Diary 5/30/23:
Just saw the movie “Paris Can Wait” with Diane Lane in the lead role of a married woman who decides to travel to Paris with her husband’s business partner. I won’t go into the details of the movie. It was written, produced and directed by Eleanor Coppola. I remember Diane from when I got involved in work teaching martial arts fist and staff forms and movement in a 2-week theatre workshop in 1974 or 75 to the Great Jones Repertory Company under director Andre Serban.
I think Andre was doing workshops for The Trojan Women getting it ready to take to the Middle East. I do not know if Diane was part of the production; she was just 11-12 years old, perhaps younger, at the time. I saw her briefly, just literally in passing, during a showing of Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Woman of Sichuan” directed by Serban at LaMama ETC on 3rd Street in the Bowery. She came up and introduced herself to me and I asked her why she did not join the workshop I was conducting for Andrei. I cannot remember her answer. Next time I saw her she did a cameo in Anton Chekov’s play The Cherry Orchard at Lincoln Center directed by Serban in 1977. And then she was in Elizabeth Swados’ musical The Runaways on Broadway. She appeared in the films A Little Romance with Laurence Olivier and Unfaithful with Richard Gere and Oliver Martinez. I met a few others in the Great Jones Repertory Company: I remember Joanna Peled and Priscilla Smith. They were also in Cherry Orchard. I saw Joanna in Swados’ Nightclub Cantata at the Village Gate in 1976 or 1977. From what I read on the internet, Joanna and Elizabeth passed in their 60s. I would have gone to LaMama to check on them during the revival of Euripides’ Trojan Women a few years ago. Many of the people I’ve known are gone. When I drive down 2nd Avenue on the East Village, I see that the area is still busy but I haven’t gone to LaMama in years. Norman, Albert and I were part of the PETAL (Philippine Educational Theatre Arts League) group that mounted shows under director Cecille Guidote at LaMama in the late 1970s and early 1980s (before we moved from New York to New Jersey). In the dance of the legend of Malakas at Maganda, the Philippine story of creation, Albert, 10, danced the tinikling wearing a bahag and wings with real feathers (he was allergic to them). I was Malakas to a 16-year old girl’s Maganda. We also mounted a show honoring the slain Ifugao chief Macli-Ing Dulag. I read several of his sayings and choreographed a fight between two warriors (I was one of them).
A bit of the old nostalgia!
Rene
