· PDF fileBrando, Vivien Leigh, and Kim Hunter in Elia Kazan’s 1951 film, made under...

SPRING/SUMMER 2002 • ALABAMAARTS • 1

Breaking New Grounds in the ArtsAl Head, Executive Director, ASCA

The Awakening of DesireThe creative process behind Winthrop Corey’s new balletMarie S. Grip, photography by Shelia Hagler

“Project Alabama”High Fashion From The Deep SouthSunshine Huff

Elephants and Butterflies: The Sculpture of Bruce LarsenGeorgine Clarke

Through The Remembered GateJay Lamar

Alabama: The Country to Film InBrian Kurlander

A Happy MarriageText and TunePhillip Ratliff

The Southern Writers’ Project at the AlabamaShakespeare FestivalCreating New Works for the StageSouthern StyleGwen Orel, photography by Phil Scarasbrook

Exhibition Schedule: The Alabama Artists Gallery

Volume XVIIINumber 1

SPRING/SUMMER 2002

In this IssueThe Creation of New Works in Alabama:The state’s emerging art and artists

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ALABAMAARTS

Library of Congress Card No. 74628447

On the cover: "Snow Moon" by Sue Anne Hoyt. Oil on board, 5 1/2" x 8". Sue Anne Hoyt lives inClanton, Alabama. She is a profes-sional artist who received her MFAfrom Auburn University in 1999. Herwork has been exhibited extensivelythroughout the region, includingone-person shows at KentuckMuseum in Northport and AuburnUniversity at Montgomery.

2 • ALABAMAARTS • SPRING/SUMMER 2002

Alabama State Council on the Arts

Mission StatementThe mission of the Alabama State Council on the Arts is to promote Alabama’sdiverse and rich artistic resources while highlighting excellence and educationalexperiences.

The Agency

The Alabama State Council on the Arts is the official state agency for the supportand development of the arts in Alabama. It was established in 1966 by an act of theAlabama Legislature. The agency supports not-for-profit arts organizations, pro-gramming in the arts for the general public, and individual artists. The State ArtsCouncil works to expand the state’s cultural resources and preserve its unique cul-tural heritage and places a high priority on arts programming by and for schools.The Council’s primary means of supporting the arts and making the arts moreaccessible to varied audiences is through a multi-faceted grants program whichcovers all disciplines and fields of creative expression.

The Council

The fifteen members of the Council are drawn from communities throughout thestate. They are appointed by the Governor for six-year terms, and selection is basedon expertise in the arts, business, or community affairs. The officers of the Councilare elected by its members.

The Council meets four times each year, at various locations throughout the state. Itapproves agency programs and policies, develops long range plans, and makes finaldecisions on state and federal grant dollars under its jurisdiction.


Breaking new ground in the arts is not only the life-blood of artists; human exploration in the arts is alsothe life-blood of a progressive society relying on cre-

ative energy to move forward. New work in the arts is also areflection of a culture that is in a constant state of flux. Ourculture is changing as a result of shifting values, rapidlyadvancing technology, economic conditions, political unrest,globalization, the evolving roles of church and state and dif-fering manifestations regarding the “pursuit of happiness.” Ashas been true since the recording of history, artists are hold-ing the mirror of our world in their hands.

Creative expression and the unique vision of artists signifi-cantly impact what we think, see, hear, touch and read everyday. Artists tell our story as a people, past, present and futureand the vehicles used to communicate, at one time or anoth-er, are the result of “new work.” In the arts, what speaks to usmost profoundly is the finished product, through diverseimages, sounds or words, but the process of art making is animportant element unto itself. Creative thinking, expression,and learning are process-oriented and, ideally, become a wayof life. An aesthetic way of thinking and processing informa-tion influences the way we behave and the important choiceswe make regarding the environment in which we live.

In Alabama, we have an abundance of new artistic workbeing created daily. We have many talented artists creatingwork in virtually all disciplines, involving every aspect of theperforming, visual and literary arts. Their work can be seenin schools, in outdoor community spaces, on stage, on screen,in books, in galleries, in public buildings and in homes. Theirwork provides character and vitality to our state in waysunlike any other field of human endeavor. The new work iscoming from all age groups, ethnic groups, genders, socialbackgrounds and geographical areas. The result is a mosaic ofstyle and form that is impressive by any standard of evalua-tion. Some of the work is inspired by a “sense of place,” clear-ly reflecting Alabama roots, while other art draws on moreuniversal themes and influences. We have reason to be proud

and excited about the work that is being done. One does nothave to go to New York to see excellent new work in the arts.It can be found in all parts of Alabama.

So, what is my point in writing about new work by artistsin Alabama? The point is to issue a challenge to Alabamiansto support the new work being done in all areas of the per-forming, visual and literary arts. Go to exhibits, perfor-mances, screenings and readings of new work. This work isnot hard to find. If you think new work is seldom presentedin Alabama, you are wrong. Seek and you will find. Buy tick-ets, books, paintings and craft items. My guess is that you willnot only enjoy the experience, but you will be impressed,inspired and enriched.

This issue of AlabamaArts attempts to highlight some ofthe new work that has been and is being done in the state.The articles deal with both the product and process of art-making, in order to provide you with a more completeappreciation for the work. An effort has been made to reflectthe diversity of work being done and the unique artists livingin our state. Clearly, difficult choices had to be made regard-ing inclusion for publication. Obviously, there are manymore artists out there worthy of attention. Hopefully you willbe a bit more motivated after reading this issue ofAlabamaArts to seek out both the artists and their work.You might even be inspired to commission a piece of newwork yourself. ■

Al Head is the

Executive Director

of the Alabama State

Council on the Arts.

Breaking New Ground in the Arts

by Al Head

THE AWAKENING OF“Desire”The creative process behind Winthrop Corey’s new ballet

by Marie S. GripPhotography by Shelia Hagler

“How are you going to do that?” was a questionfrequently posed to Winthrop Corey whenhe announced that he was planning a new

ballet based on A Streetcar Named Desire, the TennesseeWilliams classic. “At first, I wasn’t sure,” said Corey. “Iknew it would be difficult.”

Corey, artistic director of the Mobile Ballet, was ini-tially inspired to create the work while watching MarlonBrando, Vivien Leigh, and Kim Hunter in Elia Kazan’s1951 film, made under the watchful eye of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Williams. Corey had wanted to createa second original full-length ballet following the 1998 pre-miere of his acclaimed Dracula, feeling that he “needed todo more.” For a time, he considered various children’s sto-ries—Hansel and Gretel, Beauty and the Beast—but ulti-mately was struck by the film of Streetcar: “I saw marvelouspas de deux opportunities that told of a broad range ofemotions, and I thought, ‘This might be interesting’.”

While excited about the possibilities he saw in thethree main characters—the fading Southern belle,

Blanche; her sister, Stella; and Stella’s brutish husband,Stanley—Corey was aware that, for a full-length ballet, heneeded to create more than three roles. He also knew thatcertain elements of the film were unsuited to a ballet: “Inthe film, everybody met in the bowling alley, and that, Iknew, would not work onstage. So I thought, ‘What hasthe flavor of New Orleans’?”

He envisioned a smoky honky-tonk jazz club. “Jazz isnot my idiom; I’m not that well-versed in it, but I do haveenough friends in the field who could help me with it. Ithought that, as far as the story goes, it would work. Icould place all the principals in the jazz club and theycould meet one another, and I could set the story line upwithin that context.”

Corey felt that while he could easily introduce hischaracters in the jazz club setting, the task of explaining howBlanche DuBois had arrived at that particular place at thatparticular point in her life was no easy task. He had to, ineffect, conjure a past for Blanche and establish how shearrived in New Orleans in a state close to madness. In the

The cotillion scene was added to warn the audience as to what was to come.


play, Blanche had sufferedan early, disastrous mar-riage, but Corey felt thatwould be difficult to depictonstage. Although he knewhe was taking liberties withTennessee Williams’ writtenword, he felt the playwrightwould not have objected tohis solution—a militarycotillion set in a time and place worlds apart from the seedy,immediately post-war French Quarter setting into whichBlanche had descended. Because Blanche and Stella hadgrown up in a privileged society family, employing thisdevice wasn’t too much of areach. It also provided a perfectsetting in which to place theyoung Blanche—so different fromthe Blanche who arrived yearslater on her sister’s squaliddoorstep. “This (the cotillion)showed a time when Blanche wasvery happy, blossoming intoyoung womanhood and the pas-sions were very gentle. I wantedto contrast that with what hap-pened later on, when the passionsbecame ugly,” explains Corey.

Having grown up in St.Louis, which he describes as“neither North nor South”,Corey relied on some of hisMobile friends who are well-versed in Southern rituals, toschool him in the parlance ofcotillions. “I went to a lot ofpeople and asked a lot of ques-tions, and then designed a balletwithin the ballet, a 23-minuteexercise in dance for six youngcadets and 12 young girls.”

