THE ARTS PAPER – ARTICLES

Bringing a tumultuous era of history into focus

Hank Hoffman

Beverly Gage

A horrific mid-September explosion in the heart of America’s financial district. A record toll of dead and wounded. Civil liberties trampled in the rush to apprehend those responsible and prevent future attacks. It sounds like the traumatic attacks and aftermath of September 11, 2001. But the United States had seen this before. On September 16, 1920, a bomb on a horse-drawn cart exploded in front of the headquarters of J.P. Morgan and Company, killing 38 and wounding dozens more. Until the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, it was the nation’s worst terrorist attack. The bombing — widely attributed to anarchist or communist radicals but never solved — inflamed an already ongoing crackdown on alleged subversives.

In The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in its First Age of Terror (Oxford University Press), a dramatic and scholarly book published earlier this year, Yale University Assistant Professor of History Beverly Gage brings to life a period rife with upheaval. She acknowledges the parallels to the events and repercussions of 9/11, but doesn’t dwell on them. (Her research actually began prior to the 2001 attacks.)

Gage says a short mention of the Wall Street bombing in a textbook was the random incident that sparked the project. She had never heard of the attack and had no frame of reference with which to explain it.

“There had to be something interesting to say, but when I started working on it I didn’t know what that interesting thing would be. It is not as if I went into the project saying, ‘This will be a great lens into this vast and understudied history of violence and terrorism and radical conflict in the United States,’” Gage recalls in an interview at her Yale office.

Gage began her investigation in the late 1990s, when she was a graduate student in history at Columbia University. After graduating from Yale as an American studies major with a history concentration, she worked as a reporter and managing editor at the New Haven Advocate. She had a particular interest in stories about the prison system. But she says she often felt she was writing about subjects she “didn’t know very much about.” Learning more about history was the key to understanding the world. At the age of 25, Gage tells me, she realized “that if I wanted to do that, going to grad school was the only institutional way of doing that.”

While the bombing is at the heart of her story, the narrative expands to encompass a whole era of industrial and financial consolidation coupled with radical class warfare. The process of writing the book, however, proceeded organically from the specific to the general. She first wrote a short paper on the bombing for a grad-school class. Widening her focus to the postwar 1919-20 period for her dissertation — with its attendant upheaval of strikes, bombings and the raids and deportations of the first Red Scare — necessitated more research and writing. For the book, Gage expanded the scope of her project back to the 1870s, entailing a further round of research, writing and revision.

The research began with a plunge into the archives of New York’s daily newspapers, reading contemporary accounts of the bombing. This was a far more substantial task than it might appear. At the time, Gage notes, Gotham was home to 18 daily newspapers, “each with a slightly different political outlook and style and political affiliation. There was a daily English-language socialist newspaper in New York and a daily Yiddish-language socialist newspaper.” Reading the newspaper accounts confirmed that “there was so much weird stuff going on and there was a good although ultimately inconclusive story to be told,” Gage says.

Besides delving into the daily and weekly press, Gage relied on the work of previous historians, government documents and the papers of key figures in the events of the time such as anarchist firebrand Emma Goldman and Socialist Party leader Eugene Debs. The New York City Police Department files had long since been destroyed. Her initial request for documents from the National Archives came up empty. However, a follow-up Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request struck gold. A prior researcher had submitted an FOIA request in the 1980s; the records had already been processed. Instead of having to wait years for the documents, Gage says, “this gigantic box showed up at my apartment in New York with 10,000 pages of information” six months to a year after she filed her request. It was just prior to September 11, 2001. As Gage notes, an FOIA request made in the aftermath of 9/11 for documents relating to a domestic terrorism investigation — even one decades old — would well have languished.

When she initiated the project, Gage assumed it would be a recounting of the first Red Scare, “about how an unsolved, ill-defined event became part of a burst of hysteria that wrongly targeted people on the Left with having advocated or participated in violence.” While that remains a key element of the tale, her “big discovery” was that “on this question of violence, things really are more complicated.” Much of the historic literature on radicalism and prominent radicals tends to skew “either highly romanticized or fairly condemnatory,” Gage says. She sought to employ nuance and balance, recognizing that “there was a debate going on and going on pretty openly” as to “when it was appropriate to use violence and when it wasn’t.” Revolutionary violence was hardly mainstream and its practitioners were few but the public concern was real.

In an interview on PBS this past March, Gage said — apropos of the fact that the episode had slipped down a history memory hole — that it is “a failure of the imagination that it’s actually really hard 100 years later to remember a moment when people were thinking there might actually be a revolution in the United States.” In fact, imagination plays a vital if under-appreciated role in the writing of evocative history. Gage is quick to note that she stuck rigorously to the facts.

