By committing to arbitrary physical actions, adjustments, vocal patterns, and locations on stage, I find myself step by step, freed from the need to look and sound good, clever and intelligent.  I become immersed in play and movement and speech flow freely.  I enter the world of the heart and not the head.  

Preconceptions disappear, plans drop away, fear of not knowing what to do or say no longer exists.  The everyday world is turned upside down, and golden nuggets drop out of bottomless pockets. 

The result is raw material for new shows that came from your workshop.  The 48th Street Exercise (Solo Exploration) is perfectly designed for the way I work.

_ Libby Skala

Adam Hocherman was “a piece of work.” Libby Skala reminds me that’s the harshest thing he ever said about another human being.

Whenever I ranted and raved about those who drove me insane, Adam shook his head up and down and agreed, “He’s a piece of work,” and “She’s a piece of work,” and “They’re a piece of work.”

Adam was a piece of work. He was a piece of work who drove me crazy when he couldn’t get it right onstage, and he was a piece of work when he wrote brilliant words and performed them better than anyone else could have. He was the most awkward actor I have ever seen onstage, but when he got it right he was elegant.

Adam Hocherman wrote about his time in the Israeli Army. He wrote about the grief of an Arab mother for her dead son. He wrote about he and his fellows carrying a wounded soldier above their heads through the war torn desert. He wrote about the sense of humor of those who faced death at every moment.

Adam’s first day in the Israeli Army he told the officer in charge that he had come from America to serve. Adam thought the officer was going to praise his commitment.

Officer: You mean you were living in America and chose to come back here and serve in the Israeli army?

Adam: Yes.

Captain: Let me ask you something… are you retarded?

Adam was a piece of work when he ran full speed through the Port Authority Bus Terminal carrying my fifty pound suitcase so we wouldn’t miss the bus back to Hoboken.

And when I left the chocolate mint patty on his kitchen table after we returned from a restaurant where they give those candies out, and he mailed it to me in LA, he was a piece of work. I mailed it back of course and as the patty crossed a continent over and over again it became a gooey substance in deteriorating green tinfoil. We mailed it to co-conspirators who delivered it by hand to the two of us.

Adam left me phone messages whenever he found a New York bar that served my favorite beer on tap. “Widmer sighting. Widmer sighting. The corner of 72nd and Amsterdam. The bar is O’Hannigans. Widmer sighting. Widmer sighting.”

We had this bit we did too many times to be funny to anyone but ourselves. Adam might say on a hot day, “It’s hot out. You have to admit it.” And I would dead pan, “I don’t have to admit it,” or vice versa. And we would stare at each other for a moment and then go back to what we were doing in silence. We did this in private but it was most fun in public when we would speak loud enough for strangers to hear.

Adam learned my language and spoke it with eloquence. “It was a fahoy on the faheizen.” “You know exactly what you mean.” “You know what you’re saying.” “Do you see your point?” “Who would you be if you weren’t who you are?”

I introduced Adam to the music of the brilliant Texas songwriter and certified nut Kinky Friedman. We sat on his couches many a drunken night listening to Kinky and Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt and Lyle Lovett and Iris Dement and Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings and Nanci Griffith and Kris Kristofferson and Robert Earl Keen and Emmy Lou and Willie and Cash and all the rest of the modern day cowboys and cowgirls. I have only two or three other friends who would have listened to that music with me. Adam went to a Kinky concert recently, and to hear him talk about it you would think he wanted to run Kinky for president.

“Kinky’s off the charts.”

Adam loved dogs, as I do. I guess he never met a dog he didn’t like. We talked dogs and I always encouraged him to get one. Adam sent me this email a few weeks ago.

“There is someone in my cast who is a foster parent for dogs. She brought in a dog to rehearsal that I fell in love with immediately. Unfortunately it was just adopted 8 hours before. She put me on her list for her next dog. I also have been dealing with some health issues (blood pressure). I am on the mend though.
Miss You Lots Gary”

We hadn’t seen each other for nearly a year. I used to go to New York nine or ten times a year, and Adam visited us in LaLaLand. My stem cell transplant slowed me down for a time and I had to stay close to my doctors.