The “military ball” aspect

of the scene presented itsown set of opportunities.“Choreographically, Ichallenged myself; usuallywhen you get 18 or 20people onstage, you eitherface front, or you faceside, and I wanted tobuild all of these danceson diagonals, which I had

really never done in any of the ballets I’ve created.” Theyoung dancers faced challenges, as well, says Corey: “Itwas difficult for the dancers, hard for them to stay in lineand do the same thing while maintaining the rigid forma-

tion thaty I really wanted, butthey did it.”

The atmosphere in thescene is initially romantic andlight, but hints at what ulti-mately is to come for Blanche,when several of the youngcadets treat her roughly and tryto take advantage of her inno-cence. Explains Corey: “I want-ed to create an atmosphere of‘after the ball’, and what couldpossibly happen, maybe in aparking lot, or behind a build-ing, when the cadets get slightlyout of line with Blanche. Icouldn’t imagine another scenechange, so I left it in the ball-room, lowered the lights andhad everybody leave.” WhenBlanche returns for a forgottenbouquet, she is confronted byone cadet who initiallyapproaches her gently, but thengets a little rough, and finally isjoined by two others who getrougher still. These were “notnice men”, explains Corey, of

Stanley (Ian Carney) and Stella (Zoë Lombard-Todd)

Blanche (Meg Gurin Paul) and Mitch (Todd Eric Allen)



the type that Blanche would attract repeatedly throughher life. “I think she kept attracting men who were notquite so nice to ‘fix’ what had happened to her when shewas young. It’s all very psychological.”

Corey crafted the jarring end of the cotillion to warnthe audience as to what was to come. The music for thescene is a Duke Ellington tune which “fit it to a T”,according to Corey.

Not surprisingly, music is the driving force behindall of Corey’s choreography: “I can’t go anywhere step-wise without it.” Selecting the right music for this balletwas a particular challenge: “Finding it took a little over ayear. It was really, really difficult. It had to be stylized, ithad to have a flavor of the region, and it had to have adramatic quality.” Corey went through his own musiclibrary, bought “crates” of CDs, and put the word outamong his friends. It was his ballet mistress, Ann Duke,who suggested the ballet’s pivotal piece. “Ann had hearda piece of music and said, ‘Wink, you just might want tolisten to this.’”

The piece was Wagner’s overture to Tristan undIsolde, which Corey had in his collection but had neverconsidered for a ballet set in the grimy French Quarter. Itbecame the music for the pas de deux between Stanley andBlanche, and “worked perfectly.” The additional musicfor the ballet came from a wide variety of composers: JohnBarry, Emmanuel Chabrier, Emil Darzin, Duke Ellington,Joseph Kuhns, Ennio Morricone, Michael Nyman, JeanSibelius, and Richard Wagner. The flavor of the selec-tions ranged from the steamy (Ellington) to the stately(Sibelius and Wagner.)

With music in place, the task of “writing the book”and creating the choreography began in earnest. On atrip to one of his favorite places, Las Vegas, Corey hap-pened to envision a particular lift; this gave him a nudgein the right direction, and he began to write down steps.Three hours later, he had more than enough choreogra-phy for the music, and ended up having to edit. “That’sjust what you want—to come up with more steps than youcan use.”

While the dance muse seemed to have been laboringefficiently, the monumental task of designing and creating

costumes and sets loomed large. The play itself clearly sug-gested the late 1940s or early 1950s. Corey then simply“looked it up in a book” to find the styles of the day, withthe assistance of New York designer and longtime collabo-rator Ron Altman. Jazz club outfits were swingy shirtwaistsand sundresses in a variety of colors and fabrics—allauthentic to the era. Corey himself shopped for eightmonths for the men’s clothes, picking up just the rightpieces here and there. Silk and chiffon were used for thewhite cotillion gowns because of their wonderful qualityof movement onstage. Corey himself made 26 of the cos-tumes; all those for Blanche and Stella, the 12 whitecotillion gowns, and four of the jazz club dance dresses.Veteran wardrobe mistress Marian Blake and her corps of“costume ladies” made the rest. Timing was essential.“The costume patterns for Stella (Meg Gurin Paul) had tobe ready for fitting an entire year in advance, when shewas in town for Cinderella (March 2001).”

Sets for the production, ranging from a NewOrleans neighborhood with the open-fronted (for artistic

Stanley (Ian Carney) and Stella (Zoë Lombard-Todd)


purposes) apartment belonging toStella and Stanley, to the smoky,strobe-lit jazz club, and the ultra-sophisticated 1930s era cotillionballroom, were conceived byMobile designer Ron Barrett andhis team. As magnificently as theyturned out, the sets had an inaus-picious beginning: “I went tolunch with Ron Barrett and talkedabout what I wanted, and he drewon a plain old paper napkin,”Corey laughs. That same napkinwas given to Bob Swisher, MobileBallet’s multi-talented construc-tion wizard, as the blueprint.Following several production meetings, Swisher, alongwith helpers, brought the sets to earthy, vibrant, gloriouslife. Perhaps the most breathtaking component of all thesets was the series of six enormous mirrors hanging at anangle to reflect the dancers at the cotillion. “I wanted tocreate the effect of multiplying the number of dancers inthe scene—the mirrors worked,” says Corey.

While the music, choreography, costumes and setsare essential, the key element is the dancers. When askedif he created the ballet with specific dancers in mind,Corey mused: “I imagine I must have. I needed dancerswho were mature enough to bring to the roles their lifeexperience, and to combine it with mine, and come outwith a performance. There was wonderful collaboration.Meg, Ian, and Zoë were all perfect.” (Meg Gurin Paul is aformer Joffrey dancer and frequent Mobile Ballet guest;Ian Carney is a New Orleans native and principal dancerwith the Montgomery Ballet; Zoë Lombard-Todd is alongtime principal dancer with Mobile Ballet.) Perfect,perhaps, but pulling everyone together was a choreograph-er’s nightmare. “I had cast members in four cities (Mobile,New York, Montgomery and Pensacola), and had to won-der, would they all be doing the same ballet?” The princi-pals were joined by the talented young members of theJoffrey Dance Ensemble, and Mobile Ballet’s own dancers.Corey didn’t even see the entire cast perform together

until the Thursday dress rehearsalbefore a Friday morning schoolperformance. “It was a gamble,with heart and instincts and emo-tions. But it worked.” Corey wasespecially delighted when HarveyHysell, longtime fixture on theNew Orleans ballet scene,approached him after a perfor-mance. “You know,” said Hysell,“there was no cotillion in Mr.Williams’ play ... but it made itbetter.” High praise, indeed.

After such a lengthy and emo-tionally charged two-year process,is Winthrop Corey ready to rest on

his laurels? Absolutely not. Corey and Scott Jovovich(recently of the Broadway cast of Fosse) are already inves-tigating a co-production of a ballet version of MoulinRouge. “With the costumes, it would have great produc-tion value. And, with two companies sharing, you essen-tially have twice the budget.”

One could reasonably expect a new ballet as ambi-tious as Moulin Rouge to cost hundreds of thousands ofdollars. However, sets and costumes for A Streetcar NamedDesire cost about $16,000, due to the gifted volunteers atMobile Ballet (including Corey, who donates his costume-creating skills). With his cadre of eager and capablefriends, Corey and Mobile Ballet, unlike the unluckyBlanche, certainly won’t be left to rely solely on the kind-ness of strangers. ■

Marie S. Grip is a native of Boston, Massachusetts, and holds a

B.A. in English from Boston College. She has written on travel,

education, and the arts, with articles appearing in The

Virginian Pilot/Ledger Star in Norfolk, Virginia, and The

Catholic Week in Mobile. A longtime resident of Mobile and

active community volunteer, she has been Director of

Development of Mobile Ballet for four years.

Mitch (Todd Eric Allen) and Blanche (Meg Gurin Paul)

Natalie Chanin leads the kindof life that most would con-sider glamorous. A beautiful

young fashion designer, she has spentthe day before this one in LosAngeles, and last week she was inParis at the pret-a-porter (ready-to-wear) shows. However, glamour isnot the first word that comes tomind as you enter her headquar-ters—a brick ranch-style house out

in the country notfar from Florence,Alabama, inwhich the livingroom has beenconverted to acutting room andthe former bed-rooms to administrative offices.

As Natalie greets you and offers“the best espresso in the county,”she’s wearing well-used sweatpantsand sneakers, with a triangle of scrapcotton knit tied around her hair, andan unusual apron/tool belt wrappedaround her waist. Four telephonesare stuffed into various pockets orhung from the apron, and one ofthem seems to be ringing constantly.She explains that this is not standardpractice, but she’s accumulated all ofthem on her person during the morn-ing: one phone is exclusively forcommunication with her businesspartner, two are regular lines, and

one is the fax line she uses when sheknows she’s going to have a longconversation. You understand rightaway that she’s not trying to impressanyone; she’s just very, very busy.And very, very focused.

Natalie herself would hardlyapply the word “glamorous” to hercareer choice. As she says (speakinga bit metaphorically), “You spendfive minutes designing a line, thenfive months selling it and producingthe orders. Filling orders is not fun—it’s doing the same thing over andover again.”