“In terms of active imagination, there is nothing in the book that is fabricated in any way,” she tells me. Describing herself as a “straight nonfiction writer,” she adds, laughing, “I’m not actually that imaginative.” But finding a narrative structure through which to compellingly organize a mass of information is another matter.

“I wanted this to be a book of both high scholarship and also a book people who weren’t historians would want to read,” says Gage. “Speaking to multiple audiences at the same time is a difficult balance but well worth the effort.”

There were several available strategies, Gage says, for constructing a narrative for this story, including writing the story as a series of discrete events, as a series of historical arguments or as an institutional history. Gage sought out “characters who seemed to embody the trends, ideals, turmoil of the moment.”

“If there was a leap of imagination, it was trying to connect with those characters and think about who they were,” explains Gage. “A lot depended on who kept popping up over and over.”

Milling about on the Left were radicals of varying but mostly anarchist stripe: Emma Goldman, labor organizer Big Bill Haywood, Alexander Berkman and militants from the immigrant anarchist milieu. To the Right marched the forces of order and finance: Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, J. Edgar Hoover and William Flynn of the Bureau of Investigation (later the FBI), the detective William Burns, government snitches, the banker J.P. Morgan, Jr. and his son Junius.

Speaking in novelistic terms, Gage was faced not just with one but with many “unreliable narrators.” The contemporary press was partisan. Each protagonist had his own agenda, his own ax to grind, meeting to infiltrate, fuse to light.

“This is true of any historical source, learning to read unreliable sources and make your own judgment about how to put things together,” Gage says.

While there were multiple confirming sources for many of the facts, that wasn’t always the case.

“The story is almost about unreliable narrators because everybody’s an unreliable narrator and the bombing never gets solved. It’s about competing theories. So the other way to handle it is to illuminate and try and dissect and describe the stories people tell about themselves.”

The Day Wall Street Exploded vividly evokes an era that now seems quite foreign. Gage immersed herself in the particulars of the time.

She says, “I realized I was a little too deep in when I had a check returned to me because I’d dated it ‘1920.’

“That to me is the most fascinating part of being a historian, being able to transport yourself into that different world and to know enough to know how to read in the way people at a certain moment might have read,” Gage says. “To understand the language of that moment, to understand what it meant to be a member of organization X as opposed to organization Y.”

In the book, Gage writes that the most likely culprit or culprits in the attack were adherents of a small, militant anarchist sect. Had she hoped to definitively solve the mystery of who planted the bomb and was she disappointed that she hadn’t?

“I still have hopes that I might definitively find out who did it,” says Gage.



The scene of a new ‘happening’
Ascendant artists create ‘theatricalized’ pop-art musical

David A. Brensilver

	The cast of Pop! left to right: Doug Kreeger, Emily Swallow, Cristen Paige, Leslie Kritzer, Randy Harrison, Danny Binstock, and Brian Charles Rooney. Photo by Joan Marcus.

The Yale Repertory Theatre is giving audiences a unique opportunity to get inside Andy Warhol’s head with the world premiere production of Pop!, a musical by Maggie-Kate Coleman and Anna K. Jacobs.

The piece is set in 1968 and uses as its launching point the shooting of the pop-art icon. Pop!, though, is not a biographical piece, nor is it a staged documentary. Loosely, it’s a murder mystery. Below the surface, it is a story that imagines what’s behind the Warhol façade. That is, Pop! is not an exploration of the enigma that was Andy Warhol but a piece that explores the imagined person behind it.

With a book and lyrics by Coleman and music by Jacobs, Pop! first took shape in 2008 as a collaborative MFA thesis at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where Coleman and Jacobs studied in the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing program.

After graduating from Ithaca College, Coleman worked for a film company that produces documentaries about art, one of which examined the New York art world of the 1960s — during which Warhol produced much of his familiar pop art and facilitated the goings-on of a group of “Superstars” at “The Factory.” Coleman’s interest in Warhol was piqued and meshed with Jacobs’ interest in contemporary pop art. Though she didn’t know a great deal about Warhol at that point, Jacobs enjoyed seeing a connection between what Warhol represented in the 1960s and how his influence has carried over into today’s culture. While Coleman and Jacobs set out to create a murder mystery, Director Mark Brokaw said Pop! seeks to “recapture the spirit of "The Factory" … through Andy’s eyes.” It’s about creating a Warhol “happening” in which the artist “is putting himself at the center of it as a star.”

While Pop! takes place in 1968, it certainly unleashes the relevance today of Warhol’s remark at the time that “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”

Coleman said the musical is “sort of a theatricalized version of a piece of pop art.” Warhol painted Coke bottles, Jacobs pointed out, further describing Pop! as a sort of musical-theater Coke bottle: glossy, pretty, superficial — at least, Brokaw said, “that’s Andy Warhol’s intention” in terms of his telling of the story.

