Baldwin: thoughts, talks, colors create plays
by Adella Wacker
Joseph Baldwin's suit pocket is usually
stuffed with notes lines of conversation,
thoughts, experiences that may become
plays.
In 1971, two results of those thoughts and
ideas won for Baldwin two of three places in a
national one-act playwriting contest.
Baldwin, a professor of speech and
dramatic art at UNL, won first and third place
in the Des Moines, Iowa, Drama Workshop
contest.
And with the prize money, Baldwin and
his wife went to see productions of the two
plays, The Fat Man and Have Exact Fare
Ready.
That was the most recent in a string of
seven playwriting awards which Baldwin has
won since his first play was produced in 1947.
In all, he's written about 30 one-act plays,
and 20 three-act plays since college, Baldwin
said.
"My only trouble with writing was not to
write too much," he says, "like talking."
He also won another two first places in a
1971 Jacksonville (Florida) University one-act
playwriting contest with plays holding titles
like Can the Frog Princess Find Happiness?
and The Incredible Outbreak of Semi-Nudity.
This month Baldwin said, he will attend,
between final exams and grading, the opening
of his play, A Sky of Faces at the Changing
Scene experimental theater in Denver.
It's about the myths and religion that a
group of zoo monkeys have built around the
presence of strange faces in the sky visitors'
faces, Baldwin said.
Play ideas can come from anything, even a
color, he said. His play originally titled The
Color Was Green, for example, explores the
meaning that shades of green have for a
soldier, he said.
"I have a compulsion to write plays, so I
have one going all the time," he said.
Baldwin teaches introduction to theater,
contemporary theater and introduction to
playwriting classes at UNL But strangely
enough, Baldwin said, he also could love
writing sports for a newspaper.
It takes a long time for a play to be
published after it's been written and
produced, he explained. With journalism, he
said, "what you write today you see
tomorrow."
And he almost was a journalist.
Baldwin was in the newspaper business
when he was 11. He printed a newspaper for
his Boy Scout troop with rubber type, he
said.
Throughout high school and into college,
Baldwin was headed toward becoming a
newspaper man. He was born in Tennessee,
but grew up in Austin, Tex., and entered the
University of Texas there in 1934, he said. He
didn't come out with a B.A. degree until six
years later.
"I think I fell in love with college," he
says.
From journalism he changed to an English
major, a drama major and back again to
education and English, he said.
Baldwin said his B.A. took so long because
he was "busy all the time but neglecting to go
to physics labs." He said he took every
English and drama and creative writing class,
dropping his science and required classes to
do it.
In 1936, when he was a junior, the college
produced Front Page, a play portraying
post-World War I yellow journalism, Baldwin
said.
Being a journalist, Baldwin went to try out
for a part, and got it, he said.
"I got to wear a snap brim hat, smoke
cigarettes and make smart remarks," he said.
It was girl who talked Baldwin into taking
his first playwriting class, he said. The
University of Texas didn't have a formal
drama department until Baldwin's junior year,
but it had a drama group called the Curtain
Club.
Actors Zachary Scott, Eli Wallach, and
former Texas governor John Connally and his
wife were Curtain Club members along with
Baldwin. Connally was a good actor, Baldwin
said.
Between getting his masters degree in
English at Texas and getting a Master of Fine
Arts in 1948 at the University of Iowa, he
flew with a bombardier group in the Army
Air Force, Baldwin said.
Not until being stationed in England,
Baldwin said, did he "fall back in love with
drama." London was just a short distance
from where the Eighth Air Force was
stationed so at Westminster Abbey he
watched Shakespearean drama, and English
actors such as John Gielgud and Laurence
Olivier.
Back in college after the service, Baldwin
wrote a play for his master's thesis at the
University of Iowa, where he also earned his
Ph.D. in 1950. The school produced that first
play, The Wishing Hill, in 1947. Baldwin
has been at UNL since 1958. That's the
longest time he's been at any one place, he
points out.
But still, Baldwin said, "I'd like to have a
different job every week, if I could."
Corea 's
'Feather'
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Chick Corea
Light as A Feather. Chick Corea and Return to Forever.
Polydor (PD5525).
Keyboardist Chick Corea has organized a tight, fine group
and is blasting away with ammunition liKe bassist Stan Clarke,
percussionist Airto Moreira and vocalist Flora Purim.
Don't let the album title throw you, Corea and Return to
Forever is anything but light. Light As A "Feather features a
Latin sound mainly to accommodate Purim's smoky-toned,
Astrud Gilbertoish vocals.
