Sacrifices for our Art

I had performed Red Hot Patriot, The Kick Ass Wit of Molly Ivins  eight times over a 2 ½ year period—six performances at the Elks Opera House (aka Prescott Elks Theatre) in Prescott, AZ and two at The Studio Theatre of Northern Arizona University. Each venue required adaptation technically. This was especially true of Friday night’s performance, September 16, 2016 at the Centennial Center in Prescott AZ. The room would seat about 130 people at round tables and the Yavapai Democratic Party requested that I make the show fit 45 minutes--my profoundest apologies to the playwrights. The acting area was about 10’ x 8’ including a desk and chair. No special lighting. A screen for slides, but a sound system that did not have the peripherals required for the setting—so a very scaled down show. This meant of course that holding the audience was almost exclusively in the hands of the actor. But with the words of Molly Ivins as the medium coupled with my own passion for the piece as well as the work of my technician, Joseph Hough,, the task was not onerous in the least.

There is a point in the play where Molly tells us of her fight with breast cancer. In the first two productions a dog that belonged to Molly long ago and long deceased begins barking and Molly realizes she is on the cusp of death. Because of cuts made to the script and the lack of a sound system this moment had to change. I created five slides showing Molly with shaved head moving from color to fading to a full black slide. In rehearsal Molly turns her back on the audience and watches the slides before turning back and finishing the play with a call to political action.

I had long been frustrated with my Molly wig. It works OK at a distance, but in this latest venue I was within 6 feet of audience members. Moreover my dark brown hair has a tendency to sneak out from under the wig. That was when I had what I still think was a brilliant idea.  

So on Thursday evening I drove down to the new James Hancock Barber Shop next to the entrance of the Elks Opera House. Eric, a new arrival from New Jersey by way of Las Vegas took me in hand, umm, head. I told him I wanted it as smooth as a cue ball. So within seconds my already short hair was buzzed right down to a ¼ inch or less. Next came a hot towel draped over my head. Then he covered my head in a warm, foamy shaving cream. Holding my breath a wee bit, I watched Eric pull out his gleaming straight razor. I told him no nicks. And there were none.

 

 Ten days into Hair Recovery

He shared with me that he was a Conservative and former Marine who brought his two year old to live here, because he didn’t want him thinking Las Vegas was the real world. As I donned my turban to leave the shop, I did wonder what he would have thought if he knew that the haircut was so that I could play a liberal icon who coined the moniker ‘Shrub’ for former President George W. Bush.

Back at the Centennial Center, without having rehearsed the move even once, I turned my back to the audience, watched Molly’s image fade to black, reached up with my right hand and pulled off the wig—smoothly thank goodness. Then I turned and faced the audience with Molly’s take on the situation, “Well, cowboys and girls. Heck Fire!”

The Making of a Liberal, Part Four for the Grands

In the early Spring of 1977, pregnant with my third son, our family visited Big Bend State Park in Texas.  Riding a horse with my son nestled in my womb was not the most comfortable activity I've ever undertaken.  To keep him stable and safe in his watery world,  I held my body in a state of tension.  By the time I dismounted I could barely stand up with assistance.  But as the tension flowed away and blood rushed to my extremities, the beauty of the world around me came even more into focus.

  Big Bend, Texas

On our return to Houston from this trip we learned that a job was on offer in Saudi Arabia on the Persian Gulf in a place called Dhahran.  On July 19th with husband and two sons in tow and one son still finding safe harbor within, we arrived on a Pan Am flight from Paris to our new home on the Arabian peninsula.  As we flew low over the coast of the Gulf the changing depths of the sea caused the colors of the water to look as if dozens of different colored paints of green and blue had been poured in by some gigantic hand.  It was otherworldly.

 

                           The Persian/Arabian Gulf separates Arabia, the UAE and Oman from Iran

When we walked down the external and unprotected stairs to the tarmac, the engines were still oscillating and the heated air took my breath away.  Only the engines weren't on.  This was a summer shamal, a northwesterly wind raging in from Iraq...welcome to Saudi Arabia.