Warhol was a “passive-aggressive control freak,” Brokaw said, which is part of the reason the artist-as-imagined takes control of the situation surrounding his shooting in Pop! And while Coleman said the presence of “Superstar” über-drag-queen Candy Darling “allows (Warhol) to play his favorite role of observer” for a while, Brokaw said the musical is a story that Warhol is telling but loses control of as his “allies” begin to tell the story, though “not necessarily the version (Warhol) would like to be told.” In a way, Brokaw said, Pop! showcases the struggle over “who is telling the tale.”

Pop! is, to use Yale Rep Artistic Director James Bundy’s words, the first “original book musical” to be produced at the theater since Triumph of Love in 1997. It was one of three pieces workshopped during last summer’s inaugural season of the Yale Institute for Music Theatre, though it is not the goal of the Institute to see works through to production. Brokaw, who serves as artistic director of the Institute and directed Pop! in the two-week development process, said serendipity played a role in producing the piece’s world premiere at the Yale Rep, which happened, in June, to have an open slot on its calendar.

“We weren’t looking for a musical,” Bundy said in an e-mail, “but I responded strongly to Pop! in the workshop."

Talking about the work’s relevance today, Brokaw pointed to the so-called reality TV genre and said, “Every reality show has its beginning in Andy Warhol.”

Jacobs, who made a comparison between Facebook and Warhol’s famous “Screen Tests,” described her score as “eclectic” and incorporates a wealth of genres and contemporary references, from “Beatle-esque pop songs” to a “Catholic Mass sequence that sounds like Bernstein” and elements of ragtime. Jacobs said that one song, “Big Gun,” is a mash-up of beat poetry and gospel music a la The Supremes. This amplifies the work’s contemporary relevance.

Just as the score incorporates contemporary references, the characters, including a number of pop-art figures from the 1960s, are presented in a less-historical and more contemporary context.

Jacobs pointed out that different age demographics connect with Warhol in different ways. People in their 40s or 50s or older were around during the artist’s heyday. Younger generations might know little about him beyond some of his most recognizable paintings, such as his Campbell’s Soup Cans.

Pop! is more than the murder mystery that weaves a thread through the story. And it’s more than a portrait of an American icon. It is, Brokaw said, about the man who “made fame famous,” it’s about what brought people to “The Factory,” what kept them there and what happened to them while they were there. And it’s more than that. It is about the Warhol that Coleman and Jacobs have come to know.

“They have devised their own Andy Warhol,” Brokaw said.

The world premiere production of Pop! will be staged at the Yale Repertory Theatre November 27 through December 19. For details, visit yalerep.org.


Creative Arts Workshop celebrates American crafts

Lucile Bruce

ayne Bayless, a nationally known potter and Creative Arts Workshop board member, collaborated with Liz Pagano, Creative Arts Workshop printmaking faculty member, to create a series of clay and paper lamps. Photo by Hayne Bayless.

“My philosophy,” writes potter Elizabeth Mostello-Harris (Goddess Earthworks), “is that a piece of art should look great when hung on the wall, but it’s even better if you can take it off the wall, wash it, and put steamed broccoli in it at dinner time.”

Yes, it’s a beautiful object — now eat from it, touch it, wear it, feel it, use it. That’s the spirit of craft, and that spirit is alive and well at the Celebration of American Crafts, the annual exhibition/sale at Creative Arts Workshop (CAW) in downtown New Haven.

Now in its 41st year, the Celebration of American Crafts features more than 300 American craft artists from around the country. The sale opened on October 31, but because new items are introduced daily, you can still find a wonderful selection of one-of-a-kind objects on shelves and in display cases. The level of artistry is high, the variety stunning. Items include ceramics, decorative and wearable fiber, jewelry, wood furnishings, blown glass, and more.

The Celebration is more than a sale. It’s an education. In the words of CAW Executive Director Susan Smith, the galleries “provide a comprehensive look at current trends in contemporary American crafts.”

Artist statements enrich each visitor’s experience, helping to contextualize the works.

These are thinking artists, deeply knowledgeable about form and function. Katherine Park, a Hamden-based furniture maker, makes cabinets, benches, beds, and vanities that tell stories, often drawing on Biblical references. Modernist paintings and the seemingly mundane — “paint chipping off rusting pipes, old signage, concrete” — inspire Massachusetts-based jeweler Angela Gerhard. Glass artist Rajesh Kommineni, whose work is pictured above, makes marbles and paperweights using a combination of furnace glass-blowing and lampworking techniques. Takashi Ichihara fires ceramic teapots, serving dishes, and dinnerware using wood ash to create work inspired by ancient pottery traditions from around the world.

