KW This is Karen Wickre I'm speaking with Clarence Talbot in San Francisco California Today is July 21 1977

I don't need dates particularly

CT Well that's good

KW Dates I can even tell you as a matter of fact

CT You probably could

KW More just how you got started what your theatre background was up to

that point This is a program with some pictures of you

CT Oh my word

KW And how you learned about the Federal Theatre And fron then what

you remember

CT From now on it's total blank Laugh

KW Some of these might help Shows pictures

CT My word How you have gotten ahold of these things It's amazing

KW That's a story in itself

CT Oh yes

KW These are just kept together so I'd know what was what

CT You have the dates on these things as to when they started

KW Yes

CT What do you want to know first

KW Well what was your theatre background up to that point and where were

you and how did you hear about the Federal Theatre

CR Well I had had about three seasons in stock and one season in circuit

rep with one of the very fine western dramatic companies that was

the Moroni Olsen Players They were doing nothing but very fine pieces

of theatric literature Then I came back and went to school I was going to the University of Washington at the time and I decided that I would lay out for a year and go back into broadcasting And the University called me the Drama Department at the University of Washington and wanted to know if I'd be interested in going to Tacoma as a district supervisor for the Federal Theatre Project

Frankly up to that time I hadn't heard much about 'em

KW Who called you Guy Williams

CT I think it was Guy Williams

KW Or Glenn Hughes or

CT Well Glenn was head of the department there at the time Frankly

I don't remember just who made the call I think Glenn had an idea I had been working with the off canpus theatres there Che little theatre we had off canpus studio theatre seated 60 people And we made enough money in one year cm that that Glenn Hughes could afford to build his Showboat Theatre down on the waterfront So it was a rather successful operation That was the year we had Frances Farmer with us for our director

Anyway I think Hughes had an idea that to get me a job to tide me over the summertime and so cm would get me back in school earlier Well it didn't quite work out that way Laugh

So I went to Tacoma as the district supervisor and project director The project there was a joint they had a sponsorship setup in most cities and the Drama league in Tacoma was the local sponsoring group And we had a small building down in Old Town down by the old fishing wharves It was two store buildings side by side one of them we built the theatre in and the adjacent one we used for rehearsal hall construction hall offices and so forth

And we did a series of first when I got in there we were doing a series of evenings of one act plays Then they got the bright idea that they would make this a showcase for Northwest playwrights And Northwest playwrights who had a piece that they wanted to stage would present it to the state offices in Seattle and if it was approved they would assign it to us to put into production

And from there I don't recall how long in months exactly it was pretty close to a year that the Tacoma Project lasted Well then of course we did It Can't Happen Here and oh a couple of the other

KW Do you remember In His Image Too Lucky Girl Wants Glamour

CT Yeah

KW M D I couldn't find anything on that

CT That was one I wrote

KW Yeah that's what I thought But you don't have a production bulletin

for some reason In fact most all of those you were the director of the play

CT Yes

KW And an actor in some

CT Well we didn't have a very large company so we handed out parts to

everyone who could play a role And I was the stage director and producer on the show

KW How was that to have those multiple roles Was it complicated

CT Not for a dyed in the wool theatre bum If you were the type of

individual who thoroughly enjoyed doing anything around the theatre why naturally this came off very well

And they decided to consolidate the theatre project in the state of Washington and put then all under one roof in Seattle So they

closed the project in Tacoma moved it lock stock and barrel to Seattle And I was then the project director for the white dramatic company They had a variety unit in Seattle as well This outfit would get together and put together variety entertainments that they would take out to oh field houses in city parks during the season of course

KW That was made up of like old vaudevillians and that kind of thing

CT Yes dancers jugglers and the variety act type of thing And then

they had a group of Negroes We were not enlightened to the point where we referred to then as blacks or anything else They were Negroes and they didn't know what in the world to do with then

So they set up a Negro dramatic company as well So they had three companies out of the Seattle Project and I had charge of the white dramatic company

KW They didn't mix for ary productions

CT No they didn't mix Of course mind you this is 40 years ago

KW Oh I know Occasionally I gathered there were some kinds of plays where

you needed both blacks and whites

CT Yes

KW But as a rule there were separate black units

CT Yeah That seemed to be the pattern we were following

And while I was at the Seattle unit I was one of five directors that was picked Now who picked them I don’t know It was not a contest that you entered or anything you made application for But I was one of five directors out here on the West Coast that was picked to participate in a Rockefeller grant for the experimental summer session at Vassar So I went back there and while I was at Vassar I found out that I had lost my position in Seattle Why No reason ever given but would I take a job as state director in Iowa

