A Biography of Leonardo Shapiro, Part 1

 

[I met Leonardo Shapiro on 28 June 1986 in Baltimore when I interviewed him at the Theatre of Nations international theater festival, sponsored biennially at that time by the International Theatre Institute, an arm of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). 

[Shapiro’d brought his theater troupe, The Shaliko Company, to present their current production, The Yellow House, at the first TON to be held in North America.  (It’s still the only time TON has been hosted on this continent.)  The avant-garde director was one of the artists I spoke to formally for my coverage of the festival for my newsletter, Directors Notes, the house organ of the American Directors Institute, a service organization for artistic and stage directors (now defunct).  I was also writing an article on the festival for The Drama Review.

[(My report was published as “World Theater Artists Meet in Baltimore” in Directors Notes in September 1986; “Theatre of Nations” ran in TDR in the spring issue of 1987.  I republished my longer TDR version of the report on Rick On Theater as “Theatre of Nations: Baltimore, 1986” on 10 November 2014.)

[I’d been so impressed with Yellow House that I began to keep tabs on Shapiro’s and Shaliko’s work.  I saw a number of their shows until, in 1992, Richard Schechner, who’d been one of my professors in New York University’s Department of Performance Studies and was at the time also the editor of The Drama Review, asked me to write a profile of Shapiro and his company for the journal.

[For the rest of that year, I shadowed Shapiro, dug through his files; collected articles by and about him; interviewed him several times; watched videos of past productions; and interviewed his colleagues, company and cast members, Shaliko board members, and others who knew him, his work, and aspects of his life. 

[The immediate result, of course, was the TDR profile, "Shapiro and Shaliko: Techniques of Testimony," which was published in The Drama Review winter issue of 1993 (37.4 – T140).  Beyond that, I had collected hundreds of documents, video and audio tapes, notes, and random pieces of information on Shapiro’s past, Shaliko, and most of his activities before and after the New York company.

[Since I started ROT, I’ve posted many articles about Shapiro and his theater.  I realized, however, that I’ve never written much about his biography.  I decided to remedy that oversight, and below is the beginning of the outcome.  There’s a caveat, however.  I really only knew Leonardo Shapiro as a maker of theater, so there’s little content about love affairs, friendships, his marriage and son, and the like.

[There is, though, quite a lot about his theater work.  Now, while I do cover his productions, there are many of the most important ones for which I give only the briefest description.  That’s because those particular shows have been the subjects of detailed posts of their own.  I’ve cross-referenced those posts and interested readers should go to them separately if they want more information.  (I’ve also cross-referenced other past posts that relate to Shapiro, such as some of his theater techniques that I’ve discussed on ROT.)

[The Shapiro bio turned out to be longer than I anticipated when I started out.  Leonardo Shapiro led a life that was short, but crowded with incident.  Therefore, I’ll be posting this piece in sections.  “A Biography of Leonardo Shapiro” will run in eight parts, one every three days, starting today, 16 April, and continuing through Sunday, 7 May.  Part 2 will be published on Wednesday, 19 April.

[One last point: I’ve kept an annotated copy of the bio with all my sources recorded.  I’ll be glad to share this information with anyone who wants it, but you should be aware that most of the sources I used are primary—interviews, notes of conversations, e-mails, letters, and so on.  The only extant copies of these sources are in my personal files. 

[Other sources are rare, such as documents from Shapiro’s records for Shaliko and the Trinity/La MaMa Performing Arts Program, and aren’t easily accessible anywhere but my files.  Still others are just hard to find, such as clippings from small-town newspapers, obscure publications, or various archives around the country.

[One resource even I didn’t have is now available—if you can come to New York City to consult it, however.  The Leonardo Shapiro papers are now in the Billy Rose Theatre Division archives at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.  The call number for the collection is *T-Mss 1998-019 (go to archives.nypl.org -- Leonardo Shapiro papers).

[Because of the prominence of New York City, especially its borough of Manhattan, in this history, a brief overview of the city for the benefit of readers unfamiliar with its layout would be helpful.  First, as most know, New York City is made up of five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx.  Of these, only Manhattan and, briefly, Brooklyn and Queens figure in this discussion. 

[Brooklyn, which used to be a separate city and is the most populous borough, was the site of Shapiro’s residence.  It lies at the western tip of Long Island, west of Queens and across the East River from lower Manhattan. 

[Queens, New York’s largest borough, also lies east of Manhattan across the East River on Long Island between Brooklyn to the south and west and Nassau County to the north and east.  The area known as Hunters Point, where a Shaliko production of Mystery History Bouffe Goof was presented, is part of the neighborhood of Long Island City, on the East River where the Newtown Creek divides Queens from Brooklyn, directly across from mid-town Manhattan at 34th Street (south of the Queens-Midtown Tunnel). 

[New York is also a city of distinct neighborhoods.  In Manhattan, those named in this post, the borough’s principal art and performance venues, are as follows:

•  East Village, The Shaliko Company’s home territory: from East 14th Street south to Houston and Fifth Avenue east to the East River (including the section now known as NoHo at the southern end)

•  Greenwich Village (sometimes called the West Village or, simply, the Village): on the island’s west side between 14th Street on the north and Houston Street on the south, from Fifth Avenue on the east to the Hudson River on the west

•  SoHo (which stands for South of Houston) stretches from Houston Street south to Canal Street and from the Bowery west to the Hudson River

•  Chelsea: from West 14th Street on the south to 30th on the north and from Sixth Avenue on the east to the Hudson

•  Theatre District: centering on Times Square, extending north from West 40th to 53rd Street and west from Sixth to Ninth Avenue; Theatre Row, home to many Off-Broadway theaters and companies, is West 42nd Street between 9th and 10th Avenues (officially; unofficially it now extends to 11th Avenue)

•  Times Square (not geometrically a square; closer to two triangles emanating north and south from West 45th Street, where north-south Seventh Avenue intersects northwest-southeast Broadway): formed by the intersection of Broadway, Seventh Avenue, and West 42nd Street; with adjacent Duffy Square, Times Square is a bowtie-shaped space five blocks long between 42nd and 47th Streets; Duffy Square is the northern triangle of Times Square, bounded by 45th and 47th Streets, Broadway, and Seventh Avenue (known for the TKTS reduced-price theater tickets booth)

•  Lower East Side (also often called Loisaida because of the predominantly Spanish-speaking population): formerly including what is now the East Village and NoHo, now running from the Bowery on the west to the East River and south from East Houston Street to Canal (on the southwest) and the East River (on the southeast).]

Leo Richard Shapiro was born on 7 January 1946 in Saint Paul, Minnesota.  (He would adopt his professional name, Leonardo, many years later.)  His mother, Florence (1913-94), recalled that he was an active and inquisitive child—walking and talking before he was a year old, spending a great deal of time outdoors, and demanding attention from visitors to his parents’ home.  

Florence and Leo’s father, Irving (1912-74), separated in 1949 and subsequently divorced in 1951.  Florence noted that Leo became difficult and hard to handle after her divorce.  Where he’d been “full of the devil” but “warm and loving” before, Florence Shapiro said, after the separation, the boy’s antics became “more malicious.” 

Shapiro’s childhood in Saint Paul and, especially, Miami, where his mother moved with Leo and his older brother, Gary (b. 1941), was clearly stressful and difficult and in it lie many clues to his subsequent behavior, both personal and professional. 

According to his recollections and those of his mother, the fault lay largely with Irving, whom Florence married in 1935.  When the young couple became engaged, Leon Gleckman (1894-1941), Florence’s father, hired Irving at the Republic Finance Company, the loan company Gleckman had started with the money he’d made as a bootlegger. 

(The accounts of the years of Florence Shapiro’s marriage to Irving and of Leo Shapiro’s childhood, especially in regard to his father, are almost entirely from their perspective as recalled decades later.  Other members of the Shapiro family, notably Florence and Irving’s eldest son, Gary, remember this family history differently and recount it with a variant interpretation.)