It might come as a surprise tothe uninitiated that the design

“ProjectAlabama”

HIGH FASHION FROMTHE DEEP SOUTH

by Sunshine Huff

The garments are hip and elegant at the same time and command high prices—asmuch as $350 to $400 in Barney’s or Fred Segal’s for a top like this one.

Our state’s name takes pride of position in these coutoure designs.


aspect, the part of the process that isconsidered to be “creative,” is such asmall slice of the time it takes to pro-duce a line of high-fashion garments.But it would be short-sighted tothink that the opportunity for cre-ativity is confined exclusively to thedesigning of the garments.

On the contrary, NatalieChanin and her partner, EnricoMarone-Cinzano, have incorporatedsome very creative thinking into theplanning of their company. In fact,one of the most original aspects ofthe operation is the method the twohave come upon for the actualsewing of the garments. They employ“70 lovely ladies of north Alabama,"as Natalie terms them, to cut andhand-stitch the garments she designs.

(Some of the lovely ladies actuallylive in south Tennessee—the stateline poses no barrier!)

As with many of the bestideas, necessity was the mother ofthis invention. When Natalie firstbegan her independent career as afashion designer (after beginning inthe business as an assistant design-er/office manager who located andpriced trimming materials for a NewYork junior sportswear company),she was making her original tee-shirts herself. But then, after a cou-ple of mentions in the Italian andFrench versions of Vogue, she had somany orders she couldn’t possibly fillthem all by herself.

That’s when she rememberedthe quilters she had known when shewas growing up in LauderdaleCounty. She realized that she wasusing the same stitches on her tee-shirts that they used in making theirquilts. So she came back home tofind the help she needed.

“We’re making our productiongoals,” Natalie says of her home-based staff, “and we have more than$250,000 in orders to fill this season.One store took 200 pieces.”

The system that the womenand Natalie have devised is based ona very tight tracking schedule. Asthe orders come in, each stitcher isassigned certain garments or parts ofgarments; she works in her ownhome on a specified deadline to exe-cute the appliqué, reverse appliqué,embroidery, beading, and/or overdye-ing the design requires. Garmentseams are often hand-stitched, manytimes with the seam allowances onthe right side of the garment to addtexture and interest.

“As home-grown as ProjectAlabama may appear, we are a textileindustry here, with the same prob-lems that a New York manufacturerwould face,” Natalie emphasizes.“Our standards are extremely high.We have never had a garmentreturned.”

The women laugh when theirfamilies joke that one day they’regoing off to “get a real job.”

“This is a real job,” they say,and they mean it. From the first timeout, in February of 2001, whenProject Alabama had orders fromeight stores, to one year later, inMarch of 2002, the number of storeshas quadrupled. Now 32 clients haveordered from the company, and manyof them re-order during the season.

“Most orders are at least twentypieces, although several have been formore, in a couple of instances for asmany as 200 pieces. As a store re-orders, they nearly always increase thenumber of pieces they want,” saysNatalie. Those “70 lovely ladies” arethe backbone of the business, the rea-son that Natalie knows she canaccept such large orders and re-orders.

The business that Natalie andher partner are building is based onthis line of hand-stitched clothingthat is made from recycled cottontee-shirts. Natalie remarks that shehas moved from buying individualtee-shirts from every thrift shop shepasses to buying in bulk from a clear-ing-house for the Salvation Army.She dyes the shirts, and cuts awaythe knit neckbands and sleevesbefore she uses them in her own gar-ments. The product line has evolved,in one short year, from just tops to afull line of dresses, pants, coats,The garment styles vary; some are weskits or bustiers. All

are made unique with elaborate needlework.



shorts, and bathingsuits.

How does oneachieve such successin such a short time?There are several rea-sons, and Natalie isquick to recognizethem. She says shehad an “amazing”education at NorthCarolina State inRaleigh. Her majorwas design theory,with a minor in tex-tiles. NC State grewout of the famousartists’ colony of the1930s known asBlack Mountain, andNatalie found herselfthriving in theBauhaus-based, veryconceptual, designdiscipline. A youngmother when sheapplied for admission, she says a bitof luck was involved in her selection.She and the person with whom sheinterviewed discovered that theyshared a love of The AlexandriaQuartet, by Lawrence Sanders, andthey spent much of the interviewtime talking about literature. Sheloved the school.

“The emphasis was on Process,on teaching people how to think,”Natalie remembers. When asked ifshe was in over her head when shestarted at NC State, she blithelyreplies, “Sure. I’m always ‘in over myhead.’ I am now!”

Another reason for her successis her New York-based partner,Enrico Marone-Cinzano, who has a

deep background in business, primar-ily in real estate and banking. ProjectAlabama is a new type of venture forhim, but he is not deterred.

“Doubt is such a big part of thecreative process,” believes Enrico,echoing Natalie’s belief that she hasbeen “in over her head” in every-thing she’s undertaken. Andalthough there is room for doubt inthe creative process, there is no roomat all for sloppy business practices,the partners believe. ProjectAlabama is organized as an LLC(limited liability corporation), islicensed in the state of Alabama, andis a registered trademark.

“This business hasn’t just hap-pened,” Natalie makes clear. “It rep-

resents a serious financial commit-ment and ‘sweat equity’ of abouttwenty hours a day, seven days aweek.” She indicates that she spentas much as a year raising the capitalshe would need to get the businessstarted, and that part of the planningfor the company’s success was theensuring that it would be adequatelyfunded during its start-up period.

The third reason that ProjectAlabama has found success so soon isthe publicity it has garnered. For itspremiere season, the partners com-missioned a Project Alabama catalogthat explained the premise of thecompany and showed examples ofthe garments that were available.They sent the 400 catalogs to major

Sewing techniques familiar to quilters such as reverse appliqué, overdyeing, and running stitch are employed by the home-based stitchers ofProject Alabama. The design specifies double thread, with knot and thread ends showing—something a quilter would never allow on herquilts!


stores in Europe and America, andshowed the collection of 200 piecesat the Chelsea Hotel during FashionWeek in New York. The first storesto pick up the line were Barney’s inNew York, Brown’s in London, andL’Eclaireur in Paris. The acceptanceby these prestigious stores attractedthe attention of the magazines, andrepeated mentions in the leadingfashion and trade journals followed(and continue).

During the introductory year, avideo and original CD named“Stitch” made by the ProjectAlabama management was circulat-ed to the fashion media. The videois about time-honored quilting tradi-tions and the women who have con-tinued to uphold those traditionsthrough the years, even when “quilt-ing wasn’t cool,” as it is today.

“It feels good to be givingback to Lauderdale County,” saysNatalie (whose nickname in fash-

ion circles is “Alabama”).“I never really thought[the sewing project]would be this important,when it began. Now I’mbeing asked to go to othercounties, not only in thisstate, but elsewhere, andteach how to do this, howto make a cooperative ofuntapped labor for home-based work.“Unfortunately, it is justnot possible for me to taketime away from my obliga-tions to my company longenough to put together atalk,” Natalie says withreal regret. “I look for-ward to having the time

someday to be able to help otherpeople establish something like this,but I’ve got my hands full right now.Part of our mission statement for ourcompany is the moving from thisone community towards embracingmultiple communities with addition-al products and projects.”

Although Natalie Chanin,through her natural humility andthe common-sense approach shetakes toward what she does, wouldprobably play down the fact that it’sher own special creativity that fuelsthe demand for her product, there’sno denying that her approach isfresh, new, and innovative, and isthe reason her clothes have causedsuch a stir. And the timing is appar-ently perfect.

A great idea at the righttime—a sure formula for success. ButNatalie’s not taking any chances.

“As good as all this is, we tryvery hard not to get carried away. . .

you make mistakes when you dothat. We want to be careful, to makea strong foundation, so we’ll be hereten years from now.”

Sunshine Huff (aka Mary Elizabeth

Johnson] is an experienced writer who

concentrates on textiles and material

culture. Her most recent books are

Mississippi Quilts (University Press of

Mississippi, 2001) and Quilt

Inspirations from Africa (with Kaye

England; Quilt Digest Press, 2000). She

is currently researching Alabama Quilts

and invites anyone who has Alabama

quilts that were made before 1950 to get

in touch with her through the Alabama

State Council on the Arts.

Natalie Chanin’s sense of humor about her rural Alabama roots comesthrough in many of her designs for her clothing line known as ProjectAlabama.

The back of a garment is often as lavishly embell-ished as is the front.

T he sculptureis a six-footelephant

standing on aninverted rusty bath-tub with wheels. Ithas been selected asBest of Show in the11th annual editionof Art with a SouthernDrawl, a juried exhi-bition organized byThe University ofMobile and showcasing 89 pieces by artists from through-out the South. Works have been selected by W. SteveRucker, associate professor of art at Loyola University inNew Orleans. The underlying theme is Southern wit andwisdom, reflecting regional sensibility and diversity.

Beyond Repair is the title of this mixed-media pachy-derm dominating the exhibition space. It is the creation ofFairhope artist Bruce Larsen and is considered found-object art, constructed of such diverse elements as rakuclay, discarded auto parts, cow bones and rusty metal. Thetusks are driftwood found on the beach.