 

 Shamal in Saudi Arabia

                                          

Three weeks later on August 9th Andrew Neal Mangham made his appearance. My learning curve on living in the Middle East, however, had already begun in earnest.  At the very end of July with temperatures soaring as high as 120 ° F and humidity above 80%, I gathered my huge belly and went from North Camp (a collection of trailers a few miles from the main camp) to the clinic.  An old unairconditioned yellow school bus rattled up with a Pakistani driver. Ignoring the road the driver took off across the desert.  Andrew was experiencing his first of many wild and wooly rides on the sands of Arabia.  Five minutes into this roller coaster ride, the bus halted; the engine coughed into stillness; and the driver dismounted.  Laying a rug on the hard pan desert in the bit of shade created by the bus, the driver commenced his prayers while I almost fainted inside the oven that the bus quickly became.  Lesson  One-  Always have water to drink and to soak  into a towel, placed over your head.  Then with windows open and hot air blowing through the wet towel, you can experience, as close as you'll come in the outdoors of the Eastern Province, cool air giving you hope of survival.

             

                                        US/Canada Recycled Buses

                                                              

Twenty-two nationalities worked and lived on the Arabian American Oil Company compound.  A myriad tongues peppered trips to the local town, al Khobar.  National dress from countries around the world drew the eye.  Although in some ways not a melting pot, despite the variety of folks, it was still a marvelous opportunity to see and hear much of the world, to gather impressions from a word here, a gesture there, a smile, a frown, a walk, interchanges composed of broken English and broken Arabic or any number of other languages--from places like South Asia, Southeast Asia, North Africa, Europe.  I learned quickly to use my face, my hands and sometimes props to communicate.  It was always a challenge, often frustrating, but equally often fun and satisfying.  You either learned patience or you lived in a heightened state of anxiety and irritation.  I really worked on the former as the latter was just too exhausting.

 

It was in the Kingdom that I learned the importance of the separation of Church and State.  Prior to living there that notion of separation was merely a concept learned in school with little to no connection to real world experiences.  Islam and daily life could not really be separated for Muslims living in the Kingdom.  Citizens and Muslim guest workers prayed five times a day sometimes bringing activity to a halt; Ramadan, the religious month of daytime fasting, meant the closures of many restaurants during the day, or the partitioning off of hotel dining rooms so that visiting infidels could eat.  Customs, which had the approval of conservative Islamists but often without authority from the Koran, meant women went robed and veiled in public, could not drive, could not participate openly in business practices such as working in a store, could not go anywhere unless accompanied by a male member of the family.  To have a relationship with a person of the opposite sex was to court disaster and to sleep with someone without benefit of marriage could well mean death for both parties.  Women were and are often victims of honor killings.  (see Wikipedia article on honor killings.)

During this time I attended a gathering of people in a Palestinian's private home.  There were a large number of such people, mostly from the professional class, who immigrated from Palestine and the ongoing conflict with Israel.  I asked an innocent question about how they felt about life in Saudi Arabia.  The question was greeted with silence.  The silence extended.  Finally a woman said Palestinians do not discuss such topics with others even in the privacy of their own homes.  There was I learned in time a constant fear that their safe haven in KSA might end if it was learned they had said anything negative about life there.  Innocent abroad that I was, I was dumbfounded taking for granted the right to speak my mind on any topic.  The Right of Free Speech on that evening took on meaning that no textbook had ever afforded it.

Because men and women in KSA could not and most often still cannot interact except with family members, chaperones or after marriage, the sexes do not know how to relate to one another.  It was and is a toxic brew that leads throughout the world of Islam to the abuse of women.  I tried to excuse the situation with an old notion promulgated in some class in college, that if a society thrives, prospers, then what goes on in that society has a certain validity despite some negatives; for in the end the species propagated.  I eventually called bullshit on this argument.

The place of religion in Saudi  Arabia had a profound effect on me.  I became disenchanted with all religions seeking any that were not birthed in violence or used violence to spread.  Never found one.  I was more than willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater. 

In the final few weeks of our time in Saudi Arabia in 1981, we learned that a pre teen girl had been raped by an uncle, impregnating her.  She was killed for bringing dishonor to the family.  That was the straw for me.  There are those who will argue that this is not in accordance with Islam.  Perhaps.  I'm no scholar of the Koran.  But the so called honor killing is a custom grown in the fertile soil of Islam and the religion must, in my opinion, bear some, if not most, of the blame for such barbarity.

