Latest in a series of posts on the Arts in Bethlehem

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Latest in a series of posts on the Arts in Bethlehem

“A Better Law of Gravity”

“A Better Law of Gravity,” collected in The Beauty of Their Youth (2020), began as a kind of playful experiment: I wanted to try to imagine the life of Frankie, the 12-year-old girl at the center of Carson McCullers’ 1946 novel The Member of the Wedding, as a disaffected 18-year-old. I changed a few other things along the way; Frankie is now called FJ, and the story has been moved to a later time—probably the 1970s or early 1980s. Though it began playfully, the story turned more serious as I wrote it, eventually pulling in themes of gender identity, social isolation, and sexual violence that are all there (though some are more immediately apparent than others) in the original novel.

Joyce Hinnefeld

Joyce reads “A Better Law of Gravity” here on The Other Stories podcast, where she is interviewed by Ilana Masad.

Excerpt from “A Better Law of Gravity” :

Gradually [FJ] realized that Janice had begun to cry.

“What is it, Janice?” she asked her then. “Are you okay?” And she patted the hand that held her own.

But Janice yanked her hand free then and slapped the air where FJ’s hand had been, “No, I’m not all right, I’m loose as a goose, I’m a firecracker ready to go off, a loose cannon aimed at the outer zones of the universe. If I can just get there, if I can just fly a little farther out, I’ll be off their screens for good. You’ll see, kiddo, I’ll fly right off the map and then they’ll never get me back.”

“Who?” FJ asked, even though she knew Janice had to mean Jarvis. And for FJ there was her father, Aunt Pet. Everyone who seemed to like her best when she was quiet and out of the way. And hadn’t she once talked about a similar feeling with Berenice and John Henry, seated around the kitchen table with the playing cards spread out in front of them? Everybody feels caught, she had said that day (and she winced, remembering Berenice’s reply—“I’m caught worse than you is”). But to her it seemed more like everyone—and most of all she herself—was coming loose.

“All of them, the psychiatrists, your brother, my parents, the whole bloody shebang,” Janice said as she grabbed her open handbag off the floor. For another cigarette FJ assumed, but instead she pulled out a bottle of pills.

“It’s these, squirt. Watch out for these things.” She shook the brown bottle, rattling it in FJ’s face. “They’ll pin you down with these.” She threw the bottle in FJ’s lap.

“It’s this they’re after,” Janice went on, pointing at her right temple. “It’s the top that’s spinning up here, spinning so hot and fast they can’t get a hold on it, but not because they aren’t trying, oh no. I’m spinning right out of their grip but they’re desperate to get to that hot spot at the middle. The tropical zone. The psycho-tropics.”

Janice giggled then, pleased with her pun, and FJ laughed, too. “The psycho-tropics,” FJ repeated. “That’s clever.” She put the bottle of pills in her shorts pocket and said, “I hate to tell you this, Janice, but I have to pee.”

This was true, she did in fact have to pee, but besides that, FJ was getting very nervous. The more Janice talked about her spinning top of a mind the faster she drove. Yes, FJ did remember feeling loose, too, when she was a kid. But right now the fact remained that at the line about the psycho-tropics, FJ looked over to see the speedometer needle coursing well beyond the speed limit, to sixty, seventy, eighty, and beyond. And at that point she looked closely at Janice and admitted to herself that yes, in fact, she felt afraid of being as loose as that.

But by this time Janice was mumbling to herself—more about not stopping, about what might happen if she did—and it was clear she’d forgotten FJ was even in the car.

“Not this time!” she hissed as ashes from the cigarette at the corner of her mouth drifted onto her skin-tight T-shirt and the bare, downy skin of her arm.

“Not. This. Time.” By now her voice was barely above a whisper, but she pounded the steering wheel furiously with each word.

And even though Janice had taken her foot off the accelerator now and the speedometer needle was on its way back down, FJ knew that all she could do was close her eyes and brace herself, grit her teeth and hope for the best, because like it or not, Janice was flying somewhere else right then and it didn’t matter whose car it was or who was in it. So that when they rolled off the highway and finally smacked into a tree, the only thing that surprised FJ was the silence afterwards.

