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Filed under Randy
Bernstein or Towering Based on a true story by Randy Ford and Neil Bernstein
International known artist and memorial builder (Bernstein}, whose work includes memorials to holocaust victims, 9/11 victims. border crossers who died in the Arizona desert. and destruction and loss life by storm Sandy, art that stirs such emotion that it leads to destruction of the artist’s work and attempt on his life and then a mental breakdown, incarceration, divorce, protracted custody battle, stint in the Arizona State Hospital, and finally triumph.
9/11 and Hurricane Katrina Debris Works Destroyed (violations of federal law) and Artist Neil Bernstein Run Down With a Truck (a crime)
Note:: “Around midnight on October 27, 1990 — the last minutes of the 101st Congress — Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts amended a bill designed to create 85 new federal judgeships. The House approved the amendment, and so did Kennedy’s exhausted fellow senators. President Bush promptly signed the bill, eager as he was for the judgeships. In this way the Visual Artists Rights Act also became the law of the land. For most of U.S. history, artists and other citizens have been protected under copyright law against those who would make improper commercial use of their creations. Kennedy’s amendment goes considerably further. Adopting the French legal concept of droit moral or moral right, the law gives painters and sculptors a weapon against modification of a work that might hurt their reputations. Certain artists can now prevent ‘any intentional or grossly negligent destruction’ of a work of ‘recognized stature.’”- Sean Rowe 1998
Now let me start Artist Neil Bernstein’s story where it got really dangerous for him. This was back in 2008, and for those who don’t know it the US/Mexican border is not always the safest place in the world. Thousands of people have died trying to cross this border while trying to get into the United States. I live in the border-city of Tucson. That’s where I met Neil. Since I’ve met him I’ve found it hard to detach myself from him, not that I would want to. So I write this piece less as a storyteller than a person looking for clues as to why anyone or any artist would put his or her reputation on the line (and as it turned out risk his or her life) by building and rebuilding (in several hostile places) a huge art piece six times, each time after it was destroyed and ultimately have it taken down without his or her permission. I have to say and think only Neil would and for that I am thankful. I think we all should be.
Let me digress and relate something personal before I allow Neil in his own words set the scene. As a writer I could never afford to think of words as precious. Then one day I made the mistake of telling a poet what I thought about words … that I thought they weren’t precious, and her response was blunt. She said, “Oh, but words can get you killed.” Anger over Neil’s art almost got him killed.
Neil Bernstein in 2008
“I felt great about the exhibition in Tucson (an exhibition of his 9/11, Katrina, and Borderland works). I felt however that it wasn’t enough, when just 40 miles south of there hundreds of people were still dying. I prayed and meditated for a week and, on the seventh eve, saw a vision of “The Golden Gates Bridge Over Troubled Borders” – a huge golden bridge made of pipe and filled with water, inspired by “Christo’s Gates” in Central Park. I put together a crew, found a parcel of private land along one of the main migrant trails near the border and began construction.
“The GREEN VALLEY NEWS did a wonderful article about the bridge project, and the following day it was destroyed by vandals. Then after the destruction caught the attention of the television news, the battle began.
“During the building of the second bridge, at 5 a.m. a man who said that he was from an anti-immigration group known worldwide for violence and radical activism approached me. The second bridge was only up for a couple of days before it too was destroyed. … we conceded then (after the property owner was frightened) and rebuilt the bridge in Tombstone, the home-base of the anti-immigration group. During the reconstruction (the third time), I was held at gunpoint by a man who said ‘We don’t want any New York Jews around here helping the illegals. You better get the hell out of Dodge!’ That night they completely destroyed the bridge for a fourth time, this time shattering all of the piping, to the point where it was unusable and stole my fathers Veterans flag of the United States. Telemondo and several other Spanish-speaking television news teams covered the event and aired it throughout Mexico and South America.”
Artist Neil Bernstein thinks big, really big. It seems to be a compulsion…and he’s a risk-taker and a standout, which makes him an easy target. Neil is also more complex than most people realize. It is easy for a critic to either hate him or love him. His art is bold and controversial, and he uses debris from tragedies and human blood in his work. Often people are disturbed, forced to think and take sides regardless which side they’re on. He makes it impossible to sit on the fence, but it’s clear to me that he is trying to build bridges over fences that divide all of us. A good example was his “Golden Gates Bridge Over Troubled Borders.” Remember it is no longer standing. And don’t forget the violence. Violence (human caused or natural) has also been the thrust behind much of Neil’s work.
His story would be an unlikely journey for any of us except Neil. It is a story of a very perceptive and sensitive child, who was greatly influenced by his father and who even as a child possessed the gifts of an artist. And what Neil has to say has to be viewed in the context of his Jewish- European roots. His father was an immigrant, who was given the name “Bernstein” by his sponsor.
As a Jewish immigrant’s son, and while in the army and stationed in Bamberg, Germany, Neil was naturally drawn to Auschwitz. For the artist the experience was transformational. He describes feeling while there “cross-currents of energy” … how it was “deafening and like in a dream … there was a violet light ring floating above … I wept for hours … lost all sense of time and place.” He missed his bus and stayed the night.
At some point Neil got on his knees and began constructing his Holocaust works from the soil just outside the gates of Auschwitz. He used materials he dug up. The works consisted of twelve sculptures arranged in a circle and made from soil, branches, and stone. As it would anyone, the Auschwitz experience profoundly affected Neil, but it also gave him a direction that makes him unique.
There is a lot of his father in Neil. His father was fearless, public service minded and into channeling, but there are two other relatives who also influenced him greatly. From Marc Chagall Neil gained an artistic vision, and from Baal Shem Tove came his mysticism. It was his father however who took charge of his early education. Here are some things Neil says about that education. “I didn’t fit in a public school … I was considered a rebel and labeled a problem child … only my father knew how to handle me, so he took me to work with him and taught me himself. I was socialized with adults and met the most interesting people. My father also frequently took me into the worse black neighborhoods before African Americans were integrated.”
Other things happened to Neil that made him feel like an outsider, painful things. It became easy for him to isolate himself. Rather than face abuse and bullying, he escaped into mysticism. Here he describes an example of this: “weeping and shuddering, I saw a faceless entity reach out its hands and place them over my eyes. It spoke in Hebrew, chanted a blessing, and flew up into the sky like an image out of Chagall. There were shadowy angels everywhere, some of them quite frightening, but the Great Besht took my fear away. I was able to sing along in a strange language. I returned to that place every day for years, and on my eight birthday I received my purpose. ‘You are to make works of peace among turmoil.’” And I think his works show that he has been able to hold to this.
Throughout the remainder of his childhood, he “built paintings, sculpture, musle-cars and motorcycles,” and his first studio was on his family’s estate in Levittown, Pennsylvania. That area of the state then, according to Neil, “had as residents some of the most interesting people in the world. In the 1970’s, it bustled with creativity.” One of those people, who had a studio in New Hope, was George Nakashima. Neil began frequenting Nakashima’s studio, and on one such visit, Neil says, “George took me in the woods and taught me to listen to their souls.”
The military didn’t offer Neil many opportunities to shine, except for the Auschwitz experience and one other. While stationed at Fort Gordon, in Georgia, he chose as a canvas the exterior walls of old wooden buildings and painted huge murals on them.
In 1980, Bernstein met Pearl Forman. Besides her relationship with Einstein and her stint in the WACS, she got him interested in architecture. The die was cast. He became an architect. This pleased his father because “it’s much more practical than all the frightening art that you make.” His architectural and technical skills allow him to execute artistic ideas that are impossible for most artists.
After attending the Philadelphia College of Art and Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont, Neil joined the “wild guys” of The Highwire Artists Cooperative in Philadelphia. The “wild guys” were noted or infamous for taking over abandoned lumberyards, churches and funeral homes and building installations and site-specific exhibitions in them. They would do this until the city ran them out. Neil says that along with The Clay Studio, Nexus, and Zone One cooperatives, they “created a revolution of contemporary art in Philadelphia called First Fridays.” First Fridays attracted thousands of people, which gave Neil enough exposure for him to get his own show, a one-man Holocaust exhibition at The Philadelphia Inquier Gallery across street from City Hall. This was the first time he used Jewish blood (his own), which caused quite a stir. Neil said when his exhibition was quickly shut down he knew for the first time that “we were at war.”
The exhibition still caught the eye of Joan Rosenbaun, then director of the Jewish Museum in Manhattan. The long and short of it was that she was already “in a lot of hot water” over her own Holocaust art exhibition, a show that included a Lego model of Auschwitz and photos of Holocaust survivors holding cans of diet soda. Neil’s connection with Ms. Rosenbaun connected him with New York’s art scene. But it took the “World Trade Center disaster to finally bring Manhattan (along with Neil and everyone else) to its knees.”
Here we need to go with Neil … as he went back then … to meet Kirk Vamedoe from MOMA and Seward Johnson, the owner of The Grounds for Sculpture, and walk with them through The Grounds and the Van Gogh Room. The experience, along with the two hours he spent alone with the two artists, had a profound affect on Neil. He says, “Seward is misunderstood by many in the art world, and he has gone to extreme lengths to make high art accessible to common-folk regardless of their race, creed, color or education. And most people entirely miss Johnson’s point. Common-folk are generally intimidated by the art world and what Johnson has done shatters that and the glass between the viewer and the picture plane, bringing Renior and Van Gogh into our time. This doesn’t mean however that either one of them (Seward or Johnson) has resorted to manipulating the public in the way Disney did (and now prevails in western culture), but the inverse … a winding back of the watch … and it is exactly this and because they really give a damn about people that they go to such painstakingly difficult extremes. Seward, like myself, spends a lot of time in court fighting his right to display controversial art in public places. The two of us discussed the difficulties of articulation, engineering, placement, and censorship of large-scale art pieces in public places. At the time I was applying for a number of the longer steel beams of The World Trade Center, in order to build a hundred foot tall set of “Times Chimes”- a massive work that make tones as it sways in the wind.” This brings me to discussing Neil’s “Art Rises from the Ashes” exhibit near Ground Zero.
Yes, Neil Bernstein thinks big, really big. His idea for “Times Chimes” and the realization of the “Art Rises from the Ashes” exhibit are examples of just how big. When New York Times art mogul Michael Kimmelman asked “Where are all of the Davids at Ground Zero”, I would say he overlooked Neil.
According to Neil, he survived the World Trade Center disaster because he didn’t go to a broker’s training meeting at the New York Mercantile Exchange. His car wasn’t running; he missed a ride, and missed having breakfast in the North Tower like he normally did. Twenty-eight of his co-workers perished. This he says it angered and frustrated him and made him feel like he had to do something to help people heal.
