Race - Parts III and IV: From Darwin to Ota Benga to the Barksdale Stage

Posted by Bruce Miller
Part III
There are those who believe that Barksdale doesn’t do enough to promote racial equity, and I hear from them on a regular basis. We’ll talk about those issues soon.

There are more people who write to me alleging that Barksdale does too much.

My first production as artistic director was the musical comedy They’re Playing Our Song (2001). Director Jan Guarino cast two African Americans among the three men and three women who function as the alter egos of the leads, played by Robyn O’Neill and Steve Perigard, both of whom are white. “If they’re supposed to be alter egos,” a frustrated patron wrote, “why make them black. Please don’t follow the path of the Theatre of Virginia and try to force political correctness down our throats.”
Similar objections were filed when Susan Sanford and Jerold Solomon appeared opposite each other in Olympus on my Mind (2002), when Jan Guarino and Billy Dye exchanged flirtations in Annie Get Your Gun (2003), when two racially mixed couples headed the cast of Where’s Charley? (2004), and when we cast black actors among Beauregard’s extended family in Mame (2006).

I recently heard from a man who was offended because “the colored girl” in Swingtime Canteen (my wonderfully talented friend Katrinah Lewis) asked a white man in the audience to dance with her. His comment centered on the fact that Swingtime was supposed to be a re-creation of a USO show from 1944, and that no “colored female during the war years would ask a white soldier to come on stage and dance with her.” Hopefully it shows how far things have come in the last few decades. When I cast Katrinah in the role, it never even occurred to me that anyone would object.

Sometimes offense is taken from the other direction. I heard from four women, three of whom I believe were African American, who were offended by the fact that Jill Bari Steinberg played all the black characters in Syringa Tree as well as all the white characters.

I don’t want to overstate the problem. For every person who is offended, there are thousands who love what they’re seeing on stage and cheer us on.

Barksdale has a commitment to colorblind casting. This is not in an effort to be “politically correct”; it is simply our policy to cast each show based on talent rather than race. For many people my age and younger, interracial romance is barely noticeable. What I’ve come to realize is that a lot of our older audience members were brought up in a world where being colorblind was not even an option.

In South Pacific, the great American lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II got it right when he caustically commented on how racial prejudice had become so pervasive in American society. “You’ve got to be taught,” he said, “to be afraid of people whose eyes are oddly made, of people whose skin is a different shade—you’ve got to be carefully taught.”

The eminent British naturalist Charles Darwin may be the father of evolutionary theory, but he is also, perhaps inadvertently, one of the world’s foremost “teachers” of racism. In his 1859 masterwork, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (yep, that’s the full title), Darwin inferred that the “favoured race” was European and white. He stated that the Australian Aborigine and the African Negro were located on the evolutionary ladder somewhere between Caucasians and apes.

Today, the Human Genome Project has proven that Darwin’s racial suppositions were just plain wrong. Genetically, there is only one race—the human race. As Robert Lee Hotz reported in the L. A. Times, our conception of race is merely “a social construct derived mainly from perceptions conditioned by events of recorded history, and it has no basic biological reality.”

Lee Dye, science writer for ABC News, reports that scientists have found that the basic genetic differences between any two people anywhere in the world is around 0.2%, whether they come from the same “race” or different “races.” “More and more scientists find that the differences that set us apart are cultural, not racial. The so-called ‘racial’ characteristics that people think are major differences (skin color, eye shape, etc.) account for only 0.012% of human biological variation. There is more variation within any group than there is between one group and another. If a white person is looking for a tissue match for an organ transplant, the best match may come from a black person, and vice versa. There are differences among us, but they stem from culture, not race.”

Sadly, the racial attitudes of many Americans were forged more by Darwin than the Human Genome Project. That will change overtime, but not overnight. To understand the pervasive impact of Darwin, consider this story which ultimately brought Darwinism to our home state of Virginia.

(Those of you who need a break during my overly long blogs may take one here. Go enjoy a nice bowl of popcorn or a trip to the gym. Ota and I shall be ready and waiting for you should you elect to return.)