Gleckman, known as “the Al Capone of Saint Paul” because he controlled the illegal liquor business in Minnesota’s capital city, was a notorious—and, apparently, beloved—figure in the Prohibition-era Saint Paul underworld of the 1920s and ’30s.  (See my post on Rick On Theater, “Leon Gleckman: The Al Capone of Saint Paul,” 29 September 2018.)

(Gleckman’s criminal history is largely recounted in Paul Maccabee’s John Dillinger Slept Here: A Crooks’ Tour of Crime and Corruption in St. Paul, 1920-1936 [Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1995].  A musical play, Last Hooch at the Hollyhocks by Lance Belville [1935-2020], was performed at the Saint Paul Arts and Science Center in 1990.  It featured Leon Gleckman as a character, and one of Florence’s younger sisters attended a performance.  The Hollyhocks Club was a saloon owned by Jack Peifer [1898-1936], Gleckman’s rival and friend from Minneapolis.)

Something of a dandy and a man-about-town, Gleckman ran several legitimate businesses—such as a tire store, a wallpaper store, a Cord-Auburn dealership, and the loan company (which was certainly a money-laundering operation)—as well as a political machine which put selected politicians in local offices. 

After Gleckman’s death in 1941, Irving Shapiro ran the loan company and started a number of other enterprises.  He was, in fact, quite prosperous, despite the straits in which Florence and their children lived after she and her husband divorced.  “He cried poor and lived rich,” Florence protested.

(Irving Shapiro’s business interests included ownership of the historic Hamm Building at 408 St. Peter Street in Saint Paul, in which Republic Finance, an automobile loan firm, was located; a chain of used car lots called Kennedy Motors; a Hudson automobile agency in Saint Paul; and the Gale (for his sons, Gary and Leo) Chrysler-Plymouth dealership in Fargo, North Dakota.  

(Details of Gleckman’s death in an automobile accident on 14 July 1941—and more of his criminal record—are related in “Gleckman, Ex-City Boss, Dies in Crash,” Saint Paul Dispatch 14 July 1941.  It’s very likely that Gleckman’s single-car accident—he ran into a bridge abutment—was suicide. 

(Shapiro once confided to me that Arthur Miller’s [1915-2005] Death of a Salesman held special meaning for him; it may have been significant to Shapiro that Willy Loman’s death in the play, also a suicide, was nearly identical to Gleckman’s.)

When Gleckman went to prison on tax charges, he’d transferred his stock to his daughter.  Officially, Irving Shapiro was just an employee of Republic Finance; he and Gleckman had had an oral agreement about his earnings participation but he had no ownership rights.

(Leon Gleckman had been convicted of federal charges stemming from his illegal liquor business, and sent to the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, twice, once in 1927 for six months of an 18-month sentence on charges of liquor conspiracy and again in 1934 for 18 months for tax evasion. 

(Gleckman was facing a potential third term in prison at the time of his death.  There’d also been state and local charges of bribery of a juror for which Gleckman had served six months in Minneapolis in 1938.  In January 1940, Gleckman had also been convicted in New York in a Brooklyn bank fraud case and sentenced to six months in jail.)

After his father-in-law’s death, Irving couldn’t use Gleckman’s assets to secure loans so he insisted his wife sign everything over to him “so we can make money.”  When Florence resisted, he flew into a terrifying rage and assaulted her. 

Florence fled the house, but when she returned home, she made a decision she later came to regret: at her husband’s suggestion, she signed her holdings over to their elder son, Gary, less than a year old at the time.  Thus, she lost de facto control of the family businesses and income to her husband; when he reached the age of 21, Gary signed everything over to his father and Florence lost de jure control.  In later years, Leonardo Shapiro would deem that his father had stolen the family’s money.

Both Leonardo and Florence Shapiro asserted that after Irving started making money, he became “self-important” and “domineering.”  He’d always had a quick and sometimes violent temper, and Florence affirmed that he’d never really wanted children.  Despite this, she added, once his sons were born, he focused on them. 

He wasn’t good at taking the boys out to play catch, she said, “but the sun rose and set on you two kids.”  Although Shapiro insisted that he had no recollection of having lived with his father, he does have vivid images of his father’s physical and emotional abuse.  Florence averred, Irving did whatever he wanted “no matter what” and he began taking business trips and vacations without his family. 

On one trip to Hawaii in probably 1949 (according to Gary Shapiro’s reckoning), he met Lee Hoffman (1929-2002), a younger woman—Florence Shapiro thought Hoffman was only 17 at the time, though she was actually 19 or 20—with whom he began an affair.  In 1949, when Florence and Irving Shapiro separated, she recorded that her husband told her he didn’t love her and realized he never had.   

(Hoffman—who was related to actor Dustin Hoffman [b. 1937] through her mother's second marriage—and Irving Shapiro, then 36 or 37, met on a cruise ship to the island territory.  Hoffman, accompanied by her mother, had been a student at a post-high school finishing school at the time.  The couple divorced around 1966, Gary Shapiro reported, and Irving remarried again around 1970.  He was a widower at the time of his death in 1974.)

The Shapiros were divorced in June 1951, and Florence moved with her children to Miami.  Irving and Florence had been married for 15 years, and Leo was 5½ years old.  In July, Irving Shapiro married Hoffman.           

In Florida, Florence and the two young brothers were pretty much isolated—except, at various times, for Blackie, Leo’s cocker spaniel; two parakeets; two turtles; and a goldfish—because Irving had forbidden his family to visit. 

Even Florence’s family found reasons not to come to her support and she couldn’t stand up to her former husband, who, she said, “could be very charming, a lot of fun, but he could turn it on and off like night and day.”  If she brought home something decent to wear, she recorded, she’d have to return it while Irving always had tailor‑made suits. 

With her loss of control of the family income Florence had financial problems and she and Irving constantly argued over money.  Irving Shapiro became more impressed with himself: when, for instance, he decided that the socks Leo wore weren’t good enough, he bought his son cashmere ones—and then deducted the cost from his child-support payments.  To pay expenses her allowance didn’t cover, Florence sold the diamond ring that her mother had given her.

(Florence Shapiro reported that at the same time that Irving was gaining control of her assets, her mother, Leon Gleckman’s widow, sold her shares of her husband’s businesses to her son-in-law for $2,000.  It became Florence’s responsibility to make the monthly maintenance payments to her mother which had previously come from Mrs. Gleckman’s own holdings.  Rose Gleckman died on 8 May 1962.)

Leo’d never had emotional problems before the divorce and Irving’s remarriage, according to Florence, but afterwards, tension in the family increased and the boy began to show its effect. 

When Leo was little, his mother affirmed, he was very affectionate, forever laughing and smiling—though he was constantly “into things.”  He had been very active, always climbing up poles or over the furniture; he had to be watched all the time for fear he would hurt himself.  The boy was wild and mischievous—his mother compared him to the comic-strip character Dennis the Menace (whom Shapiro insisted he never found funny)—and Florence didn’t know how to handle him. 

Florence related one episode from her son’s infancy in which he pulled out the drawers of a chest and started climbing them like steps until the chest fell over.  She described how her son would climb up on the bathroom sink and shave with his father’s razor and, later, in Florida, how he would disappear into the men’s room at Wolfie’s, the famous delicatessen restaurant in Miami Beach, only to be discovered washing his hair so he could dry it under the hand dryer.  At a Lincoln Road travel agency in Miami, there was a window display of an airplane circling the globe; Leo would ride the plane.

Unfailingly sweet and nice, little Leo really liked people and frequently wanted to give gifts to his parents’ friends.  Until he was three, everything had been fairly normal, Florence said, but after his parents’ separation and divorce, he started taking his unhappiness out on others.  “Apparently the separation was hurting you,” Shapiro’s mother observed, “and it was coming out in other ways.” 