It wasn’t easy. He had been a lousy broker and was nearly broke. And then just as New York did he was able to rise from the ashes in a spectacular way. Neil pulled it off in way that the world couldn’t ignore.
He worked the same way he always had. He channeled and bizarre things started happening. “… the sound of breaking glass in the middle of the night … lightning bolt-like configurations that skipped across the igneous boulders on my property … doors opened without any help … a heater broke … and there was horrific alter-world shrieking in the forest” … and on it went. And so many of these elements re-emerged in his 9/11 work.
But Neil couldn’t have pulled it off without family and friends, and a flexible landlord, and the help of neighbors around the World Trade Center. And let’s not overlook the sweat, the tenacity and the creativity that it also took. Neil says his whole life was consumed by the project.
First came the “Zero” paintings, 12 of them on 4’ by 8’ canvases that he hung from trees to paint. As he channeled, diagrams, huge vertebrae and propeller-like forms emerged. The contrast between the blacks and the vibrant colors was important to him, as he worked through the nights. There were driveshaft-like forms that led to rectilinear three-dimensional boxes that would hold the World Trade Center ash that he collected from the site. Next came the “Temple Towers”, two, 12’ tall glass and steel towers topped with Statue of Liberty-like metal crowns that were electrified and illuminated from within. Neil says that he then was directed to a local salvage yard where he found a 15’ diameter children’s merry-go-round made of steel. The merry-go-round became “The Shield of David”, a 40’ diameter sculpture that was eventually hung from blood-soaked chains above the “Tunnel Vortex” that became the entrance to the exhibit. The “Voltex Tunnel” was constructed in such a way as to bring people to their knees and when their knees hit the floor glass would shatter, and from here they could look at the “The Shield of David” … floating in a white lit chamber … through a 12” portal. Then came “Anubis”, a child’s play-horse wrapped in bandage and covered with resin, WTC ash, and Neil’s own blood, sweat and tears.
Neil also made for the show a number of 24” by 48” canvases that were of minimal color. And there were sepia tone rectangle boxes with charcoal and WTC ash that were called “Empty Boxes”. The “Empty Boxes” were made while Neil was meditating on the absences of identifiable remains of those who perished and that there were no bodies to put in caskets. (Note: I may have overlooked something … even something important to the artist and the people who went to the exhibit).
As one can imagine, the Warren Street exhibit … just a couple blocks from Ground Zero and housed in a grand industrial space with a 30’ ceiling and massive steel doors … attracted worldwide attention. But more importantly, the exhibit became a shrine. People who were most affected by the tragedy came … some every day … family members of victims, neighbors, survivors, first responders, rescuers often returned daily to rest, to pray, to eat, and to tell their story. And of course the exhibit (and Neil) had its/his share of detractors.
When the show closed, it was taken down in Manhattan and reassembled in Johannesburg. When he arrived in South Africa, Neil saw an 80’ by 30’ banner hanging in the main square of The Sandon Civic Center with a gigantic image of him “holding up ‘The Shield of David’ like atlas.” The opening was attended by hundreds of people, including Ambassadors and many members of Mandella’s administration. The tremendous reception, the crowds that followed, and the positive worldwide press Neil says, “was absolutely surreal.” After Johannesbug, for the exhibit it was on to The Sofia Museum of Art in Bulgaria, where again the show was a staggering success. And again Neil was treated royally. Since then individual pieces from the “Art Rises from the Ashes” exhibit have been shown (and some have found a home) in galleries and museums around the world.
There is much more of Neil’ story left to tell. It would require a book, maybe several books. So I’m going to jump forward here to when Neil moved to Tucson Arizona for health reasons.
Neil says that shortly after the move he went to Nogales, a nearby town that straddles the US/Mexico border and saw “the magnitude of what was happening there.” This served as inspiration for a new series of work called “Borderworks.” Channeling again he used debris, this time debris that he collected along the main migrant routes across the desert … where thousands of people have died trying to enter our country. The irony of this then was that it was the beginning of a new chapter of Neil’s life and like undocumented immigrants crossing the border searching for a new life in America, it was, I repeat, a dangerous situation for him.
The “Hurricane Chair” came out of this period in 2004. It is made from crack-house metal roofing, WTC ash and a harmonic conversion vibration device. This piece was selected from thousands of works by Kathrine Galitz, a curator from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, for a juried exhibition called “Art of the State” at the Pennsylvania State Museum of Art. The “Hurricane Chair” became the centerpiece of the exhibit and was there when Hurricane Katrina hit.
Neil describes how he responded to the tragedy in New Orleans in this way: “I meditated and prayed for three days and was directed to go to New Orleans and collect debris and African American blood. When I got there it was impossible to go through the barricades, but I was given specific instructions on how to get through. I entered the disaster site and went deep in the Lower 9th Ward. The place was completely abandoned, and there were heaps of belongings of victims and architectural wreckage everywhere. Suddenly out of nowhere an old African-American man with a shopping cart appeared. He introduced himself as Henry George Washington.” Henry appears repeatedly in Neil’s photo-collage debris series called “The Bottom of the Ninth Ward.” “… Henry gave me two syringes of his blood for a hundred dollars … after obtaining pieces of debris and shipping it back to Tucson, I began to channel the works.” What emerged were huge-muscle-car paintings covered with African-American blood, cremation ash, and debris found at the site, which was then preserved with epoxy resin. While Neil was working on this series, Aimee Chang, the director of the Orange County (California) Museum of Art, selected “Anubis” (from the “Art Rises From The Ashes” collection) for the juried “New American Talent” exhibition at the Jones Center in Austin, Texas. Meanwhile, Neil continued channeling and working. One of the pieces from the “The Bottom of the Ninth Ward” series would end up being selected for the juried “Uprooted” exhibition at the Louisiana State University Museum of Art. (It is important to note here that Neil has “turned down huge sum of money” for his work, but it’s hard to say if he’ll always be able to afford to do that.)
It is at this junction that I met Neil for the first time. I owned and operated then El Ojito Springs Center for Creativity, a galley and performance space located then on 4th Avenue, a major tourist destination and general hangout for hipsters in Tucson. Neil says that I told him “that I really wanted to shake things up in Tucson” (which I don’t remember saying), when I asked him to show some his 9/ll, Katrina and Borderworks work at El Ojito. When he agreed I actually gave him preference over other artists and some of them removed their art in protest.
For the show Neil created a new piece, which became quite an attraction. He brought in a huge freezer, turned it upside down, removed the door and replaced it glass, and placed inside the operating freezer two dead coyotes “crucified” on giant steel crosses lit by red spotlights. I must say Neil’s enthusiasm was catching and spilled over into the street as he organized then a series of funeral processions that went up and down 4th Avenue. For each procession Hispanic-Americans would volunteer to be carried in open-caskets, and off they’d go to the tune of drumming and a wild saxophone.
Facts about the Art Piece
Untitled
By Neil Bernstein
Created in 1968 at El Ojito Center of Creativity, 4 th Ave Tucson, Arizona
Created after “The Golden Gates Bridge Over Trouble Borders” was first constructed in the Arizona desert.
Created in reaction to censorship and alteration of another one of Neil’s art pieces by Diner Ware Art Gallery in Tucson. The art gallery’s director had blood removed from that piece, which angered Neil and led him to picket the gallery. He was also reacting to the reaction of other artist who pulled out of El Ojito because of his exhibit at the gallery.
The artist as part of the work placed the tears in the work.
Neils 9/11 & Katrina work has been appraised by Bernard Ewell, art appraiser.
Yet Neil says he felt like he wasn’t doing enough.
Now I’ve come full circle to where in Neil’s life I started this essay. Keep in mind here the Visual Artists Rights Act, which became the law of the land and says, “certain artists can now prevent any intentional or grossly negligent destruction of a work of ‘recognized stature.’” And if any artwork qualifies as “a work of recognized stature,” Neil’s 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina Debris Works and “The Golden Gates Bridge Over Troubled Borders” certainly does. Remember in 2008 Neil assembled and reassembled “The Golden Gates Bridge Over Trouble Borders,” in the desert near the border and in Tombstone, (at great personal expense), and it was destroyed four times. But that wasn’t the end of it.
Up until now I have intentionally not implicated anyone or any entity in Santa Fe. Let me make it clear that it was in Santa Fe that the 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina Debris Works were destroyed. It was also in Santa Fe where once again “The Golden Gates Bridge Over Trouble Borders” was destroyed again and again (two or three times) and finally dismantled by the host of the exhibit. It was also in Santa Fe where Neil was intentionally run down with a truck while he was standing on a sidewalk. (Neil was seriously injured, and his recovery was very slow.)
Bernstein survives. He is still Bernstein. His ideas are just as big, and since they lead us back to and confront us with some of the most horrific events of our time they will always make some people’s blood boil. It is the use of ash from the Trade Center rubble, his own blood, and the blood of an African American survivor of Katrina, used as glue in his work, that sometimes turns people off, while it certainly inspires more people than it shocks. This bold risk-taking is also what sets Bernstein apart and when all is said and done makes him, I think, an important American artist.
Bernstein can be accepted now. He has paid his dues. Let’s accept him. Let’s judge him on the merit of his work. How many artists would do for us what he did at Ground Zero? How many would’ve gone to the lengths he has to bring home for us (those of us who are unable to personally go) German concentration camps or allow us to touch the aftermath of a storm like Katrina?
Randy Ford
“Neil David Bernstein A.K.A. “BEN DAVID ARIEL” known in the media (Telemundo 2008) as “Architect Of The People” Formulated a new art and architecture beginning at The World Trade Center Site in September 2001, as means to assist those suffering world-wide. Bernstein’s “CRRREATORS”-First Responder Arts Army is the secure international agency for political and tactical responsibility and revolution in the arts.”
Neil Bernstein Drives “THE NEW LINCOLN VETERANS MEMORIAL” to VETERANS DAY RALLY at the PHOENIX VA Bernstein says, “this is Veterans art made by guys who have been shot, tortured, disowned, rejected, arrested and thrown into jail and institutions by the very society they or we (Neil is a veteran who served in Germany) sacrifice our minds, well-being and lives to protect.”.
“AMERICA-9.11“AMERICA 911 EXHIBITIONS
“AMERICA-9.11 !” ” FLAG SERIES CREATIVE DEPT OF DEFENSE Begin Friday 13th January 2017 ESPRESSO ART 924 E University Ave Tucson, Arizona 85719
2017: Presidential Exhibition-NBC News, Phoenix, Arizona
2017 ACLU-NBC News
2017: NPR “Veterans Corner” 1 hour live interview
2016: New 911 wreckage-debris paintings released
2016 “AMERICAN PIE” series
2016: FILM-“BERNSTEIN!” underway
2016: established “The CREATIVE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE” interface and spx-operations agency international. Launched from Los Angeles, California and Washington, D.C.