Why is this found-object art so connected to theSouth? Larsen answers, with a straight face, “I think wehave more junk here.” As to its success, art jurors havecommented about his work: “I liked the creative way heused the materials. Wonderfully different” and “It embod-ies the almost legendary skill of Southern hands and mate-rials involved in assemblage of sculpture.” Current exhibi-tion juror Rucker is quoted in the Mobile Register, “ ...makean elephant out of an old ’47 Ford fender and the lyricism

of the (tail) being achain, it’s just incredi-ble. It’s jazz.”

Larsen’s elephantis making a statementabout universal envi-ronmental concerns.He says, “1 guess theinspiration was just theplight of elephants andthe shrinking genepool.” The sculpturehas been constructedusing salvaged materi-

als, but the animal itself may soon be gone.Bruce Larsen graduated in 1986 with a Bachelor of

Fine Art Degree from Auburn University. The creation ofa costume out of duct tape led to a prize, which then ledto spending the next 13 years in Atlanta doing freelancework designing and constructing special effects, props, ani-matronics and animation. He has worked with musicgroups Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, and WidespreadPanic. He has helped with television productions(Stephen King’s The Stand) and commercials. And he isconsidered one of the best in creating mechanical animalsfor special effects in the film industry. He describes themas “realistic horses that can do stunts.” Those were hishorses in The Patriot.

Now he wants to develop his career as an artist. Heand his family have returned to Alabama, despite all thosecalls from film producers for his help with complicatedprojects. Fairhope is a good place for children to live. He’sconstructing a house in stages—a pagoda shape up onstilts, with a section of glass brick. He thinks it looks like a

Elephants and Butterflies:The Sculpture of Bruce Larsen

by Georgine Clarke

Elephant Sculpture “Beyond Repair,” by Bruce Larsen.

Phot

o by

Ken

t St

ocke

r


space ship at night. (As a side note,he is also NAUI Scuba and UnitedStates Parachute Association certi-fied and is a member of the UnitedStates Hang-Gliding Association.)

A sculpture by Bruce Larsenwill be a signiture piece at the frontentrance of the newly expandedMobile Museum of Art, set for dedi-cation in early September 2002. Thepiece has been commissioned byCIBA Specialty Chemicals, produc-ers of products for the automotiveand plastics industry. Scott Tew,Director of Community Affairs forCIBA, said, “There are three specialevents happening now in Mobile:The City’s Tricentennial, the re-opening of the Museum, and a cele-bration of CIBA’s 50 years inAlabama. CIBA wanted to givesomething back to the community inthis celebration.

The sculpture, titled Transformation,is designed to beas monumental, interactive piece featuring a butterfly witha 20 foot wingspan. Of the title, Tew says, “Communitieschange and evolve. The butterfly is an apt symbol of that.”

Joe Schenk, director of the museum added, “We arethrilled to have one of our corporate citizens give back—especially to the arts community. We are particularlypleased that the commission also acknowledges our on-going support of local artists.” Of the size he says, “Thescale is needed at the museum’s new grand entry. Thepiece will fit well with other sculpture in the outdoor envi-roment on the lake.”

In Larsen’s signature style, the butterfly will be builtof found objects, including glass, rusted metal and a boatmotor. A lever system will allow visitors to move thewings. Tew comments, “His work is unlike anything you’ve

The Patriot horse traveled down a 100-foot track with a stunt man. Bothhorse and rider are thrown violently to the ground.

Black Knight: A mechanical horse operates on a 24-volt direct current motor.



seen. You wonder, ‘How did he think of that?’”Allen Smith, an engineer, an artist, and recipient of

a Design Fellowship from the Alabama State Council onthe Arts, is collaborating with Bruce on the sculpture. Hesays, “I’m very respectful of him as an artist and as a per-son. We encourage each other as artists. We energize our-selves by bouncing off ideas.”

Smith has designed the 30-foot steel blade of grasswhich will support the butterfly. Of the process, he says it’seasy. “You make a sketch on a napkin, digitize it and(Mobile’s) Bender Shipyard’s multi-million dollar equip-ment cuts it out of a sheet of steel.” Of the engineeringneeded to produce a piece of such scale, especially withinteractive components and potential hurricane winds, hesays that it is not a problem. “The technology and knowl-edge of things such as the dynamic loads of wind havebeen known for a long time. The challenge is to do some-thing artistically .”

How do you create such a piece? Smith says you“build it in your head first. You think about the particularsof motion in a butterfly—you think about so manythings.” But most important, you have parents who “didn’ttell him he couldn’t do what he wanted to do.” BruceLarsen says, “I’d be lost without art. It’s the only thing Ican do.” ■

Georgine Clarke is Visual Arts Program Director for theAlabama State Council on the Arts and director of the Alabama

Artists Gallery.


It is not news that Southerners have tradi-tionally had a certain obsession withplace. The questions “where are you

from?” and “who are your people?” are oblig-atory in conversation between any twoSoutherners meeting, especially when theirpaths cross outside their region. In fact, therelationship of place and self has given gen-erations of Southern artists, notably writers,a wealth of creative material.

Poet Jeanie Thompson and I won-dered whether, in this age of televisionand global communities, place still hadmuch influence on a writer and whether itwas to the good or the ill. With supportfrom the Alabama Corporate Foundationfor Children and the Alabama CivilJustice Foundation, we asked more thantwenty nationally and internationally rec-ognized authors who have strong connec-tions to our state to write an essay inresponse to the question: “How did grow-ing up in Alabama, or spending formativeyears here, shape you as a writer?”

In the nineteen essay memoirs thatwe received, the Alabama writers of TheRemembered Gate sit at dinner tables,attend funerals, crawl around in attics orin the dry dust beneath porches, paddleon snake-infested ponds, and stare out theback windows of un-airconditionedChevys as they search for their youngerselves. What they discover about the role

of place in their lives is as varied as thewriters themselves.

For Alabama poet laureate, award-winning novelist, and short story writerHelen Norris, place means land. In earlyspring on the east Montgomery farmwhere she grew up, “there were fields ofwild dewberries and blackberries, whichwe loved to pick, then red and yellowplums, muscadines, and persimmons inthe fall. Deep in the woods was a wideplace where a sloe tree dropped its blush-tipped fruit to float in the water. I tell youthis because it was extremely important tome….Everything I’ve ever written has insome sense come out of those woods.”

Poet Andrew Glaze notes that it wasnot the life of the mind, so much as theactivity of industry and business, thatcharacterized the Depression-eraBirmingham he knew as a child. Hewrites,

“I shall always

be sentimental

about Alabama.

It used to be my

home.”C. Eric Lincoln,

“Coming Through the Fire”

Through TheRememberedGate

by Jay Lamar


people were doing realthings….on the slope of RedMountain…a wagon driverwould be fiercely lashing hispoor mules, trying to makethem struggle a load of coal upthe curve in the nearly verticaldriveway at 2811 NiazumaAvenue. At Acipco, a work-man was repairing a pipe mouldand dusting it just before agiant bucket arrived along therail line and poured it full ofmolten iron. Mme JeanneYoungblood was chain-smokinghalfway up Highland Avenueto the summit from JonesValley on Altamont Road,teaching French verbs to abored high school girl, while anItalian lady in a tiny deli-catessen at 15th Avenue justoff 21st Street was dippingvanilla cones in chocolate.

Then, at age 14, Glaze read EmilyDickinson: “In an almost indefinable way,the direction of my life [took] some sort ofbend, or perhaps curlicue would be a betterword.” However separate from the “real”activity of a bustling city the young Glazefelt, the textures, odors, and thumpingblood of early Birmingham have foundtheir way into his work and given it anextraordinary concreteness and tangibil-ity. (Glaze’s new collection, RememberingThunder, will be published this year byNewSouth Books of Montgomery.)

Place, of course, is not separablefrom the people who inhabit it, andhuman beings fascinated Nanci Kincaid asa child. They were mysterious—and full ofcreativity:

You…knew everyone hadsecrets—and some of themwere not much and others werepretty bad. You also knew thatnobody was going to ever tellyou the absolute truth aboutanything that ever happened inthis life—and you came tocount on this and appreciate it.Instead people told things likethey wished they were orthought they ought to be. Ittakes a little imagination to bea good Alabamian.Kincaid, whose books include

Pretending the Bed Is a Raft (Algonquin,1997), Balls (Delta, 1999), and the just-published Verbena (Algonquin, 2002),asserts that the fact that “in Alabama agood story is always better respected thanthe actual truth” has “always worked outpretty well for her.” Actually, she writes,“the truth gets so far-fetched sometimesthat it is downright impossible to take itseriously. So stories lurk all around, mostof them with some shred of fact in themand then embellished by the hungry-hearted people telling them.”