Joyce Hinnefeld is the author of two short story collections, Tell Me Everything (1998) and The Beauty of Their Youth (2020), and the novels In Hovering Flight (2008) and Stranger Here Below (2010). Tell Me Everything received the 1997 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Bakeless Prize in Fiction, Stranger Here Below was a finalist for the 2006 Bellwether Prize in Fiction, and In Hovering Flight was the Booksense/Indie Next #1 Book for September 2008. Hinnefeld has been a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (in both Virginia and Le Moulin à Nef, France) and received a Christopher Isherwood Foundation Fellowship in 2010. She is Professor of English and the former Cohen Chair in English and Literature at Moravian College, where she founded and directs the Moravian College Writers’ Conference. The Beauty of Their Youth, in which “A Better Law of Gravity” appears, is available from Wolfson Press.     

Learn more about Joyce at www.joycehinnefeld.com or https://www.facebook.com/jhinnefeld.

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The Crowded Kitchen Players

“Twelveness: A Play in Three Scenes” by the Crowded Kitchen Players

Legendary American pianist and songwriter George Gershwin and Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg volley tennis balls, music theory, and musings on the meaning of art on a Beverly Hills tennis court and over dinner and drinks in a series of entertaining and provocative conversations that may never have taken place. But, they should have.

from Dave Howell, “Curtain Rises: Crowded Kitchen Players’ ‘Twelveness’ audio recording sound move for theater troupe.” Bethlehem Press, July 11, 2020.

The Crowded Kitchen Players release of “Twelveness: A Play in Three Scenes” by Charlie Barnett as an audio file retains the dramatic impact of the original stage production.

Plus, it has the advantage of portability and convenience. You can listen to it wherever and whenever you want.

Ara Barlieb and Pamela Wallace, cofounders of Crowded Kitchen Players, co-directed the audio version, recorded at Westwires Recording USA, Allentown, a few days before the coronavirus (COVID-19) shutdown.

The recording creates a three-dimensional sound that takes advantage of stereo and speaker separation. In the play’s opening scene, you can hear a tennis ball moving from channel to channel. The sound shifts as two tennis players talk to each other across the court.

Barnett recommends listening with headphones, preferably good ones, making sure you have the left and right channels set to the proper placement.

Barnett, an Easton native who lives in Washington, D.C., is better-known as a musician than a playwright. He has performed with his band, Chaise Lounge, at State Theatre Center for The Arts, Easton; Miller Symphony Hall, Allentown, and Musikfest and Godfrey Daniels, both Bethlehem.

Barnett has recorded numerous albums, including the recently-released “Charlie Barnett All By His Own Self.” He has composed music for TV shows, including “Saturday Night Live,” “Weeds,” “Royal Pains” and “Archer.”

The Crowded Kitchen Players has been performing at the Charles A. Brown Ice House, Bethlehem, but its recent productions were postponed because of the coronavirus shutdown. “There is no indication when it will be back up,” Barlieb says of the Ice House.

Barlieb is rehearsing the two plays that were postponed, “Book of Revelation: The Comedy” and “Dogcatcher,” and plans to present each as 10-episode videotape versions on YouiTube and other social media platforms.

Barlieb is establishing a Crowded Kitchen Players’ YouTube channel.

from Dave Howell, “Review: ‘Twelveness’ anyone? Audio play matches Gershwin, Schoenberg.” Bethlehem Press, July 11, 2020.

George Gershwin and Arnold Schoenberg did not seem to be natural tennis partners. Gershwin was 37 and Schoenberg was 62 when they met.

Although both were musical geniuses, Gershwin was a popular favorite while Schoenberg’s 12-tone method of composing was too academic and experimental to be embraced by the general public. It was called “atonal.” Schoenberg said it should have been called “pan-tonal.”

Schoenberg visited Gershwin weekly for tennis, which is the basis for the Crowded Kitchen Players audio drama production of “Twelveness: A Play in Three Scenes” by Charlie Barnett.