2016: The New Lincoln Veterans Memorial Los Angeles, California
2015: “The Politics of Haunting and Memory in International Relations by Jessica Aucther released on Amazon (immigration bridges)
2014-2016: “THE NEW LINCOLN VETERANS MEMORIAL”-(return from the ashes) Cross-country-major TV news-media. Classic Lincoln Towncar covered in signatures from the foxhole to The Pentagon to effect influence to U.S. Congress to repair the crippled VA
2013: Orange County Contemporary Arts
2013: Jailed-hospitalized due to “Psychosis induced by improper medications by under-funded VA Healthcare system”
2012: “WASTED MANAGEMENT” FEMA Area 3-Seaside Heights, New Jersey
2010: New Amsterdam
2009: “NEW CENTURY ARTISTS” Chelsea, N.Y.,N.Y.
2008: Santa Fe Railyard-Golden Gates Bridge
2008: “The Golden Gates Bridge(s) Over Troubled Borders” (7) Water-filled 80′ life-saving bridges along and across the U.S.-Mexico borders
2008: PBS Special
2007: El Ojito Center Tucson, Az. One Man 911 Arizona Border Exhibition
2007: University of Louisiana Museum Of Art-“UPROOTED” Lower 9th Ward Debris Works-spokesperson WBRZ
2006-2007: “THE BOTTOM OF THE 9th-Ward site-specific exhibition over the FEMA barricades of New Orleans from the wreckage and “Clandestine” materials of Hurricane Katrina-Rita
2006: Pennsylvania State Art Museum. “Art of the State”
2006: Jones Center/Museum for Contemporary Art. “New American Talents”, juried by Aimee Chang, director of Orange County Museum of Contemporary Art, LA, CA.
2005: Allentown Museum of Art, Allentown, PA. – Juried exhibition.
2005: Pennsylvania State Museum, Harrisburg, PA. – “Art of the State” juried exhibit. Juror: Kathrine Calley Galitz, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
2005: Allentown Museum of Art, Allentown, PA. – “Myth and Magic” group exhibit
2004: Radio Europa, Cazenovia College, Syracuse, NY. – Lecture Series “The Arts of Terrorism”
2004: Europe mecca tv, art and terrorism. Bucks College, Newtown, PA. – Lecture Series “The Arts of Terrorism”
2003: Sofia Museum of Art, Sofia, Bulgaria – Ground Zero Memorial Works- One man exhibition.
2003: Tv Good Morning South Africa. Johannesburg Museum of Art, Johannesburg, South Africa – Ground Zero Memorial Works – One man exhibition.
2002: World Trace Center area, NY, NY – Ground Zero One Man 3000 square ft exhibition adjacent to ground zero.
2000: PNI Gallery, Philadelphia, PA. – Holocaust One Man Show
1998: Highwire Gallery, Philadelphia, PA. – Cutting Edge
1995: SteamRoller Gallery, Clinton, NJ. – One Man Show
1993: Port of History Museum, Philadelphia, PA. “Art On The Edge ”
1991: Penn state college Reddins, PA. – “Art Now” TV Series guest speaker
1991-1996: HighWire Gallery, Philadelphia, PA. – One Man Shows
1991: Yeshiva, Old Jerusalem, Israel – Holocaust Works
1991: Massada, Israel – Dead Sea Siteworks.
1989-1990: Kunstenarts Contemporary Arts, Amsterdam, Netherlands-Ten revolutionary american artists (co-ordinated w/Van Gogh
retrospective, 1990)-active in demolition-special interface operations Berlin Wall-Iron Curtain, Eastern Europe
1988: Day of the Dead Architectural Towers, Philadelphia, PA.
1980-1984: New Hope Artsl, New Hope, PA.
1979: Auswitz, Germany -Site work outside the gates of prison camp.
1978: Dachau, West Germany – Holocaust Works at the gates of Dachau.
1976: Fort Gordon, GA. –(10) Building M
Filed under Art, Neil Bernstein, Randy
Irish poet, author, folklorist and traditional music aficionado, with a penchant for holding forth at length on the little vignettes and foibles of human nature that many others pass by unnoted, Mattie Lennon welcomes you.
Make yourself at home and sit awhile with him as he introduces you to some of the sights, scenes and sayings that he has come across in his travels from the little village of Kylebeg among the Wicklow Hills to where he lives.
Where that is exactly depends on what you are looking for. His employers i.e. those who pay my wages, expect to find him hard at work. He works as an inspector with Dublin Bus, while his wife expects to find him at home. He can be found in both locations, at least some of the time.
But he has managed to find some time to engage in general interests further afield. He has put together accounts of experiences in all manners and means of what he has been up to. Truly, has enjoyed his career, all o fit, to date and can only hope that there will be more of the same in times to come.
It was 1959. The National Council for The Blind of Ireland gave his visually impaired mother a wireless. It was his family’s first radio. At the time his contemporaries were clued in to the highlights of Radio Luxemburg and the Light Programme. But, always one to live in the past, he has a preference for the folk programmes on Radio Eireann.
THEN IN HIS OWN WORDS
On Monday, January 10th, 1949, I attained the age of three. I don’t remember it, but I do recall Thursday 13th, it was the Fair-Day in Blessington. When I awoke it was very dark. I made my way into the kitchen, attracted by the yellow glow of lamplight; my feet sensitive to the change of surface as I stepped from the concrete floor of the upper room to the granite paved kitchen. It was not night but morning; a fact proclaimed by my father’s apparel as he sat on a low stool at a military-style bench which on this occasion served as a breakfast table.
The Primary Cert, my first attempt at growing side locks and the feeling that my initial nocturnal adventure into Soho was in some way repugnant to Catechism teaching are all a sort of psychedelic jumble in my brain. Most memories have become blurred on the screen of time, but superimposed there and in no way distorted is my first picture of that big man, with graying hair, eating home-cured rashers from a maidenhair fern plate. The kitchen was devoid of a clock, but he threw the odd glance at the key-winder pocket watch which hung from a bent oval nail on the second shelf of the dresser. (Years later, during one of my unsuccessful attempts at horology I dismantled the faithful chronometer and having reassembled it, had parts left over; Nothing was learned from the operation except that it had been repaired in 1899). When he had mopped up the last drop of grease with a crust of home-made bread, I was to witness a scene that I would see repeated a thousand times. He took each of his boots in turn and placed a couple of small red coals inside each. Then, expertly, he rocked them from heel to toe several times. He replaced the coals in the fire, laced each boot firmly and stamped his feet on the hearth as if to test it.
A full pipe was tamped with his index finger and reddened with a paper spill lit from the glass-bowled oil lamp which stood at his right elbow. My mother often talked of trimming and filling oil-lamps in the house of gentry, yet she hardly ever succeeded in cutting this lamp wick straight across. The result was a diagonal flame.
Then, he took the reins out of the pony’s winkers that hung by the open fire, under the tallague. With the rope he made a head collar, went to the cow house and led out the white head cow. The name was not a misnomer; she was a big red animal, with a white forehead adorned by two sturdy unmatching horns. I was seeing her for the first time; having sprinkled her with Holy Water, from a jam-dish on the windowsill and making the Sign of the Cross on himself, he brought her to the road. The predawn hue was giving way to daylight. It was already bright enough to see the silhouetted paling posts and the stark contour of Black Hill and the stable.
A rat raced across the road. A neighbour cycled past on his way to work. Friendly salutations were exchanged. My mother ushered me back to bed. My first recordable day had begun.
I spent the first 25 years of my life at home on a small farm. I can identify with Patrick Kavanagh’s “burgled bank of youth” (and I am one of the few of my generation who knows how to make a bush-harrow). As a young fellow whenever I was blamed in the wrong, I would compose a derogatory ballad about my accuser. There weren’t many false accusations so I wasn’t very prolific.
I was nicknamed “the Poet” but the term wasn’t always complimentary. I agrees that what is said behind one’s back is their standing in the community and my favourite quotation is a comment made about me by a neighbour: “Wouldn’t you think someone would tell him he’s an eejit, when he doesn’t know himself”.
I have spent most of the last thirty years in Dublin but when asked “Will you ever go back to Kylebeg”? my answer is always Joycean. When James Joyce was asked, in Trieste; “Will you ever return to Dublin?” he said; “I never left”. 
I have written articles (mostly humorous) for The Sunday Independent, The Irish Times, The Irish Post, Ireland’s Own, Ireland’s Eye, Kerry’s Eye, The Wicklow People, The Leinster Leader as well as numerous on-line publications.
I was once told; “You have the perfect face for radio” and I compiled and presented my own programmes in the “Voiceover” series on RTE Radio One. I have presented ballad programmes on KIC FM, Liffey Sound and Radio Dublin.
I co-presented a Saint Patrick’s Day Ceol na nGael programme on WFUV 90.7 in the Bronx and I do pre-recorded programmes for other stations. One such programme is “The Story And The Song” in which I play a number of ballads, having first told the story behind each one.
I still write the occasional ballad (not all of them fit for human consumption).
Some of my literary efforts include stories and poems as well as some articles and essays I have penned for a variety of national newspapers and periodicals. Blogs have become Must Haves, a late addition to a virtual roomful of memories.
For some of my essays, short stories, plays, and poems go to my website http://www.mattielennon.com and for more of my work follow me on this website thebrainpanwordpress.me.
Some of Mattie’s Work can be found under the Mattie Works links in the right menu bar of this website.
By Mattie Lennon
It has been said that the first duty of a gentleman is to keep out of the hands of the police. Up to the time of writing I have carried out my gentlemanly duties, in that respect, every day of my life, with one exception. That was Tuesday 04th November 1969 when I was the victim of a wrongful arrest.
At 11:15 A.M. and I was feeding our one and only bonham. A car bearing the roof-sign of our National Guardians of the Peace stopped at the gate of our humble abode at Kylebeg. It was driven by a 38 year old farmer’s son, Paddy Browne, from Kenmare. He shared a surname with the one-time Earls of Kenmare but a Protestant farmer who had rented a house to him had once told me that there wasn’t much evidence of any nobility connection. The observer was a 44-year-old son-of-the-soil from Kilmorgan, Co. Sligo. His Name was Bill Tighe. (Up to that moment I had little dealings with either officer apart from meeting them during Census-taking. I knew that they referred to me as “the Poet”, which was understandable since I was in the habit of linking, even the most grim situation to a poetic allusion.) Despite their agricultural background they had no compunction about taking me away from my pig-feeding, when they asked me to accompany them to Blessington Station.
