KEROUAC : A REMEMBRANCE - Final

Here are a few more frame grabs from the video of KEROUAC, showing the use of slides and banners as backdrop for the various vignettes of monologue and dialogue.

 The big backdrop seen behind Me ( yes that's me with John Murphy during the show),is supposed to be a brick wall with "Kerouac" grafitti, and was created for the publicity photo shoot done about a month prior to the production. Here I used it as both a backdrop and a way to conceal the actor's dressing area just off stage.

 I love the juxtaposition of the slide of Kerouac standing before a neon sign, and John Murphy portraying him in front of my banner with the neon "Beatific slogan". Totally unintentional, and yet so perfectly apt.

This was a limited engagement running only two weekends, although it was popular enough to have been a month long run. The Hip Pocket Theatre was evolving in the mid-eighties after a decade of producing cutting edge shows and classic plays with that "Hip Pocket" touch that many found irresistible back then.

Things have changed a great deal since those days, and not really for the better in this age of mass celebrity worship and faux "Reality".

I've had a great deal of fun producing this blog for the last year and I'm grateful to those of you who have tuned in and followed along. I'll be suspending my posts for the summer, not due to lack of material...there is Tons more...but I will be focusing on the production of my third book on the art of Puppetry during this season ( it should have come out this summer, but the recession finally hit out here in New Mexico last year and I am only now able to resume my work on it, with a hopeful release date of September 2014). In order to produce a text which I feel is publishable takes an enormous amount of effort ( the last two each took two years to produce, and are selling well).

So I will not be keeping up my usual pace here...however, there are a number of "Miscellaneous" little items which will be posted from time to time during the lull, so don't give up following...

KEROUAC _ Banners 5

 I couldn't figure out what these Xerox's were about until I lined up the "sketch" of the  Cafe Bizarre banner and realized that I had actually cut it out of the copy and converted it for the projector.

This was a  Banner of an actual Banner! It hung above the Jazz Ensemble ( quite appropriately ) duruing the production  as seen here with MICHAEL BODYCOMB on bass.

KEROUAC - Banners 4

 The other two individuals who figure into the story of Kerouac's life are NEAL & CAROLYN CASSIDY, and both were represented by banners which flanked the audience seating areas.

Again, this studio portrait of Carolyn Cassidy, with it's extreme light and shadow, offered a perfect illustration for the banner with only the need to re-align to fit the canvas as seen above.

 Neal Cassidy still stands as the mostly silent symbol of all that Kerouac and the Beat Generation were about, and of course his presense permeates  ON THE ROAD. The photo above of Cassidy behind the wheel spoke volumes and covered two banners as laid out in my sketches at right.

Since these banners were behind the audience seating, the video camera was never aimed at them and so I have no frame grabs to show them in performance.

 Above actress CINDY GRIFFIN, who spoke for Carolyn Cassidy within the play, is seen performing in front of a slide of Neal Cassidy.

( Note: The banner of Carolyn Cassidy seen above still exists and is in the possesion of the play's creator JOHN MURPHY.)

KEROUAC - Banners 3

 For the background of the "Critic's Corner" area of the KEROUAC set, there was no better subject than ALLEN GINSBERG.

At first I considered using the younger image of him seen at left above. When I found the older Ginsberg in the photo above ( with WILLIAM BURROUGHS) and started doodling my graphic design over it, I knew that this was the right choice. The finished sketch appears at right.

 Here the Ginsberg banner is seen backing the Critic's Corner ( BOB KALBFLIESH and MYSELF as the Critics). I took the companion banner "Le Sang Des Poetes" from this image I found in a book about Kerouac.

KEROUAC - Banners 2

 I thought this photo of Jack Kerouac, taken with his mother near the end of his life, was a nice counterpoint to the previous banner which showed him young and ambitious. Also the natural light and shadow immediately lent themselves to the kind of graphic representation I was going for.

I used slogans from the Beat Generation at clock-points around the room. Using ordinary Letraset Type I set up the "Beatific" lettering.

 All of the artwork for these banners was projected onto the pre-primed canvas and traced onto it with a charcoal pencil. I had to rent the Art-O-Graph at a cost of $75 a day, a whopping sum for me back then! So I had to work quickly, sketching each banner off and then on to the next, so that I could return the machine before the shop closed and not have to pay for another day.

Here JOHN MURPHY as Kerouac and MYSELF as a Critic play out a scene under the two banners sketched out above. The elder Jack loomed above the desk and typewriter of his alter-ego on stage, while the serene but somewhat larger image of Kerouac's mother dominated the scene. We are all our mothers in some ways, after all....

KEROUAC - The Banners 1

 I lined the bare walls of the space Upstairs at the White Elephant with a number of painted banners taken from contemorary photos of the principle characters in the story of KEROUAC. These averaged about 3 feet by 6 feet, like the one shown in my original sketch above. This young image of Jack Kerouac was a studio portrait.

 You can see on the xerox at left how I would doodle the outlines to try and find an acceptable graphic representation. I've even penciled in a demarcation line to show the edge of the banner and the realignment of the image. Below you see a frame grab from the video of the show featuring CINDY GRIFFIN performing in front of the finished banner.

KEROUAC: A REMEMBRANCE - Groundplan

 I never actually drew up a groundplan for KEROUAC, Johnny Simons and I walked out the space Upstairs at the White Elephant and decided what would go where to facilitate the staging. Our aim was to recreate the atmosphere of a 1950's coffee house. The evolving performance piece would be played out in and among the actual audience, as if everyone present, both cast and patrons were a single collective unit. That "Painfully Intimate" Theatre I was so fond of ( the room above the famous Saloon downstairs was not quite 40 feet square!) Above is my recollection of how the space was laid out.

 JOHN MURPHY, who conceived this show played Jack Kerouac, holding court, as it were from the coffee house "stage". A collective group of his Friends and Critics sat at tables around the stage and moved among the audience when their specific narrative came up. The Critics Corner was a platform slightly "above it all" in the back of the house. The MICHAEL BODYCOMB Jazz Ensemble played live from a platform in another corner.

All the words spoken during the show were taken verbatim from published interviews and Kerouac's own writings.

Here DOLORAS HOGGARD, CINDY GRIFFIN and LYSTER CONNELL portray some of the many women in Kerouac's life as they listen to a Critic's words.

The real design elements in the space were a series of banners I painted which were taken directly from photos and images of the time. My next few posts will detail how I came up with these...