Leo’s behavior deteriorated, and he became hard to manage.  He’d regularly come home with little presents for his mother—then she found out he was shoplifting.  He fought viciously with his brother over inconsequentialities like a ping-pong game and his mother recalled that one time Leo took the framed wedding picture of his father and Lee Hoffman and broke it.

Other incidents that Florence recounted include Leo’s throwing an egg at a neighbor's house out of jealousy “because they were a family.”  He also cut the flowers out of the living room draperies with scissors and drew pictures with crayons on his bedroom lampshade. 

When a babysitter wanted Leo to do something he didn’t want to do, he picked up a baseball bat and, later, he was expelled from Cub Scouts for hitting the Pack Leader on the head with a rock.  We’ll see later that this behavior may have been in part symptoms of hyperactivity/attention-deficit disorder, a childhood condition that wasn’t well known when Shapiro was a child.

There were also constant problems at school.  When a teacher failed Leo in reading and Florence went to see what was wrong, the teacher complained that the boy had read a whole book the first day it was assigned instead of one page a day as she’d specified and that he kept his homework uncol­lected in his desk. 

At another school, a teacher complained that he would continually tell her she was wrong.  (Florence recorded that the teacher was wrong, but added that that didn’t help the situation.)  At a private school, one teacher reported Leo sat looking out of the window not paying attention, while another said he was a leader.  On a different occasion, a schoolmate had Leo’s report card and wouldn’t give it to him and Leo tore the child’s shirt.  He was suspended from another school for hitting a teacher with a ruler. 

In another incident, Leo stayed home from school with a virus but didn’t seem to be getting better.  When the truant officer came to see why the boy hadn’t returned, Florence discovered that Leo’d been dumping his medication in the closet.  He was afraid to go back, he protested, because a schoolmate was threatening him with a knife.

Part of this problem may have been that, as one psychologist determined, though Leo was still emotionally a child, he was functioning intellectually at a college level.

Between 1951 and 1960, Shapiro attended eight different schools—including the Windsor Mountain School, to which he transferred in 1960 as a sophomore.  (He went to one school twice, separated by a year at another school.)  He never went to the same school for more than two years and most he attended for one year or even less. 

In 1956, in an attempt to impart some order to their son’s schooling, Florence and Irving transferred Leo to the Admiral Farragut Academy, a military school in St. Petersburg, Florida, for sixth grade.  It was an expensive decision, but Leo resisted the regimentation and, though he made good grades at Farragut, kept threatening to run away. 

Though he returned to the public schools the next year, Shapiro remembered that he was introduced to theater while he was at Farragut, recounting that for punishment he was sent to a room in the basement of the main building that was beneath the theater. 

He could hear the student actors rehearsing above him, and found himself drawn to this new form of expression.  (Shapiro told a similar story of hearing rehearsals at the Windsor Mountain School, the prep school in Massachusetts where he finished high school—this time through the wall of his dorm room.) 

It was at Farragut, too, that Leo became aware of his religious roots, discovering his Judaism and joining a synagogue.  Shapiro said that he was one of only two Jews at Farragut, and this sense of isolation, of being an outsider, may have turned his attention to the faith of his family.

As early as second grade, one headmaster noted that Leo’s behavior changed markedly when his father was in town—the boy would throw chairs and act out in school—and suggested Leo get psychiatric treatment.  The suggestion angered Irving Shapiro who insisted his son leave the school. 

By seventh grade, the boy began getting physically ill, the bouts of illness invariably coming after Leo’d spent time with his father.  On one occasion that Shapiro recalled specifically, he spent a day with his father at the Thunderbird Motel in Miami Beach.  He was sick in bed all day while his father was at the pool and when Irving came back to the room, his son remembered, he hit the boy for being ill. 

The stress was pervasive: the night before Gary graduated from high school in 1959, Leo threw up.  Florence learned that Leo had developed an ulcer.  He was not yet 14.

Florence had thought Leo was suffering from hyperthyroidism, or Graves’ disease, which results in elevated metabolism and activity.  At first, doctors tried a mild sedative, but that made the boy worse.  Then a big change came over Leo when another doctor started giving him Dexedrine, a stimulant prescribed today for attention-deficit disorder and hyperactivity. 

It should be noted, however, that potential ADHD—one of the most common childhood behavior problems—wasn’t the only psychological difficulty with which Shapiro would be associated.  Later in life, he would take Prozac, an anti-depressant, and Rosalía Triana (b. 1946), his last romantic partner, reported that Shapiro’d been “diagnosed” with borderline personality disorder (BPD) with narcissistic tendencies.    

As children, most people with BPD are emotionally unstable, impulsive, and often bitter or angry, although their chaotic impulsiveness and intense emotions may make them popular at school.  At first, they may impress people as stimulating and exciting, but their relationships tend to be unstable and explosive.

Common aspects of the narcissistic tendencies also line up with Shapiro’s behavior: “a grandiose sense of self-importance”; “seek[ing] excessive admiration from others and fantasiz[ing] about unlimited success or power”; a belief of being “special, unique, or superior to others”; an “often . . . fragile self-esteem.” 

(I have no confirmation of a medical determination of BPD for Shapiro, though it’s certain that Shapiro, himself, provided Triana this revelation; neither Shapiro nor his mother mentioned the condition and Shapiro was already dead when I learned of this, so I couldn’t ask him. 

(Even though the symptoms seem to match Shapiro’s behavior, I have no expertise in the fields of psychology or psychoanalysis, so this suggestion is speculative despite Triana’s assertion.  The diagnosis of ADHD, however—though that name wasn’t used at the time of Shapiro’s childhood—and the prescriptions for Dexedrine and Prozac are all confirmed by either Shapiro‘s or his mother’s reports.) 

As soon as he started using Dexedrine, Leo calmed down and despite all his problems, his mother said Leo seemed a happy child.  In his “up mood,” everybody loved Leo: he was attractive and charming, hardworking and energetic, winning prizes and generally aston­ishing people with his accomplishments. 

Leo tirelessly played cowboys-and-Indians with another child—Florence didn’t record whether her son was more often the cowboy or, given his life-long fascination, the Indian—and rode his bicycle all over the neighborhood with Blackie, the spaniel puppy that Irving Shapiro’s business partner had given him for his first birthday back in Saint Paul, chasing behind.

The boy’s interest in Native Americans began, he asserted, when he attended Camp Thunderbird in Bimidji, Minnesota (“home of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox”), in the summers of 1954 through 1957.  There he learned “Navajo riding songs, wood craft, quillwork, the hoop dance, and campfire etiquette.”

“For three years, I wanted to be an Indian,” Shapiro wrote later.  “I made ceremonial regalia, did beadwork, danced, carried a tomahawk to school, scalped the principal, took back the country, drove out the white man, restored the buffalo, and lived happily ever after.”  The childhood fantasies matured into lifelong adult focus and artistic and philosophic application.

The Navajo healing sings the youngster learned about at camp became Shapiro’s “clearest model . . . for healing theatre,” Shapiro affirmed.  (I posted an article on this blog about the chants called “‘My Mind Restore For Me’: Navajo Healing Ceremonies,” on 15 May 2013.)  His affinity for the rituals, arts, and beliefs of America’s native peoples permeated all of his work with Shaliko; indeed, it was at the base of his principal philosophy: that theater is transformative and that art is and should be integral to our whole culture. 

Leo regularly took three buses to the public library in Bayfront Park on Biscayne Bay in downtown Miami, where he exhausted the library’s collection of books on Indians, and also took piano lessons, composing a song for Florence on the piano she had rented for him. 

As a result of shifting from one school to another, Leo had few close friends.  He had strong interests, however—Indians, science fiction, magic—and focused intently on them.  When the boy wanted to learn a card trick, for instance, he would practice and practice: nothing would stop him.

For 12-year-old Leo Shapiro, magic became a refuge from a world he found ugly and inhospitable.  As his mother recalled, when her son was in seventh or eighth grade, he met a retired magician named Al Cohn on the bus to the public library.  Shapiro described the man as “bald, old, smoked a cigar, and [had] 20 fingers; I was in love.”  