If my neighbours hadn’t known me as well as they did no doubt the would have been;” Wondering if the man had done a great or little thing”.
Didn’t the poet say;
To every Irishman on earth,
Arrest comes soon or late.
While Browne reversed the Squad-car down our narrow lane Tighe revealed to me that I had stolen an unspecified quantity of ham on Friday 24th October. Although I was no Phrenologist, looking at his profile from the back seat I recalled a comment made by one of my neighbours. Whatever about the grammatical correctness of the observation I was now tempted to accede to its accuracy; he had once described Tighe as being; “ as thick as the butt end of a horse’s bollocks that never saw anything only shite.” And, at that moment, I became a bit more tolerant of those who drew the cartoons of the Irish in the 19th century Punch magazine.
Once in the station another Garda had something to say. This 31 year old was Willie Nash, from Gurtnacrehy, Co. Limerick. (You may not have heard of Gurtnacrehy; the only time the word crops up is in the names of Greyhounds.) Nash was so well turned out that he was like a male mannequin compared to his more bucolic colleagues. When he first came to Blessington in January 1962 he was a useful man on the football field and sported a crew-cut. Now he was opting for a (slightly belated) Beatle look. He imparted the additional information that I had maliciously burned a rick of hay, the property of Dan Cullen, on Saturday 27th September. I didn’t share the view of the local farmer who, at the time, said, “There was only one mistake; that he wasn’t in it when they lit it.”
Nash’s body language (as he replaced a nail-file in his tunic pocket, having checked his reflection in the window ) proclaimed his lack of self-esteem and the fact that he was well aware of my innocence. His rhetorical question: “Would it surprise you to know that you were seen lighting it?” was slightly off the mark (not to mention off the wall).
I knew, through my own sources, that a quantity of ham had been reported stolen in Ballinastockan. (I wasn’t told if it was a quarter or a half pound) but I doubted the authenticity of the crime. As the interrogation progressed I became more convinced that the case of the purloined bacon should enter the annals along with The Easter Bunny, the Unicorn and a few pre-election promises. I knew that there wasn’t a great tradition of steling foodstuffs in the Lacken/Ballinastockan area; the last recorded theft of that nature was pertaining to an incident, during the Civil War, on 15th September 1922. Edward Grace, a Merchant, from Ballymore Eustace had some loaves stolen from two of his vans in Ballyknockan and Lacken on that day.
Despite being the victim of the dirtiest trick ever played on me, being spoken to like an imbecile, humiliated, embarrassed and treated like a criminal I refused to confess to two fictitious crimes. (It’s at times like this the words of Ethel Rosenberg spring to mind; “I am innocent……to forsake this truth is to pay too high a price”). The Sergeant, looking less than prepossessing and more than his thirty-seven years, gave the OK to have me locked in a cell. Maurice O ‘Sullivan, ex-Mental Nurse (known as a “keeper” at the time), from Slaheny, Co. Kerry, was very concise. Not living up to his family’s nickname of “The Long Maurices” he drew himself up to his full five-foot nine and a half inches, pretended to read from a manilla folder and told me : “I have enough evidence here to charge you”. Perhaps his past was the reason for the brevity;
For he to whom a watcher’s doom
Is given as his task
Must set a lock upon his lips
Etc.
Did the experience in his previous life prompt him to believe that I was the sort, so much in awe of authority, who would confess to anything? Although it was fifteen years since he surrendered his badge in Saint Fenan’s Hospital, Killarney, the “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest Syndrome” obtained; He still thought that he could do what he liked? (“…for in a madhouse there exists no law”).
I thought of William Blackstone who said; ” It is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer”. I soon reminded myself that Mr. Blackstone didn’t spend four years working in a Kerry asylum.)
When I was told, “You’ll get out when you tell us the truth” I took on board my neighbour’s opinion of the speaker. And the farmer’s boots and sly smile I saw as further evidence that Tighe was not a member of Mensa, would not appreciate Tennyson, and so I thought it would be futile to quote;
This truth within thy mind rehearse,
That in a boundless universe
Is boundless better, boundless worse.
My father always said that I would “hear the grass growing” and now I became acutely aware of my better –than- average auricular ability. Sound- proofing had not been a consideration in the design of the cell-door and I could hear every word spoken in the day-room. Industrial-relations matters, within the Gardaí, were touched on lightly before a turn in the conversation that was very interesting and informative; but that is a story for another day. Suffice, for now, to say that there was paraphrasing of the words of Thomas Jefferson; “ We have the wolf by the ears and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale and self-preservation on the other”
I knocked on the cell door. It immediately opened and framed Nash, who I felt was of the opinion that I needed taking down a peg. I studied his face. Why? Because Jim Blake who worked for Paddy Crotty had told me, “That Nash fella has square eyes.” He didn’t. While his optical hemispheres displayed the shiftiness of the insecure they were of regular shape.
He insisted on pretending that I was a suspect and closed the door.
When next I knocked on the cell-door it was opened by Tighe who told me, (why I don’t know) “The sergeant is gone out on another big job”. This was followed by, “Yer father says he doesn’t know what to tink. Will I go out for yer father?” When I once again protested my innocence this, ignorant, lazy, gobshite, who wouldn’t ever stand if he could sit, said, “We know certain tings Matt”. He didn’t specify what the “ things” with the silent “h” wre.) He closed the door slowly . . . like he did everything else.
When again I knocked with a hope of being released Browne uncovered the spyhole. His eye, viewed through the small rectangle of light, didn’t look friendly.
I was sitting on a wooden bench with some sort of a “tic” on it. Hey! . . . Didn’t I read on the Leinster Leader about a Ballinastockan man being fined ten pounds for pissing on a mattress in the cell of Blessington Garda station? (Of course it wasn’t worded so in the “Leader”.)
“Are you going to tell us about this fire?”. Guard Browne enquired. Now secure in the knowledge that they knew I wasn’t guilty of anything I didn’t protest my innocence. I simply asked; “Are you going to let me out?”
Browne didn’t reply. He opened the cell door and allowed me into the day room. As he lit a Goldflake butt with a paper spill from the open fire he again accused me of arson. As I looked at his well-worn shoes and archaic wristwatch I thought of his economy-consciousness which his former Sergeant, Frank Reynolds, had told me about. My comment about the coldness of the cell and my plea to be left in the Day-room fell on deaf, Kenmare, ears. As he dragged on the ignited butt I was sternly told to “get back in.”
I would compile a letter to the Minister for Justice. But that could wait. This was as good a time as any to make a start on a parody. The air of “ The Oul Alarm Clock” would do fine;
“I was told we’re going to charge you
With the burning of a rick,
By Nash and Tighe and Sullivan,
An’ Paddy Browne the prick.”
The cell door opened. Garda Willie Nash told me, “We’re lettin’ ye out but we’ll be takin’ ye in agin.” He wasn’t a man of his word; I haven’t seen the inside of that cell since.
Filed under author
Note that there are two major collections of Baker material at the Wittliff. The first, donated by the Bakers in 1999, has been processed and a complete finding aid is listed below. A second major donation by the Baker family was received in 2014 consisting of ten additional boxes of Baker material. That inventory is also provided as an addendum below the finding aid.
1911-1999 (Bulk dates: 1942-1976)
Collection 035
Descriptive Summary
Creator: Paul & Kitty Baker
Title: The Paul & Kitty Baker Papers
Dates: 1911-1999 (Bulk dates: 1942-1976)
Abstract: The Paul & Kitty Baker collection spans 1911-1999 with the bulk of the material relating to Paul Baker’s career as a director and educator. The collection also contains correspondence between the Baker family.
Identification: Collection 035
Extent: 22 boxes (16 linear feet)
Language: English, Icelandic, Romanian
Repository: Southwestern Writers Collection, Special Collections, Alkek Library, Texas State University-San Marcos
Biographical Note:
Noted theater director and educator Paul Baker was born in 1911 in the West Texas town of Hereford to Retta Chapman Baker and William Morgan Baker. He was the son and grandson of Presbyterian ministers, and the youngest of five children. When Baker was eight years old, his father moved the family to Waxahachie, Texas where Baker and his older siblings would eventually attend Trinity University, then located in Waxahachie.
In 1932, Paul Baker earned a bachelor’s degree in drama at Trinity University. Baker then spent a year at Yale University working toward a master’s in drama, but for financial reasons he was unable to continue his studies. He spent the summer of 1934 in England, and while there, he received the offer of a teaching position at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He began teaching there in 1934. At Baylor, Baker met Sallie Kathryn Cardwell (Kitty), a college math professor and artist. Kitty Cardwell had received her undergraduate degree at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia. She always had an interest in art, but chose math as her major, and went on to receive her Masters of Science in Math from the University of Chicago, where she spent a year working toward her doctorate before coming to Baylor. On December 21, 1936 – three months after they met – Paul and Kitty were married.
The Bakers had three daughters, Robyn Cardwell Baker in 1938, Retta Chapman Baker in 1942, and Sallie Kathryn Baker in 1947. Kitty Baker began teaching a children’s art and drama class for Robyn and her friends in 1941, basing her teachings on the same ideas that Paul Baker was using in his drama classes at Baylor. This class would eventually grow into the Baylor Children’s and Teenage Theater.
In 1939, with the help of a Rockefeller Foundation Scholarship, Baker returned to Yale and completed his master’s degree in drama. In 1941, Baker received a Rockefeller Grant to write about his travels during the summer of 1936 to England, Germany, Russia, and Japan where he studied theater design and production. Also in 1941, Baker returned to Baylor and helped design a new theater called Studio One. In Studio One, the audience was seated in swivel chairs and surrounded by six stages. Five of the stages formed a semi-circle around the audience and the sixth was located in the rear. This marked the beginning of Baker’s many innovative contributions to theater and theater education.
Paul Baker was one of the first theatrical specialists to join the United States Army during WWII, serving as a Special Services Entertainment Officer in Iceland and Paris, France. He directed theatrical performances at the Iceland base. Baker had no trouble finding a variety of men who were talented actors, but he needed actresses. He put in a request for four actresses to perform at his theater. His request led to the formation of the Civilian Actress Technician Corps (CATS), which continued to provide actresses for performances throughout Special Services. In 1945, Baker was awarded the Legion of Merit for the re-organization of the Entertainment Branch of the European Theater of Operation.
Back in the United States, Baker continued to receive recognition for his involvement in education and drama. Baker was the recipient of two more Rockefeller grants in 1946 and 1959. He received the first of these to make a study of leisure time problems as related to community. In 1958, Baker received an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Trinity University. Baker also served as President of the Southwest Theater Association in 1956 and as President of the National Theatre Conference from 1958 to 1961.
