Ancient Theatre, Tyrants and Olympic Games

     In Sicily’s largest and oldest Greek theatre, Teatro Greco in Syracuse, and the island’s second largest, the Greco-Roman Theatre in Taormina, the words of playwrights from Euripides, Sophicles and Aristophanes to Epicharmus, the “Father of Greek Comedy,” and Aeschylus, the “Father of Tragedy,” have been heard for more than two milleniums.

     Syracuse, founded in 733 BC, became the region’s capital and was considered the third most important city in the Mediterranean. On the north side, in the archeological park, the Teatro Greco lives on Temenite Hill in the ancient district of Neapolis.  Designed by the architect, Damocopos, the theatre was hewn from rock with hammer and chisel, during the reign of Hieron I, in the 5^th century. The first performances were tragedies performed in groups of three (trilogies) united by a common theme. Each play was followed and ridiculed by a satyr drama, a low comedy with a mythological hero and a chorus of satyrs.  The chorus, a group of actors, recited in concert and commented on the play’s action.  Dance movements were sometimes performed to the accompaniment of musical instruments.

     The city of Syracuse, under Hieron’s rule, was widely honored for its arts and letters; odes celebrated Hieron’s victories; one a tribute to his triumph at the horse races in the Olympic Games held in 476 BC.  Hieron’s court invited and played host to two rivals, Pinder, the Greek lyric poet, and Aeschylus, the first of the great Greek dramatists, who preceded Sophicles and Euripides.

     Aeschylus added a second actor to interact with the first creating dialogue and involved the chorus in the action of the play.  Twelve years after fighting the Persians at Marathon in 472 BC, he wrote “The Persians,” a war story told from the perspective of the defeated. At the invitation of King Hieron, in 471 and again in 469, Aeschylus, traveled to Syracuse where he produced and stage-managed his highly acclaimed play. He is believed to have written ninety plays, seven have survived including “The Persians,” “Prometheus Bound,” and the “Orestie” trilogy.  In 476 BC, he wrote “The Women of Etna,” to celebrate the founding of Etna by Hieron I. Legend tells us death claimed Aeschylus, on his final visit to Sicily, when an eagle mistook his bald head for a rock and dropped a tortoise on his pate. A monument was erected in his honor; the memorial mentions the battle at Marathon but not his plays.

     The dramas were presented as part of religious celebrations held in the spring and fall that lasted from sunrise to sunset. The entire population attended, socialized, gossiped and exchanged the latest news before the performances. 

     Restored and enlarged by Hieron II in the 3^rd century BC, the theater could seat 16,000. Nine sections with names of rulers and Gods etched into stone enabled the audience to find their seats. Today, sneakered feet trod the stage where sandal-clad actors dedicated their performances to Greek Gods and performed for an audience that included tyrants, winners of the olympics and philosophers.

BOOKWORM

Photo by  Vectosmart Dreamstime.com

    

Writers have piles of books waiting to be read. Hardbacks and paperbacks are stacked on a night table and loaded into their Kindles, Nooks, and Tablets. Every writer is a reader—and we are all bookworms.

     I began to wonder how the term originated and decided to do some research—a learning experience I find thought-provoking. In the process, I found out that the bookworm is not a lone creepy-crawly but significant groupings of bugs that find devouring books irresistible.

     Aristotle wrote about insects over 2,200-years ago: “In books, animalcules are found, some resembling the grubs found in garments, and some resembling tailless scorpions, but very small.”

     Silverfish are one of the most common insect to munch their way through a book—their favorite foods are the starch and proteins found in paper, prints, glue and paste. They avoid contact with direct sunlight. Writers do too—we spend most of our time working at our keyboards. Beetles do the most damage when they are in the larval stage as they devour their way through the book—some species feed on the paste and glue of cover and spine others the pages. When they become adults the beetles leave the book by chewing their way out leaving little round holes as they exit.

     The term bookworm was used by Phillippus of Thessalonica in the first century A.D. when he lampooned grammarians and is applicable in our own 21st. Century.

     Cyber space hasn’t changed the terminology. Bugs still manage to find their way onto our computers.

     Are you a bookworm?

      Bests,

     Elise

Celeste Holm

Celeste Holm's obituary was on-line and in the Newspapers yesterday. she lived and worked until she was 95. A major talent she excelled in every part she played--motion pictures, theatre, television, clubs. Loved her work in All About Eve and Gentlemen's Agreement. I saw hr act at the Palmer House in Chicago some years ago. At the finish she left the room and slid down the bannister that led to the front of the Hotel. I waited a few minutes 'til she was out of sight then tried it. I guess you could call her a role model for performers.

She was the original Ado Annie in Oklahoma. Heard that she was offered the part of Aunt Ella in a revival and turned it down saying she could still out do anyone as Ado Annie. Don't know if the story was true but I bet she could.

Bests,

Elise

SHERLOCK'S CASTLE

     

     Films about Sherlock Holmes are in theatres and television has been featuring many diffeerent versions of one of our favorite detectives so I'd thought I'd rerun a blog that I wrote for NYUS about my visit to Gillette's Castle--the home of William Gillette.

      Excited as children about to enter an enchanted realm, my husband and I board a ferry that whisks us across the Connecticut River from Chester to Hadlyme. In front of us—at the peak of the highest of seven commanding hills, a hill known as The Seventh Sister, Gillette castle— a formidable fortress that belongs to the Middle Ages and the “retirement home” of William Gillette, the actor, dramatist and inventor— commands the lower Connecticut River Valley.