Part IV
In 1904, a 30-year-old explorer, anthropologist and missionary named Dr. Samuel Phillips Verner was hired to sail to Africa to acquire pygmies willing to move to Missouri for the upcoming World’s Fair. Once there, the Africans would join other native people, including Eskimos, American Indians and Filipino tribesmen, and be put on display in replicas of their traditional dwellings and villages. (Think of that next time you hum Meet Me in St. Louis.)

Ota Benga, one of the pygmies Verner acquired, had survived a massacre carried out by the Force Publique, a notorious armed band employed by King Leopold of Belgium to bring his Congolese colony under control. Ota Benga’s wife and two children had been killed in the massacre, and Ota Benga himself had been spared by their killers only so that he could be sold into slavery to another tribe. Verner purchased him at a slave market because he was fascinated by his teeth, which had been filed to sharp points in accordance with tribal custom. (The photo of Ota Benga above and to the left was taken at the World's Fair.)

When the World’s Fair was over, Verner took all eight pygmies back to Africa as free men. Ota Benga had nothing to return to, so he befriended Verner and assisted him as he pursued his anthropological work. In 1906, he returned with Verner to the United States.

Verner was not a wealthy man. Not knowing how to pay for his charge, he took Ota Benga and his other African “collectibles,” including two chimpanzees, to Hermon Bumpus, director of the Museum of Natural History in New York. Bumpus said he would store the cargo, including Ota Benga, while Verner tried to raise funds. A makeshift bedroom was created in a maintenance area. Ota Benga was fitted with a white suit and allowed to roam the museum at will.

As might be expected, he had difficulty assimilating to this new life. At one point he threw a chair at Florence Guggenheim, one of NYC’s most prominent philanthropists. When the situation became untenable, William Temple Hornaday (pictured to the right), director of the Bronx Zoo, agreed to take custody of both Ota Benga and the one surviving chimp.

Officially, Ota Benga was “employed” by the zoo, but records indicate that he was never paid. He was free to travel throughout the zoo as he pleased, and he frequently assisted the zookeepers with minor jobs. A good deal of his time was spent in the Monkey House, where he assumed personal responsibility for the care of Verner’s chimpanzee and became attached to an orangutan named Dohong. (The photo at the top of Part IV portrays Ota Benga with Verner's chimp.)

Prior to his second weekend in his zoo home, Hornaday had his staff encourage Ota Benga to hang his hammock in a cage within the Monkey House. They gave him a bow and arrow, which he seemed to enjoy shooting at a target. They made a sign and posted it outside the cage, listing Ota Benga’s height as 4 feet 11 inches, his weight as 103 pounds, and his age as 23. At the bottom of the sign were these words: “Exhibited each afternoon during September.”

When visitors to the zoo stopped by the Monkey House on Saturday, Sept 8, 1906, they were fascinated by their first glimpse of the Ota Benga “exhibit,” and encouraged to think that what they were viewing was an in-the-flesh example of the "savages" that Darwin had described as being halfway evolved between ape and man. To create atmosphere, a colorful parrot was released in Ota Benga’s cage and dried bones were scattered around the “jungle” floor.

On Sunday, under the excited headline “Bushman Shares a Cage with Bronx Park Apes,” the New York Times stated, “Few expressed audible objection to the sight of a human being in a cage with monkeys as companions … and there could be no doubt that to the majority the joint man-and-monkey exhibition was the most interesting sight in Bronx Park.”

The zoo was mobbed that day as thousands of readers ventured out in the afternoon to see the new attraction. From all accounts, Ota Benga played to his crowds, just as he had learned to do at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. He practiced with his bow and arrow, and wrestled enthusiastically with the orangutan Dohong.

An immediate outraged response came from the Colored Baptist Ministers’ Conference. Rev. James H. Gordon, superintendent of the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn, wrote, “Our race, we think, is depressed enough without exhibiting one of us with the apes.” He noted that the exhibit “evidently aims to be a demonstration of Darwin’s theory of evolution. ... We think we are worthy of being considered human beings, with souls.” A few white churches concurred. “The person responsible for this exhibition,” wrote the white pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, “degrades himself as much as he does the African. Instead of making a beast of this little fellow, we should be putting him in school for the development of such powers as God gave him.”

