Dressing Cleopatra: The Cleopatra Costume in the Arts

I spent the summer writing a book.

On my website are five pages dealing with the Cleopatra costume on stage and the screen. Since November 2002, I have had 241,809 visitors to the site. This summer I decided to expand my research, include research into some of the Cleopatras from paintings and eventually publish a book starting with the information that I already had online.

So far I have a total of 160 pages with over 70 full page color artworks.

Writing the book was fairly eye opening. When I first started writing, I thought that historical accuracy of the Cleopatra costume was the desired goal and somehow deviations from that were "wrong." However, the more I saw some of the truly creative and innovative creations, I have come to appreciate all approaches—whether historical accuracy or the flights of fancy from some of the designers. A few of my 70 full page color artworks are seen below.

Cleopatra herself might have appeared in the first example. Here she is pictured beside a small black basalt statue believed to have been created during her lifetime. She wears a typical Alexandrian Graeco-Roman belted stolla and sea-green palla.

Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra was written in 1606. If the boy actor Edmans portraying Cleopatra were dressed as James I's queen, he would have a wheel farthingale, ruff, and stomacher.

Next is seen a Cleopatra that might have appeared in Dryden’s All for Love, during the Restoration period. Here she is made to represent Charles II’s mistress, the Duchess of Cleveland. Typical of the period were the beginnings of the standard tragic costume: crown, plumes and train.



Jumping to the end of the nineteenth century, we see “The Divine” Sarah Bernhardt in Sardou’s Cléopâtre. Artist/designer George Clairin painted her in this costume and Sarony photographed her in it when she came to the United States.

Into the twentieth century, we have Leon Baskt’s design for Ida Rubinstein in Fokine’s 1909 Cléopâtre for Diaghliv’s Ballet Russes ballet.


In 1945, Vivien Leigh starred in Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra with Claude Rains as Caesar.


Valentina in 1947 designed an understated elegant dress for Katherine Cornell’s Broadway Antony and Cleopatra. Cornell was nominated for one of the first Tonys for her performance.



Perhaps the most famous and infamous Cleopatra was Elizabeth Taylor’s in 1963. Here are three of the over 40 costumes designed for her in what was at the time considered one of the most expensive flops in Hollywood history—it led to the firing of several executives and made Taylor a permanent star.

In 1999, Leonor Varela starred in a two-part made-for-television version of the Cleopatra story. The Mausoleum gown and mantle are made from iridescent gold tissue silk, varigated with gold, magenta, and green. The "electrum" combination Isis crown is a modified Greco-Roman style. The drawing is done in frontal based style, meaning that the “feather” section is turned toward the viewer even though it in actuality faced the viewer.



The twenty-first century Cleopatras have often been garbed in other periods. As the 2005 Glyndebourne Cleopatra from Guilio Cesare in Egitto, Danielle de Niese looks like a combination of Lulu and Velma from ‘Chicago.” She flirts with dark glasses, a cocktail, pink cigarette and umbrella.

While publication of the book may be a few months away, I feel like I took a class in Cleopatra this summer—and passed.

The Big Chill

In the early 1990s, a poster stating “Fear No Art” appeared. That image has stayed in my consciousness since then. I wonder often at the fear some people exhibit toward the visual art or the written word. Surprisingly for me, both educated and uneducated people seem to acknowledge the power of art to transform us, seemingly beyond our control.

In reading about Sarah Palin today, I felt a chill down my spine as I read this passage from Time:

Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them.
"The librarian was aghast." That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor.

I’ve previously talked about the chilling effect that religion had on the time of Chaucer. Sarah Durant’s book, The Birth of Venus, deals with the climate created by Catholic Dominican reformer Girolamo Savonarola.

In 1481 or 1482, Savonarola was sent to Florence to preach. Immediately he began opposing the Renaissance attraction for pagan works and the perceived immoral life of the Florentine society and Lorenzo de Medici’s court. Becoming obsessed with the Book of Revelation, he spent from 1489 on trying to save souls from the Apocalypse he felt was immediate. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Many persons brought articles of luxury, playing-cards, ornaments, pictures of beautiful women, the writings of pagan and immoral poets, etc., to the monastery of San Marco [where Savonarola was prior]; these articles were then publicly burned. A brotherhood founded by Savonarola for young people encouraged a pious, Christian life among its members. Sundays some of this brotherhood went about from house to house and along the streets to take away dice and cards from the citizens, to exhort luxuriously dressed married and single women to lay aside frivolous ornament. Thus there arose an actual police for regulating morality, which also carried on its work by the objectionable methods of spying and denunciation.

During the 1497 carnival, Savonarola organized fifteen story-high pyres in Piazza della Signoria, onto which his followers threw “carnival masks, rich feminine ornaments, mirrors, cosmetics, cards and dice, perfume, books of poetry and on magic, musical instruments, and worldly paintings where female bodies were displayed unclothed.” Botticelli, a very sensitive soul, was so impressed (or so scared) by Savonarola that he threw many of his paintings on the bonfires. Among the works burned were Boccaccio’s Decameron and the works of Ovid. The spectacle became known as the Bonfires of the Vanities.

Savonarola’s criticisms of the Church in Rome eventually led to his excommunication in 1497, and his subsequent execution by hanging in May 1498, after which his body was burned.

In 1933, it wasn’t the Church promoting the burning of books and ideas, it was German students. Nazi Minister of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels began an attempt to regulate the arts to bring them into line with Nazi goals. Organizations were purged of Jews and others considered politically or artistically suspect. On 6 April 1933, the German Student Association’s Main Office for Press and Propaganda called for a nationwide “Action against the Un-German Spirit,” eventually culminating on 10 May, in many university towns, in the burning of over 25,000 volumes considered “Un-German.” Students marched in torchlight parades, bands played, songs were sung, “fire oaths” were taken and the left was silenced one way or another. Some of the banned authors included Bertolt Brecht, Lion Feuchtwanger, Alfred Kerr, and Americans Ernest Hemingway and Helen Keller.

Moying Li in Snow Falling in Spring describes the rampaging Chinese Red Guard of the Cultural Revolution in 1968 who break into her home and force her father to destroy his collection of “Western” books.

Book banning and burning follows much the same philosophy as that of the ancient Egyptians—if it’s not there to see, it didn’t exist. Pharaohs often had inscriptions from previous rulers recarved and their names inserted. Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, in 221 BCE, took the same tact when he ordered the burning of classic works and histories, fearing that they might undermine his authority.

A sobering poster from World War II from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum shows a book with the headline: “Books cannot be killed by fire.” And under the image of the book and burnings is the slogan, “Books are weapons in the war of ideas.”

To learn more about chilling of our minds, start here to learn the history of book burning through the ages.

And if you need any more frightening image of repression of art, check out the following images of the Hitler book burnings. Are these the past or our future?