"You're Everything," "Captain Marvel," "500 Mile High"
and an exotic "Spain" rank as the best on the album, which,
to put it mildly, is exciting.
Larry Kubert
Watch. Seatrain. Warner Brothers (BS 2692).
"Did something happen while your head was turned7 While
you blinked your eye? Keep your eye on the road. Seatrain's
changed," the album promo resolutely hypes.
Surprisingly, Warner Bros, men weren't just kidding.
Seatrain has changed. And for the better.
In Watch, Seatrain is loaded up with a new label and new
people (adding Bill Elliot on keyboards and Julio Cornoado on
drums). The group lias successfully escaped its former limiting
bag.
Watch displays an amaing versatility and scope, the likes of
which is seldom seem. From the decidedly footstomping beat
of "Pack of Fools" and hokey cornball "Bloodshot Eyes" ("I
know what I been smokin', honey,and it ain't worth a token,
next to you it's just a poke in the hay.") to the reticent
sadness of "We Are Your Children Too" and "Scratch" is
some distance. And to say the group is instrumentally superior
is an extreme understatement.
Al Kooper's "Flute Thing" with deeply intricate harmonies
and rhythms is easily the best cut on the album. It is, in fact,
the best instrumental since early Blood, Sweat and Tears. And
that's quite an achievement for a primarily vocal group.
Jim Gray
daily nebraskan
Concerts abound
as year closes
by Carolyn Hull
Finals may be approaching but Grant Johannessen and
UNL music students are ending the semester with a week of
nightly performances to entice students who study biology to
Bach.
A solo concert by artist-in-residence Johanness, in
conjunction with a Nebraska Businessmen for the Arts
conference, will be open to the public. The recital, with works
by Bach, Schubuert, Grieg, Faure and Chabrier, will follow a
short speech, "Ecology of the Spirit," given by George C.
Seyboldt, at 8:45 p.m. Wednesday, in the Kimball Recital
Hall.
The Collegiate Band and Percussion Ensemble are planning
an outdoor concert for 7 p.m. Thursday in front of Kimball
Hall. Conductor Al Rometo invites students to come and
"plop" on the grass, relax and have a good time. In case of bad
weather, everything will move inside to Kimball, he added.
Works in the program will be in a lighter vein, including
"Parade of the Wooden Soldiers" and selections from Man of
LaMancha.
With chairs and street clothes in place of sets and costumes,
opera students will present scenes from Adrianna Lecouvreur,
The Magic Flute and The Marriage of Figaro at 7 p.m. Friday.
Then at 8 p.m. Saturday Othello will replace Adrianna
Lecouvreur and The Magic Flute and The Marriage of Figaro
will be presented again.
The scenes, presented in the Westbrook Orchestra room, are
designed to test younger singers in roles they might not be able
to perform in a full-scale production and to challenge the older
students with demanding roles,, according to music professor
Richard Grace.
A lecture by Harold Schonberg, Pulitzer Prize winning critic
for the New York Times also will be held Friday night at 8:30
in the Sheldon auditorium. Schonberg is in Nebraska to review
a recital by artists-in-residence Zara Nelsova and Johnnessen to
be presented Saturday in Hyannnis.
Guiseppe Verdi's "Requiem" will be presented at 3 p.m.
Sunday in the Coliseum. Verdi's prime impact in the music
woiid -us opera, and according to conductor Emanuel
Wishnow, that dramatic quality carries over in "Requiem"
making it an exciting piece with the feeling of a non-staged
drama rather than the more traditional serious memorial.
Compositions by UNL music students also will be
performed Monday night. "Discussion for Two Pianos" by
Laurie Edwards, "Sonata for Bass Trombone & Piano" by
Mike Hoefs, "Mixed Emotions for Solo Clarinet" by Ron
Mills, "A Sight du Camp" by Bruce Chapman, "Piece in Three
Movements" by Rex Cadwallader, "Four Songs from E.E.
Cummings" by Don Gorder, and "Music for Brass Quintet" by
Noyes Batholomew were chosen to be performed as
representative of work done by Robert Beadell's students.
Ending the week-long activities is a french horn recital b
Clarence Cooper, professor of composition at Rutgers
University and visiting professor at UNL. The recital, at 8 p.m.
next Tuesday at the Kimball Recital Hall, will feature a
number by Noel DaCosta, "Chime Tones for Solo Horn,
Vibraphone and Chime" wnitcn siwr i.illy for the recital.
Wednesday, may ?, 1973