The ministers sought support from the Mayor of New York, George McClellan (pictured to the left), and were denied. Zoo director Hornaday later applauded the mayor for refusing to meet with the ministers. “When the history of the Zoological Park is written,” Hornaday assured, “this incident will form its most amusing passage.”

Nonetheless, in a belated effort to avoid controversy, the “exhibit” was disassembled on Monday afternoon.

Later that week in an editorial, the New York Times wrote: “Not feeling particularly vehement excitement ourselves over the exhibition of an African ‘pigmy’ in the Primate House of the Zoological Park, we do not quite understand all the emotion which others are expressing in the matter. Still, the show is not exactly a pleasant one, and we do wonder that the Director did not foresee and avoid the scoldings now aimed in his direction. … As for Benga himself, he is probably enjoying himself as well as he could anywhere in his country, and it is absurd to make moan over the imagined humiliation and degradation he is suffering.”

Despite the dismantling of the formal exhibit, the public was not about to relinquish its fascination. Everyone, it seemed, had heard of Ota Benga, and they all wanted to see him personally. On Sunday, Sept 16, 40,000 New Yorkers came out to the zoo. Ota Benga was no longer constrained in the Monkey House (the entrance of which is pictured to the right). As he roamed the zoo’s grounds, great mobs followed him, according to the New York Times, “howling, jeering and yelling. Some of them poked him in the ribs, others tripped him up, all laughed at him.”

Within two more weeks, Ota Benga was moved to the children’s orphanage managed by Rev. Gordon in Brooklyn. Fifteen months later, in 1910, Ota Benga was transferred to the Virginia Theological Seminary and College, an all black school in Lynchburg, VA. (Civil rights icon Vernon Johns would serve as President of the fiercely independent Seminary for five years in the early ‘30s. Their catalogue from approximately this period is pictured to the left.)

While living in various private homes throughout Lynchburg, Ota Benga had his teeth capped and changed his name to Otto Bingo. He was befriended and tutored by the world renowned poet and civil rights activist, Anne Spencer, who lived in Lynchburg. Anne Spencer was the first Virginian and the first African American to have her work included in the Norton Anthology of American Poetry. She figured prominently in the Harlem Renaissance.

Through Anne Spencer (pictured to the right), Ota Benga met W. E. B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington. After three years of study, Ota Benga abandoned his formal education and went to work in a tobacco factory, where his duties included climbing into the rafters to retrieve tobacco leaves without benefit of a ladder. He was most at home discarding his American clothes and living more freely in the woods.

On March 20, 1916, Ota Binga went into the forest, built a ceremonial fire, burned all his clothes and knocked the caps off his teeth with a stone. He was 32 years old. We’re told he performed a dance native to his Congolese homeland, and then, on the vernal equinox, shot himself with a borrowed pistol.
The obituary in the Lynchburg paper read as follows: “For a long time the young negro pined for his African relations, and grew morose when he realized that such a trip was out of the question because of the lack of resources.” Dr. Verner wrote that Ota Benga “probably succumbed only after the feeling of utter inassimilability overwhelmed his brave little heart.”
Today, efforts are underway to locate Ota Benga’s remains and return them to the Congo. The life mask above and to the left was made of Ota Benga when he lived at the Museum of Natural History, and is labeled only PYGMY.

In 2006, in commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of Ota Benga’s experience in the Bronx Zoo, NPR interviewed Carrie Allen McCray who lived as a child with Ota Benga in Lynchburg, and Phillips Verner Bradford, grandson of Dr. Samuel Phillips Verner who first brought Ota Benga from Africa to the United States. This 9-minute recording from All Things Considered can be accessed at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5787947.

When reading letters from those who are offended by interracial romance on stage, I always try to remember that the world we live in today is, thankfully, very different from the world in which their personalities were formed.