Looking at China

In 1989, my mother went to China. Her tour group visited Tiananmen Square a week before the “June Fourth” incident. From her trip, she brought me a 3- inch lovely doll which she had watched being made. My mother’s fascination with the country has proved genetic. She would have been as fascinated with the pageantry of the Summer Olympics in Bejing as I was.

In preparing the curriculum for my freshmen world literature class at St. Ignatius College Prep, I knew I wanted to teach the charming book, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie. Balzac takes place during Chairman Mao’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1968. Two “intellectual” teen-aged students are sent to the countryside to be re-indoctrinated. I’ve never taught the book, but have loved it since my first reading of it several years ago.

In doing additional research I’ve read Moying Li's Snow Falling in Spring, an autobiography of a young woman who grew in Peijing during the 1960-1970 period, which has provided many interesting first-hand details. As a child in the late 1950s, she witnessed her neighborhood’s abortive attempt to help move their country into the present by producing homemade steel, using pot, pans, and knives. Later as the Cultural Revolution started she watched gangs of teens denouncing adults and other teens, creating public humiliations, suicides, the destruction of books and break down of the educational system, and dissonants being sent off to concentration camps. There are incredible shades of Hitler’s Youth and the rise of the Nazis.

In my search for a video to support the unit, I remembered scholar of Polonysian literature once said about how it is a culture’s dreams and fiction that tells us about what they who they really are. I at first watched The Road Home, a recent Chinese film which deals with the widow of a teacher who wants the body of her husband carried home in his coffin so that his soul will know the road home. In flashback we learn of their courtship. The film gives a fascinating view of rural China during the same period as the other books. [I found a delightful touch, speaking of the connection between global cultures, in that in the educator’s house two posters of the movie Titanic hang—and are never mentioned or referenced.] I did decide that film might be a little too slow for class.

Being a fan of Chinese fantasy film, I happily stumbled onto the 2005 Warner Bros. release, The Promise [Wu ji]. The film is one of the most expensive ever made in China and has thousands of extras, fantastic sets, and magic realism. With the goddess Manshen’s flying entrance at the beginning, I was hooked. I’m a sucker for flying goddesses, fighting warlords in elaborate costumes who can fight unhampered by gravity, and a hero who can outrun time. It is an interesting tale about the inevitability of destiny and the power of love to defeat it.

I’m looking forward to starting the unit next week.

Raffo's 9 Parts of Desire

Years ago, Alice Roosevelt Longworth in an interview said that she was asked about all the wonderful things she saw in the years she was in the White House with her father’s administration and her cousin’s. She described a favorite poem in which a salamander living in the court of Nebuchadnezzar is asked to describe all the great things he had seen in the great king’s court. Upon reflection the lizard replies, “I didn’t notice any of it. I was concentrating on the flies.” I’m sometimes reminded that I am kin to that salamander. Perhaps we all are.

Last night I joined some friends and attended Heather Raffo’s 9 Parts of Desire at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art. I went, rather oblivious as to what we were going to see, and I came away realizing how big the world is and how little I really know of it here in my sheltered Oak Park, Illinois, life.

Raffo’s play is a one-woman show of 9 monologues, inspired by a 1993 trip to Iraq. During that trip she saw huge portraits of Saddham Hussein and a painting of a nude woman as a tree. Wanting to learn more about the artist, she began interviewing her and then other Iraqi women. Their stories were woven into the 90 minute show. Raffo portrays, among others, a painter, a Bedouin, a woman who mourns the deaths of her family in a bunker, a doctor, and an expatriot living in London. Each character is vividly drawn with her own posture and appearance, verbal cadences and dialects. Raffo is amazing, often funny, often heart-breaking.

The set Raffo moves around on consists of slabs of broken concrete, a partial Iraqi doorway boarded up, pieces of mosaic on the wall and mosaic patterned lineolium on the floor, a pool of water representing the river, bright yellow sandbags, and other debris, all surrounded by bare scaffolding, mood lighting, and huge plastic tarps. It is a world of both survival and destruction.

I was amazed by what I learned. One of the descriptions that astonished me were the genetic defects Raffo’s doctor describes—children born with two heads, ten year old girls developing breast cancer. [In 1991, according to an online source, the United States and Persian Gulf War allies blasted vehicles with armor-piercing shells made of depleted uranium as the Iraqis retreated from Kuwait.] Some sources speak of Iraq as another Chernobyl. Another source speaks of a baby with a head growing out its head and others with intestines growing outside the body.

Another character describes how Saddam’s henchmen had to learn to torture and cull crueltry from watching films. Torture, she says, is a learned behavior. She describes how young girls were kidnapped, raped, called prostitutes and then beheaded. Another character describes how an imprisioned woman is punished for menstruating by being hung upside down. Her three year old child is brought to outside her cell and put in a bag with hungry cats. The babies screams are recorded to play for the father who is locked away in another cell.

All evening I was reminded of Vladmir’s line in “Waiting for Godot”:

Was I sleeping while others suffered? Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow when I wake, or think I do, what will I say of today? That with Estragon my friend I waited for Godot. … But in all that what truth will there be? We give birth astride of the grave, the light gleams an instant and then it’s night once more. I can’t go. What have I said?

I consider myself a literate person, but how could all that epic suffering have not penetrated my safe cocoon.

One of my friends commented as we left, “I feel assaulted.” I did too… and emotionally drained. But if I were to judge how much I learned about the Iraqi female experience, the performance was an incredible experience. The show has only a run until May 18, but I urge you to experience it. If not, check out Raffo’s webpage and get the book or audio version of the play. I am definitely considering it as one of the works to teach next year.

The Book of Air and Shadows

William Shakespeare was born and died on this day.

It seems appropriate that I just finished reading Michael Gruber’s 2006 adventure/mystery/quest The Book of Air and Shadows since Shakespeare is the subject of the book’s search. Avoiding spoilers, let me say that the book is cross between The DaVinci Code and The Maltese Falcon. Three main characters, a weightlifter intellectual properties lawyer, a wannabe filmmaker bookkeeper, and a blonde bookbinder with a past all search a lost and unknown manuscript by Shakespeare, alluded to in letters from a Jacobean gunner/adventurer/spy. The letters are given to the lawyer and then the owner of the letters is found tortured and murdered. The plot abounds with red herrings, Russian gangsters, Polish spies, classic chases, plenty of film noir plot twists, lots of enjoyable characters, and a literate narrative which utilizes three different perspectives. The book also plays some with time sequence. Gruber understands that inherent in the adventure/mystery/quest genre is that while the characters may have to face danger and violence, ultimately the good guys win. And our sense of harmony and order is restored.

One thing I found myself enjoying about the book was the examination of the role of religion in a Roman Catholic’s world past and present—whether it’s Shakespeare who is spied upon because of his Catholicism or several of the modern characters struggling with understanding the place of the church in their lives.

