User:Graceceegrace/New York Street Theater Caravan

THE NEW YORK STREET THEATRE CARAVAN 1968 to 2000 The work of the NY Street Theatre Caravan fills an important niche in the innovative, creatively powerful troupes and ensembles that formed in the US in the 1960’s, 70’s and even 1980’s, including The San Francisco Mime Troupe, the Teatro Campesinos, Spiderwoman, Stephenwolf, The Bread & Puppet Theatre, The Living Theatre, The Shaliko Company, The Manhattan Project, The Open Theatre, Irondale Ensemble, etc. The Caravan was started by Marketa Kimbrell, then a member of the Lincoln Center Theater’s Resident Company under Herbert Blau, and Richard Levy, (then an adjunct professor at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts), and a troupe of young performers that were attracted to their vision of a professional, high-quality, ‘theatre of the people’. Some of the first public presentations of this interracial troupe were at the Poor People’s March on Washington in 1968, where they presented political puppet shows for the children living in the muddy tent city that had grown up around the Washington Memorial called Resurrection City. Their first home, was a third of a 3,000 square foot warehouse space donated by Nathan’s Hotdogs owners, Mr & Mrs. Murray Handwerker on Surf Avenue in Coney Island, the other two-thirds of which was occupied by Peter Schuman’s Bread & Puppet Theatre. (Both Peter and Marketa were Czech émigrés.) In 1972, The Olympic Committee chose 5 theatres from around the world, and assigned each of them a period of history when the spirit of the Olympics had been abused by being politically capitalized on by the host country. When Peter Schumann declined the invitation to represent the U.S. he suggested Marketa’s troupe, and The NY Street Theatre Caravan presented a work at the 1972 Olympics along with the Teriyama from Japan, the Mario Ricci from Italy, the Magic Circus from France, and (Theatro La Guardia?) from Spain. Thus began the Caravan’s relationship with a European theatre community which perhaps reached a professional height in 1982 at the International Theatre of Nations Festival in Zurich where they received top billing over Pina Bausch and Peter Brook. The rich imagery of the work, the almost acrobatic physicality, and the unapologetic emotional immediacy poignancy of the music and acting of the interracial troupe appealed to European audiences and, (not unlike jazz musicians of that era,) raised up to half of it’s yearly budget touring Europe for the next 14 or 16 years and continued to appear in festivals there until their last presentation in Budapest around 1998. They worked in Germany, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, Norway, France, Italy, Bulgaria, East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Finland, and Sweden. Marketa believed that the Expressionist movement in painting needed to be revisited as a source from which concepts of art where to be developed for our time and, herself a student of Lee Strasberg, she encouraged members of the troupe to study with him and with then iconoclastic thinker Jerzy Growtowski – so that the troupe applied these most current emotional, mask and archetypal forms into the work. Some consider the production of Molly Maguire, first mounted in 1981 and a part of the ensemble’s repertoire for perhaps 5 years, (?) to have been the zenith of the troupe’s life and work. When this play left the repertoire, several of the then core members of the troupe, (which then included Douglas Hudgins, Timothy Kirkpatrick, Ted Hannan, Ron Litman, Rae C Wright, Valerie Knight,Peggy Pettit, Linda Segura, and musical director Gene Glickman,) came into conflict with the direction Marketa saw for the group and left or limited their involvement over the next years. Though the Caravan continued to travel nationally and internationally and create new work, it may be that none had the power of those early works. In Manhattan, the Caravan had developed a performing home in a theatre space they had helped create in coalition with The Working Theater and the Modern Times Theatre in a beautiful space owned by a church at 336 W. 20th Street in Manhattan between 8th and 9th Avenues that today houses The Atlantic Theatre Company. At the time, the space had high vaulted ceilings, long windows and expansive brick walls, and had most recently been used as a basketball court by the church. The three groups kept this space open so that it was malleable in terms of design use and seating. The