So I went back to Seattle and packed my toothbrush and we drove to Des Moines Iowa And where the Seattle projects were pretty well organized I don't remember who the state director was for them at that time but he was a guy who had had considerable experience in theatre management

KW George Hood

CT Hood yeah What a memory you have Laugh

KW With me it's not memory it's just study Laugh

CT So the companies were pretty well organized They had the variety in it

They had a chap that had formerly been the leading tenor for the American Light Opera Company by the name of Harry Pfeil P f e i l And there was a guy who really had a background in professional theatre you see So we had enough elements of professionals there that we had a certain cohesion and a certain functional capability a functional potential that made it a viable organization It worked

And I got to Iowa and nobody outside of the people on the project there seemed to be very much interested in whether they had a Federal Theatre or not you know Well we've got funds for it and we've got it established I don't know what happened to the director that was in ahead of me at Iowa

KW Don Farran

CT I don't know I never knew him But anyway I came into a situation

which was then how would you say it Dry rot hadn't set in but it was separating out It was not staying as an homogenous group

We looked around for a suitable building and I think the state director of the Arts projects was a woman named Jessie Hanthorn And in discussing this with her the Federal Theatre Project was told that there was just no place in town that we could get for a theatre There was no abandoned theatre or dark theatre that we could get into on a rental basis or anything else There were no store buildings that we could get into and remodel even on a primitive artsy craftsy type of theatre project basis

KW What had they been using Do you know

CT I don’t know They’d just been

KW There was something going on before but what I don’t knew

CT Up to the time I got there the background on that project in Iowa is

lost in obscurity I honestly don't know Anyway we decided to it was an all white conpany and we decided to make a touring company out of it that we would take the theatre to the hinterlands

Well again we have to put this within a time frame of reference For example we did Eugene O'Neill's Ah Wilderness And at that time 1936 1937 there was some dialogue in the script that we thought might be a little earthy for a non metropolitan non sophisticated audience So we went through and gently rewrote this a little you know to soften it Well you can imagine what happened when we took Eugene O'Neill up into True Trere Storm Lake Boone Ames some of these towns in Iowa And people would cane in off of their ranches to the local town hall to see Eugene O’Neill's Ah Wilderness And they'd get back in their cars and go home and wonder what in hell they ever came to town for you know

I mean even though we had tried to temper this down to a point they could identify with We played a parish house in Indianola which was just across from Des Moines And I didn't get there for the opening night We were booked in there for two nights and I got over there the second night about 5 00 to see how they were caning with the set lip There were no seats up and all the props were in crates and the scenery was all packed up I said Hey what gives Don’t you know you got a 7 00 curtain tonight or 7 30 curtain whatever it was

They said Not tonight

I said Why not

Well the parish priest was in last night and saw our opening night and we closed right after the show Laugh Opened in one and closed in the alley

So this was the type of reaction that we were getting in Iowa Now this was in accord with the recommendations that we were getting from the national office

KW The play selection

CT Yes Now Hallie Flanagan I don’t know whether is she still

alive

KW No she died in 1961

CT I shall try not to speak too unkindly of those departed

KW Well you can if you want to

CT But Hallie Flanagan of course was a good personal friend of Eleanor

Roosevelt And she was placed in charge of a program which was designed to reemploy and rehabilitate professional theatrical people And while she may have been a theatre buff by nature her skirts had never been sullied by the crass commercialism of the professional theatre In other words we had a woman in charge of a national program who honestly did not have any knowledge any depth knowledge of what the needs of the professional actor or a professional performer were And she felt and expressed this on many occasions Hallie Flanagan had expressed this that the reason the American theatre had not survived was because it had not stayed contemporary

KW I’ve read that

CT It had not grown it had not given the public new things So she

embarked upon a program to try and bring new theatre to the public

KW Yes Her background was college theatre

CT Right which I feel was a mistake Now to introduce things from

new authors or works that had not been well established in theatric literature great Every play was a new play at one time But she did this with a total disregard for what would happen at the box office