The second idea I particularly liked was Gruber’s argument that we have learned how to deal with things by watching films—and our response to many situations is just like the movies because they have taught us how to respond. In the book the two main characters are discussing this idea. The lawyer and the wannabe filmmaker are talking. The lawyer says:

“… Surely it’s the other way around—filmmakers take popular ideas and embody them in films.”

“No, the movies come first. For example, no one ever had a fast-draw face-to-face shoot-out on the dusty Main Street in a western town. It never happened, ever. A screenwriter invented it for dramatic effect. It’s the classic American trope, redemption through violence, and it comes through the movies. There were very few handguns in the real old west. They were expensive and heavy and no one but an idiot would wear them in a side holster. On a horse? When you wanted to kill someone in the Old West, you waited for your chance and shot him in the back, usually with a shotgun. Now we have a zillion handguns because the movies taught us that a handgun is something a real man has to have, and people really kill each other like fictional western gunslingers. And it’s not just thugs. Movies shape everyone’s reality, to the extent that it’s shaped by human action—foreign policy, business, sexual relationships, family dynamics, the whole nine yards. It used to the Bible but now it’s movies. Why is there stalking? Because we know that the guy should persist and make a fool of himself until the girl admits that she loves him. We’ve all seen it. Why is there date rape? Because the asshole is waiting for the moment when resistance turns to passion. He’s seen Nicole and Reese do it fifty times. We make these little decisions, day by day, and we end up with a world. This one, like it or not.”

While I’m fascinated with the character’s idea, I’m not sure it fully pans out. Look, for example, at this tintype of Billy the Kid, who stands with rifle and gun strapped to his leg. But, I do agree that movies have taught me how to respond in many situations, among them how to be in love. (See one of my earlier posts regarding what literature has taught us about the same.)

If you enjoyed Chinatown or The Maltese Falcon or The DaVinci Code or National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets, I think you'll enjoy Michael Gruber's book.

The Scarf

About three weeks ago, a reclusive elderly woman, who lived in a garden apartment in the building across from mine, died. Normally I might not even have noticed. Most of the time her blinds were closed and in the five years I’ve lived here, I had only seen her a couple of times.

So how did I know she had died? One afternoon as I returned home I discovered that the dumpsters in the alley were neatly packed with books, magazines, years of TV Guides, cheap furniture, some clothing. When I walked out to my car the next morning, homeless scavengers had torn open all the bags and scattered everything they didn’t take—as if the bags were filled with cloth popcorn which had heated and burst.

Last week the dumpsters were filled again, this time primarily with clothing. [See above.] Again the scavengers attacked. And for four days, when I came home, a lone woman’s scarf lay in my path each time I walked into the building.

Do you believe that some part of us remains with items we have loved and used? I guess I do. And each day when I walked past the scarf, I felt haunted by my deceased neighbor. That’s why I picked up the lonely scarf and hung it up in my garage. Each time I see it, I think of my lonely neighbor. Everybody deserves someone to remember them.

Learning about Love

One of the greatest mysteries of my life has been learning what love is. No one taught me how to love another. My parents taught me what family love means and my grandmother taught me how to treat the opposite sex. But no wise mentor ever taught me what it meant to really love. The great authors often served as my guide.


Here are some of the books I have taught over the years and what they have to say about the power of love:
· A Christmas Carol (Dickens): the need for having love in one’s life
· A Doll’s House (Ibsen): the destructive power of love which fails to see the true other person
· A Lion in Winter (Golding): the ties of remembered love, dysfunctional family ties
· Death in Venice (Mann): the destructive power of obsessive love
· Madame Bovary (Flaubert): the failure of romantic love in a realistic world
· Siddhartha (Hesse): love of family, the inability of love to define our search for self
· Taming of the Shrew (Shakespeare): love at first sight, allowing ourselves to change for others
· The Alchemist (Coehlo): love at first sight
· The Book of Lost Things (Connolly): love of family and the healing power of love
· The Iliad (Homer): the destructive power of lust, the nobility of love of family and country
· The Turn of the Screw (James): the effects of “twisted love”
· To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee): love of family, responsibility toward others.
· Washington Square (James): The pain of unrequited love


Of all the works I’ve taught, the one that has taught me the most about love is Edmund Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac which speaks of shaping one’s life with beau gestes, the pain of unrequited love and the power of dedicating oneself to serving another. Cyrano taught me to place others above myself. He is constantly performing beau gestes (beautiful gestures which hurt him but help others). His love for his cousin enriches his life while at the same time teaches him the pain of unrequited love. At the end of his life he has the love and admiration of his friends. In his final hour he learns that Roxane has always loved him—even though she thought it was Christian she loved. He dies knowing the joy of hearing another say they love him unconditionally.

Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines

This poem was written by Pablo Neruda, from Chile:

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example,'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

Coming Into the Light: The Raising of Lazarus and Dr. Owen Harper

Recently our gospel reading dealt with the raising of Lazarus. My pastor pointed out in his homily that Lazarus wasn’t resurrected, he was resuscitated… He will die again, but for the moment he rejoins the living. Eventually he will have to die again. Only at Lazarus’ resurrection will he live eternally.

I was thinking about that homily as I ironed my shirts this weekend. And I kept looking at the 7-inch scar running down my lower left arm where my vein was taken out to use in the triple bypass operation that saved my life back in 2005. And I pondered those existential questions that face us all—Why am I here? Where am I going? What is my purpose?

My favorite television series—the one I stay home for this year—is BBC’s “Torchwood.” As a fan of the early “X-Files,” before they loaded the series down with the alien conspiracy story-line, I loved the interplay and semi-romantic banter between Scully and Mulder. In “Torchwood,” we have a main character—growing out of the series “Dr. Who”—named Captain Jack Harkness. Jack is witty and charming. He has a past which is mysterious and only occasionally explained. We know that he was born in a previous time period and has survived death. He cannot die. He is also unashamedly gay. His “shagging” buddy is Ianto Jones, whose job on the Torchwood team is that of a general support character. Ianto idolizes (and sleeps with) Jack. [When Ianto believes that Jack has been killed, the writer quotes “Brokeback Mountain,” by having Ianto standing holding Jack’s coat.]

Straight members of the team include Gwen Cooper, a former policewoman, who Jack recruits in the first episode. Dr. Toshiko Sato, a Japanese-American computer specialist, searches for love while being totally devoted to the team. Dr. Owen Harper, the cynical medical doctor of the team, offers us the cynical Scully view of the world. He is also highly sexual. In one funny moment of last year's finale, upon learning that the death of the world was imminent, he asks the team if they want to shag.

Two episodes ago viewers—if they were like me—were shocked when Owen was shot and killed. The team is such a great unit together, it was hard to believe the writers would kill him off. Since that episode, Owen has been brought back—resuscitated—but he and we are unclear whether he will die immediately or 30 years down the road.