     Gillette—intelligent, witty and mischievous—gave the breath of life to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional Sherlock Holmes, wrote two plays–Sherlock Holmes and The Painful Predicament of Sherlock Holmes and earned over three million dollars, a hefty sum in the early1900s, with his portrayal of the great detective.

     Begun in 1914, the castle was completed in 1919, at the cost of one million dollars—equal to about thirty million today. Beneath the castle’s tower and turrets are secret passageways and a staircase that disappears. The framework of the manor is steel and oak covers its beams while inside twenty-four rooms exhibit exposed stone and forty-seven doors and every window in the castle are made of hand carved southern white oak furnished with a different lock, individually designed by Gillette, locks that would challenge anyone but Sherlock Holmes. Gillette’s sitting room mirrors Sherlock's at 221B

Baker Street

and the fourth level of the castle holds a secret hide-a-way. Entry to the hide-a-way, comfortably furnished with two windows and a fireplace, is by a ladder, a ladder Gillette would pull through a trap door. Raffia matting and Japanese rice grass decorate the main hall, floors are made of hardwood, and within the room is a concealed door through which William Gillette often made a grand entrance. Gillette conceived and directed the castle’s construction with the same originality and sense of the theatrical he utilized as a playwright and actor.     

     In 1898, Gillette’s fascination with Sherlock Holmes led to a correspondence with Arthur Conan Doyle. At their first meeting, he arrived at Doyle’s home wearing a long gray cape and a deerstalker cap. Sherlock Holmes incarnate— in his forties Gillette was the right age and at the perfect height at 6’2”—Gillette’s patrician features and deep-set, blue eyes made him appear to have stepped out of the pages of Doyle’s book. When Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories about Holmes appeared in Collier’s Weekly in 1903, the illustrator, Frederick Dorr Steele, used Gillette as his model.

      Gillette extensively rewrote a five-act play that Doyle had written then cabled Doyle asking permission to “Marry Holmes.” Sir Arthur replied, “He could marry Holmes or murder him or do anything he like with him.” The original rewrite was lost in a fire at the Hotel Baldwin in San Francisco but Gillette reconstructed the play and sent the manuscript to Doyle. According to David Stashow’s 1999 book, Teller of Tales: the Life of Arthur Conan Doyle, Doyle’s reaction to the script was, “It’s good to see the old chap again.” 

     Sherlock Holmes – A Drama in Four Acts, produced by Charles Frohman, opened in Buffalo on October 23, 1899 then moved to New York’s Garrick Theatre on November 6.  Gillette’s creative mind produced spectacular lighting and stage effects—musical themes and dramatic chords were also used to convey mood and emphasize conflict as it unfolds in the mystery melodrama. The setting is dark and gloomy Victorian London where Holmes rescues the lovely Alice Faulkner, saves a royal marriage and confronts his arch-enemy Professor Moriarty. Frissons of fear chill and delight the audience when at the end of Act I, in the Stepney gas chamber scene, Holmes places Alice behind him and smashes the room’s one lamp with a chair—the theatre is abruptly plunged into blackness. The only light left in the chamber comes from the glow of Holmes cigar. 

     “The public likes villains,” Gillette said in his opening night speech and since 1899, the audience has enjoyed a most satisfactory encounter between Holmes and his evil adversary, the reptilian Professor Moriarity. 

     Playing the part 1,300 times, his imprint on the character is recognized today. Instead of the straight, oily clay pipe used in Doyle’s books, Gillette introduced a curved Calabash pipe—he could hold the curved stem pipe between his teeth, display his distinctive profile and speak his lines. He wrote and introduced the most celebrated line—“Elementary, my dear Watson.    

      Gillette made his last stage appearance in the part in 1932 when he was in his seventies but his appearance, once seen on cigarette cards and a cartoon in Vanity Fair Magazine, still defines the fictional Holmes.

     He died at the age of eighty-three in 1937—in his will, Gillette asked his executors not to sell his estate to some “blithering saphead,” after his death. His wish was granted when the State of Connecticut bought the property in 1945 and invited the public to Gillette Castle State Park. William Gillette, with his eccentric castle, panoramic view of the Connecticut River and the aura of theatrical magic that floats over the estate, continues to offer entertainment to an appreciative audience.

Bests,

Elise

RED, WHITE AND BLUE

    

     On July 4^th, I remember singing the patriotic songs, You’re a Grand, Old Flag and Yankee Doodle Dandy, My Country ‘Tis of Thee, and God Bless America at family gatherings. The evening was spent on the rooftop watching firework displays from Macy’s. We could see, in the distance, bursts of stars dressed in brilliant reds, yellows, greens, purples, and silver shooting high into the heavens, cascading through the air and slowly drifting away to make room for an ever more brilliant illumination of the night sky.

     I wonder what the Continental Congress would make of our celebration. On June 11, 1776, the Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia to draft a document that would officially break our ties with Great Britain. Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman and Robert R. Livingston were all on the committee. Jefferson thought to be the most powerful and expressive writer wrote the document—a total of 86 changes were made to his draft before the version we know today was adopted on July 4^th.

     Music and the sound of bells and a bonfire added to the festivity on July 8, 1776 when the first public readings took place in Philadelphia’s

Independence Square

. Fireworks lit up the sky in 1777 and soon celebrations began to take place in other towns and cities and congress established Independence Day as a holiday in 1870. Today we celebrate with fireworks, parades, picnics, marches by John Philip Sousa who wrote the official American march The Stars and Stripes Forever and the singing of our national anthem—The Star Spangled Banner.

     This July 4^th, we can look forward to Macy’s traditional firework display and join in via television when A Capitol 4^th is presented. How do you spend Independence Day?

Happy July 4^th.

Bests,

Elise