In 1952, Baker took a group of Baylor acting students and staff to present Green Grow the Lilacs by Lynn Riggs at the Theater Babylone in Paris. While visiting the Paris Museum of Modern Art, Baker became interested in the works of the cubists. During this time, Baker was beginning to feel that the progress of theater was lagging behind the other arts. Inspired by the idea of translating modern art techniques into drama, Baker went back to Baylor to produce an updated version of Othello in which these new ideas were expressed. He translated the cubist technique of presenting subjects from more than one point of view into drama by having three actors play the different parts of one character’s personality. Henry Hewes, Drama Critic for the Saturday Review, said that Baker had “accomplished what Orson Wells’ motion picture tried and failed to do – applied the visual arts to a great play without allowing them to inundate it” (Cory, 23). Charles Laughton called Baker’s production of Othello “the most exciting piece of theater in America,” and called Baker “a man absolutely without fear” (Cory, 23). In 1956, Baker used this method again in Hamlet with actor Burgess Meredith playing the main speaking role of Hamlet and three other actors representing the war-like, jovial and introspective sides of the character.
In 1959, while still teaching at Baylor, Baker helped found the Dallas Theater Center, which acted as the graduate school for the Baylor Drama Department. Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Dallas Theater Center, his last building and the only public theater ever built from his design. Baker also contributed to the design of the theater, working closely with Wright and sometimes disagreeing with him over such issues as lighting installation and backstage ramps. Playwright Gene McKinney described his own response to the designs for the Dallas Theater Center the first time he saw them, by saying “I realized this was going to be a different kind of theater. The whole approach to the total space, with its lack of right angles, gave freshness to the idea of theater.” (Cory, 88) Baker would stay with the Dallas Theater Center for twenty-three years.
Baker’s innovations in theater continued to receive praise from across the nation, and in 1961, he was given the first Rogers and Hammerstein Award for outstanding contribution to theater in the Southwest. However, Baker was not without critics. In 1962, he obtained the amateur rights from Eugene O’Neill’s widow to produce O’Neill’s play Long Day’s Journey into Night at Baylor. The contract with Mrs. O’Neill was to do the play intact with no editing of the script. A local Sunday school teacher, who brought her class to see the play, was offended by some of the language. She began a campaign against the production, and the Baylor President ordered Baker to close the play. In response, Baker and his entire department, including assistant professor Robert Flynn and graduate student Preston Jones, moved to Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. Baker split his time between Trinity and the Dallas Theater Center, which then began to serve as the graduate school for the Trinity Drama Department.
Preston Jones not only followed Baker to Trinity, but also worked with him at the Dallas Theater Center. While there, Jones took to heart Baker’s philosophy of non-specialization, and worked in a variety of positions, including actor, director, stage manager, and ticket taker. Jones credited these experiences with making him a successful playwright. As an actor Jones appeared in several plays at the Dallas Theater Center, including Journey to Jefferson by Robert Flynn, a stage adaptation of William Faulkner’s novel As I Lay Dying. Under Baker’s direction, this Dallas Theater Center production of Journey to Jefferson, won the jury prize at the Theater of Nations in Paris in 1964.
In 1972, Baker appointed Preston Jones managing director of Down Center Stage, a smaller workshop theater within the Dallas Theater Center. Jones’ desire to present new works, combined with a lack of good material available, led him to begin writing his own plays, the first of which was The Knights of the White Magnolia. In 1973, it was produced at the Dallas Theater Center under Baker’s guidance, and inaugurated Jones’ classic Texas Trilogy. Jones and Baker would continue to have a close working relationship at the Dallas Theater Center until Jones’ death in 1979.
In 1972, Baker wrote the book Integration of Abilities, in which he illustrated the teaching techniques he had used in a class of the same name at Baylor and Trinity. In class, Baker taught his students to use all five senses to experience and express their surroundings. Believing that a theater artist should be introduced to all facets of the arts, Baker gave his students assignments in painting, writing, and music composition. During the process of producing a play, he strove to involve the members of the production — including playwrights — in all aspects of theater work, such as taking tickets and helping in areas outside their usual sphere, in order to round out their experience of the theater. Baker explained that with this teaching philosophy he was trying to help students “discover their creative abilities,” and at the same time “help the theater catch up with the progress made in the other arts” (Cory, 20).
Baker retired from his position as Professor of Drama and Chairman of the Drama Department at Trinity University in 1976, but continued his work as Director at the Dallas Theater Center. In 1978, he received both a Distinguished Alumnus Award from Trinity University and an Honorary Doctorate of Humanities from the Texas Christian University.
By 1982, Baker and the Board of Directors at the Dallas Theater Center had begun to hold different views about the direction the Center should take. Baker wanted it to remain an educational theater, maintaining a resident company of actors, writers and directors as it had since its inception. The Board was interested in making the Center a more commercially dynamic venue, and envisioned touring productions featuring nationally-known actors who could attract audiences simply by the presence of their names on the marquee. In March 1982, Baker, after twenty-three years of service as Artistic Director, turned in his resignation. After Baker’s resignation, the Center slowly moved away from its former experimental educational approach, and its role as a graduate school came to an end. However, Baker’s methods in drama continued in the Dallas Children’s Theater, founded by his daughter Robyn Baker Flatt, and at Dallas’ Booker T. Washington School for the Performing Arts, founded by Paul Baker himself in 1976, at the request of the Dallas Independent School District.
After leaving the Dallas Theater Center, Baker continued to receive awards for his work in theater, and he remained busy directing plays and writing books and articles. In 1983, Baker received the Tomas De Gretani Award for outstanding service to American Theater. He directed a variety of plays, including Preston Jones’ Last Meeting of the Knights of the White Magnolia in 1984 at the New Mexico Repertory Theater in Santa Fe. Baker also directed a professional production of Preston Jones’ The Oldest Living Graduate for Paramount Theater of Austin in 1986, and his own adaptation, Hamlet ESP, for the Hyde Park Theater in Austin in 1987. In August of 1990, Baker’s work in drama and education was celebrated by ex-students from Baylor University (1934-63), Trinity University (1963-1975), and the Dallas Theater Center (1959-83), with “The Paul Baker Festival – Second Harvest,” which ran for three days in Waco.
In 1994, Baker was the recipient of the Texas Commission on the Arts Special Merit Award, and in that same year he wrote Making Sense with Five Senses, a textbook featuring his Integration of Abilities Technique. Paul and Kitty Baker currently live on a 132-acre ranch near Waelder, Texas, where they are both active in encouraging the application of their Integration of Abilities Technique at the Waelder elementary school.
The Southwestern Writers Collection also houses the papers of playwright/novelist Robert Flynn, playwright/actor Preston Jones and the actor/artist/director Mary Sue Jones, all of whom worked with Baker at Baylor, Trinity and the Dallas Theater Center.
Scope and Content:
Correspondence, scrapbooks, video cassettes, sound recordings, scripts, clippings, ephemera, photographs, books and periodicals, 1911 to 1999 (bulk 1942 – 1976), created and maintained by Paul and Kitty Baker, document the Bakers’ life long involvement in theater and education, as well as their personal relationship and family life.
The collection consists of twelve series: 1.Correspondence (1927 – 1999, n.d.),
2. Scrapbooks (1952 – 1986), 3. Video Cassettes (1957 – 1995, n.d.), 4. Sound Recordings (1970 – 1978, n.d.), 5. Scripts (1969-1992, n.d.), 6. The Baylor Children’s Theater Early Development (1966 – 1985, n.d.), 7. Clippings (1942 – 19990, n.d.), 8. Theater Brochures and Programs (1929 – 1996, n.d.), 9. Iceland Base Command WWII (1943 – 1945, n.d.), 10. Photographs (n.d.), 11. Personal Ephemera (1911 – 1942, n.d.), and 12. Books and Periodicals (1953 – 1994, n.d.). These series are based on the original order of the materials when present; order was created by the cataloger for the materials that lacked it.
The bulk of this material is related to Paul Baker’s career as a director and educator. The Scrapbook Series and the Sound Recordings Series are predominately made up of material pertaining to Paul Baker’s drama productions. The Video Cassettes Series documents several of Paul Baker’s productions, and includes interviews with Baker about his career and his perspective on drama and education. Material regarding Kitty Baker and the Baker family, while limited, can be found in the Scrapbook Series and the Correspondence Series. The Correspondence Series documents the Bakers’ early years of marriage, and the issues with which they dealt while they were apart during WWII. Some of the material in the Video Cassettes Series and the Books and Periodicals Series also provides documentation on the Bakers’ recent educational involvement with Waelder elementary school, and the Bakers’ use of their Integration of Abilities Technique with its students.
Additional Baker archival material can be found at the Dallas Public Library, and Trinity University. The Dallas Theater Center Collection (1954 – 1984), housed at the Dallas Public Library, represents the period from the Center’s founding through Paul Baker’s years of direction. This Collection consists of 152 linear feet plus 25 oversize boxes containing photographs, set and costume designs, building blueprints, programs, newspaper clippings, advertisements, newsletters, scrapbooks, business records, legal documents, financial records, student/school records, and production, business and personal correspondence. The Paul Baker Papers at Trinity University are made up of twenty-two boxes of correspondence, clippings, material on productions directed by Paul Baker, Children’s Theatre material, and ephemera.
Series II: Scrapbooks (1952 – 1986)
The scrapbooks in this series contain mostly newspaper clippings, and some photographs and ephemera. The bulk of the scrapbooks are about Paul Baker, his productions, and the different theaters at which he worked. The Family (1952 – 1976) scrapbook contains clippings and photographs relating to the Baker children’s activities and achievements, as well as Mr. and Mrs. Bakers’ educational interests and accomplishments. There are also a few clippings about the Baker family in other scrapbooks in the series. This series has been arranged chronologically.
Series III: Video Cassettes (1957 – 1995, n.d.)
This series, made up of the subseries Tributes and Interviews, Play Productions, Educational, and Miscellaneous, documents the Bakers’ lifelong involvement in theater and education. Within each series the cassettes have been arranged alphabetically by title. Many of the cassettes in the Tributes and Interviews, and Educational Subseries offer insight into Paul Baker’s philosophy of education, while the cassettes in the Play Productions Subseries provide examples of Baker’s work as a director. In this latter subseries, the video cassette of the 1957 Hamlet production has been transferred to DVD.
Series IV: Sound Recordings (1970 – 1978, n.d.)
The majority of the recordings (13 reel to reel tapes, 3 cassettes, and 1 phonograph set, with copies of the cassettes and phonograph set on CD) in this series are of theater productions directed by Paul Baker during his time at Baylor. They are arranged alphabetically.
Series V: Scripts (1959 –1992, n.d.)