The Crowded Kitchen Players presented “Twelveness” in 2017 as a stage play that switched scenes between the first and second floors of the Charles A Brown Ice House, Bethlehem. It had a different cast that that for the audio version, except for Stauffer as Gertrud.

The audio version, “Twelveness: A Play in Three Scenes,” is one and one-half hour in length and is directed by Ara Barlieb and Pamela Wallace. It is much different than the stage version, drawing more attention to the theoretical music arguments, and requiring more imagination from the listener regarding character interaction.

With only four actors and an emphasis on dialogue, it works in the audio format. Oswald and Stauffer use light accents, so they can be understood, and can be distinguished from the other two characters.

The portrayals seem historically accurate and they perfectly fit the play, The story builds as Gershwin is portrayed by Ferry as gradually more and more neurotic. Schoenberg is portrayed by Oswald as unemotional except concerning music, Rogers is portrayed by Cipoletti as flirtatious. Gertrud is portrayed by Stauffer as slowly finding herself as a person.

“Twelveness: A Play in Three Scenes” by the Crowded Kitchen Players can be downloaded at: www.ckplayers.com/audio-theatre

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Some may see the Westgate Mall as a dying shell of itself, but for me it contains memories of family, friends, innocence, and discovery.  The poem asks you to look deeper than the surface and think about the real meaning and measure of the location and its people. It is a poem not just of discovery but of re-discovery of something familiar but changing.

Matt Wolf

The Westgate Mall

Been hanging out at the Westgate Mall
with the ghosts of my childhood
for the last two hours
Passed up 15 Facebook status post moments.
That thought is postable.
That image is postable.
Didn’t want to inundate the world with
any more of my life.

The Westgate Mall really isn’t part of this world anyway
just some bizarre weigh station in between here
and the next embodied go-around
An island of groceries, skateboards, elderly track stars
and benches.  Lots of benches.
Or perhaps this Mall is as real as any place in this universe
alive and kicking with its bus stop and
brazen beating hearts yearning to hold onto to the marrow
of Bethlehem, Pa.
I think I’ll stay a little longer and find out.

Matt Wolf has written and performed poetry for the last 22 years in the Lehigh Valley and San Francisco Bay Area. He has organized over 40 local poetry readings and multi-media events over the last 8 years in the Lehigh Valley area. He has taught many poetry workshops in Lehigh Valley schools. He is also a Mindfulness Instructor and is a member of the Bethlehem Fine Arts Commission. Poems previously appeared in Lehigh Valley Vanguard and Lovers and Fighters: Poetry for Social Change. His book A Journey is published by BAPL Books, 2018. See the article “Giving Back” on Matt (with great picture) in the March 20, 2019, issue of Fig.

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“It occurs to me I am right on the line
between heaven and earth.”
               Cleveland Wall

With all of April’s usual National Poetry Month festivities cancelled, Cleveland decided to record a poem a day and post it to YouTube. The site of “Liminal I” is the “spirit field,” a grassy swath along Lehigh Street at the bottom of 7th Avenue.

Liminal I

My lad and I take a short walk
to the bottom of the lane behind our house.
But the end of the lane is not the end.
Beyond lies a road, a swath of green,
a wild slope, and the railroad tracks.
Beyond the tracks: canal, towpath,
river, mountain; and beyond the mountain
are shops and a cinema we know
because we have been there. Our minds can see
a thousand miles in every direction.
We can see around corners.

The green swath is mown we know not
by whom. The wind makes a blunted sound
against our hoods, the sky
more pearly than leaden.
A keening comes from the brush
as of a baby crying, but as we approach
it fades and resurfaces farther on,
more like a goat’s voice. It strings us
along to the end of the field
where, through a break in the bracken,
we see a truck beside the tracks below,
the complaint of its engine borne up
on gusts of wind which bend its shape.

