MEMBER BLOG TAG: baylor
| Thursday, December 1, 2011 10:58AM | | | | Writing Lesson From a Mime | Tags: Dallas Theater Center, Theater of Nations, As I Lay Dying, Kennedy assassination, Baylor University, Journey to Jefferson, Marcell Marceau, Etienne Decroux, Waco, Jean-Louis Barrault, Faulkner, Hemingway
| | | | The Dallas Theater Center was selected to present my adaptation of a Faulkner novel at the Theater of Nations competition in Paris. The year was 1964, a year after the Kennedy assassination, and the novel was As I Lay Dying. A troubled Charles “Chip” Bohlen, US ambassador to France, called to say that the French loved President Kennedy and posters highlighting Dallas and “As I Lay Dying” would horrify them. The title of the play had to be changed.
On a transatlantic call I changed the title of the play to “Journey to Jefferson,” and the Dallas Theater Center production of the play received a Special Jury Award.
One night when we were dark, the cast decided to see Marcell Marceau who was appearing at... | | | | | | | Tuesday, September 27, 2011 12:12PM | | | | Sit-In at Baylor Drug | Tags: Baylor University, Baptist, Drama, Paul Baker, Eugene McKinney, Thornton Wilder, integration, Baylor Drug, Abner McCall,
| | | | After two degrees from Baylor University, and two years teaching at Gardner-Webb, a Baptist college in North Carolina, I was invited to be a member of the Baylor Drama Department. Life Magazine, Saturday Review, Reader’s Digest, and other magazines and newspapers had given the department and its theater productions an international reputation. I was going to join my mentors, Paul Baker and Eugene McKinney. The impossible dream, had come true.
I had a wife and two young children and my first year I taught in summer school because I needed the income. That meant teaching three classes and directing a play in the summer theater program. My plan to write full-time in the summer was severely curtailed, especially since directing required the same kind of work... | | | | | | | Tuesday, December 22, 2009 12:08PM | | | | Christmas Means Tamales | Tags: tamale man, food pyramid, Baylor, North Carolina, Floore's Country Store, Ruben's
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Vernon, the county seat, was 12 miles from my father’s farm. In addition to the courthouse, it had 2 or 3 grocery stores, a library, 3 picture shows and “Snuff Street” where men met over and around tobacco products while the kids went to the library and then the picture show and women sat in cars and remarked about women who walked past on the sidewalk.
Whenever we went to Vernon I begged Mother and Dad to buy tamales to take home with us. A tall, slender, elderly African-American made tamales and stood on a street corner and sold them out of a steaming, red and white two-tone, two-wheeled cart. Tamales were my favorite food, even more than my mother’s fried chicken or fried steak... | | | | | |
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