--Bruce Miller

Theatre and the Winter Solstice

Posted by Bruce Miller
The Winter Solstice—that about-face moment when days stop becoming shorter and begin becoming longer, that 24-hour period when the sun’s arc across the sky shows just how low it can go before it starts to ascend again, that astrological promise of rebirth—has been celebrated by every culture worldwide since prehistoric times.

In the Northern Hemisphere, the winter solstice takes place between December 20 and 23, depending on where exactly on the planet you stand. In the Southern Hemisphere, it occurs sometime between those same dates in June.

Stonehenge in England and Brú na Bóinne in Ireland were both erected, at least in part, as
giant clocks to enable local residents to “read” the sun’s rays and know precisely when the winter solstice would arrive. In their ancient cultures, the winter solstice marked the time of the final feasts before the “starvation months” of deep winter began. Most cattle were slaughtered because there would not be enough to feed them during the winter, making this the one time during the year when fresh meat was available. Also, winter solstice marked the end of the fermentation period for the wine and beer that had been brewing since late spring.

The Christian holiday of Christmas was set on Dec 25 not because anyone knows that to be the actual date of Christ’s birth—no one does—but because Dec 25 was the recorded date of the winter solstice throughout Europe under the Julian calendar that held sway during the first several centuries AD. In fact, the Catholic Church banned the celebration of Christmas in December for centuries, believing it to be a pagan practice. It is only in the last several hundred years that Christians have universally embraced the celebration of Christ’s Mass in December, while assimilating numerous pagan rituals (the Christmas tree, yule log, etc.) into its folklore.

In Jewish culture, Tekufah Tevet is the winter solstice recognized by the writers of the Talmud. Ancient Jews believed that water kept in vessels during Tekufah Tevet, or any of the other solstices for that matter, would turn into poison and therefore must be thrown out. Among many Jews today, such dark superstitions have taken a back seat to Hanukkah, the Festival of Light.

In nearly every culture, theatre has always been a part of the festivities surrounding winter solstice. The Roman Saturnalia and Greek Poseidonia were two of the most prominent ancient winter solstice celebrations. It was during these festivals that the Greek satyr plays and the copycat Roman fabula (comoedia) palliata (stories in Greek dress) launched their ascendancies into popular culture. A Greek satyr play is pictured in the detail from an early 5th century wine bowl posted above and to the right.

These comedies highlighted role reversals among servants and masters and males and females, and explored just what might happen if social order were to suddenly turn on its ear. The comic debauchery that frequently ensued was meant to echo what might take place during that time of year when the nights were longest and the cover of darkness was most effective.

These Greek and Roman plays paved the way for the Commedia dell’Arte movement that changed the face of world theatre beginning in Italy in the 15th century. A recent commedia production of Goldoni's A Servant of Two Masters at the University of Minnesota is pictured to the left.

Our holiday productions of Scapino! in 2005 and Moonlight and Magnolias (running now through January 20, 2008) are actually perfectly in sync with the cultural history of winter solstice.

And what could be better than a few good laughs to get you through the cold nights of winter?

So as you celebrate your winter solstice holiday, why not do as the Romans did, and go to the theatre just for the fun of it.

--Bruce Miller

It's a Wonderful City -- and Barksdale and Theatre IV Help to Make It That Way

Posted by John Steils

Barksdale Bifocal’s current production of It’s a Wonderful Life is now bringing joy on tour to senior centers and retirement living facilities throughout Greater Richmond. In honor of the central plot device of this holiday classic, we found ourselves sitting around the other day contemplating how Greater Richmond would be different if Barksdale and Theatre IV had never existed?
Among the scores of answers that marketing team members yelled out, I was surprised by this one. If Barksdale and Theatre IV had never existed, there would be no Richmond Boys Choir.

If you want to hear first-ear what a loss this would be, you can attend a free concert this evening in Oregon Hill. The Richmond Boys Choir will perform their benefit holiday program entitled A Joyful Sound this evening, Fri Dec 14, 6 pm, at St Andrew’s Episcopal Church at the corner of Laurel and Idlewood. Admission is a canned good or non-perishable food item. All proceeds will go to the Central Virginia Food Bank. No reservations are required.