The lad lies down on thick-thatched grass
and bids me do the same, which needs
a quelling of the grown-up injunction
to remain always upright in public.
When I lie down, it is quiet. The wind
rushes smooth, unimpeded over me.
The blank white sky develops
subtleties of grey, a visible depth.
Unseen geese honk; smaller birds fly over.
It occurs to me I am right on the line
between heaven and earth.

Then I see sparks flitting in the air,
bright on bright like angels escaped
from the head of a pin, and I wonder
if I could be seeing into another plane
in which these busy sparks are darting
all the while, unseen by mind or eye.
I tell myself it is my vision tripping
on a surfeit of light. But my son
sees the same sparks and has no doubt.

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Proudly presenting
THE 15th ANNUAL YOUNG PLAYWRIGHTS’ FESTIVAL
ONLINE!

WHEN: Saturday, May 9, 2020 @ 7pm – TONIGHT!
WHERE: Wherever you are!

———–

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“If I should lose my language,
That would be the end of me.”
Bob Cohen

Bob Cohen, Home at My Typewriter: Selected Poems, Bethlehem:
BAPL Books, 2018.

So I attended Matt Wolf’s poetry reading the other week as part of the Bethlehem Area Public Library’s fine online series during this coronavirus era of our lives.

And then I went to buy a copy of Matt’s book as part of the BAPL Books series.

And found a book by Bob Cohen. (More on Matt later, I promise.)

I knew Bob Cohen.

Lots of us knew Bob Cohen (1938-2016): Peace Corps volunteer, a Dean at Lehigh, owner of a College Admissions small business, president of the Rotary Club, member of the Bethlehem Arts Council, BAPL board member, WDIY commentator and Board member, cabaret singer, actor. 

That was Bob Cohen.

But I didn’t know the multi-talented Bob (if you don’t believe me, look here and here and here) as a poet.

Neither, apparently, did his wife Amy Miller Cohen, who describes in an introduction to this book finding among a “gold mine of his papers . . . several hundred poems.”

Several hundred secret poems! (Echoes of Emily Dickinson!)

And in this locally produced book you’ll find about a hundred of them selected by BAPL director Josh Berk.

It was hard to pick one to share here on Gadfly in the previous post. I had a dozen top picks. But I eventually decided on “I Saw You Take the Cat’s Head.”

A poem shouldn’t need somebody else’s analysis. It should stand on its own. And I hope you enjoyed it.

But let me say that I enjoyed Bob watching Amy, appreciating her domestic artistry, recognizing his own incapacity, and thankful to be with her. And he has nailed that haughty exiting cat dead on.

You’ll find much, much more enjoyable in the book.

Library users will be familiar with plans for the “Bob Cohen Room,” with donations still appreciated for space renovation.

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I Saw You Take the Cat’s Head
Bob Cohen

I saw you take the cat’s head
With your hand, all fingers working
Down to the bone through fur;
Then two other fingers, thumb and forefinger
Lit on one ear, stopped a moment,
And proceeded to turn it inside out,
Exposing the labyrinthine gulleys full of silty brown.
The first touch with your probing Q-tip
And she started in your hand, but you held fast,
And gentle-talked her into submission.
You went in, and in again
Until the brown stuff hung upon the cotton.
“Look what we got, Munchkin! Now
Was that so bad?”

The cat, released, walks away
Ungrateful; I go back to my book,
Brimming with gratitude.

Home at My Typewriter: Selected Poems, Bethlehem: BAPL Books, 2018.

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Life has kind of slowed down for the Gadfly in the coronavirus days.

None of the usual City Hall intrigues to cover.

No meetings to attend. (He misses the Parking Authority get-togethers. Sigh.)

Sometimes not much to do but watch his beard spread almost as fast as the virus.

But empty space has given him time to think.

He would like to do more to cover, to support, to promote, to publish the arts in Bethlehem.

Not the so-called big stuff — you know, ArtsQuest and all that. They are well taken care of.

But the “local arts,” the “resident arts community” — the home-grown!

Of which there is a substantial amount.

And which ever needs nourishing.

