Women In Shorts

R.M. Sydnor

A Conversation

Women in Shorts, starring Joanna Miles and Louise Davis at the Working State Theater in Hollywood, is a delicious existential collection of six short plays from six writers and six directors.  Despite all the cooks, this toothsome dish is served very well indeed. Miles and Davis’ thoughtful performances bring a singular spirit to these stories with themes of economic vicissitudes, agoraphobia, long-term family responsibility, and the limits of love.  This is great stuff for anyone who wants more than simply a night out at the theater.

What brought the two of you together for Women in Shorts?

A few years ago, Louise and I were in a play called “Chairwomen”. So, we decided to look around for something new to do. We came up with the idea of asking the writers from the Actors Studio playwright’s group to write ten minute plays for two women.

         “Women in Shorts”, rather nice paronomasia, is a collection of existential vignettes that speak to the larger issues of the roles we play in life and relationships. What makes these slices of life work for me is the comfort level that the two of you have as actresses with each other and the roles.

              It took us time to put this all together and people have asked why it took so long. We had a few unfortunate events around physical illnesses and accidents, so we decided to keep working until everyone had recovered. That gave us the benefit of growing in each role. The truth is, is there a time limit that is acceptable? It’s silly. You do what you have to do. For us it was a gift that we might not have had with a more predictable rehearsal schedule.

 It seems clear to me that Woman in Shorts is truly a perspicacious study of the complex nature of human relationships. This is certainly apparent in Sisters, Divorces R US.

I thought the playwrights would write news worthy themes because of everything that is going on today. Nicely, their plays turned out to contain those issues, but in a more personal way, as you have pointed out.

Park Strangers is certainly my favorite among these delightful pieces, an existential twist on six degrees of separation.  While watching you perform, the theater of the absurd and Albert Camus’ assessment in his essay The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) that the human situation is essentially absurd, devoid of purpose came fresh to mind.  Two women from disparate urban milieus come together in park and who lives curiously intersect in a most unique way.

Yes, I agree that the conceit of that play is quite lovely because it explores the foolishness of our values: “Vaginal Itch” and “smoking” and loss, by allowing us to laugh at ourselves and to forgive.

The two of you faced a daunting challenge of performing diverse characters from a number of writers. This is not easy to achieve, but you do so admirable.  Tell us about your preparation in each of the plays.

The theme was, “Issues of our time.” We also wanted the plays to be set in a park. In order to avoid a lot of set changes. Out of a number of submissions, we chose six plays, which was all we could handle. We met with the writers and directors of each play and shared our ideas and theirs about the content and the characters. Some plays needed a lot of time and others came together easily.

You also faced the tantamount challenge of working with different writers but six directors with unquestionably different points of view.  It can be tough just communicating with one much more six.  I envy the two of you.

At first we were going to have one director, but then decided it would be interesting to have different directors for each play. Mostly because the plays needed work, but also because scheduling rehearsals was a challenge with an exceedingly busy crowd. It was exciting to work on each play with the different styles that each of the directors brought. Some were interested in exploring the characters and the concept; others thought the character development was our job, so they primarily kept to the business and the blocking. Both worked in their own way because of the plays they shepherded. The truth is, we ended up with separate friendly fiefdoms.

Relationships are a funny thing.  They never really end because they are eternal and spiritual on many levels.  Death and divorce do not end relationships because of this eternal equality.  I felt this deeply in Divorces R US.

I’m not sure that I understand your response to “Divorces R Us” in the same way you do. As much as I adore “Divorces R Us”, for its humor and absurdity, I don’t see death in it or really divorce. I think death is more evident in ‘The Great Out Doors,” which deals with a mother and daughter struggling with the mother’s agoraphobia in response to the mother’s loss of her husband. Nice that each play appeals to a different person in a different way. That’s what theater is supposed to do.

Art and life are inextricable.  What events or relationships in your lives helped with developing characters for “Women in Shorts”?

