Returning to the Stage, However Briefly

by John Aquino on 05/15/13

In this blog a few months ago I discussed a book I had written on artists as teachers and, while mentioning professions in the arts who were also teachers. paid tribute to a professor who taught me at Catholic University in Washington, the late Leo Brady, professor and playwright. I was honored to be invited April 27 to share my memories of Mr. Brady from my blog on stage as the CU drama department celebrated its 75th anniversary.

I was told that my blog was found by the drama department as part of a Google search. It's nice to be found and read.

The April 27 event was an on-stage celebration, with alumni such as myself sharing memories, the showing of slides and videotapes of past peformances, and alumni recreating past performances and sharing the stage with current students.

I have not been on stage for over 30 years. I forgot how blinding the lights were. I was an English major with a drama minor. I tried out for dozens of plays. When I made my presentation on April 27, I almost said that after being there 25 seconds it was the most time I had ever spent on that stage before someone shouted "Thank you very much" from the dark during an audition. I didn't say that because I was afraid someone in the audience would immediately shout, "Thank you very much." Actors!

It was also the first time I was ever miked on that stage--they had a mike at the podium. I had just assumed that since we were all trained in drama we were all going to project and spent the day doing vocal exercises. We were taught to project our voices and to reach the little boy in the last row who was sitting there because he had saved his pennies to see the play and deserved to hear as much as those who could pay more. But I've been to plays since then at a number of university theatres, and while actors have been trained to work with their bodies in a way we never were and demonstrate incredible flexibility and even grace, they usually don't project as well, and the little boy will be mad.

I was a drama minor, the teacher/directors knew the drama majors, and I was never cast in a CU production. I performed in productions staged by other students and co-founded a theatre company in which I performed in park theatres in the District of Columbia. I met my wife Deborah, fell in love, decided that I had to earn a living, and so, with my English degree, began writing for other people. The fact that I didn't haunt regional theatres in my spare time and try out for anything I could fit into my schedule means, I think, I didn't have the necessary fire-in-the-belly drive that actors must have.

Attending the anniversary celebration were many who had studied at CU. The drama department was founded by Father Gilbert Hartke in 1937. I was there in the late '60s and early '70s. There was a time from the 1940s through the 1960s that the CU drama department was arguably the best-known drama department in the country and with the Arena Stage, and the National Theatre was virtually the only theatre in Washington. That the CU drama was the center of drama activity in the area is demonstrated by the incredible number of photographs of Hollywood and stage stars from the period visiting Father Hartke at CU. At the celebration, speakers discussed this and how CU drama ushered in integration in its casts long before the other theatres in the District did. The CU drama department also spun-off the Olney Theatre and worked with the State Department to develop the National Players who gave performances around the world.

In its July 7, 1947 issue, Time magazine wrote, "The drama department at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. is the best collegiate play factory since George Pierce Baker's 47 workshop at Harvard." It cited CU plays that had been brought to Broadway, including Lute Song and Sing Out, Sweet Land, a cavalcade of American history and music created by then-CU drama professor Walter Kerr. As I wrote before, five of Leon Brady's playwriting students went on to win the Pulitizer Prize for drama.

The drama department brought in guest actors and alumni to star. I remember an actor named Donald Davis doing a wonderful Richard II in 1966 or so. A few years later I saw him on television playing the oriental villain Dr. Yes in a parody of Dr. No on the tv show Get Smart. Philip Bosco is an alumnus, and moviegoers may remember him in such movies as The First Wives Club, My Best Friend's Wedding, and Kate and Leopold. Other alumni include Jon Voight and Susan Sarandon.

It's difficult to describe the great influence of the CU drama department. When I decided to be a writer, I didn't have any writing samples and so I wrote a letter in response to a job ad and noted, "While my experience to date may not seem that exciting, I can only assure you that I am much more flamboyant in person." I received a telegram inviting me to a job interview at one of the national automobile associations headquartered in D.C. and the director there said he loved my letter. "You don't need a writing sample. That is your writing sample!" He then revealed that he had been a CU drama graduate and a member of the National Players. "I'm one of Father Hartke's kids," he said. Things looked rosy until he brought me to the man who would be my immediate supervisor, a sour-faced fellow who was not a CU drama graduate. "So," he said, "you think you're flamboyant. That's not a good thing for our type of writing. And where's your writing sample?" I didn't get the job, but I almost did and it was because of the influence of the CU drama department.

The drama department theatre burned in 1967 and was rebuilt as the Hartke Theatre in 1970. They had a gala opening season and brought in prominent guest artists such as Cyril Ritchard and Helen Hayes. Hayes gave her last stage performance in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night, directed by Leo Brady.

But other theatre came to Washington around the same time, especially the Kennedy Center, which opened in September 1971. Leonard Bernstein wrote Mass for the Kennedy Center. Theatregoers, when given a choice between a university production and 42nd Street at the National or Long Days Journey with Jack Lemmon and Kevin Spacey at the Kennedy Center, tended to choose the university less.

And theatre tastes were changing. I remember when it started to happen. The CU drama department did several somewhat old-fashioned musicals in the late 1960s and early 1970s, including The Day the Senate Fell in Love and a revival of Sing Out, Sweet Land. For the latter, I remember that Washington Post theatre critic Richard Coe concluded his review saying that the CU drama department could no longer be regarded as an important theatre venue.

That was pretty cruel. What was happening was there was suddenly a lot more theatre, and it was a transitional time for drama. As for musicals, they were being reinvented.

The CU drama department is still one of the best theatre departments in the country. Its contributions to the theatre in Washington and to theatre everywhere in the country are underestimated and surely underappreciated.

It was an honor to be on the stage for this tribute and to share the stage and memories with so many fine actors, directors, and playwrights. Over the years, I may have underappreciated the drama department myself.

Copyright 2013 by John T. Aquino