The bulk of the scripts in this series are from plays directed or written by Paul Baker. Other scripts were written by students, friends or relatives of Baker. Many of the scripts have been annotated and some are in an early or rough stage. The scripts have been arranged alphabetically by author. Highlights in this series include three plays by the Bakers’ daughter, Sallie Baker Laurie, and two versions of Hamlet, one as arranged by Paul Baker and a second, Hamlet ESP, an adaptation by Paul Baker. Several scripts in this series are by playwrights who are also represented in other drama collections at the Southwestern Writers Collection, including The Last Meeting of the Knights of the White Magnolia, and The Oldest Living Graduate both by Preston Jones, As I Lay Dying by Robert Flynn, and Ramsey Yelvington’s Cloud of Witnesses.
Series VI: The Baylor Children’s Theater Early Development (1966 – 1985, n.d.)
This series contains materials compiled by Kitty Baker about the early development of The Baylor Children’s Theater. In 1941, Mrs. Baker began a children’s art and drama class for the Baker’s first daughter and her friends, which would eventually grow into the Baylor Children’s Theater. In this series, clippings, photographs, booklets, workshop materials and ephemera record the activities of the Children’s Theater and Mrs. Baker’s role as its co-founder.
Series VII: Clippings (1942 – 1990, n.d.)
The small group of clippings in this series highlights periods in Paul Baker’s life from his undergraduate years at Trinity University in Waxahachie, TX, to his work at Baylor University, and his retirement in Waelder, TX.
Series VIII: Theater Brochures and Programs (1929 – 1996, n.d.)
The brochures and programs in this series come mostly from theaters and productions with which Paul Baker was involved either as a performer or director. They are arranged alphabetically by theater name.
Series IX: Iceland Base Command WWII (1943 – 1945, n.d.)
Paul Baker collected the material in this series during his time as Special Service Entertainment Officer at Iceland Base Command in World War II. The Iceland Base Command newspaper, “The White Falcon,” contains several articles about productions directed by Paul Baker at the base. Also included in this series are programs from some of these plays, as well as art works from Iceland. This series is arranged by material type.
Series X: Photographs (n.d.)
This series contains nine studio proofs of Paul and Kitty Baker. Additional photographs can be found in the Scrapbooks series.
Series XI: Personal Ephemera (1911 – 1942, n.d.)
This series is made up of handwritten notes, commencement programs from Trinity and other Universities, booklets about foreign missionary work, calling cards and other assorted ephemera. The material is arranged by material type.
Series XII: Books and Periodicals (1953 – 1994, n.d.)
The material in this series pertains to theater and education, and much of it is by or about Paul Baker. Annotated or unpublished titles have been filed with in this series, other titles as listed have been cataloged separately.
Access Restrictions: Open for research.
Preferred Citation: The Paul & Kitty Baker Collection, Southwestern Writers Collection, Texas State University-San Marcos
Acquisition Information: Donated by Paul & Kitty Baker, 1999.
Processing Information: Processed by Emily Painton, 1999. Inventory revised by Alan Schaefer, 2010.
Series I: Correspondence (1927 – 1999, undated)
Box /Folder
Personal correspondence between Paul & Kitty Baker
1 /1 1942
1 /2-5 1943
1 /6 1944
2 /1-2
2 /3-4 1945
2 /5-6 Assorted correspondence 1927 – 1963
2 /7 Letter from Paul Baker with the article “Growing Up a Sullen Baptist” by Robert
Flynn attached, 1999
2/1 3 Clipping from magazine of Icelandic art
Series II: Scrapbooks (1952 – 1986)
Box /Folder
18 – 1952 -1976, Family
18 – 1956, Hamlet – Burgess Meredith
19 – 1957 – 1960 (Dallas Theater Center)
19 – 1958 – 1961 (Baylor Theater, Dallas Theater Center)
20 – 1959 – 1961 (Dallas Theater Center, Baylor Theater, and Baylor Children’s
Theater)
20 – 1966 – 1973 (Trinity Theater)
3 /1 1974, Jack Ruby, All American Boy: A Pictorial Progression Project of the
Theater at Work as photographed by Chastity Fox
3 /2 1985 – 1986, The Oldest Living Graduate
Series III: Video Cassettes (1957 – 1995, undated)
Box /Folder
Tributes and interviews (1990 – 1995, undated)
3 /3 Paul Baker Second Harvest Tribute – 2 hr. 20 min. film featuring individual
tributes from Baker’s ex-students – Master of Ceremonies, Mary Sue
Jones, 1990
A Guide to the Paul & Kitty Baker Collection (Collection 035) 15
Tributes and interviews (1990 – 1995, undated), continued
4 /1 Second Harvest Tribute, produced by Clu and Miriam Gulager – a 15 minute
photo history of Paul Baker and his family, 1990
4 /2-4 Austin Faith Dialogue: TV Program Broadcast
5 /1 April 24, 1994, Austin: Richard Thompson interviews Dr. and Mrs. Paul Baker,
Making Sense With Five Senses sponsor – Austin Metropolitan
Ministries Central Presbytarian Church, Austin, Texas. 30 minutes. (4
copies, folders 1, 2, & 3 of 4)
5 /2 KLRN Artbeat #625 “Learning With Artists”
5 /3 KLRN Artbeat “Learning With Artists”
5 /4 KLRU – Texas Education Report – April 21, 1995, Art and the Curriculum
6 /1 Kitty & Paul Baker Book Fair, October, 1995, standard speed/San Antonio cable
TV interview
6 /2 Paul Baker interview with Robert Flynn. The Arts and Education Reform Town
Meeting/Round Table with the Secretary of Education and others
6 /3-4 Paul Baker: A Profile (tape missing from folder 4)
7 /1 Paul Baker’s Second Harvest Film, Jerry Mack Ratliff, 1990
Play Productions (1957 – 1978, undated)
7 /2 Hamlet – a 30 minute film of the Baylor Theater experimental production. Film
directed by Eugene McKinney, staged by Paul Baker in 1957 (includes
DVD copy)
7 /3 Lu Ann Act I & II
7 /4 Lu Ann Act III
8 /1 The Oldest Living Graduate, 1 hr. 56 min., Dallas Theater Center, 1978
8 /2 Excerpts from the Dallas Theater Center production of Stillsong by Sallie K.
Baker, staged by Paul Baker, produced by PBS, Dallas, Texas, 30 minutes.
Educational (1991 – 1993, undated)
8 /3 ABCs of Natural Abilities, November 1, 1991
8 /4 ABCs of Natural Abilities Workshop, June 5, 1991
9 /1 ABCs of Natural Learning
9 /2-3 The Arts and Education Reform Town Meeting/Round Table with the Secretary
of Education and Others (2 copies)
A Guide to the Paul & Kitty Baker Collection (Collection 035) 16
Educational (1991 – 1993, undated), continued
9 /4 Enhancing Leadership Skills, January 12, 1993, Waelder
10 /1 Final Days ABC Workshop
10 /2 Frontline: Teacher, Teacher FRON815K, 59 minutes
10 /3 Waelder ISD Arts Program (missing)
Miscellaneous (1994)
10 /4 World Cup ’94 Virtual Field Trip
Series IV: Sound Recordings (1957 – 1978, undated)
Box /Folder
Tape Reels (1970 – 1978, undated)
11 /1 Children’s Theater Alice in Wonderland (two reels)
11 /2 Hamlet ESP, 1970 (two reels)
11 /3 Hamlet ESP Acts I & II, Act III (two reels)
12 /1 Hamlet ESP Acts I, II, & III, recorded at Trinity University, 1970 (two reels; one
copy on two audio cassettes & one copy on three CD-Rs)
12 /2 Of Time and the River, Act I & II (two reels)
12 /3 Oldest Living Graduate, 1978, Preston intermission (one reel)
12 /4 Speech 304, 1 & 5 (two reels)
Audio Cassettes and LPs (undated)
13 /1 Hamlet #1-3 (three cassettes)
21 /1 Hamlet, Paul Baker’s Baylor Theater Stage Production on a 3-LP set, with liner
notes and script (also available on 3 CD-R copies)
Series V: Scripts (1959 – 1992, undated)
Box /Folder
13 /3 Baker, Paul and Gene McKinney, Mary Anna Branson, and Ramsey Yelvington
Dramatic Images: Plays For the Church, 1959
13 /4 Baker, Sallie Sky-Giant
13 /5 Byers, Ruth and Malcolm Stewart Fellows Teatru Piese Tigrul Purpuriu Caruia Il
Placeau Clatitele Si La Volan,1969
13 6 Ebersole, Martha Texas Tacky,1983 (published version)
A Guide to the Paul & Kitty Baker Collection (Collection 035) 17
13 /7 Ebersole, Martha Texas Tacky, in two acts with director’s notes by Paul Baker,
1983
13 /8 Flynn, Robert As I Lay Dying, a stage adaptation, 1992
13 /9 Gibson, Jewel Brann and the Iconclast, based on Brann and the Iconclast by
Charles Carver, undated
14 /1 Gibson, Jewel Get Out of Town, Mr. Brann, based on Brann and the Iconclast
by Charles Carver, undated
14 /2 Jones, Preston The Last Meeting of the “Knights of the White Magnolia”, a play
in two acts, undated
14 /3 Jones, Preston The Last Meeting of the “Knights of the White Magnolia”, a play
in two acts. One of the three plays comprising a Texas Trilogy, 1976
(published version)
14 /4 Jones, Preston The Oldest Living Graduate, a play in two acts. One of the three
plays comprising a Texas Trilogy, 1976
14 /5 Kirk, William Bear-Bottom Woods, undated
14 /6 Laurie, Sallie Door-Play, a play in two acts, 1977
14 /7 Laurie, Sallie Stillsong, 1976
14 /8 Schaefer, Frank A Man of Calling, a play in three acts, undated
14 /9 Shakespeare, William Hamlet, as arranged by Paul Baker and Staff, undated
15 /1 Shakespeare, William Hamlet ESP, an adaptation by Paul Baker, published
version, 1971
15 /2 Wolfe, Thomas Of Time and the River, a dramatization by the Baylor Theater,
undated
15 /3 Yelvington, Ramsey Cloud of Witnesses, prepared by Paul Baker, 1984
Series VI: The Baylor Children’s Theater Early Development (1966 – 1985, undated)
15 /4-5 Ms. Kitty Baker’s materials on early development of the Baylor Children’s
Theater
22 – 3-ring binder with materials on early development of the Baylor Children’s
Theater
Series VII: Clippings (1942 – 1990, undated)
Box /Folder
15 /6 Article about Paul Baker from the San Antonio Light, August 5, 1990
15 /7 Assorted clippings
21 – Framed clipping about the Dallas Theater Center which was designed by Frank
Lloyd Wright
A Guide to the Paul & Kitty Baker Collection (Collection 035) 18
Series VIII: Theater Brochures and Programs (1929 – 1996, n.d.)