Those “shreds of fact,” and thetruths that shape our lives, are often dis-covered in vivid memories. Bill Cobb,author of more than a half-dozen novelsas well as many short stories and

Patricia Foster

Mary Ward Brown

James Haskins

Andrew Glaze

Helen Norris

Nancy Kincaid C. Eric Lincoln Fanny Flagg


plays,remembers his paternal grandfathershortly before he died,

over at the old Cobb homeplace in Sumter County, sittingin a chair carried outside on asunny Sunday noon at a familyreunion and barbecue, on thelawn near the pear orchard.The black women from theplace were standing behind thelong table laden with barbecuecooked all night and potatosalad and cole slaw, swishingthe flies away with willowbranches. My GrandfatherCobb, sitting in the chair wear-ing a vested suit, started to cry.The tears rolled down hischeeks; I stood flatfooted andwatched him. I knew he wasgoing to die. Maybe that wasthe first time I had realized thatpeople die. I was touched bysome sorrow so deep that Iknew I could never understandit. I ran away to play with allthe other cousins.For Phyllis Perry, Pulitzer Prize-win-

ning journalist whose novel Stigmata is setin Macon County, Alabama, place meansfamily and its winding strains of connec-tion and loss. “Life is motion. Love inhuman form moves away…then comesback together. And the beloved onesreturn to you, but not as the people youknew before. They are not the untouch-able, the all-powerful, the almost super-natural beings you remember.” According

to Perry, her writing grew out of a power-ful curiosity: “Even as a child, I wonderedabout everything…that was inside ofevery person, dead or alive, who survivedit all, whether I knew them or not. Iwanted to know things about them thatthey didn’t know themselves.”

While it is true that that anyonefrom anywhere has stories to tell on whichplace impinges, place in all its particularsis important. The title of The RememberedGate comes from T.S. Eliot’s “LittleGidding,” the last of his Four Quartets. Itconcerns, among many things, comingback to a place and knowing it for the firsttime. The essays of The Remembered Gateare Alabama stories, and they tell us aboutour place.

At the same time they tell about thehuman experience in general. The routeto the universal is through the individualand the local, as Albert Murray makes soclear in the final essay of The RememberedGate. “This is pretty down-home stuff,” hewrites, “ but beneath the surface of yourold down-home stomping ground…is thecommon ground of mankind in general.”In writing about experience and all thehappiness and pain it contains, we teasethe riddle of place into something more,where it can be expressed, explored, andtransformed. As Murray says, “It is theprocess of extension, elaboration, andrefinement that creates the work of art.”

That’s precisely what the authors ofThe Remembered Gate essays accomplish.In their essays, and in their poems, novels,plays, and short stories, they draw on their

Wayne Greenhaw

Andrew Hudgins

Phyllis Alesia Perry

Rodney Jones

William Cobb

Robert Inman Judith Hillman Patterson Albert Murray


Alabama roots to make art. Takentogether, the essays of The RememberedGate do not make up the whole picture ofAlabama, or of writing, or of how artistsare influenced by place, but they do pointto how rich and vital the connection ofplace and self can be. They give us somepieces of the puzzle, and they create some-thing larger than their sum. As PhyllisPerry notes, “I belong to many places both‘real’ and imagined, both tangible andmythic. But sometimes when I close myeyes in the quiet, I’m in Perote, as close asI come to being somewhere called home.And it’s from home—good or bad—thatall stories come.” ■

Jay Lamar is the associate director of theAuburn University Center for the Arts &

Humanities and co-editor with JeanieThompson, executive director of the Alabama

Writers’ Forum, of The Remembered Gate:Memoirs by Alabama Writers, published this

year by the University of Alabama Press.

Photo of Patricia Foster by Jon Van Allen; photo of Mary Ward Brown by Jerry Siegel; photo of James Haskins by Bill Horne; photo of Andrew Glaze byAdrian Glaze; photo of Helen Norris by Robertson Photography; photo of Wayne Greenhaw by Sally Greenhaw; photo of Andrew Hudgins by JoannaEldredge Morrissey; photo of Phyllis Alesia Perry by M. Shawn Dowdell; photo of Rodney Jones by Gloria Jones; photo of William Cobb by AmyCunliffe; photo of Frye Gaillard by Amy Rogers; photo of Sena Jeter Naslund by Sigrid Estrada; photo of Charles Gaines by Michael Marzelli; photo ofJudith Hillman Patterson by Dennis Cauchon; photo of Albert Murray by Jeanie Thompson; photo of Jeanie Thompson and Jay Lamar by Katie LamarSmitha.

Frye Gaillard

Sena Jeter Naslund

Charles Gaines Jay Lamar and Jeanie Thompson


Ilove going to the movies. There isnothing quite like sitting in a theaterfilled with people, equipped with

hot buttered popcorn, a box of Dotsand a cold Coke, to transport you com-pletely into the stories on the screen.

Being wrapped up in a goodstory is nothing strange to Alabamians,who live with stories like no one else.To prove my point, I challenge you tostop in any town in Alabama and askfor directions. You’ll get two stories andthree ways to get from point A to pointB, and the experience will give you an

appreciation for the art of storytellingthat comes so naturally to Alabamians.

The climate for filmmaking inAlabama is currently at its optimum,primarily due to the leadership shownby Governor Don Siegelman andAlabama First Lady Lori AllenSiegelman. The governor’s vision for

economic development has creatednearly 70,000 jobs for Alabamians, andthe first lady’s commitment to the artshas educated Alabama school childrenabout the benefits of artistic self-expression. The film industry is truly acombination of economic developmentand the arts, and we are fortunate tohave leadership in this state that com-plements the goal of growing the filmindustry.

Hollywood is no longer the center ofthe world when it comes to filmmak-ing. The rise of digital technology has

made it easier for home-grown filmmakers to walkout their front door anddocument the stories theygrew up with in their ownbackyards. It has been apleasure for me to meetsome of these people herein Alabama who areputting their stories intofilm.

For Scott Lumpkin,film is an expression, astate of mind, and a stateof being. Scott is a film

producer. He crunches the numbers forthe budget. He hires the crew and thevendors. He assembles all the pieces ofthe puzzle and holds them togetheruntil the film is sold and screened intheaters. His business is the business ofmaking films, which he has made intoan art form itself.

“As an artist in the productionaspect of a project, I can assemble thebest team possible to tell the story. I canutilize the resources I grew up around,and bring people who inspire me to tellthat story. When in production, I liketo think of myself as the man whobrings the marble to the sculptor. I seethe figure within, and the director chis-els it out with the actors and locations Iprovide.”

Scott grew up outside Fairhope,received his undergraduate degree fromTroy State University inCommunication Arts, and attendedUSC Film School in Los Angeles. Aftera successful year of working on featurefilms in California, he returned toAlabama to work with David Prior atSouthern Star studios in Mobile. Scotthas since opened his own productioncompany, Lumpkin and Associates. Hiscredits in Alabama and elsewhereinclude The Insider, Monster’s Ball, LoveLiza, The Badge, Hometown Legend,Roper & Goodie and many others.Bringing films to Alabama is more thana job for Scott Lumpkin; it is his pas-sion, and he takes pride in being anactive participant in growing the filmindustry in his home state.

“Nothing hurts me more than whenI hear of one of our stories being toldelsewhere.

These are our stories, our places, ourresources and our people. I want tohave them portrayed on screen on our

Sidewalk Moving Picture director, Eric Jambor (left) with Kent Osborne,actor, writer and star of Sidewalk’s 2000 “Best Feature,” Dropping Out.

ALABAMA:The Country to Film Inby Brian Kurlander

own terms, and showthe world theAlabama that I knowand love.”

Erik Jambor isdirector of theSidewalk MovingPicture Festival inBirmingham. He has been working asan editor, cutting television commer-cials, since graduating from FloridaState University’s School of MotionPicture, Television and Recording Artsin 1993. In 1995, recognizing the needto get back to producing his own work,Erik produced a 35mm short filmcalled Gamalost, starring former MTVVee Jay Alan Hunter. The film screenedat international film festivals in 1996,and eventually won the gold award forbest original dramatic short at WorldFest Charleston in Charleston, SouthCarolina. But it would be the film festi-vals themselves that would soon be thefocus of Jambor’s attention.

“The best part of taking Gamalostaround the festival circuit was that Igot to be part of the film festival expe-rience and to see a lot of really greatfilms. The first big film festival Iattended was in Seattle, and I cameback to Birmingham raving about allthe great films I’d seen. Of course, mostof the films I really enjoyed never cameto Alabama—most of them stayed onthe film festival circuit, and there wasnothing here at the time for them tocome to.”

It was eventually Birmingham film-

maker Wayne Franklin who came upwith the idea that would grow into theSidewalk Moving Picture Festival.Franklin, his wife Kelli McCall, andJambor set about making the dream areality.

“Wayne’s idea was that we should doa film festival that was basically theCity Stages of film. You’d buy a daypass or a weekend pass and spend yourtime watching films or hanging out,eating, drinking, listening to music,while deciding what films to see next. Itvery quickly became about creating acommunity environment, where atten-dees could mix and mingle with film-makers. And with the AlabamaTheatre, the Carver Theatre, and theMcWane IMAX Dome all within oneblock of each other, we had the perfectlocation for the sort of festival we’denvisioned.”

