events and besides she herself had played Lysistrata years ago and it wasn’t like this production with Peace at the end coming onto the altar nude with a dove in her hand, although that’s what Aristophanes calls for. I played Lysistrata in silver mylar with a dime-store shiny white wig, and the best part of the preparations was the cockmaking party where the men made their cocks in their own image, although they all had help. Jim W. made that papier mache one with a navy blue shaft with stars, a gleaming red head, silver tinsel pubic hair, and khaki balls. His was probably the most political. Or patriotic. Joe’s was the most grossly realistic, being a yard-long tube of foam rubber covered with a silk stocking, gross realism being Joe’s style, at least at the time; actually, for the Political 1 guess Flooney, our Mad Black Actor, having a spotted panther shaft, was definitely in the running. But we rehearsed it at the Storefront and that was our first production. It was a huge success at the rock festival and established us as Portland’s People’s Theatre, and with class. 1mean, when older professionals in various professions dropped out in the ’60s and ’70s and assumed a position of leadership, well, that was the shape of some alternative culture in that place. And as luck would have it, an extra playing a beggar in The Balcony was a cook at Portland’s macrobiotic restaurant called The Wayfarer, and he was having trouble making chapatis. What a happy coincidence that his director was born in India, had a passion for chapatis, was an expert maker of chapatis and an excellent Indian cook, and invited Frank over for an Indian meal along with his boss, a long-haired New Yorker who followed Meher Baba, who immediately or soon after offered Tom the opportunity to run the restaurant on the weekends when it was closed for some mysterious reason. So by the summer of ’70 we were running a restaurant on weekends, a restaurant being a long-standing fantasy, serving exclusively Indian foods on those days, and putting together theatre the rest of the time, often while chopping vegetables or slaving-over-a-hot- stove. Following the political disenchantment of the times with hierarchy and its apparent corruption, and the trend toward collective decision of the late ’60s and early ’70s, Tom and I struggled to teach and lead and manifest theatre while creating a context for everyone to contribute, grow, and take responsibility. Difficult. The old patting-your-head-rubbing-your- stomach trick . Anyway, Tom directed Lysistrata and played the Magistrate in a construction-site black plastic cape leading the Old Men’s Chorus, who wore Tac squad helmets and colored longjohns with huge coiled rope dongs concealed inside1 , which landed on the ground when produced, with an ineffectual thud. And Henk designed his first set for us, painting white pillars which we had found somewhere; in appropriate phallic fashion, one of which was used as a battering ram by the men to storm the white plastic temple of the women, the opening of which was constructed in appropriate labial fashion in pinks and reds. High on the hillside of the Barr Farm in Banks it made a graphic and wondrous sight, 1 imagine, to the collected youth of 1970. Anne Gerety Yale Rep, New Haven 45
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