CHAPTER 6
Christopholous' office was mostly blond wood and exposed red brick. The laminated ceiling beams, the window casements, and the wide-board yellow pine floor were all stained about the color of a palomino horse. Christopholous sat behind a mission oak desk that matched the rest of the room. He was wearing a tweed jacket, and his wide, round face above the graying beard was tanned and healthy-looking.
"First let me apologize for the board," Christopholous said.
"Being smart isn't always the primary function of a board," I said.
Christopholous smiled.
"Quite true," he said.
"Willingness to raise or donate money counts for a lot."
"Counts for approximately everything, I would think."
Christopholous kept his smile but made it wry.
"The arts are a very precarious proposition these days. Reagan and Bush killed us. And dear Jesse Helms, who suspects Little Women of having a lesbian agenda."
"Grants dried up, have they?"
"In the name of thrift," Christopholous said.
"They still subsidize fucking tobacco, which is a fucking poison, excuse my French, but they save money by cutting back on the arts."
"That's 'cause they don't grow arts in North Carolina," I said.
"Sure, I know that. But they pretend to believe that theater and other performing arts should be self-supporting. For cris sake Shakespeare was subsidized. If the performing and visual arts must support themselves, then they will be required to be popular.
Television is what you get when you try for commercial art. Plays like Handy Dandy would never be put up."
I smiled.
"I know. You feel that would be no loss. To tell you the truth, and I'd deny publicly that I ever said this, I don't like the play either. But it is an attempt to grapple artistically with some fundamental issues, and, however clumsily rendered, it is an attempt that needs to be encouraged."
"Especially when you've got a hole in your schedule," I said.
"Especially then. I'm not a holy person. Had there been a better play available, we'd have put it up. I'm trying to make a living, and see to it that the company makes a living, and draw an audience, and raise money to make this thing work. It means I put on things I don't like, and kiss asses, and tolerate ignoramuses. On the other hand, we don't have Cats in for an extended run."
"That's something to be grateful for," I said.
"Real theater, any art, speaks the otherwise inarticulate impulses of the culture," Christopholous said.
"Art energizes the collective consciousness. The arts are more vital to the well-being of a society than missiles or Medicare. Do you know that English theater grew out of early religious ritual?"
Christopholous was a hyperbolic shmoozer, and a remorseless fund-raiser, and he made me tired. But he was also one of the major thinkers about theater in the world. I had read a couple of his books, and the voice from the books was the voice he was using now.
"Quern Quaeritis," I said.
I was showing off again, like when I'd said "dramaturge." And it worked again. Christopholous looked at me as if I had just levitated.
"You are an odd goddamned detective," he said.
"I read a lot on stakeouts," I said.
"Let's talk a little about the play."
"Handy Dandy?"
"Yeah. If you talk slowly, I'll be able to follow you."
"I'm not buying that pose," Christopholous said.
"You know a lot more than you look like you know."
"Be hard to know less," I said.
"What do you think is in this play that stirs up so much opposition."
"Albeit crudely," Christopholous said, "it challenges everyone's preconceptions. Not just the preconceptions of right or left, of racism or humanism, but all. If you come in with compassionate preconceptions about women or blacks, it destroys them. If you come in with hostile preconceptions about women or blacks, it destroys them. It challenges people to consider each human experience directly, without an historic framework."
"An historic framework is not useless," I said.
"Certainly not," Christopholous said.
"But Leonard would argue that you must first tear down the jerry-rigged facade, before you can begin to build a sound framework. Leonard O annoys everyone: secular humanists, fundamentalist Christians, conservatives, liberals, libertarians, blacks, whites, women, men, Jews, homosexuals, heterosexuals, bisexuals, Hari Krishnas, the AMA, you name it."
"Leonard's the playwright?" I said.
"Yes."
"Is that O?" I said, "as in say can you see?" or as in 'story of '?"
"The latter."
"Is it his real name?" I said.
"I doubt it."
"I'll need to talk with him."
"That should be interesting," Christopholous said.