set design for Molly Maguire utilized two walls of the space with a bridge that connected two platforms of different heights set on railroad ties, and the action took place both on the platforms, on the floor of the theatre and in the space between 4 bleacher-type wooden seating sections. The show, which included both traditional Irish and early American music and original music – (all performed by the members of the troupe,) opened in the Spring of 1981 just at the time that Bobby Sands and others held in Ireland’s Maze Prison were on a hunger strike to raise the issue of Ireland’s continued and historic economic repression by England. “Molly Maguire” received a ‘half-page, w/picture, above-the-fold’ review in the NY Times by then theatre critic Steven Corry which began something like, “…so much for my expectations of a troupe with the words ‘Street Theatre’ in it’s name…” and went on to rave unconditionally about the work. The Nation review was also a rave. Nicaragua The Caravan accepted an invitation from the then, three-year old Nicaraguan government in 1984, to perform whatever and wherever it wished – this arranged through the recommendation of Magnum photographer Susan Meiselas who accompanied the troupe on it’s travels there. They performed in the State Theatre in Managua, (which had somehow survived the devastation of the1972 earthquake), for the Nicaraguan troupes on the border of Honduras where the US had already begun funding a mercenary army to make incursions on the borders, (the actors were gifted with a spent shell from an incoming missile which fell near to where they were performing, which was inscribed “Made in US” on the back,) in prisons, (as per the Caravan’s request), and throughout the countryside and in other cities in Nicaragua. The A.E.A. Relationship The Caravan became an Equity ensemble in a move which A.E.A made in the 1980’s to force those collectives to become Equity troupes under special agreement. The Caravan fought this, claiming that the idea of actors requiring a union to help them collectively bargain with management was an anathema to being a collective – which had no management. The showdown came when the Caravan was to perform for workers at a conference center in the Catskills belonging to the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. A.E.A contacted the ILGWU and demanded that they not ‘employ’ non-union workers to perform at their event. The Caravan’s claim that an Equity contract would not be affordable to the union, and that the union itself hired non-union help to run it’s establishments, failed to carry enough political weight and the Caravan began a long and testy relationship with A.E.A – where they were forced to name one of their membership as the ‘producer’, and pay dues to the union. Funders The Caravan was funded by: The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, The New York Foundation, the J.M. Kaplan Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Community Trust, the New York State Council on the Arts, the NY City Dept of Cultural Affairs, The Jerome Foundation, The Rockefellow Brothers Foundation, Fund, Puffin Foundation, North Star Fund. Works Their productions included: The Mother The Hard-Time Blues (The Brementown Musicians) Wind to the West [including an adaptation of Brecht’s “The Exception & The Rule”] The Grapes of Wrath (Bitter Harvest) (OBIE) (Sustained Excellence in the Theatre) Sacco & Vanzetti: The Passion of a Poor Fishpeddler and a Good Shoemaker,(OBIE) Molly Maguire Street Korner Cabaret Gold Blues in Rags The Grand Inquisitor Plague Dogs In addition, the Caravan had a number of ‘street’ sketches which they employed at meetings, rallies, on picket lines and in the streets. Script of “Sacco & Vanzetti: The Passion of a Poor Fishpeddler and a Good Shoemaker”. Though developed/written in part by the troupe, Marketa Kimbrell, as it's principal author, received a NYFA Award for Playwrighting for the script “Sacco & Vanzetti: The Passion of a Poor Fishpeddler and a Good Shoemaker” – in 1996. Artists' Fellowship - 1996 (Gregory Millard Fellow) Playwriting/Screenwriting Artist Statement: Marketa Kimbrell is the founder, artistic director and in-house playwright of The New York Street Theatre Caravan. Among her works is 'Sacco and Vanzetti' (1994), an account of the two Italian immigrants who were sent to the electric chair in 1927 after on eof the most controversial trials in American history. "I believe that artists belong out at the edge of society and beyond