monday, november 14, 1977
page 12
daily nebraskan
arts & fffMi(n)
Novelist tries following Cother, Sandoz footsteps
By Jim Williams
Marilyn Coffey, species: New York author, was back in
Nebraska to research some essays and to participate in
Masters Week.
She looks about like you'd picture a New York author:
40; brown corduroy pantsuit with green turtleneck
sweater, brown loafers with tassels; pleasant smile, big
glasses and slightly stringy brown hair. She talks like the
poet and ex-journalist 'he is, pausing to think of a new,
concise, pithy quote while waiting for you to get the last
one down.
Marilyn Coffey said she is trying to follow in the foot
steps of Willa Cather and Man Sandoz. Species: Second
string Nebraska Woman Novelist, New York, some pretty
good books, modest fame; then, when a new generation of
novelists and novel-readers comes along, an awful limbo,
with books preserved on freshman reading lists and name
preserved on UNL residence halls.
Coffey, at least, is following the path with her eyes
open.
She was born and raised in Alma. At UNL she wanted
to major in English, but her mother thought she should
study something that would help her get a job. She chose
journalism, worked for the Daily Nebraskan and, after
graduating in 1959, the Lincoln Journal and the Hastings
Tribune.
She interviewed Mari Sandoz, Nebraska's second-string
woman novelist of the time, for the Daily Nebraskan.
Seedy hotel
"If there was a single assignment that affected me
most, that was it," she said. "I interviewed her in a seedy
hotel. . . I found her there with her hotplate and her can
of soup. It brought home to me a great truth, which
that you can be a great writer and not make much mone
at it."
Coffey headed for New York in 1960. "When I left
Nebraska I swore I'd never return," she said. The atmos
sphere, she thought, was uncongenial to someone who
wanted to be a poet and novelist. "I felt I was an oddball,
I didn't fit in." Besides, New York was the center of the
pubhshing world-and Cather and Sandoz had gone there.
Public recital
The UNL School of Music Percussion Ensemble will
present a free, public recital Tuesday at 8 p.m. in Kim
ball Recital Hall.
The ensemble is composed of 18 students and is
directed by Albert Rometo, instructor of percussion
and theory in the School of Music.
The program will include three works: "Toccata"
by Carlos Chavez, "Introduction and Allegro" by
Richard Schory and "Mau Mau Suite" by Thomas L.
Davis.
Rometo said the Chavez piece will feature a large
variety of membraniphones, what he termed "any in
strument with a membrane stretched across it" such as
drums and tambourines. He said the composition will
include conga drums, tom-toms, tympani, snare drums
and other membraniphones.
Students, faculty
present concert
The Collegium Musicum of the UNL School of Music
will present a free, public concert of early music including
singing and choreography at 8 pjn. Tuesday. The concert
; will be in the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery auditorium.
The Collegium Musicum is a group of students, faculty
members and other persons related to the School of
Music. It was formed to give musicians an opportunity to
perform music written before 1700, offering insight into
the repertoire and performance practices of a vast, liftle
known music.
The works on Tuesday's program include selections
from "Gregorian Chant" and early organ pieces; songs of
the Troubadours and Trouveres; works by Guillaume de
. Machaut; a 15th century motet by Guillaume Dufay
' written for the consecration of the Cathedral of Santa
Maria della Fiore at Florence, Italy; several pieces for a
consort of viols; and a double-choir motet by the 16th
" century Czech composer Jacob I Iandi.
This will be the inaugural concert for the group's
new portative organ, an authentic copy of a medieval in
strument, made by the Noel Mander Organ Works of
London, England.
Also featured in the concert will be members of the
UNL dance department who will dance a number of
Renaissance selections in period costumes.
The Collegium Musicum currently has 18
members, four who are vocalists. The remainder are in
strumentalists who play viols, viclle, tttcrdis, lute, harp,
kiumnihom, bells, nakers, tabor and finder cymbals.
Looking for work in New York, Coffey turned into a
feminist. She said sheas often refused jobs because she
was a woman, and was told so directly.
"I wanted to do the same kind of work I'd been doing
in Hastings, Nebraska," she said. "I wanted to be a
reporter, but I didn't want to be on the society page."
Coffey eventually found work with various New York
business publications. In 1966, though, she grew disen
chanted with journalism and quit.
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Photo by Bob Pearson
Marilyn Coffey, like Sandoz and Cather, has pur
sued a writing career in the Big Apple.
Coffey said she realized she'd have to support her novel
and poetry writing somehow.
"I hoped, but never serioidy believed, I'd be able to
support myself with my own writing," she said,
"but very late in my life, if at all."
She tried free-lancing and teaching, deciding she liked
teaching better. She wound up at the Pratt Institute, a
degree-granting institute for professional artists, where she
now is director of freshman English.
Summing up
Coffey sums up her present neatly, like a resume: "I
write poetry, fiction both short and long, and non-fiction
essays. I've had one novel published. Its title is Marcella.
I am currently finishing a second novel, which I'm calling
One for the Money. I've also been doing a series of essays
based on the period of time I spent in Nebraska." One of
these, about the Starkweather murders, ran in Atlantic
Monthly; another, about the dust bowl days before
Coffey was born, has been accepted by Natural History.