15 /8 Dallas Theater Center brochures
15 /9 Trinity University Theater brochures
16 /1 Assorted theater brochures
Series IX: Iceland Base Command WWII (1943 – 1945, n.d.)
21/ 3 Copies of the Iceland Base Command newspaper, “The White Falcon,” and an
Icelandic newspaper, “Morgunbladid”
16 /2 Artworks
16 /3 Play programs and ephemera
Series X: Photographs (n.d.)
16 /4 Nine black and white, three and a half by five inch studio proofs of Paul and Kitty Baker
Series XI: Personal Ephemera (1911 – 1942, n.d.)
16 /5 Handwritten notes
16 /6 Trinity University and assorted university material
Series XI: Personal Ephemera (1911 – 1942, n.d.), continued
16 /7 Foreign missionary material
16 /8 Calling cards
16 /9 Assorted ephemera
Series XII: Books and Periodicals (1953 – 1994, n.d.)
16 /10-11 Baker, Paul ABCs of Natural Sensory Abilities Program Handbook (Preliminary
Copy), Waelder Independent School District, 1992
17 /1 Baker, Paul American Stars, n.d. (unpublished script)
17 /2 Stecker, Elizabeth Wear The Baylor Theater Method of Work – Excerpts From the
Thesis: The Method of Work of the Baylor Theater with a Critical
Analysis of the Prodcution of Othello, n.d.
The following titles have been cataloged separately:
Baker, Paul The Drama Review: Architecture/Environment, with article “Flexible
Theatrical Space,” 1968. PN 1601 .T8
A Guide to the Paul & Kitty Baker Collection (Collection 035) 19
Separately
Accession 2015-078
Baker Estate/Paul and Kitty Baker
This addition to the Paul and Kitty Baker archives includes drafts and workshop materials of Baker’s Making Sense with the Five Senses, extensive lesson plans and teacher evaluations from Baker’s work with Waelder Independent School District and the Arts Magnet School, drafts and cue sheets for Hamlet ESP, and research material and drafts of Peer Gynt. Other material in this collection includes correspondence with former students, Baker’s Texas Institute of Letters and other awards, and pictures of productions at the Dallas Theater Center.
BOX 2004 (1 of 10)
Box/Folder
2004/1: Baker’s Introduction to Your Sensory learning Abilities” Workshop Plan
2004/2: “Weekly Lesson Plan Explained 47 and Groups”
2004/3: “Master Copy Lindblade” Lesson Plans
2004/4: “Additional Lesson Blades”
2004/5: “Exercises for Training the Voice” [12 Copies]
2004/6: “Exercises for Training the Voice” [14 Copies]
2004/7: “Reaction to Book” Published with TCU Press
2004/8: “Workshops Held 1992—New Orleans, Denver, Utah”
2004/9: “Proclamation” for Baker’s Sensory Learning [34 Copies]
2004/10: “TAAS Material from Lindblade”
2004/11: “Sensory Learning As Applied to Weekly Lesson Plan”
2004/12: “Skip Country Rhythm Introduction”
2004/13: “Beat Reading”
2004/14: “Paul Baker” Articles on Baker’s Work With Waelder School District
2004/15: “Summary 1990 Teacher Meeting”
2004/16: “J. Chester Written Receipt of Tapes 1 + 2” Transcipts
2004/17: “Tape 1—Continued, July 3, 2000” Transcript
2004/18: “US News Report—The Five Senses” [13 Copies]
2004/19: “Your Child’s Brain—Newsweek” [16 Copies]
2004/20: “23 Psalm—An Analysis of the Sensory Realm of the 23 Psalm”
2004/21: “5 Senses Workshop at Church” [3 Copies]
2004/22: “Waelder Elementary Workshop”
2004/23: “Baylor + DTC + Trinity—Names of Students with Reputations”
2004/24: “Programs Nuture Kids’ Money Skills—The Prescription for Smart Kids” News Articles, Dated 1997
2004/25: “Makin’ Sense KLRN, P.B. Enterprise”
2004/26: News Clippings on Children’s Education, Dated 1996-1997
2004/27: News Clippings on Children’s Education, Dated 1996-1997
BOX 2005 (2 of 10)
Box/Folder
2005/1: News Articles on Baker’s Arts Magnet School
2005/2: Fax Correspondence with Robin Flatt Concerning Sensory Learning
2005/3: Other Materials on Sensory Learning
2005/4: Production Notes on Macbeth, Including Cues & Character Information
2005/5: Seven Paths to Peace, Inscribed to Baker
2005/6: “ABC Crozier—C. Crozier”
2005/7: “Printed Material & ABC Copy” [9 Copies]
2005/8: “Joan Miesler—Say What ABC Accomplishes”
2005/9: “Symbolic Knowledge & Related Writing”
2005/10: “NSA Vocabulary Master Copy”
2005/11: “Formal Writing of Paul Baker Regarding ABC + NSA”
2005/12: “Dallas Morning News—Early Childhood Program”
2005/13: “Baylor DTC—Integrations Theses”
2005/14: “No. 1 Complete—OA-J Material”
2005/15: “ABC Summer 1992”
2005/16: “Lesson Plan 1991”
2005/17: “LSG—WISD” Notes on Teacher Evaluations
2005/18: “Steve Martin”
2005/19: “Mrs. Adair Margo Chairman” Correspondence
2005/20: “Margaret Mills—Cultural Trust Council”
2005/21: “McArthur, Charlotte” Correspondence, Dated 1992
2005/22: “WISD—Roger Mudd—Learning in America”
2005/23: “Master Copy, Dallas A Mag”
2005/24: “Kitty Baker—Main Office”
2005/25: “Paul Baker, Proclamation 2/30”
2005/26: News Articles and Notes on Baker’s Departure from Baylor
2005/27: “Birmingham” Including Copy of Making Sense with Five Senses
2005/28: “Susan Perez—Letter for Robyn”
2005/29: “Grader WISD—July 1992”
2005/30: “Summer 91—Grade Level”
2005/31: “Elementary Sight Base Committee Request”
2005/32: “WISD 1992 Evaluation Forms”
2005/33: Unused Alphabetical File Folders
2005/34: A Waiting Heart by Amanda McBroom
BOX 2006 (3 of 10)
Box/Folder
2006/1: “Making Sense—Paul Baker 2 Originals”
2006/2: Making Sense with Five Senses by Paul Baker
2006/3: “Making Sense P.R.”
2006/4: “Making Sense Peer Tapes” (1 of 2)
2006/5: “Making Sense Peer Tapes” (2 of 2)
2006/6: “Baker + Reynold Arnold Beginning Script for Integration of Abilities”
2006/7: “Lon Tinkle Review of Pa’s Integration of Abilities””
2006/8: “Making Sense Comments”
2006/9: “Complete Copy (Draft of Baker Biography)”
2006/10: “Rough Draft Complete Copy #2” of Baker’s Biography, Including Edits
2006/11: Correspondence with Henry Carter, Dated October-December 2004
2006/12: “Bible Reading—Psalm I, Psalm 23” Plus Baker’s Texas Medal of Arts Award
2006/13: “Baylor Theater Before 1948” Photographs (1 of 2)
2006/14: “Baylor Theater Before 1948” Photographs (2 of 2)
2006/15: Photographs of a Paul Baker Exhibit
2006/16: “E. Perez Articles and Tape Transcripts
2006/17: “Tapes 1-2-4” Typed Transcripts
2006/18: “The Baylor Theater Method of Work—Beth Wear” Othello Script
2006/19: “Very Imp. Keys—Keys”—Student Testimonials
2006/20: Trinity Spring 1999 Issue, Including Articles on Theater Makeover
2006/21: Baylor Line Spring 2001, Fall 2001, and Fall 2003 Issues Featuring Articles on Paul Baker
2006/22: “Mary Sue Jones” Memorial News Articles and Services
2006/23: “List for DTC Opening 1969”
2006/24: Dallas Theater Center Grant Report
2006/25: 2003 Texas Book Festival Catalog, Including Flyers from Robert Flynn’s Reading at Southwestern Writers Collection
2006/26: “The Pat Neff Report 1947” of Baylor Drama Department
BOX 2007 (4 of 10)
Box/Folder
2007/1: “Medal of Arts 2007”
2007/2: Texas Medal of Arts Highlights DVD
2007/3: “Collage of Fellows”
2007/4: “Paul Baker—B.B. Woods”
2007/5: “2001 Baylor Gathering—Genesis of the Creative Spirit” (1 of 2)
2007/6: “2001 Baylor Gathering—Genesis of the Creative Spirit” (2 of 2)
2007/7: artsTEXAS Fall 2000 Issue [3 Copies]
2007/8: “Paul Baker Enterprises NSFS Statement”
2007/9: Dallas Theater Center: The Early Years 1955-1982 [2 Copies]
2007/10: Ruth Taylor Theater at Trinity University Floor Plans [14 Copies]
2007/11: “Bautista” Correspondence Dated 1994
2007/12: Dallas Theater Center: A Theater Turns 20
2007/13: The Drama Review: Architecture/Environment
2007/14: Venture: The Baylor Literary Quarterly, Issue 54
2007/15: American Theater Fellows: The First Thirty Years With Inlaid Notes
2007/16: The Place of Experimentation in the College Theater, an Address by Baker to the Northwest Drama Conference in 1953
2007/17: Fax Correspondence with Art Rogers, Dated May 1999
2007/18: News Articles on Paul Baker and/or Dallas Theater Center
2007/19: Baker’s Research Material and Notes
2007/20: “Student Records DTC Baylor”
2007/21: “McKinney Book—Bob Flynn Whai Article”
2007/22: “As I Lay Dying” Correspondence
2007/23: “Baylor Line”
2007/24: “Baylor Celebration Copy”
2007/25: “Curriculum Plan for a Drama Student”
2007/26: “TCU Book—Flynn Contract” (1 of 2)
2007/27: “TCU Book—Flynn Contract” (2 of 2)
BOX 2008 (5 of 10)
Box/Folder
“Peer Gynt”
2008/1: Baker’s Reworked Hamlet Script
2008/2: “Hamlet—56-57.70”
2008/3: “Hamlet ESP, Flynn Book”
2008/4: “Light Booth Script” for Hamlet, Special Arrangement by Baker
2008/5: Hamlet Script Arranged by Paul Baker and Staff
2008/6: Baker’s Hamlet ESP, Including Baker’s Scene Drawings
2008/7: Theatre Southwest September and April 1991
2008/8: Dallas Theater Center 1959-1979
2008/9: The Paul Baker Theater: A Photo History
2008/10: Dallas Theater Center 50th Anniversary Promotions
2008/11: Costume Designs for The Tempest for Dallas Theater Center’s Production
2008/12: Other Notes and Materials
2008/13: “Othello and Different Perspectives”
2008/14: Baker’s Director’s Notes on Henry IV (1 of 2)
2008/15: Baker’s Director’s Notes on Henry IV (2 of 2)
2008/16: Peer Gynt—Peer Gynt Script Adapted for the Stage by Baker, Including Some Annotations
2008/17: Peer Gynt—Peer Gynt Adapted for the Stage by Paul Baker, Copyrighted 1986