This is a very complex and in-depth question and I would have to write a book to answer it properly. I use my mother in the “Great Out Doors”. I looked after her during her very long life. I’m playing her in all her controlling and mischievous self. “Magic Rabbit” is about my own fears of losing everything and abandonment. “Ladies of The State” is forcing me to play a woman I don’t agree with. She justifies war for it’s nobility and I think putting guns in young people hands is horrifying and doesn’t win wars. The play takes place in the past. There’s a line in it, “We’ve come so far I can only imagine what the future holds.” Today, we don’t seem to be any wiser.

       There is always growth with each role you play.  What has Joanna Miles and Louise Davis learned as actors from this experience?  How have you grown as people?

It was a terrific experience. It was an enormous challenge to learn all the plays much less perform and discover them. We often look at each other and say,”My goodness we did it.” We make discoveries all the time, and with more of a run we would continue to grow. That’s the nice thing about theater versus film. In film you are kind of stuck with what you’ve put out there, at least as an actors.

  

What is on the horizon for Joanna Miles and Louise Davis?

We would like to have this production move on and have a future life somewhere. We have had a few possibilities suggested, but nothing firm. We would also like to get it published.

I want to add that putting a play on isn’t just the writers and directors and actors, it’s the team of creative people who share in the vision and do their best to make it all happen.

Working with Tom Meleck, our set and lighting designer, has been a gift. He brought so much to our production and would have done more if we had had the money to create changes of season and weather and more.

Betty Madden, our costume designer, created those characters with us. Finding simple pieces that expressed the nature of each person we were living in.

Tom’s son Mike, was our rock and stage manager. He brought order to a certain amount of confusion, with good spirit and patience. Iris Merlis joined us later and also was a great support. Quietly doing her best to give us her time, intelligence and enthusiasm.

IMAGINE

R.M. Sydnor

Tim Piper as John Lennon in Imagine, now running at the Hayworth Theater in Los Angeles, stands sui generis in a performance the like of which we might not see again of the troubled artist and humanitarian.

Interview

I want to say at the outset Tim that I did not know what to expect from Imagine.  I am happy to report that you and your band of four merry men blew me away.  This is a rarity for critic who has been covering performances for well over 30 years.  Metempsychosis, the passing of the soul at death into the body of another, describes what I witness Saturday night. We all felt the presence of John Lennon.   This goes beyond playing a role. You were John Lennon, inextricable yet disparate. Amazing.  I am grateful for the experience.

I am thrilled and humbled at the same time from your assessment of the performance. This has always been my ultimate desire in trying to evoke the spirit that we know, love and recognize as John Lennon, to have people feel that maybe they had the opportunity to spend some time with him once again. Disparate to be sure in personality, but I sense that we share the same love for certain simplicities in life, whether it being rock 'n roll or chocolates and a common desire for an 'even playing field' for the human race.

For me, Imagine is really about the impact of love and relationships on the life of John Lennon.

And the lack of love - which drove him immeasurably to seek affirmation from the world. Having a mother and father pass on their responsibility to love and nurture you in your most formative years is equal to rejection from God Almighty. How do you reason your creators turning their backs on you?

There is much to admire about John Lennon.  His humility and love for humanity makes us stop and pause.  What does John Lemon mean for Tim Piper?

John said, "I love humanity, it's people I just can't stand." His candor, his humor, his honesty, his lack of suffering fools...  although it sometimes came with a price. John was the big brother we all looked up to who was courageous enough to take the whipping for what he believed in even though he might have been flawed in his approach at times.

We know that John Lennon’s parents had musical backgrounds but never pursued music seriously.  There is always a existential juxtaposition between art and reality.  Magic happens when art truly meets reality.  Tim are your parents musicians or artists in any way?

Life imitates art - art imitates life. John believed in magic.
My parents we born in Kansas and Missouri but didn't belong in the midwest or World War ll when they first met each other at a USO show. They ran off to an acting camp in Boston and soon formed "The Piper Players" with a bus and a group of college-aged actors bringing 'Broadway to the Midwest'. 1950 brought them the opportunity to work on The Red Skelton Show where they'd move to New York and produce four children. Creators of the game show, "Concentration" and others, they eventually moved to Los Angeles in 1966 and, many stories later, this unique family was about as true life as you could get to The Nelsons or The Partridge Family on steroids.