Now in larger cities Los Angeles New York Mercury Theatre you know all the rest of this jazz you were playing the numbers racket You had enough people that would go to the theatre regardless of what was being shown if here's something new Well let's go see what it is But if you got into the provinces of the United States and I'm speaking in terms of provincial attitudes people who went out and spent a couple of bucks for a theatre ticket expected something that they could understand in the area of conventional theatrical entertainment They wanted mysteries they wanted comedies they wanted romantic stories They would still buy Daddy Longlegs They'd still buy The Prisoner of Zenda and you knew all of these things which is nothing wrong with them

Just to digress for a moment some time ago we got into a discussion of what is good theatre And we were discussing some of the old bills that might be revived or brought back again And I said in this discussion I think it was with a group of community theatre people who were starting to organize a play reading cornnit tee I suggested that something like Seven Keys to Baldpate would still be good theatric entertainment today if it were done well The whole Oh good heavens no Oh I remember seeing that as a child in a stock company you know

KW That was the only objection

CT Well yes It's an old play and they had seen it a long time ago

and Oh no Seven Keys to Baldpate And it wasn't more than a couple of weeks after that that Hallmark Theatre did it on nationwide television in about a three hour special And instead of having a playwright go to this remote lodge to write a play in 24 hours they had a TV writer go out there to write a TV show That was the only difference to contemporize it you see But the basic elements to good entertainment were still inherent in the piece itself

So those of us in the field when Hallie Flanagan sent out a recommended list of plays for a season or We urge that you give these your consideration type of a memo those of us in the field interpreted that as almost a mandate That this season you will do plays from this list only Don't think for yourself These are the ones that we have cleared the rights to at a national level These we can get for you These we've got royalty agreements on that it'll only cost so much to do and you will do a play from this list was our interpretation of it I don't recall having talked to any of the other directors or producers in the whole setup that did not share that that when a recommendation came down from Hallie Flanagan's office that was tantamount to a directive that you will do this

Well what really took the rag off the bush as far as I was concerned was one winter we got Hallie Flanagan sent us a rather lengthy little memo in which she was looking back at the morality plays that were done at Christinas time And wouldn't it be a nice thing aesthetically culturally and yes even spiritually if the Federal Theatre Project were to take the theatre to the people at Christmas time take them into the public squares and wagonstage them like they used to do You know put them on wagons and build your scenery on it and stage these in the open so people could come to the public square and see these morality plays

KW It's a little cold in Iowa then Laugh

CT And completely disregarding that you can't take angels in gossamer

wings and hang 'em out to dry in the middle of an Iowa winter I mean it was just you know totally unrealistic So that winter as I say the project in Iowa I dwell on it because it was quite significant to me I had had no experience previously in any type of government work

KW This involved a lot I knew

CT So I felt a little like a fish out of water on how you organize this thing how you get things done If our local administrator says There is no theatre available we’ve looked forget it Don’t waste any time on this Go ahead and make a touring company out of it This sort of thing Well I figured that’s the way to go Here’s a chain of command kind of setup that you follow

But the project there was not well supported It had no community sponsor It was an unsponsored project of the WPA Works Progress Administration exclusively And it so far as I was concerned seemed to be deteriorating rapidly Now as I say I am primarily interested aid qualified in the areas of stage direction production and acting At that time I had not had administrative experience I look back now 40 years later and see where I might have been able to do semething as a strong administrator I might have been able to do something to salvage that project in Iowa But at that time with the backgrounds I had and the training I had I was in over my head so far as how do you fight city hall

KW Well you had to deal with the state WPA administration which wasn’t always sympathetic

CT Yes that’s right Yeah the Arts projects you knew the music

history etcetera etcetera and theatre the five Arts projects so far as the rest of the Works Progress Administration is concerned were an offbreed bunch of cats They didn’t even belong under a Works Progress program They weren’t contributing anything

So in high dudgeon I resigned from the Federal Theatre projects as a matter of principle I could not go on in the face of such ridiculous things as let's wagonstage a Christmas morality play in the middle of Iowa you know

We took one show to Davenport Iowa in the middle of the winter I think it was Anns and the Man We played that a few places around As Aims and the Man went into production I was taken violently ill in Des Moines and had to turn the production over to the rest of the company And we took that to Davenport at which point Hallie Flanagan came out to see it