2008/18: Peer Gynt—Handwritten Notes on Peer Gynt Novel
2008/19: Peer Gynt—“Ideas—Peer Gynt”
2008/20: Peer Gynt—“Peer Gynt 5/25/82” Draft with Annotations
2008/21: Peer Gynt—“Program Information, Houston, NYC, etc”
2008/22: Peer Gynt—Baker’s Notebooks on Peen Gynt
BOX 2009 (6 of 10)
Box/Folder
“Peer Gynt” Continued
2009/1: Peer Gynt—“Extra Script”
2009/2: Peer Gynt—Baker’s Notes on Peer Gynt
2009/3: Peer Gynt—Rolf Ejelde’s Translation of Peer Gynt, Including Baker’s Annotations
2009/4: Peer Gynt—Peer Gynt, Illustrated by Arthur Rachkam, Including Baker’s Inlaid Material
2009/5: Peer Gynt—The Quintessence of Ibsenism by Bernard Shaw, Including Baker’s Annotations
2009/6: Peer Gynt—Kenneth McLeish’s Translation of Peer Gynt
2009/7: Peer Gynt—Rolf Ejelde’s Translation of Peer Gynt, Including Baker’s Inlaid Material
2009/8: Peer Gynt—Horace Maynard Finney’s Translation of Peer Gynt
2009/9: Peer Gynt—Ibsen: A Biography by Michael Meyer
2009/10: Baker’s Professor Emeritus at Trinity University Award
2009/11: Baker’s Texas Institute of Letters Award and Senate Resolution No. 950
2009/12: “Yale” Drama Alumni Newsletters 1981-1991
2009/13: “Therapy Agenda, Sense Therapy”
2009/14: “J. P. Batiste”
BOX 2010 (7 of 10)
Box/Folder
2010/1: “Campbell + Jack Thomas” Correspondence, Dated June 1995
2010/2: “Octavia Solis” Lecture for a Dallas Workshop in 1992
2010/3: “SWTA College of Fellows”
2010/4: “Reba Robinson”
2010/5: “Albert Ratcliffe”
2010/6: “Recommendations”
2010/7: “Ted Perry” Correspondence
2010/8: “Janice Northers” Correspondence
2010/9: “N.T.C. Conference”
2010/10: “Northouse, Donna” Correspondence, Dated 1994
2010/11: “James Laurie” Correspondence & Poetry
2010/12: “Retta Kelly” News Clippings
2010/13: “Jeff Kinghorn” Correspondence and News Clippings
2010/14: Texas Women’s University Curriculum Information
2010/15: “Bob Flynn” News Articles
2010/16: “Retta Kelly”
2010/17: “Robyn Flatt” and Dallas Children’s Theater
2010/18: “Jean Fish Davis”
2010/19: “O. Cory Ackermann” Correspondence
2010/20: “Menu Cheatham”
2010/21: “Arts Connection—Talk Workshop”
2010/22: “Sallie” Correspondence and Other Writings
2010/23: “Sallie Play Space”
2010/24: “Joe Brown” Correspondence, Dated 1991
2010/25: “Birkhead-B” Concerning Mary Sue Jones’s Memorial Service
2010/26: “Dedication—Photo Exhibit”
2010/27: “Cyril E. Bryant” Correspondence
2010/28: “Paul Baker Finished Films
2010/29: News Articles on Robert Wilson
2010/30: Unused File Folders
2010/31: Expressionism in Art, Including Baker’s Annotations
2010/32: “Scrapbook” of Trinity University Events
BOX 2011 (8 of 10)
Box/Folder
2011/1: “Class Notes from Theatre Classes @ Yale 1937” (1 of 4)
2011/2: “Class Notes from Theater Classes @ Yale 1937” (2 of 4)
2011/3: “Class Notes from Theatre Classes @ Yale 1937” (3 of 4)
2011/4: “Class Notes from Theatre Classes @ Yale 1937” (4 of 4)
Wooden Box for Business Cards [Broken]
BOX 2012 (9 of 10) Document Box
Box/Folder
“Tapes”
“Paul Baker—Drama in Education Workshop” VHS Videotape
“ABC’s of Natural Sensory Abilities Waelder Elementary Summer School Presentations—Summer, 1991, Tape I” VHS Videotape
“ABC’s of Natural Abilities Workshop, June 5, 1991, 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.” VHS Videotape
“ABC’s of Natural Abilities Workshop, June 6, 1991, 9:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m.” VHS Videotape
“ABC’s of Natural Abilities Workshop, June 6, 1991, 1:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m.” VHS Videotape
“ABC’s of Natural Sensory Abilities Waelder Elementary Summer School Presentations—Summer, 1991” VHS Videotape
“ABC’s of Natural Abilities Workshop, June 7, 1991, 9:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.” VHS Videotape
“ABC’s of Natural Abilities Workshop, June 7, 1991, 9:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.” VHS Videotape
“ABC’s of Natural Abilities Faculty/Staff Meeting, June 13, 1991, 11:30-12:30” VHS Videotape
“Presentation: Dr. Paul Baker Waelder I.S.D. Summer School, May 31st, 1993” VHS Videotape
BOX 2013 (10 of 10) Document Box
“Tapes”
“4Cupid Paul Baker Tribute (1990)” VHS Videotape
“1990 PB Second Harvest—Tribute: 2 hours, 20 minutes” VHS Videotape
“1990 PB Second Harvest—Tribute: 2 hours, 20 minutes” VHS Videotape
“1990 PB Second Harvest—Tribute: 2 hours, 20 minutes” VHS Videotape
“1990 Second Harvest—Gulager Tribute, Clu + Miriam, 15 minutes” VHS Videotape
“1990 Second Harvest—Tribute by Clu + Miriam Gulager, 15 minutes” VHS Videotape
“Paul Baker Festival: A Tribute from Miriam and Clu 1990” VHS Videotape
“Portrait of an Idol by Reynold Arnould” VHS Videotape
“Dallas Theater Center, Excerpts from Stillsong—PBS by Sallie Baker, Festival Copy, 30 minutes” VHS Videotape
“Hamlet, Baylor Theater 1957 Production—Staged by Paul Baker, 30 minutes” VHS Videotape
“Hamlet, Baylor Theater 1957 Production—Staged by Paul Baker, 30 minutes” VHS Videotape
“Hamlet, Baylor Theater, As Staged by Paul Baker Director, An Impression of the 1957 Experimental Production, 18:55 minutes” VHS Videotape
Mapcase Materials:
Drawer 22
18” x 25” Dallas Playmarket ’74 Exhibit Poster
RESEARCH
Filed under Paul Baker, theater
The company opens Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying,” a novel steeped in Mississippi mud, dysfunctional characters and words so lush and writing so magical that it, along with his other works, won Faulkner a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949.
“We may have all sorts of higher thoughts, but we are physical beings, and we are never really allowed to forget that. It’s an unflinching look at what it is to be human not just in an emotional, but physical sense.”
Faulkner wrote “As I Lay Dying” in 1930. Since then it has been consistently cited as one of the great American novels of the 20th century.
And the play, adapted by Annette Martin, doesn’t fool around with the master’s text.
“We aren’t doing the entire novel,” said McGrath.
“The adaptation cuts a lot out. But there isn’t a word that’s not Faulkner’s. We’ve pulled everything from the book.”
“As I Lay Dying” chronicles the journey of the dirt-poor Bundren family members as they attempt to bring the wife and mother, Addie, to her requested burial site.
It is character-rich, and each of them delivers monologues, revealing inner thoughts, turmoils and troubles.
“They are all narrators, but not all the narrators are reliable,” said McGrath.
“So what you’re doing is piecing together what is happening and what is true and reliable. The effect is one of isolation, where every person is in his own world.”
McGrath is compelled by the family in this story, and the nature of family that Faulkner addresses in “As I Lay Dying.”
“This family is so inept without its mother,” he said.
“We join them as they are in the death watch, and already the family is beginning to disintegrate. Their journey, without that figure of Addie that would help them make decisions along their way, is pretty inept and comic. I hope to bring out the comedy. In a way, it’s deeply disturbing and very close to farce.”
And as for those who fear Faulkner, this may be your chance to embrace the author.
Of all of his works, this is the “shallow end,” said McGrath.
“This is the easy way to get into Faulkner.”
• Presented by: The Rogue Theatre.
• Adapted by Annette Martin
• Where: 300 E. University Blvd. in the Historic Y.
The story
Addie Bundren is dying, watching as her son Cash builds her coffin. She has one wish: to be buried in a town 40 miles away.
It’s a difficult request to fulfill, but the family tries. Addie’s body in hand, they take nine days and deal with flood, fire and buzzards in their quest to bring Addie to her final resting place in her hometown of Jefferson, Miss.
While committed to granting their mother’s desire, the characters, through a series of monologues, reveal some desires of their own that they think can be fulfilled in Jefferson.
ANOTHER ADAPTATION OF ‘”AS I Lay Dying” was written by Robert Flynn. called “Journey to Jefferson” and was first directed by PAUL BAKER at the Dallas Theater Center. Robert Flynn’s adaptation was later widely produced and won international awards.
Filed under Paul Baker, theater, Tucson
It is a sorry treatment that began before this landmark structure was even completed, in 1959, and has pretty much continued unabated ever since. Even this paper has been guilty of defamation. After one of the many unfortunate renovations inflicted upon the theater over the years, my predecessor as architecture critic bemoaned it as a “forlorn ammonite in a sea of asphalt.”
Let me suggest a more generous reading.
The Kalita, which became a city landmark in 2005, is an iconic late work by America’s most singular architect; a masterpiece of structural daring wedged with care into a verdant landscape; and an enveloping jewel that promotes innovative theatrical productions. At least this is how it was conceived, and in many ways how it remains, although its attributes have been veiled and sometimes erased by decades of accumulated degradation, in both the physical and figurative senses.
Filed under theater
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The Brainpan 