Local and regional artists are well represented, including many with ties to CAW. Hayne Bayless, a nationally known potter and CAW board member, collaborated with Liz Pagano, CAW printmaking faculty member, to create a series of clay and paper lamps. Works by several pottery faculty members, including Stephen Rodriguez, Louise Harter, and Anita Griffith, are for sale, along with jewelry by instructor Connie Pfeiffer and hand-woven pieces by instructor Lucienne Coifman.

The Celebration also features a large selection of hand-crafted toys and children’s clothing, furniture, blankets, and accessories, including Cathy Berse-Hurley’s one-of-a-kind animal character backpacks.

Items are sold on a consignment basis, with CAW retaining 40 percent of each sale. Proceeds support CAW’s outreach programs, scholarships, and other community-based activities that are not covered by tuition. According to CAW, the sale attracts nearly 10,000 visitors each year from all over the Northeast.

“A lot of people have been asking how the recession will change the Celebration,” says CAW Communications Director Lesley Holford. “This year, we’ve really tried to find more affordable items for people to buy. We’re aware that people may have less to spend, so we’ve tried to make it possible for them to shop within their price range.”

While many of the artists represented try to make a living through their work, the rewards of craftsmanship run much deeper than money. Artist Susan Dugan writes, “I derive a sense of peace and well-being from my basket-making; the rhythm of the process, the creativity and logistics of the new model, the deep feeling of surrounding comfort that comes from practicing an ancient art.”

Indeed, there’s much to celebrate in this Celebration.

If You Go
41st Annual Celebration of American Crafts
Creative Arts Workshop
80 Audubon Street, New Haven
(203) 562-4927
Hours: Monday–Saturday, 11am-6pm;Thursday, 11am-8pm; Sunday, 1-5pm; December 24, 11am-2pm
Free and open to the public
For more information about American crafts visit www.craftinamerica.org.



Theater ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’

David A. Brensilver

This month, the New Haven Theater Company will stage Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel’s A Civil War Christmas: An American Musical Celebration, a work Creative Director and Producer T. Paul Lowry believes will become the American A Christmas Carol.

“In time,” Lowry said, “I think it will become one of those shows that people put on every year.”

Asked last year, “How did you come up with the idea for the story?” Vogel told Kara Arsenault, then-editor of The Arts Paper, “I was having dinner with Molly Smith during tech rehearsals for How I Learned to Drive at Berkeley, and she had just been hired as artistic director for Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. And I started my riff on why do we only produce Christmas plays about Victorian London? Where are the American Christmas Carols?”

Lowry’s turn at A Civil War Christmas, which received its world premiere at Long Wharf Theatre last year, will mark the first time the piece is produced by a community theater.

“We’re taking … the approach that it’s the community talking to the gathered community,” said Lowry, who was associate producer at Long Wharf Theatre when the organization produced A Civil War Christmas.

“I think the play is very hopeful,” Lowry said. “I think the play is very celebratory of what America is,” even as “its subject matter is the darkest time of our nation’s history. … The issues at heart — slavery, oppression, tyranny — the fundamentals of what it means to be self-governed … it’s all there.”

Lowry, a self-proclaimed history buff who is half Mexican and half Irish, said he had a great uncle, Charles Lowry, who served as an artillery man for the Confederacy. In a recent interview, Lowry wondered aloud what his relative would’ve thought about him staging a work that’s not just about the spirit of the holidays, but a story, set on Christmas Eve, 1864, that is about “coming to an understanding … (that) we’re all woven together.”

Rachel Shapiro Alderman, who played four roles in A Civil War Christmas at Long Wharf Theatre last year, is working as associate director on the New Haven Theater Company’s production, which she sees as a production “of the people, by the people, for the people.”

Whereas fourteen actors each played numerous roles in the Long Wharf Theatre production, Lowry and company have enlisted about 40 individuals to play eight main characters, about a dozen to play multiple roles, and 15-20 for what Lowry said he’s calling “the narrative chorus.”

“They are the narrator of the story,” he said, and their job is to “create this atmosphere,” whether it’s Washington, D.C., inside the White House, or in Union or Confederate camps.

Talking about the casting process for the New Haven Theater Company’s production of A Civil War Christmas, Alderman — who will have a role in the show in addition to working as associate director — said, “We wanted to open up our cast to as many people as we could fit. … That open-door policy was part of the mission.

“When you put a script in the hands of the community,” Alderman said, “then we can really start to talk about the issues as a community.

“It’s an American story,” she said, “and it’s a season when we should think about American stories and American values.”

Performances of the New Haven Theater Company’s production of Paula Vogel’s A Civil War Christmas will take place on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, December 4-20, at the High Lane Club, 40 High Lane in North Haven. Tickets are $10-$15 in advance and $15-$20 at the door. Group discounts are available. For detailed information and to purchase tickets visit newhaventheatercompany.com.

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