All of the foregoing said, there are glimmers of change throughout the Arab world.  Enlightened young people, fathers and mothers who want something different for their sons and daughters are beginning to speak out, to question the assumptions of elders or those who are the more conservative members of the community.  To do so is often to risk all: one's reputation, career, family, even one's life.  It is exceedingly slow this change.  Incrementalism (not found in the dictionary but recently used by President Obama) is like the speed of light compared to the glacial changes within Islam.  But still my ten years in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are filled with memories of beautiful people who tried to hold with grace and calm the tensions between their religion and the changing world around them.  They continue to fill me with hope.

And I shall always remember one student of mine, Mohammed Sultan, who held up five fingers of his hand and said in halting English--"Note they are all different, these fingers, as are we Miss Gail."

 

But back to the 'making of a liberal'.  I have no statistics or studies to reference, but I believe it is fair to say that liberals are more comfortable with the separation of Church and State. It was and is the most conservative and authoritarian viewpoints that hold sway in much of the world ruled by Islam.  Individuals, men and women, court prison or death if they defy the tenets of their religion or break with the customs evolved over the centuries under the tent of Islam.  Their world never saw the Magna Carta, the Enlightenment,  the American Constitution, the Declaration of Human Rights.  In America, despite all our problems, we feel confident that we can promote change without inviting separation from our heads.  We may not succeed, but we have a plan within which we can act without fear--our Constitution. 

 

SIDEBAR July 27, 2025  It is an enormous irony that I wrote such hopeful words in the paragraph above and below.  In the nine years from that posting to this editing, our democracy is under attack from within and it hangs by a thread. Fear and outrage stalk the nation.

 

It  has been said that the history of our nation can be read as one long struggle to extend the liberties set forth in the Declaration and the Constitution to EVERYONE in America.  From the beginning it is fair to say that it is people of liberal/progressive thought who have extended rights to poor people, black people, female people, gay people, minors, the Other.  And the work is far from finished.  But we have a set of instructions, a document that is only a little over 200 years old that guides us.  It is and should be a living document, words that take on new meaning, in new times, reflecting the evolution of our humanity without undermining the foundation:  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

 

My sojourn in Saudi Arabia forty years ago and my time in the UAE at the opening of this century helped define me.  So yes I am a Liberal and --finally say to the world --proud of it.  As Molly Ivins once said, "Fish gotta swim; hearts gotta bleed."  And there are still way too many days when my heart bleeds for those to whom social contracts have not extended the rights and liberties that are their due.

Matt Jackson Remembered

It was 2007 and I was set to direct TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE at The Blue Rose Theater.  The call for two male actors went out here in Prescott.  Three men showed up for auditions.  ‘Morrie’ himself walked in off the street in the form of Ernest Giglio, a New Englander who had just moved to Prescott with his wife Karin.

Meanwhile I was without a Mitch Albom.  I called a few friends asking if they knew of an actor/jazz pianist.  If I couldn’t get both in the same person I’d settle for the jazz pianist.  The name Matt Jackson came up and I contacted him asking, hmmm begging, that he read for a role that would require him to act, play piano and could even make use of his improvisation/composition skills.  I knew in seconds that he was perfect even though he had never been on stage --as an actor.

That night marked the beginning of a friendship built around music and storytelling.  Directing this show was in many ways remarkably easy.  The Mitch/Morrie relationship was translated with consummate ease by Matt and Ernest.  Matt’s acting debut was a great success.

 Matt Jackson and Ernest Giglio in TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE

At some point Matt’s interest in storytelling led him to study film making.  I had the great good fortune to be cast in his debut film.  Our roles were in some ways reversed.  I had practically no experience in film acting.  But Matt made me feel comfortable and the experience was both fun and enlightening.