Both the Richmond Boys Choir and St Andrew’s have strong connections to Barksdale and Theatre IV. And in the case of the Choir, the “connection” goes beyond strong.

The current Richmond Boys Choir was founded as a subsidiary of Theatre IV in 1996. Our artistic director, Bruce Miller, apparently charged into Phil Whiteway’s office one day twelve years ago mourning the fact that the first Richmond Boys Choir had fallen into non-existence in the three years following the death of its founder. Bruce decided that Theatre IV was in a position to reinvigorate the Choir, and he convinced Phil of the validity of his idea. Together, the two men convinced the Theatre IV Board.

Billy Dye, who was at that time a staff member of Theatre IV, was assigned the responsibility of serving as the artistic director of the new Choir. As fate would have it, he’s continued to serve in that role for the last 11 years.

From 1996 until 1999, Theatre IV mentored the Richmond Boys Choir, paid its staff, built its Board, managed its finances, and raised funds on its behalf. During this three year period, the choir was housed in Theatre IV’s offices and rehearsed and performed in Theatre IV’s historic Empire Theatre.

In 1999, the Richmond Boys Choir fulfilled its strategic plan and became the fully independent nonprofit organization that it is today. Happily, our now independent companies continue to be the closest of allies.

The Richmond Boys Choir welcomes members from all socio-economic, religious and cultural backgrounds. They have opened for and/or performed in association with Wynton Marsalis, Lily Tomlin, former Supreme Mary Wilson, James Earl Jones and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Their spirit and talents have been showcased at the Governor’s Inaugural Prayer Breakfast and broadcast nationally on The Today Show, winning praise from Katie Couric.

Recently the Richmond Boys Choir was named one of 50 finalists nationwide for the Coming Up Taller Award presented annually by the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. Should they be selected for this honor, they will be the first Virginia organization to receive this prestigious recognition as one of the nation’s top arts programs serving youth beyond school hours. Keep your fingers crossed.

When it comes to St Andrew's, staff members from Barksdale and Theatre IV have been volunteering in their after school program since September. Our artistic director Bruce Miller works with third, fourth and fifth graders each Monday afternoon in this community-based enrichment program.

Our theatres’ partnerships with the Richmond Boy Choir and St Andrew’s School are perfect examples of the vital contributions that Barksdale and Theatre IV make throughout the community every day, often without publicity or recognition. In many ways that we frequently forget, Barksdale and Theatre IV are essential cornerstones of the life of Greater Richmond.

--John Steils

Heaving Hedgehogs in Hanover

Posted by Bruce Miller

After a 12 noon meeting in Ashland on Wednesday, Phil and I decided to drop in on our Swingtime Canteen company at Hanover Tavern before their 2 pm matinee. Our gorgeous ladies were in their costumes and our dashing men were stepping up to their piano, bass and drums in an effort to begin the show, when word came down from Michelle (of the restaurant that bears her name) that she had just been called by a bus group of 45 South Carolinians. They were traveling up 95 and would be about 25 minutes late for the performance. Could we hold?

Three groups comprised most of the sold out house that day. The Henrico Rec and Parks group and the Red Hat Ladies were already sitting patiently in their seats. And right smack dab in the middle of all of them were 45 empty seats for the gentle folk from Charleston.

Situations similar to this happen from time to time, and Phil and I frequently are called upon to do our “dog and pony show.” I’ve never been sure which one of us is the dog and which the pony. Perhaps we’re both donies. Or pogs. But our goal is to keep the on-time audience members happy until the “held up in traffic” audience (usually arriving by the busload) actually shows up.

When it’s a children’s theatre audience, and Christmas, I haul out my audience participation versions of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the Snow Bear Boogie, etc. We put our right paw in and our left paw out, and we parents jangle our car keys to Jingle Bells until the errant playgoers finally make it into their seats. At Easter-time I’ve been known to resort to Little Rabbit Foo Foo.