She has a husband, John Powell, and a son, Ian, by a
first marriage. She has an apartment in Brooklyn (she
moved out of her Greenwich Village apartment two days
before she flew to Lincoln). The new apartment has room
for a piano-she said she likes to spend a lot of time at the
piano. She also enjoys travel and friends, she said.
She summed up her writing, her future, and her
Nebraska experience neatly:
"I definitely consider myself a feminist-but before I
was a feminist I was a writer. I don't write deliberately
from a feminist perspective. But because I'm a woman and
because I'm a feminist, a certain part of what I wrote
would fall under the umbrella of feminist writing."
"I intend to keep on writing. I expect the work to be
published. I expect to keep on teaching-the two work
well together. If my writing should ever be financially
successful, might cut back on my teaching. . . I'm pretty
happy with my life now, and I don't expect to change
radically." i
"Nebraska rejuvenates me, but I need the distance to
get the dispassion to write about it."
Will there be a Coffey Hall someday?
Playhouse opera 'Trouble in Tahiti'
reveals hypocrisies of married life
By Charlie Krig
The title may be Trouble in Tahiti but there are few
problems with the Lincoln Community Playhouse Gallery
Theatre production of this play.
The show is a short (45-minute) opera by Leonard
Bernstein and it contains a basic plot that's far from
unique: a married couple tries to revive the life in their
marriage. However, Bernstein avoids the usual hackneyed
characters and situations by concentrating on solo scenes
where the actors explain their frustrations and thoughts.
theatre review
Paula Morris plays the wife, Dinah, with skill. She has a
good voice that easily conveys each emotion in the part,
whether it be disgust and despair over her husband or a
lively, virulent discourse about the movies site watches.
Sam, played by Rob McMaster, is a workoholic, ego
centric type who's too caught up in his own affairs to
notice the depth of the maritalfamilial discord at home.
The macho bravado displayed in his rabid quest to win the
handball tournament contrasts with McMaster's apparent
nervousness on stage.
The remainder of the cast, a trjo of singers (Laurie
Norton, Deanna Mumgaard and Bill Davis), supply choral
backup that reinforces the cool, aloof sophistication that
marks the couple's marriage.
The technical designs also show taste, particularly
Don Yanik's set. The bland flats and stair-step stage levels
allow fast, easy transition from scene to scene but the ex
tremely stylized set pieces lend even more to the charac
ters distant, sanctimonious attitudes.
The result is a slick little production that reveals some
of societal hypocrisy of married life. While the opera may
not be as elaborate as other plays with similar themes (for
example, Stephen Sondheim's Company) it provides a
pleasant diversion with moderate amounts of both humor
and pathos.
The play will be presented this weekend with perfor
mances at 8 p jn. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday in the
Gallery Theatre at the Playhouse, 2500 S. 56th.
The UNL Cultural Affairs Committee deserves a special
note for sponsoring a performance Saturday by the
National Theatre of the Deaf. The ribald comedy based
very loosely on Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers
had a special humor made all the more enjoyable and vivid
by the actors' use of sign language. Extraordinary groups
such as this should be brought to campus more often.
Vocalists perform duet at 8 p.m.
A UNL School of Music voice instructor and a special
guest vocalist will perform a program of duets spanning
four centuries of musical work in a free, public concert at
8 pin. in Kimball Recital Hall.
Donna Ifcrier, a soprano in her second year as a UNL
faculty member, and Drew Minter, a counter-tenor who
has performed since he was 10, will sing 14 selections by
Guillaume Machaut, Francesco Landini, Johann Sebastian
Bach, Claudio Monteverdi, Henry Purcell, Georg
Friderich Handel, Robert Jones, John Cooper, John
Dowiand and Borlet.
The featured piece will be the Harler-Minter duet on
"Purtimiro" from Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppea,
one of the most sensual duets in operatic literature.
Harler will accompany Minter on a new portative organ
owned by the UNL Collegium Musicum to open the
program. This will include four 14th century songs:
"Douce dame jolie" and "Ma chiere dame" by Machaut,
"Ecco la prinmcra" by Landini and "Ma tredol rosignol
joly" by Boric t.
Two other UNL music instructors will accompany the
duo during two risque Elizabethan duets, "Lachrymae"
by Dowiand and "Will said to his Mammy" by Jones.
Tracy Hanson will play the cello and Quentin Faulkner
will play the organ.
Minter first sang a solo as a member of the Washington
Cathedral Choir when he was 10. He has appeared in
world premiere performances of two operas in Washingt
on, Vie Shcphcrde's Playe and Erode the Create by
John LaMontaine, and has soloed in Leonard Bernstein's
Chichester Psalms with the Washington Choral Arts
Society and members of the National Symphony
Orchestra.
Minter also worked with Washington's pre-professional
troupe, Shakespeare & Co. in the Trapicr Theatre, the
Aspen Music Festival and the Kennedy Center. He has
studied music at the University of Indiana and in Vienna.
He also won second prize in the International Singing
Competition in Holland.
