LARRY KORNFELD INTERVIEW with Steve Bottoms, 9.95 - Judson ...

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SJB: Yes. But was there a tension, then, between the right to fail, and a sense ofpressure to succeed, and I'm talking not just about Judson but the movement ingeneral, if there was such a thing as a movement..LK: I think as time went on it grew. And you would have secret hopes, or not suchsecret hopes, and you had to relax, you had to give that up, you had to practice allkinds of meditation to get rid of that kind of ego. Because you knew it affected yourwork. And after a while it became quite clear: you know, in Everyman, Everymansays to death, 'Thou comest when I least expect it.' And death comes in that way, butalso success comes, when you least expect it. And I think that's true of everything,professional and amateur, Off-Broadway and on-Broadway, you hope you can buildthings up ... but essentially art has to do with the release of yourself into the work, andthen it comes. Of course we all know that the history is that some of the greatest,most successful works of art ... we know that La Traviata was laughed at, so wasCarmen ....SJB: Do you think OOB has had a big influence on what has happened in the theatresince?LK: I don't want to slough off your question, but deep in me I'm not interested ininfluences. You see A doesn't influence B, A and B are both influenced by somethingsimilar, we don't know what it is. A may copy B, or be sllpported by B, or vice versa,but. .. I know I look back on some of my work in retrospect and realise that clearly Ihad seen such and such a thing, but at the time I wasn't conscious of it, I didn't knowwhat the influence was. I've never been a critic, I'm not good at it. So I'm notinterested in who influences who, I'm more interested in the work getting out. Nowwhen I'm listening to music, I'm very aware - when I'm listening to Benjamin Britten- of the incredibly subtle and beautiful influence of both Shostakovich and Mahler.But that's not important. I'm not a musician ... Shostakovich was a friend of, wasbefriended by Britten, and was certainly very much in awe of Mahler, but was heinfluenced by them? No. But you can see there where they were and what they did inhis... Britten, when he does atonal passages, does that mean he's influenced bySchoenberg or Berg or Weber? Not really. He just used some of that vocabulary.LK: It's a funny thing. I don't know how many directors think of themselves as artists.I think young directors now do, but in my generation I think most directors werepeople who worked with artists, and who helped the artwork. They were organisers.But I felt always that I was an artist.SJB: Is that an "influence"? Directors now thinking of themselves as artists in ownright?
LK: And then that goes too far. Or does it? I don't know? I think that Peter Sellars'Cosi Fan Tufte - I can see how people would think that was absolutely aberrrant,doing that in a diner. Well I saw it, and I thought it was certainly not what Mozartmeant, but oh it was fascinating! There were moments in that that were so brilliant, soexciting! So, Mozart's very strong, he can outlive any of us, so why can't we tryoutsome of those things? And there are other things that you shouldn't touch. I mean atthis point I would not change a thing if I were doing Beckett. It's ridiculous, it'sgilding the lily (to use a clichZ): Beckett should be done as he wrote it, as it wasmeant. When I see people doing Beckett with barbed wire around it I say come on, goaway! That's not what it's about! That's not where he is!SJB: Well as we were saying, some writers lend themselves to free interp. better thanothers.LK: What, in general? Well when it wasn't stupendously exciting, it was just bad.People were not trained. And that was very important that that happened at that time.It revitalised the theatre, not having that professional tonality. Because the giftedamateur brought something new to the theatre. A person like Florence Tarlow neverstudied acting ... You've seen pictures of her, you've seen the Promenade pcitures?She was Miss Cake. And she was a librarian! And she was wonderful, she broughtthings to roles and performances, to Saint Mary of Egypt, to Miss Cake, toStrindberg, this breast in the [,.? ..] show ... People would come to see FlorenceTarlow! She was an amateur, she was also very smart! She brought things that werewonderful.LK: No, I'm not being negative at all about this. You asked me what the acting waslike. By professional standards it was pretty poor. And under the hands of somedirectors, with good scripts, those productions could be wonderful. And sometimesthere would be wonderful actors who would come in to work. I mean Al Pacinoauditioned for Judson when he was a kid! (We didn't accept him: I mean I had seenhim perform, and I thought he would just destroy the place, he was too strong! I wasreally wrong: what it amounted to when I look back was that I was terrified of him, Ididn't know if I could handle him. And I don't know whether I could have: I couldnow, I think. But. .. he was just seventeen years old!) So, amateurism, you know theold clichZ, people say it comes from 'a lover of, and these people loved it! But therewere B'way productions, and there still are, where I simply can't bear to be in thetheatre, because the acting is not exciting, it's not original, it's not personal, it's noteven good. It's just bad, the people up there have no idea what they're doing, becausenobody asked them for anything interesting. I don't mind seeing people with rustytechniques or no techniques as long as their souls are out there, and that's what
Page 6 and 7: -- from song to song in one play: w
Page 8 and 9: The church's mission was very spiri
Page 10 and 11: LK: Yeah. I was always very fond of
Page 12 and 13: of the truck driver, who's the chor
Page 14 and 15: young playwrights, poets, who had a
Page 16 and 17: LK: The theatre was originally form
Page 18 and 19: SJB: Michael Smith said somewhere t
Page 20 and 21: LK: Remy Charlip's work. Almost any
Page 24 and 25: happened with the best of Off-Off-B
Page 26 and 27: So they really retained the quality
Page 28 and 29: SJB: Irene was saying how you shoul

LARRY KORNFELD INTERVIEW with Steve Bottoms, 9.95 - Judson ...

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