With an audience of spirited senior citizens, it’s not quite that easy. Making antlers with our hands every time we get to the word “reindeer” doesn’t seem to float their boats. So Phil and I took to the stage and announced that we’d be happy to answer questions about the history (fascinating, actually) of Barksdale Theatre and Hanover Tavern.

After breezing through my less than encyclopedic (but fairly accurate) knowledge of Patrick Henry and Hanover real estate circa 1776, the questions started getting tougher. “Who is the Montgomery Room named after?” (The Montgomery Room is the dining room in which the group had just eaten lunch, and I don’t have a clue how it earned that moniker.) “Did Thomas Jefferson really visit Hanover Tavern and which room did he stay in?”

I felt myself missing Nancy Kilgore.

Nancy, God bless her soul, knew all the answers. And when she didn’t, she was an unrivaled expert at making them up. She was at her most dazzling when the “real” answer was either fleeting or unknown. Watching Nancy lead groups through the Tavern and/or other historic Hanover properties was like watching Maggie Smith captivate the tourists visiting an historic British manor house in Lettice and Lovage.

In that wonderful play by Peter Shaffer, the character of Lettice, hilariously played on Broadway and in London’s West End by Dame Maggie, repeats the same historical narrative to a different group of tourists four times, and each time her docent declamation becomes more fantastical and compelling. In the final iteration, she has the tourists spellbound with a tale of British gentry vaulting down the grand staircase holding aloft platters brimming with baked hedgehogs.

I must admit I resorted to a bit of hedge-hogwash myself when I described the fiddle contest that Henry and Jefferson are alleged to have had "just on the other side of that door" during the Christmas season of 1759. We know from his journal that TJ visited the neighboring estate of Nathan Dandridge that year on his way to William and Mary. Who’s to say that the fiddling legend is untrue?

Of course, the Hanover Tavern in which Patrick Henry worked and played actually burned to the ground sometime in or just prior to the 1780s, and the one we know and love today (at least the northern section in which the theatre is located) was not rebuilt until 1791. But that’s not the way that Nancy Kilgore told it. And if I have the choice of being true to history or true to the memory of Nancy’s wildly enthusiastic embrace of the Tavern’s spirit, I’ll pick the latter any day of the week.

After all, as Nancy once said, “Once you’re sitting in those seats, darling, you’re not in a museum, you’re in a THEATRE!!” Here here.

--Bruce Miller

Images (from the top): Hanover Tavern, Swingtime logo, Rudolph in Claymation, the new Thomas Jefferson gold piece, Nancy Kilgore in Stop the World, Maggie Smith in Lettice and Lovage, Patrick Henry.

My Dinner with Bob Porterfield

Posted by Bruce Miller

In the winter of 1968, about six months after Barksdale’s Stop the World residency at Barter (see Barksdale and Barter, Aug 28), and about four months before my high school graduation, I was invited to dinner with Robert Porterfield--"please call me Bob"--Barter’s legendary founder. Here's a photo of Bob (taken about a quarter-century earlier) with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

This was nothing like my mealtime encounter with Arthur Miller (see My Lunch with Arthur Miller, Aug 12), where I sat respectfully and anonymously at his elbow with neither one of us saying a word. This was an animated three-hour dinner conversation with only four of us in the room.

A little background... In high school, I met one of my lifelong friends, Terry Bliss (pictured to the left). She’s co-author with me of Hugs and Kisses, and she works today as a practicing attorney and Artistic Director of North Street Playhouse in Onancock, VA. I was also good friends with Terry’s younger sister, Kathy. Through Terry and Kathy, I became friends with their mother, also named Terry Bliss. Terry Bliss (the mother) was the director of PAVE (Performing Arts in Virginia Education) after it became independent of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and just before it morphed again into the Virginia Commission for the Arts.

Terry Bliss (the mother) is now named Terry Showalter, and doing great things in Harrisonburg, VA.

Terry Bliss (the mother) had met the late Mason Bliss (the father) while he was working as the booking agent for Barter Theatre after WWII. (Below and to the right, you can find a photo of the Barter touring bus from the post-war years, parked in front of the Algonquin Hotel in NYC.)