it, where the pain is. I try to make my plays a voice - often a cry - of the powerless in society. Sacco and Vanzetti were such voices. Creating a play about them keeps their voice from being silenced.” some ‘Of Note’ Relationships/Performances Lauded by and engaged with many ‘notaries’; in addition to Maya Angelou & Vanessa Redgrave (listed below in “Anecdotes”) the troupe had long-standing relationships with Wolf Bierman and Theodorakis whom they met at the East German Cultural Festival of 1980,  Pete Seeger and William Kunstler who were active members on the advisory board; Dario Fo who said the Caravan was the most humorous troupe he’d ever known… next to his own of course. They performed at La Paz for Cesar Chavez, in the Parish Prison in New Orleans, at the infamous  Cummins Prison Farm in Little Rock Arkansa, Attica, for the activist Iranian Students League,  the UAW,  UMWA,  ILGWU,  ACTWU,  SEIU,  1199, 1199 Bread and Roses Project, the Attica Defense Committee;  while touring SD a member, Ron Litman was formally initiated as an adoptive son of the Jumping Bull family in South Dakota, working w/Akwesasne Notes editor Jerry Gambill, with the United Farm Workers Union Boycott Committee, CISPES, et al. Former members include: Lou Quinones Allen Kimbrell (D) Andre Kimbrell Pilar Zalemea Gordon King Kaiulani Lee Andy Abrams (D) Timothy Kirkpatrick Greg Rae C Wright (Cynthia Wright) Douglas Hudgins Linda Segura Alan Marshall Ron Litman Ted Hannan Valerie Knight Lionel Roper (D) Peggy Pettitt Diego Cortes (D) Tyrone Hendricks Sari Guinier Jose Cruz (?) Jean Francois Quinque Veronica Nowag Penny Bender (videographer) Amy Berkman Phyllis Blanford Jos Laniado David deLuck (Earl Imbert) Marcia Donalds (D) Richard Brooks Murray Levy (D) Gerald Saldo Susan Mieselas (as photographer) Gene Glickman (as musical director) Joan Rosenfels (as administrator) Anne Glickman (as administrator) Doris Metzler (as costumer) Paul Baker (D) Tom Dromgoole Mie Lui (?sp) Van Santvoord Jennifer Johnson Melba LaRose Anecdotes: In the 1970's there was alot of activism in prisons - "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" and"Soledad Brother, The Prison Letters of George Jackson" were printed in 1965 and 1970 respectively. Performing on the Lame Deer res in Montana – off the back of our International Harvester red (25 foot – stage 8 by 16?) stake truck (named Rosa) to a field of (“one-eyed”) pick-ups and 1950’s sedans. Some appreciative laughter coming to us through the open car windows – a few folks sitting on the cab/roof of the truck/car - but we virtually performed for a field of windshields and at the end, were greeted with the approval of lights being flashed on and off and people stomping on the floor of their cars and trucks which rocked and rolled in the field. Performing in the Parish Prison in New Orleans – walking into the place and seeing three men in a cage set into the wall, crouching down as it was only 4 feet high inside – one man was in his underpants. Doing the first performance in a white-washed court yard surrounded on four sides by walls five stories high, with barred windows, out of which black and white arms were stretched holding pieces of mirror, so that they could see the performance on the ground below… After that first performance the warden sent word we could do a second, in a second courtyard, and that those inmates would be permitted to come down and sit on the cement to watch. It must have been 95 in the shade…the performers must’ve lost 5 lbs. easy__ Vanessa Redgrave braving the wilds of Jamaica, Queens where we were rehearsing at the time to come watch the work, and then arranging to have ‘sessions-to-explain-socialism’ in the city in the 6th floor, sour-smelling walk-up of one of the members in the then-ghetto East Village…she meet with three of us once, tried to persuade us to persuade our troupe to ‘over-throw’ the director and go to a political rally of her group in Canada. ‘No’, we said, we had a performance scheduled. “Cancel it!” she said. "Well," said we, "…are you going?” "No", said she.  “Why?” said we. “I’ve a performance!” said she.  Maya Angelou catching us on the street performing in Oslo, coming ‘back-stage’ in tears after the sketch… Valerie Knight asked:  How about a specific in Nicaragua. Did we perform at the prison with captured contras? Rae C responded: I remember being in the countryside - no electricity, no plumbing -- a theatre troupe existed in this community - they did a bit of a 'family drama' for us - we were outdoors in a kind of corral as i remember.  