Of course I had been under the doctor’s care and I got an okay to drive to Davenport You see that's halfway across the state of Iowa And frankly it was a god awful production The sets had been built so that any back lights shone through the set You know no masking for back lighting in entrances or anything like that It was just a bad show It wasn’t up to the quality of things that we'd done even with the one act plays in Tacoma

So we sat up until about 2 00 in the morning in a hotel lobby discussing the future of the Federal Theatre projects in Iowa and no decision was made at that time It was held in abeyance as it were I drove back to Des Moines and thought about it all the way back and thought This is not worth it They’re asking for inpossible results without giving us really the tools to work with I don’t knew how this all came about but the chap who was then editor of Liberty Magazine heard about this situation in Iowa and asked me if I would do an article for Liberty Magazine on the Federal Theatre projects I didn’t feel that I had a broad enough overview of the entire projects to really qualify me to do the job So I backed off from it

I resigned and went to work for KSO KRNT the radio stations there

KW In Des Moines

CT in Des Moines And as soon as the weather broke So I could drive

west I came back out to Los Angeles And that ended my experience with the Federal Theatre

KW How about the audience reaction to like It Can't Here was the one that opened in all of the cities Did you have any special problems with that How was that received in Takoma

CT Well um It Can't Happen Here It was really not a bad show New in New York let's say in megalopolis We won't put a name on it In megalopolis the show could be done well because they had adequate budgets for scenery You could put the play in a proper setting They had enough actors to draw upon that they could cast the show well you know

In our situation with a very small company and no money to work with we had to say Well there are 12 parts and we have 12 actors Obviously you can't play a 12 year old girl We've got to give you a man's part And we just had to sort 'em out and say Maybe this won't fit but try it on

This is not making excuses It is a fact of life so far as our operation was concerned We were limited So I feel that we did a very good show I thought it was a very good show We moved uptown to I think the auditorium in the Scottish Rite Building where the show instead of being out at the edge of town on the

waterfront in an artsy intimate theatre type of thing you know we brought it uptown and opened it under situations that would be comparable to a touring attraction coming through and where more of the city of Tacoma would have an opportunity to have access to it because they could get to it easier

It was greeted with kindly lukewarm enthusiasm

KW People didn't get upset that it was too controversial or too political

CT Not that I recall We didn’t run into the controversial area We ran into more of an apathetic area because the audiences that we were playing to both out here in the state of Washington and in the state of Iowa still were not looking upon the theatre as a sounding board for either social messages or political messages or any of the nouveau concept that Hallie was trying to inculcate into the theatre picture Now we think nothing about it We see all kinds of shows stage television motion pictures of social significance And if it coincides with your own viewpoint as a marker of the audience why fine If it doesn't why you just say Well ho hum But the attitude of the theatregoer 40 years ago toward the theatric presentation of social significance was strictly one loud raspberry They weren't interested in it really

KW What about like they did the Living Newspaper over in Seattle But maybe

that was closer to home do you suppose I mean that had a definite social message

CT Well I think I was still in intellectual isolation over in Tacoma

when that was going on in Seattle

KW Because that was definitely social but since it was about the

industry

CT I had no intimate association with that so I couldn't comment on it

you see

KW Tell me about M D since we have no records on it for some reason

CT Well I had had three plays that I wrote produced not by Federal Theatre

however This was the first one by Federal Theatre and came in under the new authors new playwrights deal It was the story of a doctor whose son had been killed in a was the victim of a crime And the criminal shows up to the doctor for treatment Now that sounds like a rather trite little old theme But the switch in this was that there was no way in which the doctor could trap this criminal He couldn't take him to a hospital He had to be treated in the office

So under the guise of giving him a tetanus shot he injects the criminal with an intravenous anesthetic Now at that time an i v anesthetic was unheard of New of course sodium pentathol But 40 years ago this was a laboratory dream that anesthesiologists were looking for that some day somebody would develop this type of a product which would produce general anesthesia merely by injection into the blood stream So this several years ahead of its time you see was the product of the M D 's research in his own lab And essentially it was a very simple story plot but it was almost a character study of this M D of his work in developing a new product his own medical research in his own laboratory his relationship with his family what happens when his son is killed How does he react Does he take revenge upon the man or what sort of a humanitarian is he As a doctor what does he do when he is confronted with this sort of a situation I suppose if I were to see it today on stage I would think it was a rather dreary little shew But of course at the time it was my brain child you see and all men's geese are swans