In 1946, Mason was trying to book a Barter touring production into Limestone College in Gaffney, South Carolina, where Terry headed the theatre department. He didn't win the booking, but apparently he won the heart of the drama chair. Six months after their first meeting, Mason and Terry were married in Abingdon. Southwest Virginia was “dry” in those days, so Ernest Borgnine (pictured to the right) drove to Tennessee to pick up the wedding champagne. Bob Porterfield was the Best Man. The happy couple moved into the Barter Inn, company housing for the theatre. It was in the Barter Inn that Terry Bliss (the daughter) was conceived and lived the first several months of her life.

Soon after his daughter’s birth, Mason Bliss needed to earn money. He established The House of Bliss Celebrity Bureau, Inc.—yes, that really was the name—and he moved his family to Richmond. From here he ran one of only three producing and nationally touring theatre operations to be located outside of New York or Los Angeles. Terry (the mother) was a respected local actress. (A photo of her on the cover of a Richmond Summer Theatre playbill appears above and to the left.) Each year The House of Bliss would produce touring productions starring the likes of Pernell Roberts, Dennis King, Sir Cedric Hardwicke and Hal Holbrook. Google ‘em if you’re too young to know who they are.

When Mason died in the mid-60s, the House of Bliss died with him. Terry (the mother) went on to direct the state agency PAVE, and it was her job to book arts programs into Virginia’s schools. She relied on her good friend Bob Porterfield and the artists from The House of Bliss to help her with her job.

In 1968, Bob Porterfield was coming to Richmond, and he called Terry Bliss (the mother) to invite himself over for an evening’s meal. She told him about her daughters’ friend (that would be me), a high school student who was, as Moss Hart famously said, "drunk" on “the smell of the theatre.” Bob was renowned for how much he enjoyed talking with students who wanted to go into theatre professionally. He encouraged her to include me in their get together.

Terry (the daughter) was off in college, so Terry (the mother), Kathy, Bob and I met for dinner in February, and the rest of my life was molded, at least in part, in that one funny, moving and passionate conversation.

Bob spoke enthusiastically about the founding of Barter, and about his good friends Pete and Nancy Kilgore and Muriel McAuley (who, at that time, I had yet to meet). He expressed how much he admired Barksdale, because they were going through so much of what he went through in Barter's early days. He professed that theatre was the noblest vocation anyone could accept, and convinced me that, should I decide to pursue such a career, it would be a privilege and an honor that I could not take lightly.

He discussed the work that he and others had done with President Kennedy to create the National Endowment for the Arts, which had finally been established by President Johnson only three years prior to our dinner. Bob passionately believed that encouraging and showcasing artistic excellence would rekindle America’s creative energy, enrich a national cultural landscape that he believed was in danger of stagnation, and engender in average Americans an understanding of what true civilization really meant.

He believed that, due to our nation’s emerging prosperity, we in the U. S. had inherited from Europe the responsibility of being the caretaker of Western culture. He was convinced that the best way to lure developing countries away from communism and toward democracy was through artistic expression, a tool that the Russians were funding at the time with unparalleled vigor.

Decades before the social economist Richard Florida began discussing the "creative class," Bob Porterfield (pictured in the pencil portrait to the left) discussed American business’s need for the creative education and inspiration that only an arts-rich environment can provide.

It was heady stuff. It changed my life.

Bob Porterfield, Pete and Nancy Kilgore, and Muriel McAuley were great leaders not only because of the institutions they founded and sustained, and certainly not only because of the plays they produced. They were great leaders because of the imaginations they ignited, the opportunities they provided, and the dreams they applauded, encouraged and embraced.

I am forever in their debt.

--Bruce Miller

Addendum: On the "Six Degrees" front, Bob Porterfield's secretary at Barter was Byrd Jervey. When Mason Bliss founded The House of Bliss, Byrd accepted a job as his secretary, moving with him back to Richmond so that she could be closer to her sister. Her sister was Helen Jervey, who was Muriel's first friend and office mate at AAA, and would subsequently become a legendary Barksdale All Star, beginning with Barksdale's first mainstage production, Gold in the Hills.

