Going Home, Going to The Feast, Going to August: Osage County Part I AUGUST 21, 2007
August 14 Chicago--->Shaker Heights. August 15--->Feast of the Assumption procession, Holy Rosary Church, Little Italy Cleveland. August 17 ---> August: Osage County, Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago
PRELUDE
Well, my trip had been planned for months, maybe for a couple of years. I had last been to see the procession at the Holy Rosary Church, which honors the “assumption” of The Virgin Mary into heaven, in August of 2005. Last summer, I missed it, having just started a new job and gone to New Orleans for the APA convention the week before the Feast. At the 2005 Feast of the Assumption procession, I rediscovered my family’s roots in Little Italy at a backyard “festa” with Mary and Rudy on E. 126th Street. Two of their children had just come back from a family pilgrimage to Alcara Li Fusi, in the mountains of northern Sicily, which was the home of Mary’s father, “Mister Nic”, and also, not coincidentally, of my grandfather, also named Nicola. I felt fortunate to be included in their celebration.
BACK STORY
Before ’05 I had last traveled to Cleveland to watch the procession in 2003; however, I was unable to do so “due to circumstances [way] beyond our control.” That feast day turned out to be a fateful day in the life of my family. My father was seriously injured as a result of an early morning fall on August 15 during the Great East Coast BlackOut of 2003. Cleveland Hopkins was closed until the afternoon, so I definitely missed the procession, and instead of going to the Feast on Cleveland’s East Side, I ended up visiting my father down the street from Holy Rosary at the University Hospital. He was just coming out of surgery to repair three broken bones. At the hospital, the computers were down and they were using bottled water because of the electrical failures all over town. When I called the next day, Patient (socalled) Information informed us that there was “no one by that name here” when we called to talk to him in his room!
YOU CAN”T GO HOME AGAIN
This August 15 marked a completion of a cycle, because when all was said and done, almost four years later and after a long journey to recovery and life under my mother’s care, my father suddenly succumbed to an unexpected and undetected massive tumor in his liver in May 20. This, after my overwhelmed and emotionally frail mother was consigned to permanent nursing care in January. So, going home is very different these days, and it means an entire reorganization of the family relationships and of my emotional reality.
August: Cuyahoga County
I thought that it would be nice to invite my sister Paula (MSP) to come along, because we were invited back to Mary and Rudy’s after the procession. Paula was born and had lived at Mary and Rudy’s two-flat in Little Italy where the backyard party was being held. She hadn’t been to the Feast for many years, and after some anxiety about the possibility of rain (“Paula, that’s why the Sainted Virgin gave us umbrellas...”), she said she’d come with me.
PARKING AND PROCESSING
After we improbably scored a late parking space across from the house on 126th Street and dropped off some cake I made, our precious photo albums from the 1940s, and two folding chairs at Mary and Rudy’s, we headed down to the corner where my mother used to stand to watch the procession. Folding chairs are an essential bring-along to Sicilian parties, whether they are held indoors or outdoors, because the home always has enough chairs for the close family, friends, and the grandparents, but never enough chairs for everyone who eventually shows up! The parties are full of good food and wine, irrational exuberance and Mediterranean energy, loud storytelling and joking, even singing and dancing! This festa would turn out to be no different, but first, the story of the procession.
When the bells started to ring around noon, The Virgin came out of the church and turned right at the corner of Coltman and headed down the street with the Knights of Columbus, the women of the saint societies, and the congregants following. I had toyed with the idea of doing the procession this year, and when I got Paula to entertain the thought of it, we brought up the rear and followed the priests and the float with Mary on it, as the preachers preached and the people sang. Like my mother did religiously in years past, the faithful lining the streets handed the Knights of Columbus $10 and $20 bills to hang on the drapes over Mary’s outstretched arms.
THE NEIGHBORHOOD
As we wove through the cobblestone side streets, I was struck by how much this procession was like one that I had seen in a seaside village in Ischia in 1999: That one was more opulent and shiny and octopus-like as it surged forward and seemed to take in whole groups of observers as it rolled along. We kept a steady pace and a contained line as we made a big figure eight around the neighborhood. I noticed that the streetscape was right out of the 1950s and indeed, we had gone back in time to a personal and larger family and community history.
WHERE DONA CONCETTA AND MR. NIC ATE, DRANK, AND DANCED
When we finished our circuit, it was only a matter of time before the table would be spread with the bounty of the Feast, and the truncheons of meatballs, bruschetta, and sausage and zucchini would appear. And the pizzelles! Mary (whose parents were known to my parents and family as Dona Concetta and Mr. Nic) made about 200 of these thin anisette flavored waffle cookies, and it was hard to wait for dessert to start enjoying these. People got comfortable in their chairs--another guest monopolized our highback folding chair from the house, and I fell over in one of the chairs that was set on uneven pavement! Nonetheless, MSP and Mary looked through the albums, which featured my parents as a young couple and included pics from my sister’s 1st birthday party, and I showed my family movie on the MacBook.
http://web.mac.com/theactivelistener/iWeb/www.theactivelistener.com/Magnum%20Opus%20Productions.html
But it wasn’t just the litany of memories and the elated shouts of, “Hey, Marge, come on and look at this picture of Joe Tano!”. It wasn’t just the home cooking and the homemade wine. At around 3:30 p.m., a strolling accordionist, who happened to be a family friend, strolled down the galley way. It was better than being in a restaurant and giving requests to the musician. Dennis, the man with the accordion, sat down next to Rudy, and the two of them crooned songs of Sicily and Naples. As the highlight, Rudy, who uses a walker and wheelchair, danced with the young ladies, and as he tired one out, he’d stand with open arms and say, “Next?” There were some moments when we held our breath, but he could still cut a figure on the dance floor and was satisfied to have so enjoyed this Feast day, despite Mary’s worries about his stability. “He dances with all the ladies at the day care,” she said with a smile.