KW Was it well received

CT Yes it was But again our entire program in Tacoma was quite well

received But we were under the sponsorship of the Drama League so we had a certain segment small as it was of built in theatre enthusiasts who would come to shows who would bring friends who felt they were participating This is part of our program We sponsor this you knew So the attitude the relationship between us and the community was slightly different We had good press relations in the city and good social and community relations within the community of Tacoma And it was a very pleasant experience

KW How different was it in Seattle Was there a built in audience

CT Seattle we were working more as a professional theatre company going

into a professional theatre such as the Moore Theatre up there and staging the show at a fixed box office And depending upon advertising and promotion to get an audience in the house in the first place and a good enough performance so that we could keep the show running for three or four days or whatever the schedule on it happened to be It was a professional theatre project

KW There were so many diverse theatrical groups there It's interesting

that they pulled together to do something

CT Yeah We did Warrior's Husband in Seattle and had a lot of fun with it

a thoroughly delightful romp

A little side note About a month before we were to open with Warrior's Husband you know the bill don't you Or do you

KW I've seen the program

CT Well it's an Amazon story with characters from Greek mythology woven

into it The warriors are the women and the Warrior’s Husband is what happens to the the turnaround situation and the guy that's left at

home to wash the diapers and do the dishes you see As I say probably not a great enduring contribution to theatric literature but a good show

About a month before we were scheduled to open a Negro company opened I think it was at the Moore Theatre with a rather earthy version of Lysistrata And this was done in what we would think of even today as a rather modem Afro interpretation a lot of semi naked bodies You knew this brown bronze bit all oiled up to glisten under the lights and so on I didn't see the show I got reports on it but apparently the city fathers reviewed the show and objected to the fact that a lot of the action took place on mattresses that they had on stage The women who refused to be wives to their men as long as their men were out fighting you see So the city fathers had no tolerant overtones even when it came to matters of Art with a capital A So they closed the shew Well of course once they closed it down everybody in town wanted to see it Gee what about that

And we were not doing too well with advance publicity so we had very much off the record This was not an official Federal Theatre action You understand How in hell are we going to get some people in to see Warrior's Husband Well we had a couple of guys that went around to cigar stores and card roans and recreation places where men talk rather freely And they didn’t say that Lysistrata was going to reopen but Hey you know that show that they closed up at the Moore Theatre the other day Yeah I wish I had gotten to see that

I heard that they're gonna reopen that and call it Warrior's Husband

They’re gonna open it at another theatre laugh And it worked We started a word of mouth campaign and everybody who wanted to see the shew that had been closed came galloping over to see if this was it

KW Were they angry afterwards

CT No because they had good entertainment

KW What's what you had to do in those days improvise especially to

unfamiliar audiences shall we say

CT We got up in a little town in Iowa called Storm Lake one winter's day

I think it was Storm Lake and found that there had been no advertising put out by the sponsoring group in that city at all for a shew that was gonna open and play there that night So we went out to a local printer and we got handbills printed up And every member of the company went out with an armload of these handbills in a snowstorm and stood on the street and passed these out to passerbys to help build an audience for the shew that night

KW And that worked You got enough a fair amount

CT It helped It sure helped

KW So the people in Iowa go out in snowstorms I guess

CT Well it was just starting to snow that afternoon And they were out

there in the falling snow handing out handbills for their performance that night which is going back in theatre history a long way where the actors did a parade or a ballet or something to help attract the crowd before they got 'em inside

KW Yes even a Punch and Judy show or something like that

I should have brought we had the special edition of The Federal Theatre Magazine that was on The First Federal Sumner Theatre I think it was called But there were a lot of pictures of you and different people hanging around and in the different roles in the plays I think one of yours was a policeman in It Can't Happen Here

CT Yeah

KW But it described you in one place as an actor playwright photographer

and magician all those things I thought that was interesting They had different mentions of you know different people And that's where I found out that you went to Iowa too

CT That night following the play there was a cast party reception etcetera

etcetera ad nauseam for Eleanor Roosevelt

KW Yeah I was going to say I thought she came to that

CT And somehow or other somebody just in passing said Would you see that

Mrs Roosevelt gets to the punch bowl or something So I'm still in this policeman's outfit from the show which she knew me as a member of the cast But none of the Secret Service men who were accompanying her as the President's wife knew who in the hell this cop was but it must be all right because he's a uniformed policeman So I was Mrs Roosevelt's escort that night for this social function and none of her Secret Service people knew who I was or whether I was qualified to be there or not I was just one of the actors out of the company