Death has been a common theme dealt with in several episodes. Most commonly the writers’ viewpoint is that death is nothingness—the great black beyond, devoid of hope or comfort. When you are dead, you’re dead. But Captain Jack’s existence questions that very statement. And Owen’s return offers the writers’ another chance to deal with the existential questions of life and death.

In last week’s episode, Owen talked about having a “bad week.” He died, he lost his love of food, his love of sex, and his love of life. He is separated from the team—since they are living—and his sense of existential angst drives him to the despair of wanting to just have it done and kill himself again. But when he tries to drown himself, he stays underwater, still living. In the episode, he comes across what the team believes is a bomb filled with energy. Instead he discovers it is similar to our Pioneer 11 attempt to send our life prints to other galaxies. The machine draws energy and shows us in a darkened world that there is light—wonderous, magical, healing, comforting light—light which allows Owen to find meaning here and go on.

Do we all become Lazarus, locking ourselves in our living tombs, waiting for someone or something to call us forth and help us find meaning in the darkness? I think so. In fact, I think I have the scar to prove it.

[The picture is a modified version of Caravaggio's Raising of Lazarus.]

Is Anybody There?

Not too long ago I was teaching doing the blog to my juniors, and looking at my own blog I find a deficiency. Nobody seems to want to make any comments. I don't know if that means the entries are too esoteric or too long or too uninteresting. I'm not sure how to get comments, but I know that having them would help open more of a dialog between me and you. Do you have anything to add?

A.I.: Artificial Intelligence

A fairy tale search for lasting love

I am currently teaching A.I., one of my favorite films, to two high school junior English classes after their reading of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. We are looking at the similar themes and new questions that man as creator introduces.

The first image we have in this futuristic fairy tale is of powerful ocean waves while a soothing omnipotent narrator describes the time when the ice caps have melted, the major cities have been flooded, people have migrated, thousands have starved, and the remaining humans have placed limits on the number of live births, thus making the creation of Mechas which don’t eat important. [How insightful for 2001.]

Science is personified in Professor Hobby. His objective in the film is to create a perfect Mecha [future-speak for ‘robot’] which will love genuinely, unconditionally—a Mecha child that will never grow up, never get ill, never reject, never stop loving. … “A Mecha,” his creator says, “that dreams.”

“But,” responds one of the professor’s colleagues, “given the animus toward machines, can you get a human to love it back? And what sense of responsibility will that love carry?”

The professor ends his argument with, “In the beginning, didn’t God create Adam to love him?”

Monica and Henry’s real son Martin lies in a cryogenic cocoon, unresponsive, seemingly lost forever. Henry brings home the Mecha child David from work to try to pull her out of her depression.

“On the outside he looks so real,” Monica observes, “but I know he is not.” That assertion is something Speilberg constantly reminds us—remember these are only Mecha, but then why are you feeling so sorry for our treatment of them?

Henry cautions Monica that they must be sure they want to keep David because after a Mecha’s imprinting occurs, if they want to give him up he has to be returned to the Cybertronics lab to be destroyed.

Quickly we see David imprinting on his mother and learning what it is to be human—to prepare and eat food, to play, to laugh. At first he is too present. She suggests he sleep so she can get away for awhile. “I can never go to sleep,” he tells her, “but I can think quietly and never make a peep.”

We know that David has gone begun thinking for himself when he laughs at Monica with spaghetti hanging from her mouth—a reference to Disney’s Lady and the Tramp?

After Monica says the words to imprint David to her, we know the change because he stops referring to her as Monica and calls her “Mommy.” But as a loving Mecha, David learns fear. “Mommy, will you die?” he asks. “I’ll be alone,” he says embracing her. “How long will you live?” “For ages…for fifty years,” she answers.

Like Disney and Collodi’s Pinocchio, this artificial boy wants to be a real child, but David is created to be only an illusion of human. He is given a Disney wise-mentor Jiminy Cricket in the form of supertoy “Teddy.”

Martin, when he returns, introduces David to the idea of being “real.” “When’s your “build day?” Martin asks. David has no concept of what Martin is asking. Suddenly David is confronted by questions of a larger world: Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going? The answers seem to lie in Collodi’s Pinocchio which Martin has Monica read to David.

After we see the destructive power of jealousy and hate through David’s encounters with Martin, Monica takes him to Cybertronics to be destroyed, but she can’t bring herself to do it. Instead she deserts him in the woods. David pleads, “If I become a real boy can I come back home?” “It’s only a story,” Monica says and leaves him with Teddy to face a world for which he’s totally unprepared.

The rest of the film becomes David’s journey to find himself, to reach the Blue Fairy, and ultimately to become a real boy. Along the way, other Mecha help him—especially Giggolo Joe [the fox from Collodi’s story] who even takes him to a city of Lost Boys just as in Pinocchio.

David’s journey finally takes him to the offices of Cybertronics where he discovers there are hundreds of Mecha just like him—the unique boy is only the image of Professor Hobby’s dead son.

If the film were to stop here, the sadness of the journey would create only despair that we live in a world of cruel humans where magic can’t happen. But the film has one final surprise. Centuries pass and benevolent aliens come to study our culture. [Spielberg’s Close Encounters return in an advanced future.] Nothing remains of us—except for David, Teddy and a lock of his mother’s hair.

David is given the chance to have one last day with the mother he loves—and when it is over, he lies quietly beside her, dreaming and sleeping for the first time. And Spielburg tells us that of all the remaining traits of our humanity which may have meaning in our universe our ability to love unconditionally is the most redeeming. David spends an eternity loving. If only we could.

Emotional Pain

On Thursday’s NPR’s Fresh Air, Terry Gross talked with Martha Weinman Lear, author of Where Did I Leave My Glasses? The What, When and Why of Normal Memory Loss. [An excerpt from her book is found here.] Lear talked about some of the latest findings regarding memory and aging. I was particularly interested in Lear’s comment that memory of physical pain is not retained while emotional pain can remain as fresh as when it first happened.

Lear talked about the death of her husband and how the pain of his loss was still with her—that she could easily recall the emotions she felt. In contrast she states that it is probably important that we not remember physical pain—remembering a broken arm she points out could be debilitating.

Lear’s comments make a lot of sense. I have little memory of the actual physical pain involved with my triple bypass operation. I can intellectually recall the experience, but I can’t reproduce what I felt. On the other hand, I can intensely recall the emotional pain I felt with my call from my uncle telling me that my father had committed suicide.

I’ve been wondering how her discussion ties into a theory we studied in drama called the James-Lange theory. William James and Carl Lange basically suggest that our physiological reactions, such as panting, heart rate, muscular tension, lead us to then experience what we call emotions. According to the two of them, our physical reactions come first; we interpret these motor responses as emotions. One of my acting teachers stressed how the theory played out in terms of theatre. According to him, if an actor knows that his response interpreted as anger involves more concentrated and faster breathing, faster heart rate, clinched fists, wrinkling of the forehead, then by reproducing those responses, the actor will find he is angry.