Mark Twain was among some of the best story tellers ever and few can make a story come alive.  You seem to have that gift.      

How synchronistic that you'd mention him. Years ago when I saw that Hal Holbrook was performing as Mark Twain in his one man show I thought, "How brilliant - if only someone would do that for our rock 'n roll generation with someone that we would really relate to."  Hmm...?

My son calls me 'the weirdo whisperer' whereas people approach me out of nowhere in public and impart the most personal information you never thought you'd asked for. I care about people. I'm a good listener and you can learn a lot from them. I also take great pride and care in communicating - maybe it's the Gemini in me.

Clearly, the information provided in your performance shows a deep level of preparation.  Tell me about you musical and acting preparation.      

Music has always been a major factor in my life whether as a child, singing harmonies with my grandmother at the 'Old Time Singing' in the Ozarks in Red Top, Missouri or recording Adam Ant or Jackie DeShannon as an engineer at Track Record in Hollywood or the numerous bands where I played in all the major clubs in Los Angeles, or teaching recording engineering at The Los Angeles Recording Workshop. Acting as afore-mentioned is in the family and came in handy when I was selected to play the television role of John Lennon in CBS's 'The Linda McCartney Story' as well as E! Television's 'The Last Days of John Lennon' & 'Beatle Wives' as well as the singing voice for NBC TV's 'In His Life - The John Lennon Story.' The rest of the preparation is in my daily habit of studying most everything written & recorded by John and The Beatles. I kind of consider myself somewhat of a historian.

The video images add quite a bit to the feel of the whole performance because it gives us visual context.     

We always thing of Yoko Ono and John Lennon but we forget about Cynthia Powell his first wife.  I really appreciated how tenderly you reminded us of her contributions.  The relationship between Lennon and Powell proved to be tempestuous and at times violent.  Lennon was possessive and physical violence surfaced often.  He said that not until he met Ono, he had never questioned his chauvinistic attitudes to women. If memory serves me well, I believe it was the Beatles’ song “Getting Better” when he told his own story about cruelty to woman. I guess he was indeed “just a jealous guy” greatly misunderstood. John Lennon, like all of us, must face the insecurities and demons. I would argue, however, that the demons and insecurities contributed to the greatness of John Lennon the artist.

Clearly, John was an extremely insecure individual whose sometimes knee-jerk violent reactions were to plague and haunt him up to the very end. Maybe the only thing to separate him from the common person was his ability to artistically express his sorrow and apology for the inexcusable behavior he'd live to lament. 

We know John Lennon’s aunt Mimi raised him when his parents separated in 1956.  She and her husband George Smith had no children.  It was she who purchased his first guitar and yet she did not think John could ever make money with his music. How odd.     

Mimi was a strict conservative matriarch (albeit with contradiction) who could never show physical affection to John but who always believed in John' intellectual abilities. In a time of post-war Britain's survival she surely never could have understood a generation which was to adopt rock 'n roll as a way of escaping the horror & ravage they learned as children.

"The guitar's alright John, but you'll never make a living from it". He later had a plaque engraved with her words and placed it on her living room's television set.

As you rightly point out in Imagine on July 15 1958, when Lennon was 17, his mother was struck and killed by a car driven by a drunk, off-duty police officer, as she returned from Mimi's house. The death was one of the most traumatic events in John's life; she was a loose, optimistic person who understood John's struggles in school. Julia Lennon's death was one of the factors that cemented his friendship with McCartney, who had lost his own mother to breast cancer in 1956, when he was 14.  There are so many ironies in Lennon life.     

It seemed that the key figures in John's life were destined to leave him inexplicably at marker events in his life: As a child - Uncle George, Mimi's husband who served as a John's surrogate father died from a sudden heart attack. At 17 years old his mother, Julia died form the tragic accident.  As a major influence during his time at art college, Buddy Holly dies. Stuart Sutcliffe, John's best friend, college mate and more - the 5th Beatle dies from a brain hemorrhage (as legend would have it) from being beaten by a group of hoodlums after a concert - possibly reconsidered after a jealous beating from John at a college soiree?

