THE MAN IN THE BLACK HAT
Oct 3: flying to the USA after our sixth month, eventful stay in India.
To continue. I want to pick up several strands from the last entry and weave them here. The very first one is the idea about discouragement. Is there anyone there who is reading this blag? (combo word meaning blab and blog).
I’ll tell you my New York story which has much to do with discouragement and audience. It is an embarrassing story, something I have not admitted to anyone else but the time has come to reveal it. The thing about ‘fessing up,’ as they say, writing and telling about it, is that it objectifies it so you can laugh instead of blush about it.
Way back in ’89 or ’90, when I was sending off my play scripts to theatres and getting a lot of rejections, I was thrilled to get a letter from Dramatic Risks, a new theatre company in New York started by Mark Grant Warren, saying something to the extent that “we love your script, CLYTEMNESTRA, and do we have your permission to do a staged reading of it in New York?” Of course I said yes. Who in her right mind would refuse New York? The big apple was beckoning and not only was I going to give them permission, but dig into my meager savings and fly out to New York for it.
So I flew East, with my then husband, the late Donald Powell (for the story about his suicide read my book of poems called AS A FOUNTAIN IN A GARDEN, to be available in Print On Demand soon), to meet my destiny. We spent quite a penny, stayed at the Gramercy Park Hotel, and the day of the reading, strolled about in Manhattan and found a great bookstore. As I was browsing in the theatre section, looking for a book on Ben Jonson (I wanted to make him a character in my play about Shakespeare (the idea was abandoned though the play about Shakespeare did get written in ’98), someone came up to me and said, are you “Kamal Kapur?” (I only became Kamla in 2002).
I was amazed. I didn’t know anyone in New York. Who could this be?
“Yes,” I said.
“You are the playwright? Clytemnestra?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve read your play. It’s great!”
Wow! I was famous even before the reading. New York! New York!
“But how did you know it was me?”
“I was part of the selection committee.”
“But how did you know it was me?”
“You’re in the theatre section, you’re Indian, your play is going to be read this evening,” replied our Sherlock Holmes.
I walked out of the bookstore on air. The anticipation of the evening was thick and heavy. There would be crowds there. Perhaps even overspill; people standing in the isles, perhaps even, as in the old days, beautiful, eager young people sitting on and around the stage. I was on the verge of my career as a playwright taking wing.
The evening came and off we went to the rather large café that had offered itself as the venue for the reading. I was a bit disappointed it wasn’t a theatre, but I knew that great things have humble beginnings, so shrugged it off. The actors, whose movements had been choreographed, walked about the stage, script in hand, reading their parts in a rehearsal. The time for the opening drew closer, but where were the crowds? Where was Sherlock Holmes? Over on a table in a corner sat a lone man in a hat, crumpled over a drink, but present, and observing. Mark looked embarrassed, and the actors, each of whom was also probably hoping for a break – a well-known director in the audience, perhaps, who would gobble them up after the reading. But no, though we delayed the opening a bit, no one else, absolutely no one else showed up. A few bar tenders, a few waitresses, Donald and I, and, of course, the lone man in the hat were the sole audience. He stayed throughout. When the play was over two hours later, he walked up to me, shook my hand, looked straight at me, and walked out without a word.
The narrative ends here. It would be futile to attempt to describe my disappointment and discouragement. We returned to California, and as time passed, a resolution formed inside me. I would always address myself to the man in the hat: an audience of one, as in Coleridge’s The Rhyme of The Ancient Mariner, would do for my purposes.
A few days ago I sat across the table from Neelam Mann Singh, dear friend, theatre director, house wife, mother, daughter, socialite, bright, sparky being, at the Taj Hotel In Chandigarh, bidding farewell for the next six months. Neelam had directed Clytemnestra for her theatre group, The Company, in Chandigarh in the 1980’s. “I love your blog,” Neelam said.
So, this entry is for you, my friend, Neelam, my man in the black hat.
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Posted by kamla Oct 3rd 2009