So is our memory of emotional pain tied into physiological reactions to a situation?

Recognizing The Face of Evil

Can we recognize the face of evil when we see it? We are conditioned to recognize the evil nature of a Hitler or a Ben Laden or a Caligula or a Nero, but can we pick hidden evil when we encounter it? In Portrait of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde's main character's evil transformed a painting while hiding the character's true nature from others. So if we come face to face with the basest nature of man, can we pick out those people by sight? Unfortunately not.

Today I discovered two photo albums on the Holocaust museum website. One album, called Auschwitz album, contains 192 photographs from 1944, picturing Jews from Subcarpathian Rus, many picturing men, women and children moments before being herded to their deaths into the gas chambers. There they stand or sit, bewildered, in shock, perhaps unaware of their immediate fate.

In grim contrast is a 1944 photo album created by SS-Obersturmführer Karl Höcker [alternately spelled Hoecker], the adjutant to the commandant of Auschwitz, SS-Sturmbannführer Richard Baer. In a neat grid of two columns with neat handwriting, the 116 pictures include images of a Nazi officers’ hunting retreat, Höcker playing with his dog, SS officers relaxing with women and a baby, members of the SS Helferinnen (female auxiliaries) and men enjoying cups of blueberries and accordion music, Höcker lighting Christmas tree candles, and officers socializing together. Among the men in the pictures is a smiling, benign-looking Dr. Joseph Mengele, who history has nicknamed “The Angel of Death.”

History tells us that Mengele was responsible for the selection of who lived and who died and enforcing horrendous atrocities —sterilization, freezing, infecting people with malaria and typhus, giving them mustard gas, sea water, phosphorus, and poison. But as pictured in the album, Mengele stands laughing and enjoying the company of the people he knew, while train loads of humans were being systematically catalogued, selected and sent to their deaths. Monster that he was, he appears almost friendly—death hiding behind a smile.Did he use his charming smile to lull his victims into a sense of security?

Filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock understood that everyone has a propensity for evil—we all carry dark secrets. Speaking in a filmed interview, he once talked of enjoying using seeming cultured, harmless people threatening the safety of ordinary people in seemly “safe” situations. In these two Holocaust albums, we can see through the impartial eyes of the camera lens that seemingly ordinary evil.

I found viewing the albums a truly chilling experience.

Revealing our inner selves

During the last couple of weeks, my juniors have been reading from the diaries of Samuel Pepys. While we have easily discussed Pepys’ social life, his descriptions of the Black Plague of 1665 and the Great London Fire of 1666, one issue we had doubts about was whether Pepys intended them to be read. Our final consensus was that since he wrote in his own private shorthand that most of his contemporaries couldn’t read, he must not have intended them to be for an audience.

Pepys does not, for example, shy away from showing his flaws. In one entry he talks about his violent and jealous temper, which leads him to destroy his love letters which his young wife cherishes. In another he beats her:

Thereupon she giving me some cross answer I did strike her over her left eye such a blow as the poor wretch did cry out and was in great pain, but yet her spirit was such as to endeavour to bite and scratch me. But I coying —[stroking or caressing]— with her made her leave crying, and sent for butter and parsley, and friends presently one with another, and I up, vexed at my heart to think what I had done, for she was forced to lay a poultice or something to her eye all day, and is black, and the people of the house observed it. [Pepys]

Thoughout, as a Restoration playboy, Pepys details his sexual conquests with a pride.

Having been primed for the topic of diaries and the private self we reveal though them, I listened with interest when NPR’s Fresh Air reaired Terry Gross’ 1995 interview with author William Maxwell. In the conversation, they talked about his 1992 short story “What He Was Like” (found in All the Days and Nights: the collected stories). The story, according to the author, deals with the disparity of one’s interior life and public life. I had not read the story but was intrigued enough by the discussion that I bought the book to read it.

The four-page story deals with an unnamed protagonist. “He kept a diary, for his own pleasure. …” begins the story. In it the man writes all he feels, who he hates, his sexual fantasies, his dark inner soul. He writes, “To be able to do in your mind what it is probably not a good idea to do in actuality is a convenience not always sufficiently appreciated.”

After the man’s death, his daughter determines that she wants to read the diaries. Her mother (who has never read them) cautions her against it, saying, “They’re private and he didn’t mean anybody to read them.” Ignoring her mother’s advice, the younger woman reads some of the diaries. She is devastated. To her husband she laments,

“He wasn’t the person I thought he was. He had all sorts of secret desires. A lot of it is very dirty. And some of it is more unkind than I could have believed possible. And just not like him—except that it was him. It makes me feel I can never trust anyone ever again.”

So the story and the discussion have led me to question whether we really want to know the interior life of anyone we know.

In a 1976 Playboy interview, Jimmy Carter raised many eyebrows by admitting that he had committed adultery in his heart many times—and had been forgiven by God for it. I don’t think I agree. I don’t believe we will be punished for our thoughts; I feel it is our actions that make us who we are.

One of my favorite authors, Nathaniel Hawthorne, investigates that sense of guilt for the unspoken life in “The Minister’s Black Veil." The author describes how the minister suddenly assumes a black crepe mask:

Swathed about his forehead, and hanging down over his face, so low as to be shaken by his breath, Mr. Hooper had on a black veil. On a nearer view it seemed to consist of two folds of crape, which entirely concealed his features, except the mouth and chin, but probably did not intercept his sight, further than to give a darkened aspect to all living and inanimate.

The story deals with others’ perceptions of and reactions to what the veil hides. Tbe minister’s preaching seems to change.

“The subject had reference to secret sin, and those sad mysteries which we hide from our nearest and dearest, and would fain conceal from our own consciousness, even forgetting that the Omniscient can detect them.”

Mr. Hooper’s parishioners find the crepe veil alternately distressing, mysterious, threatening. The love of his life leaves him when she cannot convince him that other’s feel the veil represents an inner hideous sin.

After a long life, still wearing the veil, Mr. Hooper reaches his death bed. Another minister tells him that since he has led a blameless life in deed and thought that he should now discard the veil.

“Dark old man!” exclaimed the affrighted minister, “with what horrible crime upon your soul are you now passing to the judgment?” …

"Why do you tremble at me alone?" cried [Mr. Hooper], turning his veiled face round the circle of pale spectators. "Tremble also at each other! Have men avoided me, and women shown no pity, and children screamed and fled, only for my black veil? What, but the mystery which it obscurely typifies, has made this piece of crape so awful? When the friend shows his inmost heart to his friend; the lover to his
best beloved; when man does not vainly shrink from the eye of his Creator, loathsomely treasuring up the secret of his sin; then deem me a monster, for the symbol beneath which I have lived, and die! I look around me, and, lo! on every visage a Black Veil!"

When the Good Father Hooper dies, his veiled corpse is buried. The grave decays his body but the thought of the black veil remains. Hawthorne is a master at describing guilt.