Adam taught me about war and about the relationship of Jews to Arabs in the promised land. He referred to Arabs as his “cousins.” He taught me about rising on thermals when he hang-glided on air. He taught me about committing to one’s passion and sticking it out, even when one is alone.

He taught me not to judge. I learned the lesson in my rational mind but I’ve never stopped judging. I can’t always be kind enough to say, “He’s a piece of work” when the crime seems unforgiveable.

When I told Matt Cartsonis about Adam’s death, he said, “Adam was without guile.” Yes, he was an innocent who just wanted to do the things he wanted to do. There was no desire to compete or showcase himself. He would take the small role for no pay and invite everyone to see the show.

Adam had dreams which he pursued with the naivete of a child and the fight of a warrior. Adam was a writer when I met him. He discovered acting and improvisation. He wrote and he acted and he improvised with as much intensity as anyone I’ve ever known… and with love for the craft of the theatre. We did shows and workshops and we improvised on and offstage and we went to the theatre and we watched the best. And we were fortunate to “drink” with the best, both the known and the unknown.

Adam offered to share his apartment in Hoboken with Wenndy and me the weekend before he died. We stayed in the city instead. It was a casual choice. It sure seems like a momentous decision in retrospect.

Adam was one of the truest friends I have had in my life.

The last email I got from Adam ended with, “You have to admit it.” I wrote back, “I don’t have to admit it.”

Adam lives on.

I have to admit it.

He was a piece of work. I keep thinking of giving him a call to say something stupid knowing he will have a stupid response, and then I cry once again.

There once was a land of beauty far beyond the imagination of anyone who had never seen it.

In time the land was discovered by those who had never seen it and they marveled at its beauty. They were people who believed in the value of hard work and progress. And so they built buildings upon the land they considered beautiful and in the buildings they created things that improved the lives of all. And these builders were revered and rewarded for their imagination and hard work.

And there was a young girl who lived in this land who could imagine vistas of beauty, even when those vistas were hidden by the buildings that were built to create things that improved the lives of all. And those visions filled her dreams. So she spent her life seeking and sometimes finding the hidden beauty she imagined.

One day as she walked along a mountain path with her father she looked down and saw a valley untouched by human hands and filled with beauty far beyond anything she had ever imagined. Her father was a builder and he had worked hard all his life and had built buildings where people made things that all could enjoy. And her father was revered and rewarded for his life of imagination and hard work.

And the young girl said to her father, “Look at how beautiful this place is!”

And her father said, “Yes, but what good is it?”

And the young girl didn’t know what to say. And so she said nothing.

For years and years the young girl never spoke again, because she didn’t know what to say. And so she became a young woman and she didn’t know what to say.

One day as she walked along a river looking for hidden beauty, she came upon a tattered old man who was dying. The old man clung tightly to an old beat up guitar that seemed older than he himself.

The young woman didn’t know what to say, so she gave the old man some water from the river.

The old man struggled to say something. And when he finally managed to speak he thanked her for the water and then he died.

The young woman buried the old man deep in the river sands and she prayed a silent prayer to the river. In her silent prayer she asked the river to watch over the old man’s grave.

She knew the old man would never play his guitar again, so she took it and continued her walk.

And the young woman who didn’t know what to say came upon a vista even more beautiful than anything she had ever seen or imagined.

She sat down and she knew what to say. She struggled to speak but her words came out as a song. And she picked up the old beat up guitar and she strummed it as she sang.

She had never played a guitar and she had never sung but she played and sang anyway.

And for the rest of her life she sang of the beauty she imagined. She continued to seek beautiful hidden vistas and when she found them she sang of them.

The young woman grew old. She never spoke again, but she never stopped singing. She knew what to say.

I campaigned and voted for you in 2008. I had never been so excited about a candidate since Bobby Kennedy.

I am angered by your weak-kneed cave-in to the Republicans on the tax bill. I am disappointed that you didn’t choose to fight the hypocrites and liars before this late date. Compromise is necessary after the battle is won. You didn’t compromise. You refused to fight.

I long for the strength of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, the Kennedys, Tip O’Neill and Lyndon Johnson among other great Democrats. While I don’t agree with all the positions they took, they fought and won important battles that changed the country and the world for the better.

I have always resented your appointment of Ken Salazar to Interior and I began to suspect then that you were not the person I voted for.