Alan Hunter and filmmaker MicheleForman were recruited to the cause,and brainstorming in 1997 turned intoplanning in 1998. In November of thatyear, the group founded the AlabamaMoving Image Association, Inc., a non-profit group that would run the festivaland other related projects, all to furtherthe organization’s mission to inspire,

support and encouragefilms and filmmakingin Alabama.In addition to bringingnew films to a newaudience, Sidewalk alsoprovides a tremendousresource for Alabama

filmmakers. Industry leaders like SonyElectronics and Eastman Kodak attendthe festival and hold special technologydemonstrations and workshops.Filmmakers participate in panel discus-sions, share ideas, and exchange infor-mation. Perhaps most importantly, theevent has encouraged Alabama film-makers to make more films.

“Each year, we receive more andmore films from Alabama filmmakers,and each year, the films that they sub-mit get better and better. At Sidewalk2001, almost one-third of the 100 filmsscreened at the festival were byAlabama filmmakers or had some sortof Alabama connection.”

What do you get when you puttogether two childhood friends fromDothan, a bucket of fresh mullet and adigital video camera? You get a filmcalled Mullet Men, written and pro-duced by Harris Mendheim and star-ring his childhood friend AndyStuckey. The two are part of PossumDen Productions, which, along withCharlie Hubbard, Mullet Men’s editor,has produced the “story of all stories”about the world-famous (or perhapsinfamous) FloraBama mullet toss. Theannual event is held at the FloraBama

A street view during the Sidewalk Film Festival


Lounge in Orange Beach, Alabama/Perdido Key, Florida and attracts color-ful characters from throughout theUnited States who compete for theprestigious honor of determining whocan throw a fish the farthest.

Shooting at the FloraBama was anundertaking, especially with no budget.Owner Joe Gilchrist was kind enoughto give all the guys access passes, withthe only stipulation being that if some-one asked not to be filmed, they wouldnot film them. Fortunately for Andyand Harris, the FloraBama creates abackdrop for a short film that is alreadygarnering rave reviews.

“The movie has to be groundbreak-ing in its cinematography, as there is noplace in the world with the atmosphereof the FloraBama, especially during thenow world-famous mullet toss. Weshot 60 hours of tape on DV cams inAlabama, Florida and New York. Theoutcome is a 60-minute documentaryabout one man’s quest to become aworld fish-throwing champion.”

Possum Den Productions is madeup of six people who had a vision tomake a movie and fulfilled that visionby purchasing cameras, editing equip-ment and using it to tell a humorous,possibly, compelling story. Mullet Mendebuted to a full audience at theDothan Opera House on December 22,2001. It has since played in sold outhouses in Atlanta, Birmingham,Nashville and New York.

There are only a few places in oursociety today where we gather as a

community and share the stories thatbind us together. The movies provideus with a place to laugh, cry, be startled,and contemplate our own lives and theworld that we share with others.Alabama is filled with great stories and,better yet, great storytellers. The vastdiversity of landscapes in Alabama pro-vides filmmakers with an amazingarray of location options. Alabama isnot like filming in just one state; it’s likefilming in all 50 states. All of these fac-tors have led to the coining of a phraseto promote Alabama and the AlabamaFilm Office: “Alabama, The Country ToFilm In.” ■

Brian Kurlander is the director of theAlabama Film office. His goal is to merge

the art of storytelling with technology,which is playing a major roll in how sto-

ries are told and films are currently beingmade. He gratefully acknowledges contri-

butions to this article by Scott Lumpkin,Erik Jambor and Andy Stuckey.

Andy Stuckey practicing his mullet throw in Central Park. The annual mullet toss takes place at the FloraBama inOrange Beach, Alabama/Perdido Key, Florida.


Alabama is not like filming in just one state; it’s like filming in all 50 states.


For a composer, setting a text can be difficult enterprise,involving a series of concessions and compromisesbetween two powerful expressive forces, words and

music. To successfully unite the two, the composer must act assomething of a marriage counselor, finessing the two oftenconflicting parties toward agreement, persuading them tobend in service of a larger concern—a harmonious union.

Samford University composition professor JamesJensen was recently given opportunity to address thethorny technical issue of text setting in his 2001 composi-tion entitled “Three Poems by Theodore Haddin.”

“I’ve touched on the song writer’s most vexing ques-tion—how to accomplish a natural, mostly syllabic, settingof a text that still has musical interest,” Jensen says. “It’sall too easy to go off on a flight of musical fancy thatobscures the text, and when that happens you might aswell ask your singer/narrator to randomly open a phonebook and start reciting names and numbers because, at thispoint, text has become meaningless.”

“Three Poems” received its premiere at AlabamaModern Collaborations, one of a series of concerts present-ed by the Birmingham Art Music Alliance. For his texts,Jensen turned to the Birmingham resident and formerUAB English professor. All three of Haddin’s contribu-tions “Snakes Again,” “Housing Authority,” and “BenefitsOffice” concern the dehumanizing effects of modern-daycommercial and bureaucratic excesses.

Setting Haddin’s poetry to music was not without itschallenges. Haddin’s lower case, unpunctuated texts offerfew cues as to how his poems could be structured musical-ly. Haddin describes his poetry as “a kind of free verse thatemploys natural rhythms and natural rhymes.” Althoughhe might write the occasional sonnet, he usually avoidssuch formal approaches to rhyme scheme and rhythmicpattern. “I like to plunge right into the poem,” he says,referring to his process of letting the poem’s spontaneouselements control its outcome.

Jensen’s music, in contrast, relies on more conven-tional designs. His complicated, jazzy, rhythms requirenotational precision; he frequently uses intricate counter-

point; and his forms are more traditional. Jensen struggledto find the musical means to allow for the natural flow ofHaddin’s text while remaining true to his stricterapproach. Jensen eventually decided to use a narratorrather than a singer. “Ted’s poem was merely an outlineand it really didn’t matter if we were beat-by-beat togetheras long as we arrived at certain pre-determined markstogether,” he explains.

Haddin was pleased with the results. “Jim was able toarrange themes in such a way that the parts of the poemsthat needed to be emphasized got the emphasis,” Haddinsays. More importantly, Jensen discovered the meaningbehind the words. Perhaps because, Jensen suggests,Haddin’s poems spoke directly to Jensen’s concerns as acitizen of a sprawling city like Birmingham.

“Snakes Again,” which is about one man’s frustratedresponse to a developer, in particular struck a “note ofconsonance” with Jensen, reminding him of his own reac-tion to a construction project west of the Samford campus.Prior to the development, Jensen recalled, the area was aforest, without even a road through it. “The developersspent a couple of years leveling and scraping away everyliving thing, flora and fauna, leveling it out, and finallycovering it with asphalt,” Jensen says. “When they werefinished, they named it ‘Wildwood.’ Many of us atSamford refer to it as ‘Paved Wood.’”

Jensen credits Haddin with helping him find thisdynamic connection between music and text. Jensen seesHaddin’s poems as inherently musical, a trait Jensen attrib-utes to Haddin’s earlier training as a violinist. Haddinrecalls visiting Jensen’s office at Samford and seeing copiesof his poems tacked to the walls, suggesting that Jensen’sapproach was one of total immersion in his poetry. Jenseneventually asked Haddin to record his own recitation ofhis poems. By repeatedly listening to a recording ofHaddin’s spoken version, Jensen discovered the shape andrhythmic life of the text and contoured the ebb and flowof his music accordingly.

In fact, Haddin’s reading had become such an integralpart of his understanding of the music, Jensen asked him to

A Happy MarriageText and Tune by Phillip Ratliff


join the group of musicians, which included clarinetist LoriNeprud-Ardovino, pianist Adam Bowles, and bassistAbraham Becker, as the narrator in the premiere perfor-mance. For Haddin, reciting his poetry in time with threeother performers, despite his experience as a violinist, was anew experience. “I had to come in at the right time, exit atthe right time,” Haddin says. “It was very different fromreading by myself. When you read yourself you are in con-trol—you can hesitate, give some space. When reading tomusic you have to conform to the composition.”

The idea for Alabama Modern Collaborations tookshape in an unlikely place—Nabeel’s, a Mediterraneanrestaurant in the Birmingham suburb of Homewood.According to Birmingham Art Music Alliance (BAMA)Programming Committee chair Monroe Golden, the meet-ing was born out of a common frustration among BAMAmembers over recent performances, which seemed longand artistically uneven, more of a hodgepodge of piecesthan a series of unified concerts. Many recent composi-tions submitted for performance to BAMA, a groupformed to present the newest of the new in contemporarymusic, were, in fact, a little dusty.

Collaborations with local poets and writers seemedan ideal solution. By pairing composers and poets, BAMAwas assured a supply of brand-new compositions unified byan overarching theme. And with a deadline looming onthe horizon, a composer’s tendency toward long-winded-ness would be regulated.

BAMA considered one other benefit from collabo-rating with poets’ larger audiences. Like composers, poetshave their regular fans. But contemporary poetry is, by andlarge, a much more audience-friendly enterprise. There issomething egalitarian about its free rhythms, modern-dayreferences, and often very vernacular form of English.

