension. 

Among the stuff around the stage area were sound devices that were used as in old radio shows, including some I haven’t seen in use since my grad school days back in the dark ages before computers and digital recordings: a rain stick, a thunder sheet, and a wind machine.  (The only one missing was a crash box.)  All of the sound effects (sound design was by John Gromada), whether made by such low-tech devices or by the two theatrical poobahs (aided occasionally by one or more stage assistants, to borrow a term from Kabuki and Noh) by using their bodies or their voices (sometimes over the anachronism of mikes), were performed live in view of the audience. 

Except for de Rougemont, who wore suitable 19th-century garb, Michael Krass’s costuming was nominal.  Jeremy Bobb, who may have had the most fun role in the performance, played Bruno, the ship captain’s dog who became de Rougemont’s boon companion for much of the story.  In that part, which Bobb executed delightfully and entirely convincingly, he used no props and wore no costume aside from his street clothes.  The other ”Player,” Donnetta Lavinia Grays, and Bobb each performed both male and female characters.  Bobb got to appear—walking on his knees—as Queen Victoria.  (That’s the second production this season featuring an appearance by Victoria, both of them portrayed by a man in drag!  The other performance was Virginia Woolf’s Freshwater; see my report of 27 January 2009.  Is that a trend, do you suppose?) 

In one of director Peterson’s silliest and neatest little gags, Bobb’s diminutive queen entered directly up stage, “walking” on de Rougemont’s left.  We couldn’t see his legs sticking out behind him, but since we knew Bobb is a tall man and now he was only chest-high beside Countryman, we knew what was happening.  Then the pair made a sharp right turn—and Bobb’s legs were clearly visible trailing out behind Victoria like a peculiar kind of train!  It was only worth a chuckle, but a good little chuckle.

All this was cleverly and charmingly done, and I can’t complain about the performances or the quality of the work in general.  Countryman has always been a favored actor of mine since I first saw him over 20 years ago (in January 1987 in The Common Pursuit by Simon Gray, which played at the Promenade Theatre from 19 October 1986 to 23 August 1987): I think he’s a superb character actor who is always solid, convincing, grounded, and committed.  I don’t know why he’s not famous—though he does work all the time as far as I can tell (counting TV, commercials, and movies along with stage work on and off Broadway, as well as out of town). 

At an hour-and-a-half, Shipwrecked! is the kind of show that seems like great fun for the actors to do—for an audience of pre-teen boys.  And that’s the big problem here.  (I said I’d get back to this—and now I have.)  This is a boy’s adventure tale.  It’s Robert Louis Stevenson, The Swiss Family Robinson, Robinson Crusoe, and all the swashbuckling, seafaring, storm-tossed tales many of us read before the days of Harry Potter.  Disney used to make the movies or they were serialized on the Mickey Mouse Club.  

Charles Isherwood said Shipwrecked! is “best suited to children who are still susceptible to the magic of bedtime stories . . . .”  I’m 62 now: Pirates of the Caribbean bores me (though, I admit, I find the Potter flicks cute—but I’m still a sucker for magic).  And most of the audience was older than I am (with a handful of youngsters—real ones, I mean—here and there).  I’m sorry, but when I subscribe to a season of an Off-Broadway company, this isn’t what I sign up for.  (Okay, I took my mother to The Lion King for Mother’s Day in May 1999—but that’s Julie Taymor, for Pete’s sake.  That’s different.  That’s theatrical, by the way!) 

The story of Shipwrecked! is amusing, but it doesn’t tell me anything.  (The announcement in the March 2009 issue of American Theatre for the published text asserts that Margulies “takes on the nature of storytelling and authenticity.”  But he doesn’t, really.  He engages in storytelling—but he doesn’t take on much of anything.)  It’s Baron Münchhausen, the kind of thing that I’d expect to find playing at the New Victory or during the summer to attract families to otherwise dark theaters. 

By the way, there’s a curious disconnect in Margulies’s script; maybe someone can explain it away for me.  If we’re watching de Rougemont recount his story, as the conceit for the performance has it, how does he get to end with the debunking and disgrace?  That didn’t happen, of course, until after de Rougemont published his tale and did his lecture tours—and it wouldn’t have been part of what he related from the stage. 

In other words, the narrative moves from the past, when de Rougemont is relating his adventures, to the present or future, when he tells us what happens afterwards.  (I haven’t read Glin’s account, but I don’t imagine it includes the latter part of the story; he wrote and published the tale before all that happened.   In fact, it happened because of the publication.  Apparently Margulies has incorporated parts of later, 20th-century biographies of de Rougemont in his script.) 

I think we’re not supposed to have noticed that.  But I have a nasty habit of noticing things I’m not supposed to.  Oooops!  (The other paradox is much more intriguing—and appropriate to the endeavor: Shipwrecked! is based on a true story—there really was an H. L. Glin—that in turn is based on an untrue story—Louis de Rougemont never existed!  But, as Isherwood points out, Margulies doesn’t explore any of the implications of this or the other questions raised by the tales; he just tells the story.)

[In 1899, Glin toured music halls in South Africa billed as “The greatest liar on earth.”  Aside from his own book, there are two biographies of “de Rougemont,” coincidentally entitled The Greatest Liar on Earth (Melbourne: Hawthorn Press, 1945) by Frank Clune and The Fabulist (Milsons Point, NSW, Australia; New York: Random House Australia, 2006) by Rod Howard.

[A performance about one of the greatest liars of his time—and a play, Souvenir, a few years ago about the worst singer ever, Florence Foster Jenkins—makes me think that someone ought to be able to write a very amusing play from the story of Robert “Romeo” Coates, England’s worst actor.  Theatricality is built into the story: Coates pretty much practiced for real what Michael Green immortalized as The Art of Coarse Acting (New York: Drama Book Specialists, 1981).  It would take a playwright to figure out what to say with the story, but the territory seems fertile to me.  I’m just sayin’ . . . .

[Coates (1772-1848) appeared on London stages, often in the role of Romeo (hence his nickname), from 1809 until around 1815.  If he couldn’t convince a manager to hire him, Coates would bribe him from the family fortune he’d inherited (see my article on ROT on 30 and 31 May and 2 June 2009).  There is considerable source material available on Coates, including several first-hand accounts of his acting.

[Souvenir, by Stephen Temperley, was presented by the York Theatre Company from 1 December 2004 to 16 January 2005 and at the Lyceum Theatre on Broadway from  10 November 2005 to 8 January 2006.  Jenkins (1868-1944) flourished, if that’s what you call it, in the 1940s, including self-financed appearances at Carnegie Hall and recordings.]