So should we avoid revealing the dark landscape of our inner soul? Or should we all acknowledge that we all have secrets that are better kept private? Maybe we need to trust that it is our actions that truly define us.

Just a Cup of Tea

Currently my freshmen are reading Art Speiglman's graphic novel, Maus. As part of their learning about graphic novels, they are going to create a small comic of their own. They will either interview someone or listen to someone's conversation and write a script of dialogue of approximately three pages. Then they will create a five-page comic based on that dialogue. In anticipation of understanding the difficulty they would have in doing the assignment, this weekend I created my sample.

"Just a Cup of Tea" grew out a real conversation I overhead one day at Starbucks. I found the two ladies so facinating I ended up writing down their conversation instead of grading papers. In drama we talk about subtext as being the dialog that continues unsaid throughout any scene. Here in one sentence glimpses we can see the lives these two women lead. Playwright Anton Chekhov once described the kind of naturalistic play he wanted to write:

"After all, in real life," he observed, "people don't spend every minute shooting at each other, hanging themselves, and making confessions of love. They don't spend all the time saying clever things. They're more occupied with eating, drinking, flirting, and talking stupidities—and these are the things which ought to be shown on the stage. A play should be written in which people arrive, go away, have dinner, talk about the weather, and play cards. Life must be exactly as it is, and people as they are.… Let everything on the stage be just as complicated, and at the same time just as simple as it is in life. People eat their dinner, just eat their dinner, and all the time their happiness is being established or their lives are being broken up."

I used Spiegelman's design grid of two panels by four panels to create my mini-drama.

Click on the following images to read this five page mini-play.

 

Three Books for the Holidays

I recently found three new books I’d like to recommend:




I collect crèches. Recently Chicago’s Loyola Museum of Art presented an exhibit of over 100 crèches from around the world from the collection of James and Emelia Govan. What a great exhibit! I was quite surprised that I had seen none of the crèches shown. At the exhibit, I made sure I picked up the book written by the exhibitor, James L. Govan. Called Art of the Creche: Nativities from Around the World, this 208-page oversized book (11.3 x 9.8) is filled with large highly detailed color photographs of many of the pieces from the exhibit.

Italian artist Francesco Scarlatella created my favorite piece, a terra cotta family grouping of an old Joseph holding the baby in his lap, with Mary seated beside. The figures sit on volcanic stone from Mount Etna. A marvelous large vignette by Scarlatella of the wise men and family is shown in the book. Creches range from those of professional artists like Scarlatella to a myriad of folk art examples ranging from the abstract to complex, coming from such countries as the United States, Peru, Poland, Czech Republic, Mexico, Germany, France, New Zealand, Nigeria, Sweden, Swaziland, Thailand, Ghana, and Singapore (to name only a few).

I was struck by how each culture interpreted the basic details in their own image: the holy family become the common man, animals become those indigenous to the artist’s country, shepherds, and wise men. Each piece shown tells not only the story of the nativity, but also conveys much about the artist’s culture.

If you are fascinated with crèches also, you be sure to add this book to your library.



I found Terry Taylor’s book Artful Paper Dolls: New Ways to Play with a Traditional Form while on vacation in New York. Taylor has collected a large series of unique and artistic paper dolls done by a range of contributors, including Taylor. The 144 page book (10.1 x 8.7) is in full color. Including some history of paper dolls (such as, Katy Keene, Tom Tierney, original doll artists), traditional paper doll forms are contrasted with shadow box figures, wall hangings, memory dolls, accordion panel books, collage figures. The book is well laid out and offers the viewer lots of creative views of the paper doll form.



The third book is mine. Called The Paper Doll World of David Claudon, I’ve taken 17 sets of the paper dolls I’ve done over the last couple of years and put them in a large size (8.25 x 10.75) 163 page book complete with large full color pages. The book has a casewrap-hard binding. Among the subjects are The World of Samuel Pepys, Elizabeth I transformations, several Renaissance paper dolls sets--The Birth of Venus, Michelangelo and DaVinci, Shakespeare and Taming of the Shrew--Moliere, King Louis XIV, the Sun King, the World of Oscar Wilde and his Importance of Being Earnest, Theda Bara and her film Cleopatra, and Santa Claus. These are sets of paper dolls created in high detail using Adobe Photoshop CS2 and Corel Painter IX. Many of the sets have sold on Ebay. Well, here they are all collected together in book form.

Bring on the Tenors

I love to sing. I sing with a choir and cantor in church, but I realize how my voice pales listening to these young tenors. These are tenors I’d love to hear in concert.


Michael Ball – Prepare Ye the Way/Gethsemane



Mario Frangoulis – Empty Chairs at Empty Tables



Patrick Fiori with Lara Fabian – La Difference



Patrick Fiori - Juste Une Raison Encore [love the video]


Patrick Fiori – Il Parait



Josh Groban – You Raise Me Up

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The Passion Play

When I was a child, my parents took me to see the American Passion Play presented by the Scottish Rite Temple, Bloomington, Illinois (I was surprised to see that it is currently being presented, now in its 85th year). In my childhood eyes, the play’s cast consisted of hundreds of people. The production told the story of the life and death of Christ—from birth to ascension, often quoting famous paintings in their telling of the story.

Drama can entertain. It can teach us lessons. It can make us think. Sarah Ruhl’s play The Passion Play, currently finishing its run at the Goodman Theatre, is filled with ideas for us to wrap our heads around. I have purposely avoided reading reviews or articles about the play in order to figure out what I think the play is about. To me one of the basic premises of the play is how we fashion and present the Passion of Christ. If the playwright is right, we do it through our visions of ourselves.

This is a play about dreams—what we want, what we fear. Mary (Kelly Brady) in Act I says, “All my life I’ve dreamed of playing the Virgin Mary.” Pilate says in the same act, “I dreamt of fish.” At the end of the play, we are admonished to go home and sleep because only after sleeping fully can we arise with a clear head and see what is reality.

The play is staged on a pine platform stage with large moveable boxes for walls with doors, a window, and a large pine trestle table. Above the walls runs a projection frieze used throughout the play to establish location.

We open to the sounds of the ocean in a fishing village still locked in the medieval view of the world, lying far from the Enlightened World of Elizabeth I. They catch fish here. They gut fish. They even dream of fish. At the end of the act, John the Fisherman who plays Christ strains in silhouette against a red sky pulling in his catch of fish while his dying cousin is carried off by a dream of a school of giant fish.

Our bridge character in Act I is a priest who has come incognito to view one of the last remaining Passion Plays. He becomes the adversary of Elizabeth I.

Throughout the play, a red sky becomes a motif of fear. “I can turn the sky red,” say both the Village Idiot and Pilate) In Act III, Pilate quotes the old adage, “Red sky at night sailor’s delight; red sky at morning sailors take warning.”