Somewhere during this period Matt asked if he could study acting with me.  I believe his main interest was in understanding how actors work.  And now began the third stage of our friendship and the one most gratifying.  Matt would come to my home laden with notes, props, scripts, water bottle.  My living room has two couches.  We would each take our own couch and begin the session with what had been happening in our lives.  Slowly I would move us into the lesson.  Because I knew he was interested in acting from a director’s viewpoint, exercises often ran on two tracks.  First I would treat him as an acting student, letting him arrive at conclusions from the experience of the exercise.  Then often we would talk about the purpose of the exercise, how a director might use it with a novice actor.  Sometimes I would play opposite him in an assigned scene using our living room and kitchen as the set.  Rather often we laughed ourselves silly.

Matt was an outstanding ‘student’.  Always prepared, but what I cherished most was his layered and nuanced analysis/understanding of a scene.  Of course this should not be surprising in a mature man who had an extraordinary, intimate and working acquaintance, if you will, with both sides of his brain.  Artist and technician, observer and participant, reader and writer, composer and player, he walked these parallel tracks with grace and confidence until they joined in a seamless, single path.

Our last class was this past summer.  He was going off to France and would call me on his return.  But as he described it himself, outrageous fortune inserted itself in the form of cancer.  During his illness he shared his journey with us in a remarkable blog that begins with these words: 

  Outrageous Fortune.  Sometimes good, sometimes bad. 

Often outrageously so. 

In the end, telling the difference is beyond most of us mortals.

 But we’re human, so we must try.

Matt passed away Sunday evening March 27, a few days before his 58th birthday on the 31st.  Now we must learn to live our lives without him.  Rest in peace my dear friend…

Pat Conroy Remembered

One aspect of Facebook I've grown to love is connecting with classmates from long ago.  One such person is Bob Vickrey who has graciously given me permission to publish  his tribute to friend and writer, Pat Conroy.

PAT CONROY: A SOUTHERN VOICE FOR THE AGES By Bob Vickrey      

                           

When best-selling author Pat Conroy was once asked by his literary agent why there was not more sex in his novels, he responded, “Because my grandmother is still alive.”

When he told that story at book signings and speaking events, there was always an eruption of laughter and applause in the room. Everyone in attendance fully understood the precarious minefield a writer navigates when it comes to family matters.

Nevertheless, after more than four decades of writing about family, there are legions of his loyal fans who would attest to the boldness of his work. His novels, The Great Santini and The Prince of Tides, were bothfictionalized chronicles of the tumultuous Conroy family household that endured the tyrannical behavior of their Marine Corps fighter-pilot husband and father.

When news of the author’s recent death was announced, an incredible outpouring of tributes ensued in the days afterward. Conroy died March 4th in Beaufort, South Carolina after having been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer several weeks ago. When the announcement was placed on Facebook shortly after the diagnosis, two million responses were posted on his site within the first two days.

Pat Conroy’s interest in writing started early in life as his mom read stories to him and his siblings when they were growing up. He inherited his gift naturally as he followed in the great Southern storytelling tradition of Faulkner, Wolfe, Fitzgerald, and Welty. He continued that long lineage of storytelling about a region that has produced writers as one of its most precious exportable commodities.

His imaginatively evocative passages describing South Carolina’s “low country” captured the beauty of its scenic marshlands and fragile estuaries that were an integral part of his
boyhood.

But his prose was perhaps even more powerful when he described growing up in his fractured family. Conroy’s fictional stories could hardly conceal the fact that he was writing about his own tormented childhood. His candid examination of a tortured upbringing represented a lifelong quest to heal those seemingly indelible scars of his past.

When the manuscript of The Prince of Tides first arrived at my doorstep one evening in 1986, I read into the early morning hours before reluctantly putting the rest of the bulking stack of pages aside until the following day. I knew that my friend had been busy working on the novel that would ultimately transform him into the publishing star he was destined to become, but I wasn’t quite ready for the force and power that his new book would deliver on such a personal level. It
mesmerized me like few other books had, and I knew at once that Pat had written his definitive work.

Back then, I worked for Houghton Mifflin, the publisher of Conroy’s earliest books, and was responsible for bookstore sales and promotion in several Southwestern states.

Pat and I had been introduced in Boston when I first joined the publishing firm. The Water is Wide had just been published and he was in town visiting his editor and publicist. We went to dinner that evening and talked about how we both had landed in our various roles at Houghton—he, as a struggling writer, and I, as a fledgling publisher’s representative who would be promoting his book in my Southwestern territory.