Golden and the programming committee presented theidea to the other members of Birmingham Art MusicAlliance, who embraced it enthusiastically. BAMA presidentCraig Hultgren then applied for an Alabama State Councilon the Arts project assistance grant, and the organizationeventually received $3500 in funding; Alabama Modern

Collaborations was born.Jensen’s and Haddin’s collaboration was one of sever-

al presented in the April concert at Samford University.Other composer/poet teams included DonaldAshworth/Russell Helms, Joe L. Alexander/Alan May,Monroe Golden/Sandra Sprayberry, and CharlesMason/Leisha Hultgren/David Ulrich.

Both Jensen and Haddin gained something from theAlabama Modern Collaborations project. For Jensen, col-laborating with a living poet during the compositionalprocess has been an invaluable learning experience. “Oneof the most satisfying aspects of the collaboration was hav-ing the poet actually participate as a part of the musicalensemble,” Jensen said.

Haddin, too, learned something from the experi-ence: “It assured me that composers can be very goodreaders of poetry. It was most surprising and pleasing tofind this out.” ■

Cullman native Phillip Ratliff currently resides in Birmingham,

where he teaches music and humanities at Miles College. A grad-

uate of the University of Montevallo, he went on to complete the

Master of Music and Doctorate of Musical Arts in Composition

at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music.

In 1998, Ratliff was commissioned by Taavo Virkhaus and the

Huntsville Symphony Orchestra to compose I-65 Rocket in cele-

bration of the 45th Anniversary of that city’s space industry.

Other commissions include Travolta, written for the Cleveland

Chamber Symphony, and 49, for the University of Texas New

Music Ensemble.

Active as a writer, Ratliff regularly contributes reviews and fea-

tures to the Birmingham News, the Birmingham Weekly, and

the Oxford American, and edits the journal Living Music.


chicago police housing authorityopen up inspection men come inwe step back they go for the dresserpull out drawers mess up everythinglook under the bed lift up the mattresscheck the kitchen cupboards examinethe waterpipes lift the commode lidwhat they doing here only a womanninety years me a married man childrenthey don’t know our names my wife says ohoh again what did we do no warrant they gonext door do the same a mother her childrenlook like a gang they look like cocainenothing there stockings thrown all aroundmr vincent lane director says he wantsto make surprise inspections all through chicago he never heard of martin luther kingbut he knows the nazis he strides like hessthrough ghettos sneaky sweet swastika deathopen up he says shuts a door on self respect

She spoke so I couldn’t sayI was trying to tell herI was worth a quarterof a million deadbut I couldn’t get to I was worthand then not evena quarterfinally I told herI was dead.

Dear mister city manhere are these snakesI’ve caught in basketsblack king gray rat copperheadall those that escaped vibrations of your great bulldozerHere I give them back to dwell as best they canaround your big houseon your land devoid of treesand bushes and long grassand rock piles by the creekHere have them mansince she wont seek the outsidetell your wife to stay insidebut watch the raftersbefore she gets in bedwith you at night


Sometimes people wonder how anice girl from New Jersey came tobe in Montgomery, Alabama. When

I say I came here to work in the theatre,sometimes people look puzzled: surely thecenter for theatre is New York?

Well, not necessarily. For some time,much of the best theatre in the countryhas originated in regional theatres nation-wide—particularly when it comes to newplays. Producing a non-musical play inNew York is so risky that only organiza-tions like the Alabama ShakespeareFestival, supported by foundations andloyal audiences, can take on the nurturingof new work. Next time you see a play inNew York, look carefully at the titlepage—nearly every play you see will havebeen developed, and often produced,somewhere else in the country first.

Montgomery may not be a huge the-atre center, like Minneapolis, Chicago orSan Francisco, but it is becoming one ofthe foremost centers of play developmentin the country. I came here to be the lit-erary manager for ASF and to run theSouthern Writers’ Project.

Playwrights who participate inSouthern Writers’ Project workshops—sometimes coming from New York andLos Angeles—are torn between wantingto spread the word and wanting to keepthis “secret” to themselves. But as literarymanager, I have no trouble at all in brag-ging about this wonderful program!

Founded in 1991 by ArtisticDirector Kent Thompson, the SouthernWriters’ Project of the AlabamaShakespeare Festival has a mission to pro-vide for the growth of a new voice forSouthern writers and artists; to encouragenew works dealing with Southern issuesand topics including those that emphasizeAfrican-American experiences; and tocreate theatre that speaks in a specialway to ASF’s unique and racially diverseaudiences. It is a way, Thompsonexplains, to locate the work we do in ourown community.

“There was nothing in our program-ming to reflect the region that createdthis theatre. However presumptuous [theidea might be], I decided ASF should tryto create the next Southern classic for thestage. I believed that our Southern storieswould inform and enhance ourShakespeare stories and vice versa. Whocould not experience King Lear withgreater depth after seeing Cat on a HotTin Roof?” he asks.

Since its origin, SWP has produced13 plays—12 of which were world pre-mieres—and workshopped dozens of others.

Southern Writers’ Project produc-tions have included Grover (1993) by thelate Randy Hall, about MontgomeryAdvertiser editor Grover Hall and his bat-tles with the Ku Klux Klan; Lizard(1994), by Birmingham writer Dennis L.Covington, adapted from his novel of the

The Southern Writers’ Project at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival

CREATING NEW WORKS FOR THE STAGE

Southern Styleby Gwen Orel

photography by Phil Scarsbrook

Greta Lambert, Shiloh Rules, 2002.


same name, later produced in the 1996Summer Olympics in Atlanta; Fair andTender Ladies, adapted from Lee Smith’snovel by Eric Schmiedl with music andlyrics by Tommy Goldsmith, Tom House,and Karren Pell; Horton Foote’s VernonEarly, which received national mediaattention and glowing reviews; Lurleen,Barbara Lebow’s story of the life ofLurleen Wallace, A Night in Tunisia byRegina Taylor, The Negro of Peter TheGreat by Carlyle Brown, and Shiloh Rulesby Doris Baizley.

But the plays produced each year arejust the fruit of SWP—there is ablooming, healthy, new tree of playdevelopment growing in Alabama—through our SWP workshops. Inthese workshops, we foster not onlyplays, but playwrights as well. In thecourse of one single week, werehearse five or six plays with pro-fessional actors, directors, and dra-maturgs (a dramaturg is somethinglike an editor; he/she works with thewriter on story structure, suggestingchanges and helping with research),culminating in script-in-hand read-ings in front of an audience. A dis-cussion usually follows. All of theSouthern Writers’ Project world pre-mieres have come out of these work-shops. Some of the plays are com-missioned by ASF; some come to us

via agents or the “stacks”—unsolicitedmanuscripts, sent by the playwrightsthemselves.

Sometimes we invite writers who areyoung in their career (not always thesame as young in years, though that isoften the case) to give them a chance tohear their plays read by professionalactors, so we can get to know the writersbetter and support them as they find theirvoices, even if we don’t think a particularplay would be right for us.

Mobile native Elyzabeth Wilder is agood example of an Alabama playwrightwhose career is being watched and culti-vated by the Southern Writers’ Project.We expect big things from her! Actually,we expect big things from all the writerswho come to SWP—but Elyzabeth’s longhistory makes us particularly proud.

Elyzabeth first came to theAlabama Shakespeare Festival as a “lostboy” in 1993’s production of Peter Pan,directed by Kent Thompson. She partici-pated in the Young Playwrights’ Projectworkshops in 1997. (Instead of the YoungPlaywrights’ Project, ASF now sponsors aYoung Southern Writers’ Project com-petion, open to Alabama teens. Winnerswill be announced in mid-June.)

As a member of the “Youngbloods”at New York’s Ensemble Studio Theatre(E.S.T.)—a group of young writers under30) Elyzabeth is already generating inter-est nationwide. Although she has yet tosee a professional production of one ofher full-length plays, her one-act, TheFirst Day of Hunting Season, was producedat E.S.T. this winter and praised by the

Caroline Clay & Sonja Lanzener, Shiloh Rules, 2002.

Greta Lambert in 1998’s Fair and Tender Ladies


New York Times! Elyzabeth has received afull fellowship to NYU’s DramaticWriting Program, and she starts this fall.(This prestigious program incorporatesplaywriting, screenwriting, and writing fortelevision.)

“To a certain extent my work with aSouthern theme is definitely received ona different level when seen by a Southernaudience,” she says. “Southern audiencesappreciate elements of the work that

audiences outside of the Southmight miss.”

“In New York, people ask you‘what are you?’ ‘cause so manypeople are first and second-genera-tion Americans. I say, ‘I’m south-ern.’ That’s how I view myselfbefore anything else—we have toembrace our history if we’re goingto learn from it.”

Elyzabeth has participated inSWP workshop weekstwice: once in January2001, with her scriptThe Theory ofRelativity; again inOctober 2001, as partof our “New Voices” week, toworkshop her play, In OceanSprings. In the October work-shops, she worked with MFAacting candidates on impro-vised scenes from her scripts.Rather than having arehearsed reading in front ofan audience, she read excerptsfrom her play at our play-wrights’ panel, and used thetime here as a writing retreat,with intensive feedback fromASF artistic staff.

