"Who's Harold Pinter?"

The back story:
While on campus as an RA for the Kenyon Review's Young Writer program for high school age students, the alumni magazine began photo shoots for various 'Kenyon legends'. One of them was the rumor that the Great Hall was runner-up for filming the Harry Potter movies (a very fitting rumor for today, too). They needed eight models, and there just happened to be eight RA's for Young Writers -- and we're all English majors -- perfect! They dressed us up and we had to do different poses at every table in the Great Hall, which will later be photoshopped together into an amazing picture of Hogwarts-at-Kenyon (read your next alumni magazine). Anyway, I decided to channel a different author at each table for my poses. Towards the end, I announced to my very literary comrades that at this table, I was Harold Pinter. In reply, the most hipster-literary one turns to me and asks "Who's Harold Pinter?"

My question to you, bloggers, is how can an American college English major not know who Pinter is, but a British anything-major can name his three most famous works?

Okay, I'm not a Harold Pinter fan. Why am I defending the man? Because I respect how he changed not only theater, but literature. Yes, he's British. Of course the Brits know more about him. But the man won the Nobel Prize recently and also died in the past year with a big hullabaloo from the press. I hadn't realized that it was possible for a Kenyon student to have not heard of him. Can we claim to be a literary college if people are graduating without hearing the name of Harold Pinter once? It's high-time those reading list windows in Peirce got updated.

I don't mean to be presumptuous about this, but if Kenyon students haven't heard of Pinter... what does that say about the rest of America? Are we out of touch? Perhaps the British are just infinitely more cultured than us. Although, fascinatingly, there are major American authors their unviersity students have never heard of either ("Who's Kurt Vonnegut?"). But at least their American Lit classes include Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. And most of them have heard of Edward Albee. That still leaves out other American landmarks like August Wilson -- but hey, most Americans haven't heard of him yet.

There's talk that the only reason we have "classic" American authors now is because someone wrote a book and said that Hawthorne and Melville were geniuses and we should read them. One person reached into two hundred years of early-American writing and picked out a handful of people to call quintessentially American. Today, we have a jumble of consistently-mediocre authors and one-hit wonders. Is it time for another shortlist of American Lit for the people to read?

---

Here's my shortlist of 5 American playwrights (I won't even get into the British). Who's on yours?

Edward Albee
Arthur Miller
Thornton Wilder
August Wilson
Tony Kushner
--- honorary mention: Suzan-Lori Parks, Tracy Letts

And, just for kicks, 10 American authors I love:

Edgar Allan Poe
Richard Wright
Kurt Vonnegut
T.S. Eliot
Carl Sandburg
Robert Penn Warren
Mark Twain
Shel Silverstein
Tim O'Brien
James Baldwin

Some stirred-up 'gossip' from midtown to Jersey

Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.

This summer I'm living with one of my childhood best friends, whose older brother - let's call him G - was in Spring Awakening up until its closing this year. He was understudy and swing which means he played just about every single male part in the show at one point or another WHICH means he had to learn just about every single male part in the show and be prepared to perform them at one point or another. Honestly it kinda blows my mind. For all you actors, imagine the hold you've got to have on your ONE character in a show ... now imagine having that same kind of hold on like SIX different characters AND just turning them on/off and switching focus at will. Seems pretty daunting. Maybe that's just me (over-obsessing, mildly perfectionist, OCD ... etc.), but I don't know how I could manage to do it and I think swings/understudies are intensely under-appreciated on Broadway.

But I digress slightly.

Last August, Hunter Parrish (of 'Weeds' fame) was cast as Melchior on Broadway. Now, I have to admit, I never got to see the show so I never got the opportunity to compare Melchiors. But everyone I've heard from seems to agree that his performance fell, well, sort of flat - to be fair, he's been acting on TV for so long, it must have been a fair challenge to switch from that small-focus sort of performance to a level that can fill the Eugene O'Neill Theatre.

BUT THIS IS MY POINT. Why cast a TV actor in a leading role on Broadway, in a show that's pretty fahking big these days? (Comparatively speaking, whatever, you can disagree if you want but I think it's a pretty big theatre milestone, but that's another post.) Is it just the economy? Did they really need that celebrity boost? Because it's a pretty small boost too at that, if you ask me; 'Weeds' is not what it once was. But I can't really think of any other reason for them to cast someone whose stage presence did really just not cut it the way it should.

Let me be clear, I'm not here to judge the kid. You've either got it or you don't; you're either right for a part or you're not. And my disclaimer, because I've read some of the reviews and I know Parrish was pretty well-liked, is that the less favorable reviews have come from insiders who were actually working with him, and who weren't crazy about doing so. And in the midst of all this was G, who had played Melchior plenty of times, was obviously comfortable in the role, and, from what I've heard, was GOOD in it. Like, REALLY good.

But OK. So maybe a lot of this is just conjecture on my part. It's possible the producers weren't even considering putting G in the role - but maybe they were. I don't know these things for sure. And maybe Parrish really was a decent Melchior, for the audiences anyway. (His rabid fans on IMDB certainly seemed to love him, but frankly, I don't really trust them.) (One of them told a story about meeting him outside after the show, telling him she loved him, and promptly sobbing on his shoulder. I mean, COME ON.) Like I said, I never got to see it, so I don't know. But to me it just seems that if you've got two actors up for a part, possibly-to-roughly equally well-matched, and you've got a TV star (admittedly D-list) versus regular guy, straight outta MoCo, who's done the time ... well, obviously I'm not in the business nor am I a businessperson, but I'd give it to the up-and-comer before the 'Weeds' supporting actor. Besides, Parrish was offered the role of Link Larkin at the same time anyway, so really, everybody would have won.

I just feel sometimes like Broadway is too much of a Business. It's that catch-22, Broadway and its environs can be your fastest and sharpest ticket into the biz ... but is it really the biz I want to be a part of?

I'll get back to you.


p.s. I wonder if anyone will possibly get the very veiled pun in my title? You'd have to know my life really well.