                                                    

Our bond was formed as we both began our new careers. I made the observation during dinner that this represented the first time someone had paid him to write—and someone had paid me to read. He responded, “Yes, but not very much.”

                                                 

 Pat Conroy and Bob Vickrey

New Orleans, 1986,  Launch of

THE PRINCE OF TIDES

During the promotion of The Great Santini in 1976, I picked him up at Houston’s Intercontinental Airport and we headed off to do newspaper interviews and local afternoon talk shows throughout the Southwest. The book received extensive review attention and later became a hit movie. By then, everyone in the company realized that we had a true star in the making.

A decade later, the company’s initial launch for The Prince of Tides was planned for the American Booksellers Association meeting in New Orleans. The weekend culminated with a huge breakfast gathering that featured Conroy and legendary newsman Walter Cronkite as speakers.

During Cronkite’s eloquent and adoring introduction of Conroy, he said, “It must be a good feeling to be able to string together those beautiful lovely words in a necklace of incomparable prose.” He declared his envy of Conroy’s gift of storytelling, but suggested that Pat had been born with a distinctive advantage of “having been blessed with an Irish muse.”

Conroy’s impassioned speech that day inspired the crowd of booksellers, and eventually became part of publishing lore. He told of his mother’s infinite influence on his career and how her ongoing encouragement had led him to become the “Southern writer” she had always wanted him to be. He said, “It is my mother’s voice that I speak in today. It is the power of her voice that moves me to write. My mother taught me what we all look for as writers. It is the moment when language and passion and the beauty of writing all come together.”

Pat Conroy and Mother, Peggy

Conroy’s appearance had helped successfully launch his most important book to date, and sent booksellers home spreading the word about his novel like new-born messengers who had just discovered religion. The Prince of Tides became the most talked about American novel later that year and eventually spent 51 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list.

The book also secured his place among the very best contemporary American writers, and its success created enormous anticipation for each succeeding book. Beach Music, My Losing Season, South of Broad, and My Reading Life each resonated with his fans in succeeding decades.

Conroy best summed up his writing life and career when he related the story of his mother’s final bout with cancer that would ultimately take her life. He described Peggy Conroy as the prettiest woman he’d ever seen, but in her last days while suffering from diarrhea and vomiting, had been reduced to a mere 80 pounds.

He said she looked up from her bed and said, “When you write about me, don’t make me like this. Promise to make me beautiful again.”

Conroy said “From that moment on, I loved being a Southern writer.”

He said, “Momma, I’m going to make you so beautiful. And because you taught me how to be a writer, I can lift you off that bed and I can set you singing; I can set you dancing; And I can make you beautiful again for the entire world to see.”

Just before his mother slipped into a coma, his brothers and sisters sat around her bedside and read her poetry throughout the night. They sent her off that evening in what Pat described as a “wave of language.”

Pat Conroy always believed it is that “wave of language” which binds us together as writers and readers. Many of us believe he successfully accomplished his mission.

Bob Vickrey is a native Houstonian. He is a member of the Board of Contributors for the Waco Tribune-Herald and a regular contributor to the Boryana Books website. He lives
in Pacific Palisades, California. 

My Grand Tour

I’ve just spent a half hour looking at the NY Times.  Of course trouble around the world and here at home fills the headlines.  I realize that my recent trip out of town did not provide me with the respite I had hoped for.    For four decades now it has been difficult for me to focus on my own back yard where there are enough problems to grapple with.  I care about what is happening in the next town, state, country.  Thank goodness I don’t have to worry about those on other planets in other galaxies.

So, in April I will get into my wee, gray, mouse of a car and do my favorite circle tour.  First stop: The Grand Canyon will put me in my place, rather small in the scheme of things.  A hike along the rim, (70+ old knees are no longer happy on Bright  Angel Trail.) will give me moments of solitude, the antics of song birds, the soaring grace of a raptor—a reminder that there is a life, a vast, vast life beyond the disappointing acts of humankind.