Sincerely,

Gary Austin

Written by Gary Austin

In 1971 I was an acting client at Compass Management in Beverly Hills. The agency was owned by Garry Marshall and Fred Roos, and the managers were Herb Molina and Pat McQueeney.

The client list included Harrison Ford, Cindy Williams, Penny Marshall, Martin Sheen, Howard Hesseman, Lynne Marie Stewart and more.

Pat asked me if I would like to meet a Compass client, actress Monica Belson, and work up an audition scene with her. Monica and I met and we selected a scene from a western comedy Movie Of The Week, written by her brother Jerry Belson.

We began rehearsing and in between meetings we spent lots of “money” speaking on the phone. This was before cell phones of course.

I don’t recall Monica ever telling me a joke, but she gave me laughing fits. Monica’s was a different kind of “funny” than any kind of “funny” I’ve ever known. I never thought of her as “The Funniest Man I Ever Met.” That moniker I reserve for the late Kip King. I don’t even think of her as the funniest “anyone” I ever met. She was Monica. Mention her name to anyone who knew her and you’ll get at least a chuckle and a Monica story.

Monica said things that were other-worldly and mind boggling and “where did that come from,” yet simple and oh-so truthful coming out of who she was. Her words were spoken dead-pan and so honestly that the outrageousness of what she said seemed perfectly logical.

Monica was in “Mensa.” If there is such a thing as genius, she came pretty close.

We decided to write sit com together (with Garry Marshall as our mentor), which we did for about a year or more in 1971-72. I spent many a night on her couch as we worked late into the night and then took it up again at dawn.

Monica usually spent her days in curlers and a nightgown. When we went shopping together she usually didn’t bother to dress or remove her curlers.

I was at her wedding to Andy Johnson, a marriage which lasted a very short time. Thus the name, Monica Johnson.

Monica became a student in my improvisational acting workshops and we improvised together at The Comedy Store in The Comedy Store Players.

One sunny afternoon Monica showed up where I was staying in Baldwin Hills (she lived in Sherman Oaks), and asked me if I wanted to go for a ride. I did and after we had gone some way, she announced that we were going to Las Vegas for the weekend. I told her that wouldn’t be possible on such short notice… that I had to take care of my dogs and that I would be without a change of underwear. I insisted in dramatic (as opposed to comedic) fashion that she take me home. After driving across much of LA toward Vegas, she relented and returned me to my abode.

I soon found that I didn’t enjoy writing sit com, and so we stopped writing together and our paths diverged. Monica went on to great success writing for TV’s The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Odd Couple, LaVerne and Shirley and more. She became a producer for LaVerne and Shirley and famously showed up for work in nightgown and curlers. She said she didn’t like producing because she had to show up on time.

Monica teamed with Albert Brooks to write (with Harry Shearer) “Real Life,” a 1979 comedy that marked Brooks’ feature film directorial debut.

Monica Johnson co-wrote four more films with Albert Brooks, directed by and starring Brooks: “Modern Romance” (1981), “Lost in America” (1985), “Mother” (1996) and “The Muse” (1999). They won a New York Film Critics Circle Award for best screenplay for “Mother.”

Monica and Brooks also co-wrote (with Andrew Bergman) “The Scout,” a Michael Ritchie-directed 1994 comedy starring Brooks and Brendan Fraser.

Enough of credits… Monica was a true friend. Between the years of 1973 and 2009 the only contact we had was one phone call (on cell phones). A year ago we found each other on Facebook and began emailing. It was another of those “no time had passed” moments. Monica invited Wenndy and I to come visit her in her home in Palm Springs. “Yes of course we will.” And we would have.

On November 1st our mutual friend Steve Bluestein called to say that Monica had passed away that morning from cancer. I didn’t know she had the disease.

Wenndy and I attended her memorial last week. It was a funny, sad and joyous occasion.

A card was handed out to each of us with pictures of Monica and her wishes.

“Just one last thing… please make sure ‘she collected lava lamps’ is in my obit if newspapers still exist.”

And, “That’s it..no more doom and gloom from me..who got kicked off idol last night?”

For thirty-six years of not seeing Monica I always knew she was “here.”

I will miss knowing she’s “here.”