“In Ocean Springs wasn’tas complete as The Theory ofRelativity—it wasn’t ready foran audience yet,” Elyzabethexplains. “The time spent dis-cussing the piece was asimportant as hearing it. Theimprovisations opened up new

Greta Lambert & Johnny Lee Davenport in TheNegro Of Peter The Great, 2001

Philip Pleasants & Johnny Lee Davenport in The Negro Of Peter The Great,2001.


areas of the work that Ihadn’t thought of yet,and gave me a new per-spective on the backsto-ry of the characters.From that came newideas on where the char-acters could go.

“SWP providesme with a safe home tonurture my work. I neverfeel like my work isbeing compared to any-one else‘s—which canhappen in writers’

groups. We just focus on the work.”Since her workshop of In Ocean

Springs with us, Elyzabeth has had a read-ing of it in New York that incorporatedchanges made here, including somerewriting and restructuring. Audiencereaction was good, and recently Elyzabethgot a call from Actors’ Theatre ofLouisville requesting a copy. “HavingSWP on my resume´ with that piece hasopened doors—it has allowed the work tobe read by people who might not haveotherwise.”

As literary manager, I host theworkshop weeks—and one of the things Ilove most about SWP is the way it bringstheatre artists together. Theatre is inher-ently a collaborative art—but writing isintrinsically lonely. When we do a work-shop week with five or six readings, wecreate a microcosm of the theatre worldacross America—a country so wide thatpeople can admire one another’s work foryears and never have a chance to meet.

In January 2001, we began includingplaywrights’ panels in the schedule of thereading week. At these panels, play-wrights read a three-to-five minuteexcerpt from their work, discuss the play’sorigins, and take questions. This breaksthe ice with the writers and audiences,and encourages cross-collaboration, asdemonstrated in our post-show discus-sions and conversations in the hall. Iknow things are going well when actors,directors and playwrights beg me for thepermanent contact sheets that includethe address, phone number and e-mail foreveryone in the SWP company.

Stuart Culpepper, Grover, 1994.

Lester Purry and Shawana Kemp in 1996’s ThunderKnocking On The Door.


Elyzabeth agrees. “I am inspired byother writers I have met there. To beamong such writers as my peers KeithJosef Adkins, Kia Corthron,and DorisBaizley—is so wonderful. The wide vari-ety of playwrights that SWP embraces,and the way the program has grown, isreally impressive! I’ve made wonderfulfriends there.”

Elyzabeth is right—SWP surely isexpanding! We have received a generousgrant from Vesta Insurance Group, Inc.,with which we will inaugurate the VestaFestival of the Southern Writers’ Project(Vesta Fest), our first new play festival, inFebruary 2003. This will consist of twoSWP world premieres which will run inrepertory in the 225-seat Octagon—KiaCorthron’s ASF commission, The Venusde Milo is Armed, and a play by Mississippischoolteacher and writer Linda ByrdKilian, Aaronville Dawning. The two playsexpress the wide variety of SWP produc-tions—a cutting edge sociopolitical come-dy from Kia, and an authentic voice ofSouthern storytelling from Linda.

The way in which we found thesetwo writers are another example of thevariety and breadth of SWP: we cameacross Kia Corthron’s work when visitingthe A.S.K., Los Angeles’ New Play week-end. Kia’s play about girl gangs, Breath,Boom!, has since been produced inLondon, New York and Atlanta. Whilewe knew that play wasn’t right for us, hervoice was so impressive that we signedher up for a commission; she wrote a playfor us that is a realistic depiction of a sur-real situation—a world in which land-

mines go off inAmerica. Her play takesplace in an unnamedtown in the South, and,despite the subject mat-ter, is a wild, comic ridethat is, tragically, verytimely. What do youlose when you lose alimb? And is terror evera valid way to make apoint?

We workshoppedKia’s play in June 2001(A production ofanother of her plays, Force Continuum, inNew York, had kept her from coming tothe workshop in January).

“I had never been to the DeepSouth before the workshop last June,” Kiasays. “It’s so exciting for me to be doingthis play in the Cradle of the Civil RightsMovement! As an African-Americanwoman, I am eager to work in the townthat laid the ground so that I could [workand write]. There are many theatres thatattain grant money, via which they com-mission writers who write plays that arenot immediately, and often enough,never, produced. Many theatres commis-sion edgy, risky writers, then reserve theirseasons for the safe tried-and-true.Alabama Shakespeare Festival, which inthe past has produced such bold, brilliantwriters as Carlyle Brown and ReginaTaylor, is obviously not an institution thatsimply plays it safe. Such courage is lack-ing in many centers of theatre—includingmy city of residence, New York.”

Isiah Whitlock Jr. and Jamahl Marshin 2000’s A Lession Before Dying.

Norbert Butz, Lizard, 1995.


We found Linda Byrd Kilian when Iserved as a panelist for the MississippiState Council on the Arts. Every otheryear, they award grants in playwriting andin screenwriting. Ms. Kilian, a seventh-grade schoolteacher and grandmother,submitted her Aaronville Dawning, andsubsequently joined us in October for ourNew Voices workshop. Her play presentsLemy Babin Caldwell, an elderly womanwho, while preparing funeral food for herfriend Beasley, tells the audience aboutthe people of Aaronville, Mississippi—itssinners and its saints—while keeping herown secret, secret. It is Linda’s first play—but not her last, if SWP has anything tosay about it!

Both Linda and Elyzabeth credittheir Southern upbringing for their desireto write plays. “Southerners are prone tostorytelling—if we forget the ending, wemake it up!” says Linda. “I have alwayswanted to write—it comes from beingSouthern and hearing all this stuff, andthe fact that Southerners tell peoplethings—they don’t show them, they tellthem—from the time we’re little kids. Ihave always kept my ears open. I wonderif it can be done anywhere elseSometimes I think that living in theSouth is like living on another planet.”

Elyzabeth says, “My earliest memo-ries are of cocktail hours, sitting at thefeet of my great-grandmother and grand-mother and her sisters, telling stories anddrinking bourbon. They would eat extra-sharp cracker barrel cheese and peanuts—this happened every day at 5:00 p.m., reli-giously. They told stories about growingup in the Depression, going through thewar years, raising children—my grand-mother has an amazing ability to turn factinto fiction. Or vice versa, depending onhow you look at it. It became almost acompetition between the sisters to seewho could tell the best story. It’s some-thing you can’t really go to school tolearn. I live in New York, but Alabamawill always be home.”

For Linda, coming to the SouthernWriters’ Project has changed her life.“Being included in the Southern Writers’Project workshop was wonderful, becausefor the first time I got a chance to workwith professionals. I didn’t think therewould be so much interest in my work! Igot a feeling of confidence I would neverhave had if I had not gone through theworkshop. It was even better than Iexpected—I thought it would be a hum-drum thing, that they’d read it, ho-hum,and I’d go home. Everyone was so profes-sional, and so respectful of the work. Theother playwrights were so accepting. As afirst-time playwright, this was the onlyvenue I had to get professional advice onthings. Having ASF decide to do it is adream come true!”

Is it so surprising, then, that thisJersey girl would jump at the chance to be

Kent Thompson and Alan Harrison at a SWP workshop


here? There are not many theatreslike this one, so committed to nur-turing and supporting artists, and sonurtured and loved by their commu-nity. The love Alabamians have forthis institution is manifest in somany ways—not only in the foodvolunteers bring to our receptions,but in the people who attend ourplays, send us their comments, cometo our “Theatre in the Mind” lec-tures, and support our residentactors, designers and students.Alabama is proud of ASF—and it is thispride that makes what we do so reward-ing. ■

Gwen Orel is the literary manager at AlabamaShakespeare Festival, where she runs the

Southern Writers’ Project. She spent 1999 inPrague on a grant from the Mellon founda-

tion, researching her dissertation on “English-language Theatre in Post-Communist Prague.”

Her adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial was pro-duced in Prague and in Dublin. Recent pub-

lished work includes articles/entries inTheatreforum and the Oxford Encyclopedia

of Theatre and Performance (2003).

Playwrights Elyzabeth Wilder, Linda Byrd Kilian, and Javon Johnson.

Gwen Orel with playwrights Eric Schmiedl, Kelley Pounders, Elyzabeth Wilder, and Linda Byrd Kilian.


May 9—July 5, 2002“New Work—Emerging Alabama Artists”Emily A. Bodner, Huntsville, paintingRichard Curtis, Huntsville, performance artJulie J. Hankins, Montevallo, installation of ceramic stonewareSamantha Rinehart Taylor, Marion, drawing and painting

July 11—August 29, 2002“From Tradition—Baskets of Alabama & Quilts by 2001 NationalHeritage Award Fellow, Mozelle Benson”Organized by the Alabama State Council on the Arts and theAlabama Folklife Association

September 8—November 8, 2002“Giving Voice to Vision: Alabama Design”Exhibit featuring design in Alabama

November 15—January 2003“Alabama Masters”ASCA Fellowship Recipients 2002

The Alabama Artists Gallery, located at the offices of the AlabamaState Council on the Arts in the RSA Tower in downtownMontgomery, provides an on-going showcase of the work of Alabamaartists in all media.

Exhibition ScheduleAlabama Artists Gallery

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