Then perhaps being refreshed by Nature I will gather my strength to drive on to Flagstaff where I will go to the Museum of Northern  Arizona where the work of artists past and present will feed my soul.  Then drawing on more courage I will attend NAU Theatre Department’s  TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.  This will require courage—not because the acting will be poor, not because the directing will lack texture, not because the crew fails to support the work fully—experience has taught me that the students and faculty there do great work!  But, I will be plunging right back into man’s inhumanity to man or if you prefer humankind.  And having grown up in Texas I carry, perhaps, a greater awareness of and sense of unwarranted responsibility for the plight of Tom Robinson.  These themes of injustice in the south gnaw at me like no other.  And yet I want to support the work of young people taking those first tentative steps toward careers in the world of theatre.

So I will go and then after a restless night’s sleep in Flag, I will meander down Oak Creek Canyon catching glimpses of a bounding creek, trees arching over the curve of road,

and finally the wonder that is the red rocks of Sedona  will unfold before me. 

After visiting all my favorite spots and having lunch with a friend,  in the late afternoon I will make my way over Mingus Mountain-- one of my favorite drives, where at one point the expanse of the valleys appears framed by the slope of mountain and my heart expands to the distant horizon.  I am almost home…  Spirit renewed, a gift from artists, from friends, from the great Southwest, from Nature herself.

The Making of a Liberal, Part Three for the Grands

In the fall of 1962 I moved from a school of 600 to a school of close to 25,000—the University of Texas at Austin.  My roommate that first year was from a small town just an hour or so from my own.  In fact I just visited her and her husband a week ago. 

We lived in Andrews Dormitory.  This was to be the last year of the infamous…and silly…panty raids where young men stood en masse before the dorms demanding that panties be thrown to them from windows.  Today men and women share that same dorm.  In 1962 women had to wear a coat or skirt over gym shorts while walking to gym class. It was the last gasp of the façade of primness that characterized the ‘50’s.  Soon the whole country would be embroiled in revolts—against the Vietnam War, against the behavioral straight jacket of the previous decade.  Women were demanding equal rights in the classroom, the office, the bedroom and everywhere in between.  Texas was late to the party but eventually it showed up or rather the party came to it.

Part of being a liberal is being inclusive.  In the early ‘60’s there were less than two dozen black students among 25,000 on the 40 acres comprising the UT campus. But one of those students changed me.

In 1963, my sophomore year, I had an ‘Aha’ moment in the elevator of Batts Hall the foreign language building where I took classes in French, one of my two majors, the other being English.

That morning as I rushed to class, I hesitated for a second as the elevator doors opened.  A young, black man was standing alone in the elevator.  I took a quick breath, made a decision and entered.  I was going to be late if I waited for him to go up to his floor.  To this day, 53 years later  I remember looking straight forward at the doors, thinking  ‘Oh My God I’m alone in an elevator with a Negro man’, since’ black’ was not in vogue at that time.  The elevator rattled upward always sounding as if it were on its last gasp.  I cut my eyes over and up and up for he was quite tall and took a quick look.   He was looking straight ahead as well, perhaps feeling as uncomfortable as I was.  He said nothing; I said nothing.  His presence did not feel threatening.  I grabbed another quick glance.  

Understand that I had never been this close and alone with a black man.  All the stories that one gathers by a kind of cultural osmosis that feeds the fear of a white woman in the presence of a black man were a part of my psyche.  Yet I felt no fear.  I remember thinking, ‘So what is the big deal’?  And the light came on.  There was no big deal.  Here was a student going to class just as I was.  I didn’t feel fear.  I just felt acute awareness.  And finally I thought.  ‘This is OK.  I’m OK.’  And from that day forward I have endeavored to identify knee jerk reactions based on biases fed to me in countless ways in my youth.

There is a piece on the Internet describing those first black students, the Precursors they called themselves.  I look at the photo below and wonder, ‘Is one of the guys  shown my elevator stranger?' 

Oh how I would love to speak with him and share all that went through my head in those few moments when we rode to the third floor of Batts Hall.  Our paths never crossed again.  Indeed I have no memory of any black students in my classes.  There were only a few in those first years.

So often we cross paths with others and something happens that shapes us, shifts us.  Sometimes years pass before we understand the significance of these encounters.  But the rub is that we almost never get a chance to tell that person how they played a role in our lives.  Sigh…

To be continue...Lessons from Saudi Arabia