The troupe was only men, and there was the one man who played all the women's and girls parts.  He may have actually been straight?  He was so physically gifted,  he just transformed his body, and was, a female.  It was a delight. I remember playing, in a similiar 'hood, this "expressionistly" costumed Jean Kirkpatrick (the then author of U.S. policy in Central America - Attorney General under Reagan). I was dressed as a gym teacher with a boxy plaid skirt and sneakers and a bad wig, blue blazer/white shirt/american flag tie. Astonishingly, these people knew who i was characterizing___ I remember performing in two prisons. The first was an experimental prison we were told, by the warden who came to meet us before we went. It turned out to be a working farm. The warden, (who’s voice I will always remember, is was so round and wide and kindly really__,) he told us, that they had researched prisons throughout history, that this was what they had come up with. There were no ‘bars’ per se. but the inmates were told that ‘escape’ was not an option – they would do their time here, or somewhere else behind bars. He said he had heard we had been to many prisons (we had) and that he would certainly like to know any thoughts or suggestions we might have after visiting this place. (No one did.) The powerful, personal lawyer of Somoza was in this prison at this time. I remember being struck when performing for members of the armed forces in Nicaragua, how most of the men liked our work very much, and some were absolutely not inclined to clap or smile or in any way be open to us. And that was okay with their superiors and fellows. I remember feeling that this respect-for-wildly-different feelings – was divine. Ron Litman 3/2008 remembers: Seeing the 'real' electric chair, which the guards nicknamed "Old Sparky" in the Tennessee State Prison while we were still in the earliest stages of creating Sacco & Vanzetti; Performing “The Grapes of Wrath” outdoors on the back of 'Rosa' in Batavia, New York and starting out with an audience of around 100 people just before dusk and at the final curtain there being 2 audience members left and 10,000,000 mosquitoes; Being adopted into the Oglala Sioux Nation by Grandma Jumping Bull and given the Lakota name 'Olotape' (means, “borrow him” – named after a favorite grandson who was a very popular-in-the-community-basketball star) as a result of the Caravan's residency in the Round House on the Pine Ridge Reservation; After a performance at Columbia University as guests of the Iranian Students League Against The Shah (before the Iranian revolution). We had performed a very funny and broad skit we (in house) called ‘The Woman’s Skit’ - in which three different comically ‘abused’ women, literally, ‘fight back’. It could also be seen as: a female character had showed strength, determination, and a willingness to get out in front of the issue -- and having a spokesperson from the student group coming on stage and stating..."the views of the New York Street Theater Caravan do not reflect the views of the Iranian Students Against The Shah..." in direct response to the woman in the skit actually being equal to, if not stronger than, the men in the skit; One of my proudest moments as a performer, when in Wilhelmshafen, Germany, my fake mustache fell off during a performance of Sacco & Vanzetti and I covered with the line, "...I might as well get rid of this damn thing, I only wear it because my wife thinks I look better with it..." and hearing Marketa roar with laughter from the light booth. Rae C: How to explain - how fully the dramas of this time lay in our hearts. How the imagery in the work, in the performances of the work… I remember performing at the Cummin’s Prison Farm in Little Rock, Ark. It must have been 1969 or 1970 – we read about it in the paper and immediately wanted to play there. (See Time Magazine article below.) We did The Mother”. Never had I seen such a solemn group of men. There was no laughter, no smiles, and rapt, silent attention. I remember when Marketa rising up after holding the body of her son (played by Gordon, a young, black man) in her arms in such a beautiful pieta, to take the 8 ft high cross (which we had just taken him off of) into here arms in a stance as if to use as a battering ram, while she swore, “All this must be changed…!” The music we used was Penderezski – as she rose from Gordon’s body a great winged cockroach flew up and circled the stage in some sort of nature-madness – It was one of those moments. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,844402,00.html To most people outside penitentiary walls, the term prison reform is a meaningless abstraction. Only when the particular problems of a particular prison break into the open is there public pressure for correction. Such was the case in Arkansas last week. For years, Arkansas legislators have been referring to their two large convict farms as a "model system." The farms turned in a handsome profit that averaged about $1,400,000 over the years from the sale of farm products, and few prisoners ever seemed to escape. But the realities of prison life in Arkansas were far removed from the comfortable assumption. The point was brought home painfully when three skeletons, one decapitated, one with its skull crushed, the third with its legs broken back, were unearthed from shallow, unmarked graves in a field of the state's Cummins prison farm. It was not the first hint of brutality and murder at the farms. Shortly after Governor Winthrop Rockefeller took office in 1967, he released a 67-page state-police prison report, ordered and then suppressed by former Governor Orval Faubus, that painted a picture of hell in Arkansas. To maintain discipline, prisoners were beaten with leather straps, blackjacks, hoses. Needles were shoved under their fingernails, and cigarettes were applied to their bodies. For the truly unregenerate, there was the "Tucker telephone," a form of electric-shock torture used by James Bruton, former superintendent of the Tucker prison farm. A prisoner was strapped to a table. Wires leading from an old-fashioned crank telephone were attached to one of his big toes and to his genitals. The crank was spun, and the victim got a series of electric shocks. Grotesque Practices. When Thomas Murton, Rockefeller's 39-year-old reform appointee to the prison superintendent's job, took over early in 1967, enforced homosexuality and traffic in liquor and narcotics were rampant at Tucker and the Cummins prison farm. Trusties, armed with shotguns, were squeezing weekly payoffs out of the "rankmen," or ordinary inmates, who worked under their supervision. Often the trusties, who lived in unlocked TV-and-refrigerator-equipped shacks, fired rifles inches over rankmen's heads simply for sport. Murton quickly abolished many of the grotesque practices, but he was troubled by continuing rumors that prisoners had been murdered and buried on the prison grounds. Last week Murton ordered digging started in a treeless pasture at Cummins. Led to the site, which contained between 15 and 25 unexplained earth depressions, by strapping, 59-year-old Inmate Reuben Johnson, the workmen uncovered the three skeletons. Murder for Money. Johnson, who has spent some 30 years on the farms for murder and robbery, identified one of the skeletons as Jake Jackson, a Negro whom he had helped bury on Christmas Eve, 1946. Prison records indicated that Jackson had "escaped" two days later. Around Labor Day in 1940, he said, "they killed a bunch of them—I'd say about 20." Asked why the men had been murdered, Johnson said: "For money. You need money to make it here." …said he paid $2 to $3 a day to….etc. In the early years we always traveled with dogs, at least one, usually two, and once three. Sometimes they guarded the truck. Once we forgot one and a car had to travel back 4 hours to collect it. Once we left Gordon at a roadside café we stopped at in Mexico – on the way to Mexico City from Brownsville, Texas. We had traveled 6 hours. We did The Hard Time Blues in Chapultepec Park for like 1,000 people. When it was over, they actually picked us ALL up and carried us through the park on their shoulders. I remember watching how everyone responded, like I felt very shy, and I remember Gordon was whooping and felt like “at last!”. It felt bigger than life. I remember once eating breakfast at a kind of IHOP, somewhere near Eutaw, Alabama. Some heavily armed troopers came in and asked the black men to go outside with them. We refused, an altercation was avoided, and afterwards, Jose Cruz, a very big gentleman, asked kindly asked the waiter if we might speak to the manager. The manager came to the table and explained that he had called the police because there were some escapees from the local prison and our white [painters] pants made him think we were from the prison. (I was wearing them as well. A twenty-something year old white woman.)  