INTERVIEW: Jean Claude van Itallie’s new La MaMa play welcomes end to patriarchy
Photo: The Fat Lady Sings, written by Jean Claude van Itallie, stars Tony Torn. Photo courtesy of Carlos Cardona / Provided by DKC O&M with permission.
Jean Claude van Itallie, the legendary playwright, has been associated with La MaMa for almost half a century. The downtown arts institution has led the way on presenting avant-garde off-Broadway theater, and much of its reputation is thanks to Itallie’s plays over the years, which have touched upon war, politics and patriarchy.
His latest is The Fat Lady Sings, which is a searing indictment of the current societal and political times. In the show, which runs through Sunday, April 7, the playwright skewers patriarchy and asks some simple, yet profound, questions about how the last two years came to be.
“How did we get here?” Itallie asked in a phone interview. “What brought us to this extraordinarily difficult place? I think it’s an important question for playwrights and writers to think about right now. It’s so far out. It’s so extraordinary, and it’s so negative where we are that I think it’s worthwhile plunging in and wondering [about] our unconscious or the unconscious of the people who voted for the current president. What brought us here?”
Itallie said he is not interested in satire. He doesn’t want to make fun of people or put anyone down with his words. Instead, he wants The Fat Lady Sings to be a theatrical exploration of collective conscience.
Press notes point that out the play exposes the rotting belief systems and moth-eaten myths that have brought the United States to its knees. In the narrative, a family — white, authoritarian, Evangelical — live out their days on on a dream-like, falling-apart ship. They careen toward catastrophe, but also catharsis.
Itallie was an active participant in the play’s development process, including its auditions for the La MaMa run. However, health concerns derailed his plans to be present at rehearsals.
“It’s a very exciting time [to rehearse], and I was deprived of it because I’ve always been in extraordinarily good health,” he said. “And suddenly I had unexpected open-heart surgery, so I couldn’t go to a single rehearsal. … I’m on the mend indeed, but it’s very, very slow. It’s a great shock for somebody who has been extremely healthy all their lives.”
This meant Itallie, who was born in Brussels in 1936, had to depend even more on the director of The Fat Lady Sings, David Schweizer.
The result has been a productive collaboration, and Itallie believes the audiences have been responding to his words.
“I’m more interested in what it does for other people,” said Itallie, who has also written America Hurrah, The Traveler and War and Light. “I’m more interested to see if people recognize these themes. We’re really trammeled and tied up by all kinds of beliefs to do with fundamentalism, to do with capitalism and most particularly to do with patriarchy, and that’s been used to exploit us for the last 2,000 years. And it’s being used to exploit us now, so in a sense The Fat Lady Sings is hopefully heralding the end of patriarchy.”
He added: “I hope I’m tapping into something beyond 2019. I think the really important questions continue all the time. I can’t predict what will happen to the play in a couple of years, but I think if you dig deeply enough, you dig universally.”
It’s wholly appropriate that La MaMa is presenting The Fat Lady Sings because Itallie has been associated with the theater since the mid-1960s. He remembers his first time meeting Ellen Stewart, the experimental theater club’s founder.
“I had found a little note at the Caffe Cino on the table, saying if you like the Caffe Cino, you’ll really like La MaMa,” he remembered. “So I went down to, at that point, 122 Second Ave.”
He climbed a couple flights of stairs and went through a big metal door painted red. Inside he found Stewart, who Itallie described as extraordinarily elegant.
“I explained to her that I was a playwright looking for a place to do my plays,” he said. “Her response was, ‘Honey, you’re home.’ So La MaMa has in a sense been home to me for about 50 years. It’s been a theatrical home. It’s family. It’s a place to do my plays.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Fat Lady Sings continues through Sunday, April 7 at La MaMa on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Click here for more information and tickets.