In the first act, Christ is portrayed (we are told) by the handsomest and most virginal man of the village (Joaquin Torres). His cousin (Brian Sgambati), limping like a Medieval Richard III or Iago, talks of wanting to kill his cousin—to literally nail him to his cross. “Why does he get to play Christ and I have to play Pilate?” he asks. This conflict becomes one of the motifs of the play--not that of the traditional Christ betrayed by Judas but Christ versus Pilate—Christ whose kingdom is not here on earth versus Pilate whose kingdom is.

Not only are the two men in conflict. The actress playing Mary Magdalene wants to play the Virgin, but the director tells her, “She looks like the Virgin. You look like a whore.” So we find ourselves stuck in roles beyond our own making. But not only are our play parts confusing. Mary Magdalene confesses the desire to kiss another woman—and does. The kissing is used in each act with great power.

The Village Idiot, played with great poignancy by Polly Noonan, wants to be in the Passion, but she is not allowed to until the actress playing the Virgin commits suicide. Then we see her performing the part of Eve—mother of all. The character of the Village Idiot becomes another motif shaped and reshaped in each act. It is she, of course, who sees and knows all and offers us some of the wisdom of the play.


Act I presents the first of the major symbols and motifs of the play: the fish. These larger than human-size fish are carried on like giant floats from a distant Mardi Gras parade. Actors ceremoniously carry the fish in (or are they swimming in?) as if performing in some somber medieval religious rite. The visual effect is stunning.

[A couple of weeks after the production I chanced upon a closeup picture of Peter Brughel’s triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights and from the center panel I was astonished to see the picture at left. At a seminar on the play I was told that this was one of the inspirations for the fish pageantry.]

We should note that the village consists of scores of hidden Catholics, and the symbol of the fish has for centuries been used as the sign of their followers. “Come with me,” says Christ in the Gospel, “and I will make you a fisherman of men.”

Another motif is a dream of sailing ships from which we desire protection. I assume they were inspired by the Spanish Armada which Elizabeth protected her people from? The march of ships—another ceremony repeated throughout the play--suggests the banners from the medieval ceremonies. It was strongly reminded me of the magic realism of Canadian artist Rob Gonsalves in his painting, “In Search of the Sea.”




The “flying ships” introduces another motif: an obsession with birds and flying. In Act I, the angel of the annunciation is given fantasical wings a la DaVinci and flown against his will up in the air. Are we to see an angel in the first act or perhaps a reluctant holy spirit? In the last act, Christ is flown without wings while op art clouds part to show an op art sun. A man dressed to suggest a bird in the second act can’t fly at all, but merely investigates and leaves—a threatening, vaguely malevolent figure wearing the wings from the first act, but wearing a triangular “bill” which gives the appearance of the gas masks of World War I. In the last act, the daughter who is said to draw pictures of birds, sees her father’s vision of the flying ships.

[When I was a child I went to see Jean Arthur in the Chicago production of Peter Pan. For years I dreamt of flying—my way of escaping my world. But my flying was swimming in the air, like a fish.]

In the production there are three ascensions: the angel of the annunciation in Act I, Christ in Act III and Pilate’s at the end.

Act II finds us in Oberamergau, Germany in the 1930s. The Jews have become the enemy of the “good people.” The Jewish priests are depicted as devils with horned headdresses. Our bridge character becomes a pacifist English spectator who has come to write a book about theatre, with a chapter on the Passion Play. His pacifist views counterbalance the views of Hitler who appears during the rehearsal of the production.

In Oberamergau, the production is only performed by members of families who have traditionally presented the plays. Christ is new—the young man’s father had essayed the role before but is too old now. This young Christ has trouble remember his lines and debates whether he even wishes to play the part.

The young Christ is in love—with the actor performing Pilate who is going into the German army. They have a long kissing scene which is observed by a few officer of the S.S. The officer has a scene where he asks Pilate to feel Mary’s buttocks. He then asks if he is aroused. When Pilate says he is not, he is warned that in Hitler’s army he must function as someone who gets aroused by women.

During the act, the young girl—the act’s village idiot—wants to be part of the production and watches rehearsal. She is told she can’t be part of the play because she is not one of them. When she feeds Christ incorrect lines, she is put in a cage. Later Christ frees her. Shortly after comes a dream sequence where a giant bird—one of the actors in the wings from the previous act and a funnel “beak”—comes and walks around her. He is not a savior, he seems menacingly, even malevolently inquisitive. At the end when the girl is told that she is to be taken away, Christ tells her that she must go, because “your blood is different.” When he attempts to take her away, she struggles and says that she wants to walk on her own. One of the obvious ironies is that it is Christ who gives her up, who betrays—and the other cast members end the act looking accusingly at the audience.


By Act II two questions become prominent:

· What is the role of a leader?

Pilate? Elizabeth? Hitler? Reagan? Christ? In each act, a ruler/leader stops the reality of the play—just as the director does in the inner play—to redirect, to focus to interpose his/her will. We are manipulated—directed if you will—by leaders who stop us from living the lives we want to live. Notice how much each enjoys the “acting” of the part.


Elizabeth in Act I doesn’t want the Passion Play presented because it supports the Catholic view. Hitler decides to allow the work because it disparages the Jews. Reagan welcomes what he sees as wholesome Christian values.

We’ll come back to this idea later.

· What is the role of art in our lives? What is the role of the actor? How does art translate our pain? How does the actor’s obsession with a role change the actor?

The Oberammergau Christ worries because his father’s face glowed and his doesn’t. The director tells him that audiences seeing the play have spent money to attend. They’ll believe his face glows because they’ve paid to believe.

The South Dakota Christ wants to change his acting style to be more real and the new director asks, how will the huge audience then see the emotions without the larger than life gestures? This is, after all, about the production, not about living life.

Research tells us that “Mystery or cycle plays were short dramas based on the Old and New Testaments organized into historical cycles.”

“Unlike morality plays, the cycle plays did not try to influence people to alter their behavior in any way to achieve salvation, but rather they were a celebration of the ‘Good News’ of the salvation preached by the apostles that had been granted through the Passion and Resurrection of Christ.”

The people in each act are presenting the Passion Play. Is this an obvious pun? Is it the Passion of Christ? Or the passion of his people?

In a panel discussion of the play, the actress playing the Village Idiot stated that Act III was the act that on first read through seemed the most complete and ready. It was only as the other two acts became refined that the act became more problematic.


In Act III we are in the 1980s in Spearfish, South Dakota. Pilate, in this case, marries the Virgin Mary and Christ, his brother, betrays him by sleeping with her. There is a sense of a much more episodic storyline since this act covers several years.

For me, the act becomes a descent into the mind of Pilate and we get further and further expressionistically away from reality. Perhaps this is one of the problems that some have with the act. This is not realism and not intended to be. It is perhaps all within the mind and dreams of Pilate.