Yet, maybe this compounded tragedy leads to an almost super human ability to outwardly shield oneself from an inexorable amount pain?

I was impressed with your group of merry men in the way they complemented you singing and performing.      

The great thing about this band is that these cats are for real. They grew up in the time of the British Invasion and the great American Rock 'n Roll follow-up. Don Butler on lead guitar has played and recorded with several rock luminaries and is regarded as one of the world's experts on guitar and amp repair and customization. His 'Tone-Man' authority in the business has the biggest names in music lined up for his services. Of course, he plays a mean guitar. Drummer Don Poncher who lays down a thunderous beat has an equally historic resume having shared the bill with Jimi Hendrix and others - most notably playing & recording with the group, Arthur Lee's Love, an icon from the psychedelic 60's. Keyboardist Morley Bartnoff, newly inducted member of Las Vegas, Nevada's Rock Hall of Fame brings a soulful Zen mentality into the mix & plays with the who's who of the Los Angeles music scene and is still a performing member of the 80's hit group Dramarama. Last, but never least, my brother Greg - musical director nominated 'best' last year by L.A. Weekly Magazine has played the world around with Tim - India, Japan, South America, Canada, Hong Kong to name a few and notably Liverpool, headlining for 30,000 Liverpudlians at the Mathew Street Festival. Greg also handles much of the business and promotional aspects in the background.

Lennon’s relationship with Brian Epstein, manager of the Beatles, was certainly intense given the fact that Epstein was homosexual and Jewish.  There were rumors at the time that Lennon had an unconsummated relationship with Epstein. Lennon openly mocked Epstein for being a homosexual and Jewish.  This seems so out of character of John Lennon the humanitarian.     

Tough stuff here. John and Brian were two needy humans that fate had put together. Each to ultimately help the other evolve & grow. Epstein the elder was to bring out the essence of John's genius that was hidden behind the false bravado and machismo Lennon used as a survival technique. Lennon gave Epstein purpose, focus and accomplishment in his artistic vision of what he saw in The Beatles. Together, they experimented and shared in all things humanly curious never losing sight of the greater goal in mind. Lennon's crude, rough, immature manner in berating Brian using the homosexuality factor (action also exemplified with Stuart earlier) was a way of exuding control from a person who was totally out of control. 'You always hurt the one you love.'  John loved Stuart and Brian wholeheartedly and felt great remorse later as he matured and realized what he had had and lost.

There are so many wonderful John Lennon songs like Imagine, Working Class Hero, Woman, “Mind Games”, “Instant Karma”, “Give Peace a Chance.” In fact these songs have rightfully become anthems, flaunting tough-minded realism, cosmic epiphany, hard-won idealism and visionary utopianism in equal measure.  Tim, do you have a favorite? 

That's like asking what you'd like for dinner this evening. Steak, Pizza, Shrimp Scampi? All wonderful wayward flavors each as good as the other depending on mood and time. I'll take one of each, thanks!

You have a very accomplished creative team beginning with director Steve Altman and musical director Greg Piper.    

Again, both without whom this show would be an entirely different experience. Like as in any group or production the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Unmentioned as well is friend and Executive Producer Philip Wegener who funded the show originally back in 2002 at The Stella Adler Theater in Hollywood and helped convince me to pursue action in mounting a production which has now successfully lasted almost 9 years.

Life is indeed a journey of clarification.  I truly believe Lennon was clarifying his journey until his untimely death December 8 1980.  It has been over 30 years since that fateful day.  How has performing John Lennon clarified the journey of Tim Piper?

I've become part of a worldwide family that shares emotions and memories of a man, his music and magic of a time gone by that still resonates today and potentially forever. I am simply a conduit for the connection that we all share and care for. What an honor and opportunity but I live it with respect, reverence and pride.

What is on the horizon for Tim Piper?     

Hopefully to continue this journey as it seems to perpetuate hope and love in a world that is stressed and depressed and could use a beam of light that we pass on from John to us and beyond.
"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." - a wise man, indeed.