Cohn (1891-1988), known as the “Sponge Ball King” for a famous trick he invented and sold, had retired to Miami in 1951 after owning the Magic Centre on Eighth Avenue near Times Square in New York City for many years.  Given the boy’s response to him, Cohn may have been Leonardo Shapiro’s first surrogate father in a line that continued well into adulthood.

He taught the boy some sleight-of-hand tricks and soon Leo started taking daily lessons from him; attended Saturday-morning meetings of the Magic Roundtable, a magician’s group, at the MacArthur Hotel in South Beach; and even performed at bar mitzvot and children’s parties in Miami Beach:

I gradually moved up from guinea pig to stooge to accomplice, to junior magician.  I started to create my own routines.  I acquired a stage name, a hand-me-down tuxedo, a bright red cummerbund, and actually made some money performing at children’s parties.

Leo’s devotion to magic lasted several years, Florence remembered, and like his other pursuits, it was a total commitment.  It also, like many of his other childhood pursuits, found expression in his stage productions.

Miami Beach in the 1950s was a “concrete fake Art Deco landfill,” in Shapiro’s view, and his Dade County public school was a restrictive and confining environment.  Performing magic tricks surely gave young Leo at least the feeling of control over his surroundings, his “violent peers, their bullying parents,” and “the Cuban Revolution’s . . . angry exiles,” perhaps in the same way that Indian shamans, in whom Shapiro would later take an interest, took control of the nature around them through magic. 

The science fiction books were clearly an escape, too: “I used them like drugs,” he said.  Shapiro disclosed that he read a novel or two every day, including Isaac Asimov’s multi-generational Foundation Trilogy with its theme of social evolution in a universe of many diverse worlds—an obvious appeal for young Shapiro. 

We’ll see that both science fiction, which he said gave him “a Utopian imagination,” and magic would continue to be an interest for Shapiro well into his professional adulthood.

[Part 2 of “A Biography of Leonardo Shapiro” will be posted on Wednesday.  I’ll pick up with Shapiro’s transfer to the Windsor Mountain School in Lenox, Massachusetts, for 10th grade.  This move marked a great change in the young man’s life and was a major influence on his path toward becoming a theater artist.  Be sure to return to Rick On Theater on the 19th to continue this story of Leonardo Shapiro’s life and work.]

Noh Theater of Japan

 

[I’ve posted a number of pieces about Kabuki, the dynamic traditional theater form of Japan, on Rick On Theater.  (See, for example, “Kabuki: A Trip to a Land of Dreams” [1 November 2010]; “Grand Kabuki (July 1985)” [6 November 2010]; “Two Kabuki Reviews (2014)” [20 January 2018]; “‘Kabuki: Inside the Japanese Artform with its Biggest Star, Ebizo’” by Jon Wertheim [1 May 2020]; “‘The Ancient Art of Kabuki Made New, With Computer Animation’” by Micheline Maynard in “Computers and Actors, Part 1” [4 October 2021].)   

[I’ve even posted one article on the ancient performance form Gigaku (26 July 2011); but I haven’t run anything on Noh (14th century), which is older than Kabuki (17th century) and younger than Gigaku (7th century).

[On a recent Sunday, the New York Times published an interesting piece on a new movement in Japan concerning the making of Noh masks in the paper’s T Magazine, its periodic style publication.  The report, Hannah Kirshner’s “A New Face,” is short, and it doesn’t say anything about the theater form itself, so I decided an introduction to Noh was in order.

[The name Noh (sometimes written ‘Nō’) is probably familiar with most readers, but I suspect most Westerners are unfamiliar with the theater form itself.  So, before I present Kirshner’s report on the modern-day take on Noh masks, here’s a brief history and description of this classic drama.]

Noh is a Japanese classic theater form involving music, dance, and drama, originating in the 14th century.  It was developed together with Kyogen, which are comical pieces performed during interludes of the main Noh performance.  The dual art of Noh and Kyogen is known as Nohgaku, and has been designated an Intangible Cultural Heritage by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Noh, as we know it today, was popularized and formalized by a dramatist named Zeami Motokiyo (1363-1444) during the Muromachi Period (1333-1573).  Of the known 240 Noh plays in the current repertoire, Zeami wrote 100, and he codified the acting and production techniques in use today (1400-33; On the Art of the No Drama [Princeton University Press, 1984]).

It was Zeami's work that attracted the government's patronage of the art form.  Zeami later fell out of favor with the government and was banished to Sado Island.  Four main Noh troupes were subsequently established, receiving sponsorship from shrines and temples.

During the Tokugawa Period (1603-1867), the shogunate, the administration of the supreme military commander (shogun) of feudal Japan, made Noh its official ceremonial art and issued regulations for its governance.  Noh thus became increasingly standardized, with an emphasis on tradition rather than innovation.  A fifth troupe was added during this time, making five main Noh troupes which survive and perform till this day.

Noh theater is structured around song and dance.  The movement is slow and stately, the language is poetic (and spoken in a highly stylized form of 14th-century lyric Japanese that few modern spectators can understand), and it’s sung in a monotone.  

The name ‘Noh’ means ‘skill,’ ‘talent,’ or ‘to accomplish something.’  Zeami used the term ‘elegant imitation.’  When executed with excellence, the result is the experience of yugen, or ‘supreme beauty.’  This is the ultimate goal of the Noh performer. 

The rich, elaborate, and heavy costumes consist of multiple layers and textures that create an effect of resplendent elegance but also a bulky, massive figure.  Expressiveness is enhanced by props, most notably a folding fan.  Closed, partly closed, or open, the fan may represent any object as suggested by its shape and handling, for example a dagger or a lantern.

Plots are usually drawn from legend, history, literature (primarily Japanese or Chinese classical poetry and Zen Buddhist verses), and contemporary events of the era.  Themes often relate to dreams, supernatural worlds, ghosts, and spirits.

Noh plots are essentially dance-dramas, not concerned with dramatic action.  The plays seek to explore the essence of a situation or emotion in lyrical form.  All Noh plays reach fulfillment in dance.

Noh is performed on a square stage with a roof which is supported at its four corners by pillars.  The stage, made of planks, is hollow and resounds like a drum which the actors can use for sound effects.  All sides of the stage are open except for the back which consists of a wall with a painted image of a pine tree; in addition to no walls, there’s also no curtain to separate the audience from the performance space.  (All Noh stages are virtually identical.  Even the dimensions are standardized.) 

A bridgeway (hashigakari) runs at an oblique angle off the rear left corner (i.e., “up right” in western theater jargon) of the stage (to a small structure that serves as the “wings” of a western theater) for performers to enter and exit.  Noh used to be typically staged outdoors, but modern indoor theaters have also now become a common venue.

All performers in Noh are traditionally male (though that tradition is being successfully challenged more and more).  The roles are traditional and codified:

•   shite – the leading player.  Depending on the play, the shite (pronounced shi-TAY) may act as a holy old man, a deity, a demon, a spirit, or a living man or woman.  His movements express various moods.  (The shite is the only performer who wears a mask.)

•   waki – the supporting actor.  The waki plays roles such as a priest, monk, or samurai.  In contrast to the shite, the waki always portrays living people.

•   jiutai – the chorus.  The chorus of eight to ten people, including the chorus leader, sits stage left (i.e., the right of the stage from the perspective of the spectator) and assists the shite in the narration of the story.  (Unlike the chorus of a Greek classic play, the jiutai doesn’t enter the action on stage.)

•   hayashi – the orchestra.  Four musicians provide accompaniment for the performance with a flute (fue), shoulder drum (kotsuzumi), hip drum (otsuzumi) and stick drum (taiko).  They sit upstage, at the rear of the platform.

•   koken – stage attendants.  Dressed in black (to indicate they are unseen), the stage attendants are not part of the play but assist the performers in various ways, such as handing them props or adjusting their costumes.