The act returns to examination of the role of the leader. One of the strongest moments of the play comes when Pilate lies wounded on a battlefield in Viet Nam. Elizabeth I amid all her medieval pageantry enters and says to us:

I cannot fathom why any subject would be willing to die for any leader other than a monarch. What man would die for a leader who was not rushing to the battle-field with him—their blood soaking into the dust together. On the battle-field the monarch and the nation’s blood are one!

In contrast, the Ronald Reagan of Act III describes being a radio sports announcer who had to announce a game he wasn’t even at—he was fed his news through an earpiece. At one climatic point—when the feed is dropped—he makes up what he says. And that’s how he plays at being president. Our modern leaders must learn to act—watch The Queen. Who better to show us that than an actor who became president? Reagan reveals:

I never did serve in the military. But I feel as though I did. I made training films for soldiers, during the war. … Luckily I never sent my men into combat. It is a fearsome thing to do.

Pilate returns home, but as damaged goods, to find his wife and brother and the child he thinks is his but is his brother’s. Has he at this point become our Everyman? [Has he been that all along?] He says at one point, “I don’t want to be in the play anymore.” But in his delusions, he nails his own hand to the cross. So who is this Pilate? Does he represent all of us who think we are good but ultimately wash our hands of Christ’s suffering? Do we all think we want to play Christ until the play gets too close to our own lives?

The theme of infidelity and loss and betrayal runs throughout the act.

But we are also told that we need to hold onto our dreams. We share a need to have someone sleep with us, share our dreams. Pilate’s daughter, who might be Christ’s daughter, ultimately sees the same visions as Pilate—the ships and the fish. She too has listened for the wind. We long for ceremony and religion in our lives, even when we lose touch with God and organized religion.

In the end, the playwright suggests that we should mount the ships of our dreams and fly away holding onto whatever we think is real.

[For the pictures from this production, go to Photo Flash: 'The Passion Play' at Goodman Theatre.]

Giving High-Fives

Teachers don’t stand at their doors here. That’s different than the public school I retired from where the administration “strongly suggested” [read often demanded] that we stand by our doors during passing periods. The reason there, of course, was that in the public school, fights, drug deals, harassment, and inappropriate behavior could be deterred by the visible presence of a teacher. Here we don’t have those problems.

One of the good things that grew out of greeting the students at the door happened quite by accident. During third quarter a student walking into my History and Thought of Western Man class was feeling goofy and gave me a high-five. When I responded, the student following him wanted one too. And so on… and so on. Within a couple of days students began expecting high-fives. If I was late getting to the door, they waited for me before coming in. It became a game of community—and fairly quickly the woman I taught with felt left out and joined in too. Each beginning of that class became a celebratory event.

After a couple of weeks, I began noticing that that class’ camaraderie was more visibly positive. They seemed to feel good about themselves and each other more than the other History and Thought class that didn’t do it.

When I questioned some students about their perception of a change and what they thought the high-five was doing, one young lady told me:

“You’re the first teacher who ever made me feel like you wanted me in your classroom. I came to class one day, embarrassed that I hadn’t read the assignment—and you still gave me a high-five. I didn’t feel like I deserved it, but you still made me feel like you cared that I was there.”

I’d like to report that her class grades dramatically improved. They didn’t. But what did change exponentially was her involvement with and interest in the class. She knew I cared more about her than her grades—and that made the class easier for her to take.

On my last day with that class, the students formed a long line so they could all give me one last high-five. It was the most appropriate parting present they could have given.

So two years later I’m at a new school where I’m very happy, but I realized today that I am one of the few teachers standing at my door. Last week I shared with my freshman class about the high-fives and they have now bought into their own tradition—a couple are very tentative, some smack my hand as hard as they can seeing if I’ll flinch, one even had to do it a couple of times today to make sure the sound and the hit was to his liking. It’s contagious also. The teacher who shares the room before me said the day we started it, “I want one too.” So now he and I also high-five a greeting as I walk in.

Call it goofy, hokey, whatever you want. But I’m going to be interested in seeing how the sense of community grows.

Returning to Teach

My attempt at full-retirement was a failure. I spent a lot of time feeling vaguely guilty that while others were working I was sitting around doing my art and writing. The Midwestern Middle-class Puritan Ethic my parents taught me was pretty hard to move beyond. When in Second Semester St. Ignatius College Prep’s administration asked me to cover for a maternity leave from last April through June, I jumped at the chance. Having taught in public school for 39 years, I suddenly encountered a brand new world where it is okay to talk about one’s own faith journey and I can actually teach a majority of students who want to be where they are.

As summer approached, I was asked to teach full time this year. I didn’t want to do it—after all I am retired. But when I was offered part time again—four classes first semester and three second—I was happily agreed.

So in August I rejoined the staff of St. Ignatius for the beginning of my 40th year of teaching. The first day of freshmen, 22 August, I walked in with them. Seniors acting as leaders had formed into a long gauntlet—a pretty intimidating prospect for a teacher, even more so for a freshman. But as students walked past the seniors, they were cheered and applauded—and buoyed up with comments such as, “We’re glad you’re here”…”welcome”…”you’re going to love it here.” I was walking behind two freshmen girls. As they entered the building a senior stopped one of the girls and said, “Those are very cool shoes.” Imagine hearing a compliment on your first day in high school instead of being thrown pennies or castigated with catcalls.

Each senior leader counsels five freshmen. Before opening day they had called all of their charges to wish them good luck and tell them they would see them. Once a week during homeroom, they now come and talk with the kids to see how things are going. This will be for the entire year. My freshmen seem happy to work with them.

Friday we had our first Ignatian Value Day. These are four days set aside each year to deal with issues of social change, growth and justice. Our theme was “Being Open to Change.”

The day started with an all-school Mass. Students were released according to their class. My freshmen came in at the end… and were greeted at the front door of the church by the President of the School and other administrators. Inside, all the students were applauding and cheering as my students walked down the center aisle and sat in the center pews. What a powerful message of welcome.

I should point out that St. Ignatius students worship at Holy Family Church, which is beside the school. The Church, one of the most beautiful in the city of Chicago, was originally constructed in 1857-1860 under the supervision of Fr. Damon, a Jesuit priest. Additions to the original church in 1862 and 1866 enlarged it to its present impressive size. Surviving both the fire of the 1870s, changing neighborhoods, and threats of demolition in the 1980s, the present church is both inspiring and awesome.

As the Mass began, near the front of the procession, four students carried 7 foot banners -- two in maroon and two in gold bearing the legends ’08, ’09, ’10, ’11—which were placed on the altar. Seeing the church packed with some 1300 students singing and worshipping was a great boost.

After a powerful speech by one of the teachers regarding his views about being open to change, the last part of the day was spent reflecting on the message. My freshmen set goals of ways to make change in class more positive. They will in the next two weeks try to get to know three people in class they don’t know right now. It’s small steps, but after the sense of inclusion they’ve experienced, I know they can build their own community of trust.