Full-tilt sensory surrender in the theaters of fear

Mythologizing Jack Kerouac with Larry Myers and Vincent Balestri

Larry Myers is a playwright and director who currently teaches courses in Speech and Playwriting at St. John's University's Manhattan Campus. Vincent Balestri is a playwright and actor currently based in Seattle. Larry I heard of when people left comments about him after a couple of Beat-related book reviews I wrote for the Examiner, lauding his impression of Jack Kerouac at New York City's Howl Festival last September. I saw Vince's show, The Essence of Jack in Austin, Texas, years ago and it really sent me.

Vince still performs his own work, as well as stage projects for others, Independent film, some print work and an occasional commercial. "I was never big on commercials," he says, "I'm not the type that can sell shoes, but I had a terrific experience recently for an Anti-Smoking campaign. I got to shave completely and dress as a teenage cheerleader. They had the voices of teenage girls dubbed over our lines with the point being that smoking makes you look old. I guess it was highly effective, because it ran for close to a year."

Myers agrees that theater arts careers don't necessarily progress in an orderly, linear way, given the changing expectations of dramatic arts students and audiences, and that the need for cash to live and eat demands a separate, stable day job. All around us he sees "theaters of fear"- the economic crisis, the ecological crisis, new & old viruses. "Menace & mendacity permeate patterns of being." He reports. "A playwright must find new light in the cracks of despair, a hopeful, happy trouble, & new faith configurations. Theater spaces are seized by the greedy, forcing a new invisible theater to arise . . . a theater that is literate, subversive & utilitarian, done more cheaply, faster & even more ferociously for this new nervous impatience, for those who demand a cultural or spiritual fulfillment of any kind. A permanent Halloween seems to have fallen upon us, sucking the light from our innards & marrow. Playwrights evolve into some sort of semi-psychopathic survivalists. A career now means constant clawing & scratching at what theater arts can do. It's all about change and drastic change."

Vince hasn't had much contact with Kerouac's friends or relatives since closing down Essence-"I try to avoid the political quagmire of Jack's estate," though he studied tapes of Jack's voice long before they were publicly available through the good graces of Kerouac's first wife, Edie, who became a good friend and supporter. "I continued my research on him throughout the time I portrayed him and did meet many of his old friends and family, who were generally supportive. Jack in his own right was a very good impressionist, from the 3 Stooges to Frank Sinatra. This gave me a terrific opening to perform other characters from his life as a part of my show. Beat Angel incorporates some of that material, taking it another step in translating it to film."

"Being able to meet the real people who are very very protective of their memories and feeling that these memories help identify them has been significant," says Myers. "Friends & family of Jack Kerouac all seem to be apostles & celebrants infected & invested by his otherworldly spirit. Carolyn Cassady (whom I met at the Beat Museum) is a classy, charismatic stunningly beautiful woman. She said ‘Both Jack & Neal came cross country because of me!' It is easy to see how this educated, theatrical siren summoned them." Other Kerouac friends and relatives cited by Myers include John Sampas, Kerouac's brother in law, Andy Warhol's friend Taylor Mead, close Kerouac associate David Amram, and Adele Morales, who eventually married Norman Mailer. "What one gleans from Kerouac companions & personnel is a reverence for high vibration," he says. "At the Worms Gallery in San Francisco's North Beach, Lawrence Ferlinghetti (owner of City Lights Books) stressed to me how Kerouac's writing is as stunningly original, valuable & startling now as it was way back then."

Kerouac pioneered a form of writing he dubbed "spontaneous prose" akin to the Buddhist concept of "first thought, best thought" and earmarked by cues like "Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better," and "Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better". Many critics considered him undisciplined or lazy when he became popular in the 1950s. In honor of Jack's spontaneity, Balestri never wrote down an entire script for his Kerouac show. "It changed each night because I would bring different scenes (or novels) depending on my mood, the audience mood, the location, etc. I would use a different theatrical style for different scenes. For example, Jack appeared on William Buckley's 'Firing Line' roaring drunk. This called for dramatic improvisation. I recreated the scene by having the live audience ask me questions that I answered as a drunken Jack Kerouac. I could only answer with my understanding of where Jack was at that point in his life. At one of the shows in San Francisco, Lawrence Ferlinghetti asked me what I said to him 'while jaywalking in Berkley that day in 1952.' I answered him as the drunken Jack on 'Firing Line' in 1967. My answer drew a good laugh from Ferlinghetti, so I knew I had hit the mark."

At least in the beginning of his career, before surrendering to alcoholism and backsliding away from things new into his late father's bourgeois complacency, Kerouac was a writer who wanted to push the literary medium forward; other 'rules' of spontaneous prose were "Blow as deep as you want to blow" and "Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind"--which begs the question: how best to honor their original progressive impulse when portraying artists after they die? It's a form of time travel, for sure, but what makes it more than simple reproduction, a one-sided conversation with a ghost?

"Proper delivery of Kerouac is a method actor's full tilt sensory surrender," says Vince. "He was a 'method' liver. Kerouac cherished life, experience, soulfulness, & patriotism. He spoke in a distinctive manner. His readings sound like incantations in their hypnotic, lyrical soundings. Kerouac's is a unique music-Influenced by both jazz & everyday white noise. Both feet are firmly implanted in a working class sensibility. Mimicry has its place, but a one-person show is about portraying a life. Jack mythologized America. I mythologized Jack. The theatre is a mirror to reflect a society back to itself. My job was to reflect America back to itself through Jack Kerouac. He sang of America's innocent wants. I tried to give the audience the inspiration to desire that innocence once again. To find the creative presence within their own being."

Far more than static reproduction, honoring quickened spirits like Kerouac's is a way of resurrecting and continuing their original inspiration. "Sometimes acceptance of the sheer guts to want to try to move monoliths is effective," says Myers. "From facebook to scrapbooking to MySpace, stethoscopic souls try to amplify the photographic level of existence to something more tantamount. Cliche-avoiding obsessionists are always pushing the envelope or attempting to astonish! The confrontational are always pushing lit forward to discover & rediscover the individualistic personal surreal edge we embody in Walmart nation. We do autopsies upon,old corpses & conjure acts. There should be want ads for shamen not nurses nowadays. . . but the levels of reality are there for the enlightened & perceptive. The freshness of active discovery can annhilate ennui, acceptance & the predictable. Kerouac approached his art as a radical spiritual investigator & ghost buster. His trance state is and was contagious & pull us in. Apparitions, otherworldy visitations, ghosts, shadows are our friends. We can indeed communicate & commune with those who defied time & place."

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