KW How was she

CT A very pleasant personality a very nice personality

KW Did she like this production

CT They put on one hell of a production They only did the first half of

the show the first third of it But ny God they brought up enough theatre They had lighting equipment from New York that you could have lit the Hippodrome with it And they spared no expense Well obviously it came off beautifully They had fantastic theatre lighting that was years ahead of its time really

KW Yeah Abe Feder I think did it

CT Yeah And they brought in so many lights that we spent several days

putting new lines up in the grid up over the stage to hang pipes to put lights on putting up new pulleys and sheaves and new sets of lines and pretty near rebuilt the backstage thing to accommodate the extra equipment they brought in to do half of a shew which shows what you can do if you have the money to spend and the manpower to do it

KW I wonder if that summer is what worked it into such a successful show

later

CT It didn't hurt

KW All the people input you know that went on probably made it what it

became

CT Now do you want any information on that sunmer session thing

KW Sure

CT I'll just broadstroke it for you Mind you you've got a bunch of

ex professional theatre people up there in a rather sterile academic environment And that same summer this being one of the first of the coeducational summer sessions ever held at one of the big Eastern girls schools but since then all of them have had them

There was a euthenics group young parents for the most part They had their children parked in a scientific and hygienic nursery school while

they studied the science of living And they were taking it all very seriously Well the theatre group would sit on one half of a big dining hall and the euthenics group sit on the other half and like a Quaker meeting the males shall not mingle with the females or you know the groups didn't mix at all They could have had a lot of fun had they decided but no this is your section You stay over here And somebody from the euthenics group was always getting up in the dining hall and tinkling a spoon against a glass you know call for attention and announcing that tomorrow the Social Director had two scenic trips planned to Bear Mountain And they’d go into great lengths about this and sit down amidst a round of modest and polite applause you see for the dull announcement that they had just made at which point semebody from the theatre group would get up and clank a spoon against a glass and say I would like to announce that I have about three good lots in Mill Valley left out in California If anybody's interested in some real estate see me after dinner and sit down again totally nonsequitur you know It got to the point where everybody on our side of the room was breaking up and everybody on the other side of the room was gettin their nose out of joint because they felt that we were making fun of these inane bloody announcements that they were making which in fact it was But they finally decided that they would have a party one night where everybody was invited and the theatre people would put on the entertainment

Well I remember one act for example that I think the people from the euthenics group were rather looking for oh some little ship's concert type of thing you know And here were a variety of performers and so on that were doing all sorts of things And one red headed guy from New York City got up and did a fantastic pantomime a really fine piece of mime acting of a woman getting into a tub of hot water And the euthenics people seemed to think that that was not vulgar but just not quite up to the class of things they had expected to see and the theatre people all broke up over it You know they were all lying on the floor rolling in it because the guy was a fantastic mime So we had these divergent opinions

Well in the theatre section these people came from all over the country and had no indoctrination as to what to expect So when they got there they found they were getting courses in eurythmics and interpretive body movement and how you would toss an imaginary balloon to your partner over here and how they would catch it Now how would you toss a basketball Well that's heavier different shape and so on Without any reason as to Why these exercises were important

So what would happen would be after dinner some of the gang would go into Poughkeepsie and bend the elbow at the local tavern and put away a few beers and they'd come out and take off their shoes and get out on the lawn in front of this dormitory and go through these burlesque versions of scarf dances and the burlesque versions of passing a bird from hand to hand and their own burlesque version of the balloon dance thing It's too bad that could never have been recorded on film of something because here were some really top interpretive people that were having fun with something not to put it down This wasn't really a putdown It was something they didn't understand and the only way they could really identify with it at all was to give it an

application that fit into their ken And the people who were sponsoring who were our supervisory people shall we say our staff people at the summer theatre there took this very badly They didn't think it was funny They’d had complaints that we were keeping some of the other people awake in the dormitory buildings Laugh Besides they weren't supposed to be out on the grass in the first place and there was a big chap why 40 years later memory comes back of a name a big heavyset Spanish American type from down in Florida by the name of Luis Aparicio And whether he had a Spanish American or a Mexican theatre group down there or what I don't know Nobody ever found out much from him He

was a very portly individual And he came to these things and sat through than stoically and never had much to say And as a result they felt that Luis Aparicio was not getting anything out of it that he was a

negative influence and they sent him home

KW Gee I wonder why they didn't assure just the opposite that he knew

I don't know

CT And oh many of us were called into the office for interviews about this

unseemly behavior of the theatre group which if they had known anything about theatrical people would have known that's the way these people play This is the way they have fun is entertaining themselves and their friends you see with the things they do the things they know