I saw Jose listening attentively, nodding politely, and then saw him speak briefly to the manager. He returned to the table and said he had asked if the manager might see to it that our breakfast was paid for. The manager complied. Tuscaloosa Alabama: I'm walking down a street with big houses on it, walking with Pilar, Tim, and Gordon -- cop car stops and they are arrested...I saw them taken away - ran back to the house we were staying. MK called the Alabama State Council on the Arts and they contacted a Southern Lawyers organization and in a few hours, they were released. Tim carried the arrest record they gave him in his pocket for years until the paper just melted away. It said he was arrested for "acting real smrt"... Looking back I think tenderly of our truck Rosa. How I can still hear the whirring of that engine at 60 mph. Her courage in climbing a mountain track in West Virginia. Painted red with ‘city street theatre’ and rusting images of apartment buildings and people with the arms lifted high. When we couldn’t afford to keep her, after maybe 15 years of service, we sold her to a farmer upstate – we asked him for 200$ he gave us much more – said we should know she had great value. That made me feel good! Like someone would love her still. I heard she was repainted green and her bed transformed into a dumper... Wherever she is now, may she r.i.p. Valerie Knight asked: Or how about performing on the strike line 7 times that day in front of JP Stevens or at the strike headquarters? Melba LaRose member 1990-96 writes: Austria was 1990, Germany 1991, Finland 1995, Romania 1996 (the final international tour). 1992-94, we were touring "Blues in Rags" locally and upstate, while developing "The Grand Inquisitor." I remember the first tour I did with the Caravan to Austria for an international theatre festival. Marketa insisted we fly to Munich and take a train down to Villach because it was "the only way to see the Alps." I sat gaping out the window the whole journey. We were performing "Blues in Rags" and I had managed to find a well-known jazz pianist named Bertha Hope, who was thrilled to make the trip. She was the hit of the town... but very confused. The popularity was wonderful (everybody had to take pictures with her on the street), but at the same time it was because she was an oddity -- a black woman in a sea of white blondes. The performance about 3 women and how they became homeless was nearly 2 hours long. People came out at 10 in the morning and jumped to their feet at the end to give us 10 standing ovations. At that point, the company was Marcia Donalds, Jen Johnson and myself. The 2nd trip was to East Berlin, not long after the wall came down, and to Bremen. In Austria, we had met people from Berlin's One World Festival as well as the Bremer Shakespeare Festival. They asked us to perform in their festivals the following year. We performed "Blues in Rags" at a club in East Berlin (where the Beatles had once played) and another in Magdeburg. I remember our friends in East Berlin being paralyzed when the police stopped our car for some minor thing and when they came to the door because there were noise complaints. At the Brandenburg Gate, they were selling Russian army winter coats, medals, and belt buckles with hammer & sickle. In Bremen, the local news station sent a crew to film us in the central marketplace. MK decided it should be Lil "Blues" Jensen, the part I played in the show. I dressed in my rags and smudged up my face, and walked around the square going through the garbage and acting like I was drinking out of tossed-away cups. I also confronted people by staring back at them. Marcia and Jen sang out Lil's story to accompaniment on a boombox as I played out a scene from the show. Jen had a sign in front of her about being homeless. Some people walked by and threw money. Jen was shocked, and then she wept. While this went on, members of the Bremer Shakespeare Company walked around interviewing people to get their reactions. They were stunned. Evidently, the homeless slept under the eaves of the government buildings there at night, but disappeared into the forest in the morning. No one ever saw them. Some people were sympathetic and others thought "they should all die." The publicity brought a lot of audience to the show and, again, there were standing ovations. Afterwards, we packed everything up and took it to an air freight airport. Within the day, we were called back to explain ourselves because Marcia had said there were no weapons, but they had discovered our starter pistol in