My love to Heidi,

Gary

Written by Keith Merritt

Animals cannot speak for themselves, the Earth cannot speak for itself, we as natural beings as part of it’s spiritual energy speak for Earth. Here’s a little something I wrote and posted after seeing an aquaintance from high school post several pictures of his ‘hunt’ last year. the carcass of a very small bear, being gutted by the man’s son. I wrote something to him and added the amazing scene from the Deer Hunter where deniro does not shoot the deer. Unfortunately, last saturday the mighty hunters tracked down their dangerous and crafty quarry and took him out. again. I owed the bear these words…..

This is the face of Failure.
My failure as a poet to inspire empathy.
The failure of other men to know truth.

This was not done out of necessity, either for sustenance
or self preservation. This was not a sport as both parties
did not know they were involved in the deadly game,
and the odds were impossibly stacked against the nobler creature,
despite its superior strength, sight, hearing, sense of smell and natural grace.

This required no great skill, no great courage.

And it is highly ironic and absurd that an invasive, cancerous
non self regulating species of over 6 billion should claim the need to ‘control’
the population of other species, even as they kill 150 species a day,
and utterly devastate the life supporting ecological net which supports
themselves and all other things on this planet.

Don’t think I haven’t asked myself “Who am I to judge?”
I am me, that’s all I can say. I’m not judging primarily.
I’m thinking and feeling.

I could quote the bible and the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” and say ‘you’re going to Hell” but I don’t really believe in Hell, except the one we create with our own thoughts and actions here. And anyway, someone would just quote back at me our right to ‘dominion’ over the creatures of the Earth as quoted in the bible. Although I don’t see how we can ‘rule’ over all the creatures of the Earth if they are all dead, and if eventually our own species is dead.

Even if you believe that the bible is the word of God, we are still left with many choices of interpretation. Furthermore, the bible and any other text claiming to have come from a deity above originally came from a man who ‘heard’ the deity. Why should I listen to the words of a long dead man who claims God spoke to him 2000 years ago, if God spoke to me yesterday? And told me very clearly “this is wrong, this is sad, this is contrary to my will.” Unfortunately, I can’t definitively say I heard the voice of God or angels, the voice in my head is my own, as far as I can tell, but who knows.

I consider the Bear to be my spirit animal, so it may very well be the spirit of the Bear trying to come through in these messages. I don’t know of anyone who could claim that the Bear was happy or agreed with what happened Saturday, no matter how you rationalize it. If the bear had spoken and begged for his life, I’m sure he would not be dead now. At the very least the hunters would have thought some idiot was out in the woods in a bear suit, or that they were on some sort of Candid Camera episode. In any case, I claim the right to speak for the bear.

After taking my dogs out for a walk and looking down the hill at everything living far and near, nature shrouded in fog, and mountains basking in the sunshine, small figures of humans and other animals moving down below, I think of my father and the way he looked when he died. He looked dead. Empty. Devoid of the animating force of spirit.

Witnessing the death of a human being in this way illuminates the miracle of life in a way nothing else can. As amazing as seeing the birth of a human or other animal, something suddenly there, alive where there was nothing a moment before. So too is death amazing. We see something alive, full of spirit and consciousness turn before our eyes, into a THING. I couldn’t have been more amazed if my father had turned into a chair or a table at that moment. The difference between living and dead is that profound.

The point is, I’m not trying to take anything from the hunter. I’m trying to give him something.

The miracle of nature lies in the life it contains. The fact that spirit inhabits things, and gives them the power of motion, of thought, of desire, of happiness and sadness. The miracle is that the inanimate becomes animated. Like Pinnochio changing from wood to flesh. The miracle to me in nature is the love implicit in life. To watch a living animal, and know that it is purely different than me and yet kindred in an amazing mysterious way. I can never know the depths of it’s mind and soul, except by observing it, and feeling the energy it puts forth.