The cast of a Noh play is a minimum of two (the shite and the waki), which is the usual, to up to six, plus the chorus and musicians. 

The roles each actor may play are rigidly conventional, unlike in western theater.  A waki one night can’t play a shite’s part the next, and a shite wouldn’t play a waki’s role in another production.  Training starts at around age three and it takes decades for a Noh actor to move up the ranks.

A Noh play generally runs around 60-90 minutes, some divided into two acts, and a Kyogen play lasts for around 15-30 minutes.  Traditionally, a Noh program includes three to five plays, one from each of several different categories of styles.  

Each play is separated from the next by a Kyogen, usually a comic version or parody of the main Noh play, making a total performance of between 3:45 and 10:00 hours (though probably more like 4-5 hours; spectators would come and go and bring food and drink).  Modern Noh performances, with fewer plays, are considerably shorter.

The lines of the play preceding the climactic dance establish the circumstances which motivate it.  The jiutai sings the narration of the shite’s dance-story; the hayashi furnishes a musical setting and establishes the timing of the shite’s gestures.  The dancer’s every movement of his hands and feet follows set rules.

Each gesture, each pose, each movement, each vocal inflection, each musical sequence has a specific meaning.  (These codified performance techniques, passed on from generation to generation, are called kata.)  The actors and musicians must learn these and execute them precisely, and devoted Noh fans understand them as if they were speech.

One key element of Noh are the masks which the shite wears.  They tell the audience what kind of character is being portrayed.  Some masks are general characters who may appear in many plays, while others are specific and are used in only one or two plays.  Frequently used masks represent demons and spirits, as well as women and men of various ages.  

The masks, which cover only the actor’s face, are carved from blocks of Japanese cypress.  Their three-dimensional properties allow skilled actors to evince a variety of expressions with changes in head orientation.  Some Noh masks, for example, are so carefully designed that the face smiles cheerfully when the actor looks up and takes on a dark, melancholy expression when the actor looks down. 

The masks are as codified as the actor’s kata.  The traditional mask-maker (unlike the ones in the article that follows), who’s an artist as well as a craftsman, can make only the subtlest modifications to the face, but master mask-makers have more leeway to do so than an apprentice.  Like the actors and the musicians, mask-makers have their traditions that are passed on to the next generations.

                     

— Pat Byrnes, New Yorker 29 Oct. 2001 

 “A NEW FACE”
by Hannah Kirshner

[Below is Kirshner’s New York Times report on the recent development in Noh mask-making (T Magazine 26 March 2023).  It’s also available online as “MAKING IT: The Female Artisans Honoring, and Reinventing, Japanese Noh Masks” (The Female Artisans Honoring, and Reinventing, Japanese Noh Masks - The New York Times (nytimes.com)).  There are several nice photo illustrations by Bon Duke, which I didn’t reproduce for ROT.]

Both honoring and departing from the tradition of Japanese Noh masks making, women are expanding its possibilities.

One of the world’s oldest surviving theatrical arts, Japanese Noh grew out of various forms of popular entertainment at temples, shrines and festivals, including seasonal rites offered by villagers giving thanks for a bountiful harvest. During the Muromachi period (1336-1573), those varied productions were codified into an elaborately contrived entertainment for military leaders, some of whom, like the 16th-century warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi, also acted in Noh. Presented using minimal props on a stage comprising a roof, four pillars and a bridge way, the plays dramatize myths and tales from traditional Japanese literature with monologues, sparse bamboo flute melodies, periodic percussion and tonal chanting. Often, supernatural beings take human form. The pace can be almost hypnotically slow, with the colors and elaborate embroidery of the actors’ costumes indicating their characters’ age and status.

But perhaps the most distinguishing feature of Noh is the carved masks worn by performers. Of the hundreds of masks produced during the Muromachi period, about 40 to 50 form the archetypes for the masks made today, says the historian Eric Rath, who specializes in premodern Japan; many represent different characters, depending on the play. Master mask carvers have long been celebrated for their ability to create a static face that seems to come alive, its expression changing with the angle of the performer’s head and the way the light hits its features. While many Japanese people today have never seen a live Noh performance, the white visage and red lips of a Ko-omote mask (one of a few denoting a young woman) or the bulging golden eyes of the horned Hannya (one of the most famous of the demon masks, representing a wrathful, jealous woman) are both intrinsic to Japan’s visual culture.

Before World War II, only men were allowed to perform Noh professionally; now, some women play leading roles. But until recently, mask making, in which blocks of hinoki cypress carved in high relief are hollowed out, then primed with a white mixture of crushed oyster shells and animal glue -- with mineral pigment for lips and cheeks, and gold powder or copper to give the teeth and eyes of masks depicting supernatural beings an otherworldly glow -- was a craft largely handed down from father to son.

That’s changed somewhat in the years since the Kyoto-based Mitsue Nakamura, 76, started learning the craft in the 1980s. When she began, she knew of only one other woman in the field, but this year, all four of her current apprentices, some of whom study for as long as 10 years, are female. Some adhere to the traditional archetypes and techniques, while others radically reinterpret them.

For purists, Nakamura says, a true Noh mask is never entirely decorative: It has to be used onstage, and its maker must hew precisely to a narrow set of centuries-old parameters. Today, Nakamura says, actors prize masks that are antiques or appear to be. Her pieces, each of which takes about a month to complete, often look older than they are thanks to the shadows she smudges into the contours of the face, or a weathering she achieves by scratching the paint with bamboo.

In 2018, the Kanagawa-based playwright and screenwriter Lilico Aso, 48, came to see Nakamura’s process firsthand because she was interested in developing a character who was a Noh mask carver; instead, she became a mask carver herself, drawn, she says, to the idea of being “both a craftsman and an artist.” She’s been studying with Nakamura ever since and, last fall, in a show titled “Noh Mask Maker Mitsue Nakamura and Her Four Disciples” at Tokyo’s Tanaka Yaesu gallery, she exhibited a series of four masks called “Time Capsule” inspired by celebrities and fictional characters. Rihanna became an earth goddess with pearlescent blue lips and eye shadow. Ariana Grande morphed into the moon princess Kaguya, who, in an ancient tale, rejects all her mortal suitors and returns to her lunar home; in Aso’s rendering, she has the high, soft eyebrows of a Noh beauty.

For some female Noh artisans, subtle changes to traditional forms emerge from a deep personal connection. Keiko Udaka, 43, who also works in Kyoto, grew up steeped in Noh, with a father who was both a performer and a mask maker. She began studying with him when she was a teenager; in 2021, after he died, she took over an unfinished Noh play he was working on, commissioned by a town in Ehime prefecture, on the island of Shikoku. While one of her brothers completed the script, Udaka created a mask for the main character, a folk hero who starved to death while cultivating barley for future generations, imbuing it with the features of their late father. Such homages aren’t an uncommon practice among Noh artisans, and the allure is obvious: As Udaka says, a painstakingly crafted carving is more indelible than a photo. “Memories can be recorded too easily in many places now,” she says, “and they don’t remain in our minds.”

While Udaka’s departures from tradition are subtle, those of the Tokyo-based Shuko Nakamura (no relation to the Kyoto mask maker), 34, are unignorable. Inspired by Noh history, folklore and her own imagination, she makes masks out of modeling clay and paper rather than wood. One mask depicts an old woman, a crown of blue-black crows circling above her forlorn face, alluding to the ubasute story -- which appears in both folk tales and Noh -- of an elderly family member abandoned in the forest. With deep smile lines, a long horsehair beard and bushy pompom eyebrows, another mask honors the form of Okina, a spirit who appears as an old man. A gnarled pine tree sprouts from the mask’s head in place of hair; at the roots nestle a pair of turtles. The conifers and reptiles, she says, are references to the characteristic illustrations on the fan Okina holds when he dances.

