September 27, 2023

As production nears, I hunted in my journals for previous mentions of Ben and Angela. This is from October 3, 1999. Last Century:

Converse College is doing Four for the Gospel Makers and Ben and Angela’s Romance as reader’s theater this coming Saturday. If one of them wins their contest, it will be done as a mainstage production. About that I forbid myself any hope, lest the disappointment be worse than it needs to be.

Then, from October 10:

Drove to Converse College yesterday for Theater Converse/ Scriptwriters of South Carolina 5th Annual New Play Festival. I gave myself too much time, and arrived early, to watch the campus fill up with proud papas and elegant mamas for parents’ day. I had forgotten that Converse is a women’s school; the boxy femininity of the place added an air— how to say it without deepening a cliche?--that was gentle, airy, safe, sweet. The conference itself was filled with that atmosphere I had forgotten since I had stopped attending such things: the innocent asininity that attends on too much confidence, the most talk from the least able, awkwardness and unexpected excellence, all with a gentle unconsciousness that made it, if exhausting, funny rather than horrible. Steve Willis from Greensboro thought he was going to be the star of the show. He was doing a “presentation”-- which turned out to be his bragging on his many accomplishments— in the afternoon, and he had just come off a run with John Glines in New York. I latched on to him and his lover, though, because they were friendly and, even when mutually bragging on Steve’s brilliance, interesting. Another cliche— gay men being the life of the party. His play was almost unbelievably boring, but had just won a prize at some festival in Savannah. I never cease wondering what goes through peoples’ minds. My Ben and Angela’s Romance was the second play on the bill. The actor playing Ben had not showed, so the director of Steve’s show was pressed into service, and the result was that, though Angela, one Chris Freedman, was subtle, intelligent, excellent, Ben was a dud, as well as being way too old, and, as he’s half the show, it was a half a debacle. Added to that was the fact that my director was either stupidly literal-minded or had deliberately tried to sabotage the show. It was all, I thought, awful. When it came time for the playwright to speak--a period in which Mr. Willis went on for an easy twenty minutes--I could barely find a thing to say, except for the obligatory thanking of cast and crew. I was so frustrated. If I hadn’t had another show later that afternoon, I would have left. 

There was another playwright from Asheville. Her play was called Merlin, the Mountain Medium, and was so unbelievably bad that, again, I wondered what the theater people were thinking, or if the array of scripts they had received was really so abysmal, or if they thought the sittin’-and-spittin’ genre of ignorant mountain folk doin’ ignorant and boring things needed representation. During her talk, the playwright explained that the play came from the need to confront grief at the death of her dog. 

Four for the Gospel Makers came on in the afternoon. I unclenched then, finally, for the direction was intelligent, and though my actor, Keith Turner, took some time to warm up, he was attractive and fully adequate. Lest I appear like one of those people I mock for their self-delight, I will keep to myself the fact that the play moved me deeply. It was as though it were not mine at all; I was listening to catch every word, learning, discovering, dreading, at some points, weeping. The emotion in me afterwards was the knowledge that it, as least, is a great play. I was satisfied. The conference had given me what I needed. When they asked me afterwards where the play had “come from,” I flatly could not answer them. It sounded like I was being evasive or “arty,” but I really didn’t know how that had gotten into my mind.

During the reception, when they announced the winner of the contest and the play that will be presented as a mainstage offering in May, it was Ben and Angela’s Romance. This surprised me as much as it must have the others, though the conference director had emphasized that choice would be made based on the script and not on the performance. It was not the play I had enjoyed most--that had been Learning the Alphabet by Liza White--though perhaps I was too pretzeled up inside over the production to enjoy it. I left happy. Walking to the car I sang “Green Grow the Rushes, O” all the way through for the first time in a decade. 

Then, from the production:

May 11, 2000

The highlight of the week was traveling to Converse College in Spartanburg, twice, to see the production of Ben & Angela’s Romance. It was one of those experiences that was better than one expected. I sat in the dark, weeping briefly opening night, for relief, for sheer joy. Everything could have been much worse. Some things could hardly have been better. D played Ben. Danny is so beautiful that the sight of him skewed my impression of the play, which turned into a fantasy of our lives together, tender and sexual, out of which I could not fully rouse myself. I thought of him all the way home, and could not sleep for thinking of him once I got home. The second play, Packing Up the Past, the English premiere of the work of a famous Spaniard, Sebastian Junyent, was so self-congratulatingly bad and so long, that after 2 ½ hours, after I had dozed all that I could doze, I came as near as I ever have to standing up and shouting, “All right! That is enough!” It is a mistake to put the exit on the other side of the stage, so that one cannot escape. Nice reception afterward, (exactly the same food as the reception in the same place in October) during which I was praised almost enough to suit me, and during which D suffered my attentions in a way that seemed welcoming, physical and affectionate. I smile thinking of all the things which might have been on his mind-- respect, delight at premiering a play and meeting the playwright, who had just praised his performance, maybe a little artistic veneration--which were not precisely what I wanted. 

Ellen joined me Thursday night, and liked the play, though questioning, as I did, certain directorial choices. It was lucky she could see through the technical disasters, some of which had the actors on stage saying their lines in the dark, or by the light of a flashlight someone from the audience seemed to have trained on them. Even with that, it was very good. Slipshod Asheville makes me forget the difference well trained actors can make.

The minute one crossed into South Carolina, the air smelled of honeysuckle.

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The sky looks like rain. All my bulbs are in (for the moment) so I’m praying for rain.