BUONA SERA
Heading home at around 6 p.m., we wanted to go up the hill to see my father’s crypt at the Lakeview Cemetary, but the police had closed off the entrance and the Cemetary was closed for the night. I took Paula back to the house and headed out to see my mother. I told her that we went to the feast and I brought her the words to the procession music so we could go over them together. My sister thanked me for asking her and encouraging her to do the procession, and I thanked her for going with me. Although I could have had fun going alone as I had two years before, I had more fun going with my sister and it was important for both of us to get out, together, and to see old family friends who are really part of the family history.
GOING WEST
Because in 2007, it’s all about family, Part II of this entry will be about seeing and responding to the hot Steppenwolf Theatre Play, August: Osage County. A father who dies. A mother who’s in and out of the family reality. Adult siblings and spouses dealing with each other. Going back to the family home to be together. Art imitates life. Stay tuned.....
AUGUST 21, 2007
Going Home, Going to the Feast, Going to August: Osage County Part II A father who dies. A mother who’s in and out of reality. Going back to the family home to be together for a funeral. Adult siblings and spouses dealing with each other and their troubled children. Art imitates life. Stay tuned...
ALL THE RAGE
August: Osage County at the Steppenwolf Main Stage has been one of the hottest tickets of a hot summer. After reading the New York Times review about a week ago, my resolve was, once again, steeled to get a ticket to see this “huge” play about family. Alas, on the Monday of the review, every day and every show of the run was sold out.
GETTING TICKETS
I couldn’t get the idea of seeing this play out of my head, and around lunchtime on Friday, when I was making plans to go out this evening, I didn’t like the options, but my friend was willing to go to this play. When I went on the website, a miracle occurred--two tickets on the main floor were available, and I could have them if I completed my order in 13 minutes or less! I quick called MFC and we made arrangements to meet up for a 7:30 show.
THE PLAY’S THE THING
I can’t and won’t give a synopsis of the play, but I do recommend looking into the Steppenwolf Theatre website, including action from the play. But it was one of the best things I’ve seen at Steppenwolf since the days of Grapes of Wrath or The Song of Jacob Zulu. Unpretentious, alive, and at once riveting, rollicking, and wretched, this high drama (yes, the mother is the highest of the high) was thoroughly enjoyable. It was evident that the audience as a whole was right with the actors and their energized performance.
AUDIENCE CONVERSATION
Even though the actors gathered at the stage front for their last curtain call at around quarter to 11 o’clock, we decided to stay for the discussion with about 25 audience members and one of the production crew directors. She asked for some general responses to the play, and one man started by saying that he found the laughter and audience involvement were disconcerting and distracting. At some point I piped in that I thought that this play was a good example of what we learned about in literature class--theatre as catharsis, as in Greek plays that we had to read in AP English. I added that I think everyone was having their own personal experience through the onstage emotion and conflict. MFC talked about the laughter as a response to the vulnerability of all the characters who are exposed and in almost constant emotional pain on stage and likened it to “why we laugh at clowns.”
IS THIS PLAY HALF HOPELESS OR HALF HOPEFUL?
Another question had something to do with “what, if anything, was hopeful by the ending?” That brought out a lot of chatter about family dysfunction, the mother and daughter breakdowns, the sibling love relationship that is exposed near the end, and any number of other gloom and doom scenarios. I had a different viewpoint--and articulated it. That is...”I could see it being a lot more hopeless. Whether or not it was right that the father Beverly killed himself==his death left people with new possibilities for self=development and new relationships with each other. A father, a mythic man like this takes up a lot of space in the family, and only when he’s gone can people see themselves differently....” I also thought that a questionable interlude of music by the two “cousins” in love was a way in which the adult son was linked to his poet father.
PATERFAMILIAS PATTER
All in all, a fun mini-seminar after a rip-roaring witnessing of full-on theatre. On the way out, an older white-haired man came up on my right and told me, “I liked your comments.” I thanked him--a nice compliment from a stranger--and said something that, “Well, I’m a trained professional and I thought there was room for hope.” I asked him how he liked the play, and he said, “I like it a lot--I’M IN IT!” It occurred to me--”You’re HIS father.”
This was Dennis Letts, father in the play and father of the playwright, Tracy Letts. I had not recognized him and was completely shocked that he was sitting in the audience during the post-performance discussion. But--a serendipitous connection and affirmation. Since my father’s recent death, I have been in a zone of meditation on my family past, present, and future. The play spoke to me about the pain and possibility of the loss of the father and the surging ripples of rage, regret and loneliness that follows such a death. Maybe Dennis Letts liked that I focused on the role of the father; many critics, including the one in the NY Times, rave about that ice pick of a mother who knew all and who tried to eviscerate her daughters, one by one. And I secretly loved that it seems like wherever there’s a father figure, mythic, theatric, or one of the fathers in the audience discussion, I’m noticing him, speaking to him, and connecting with him.
October: Broadway’s Imperial Theatre
SUNDAY, September 2, 2007
August: Osage County by Tracy Letts is going to Broadway in late October.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/stage/chi-mxa0826artcoverrareaug26,1,3917609.story