This was always part of the original conception of the Gadfly blog in the notion of “local color” pieces (a term borrowed from an American 19th century literary movement: works written in a region, about a region, that are recognizably regional, that, in effect, could be written nowhere else).

From the Gadfly About page: Local Color: original creative work with recognizably local Bethlehem subjects or connections — art, poems, mini-essays, vignettes, photographs, songs — that help us see or think about our town and townspeople in interesting ways.

Creative work by Bethlehem artists and, especially, about Bethlehem itself.

Followers know Gadfly’s orgasmic coverage of the Touchstone Festival and the H. D. celebration.

And you’ve watched him poach Dana Grubb’s treasures and gratefully receive Ron Yoshida’s perambulating perceptions.

But Gadfly would like to take this opportunity to beat the drum more forcefully.

Gadfly would like to publish original work of various sorts.

Gadfly would also like to publish pieces about resident art.

He’s not thinking so much as announcements of events — Facebook is good for that — though he will do so.

He’s thinking more of blog-length pieces that help us understand the art and artists and analyses or reviews of works or events. Thought-pieces.

Some followers are connected to the local resident arts community — please pass the word!

Some of you — perhaps with a bit more time on your hands these days — have something you would shyly and secretly want to share — Gadfly can offer the opportunity for a first-time publication.

Gadfly himself has put some things out there (for instance, “First day of school” and “The Downsizing Decision (nearing 80)”) and survived!

(Hmm, Gadfly rather likes his line “where excuses mate, and even the dust has weight” in the poem.)

So please let the word go forth that Gadfly invites creative work and posts about creative work!

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Matt Wolf poetry reading via BAPL:

Latest in a series of posts on the Arts in Bethlehem

Bach at Noon In Your Home!

Latest in a series of posts on the Arts in Bethlehem

“Library”: from the Latin liber, book.

Do you remember when libraries were just books?

The small library tucked away just over the railroad hump in Lansdowne, Pa., during the 1940s and 1950s was as instrumental in shaping my mental and moral character as the Highland Ave. playground was in shaping my physical and social one.

There the building still is. Thank god it’s not a tattoo parlor or something. The spirit of the bun’d, bespectacled Miss Barrow must still reside beneath the eaves.

Our BAPL is not your grandfather Gadfly’s library. It’s so much more.

Would you join me tonight at the virtual library ?

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Gadfly bets that when many of you think of the Arts in the Valley, you think of ArtsQuest, Pennsylvania Shakespeare, the State Theater, and so forth.

Big-name productions. Lots of advertising. Lots of splash. Lots of foreign talent.

Gadfly bets that some of you may know of Touchstone Theatre, but few of you have attended a performance there.

A shame.

Touchstone is one of many distinctive Arts treasures in Bethlehem.

Founded in 1981, Touchstone Theatre is a professional not-for-profit theatre dedicated to the creation of original work.  At its center is a resident ensemble of theatre artists rooted in the local community of Bethlehem. . . . The Ensemble . . . transforms audiences through community-based theatrical productions and community-building projects.

Original work . . . resident ensemble . . . rooted in the local community . . . community-building projects.

Remember the 10-day Festival UnBound? (Deargod, look at this video, and I dare you not to glow with pride at this Bethlehem extravaganza!)

Frankly, Gadfly has not been good at recognizing and patronizing these home-grown treasures.

But that is changing.

Gadfly has become familiar with and inspired by a project that you will hear more about later, a project about the Arts of the Local Culture, about the Resident Arts Community.

Native talent.

A month ago, Gadfly went to an original play at the Ice House that he wrote you about, and Sunday to a wonderful performance (playing this week too) at the Pennsylvania Playhouse.

And on Sunday March 8, 2PM he’s going to Edith Piaf: Hymn to Love at Touchstone.

Gadfly has two tickets for that performance he can’t use.

Here’s his offer: he would like to give the two tickets to someone who has never attended Touchstone Theatre in return for a short post on Gadfly about the show or the experience of going to Touchstone.

What say? Contact Gadfly via the Contact link on Gadfly or at ejg1@lehigh.edu.