[Ubasute (‘abandoning an old woman’) is a mythical practice whereby an infirm or elderly relative is carried to some remote, desolate place, and left there to die.  It appears to be the subject of legend and doesn’t seem ever to have been a common custom.]

Out of respect for the ancient art, Shuko Nakamura refers to her creations as “creative masks” rather than Noh masks, but the tribute is clear. And even a traditional mask maker like Mitsue Nakamura sees the place for works that expand the boundaries of Noh’s conservative culture. “Of course, the best masks are those used onstage,” she says, “but I think we should also make Noh masks that can stand on their own.”

[A little more than a dozen years ago, I published a post on Rick On Theater on “The Magic of Masks” (17 September 2011; Rick On Theater: The Magic of Masks).  I looked at masking in a number of different circumstances, including various performance forms—Noh theater among them—and from several different perspectives.

[The interested ROTter might want to have a look at this post (which also touches on puppetry, an allied art form, in passing).  If anyone wants further information on masks and masking, the afterword of “The Magic of Masks” is a list of the people whom I referenced in the post and some of the sources I consulted. 

[(A few words of caution: the mask post, and therefore the list, is 12 years old.  Some of the life-dates included in the list of names are out of date and the person named has since died.  Some of the sources, too, are old and may no longer be readily available.)

[Hannah Kirshner is a writer, artist, and food stylist.  Her reporting has appeared in publications including the New York Times and Food & Wine, among others, and on the Proof podcast from America’s Test Kitchen.  She’s the author and illustrator of Water, Wood, and Wild Things: Learning Craft and Cultivation in a Japanese Mountain Town (Viking, 2021).  

[Kirshner’s the winner of an International Gourmand “Best In The World” award for writing on Japan.  She grew up on a small farm outside Seattle, studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, and now divides her time between Brooklyn and rural Ishikawa, Japan.]

"Baring Beethoven's Secrets With Snips of DNA"

by Gina Kolata 

[Gina Kolata’s report on the DNA tests on the locks of hair believed to have been taken from the head of German composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 [baptized]-1827), “Baring Beethoven’s Secrets With Snips of DNA,” ran in the New York Times of 23 March 2023 in the news section (Section A).

[As you’ll read, there were numerous mysteries surrounding Beethoven’s health, his deafness, and his death and scientists hoped that the DNA tests might reveal some answers.  Instead, they raised several more questions.  I’ll let readers discover what resulted for themselves.  It may not be conclusive, but it’s really interesting.]

By analyzing seven samples of hair said to have come from Ludwig van Beethoven, researchers debunked myths about the revered composer while raising new questions about his life and death.

It was March 1827 and Ludwig van Beethoven was dying. As he lay in bed, wracked with abdominal pain and jaundiced, grieving friends and acquaintances came to visit. And some asked a favor: Could they clip a lock of his hair for remembrance? 

The parade of mourners continued after Beethoven’s death at age 56, even after doctors performed a gruesome craniotomy, looking at the folds in Beethoven’s brain and removing his ear bones in a vain attempt to understand why the revered composer lost his hearing.

Within three days of Beethoven’s death, not a single strand of hair was left on his head.

Ever since, a cottage industry has aimed to understand Beethoven’s illnesses and the cause of his death.

Now, an analysis of strands of his hair has upended long held beliefs about his health. The report provides an explanation for his debilitating ailments and even his death, while also raising new questions about his genealogical origins and hinting at a dark family secret.

The paper, by an international group of researchers, was published Wednesday in the journal Current Biology.

It offers additional surprises: A famous lock of hair — the subject of a book and a documentary — was not Beethoven’s. It was from an Ashkenazi Jewish woman. [Jews descended from Central and Eastern European ancestors are Ashkenazim.]

The study also found that Beethoven did not have lead poisoning, as had been widely believed. Nor was he a Black man, as some had proposed.

And a Flemish family in Belgium — who share the last name van Beethoven and had proudly claimed to be related — had no genetic ties to him.

Researchers not associated with the study found it convincing.

It was “a very serious and well-executed study,” said Andaine Seguin-Orlando, an expert in ancient DNA at the University Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, in France.

The detective work to solve the mysteries of Beethoven’s illness began on Dec. 1, 1994, when a lock of hair said to be Beethoven’s was auctioned by Sotheby’s. Four members of the American Beethoven Society, a private group that collects and preserves material related to the composer, purchased it for $7,300. They proudly displayed it at the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San Jose State University in California.

But was it really Beethoven’s hair?

The story was that it was clipped by Ferdinand Hiller [1811-85], a 15-year-old composer and ardent acolyte who visited Beethoven four times before he died.

On the day after Beethoven died, Hiller clipped a lock of his hair. He gave it to his son decades later as a birthday gift. It was kept in a locket.

The locket with its strands of hair was the subject of a best-selling book, “Beethoven’s Hair,” by Russell Martin, published in 2000, and made into a documentary film in 2005.

An analysis of the hair at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois found lead levels as high as 100 times normal.

In 2007, authors of a paper in The Beethoven Journal, a scholarly journal published by San Jose State, speculated that the composer might have been inadvertently poisoned by medicine, wine, or eating and drinking utensils.

That was where matters stood until 2014 when Tristan Begg, then a masters student studying archaeology at the University of Tübingen in Germany, realized that science had advanced enough for DNA analysis using locks of Beethoven’s hair.

“It seemed worth a shot,” said Mr. Begg, now a Ph.D. student at Cambridge University.

William Meredith, a Beethoven scholar, began searching for other locks of Beethoven’s hair, buying them with financial support from the American Beethoven Society, at private sales and auctions. He borrowed two more from a university and a museum. He ended up with eight locks, including the hairs from Ferdinand Hiller.

First, the researchers tested the Hiller lock. Because it turned out to be from a woman, it was not — could not be — Beethoven’s. The analysis also showed that the woman had genes found in Ashkenazi Jewish populations.

Dr. Meredith speculates that the authentic hair from Beethoven was destroyed and replaced with strands from Sophie Lion, the wife of Ferdinand Hiller’s son Paul. She was Jewish. [The Hillers (originally Hildesheim) were themselves Jewish.]

As for the other seven locks, one was inauthentic, five had identical DNA and one could not be tested. The five locks with identical DNA were of different provenances and two had impeccable chains of custody, which gave the researchers confidence that they were hair from Beethoven.

Ed Green, an expert in ancient DNA at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved with the study, agreed.

“The fact that they have so many independent locks of hair, with different histories, that all match one another is compelling evidence that this is bona fide DNA from Beethoven,” he said.

When the group had the DNA sequence from Beethoven’s hair, they tried to answer longstanding questions about his health. For instance, why might he have died from cirrhosis of the liver?

He drank, but not to excess, said Theodore Albrecht, a professor emeritus of musicology at Kent State University in Ohio. Based on his study of texts left by the composer, he described what is known of Beethoven’s imbibing habits in an email.

“In none of these activities did Beethoven exceed the line of consumption that would make him an ‘alcoholic,’ as we would commonly define it today,” he wrote.

Beethoven’s hair provided a clue: He had DNA variants that made him genetically predisposed to liver disease. In addition, his hair contained traces of hepatitis B DNA, indicating an infection with this virus, which can destroy a person’s liver.

But how did Beethoven get infected? Hepatitis B is spread through sex and shared needles, and during childbirth.

Beethoven did not use intravenous drugs, Dr. Meredith said. He never married, although he was romantically interested in several women. He also wrote a letter — although he never sent it — to his “immortal Beloved,” whose identity has been the subject of much scholarly intrigue. Details of his sex life remain unknown.

Arthur Kocher, a geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany and one of the new study’s co-authors, offered another possible explanation for his infection: The composer could have been infected with hepatitis B during childbirth. The virus is commonly spread this way, he said, and infected babies can end up with a chronic infection that lasts a lifetime. In about a quarter of people, chronic infection will eventually lead to cirrhosis of the liver or liver cancer.