Barksdale and Barter

Posted by Bruce Miller

Exactly forty years ago, Barksdale Theatre was about to wrap up its one-week run of Stop the World—I Want to Get Off at Barter Theatre. This was a history-making engagement, as Barksdale was the first guest company ever to be invited to perform on the Barter Stage.

The following newspaper coverage is quoted in Muriel’s book. She doesn’t identify the newspaper, but I suspect it was either the Richmond Times-Dispatch or News Leader. No publication date is provided.

“Barksdalians To Do Play at Barter

The telephone lines and the mails are humming these days between Abingdon, Va., and Hanover Court House, respective homes to two of the state’s best-known theaters.

Barter Theater, the State Theater of Virginia and perhaps the most famous professional company in the nation, is located in the tiny mountain town of Abingdon. It’s an improbable site for a major theater, but no more so than founder Robert Porterfield’s original idea during the depression of exchanging entertainment for food.

Three hundred miles away is Hanover Court House, another small hamlet that never expected to claim the state’s first dinner-theater, Barksdale. On August 22 through August 29, Barter will be host to Barksdale’s highly-praised production of “Stop the World—I Want to Get Off.”
It all began last fall, when Porterfield saw the off-beat musical at Barksdale Hanover Tavern. What began as a casual suggestion that Burt Edwards and Nancy Kilgore re-create their leading roles at Barter, gradually ballooned into the entire Barksdale company, with the original sets and costumes by Lyde Longaker, guesting at Abingdon for a full week. All of the Barksdale cast will be together again for the event, with some taking leaves from other summer stock jobs in order to do the show.

Rehearsals begin this week, under the direction of Jay Lundy, musical direction of Dougee Zeno and choreography of Frances Wessells, who will also travel to Barter for two days of rehearsals on that stage prior to the opening.

With Edwards, who plays Littlechap, and Mrs. Kilgore, who appears as his wife and as several other women in his life, will be Carol and Bobbie Hamblett, Richmond twins who will again play the two daughters, and the singing and dancing chorus composed of Judy Ward, Patricia Story, Carol Rogers, Gina Vetter, Libby Jarratt, Henrietta Near and Melvina Gooch.”

The history-making aspect of all this, as Bob Porterfield would shortly thereafter explain to me himself (see the upcoming My Dinner with Bob Porterfield), was that in 1967 Barter Theater honestly was, as the newspaper article says, “the most famous professional (theatre) company in the nation.” Please remember that in 1948, Bob Porterfield received the first Regional Theatre Tony Award for his “Contribution to the Development of Regional Theatre.” The next such award was not presented until 1976, when it was won by Arena Stage in Washington, D. C.

The actors whom Barter hired included Gregory Peck (pictured to the right), Ernest Borgnine, Patricia Neal (pictured up and to the left), Ned Beatty and Hume Cronyn. When Bob Porterfield visited Barksdale, loved Stop the World, and invited Nancy and Burt to star in the same musical at Barter, it was a huge deal. And when Pete and Muriel responded by saying, to quote Muriel, “None of that, if you want them, you’ll have to take everybody,” they were taking a huge gamble.

Mr. Porterfield must have had tremendous respect for Barksdale, and he certainly was committed to the developing regional theatre movement. But no matter how you look at it, it was downright amazing that, in Barter’s 34th year of existence, founder Bob Porterfield invited Barksdale to be the first guest company ever to perform in his nationally prominent theatre.

In the next few days, I’ll interview Frances Wessells, Lyde Longaker and others about their Barter experience. Stay tuned.

--Bruce Miller

More photo credits: The two young lovelies are Carol Rogers and Julie Crump from the Stop the World ensemble. That's Nancy and Burt perched atop the Barter marquee, in their full Stop the World get-up. Can't you just hear the Abingdonians shouting, "Who are those two clowns on the marquee?!" The painting of Nancy, which regularly hangs in the Barksdale Willow Lawn lobby, dates back to that famous Stop the World run.