So the theatre project there at Vassar in review by the administrative people would probably be considered something of a fiasco They got a lot of work done but I think they would have probably felt in retrospect that there was much of it that was not taken seriously and much of it that was wasted on people that didn't appreciate it And yet that was not really the case

KW Don't you think it was good to learn about different regions experiences

and meet these people from other places involved in

CT But we didn't have a chance to have any rap sessions with these people

to do much experimentation or discussion with Do you mix blacks and whites in a dramatic company Do you have a dance group Or it's all black or it's all white Or it's all modern or it's all classical There could have been a great deal of exchange among these people from various backgrounds and from all parts of the nation that could have proven to be a very healthy thing had provision been properly made for these people to get together under the right sort of circumstances for a real let your hair down type of confrontation or

KW Some kind of exchange

CT Yeah

KW I think I might have a note somewhere that would solve why you got to

go there Ah The people who went were chosen by the National Policy Board whatever that is after lists were submitted by assistant directors And those who got to go had qualifications and accomplishments which would justify additional training and later responsibilities That is a quote from that magazine So someone knew you and knew your stuff

CT I would say when we started out under a sponsorship setup and so on we

were doing good work really good work And we did some good shows in Seattle But as I say when we got to Iowa I felt that the whole thing there deteriorated

KW Let me ask you about a few names Just tell me what if anything you

remember about therm The Jameses Were you there when they were

CT Oh the Jameses were in Seattle for a long time and were very prominent

They started with a private artistic theatre company and then opened what they called the Repertory Playhouse

CT The Jameses finally put together under their own private sponsorship and

donors and so on a beautiful little playhouse which still exists out in the university district in Seattle And they were doing some very fine theatre very good theatre and they were running a pleasant competition to what we were doing from the University with the Studio Theatre and the Penthouse Theatre You see off campus theatrical projects

Unfortunately about that time I think it was Florence James became quite liberal minded apparently and got involved with some groups that were regarded as Communist And their little playhouse

rightfully or wrongfully I never knew the facts on it but it got tarred with the brush of being a Communist stronghold This is where the Jameses are taking our young people and molding them to Communist philosophy you see And that could not be tolerated Somehow or other that was a reputation they got that stayed with them They apparently couldn't shake it and their patronage from the affluent section of Seattle's theatregoing society of course dwindled I never knew what happened to them ultimately but they have vanished into limbo at this point so far as I know

KW I don't know what happened to them after either

How about Edwin O'Connor Do you remember him

CT Don't know the name

KW I think he might have come after you were in Iowa He was the I

think he followed Hood or he was also a stage director at the same time How about Esther Porter

CT Doesn't ring a bell

KW She was a Seattle director but she went late too I think you

were already cut by then Glenn Hughes you knew from I guess the University

CT The University yes

KW Blanche Morgan

CT Oh yes She was with us on the Tacoma Project Blanche Morgan was

a very talented gal a designer and she did our sets for us of course Later she went to Seattle and was in the Art Department for I believe it was the Frederick and Nelson Department Store there which is a Marshall Field store

KW That's right I heard that a department store

CT And a very capable gal very well qualified and has probably gone on

to more mature successes in the art field in the commercial art field since

KW I'm not sure It seems to me she might have stayed with the department

store for quite a while That's what I heard

Do you keep in contact with anybody at all from those days

CT Nope unfortunately

KW I really don't know who is in Tacoma This is a list of how Federal

Theatre started and then we have been adding to it or changing whatever just a list of productions and who was where when as near as we can figure

Seattle is there but Tacoma is in the pages beneath

CT Looks at production lists Florence James and Burton James I didn’t

know that they had ever directed for the Federal Theatre

KW They did for a while and then I guess they left to really wprk on theirs

CT Lysistrata African version Censored and closed Hmm Harry Pfeil

KW Yeah He was what The head of the vaudeville unit

CT Yeah head of the vaudeville unit Did the Mikado

Reads May not have actually been produced Seattle Rep

KW What’s that