“It could ultimately lead someone to die of liver failure,” he said.

The study also revealed that Beethoven was not genetically related to others in his family line. His Y chromosome DNA differed from that of a group of five people with the same last name — van Beethoven — living in Belgium today and who, according to archival records, share a 16th-century ancestor with the composer. That indicates there must have been an out-of-wedlock affair in Beethoven’s direct paternal line. But where?

Maarten Larmuseau, a co-author of the new study who is a professor of genetic genealogy at the University of Leuven in Belgium, suspects that Ludwig van Beethoven’s father was born to the composer’s grandmother with a man other than his grandfather. There are no baptismal records for Beethoven’s father [Johann van Beethoven; 1740-92], and his grandmother [Maria Josepha (Poll) van Beethoven (née Ball; ca. 1714-75)] was known to have been an alcoholic. Beethoven’s grandfather [Ludwig van Beethoven, born Lodewijk van Beethoven; Flemish, 1712-73] and father had a difficult relationship. These factors, Dr. Larmuseau said, are possible signs of an extramarital child.

Beethoven had his own difficulties with his father, Dr. Meredith said. And while his grandfather, a noted court musician in his day, died when Beethoven was very young, he honored him and kept his portrait with him until the day he died.

Dr. Meredith added that when rumors circulated that Beethoven was actually the illegitimate son of Friedrich Wilhelm II [1744-97; King of Prussia: 1786-97] or even Frederick the Great [1712-86; King of Prussia: 1740-86], Beethoven never refuted them.

The researchers had hoped their study of Beethoven’s hair might explain some of the composer’s agonizing health problems. But it did not provide definitive answers.

The composer suffered from terrible digestive problems, with abdominal pain and prolonged bouts of diarrhea. The DNA analysis did not point to a cause, although it pretty much ruled out two proposed reasons: celiac disease and ulcerative colitis. And it made a third hypothesis — irritable bowel syndrome — unlikely.

Hepatitis B could have been the culprit, Dr. Kocher said, although it is impossible to know for sure.

The DNA analysis also offered no explanation for Beethoven’s hearing loss, which started in his mid-20s and resulted in deafness in the last decade of his life.

The researchers took pains to discuss their results in advance with those directly affected by their research.

On the evening of March 15, Dr. Larmuseau met with the five people in Belgium whose last name is van Beethoven and who provided DNA for the study.

He started right out with the bad news: They are not genetically related to Ludwig van Beethoven.

They were shocked.

“They didn’t know how to react,” Dr. Larmuseau said. “Every day they are remembered by their special surname. Every day they say their name and people say, ‘Are you related to Ludwig van Beethoven?’”

That relationship, Dr. Larmuseau said, “is part of their identity.”

And now it is gone.

The study’s findings that the Hiller lock was from a Jewish woman stunned Mr. Martin, author of “Beethoven’s Hair.”

“Wow, who would have imagined it,” he said. Now, he added, he wants to find descendants of Sophie Lion, the wife of Paul Hiller, to see if the hair was hers. And he’d like to find out if she had lead poisoning.

For Dr. Meredith, the project has been an amazing adventure.

“The whole complex story is astonishing to me.” he said. “And I’ve been part of it since 1994. One finding just leads to another unexpected finding.”

[This article caught my attention because of where I lived in Germany when my family first arrived there in 1962—before my dad went to the embassy in Bonn in 1965 (see my two-part post on Rick On Theater, “An American Teen in Germany,” 9 and 12 March 2013).

[Dad was assigned to the small city of Koblenz on the Rhine.  ROTters may recall from the several times I blogged about Koblenz that across the river, just at the point where the Mosel flows into it, is the suburb of Ehrenbreitstein, the site of a ruin of an old fortress.  It’s where the fireworks for the Rhine in Flames celebration are launched every summer; I wrote specifically about that on ROT (13 November 2019).

[Well, Ehrenbreitstein was also the birthplace of Beethoven’s mother, Maria Magdalena van Beethoven (née Keverich; 1746-87), and it’s the home of the world’s largest family-owned Beethoven collection.  I wondered if the article made any mention of this connection.  (As you see, it didn’t.)

[Gina Kolata writes about science and medicine.  She’s twice been a Pulitzer Prize finalist-—for investigative reporting in 2000 and for explanatory journalism in 2010—and is the author of six books, including Mercies in Disguise: A Story of Hope, a Family's Genetic Destiny, and The Science That Saved Them (St. Martin’s Press, 2017).]

 

"New film 'Nine Parts' explores lives of Iraqi women after U.S. invasion"

by Jeffrey Brown, Anne Azzi Davenport, and Alison Thoet 

[The report below, “New film ‘Nine Parts’ explores lives of Iraqi women after U.S. invasion,” discussing the new film version of Heather Raffo’s 2003 play, Nine Parts of Desire, was written, presented, and produced by Jeffrey Brown, Anne Azzi Davenport, and Alison Thoet.  It aired on PBS NewsHour on 30 March 2023.

[Nine Parts of Desire, the play, recounts the lives of nine Iraqi women (one of whom is based on Raffo, herself) after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in mid- and late March 2003.  (The film has come out on the 20th anniversary of that invasion.  The film version is set in Michigan, home to the U.S.’s largest Arab-American population, and relates the experiences of Iraqi women now living in the United States.)

[Raffo was born and grew up in Okemos, Michigan, part of metro Lansing, ca. 1970.  She’s a Lucille Lortel Award-winning (for her solo performance in her play Nine Parts of Desire), Iraqi-American playwright and actress.  Her father, a civil engineer who died in 2014, was Iraqi—born in Mosul but lived in Baghdad—and her mother is American.  Raffo has lived in New York City for 30 years.]

After the U.S. invaded Iraq 20 years ago, Iraqi-American playwright and actor Heather Raffo created and starred in an acclaimed play “Nine Parts of Desire” about the lives of Iraqi women. She’s returned to the subject on film and through a distinctly American lens, setting a new version in Michigan. Jeffrey Brown went there to see the work for our arts and culture series, CANVAS.

Geoff Bennett: Twenty years ago, after the U.S. invaded Iraq, Iraqi American playwright and actor Heather Raffo created and starred in an acclaimed play titled “Nine Parts of Desire” about the lives of Iraqi women.

Now she’s returned to the subject, but on film and through a distinctly American lens, setting a new version of the work in Michigan.

Jeffrey Brown went there to see how this work lands for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Jeffrey Brown: The setting, a church on the Flint River in Michigan.

Heather Raffo, Writer and Actress: The year ISIS took Mosul [2014], dementia took my dad. He spent 80 years carrying and six years forgetting money.

Jeffrey Brown: In the midst of the pandemic, an Iraqi-American woman mourning the loss of her father is visited by a series of women.

Heather Raffo [in film scene]: We didn’t know if our neighbor was Sunni or Shia. It was offensive to ask. But here now people demand to know what I am.

Jeffrey Brown: Many lives.

Heather Raffo [film scene]: I have not been to school since America came.

Jeffrey Brown: Many stories.

Heather Raffo [film scene]: We have you chained to the desert.

Jeffrey Brown: All played and told by writer and actor Heather Raffo.

Heather Raffo: Even my son, he said yesterday, he’s like: “So, were they really there?”

Jeffrey Brown: Yes.

Heather Raffo: “Or were they all in her head?” And he’s like . . .

Jeffrey Brown: Right. I mean, I was thinking the same thing, right?

Heather Raffo: Right? And he’s like: “Well, did it happen or didn’t it?”

And I’m like: “Well, I think that’s just up to you, how you feel about that,” because that’s how I felt oftentimes during the pandemic. Am I connected to my ancestors? Am I connected in my grief to all these things that have happened across the world throughout time, or am I just isolated and alone?

And I think it’s both, right?

Heather Raffo [film scene]: There’s a whole generation today, they want to think for themselves without Iran, without America.