the props. The 3rd trip was to Finland for the Tampere International Festival. We were doing "The Grand Inquisitor," Marketa's adaptation of the famous chapter from The Brothers Karamazov. It spanned the Inquisition in Europe down through the centuries to a scene of a NJ housewife reading a letter from her husband, a bomber in the Gulf War. I managed to get a good deal on tickets from Finnair, and then coerced them into giving us an overnight in St. Petersburg for an extra $40 each, so we could visit Dostoyevsky's home. The next day was spent at the Hermitage. In Tampere, we performed on an outdoor stage and gathered a huge, appreciative following. At the end, some of the company went to Scandinavia. I went alone and visited the Edinburgh Festival, where we were invited to perform but the company had decided not to go at the last minute. When I went personally to apologize to the venue operator, he said, Well, it's too bad; a film crew from Russia came to film you! The 4th trip was to Romania to play "The Fugitives," adapted from Plague Dogs, about animals who escape from an experimental lab. Marcia and Jen played the dogs and I played a fox. Our hands and knees were nearly worn out from developing the piece and trying to achieve animal physicality. I managed to get Tarom Romanian Airlines to give us a strongly subsidized fare and also got a grant from the International Theatre Institute to cover expenses. I had informed them that we would be transporting sets & props that included a rifle, starter pistol, and other things that looked like weapons but were not. When I got to JFK, Marcia had already sent it on through and nobody said a thing. On the way back though, they stopped us, showed the X-ray images and questioned us profusely before letting the plane take off. The festival treated us to 3 days in Bucharest, before the festival which was in Piatra Neamtz. Marketa always marveled at the way I could save the show if anything went wrong, somebody forgot a prop backstage, or a wheel fell off a wagon. This happened at the festival and when I saved the day, I heard Marketa chuckling from the light booth. We were very well received in Romania and the festival organizers arranged for us to have a trip to the Black Sea (hotel with spa at "Romanian people's prices") when we were done. In the van back to the hotel in the middle of the night, we were stopped by guards with machineguns and grilled about who we were and where we were going, but finally we made it back. It was not long after the downfall of Ceacescu and crime was rampant. Money changers repeatedly short-changed us and resented being called on it. The stage manager had her passport and $200 stolen on a tour bus, which resulted in a lot of bureaucratic entanglement at the Embassy. Street children (stoned on chemical inhalants) encircled and harassed us on the streets of Bucharest at night. Extremely intelligent and educated people were working 3 jobs, including train conductor, tour guide, and factory/office worker. Our train conductor was an engineer and in talking to us about his situation, he said his child sometimes asked for an ice cream cone and he was heartbroken to have to say no. We gave him money for his son's ice cream and he wept. In this period we were doing performances at shelters, community centers, women's centers, and more throughout NYC and NYS. I remember when we did Atlantic Men's Shelter in Brooklyn in an old armory. It had over a thousand homeless men and was infamous for people getting killed inside. We had to go through metal detectors to carry the set & props upstairs. While we loaded in and put up the set, the men sat, poked fun at us, and laughed. We had to clean feces off the stage and from the side room before we could perform, and Marcia said, It's not animal feces, you know. This was when we were doing "The Grand Inquisitor." There were always interactive elements in the plays and generally I was elected to go into the audience, which I did in this play as the NJ housewife, treating them all as "my boys." By the end of the play, they were radically transformed, a passionate audience literally leapt to their feet applauding, and they would not let us go. They stumbled over each other trying to carry everything out to the truck and begged to join the company. One of them went to the counselor and pleaded, “Please bring back the Caravan--they're the only ones who don't insult our intelligence." Some most remarkable ‘talk-backs’ happened in shelters such as this one.  Melba