Jeffrey Brown: At Detroit Public Theatre recently, Raffo screened her new film, “Nine Parts,” for family, friends and community members.

Heather Raffo: This is absolutely meant to be in Michigan.

Jeffrey Brown: It was a homecoming on several counts.

Heather Raffo: Adapting it was wanting to be in conversation with my dad, was what the film was, and wanting to be in conversation with my country.

Jeffrey Brown: She lives in New York now, but was raised in this area amid the largest Arab American population in the country. And this was also a chance to mourn our own Iraqi-born father, a member of its minority Christian, or Chaldean, community, who died during the pandemic, when his family couldn’t hold a public funeral.

Heather Raffo [film scene]: Who is going to be left to inspire the people?

Jeffrey Brown: And the film itself is a kind of return to her critically acclaimed 2003 play, “Nine Parts of Desire,” that explored the lives of Iraqi women through a decade of war and upheaval.

Heather Raffo: The original impetus for “Nine Parts of Desire,” the play, was to reach Americans with the humanity of Iraqis.

Jeffrey Brown: Which meant what?

Heather Raffo: Which meant, they are real people.

Jeffrey Brown: Right.

Heather Raffo: They have deep and complicated feelings, both politically and personally, and that we can’t pigeonhole them to one side of an issue. And, of course, once the kind of civil strife started happening, it was just showing the huge diversity and depth of their thinking.

Jeffrey Brown: Twenty years later, the impact of the American invasion continues to be felt in Iraq, a country still torn by sectarian divisions, beset by economic woes and political corruption.

An estimated nine million Iraqis are internally displaced or live abroad, including most of Raffo’s extended family, many of whom left when ISIS took over Mosul in 2014 and targeted Iraqi Christians.

Heather Raffo: I had about 100 family members living in Iraq in 2003. I now have one cousin left in the country. So that’s a thousands-of-years-old family and community that has been displaced in less than 10.

Man [in audience at film screening]: There’s a lot of talk about homeland. And I have been struggling with that the older I get.

Jeffrey Brown: The reverberations also continued to be filled in the Iraqi-American community. Among those attending the Detroit screening was 24-year-old Fatima Al-Rasool.

Fatima Al-Rasool, Public Programming Coordinator, Arab American National Museum: Watching the film just brought up so much emotion.

The struggles and the hardships that Iraqis go through and that Iraqi-Americans feel and also go through are something that isn’t talked about quite often. I think that . . .

Jeffrey Brown: It isn’t talked about even in your community, you and your friends and family?

Fatima Al-Rasool: It’s talked about, but I think, with big traumas like that, things tend to be buried deep.

Jeffrey Brown: Al-Rasool, from a Muslim American family, came to the U.S. as an infant in the period just before the war. Many relatives remain in Iraq.

She now straddles these worlds, in part through her work as public programming coordinator at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, which features exhibitions of both past and present, including showcasing the work of contemporary artists.

What’s your sense of your friends, other people in your generation? How important are the traditions and the history?

Fatima Al-Rasool: Because, for the most part, we were raised in America, we really try our hardest to keep in touch with our heritage, even further than just hearing the stories of our parents or visiting.

We really want to define being Arab-American and what that means to us. And I think the museum is a place that allows us to do that by uplifting Arab-American stories, encouraging conversations through art.

Heather Raffo [on stage in a play reading]: You a politician? You know I hate politicians.

Actress [in reading (Kathleen Chalfant)]: Wow.

Jeffrey Brown: Heather Raffo is now artist in residence at the museum, a chance to develop a new play that expands her canvas, looking at migration around the world, and featuring musicians and actors from a variety of countries.

Heather Raffo [film scene]: I very much feel this void. I have no peace.

Jeffrey Brown: But it is this country that seems most on her mind, especially by setting the new film version of “Nine Parts” here in Michigan in 2020, sectarian division and anger all around reminding her of Iraq’s plight.

Now the Flint River and the city’s ongoing water crisis stood in for the Tigris. The pandemic brought epic loss of life on a scale of war.

Heather Raffo: From a Michigan point of view, there were armed militias in our government buildings [30 April 2020, in protest of the governor’s COVID-19 stay-at-home order]. And the way the country was increasingly tense was something that almost every Arab-American, but particularly Iraqi-American, goes, OK, warning signs are really clear.

Jeffrey Brown: You see that happening in the U.S., those kinds of divisions? Are you red? Are you blue?

Heather Raffo: Are you red? Are you blue? How you going to talk to your family member over Thanksgiving, right? How’re you going to — what are you going to say?

It’s hostile. It’s hot. As an artist, we go toward the heat.

Heather Raffo [in reading]: Can you ski without risk?

Actress [in reading (Kathleen Chalfant)]: I always land on my feet.

Jeffrey Brown: Iraq, she says, could be a bellwether for the U.S.

Heather Raffo [in reading]: Everything bounces back, the market, the weather. It will all bounce back.

Jeffrey Brown: Unless we address where we are 20 years later.

Heather Raffo [in reading]: Money doesn’t move. It bounces.

Actress [in reading (Kathleen Chalfant)]: Will a rock bounce back?

Jeffrey Brown: For the “PBS NewsHour,” Jeffrey Brown in Detroit.

Geoff Bennett: Heather Raffo’s new play, “Tomorrow Will Be Sunday,” opens at Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center on April 13.

[According to Wikipedia, Raffo conceived her play, Nine Parts of Desire, during an August 1993 trip to Baghdad to see family.  She visited the Saddam Art Center, and a painting by Iraqi artist Layla al-Attar (1944-93) entitled Savagery, depicting a naked woman from behind hugging a tree trunk among a stand of trees, moved her.  The impressionistic, sepia-colored, monochromatic canvas inspired Raffo to compose Nine Parts.  

[The dramatist was curious about the life of al-Attar, and in the play she placed the al-Attar character prominently.  The artist, who became director of the Iraqi National Art Museum. expressed recognition of the importance of women in all spheres of society.  On 27 June 1993, al-Attar, her husband, and their housekeeper were killed by a U.S. missile attack on the Iraqi Intelligence headquarters just behind her house; two rockets misfired and hit her house.

[Raffo spent ten years interviewing Iraqi women from various social backgrounds, and she used this information to write the play.  Some of the women were strangers to her and some were relatives.  In 1998, she staged a 20-minute performance of the play at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, California, as part of her Master of Fine Arts thesis at the University of San Diego. 

[The final version of the play was completed in 2003 and premièred in August at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, Scotland.  It débuted in London at the Bush Theatre in September of that year.  From October 2004 to May 2005, it had its U.S. première Off-Broadway at the Manhattan Ensemble Theatre on Mercer Street in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood.  It ran for 246 performances.

[At the 2005 Lucille Lortel Awards (for excellence in New York Off-Broadway theater), Nine Parts won two awards, one for sound design and one for Outstanding Solo Show, shared by Raffo (for acting and writing) and MET (as producer); the play was nominated for another Lortel (scenic design) and an Outer Critics Circle Award (Outstanding Solo Performance).

[In his more than 30-year career with the PBS NewsHour, Jeffrey Brown has served as co-anchor, studio moderator, and field reporter on a wide range of national and international issues, with work taking him around the country and to many parts of the globe.  

[As arts correspondent he has profiled many of the world’s leading writers, musicians, actors and other artists.  Among his signature works at the NewsHour: a multi-year series, “Culture at Risk,” about threatened cultural heritage in the United States and abroad; the creation of the NewsHour’s online “Art Beat”; and hosting the monthly book club, “Now Read This,” a collaboration with the New York Times.

[As Senior Coordinating Producer of CANVAS, Anne Davenport is the primary field producer of arts and culture pieces and oversees all coverage.  She’s been leading CANVAS since its beginning, collaborating with Chief Arts Correspondent Jeffrey Brown for most of her 21 years at PBS NewsHour as well as with others.  Alison Thoet is a writer and a CANVAS associate producer and national affairs associate producer at NewsHour.]