To watch an animal in the wild and to share its freedom and enjoy its aliveness is a gift of incalculable value, a true miracle. To kill the animal is to take that particular miracle from the world forever. But it is not the bear in this case that loses. That spirit will go on, will return from whence it came, wherever that is. Perhaps to reenter the world somewhere else. It is the hunter that really loses in this instance. He was in the presence of a miracle. A living creature, mysterious and free. And he took the gift away from himself, leaving only a cold dead thing. A large piece of meat and hair. It is the hunter who lost. The bear is free and always was. It is the hunter who is enslaved.

or as William Wordsworth put it in Oh so fewer and more succinct words:

This beast not unobserv’d by Nature fell,
His death was mourn’d by sympathy divine.
One lesson, let us two divide,
Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.
William Wordsworth

CHRIS KATTAN, KIP’S SON, PRESENTED A WARM, FUNNY AND POIGNANT EVENING.

Kip sat here. The rest of the cast sat in the front row and entered the stage from there. That would have been difficult for Kip.

That was a couple of years ago, not long before he went into the hospital. We were working together again.

Kip was discovering the joy of ensemble work.

Kip King was the funniest man I ever met. And I’ve know some funny people. I saw the tears underneath the laughter and when the tears came they came easily. The sadness of the clown and the joy of performance and laughter.

Jerry Lewis tried to clone him. Luckily he failed.

In a workshop about thirty years ago I asked Kip to go onstage and make a hospital bed with the chairs and to lie in the bed. I told the group, “Kip is dying. You each have exactly one minute to tell him good-bye. You must leave the room when your time is up.”

We laughed and we cried as we watched Kip interact with his friends. The funny and the sad back and forth, unpredictable and as truthful as Kip himself.

When Wenndy and I visited him in the hospital I didn’t think we were saying good-bye. I told him we’d be back. How could there be a final good-bye?

Kip came to the house for singing lessons with Wenndy in his last couple of years. He had trouble walking and so he sat in a chair for his lessons. Kip was finding easy access to his emotions through singing. He always greeted us with new jokes upon arrival. Wenndy and I laughed as deeply and as heartily as any laugh we’ve ever laughed.

I don’t know how funny those jokes were, but Kip King was telling them, and there was nothing funnier, ever.

The night before the Groundlings 30th Anniversary Celebration at the Henry Fonda Theatre, Wenndy and I threw a party at the house for our friends, including all those who had traveled from around the country for the event.

Kip sat in an easy chair and conversed with people. More and more people gravitated toward him and soon everyone at the party had formed an audience around him. Kip spoke and we listened and we laughed. It was a show. People from the East Coast who were there still talk about it.

Kip had his characters. The Telethon Guy. The jokes he wrote in the 70’s stood up in 2004. They were silly, smart jokes and only Kip could get laughs from them. No one else. No one else. It seemed to me that those in the audience knew they were laughing at the man and the jokes were just the wagon he rode in on.

In the Telethon piece, Kip introduced Lynne as Sonoko and Suzanne as Rita Chandelier and Sandy as the old decrepit dancer, Slam Bones. If Kip was the funniest man I ever met, Sandy Helberg did the funniest dance I ever saw, as Kip sang, straight faced and oh so sincerely, Mr. Bo Jangles. Jerry Lewis sentimentality magnified.

In Pee Wee’s early days, when Pee Wee was a stand-up comedian, before he became a Kids Television host, Kip played his vaudevillian Grandfather in a presentation sponsored by Norman Lear for a possible television series. Kip’s Grandfather secretly coached Pee Wee in the art of telling jokes.

Kip’s latest great character, created just before he became ill, was a totally blind Hollywood agent. When he perused a client’s 8 x 10 and made his selection, we bought it. He made us believe that he had picked the best picture.

In 1979, just before I resigned from The Groundlings, a rift had developed in the company.

I was Artistic Director and there was a bitter division over the definition of The Groundlings… who we were and what was our purpose. I was the leader of one of the two factions.

There was a contentious meeting with all members of the company in attendance. It was the big showdown. Kip sat there. In the midst of the noise and anger and confusion he stood up and he spoke in defense of my position and in defense of me personally. His remarks were spoken through his tears and I knew that I had a true friend.

The last time I saw Kip, just a few weeks ago, I spoke to him, our faces in close-up wth each other, inches apart. I asked Velma if he could hear me and she said “yes but speak a little louder.” Wenndy and I had remarked during the months Kip was ill how frustrating it must have been for him not to be able to speak. That was his life – talking and being loved for it.

I have never seen two eyes look at me with such intensity. His eyes pierced me and brought me into himself. I searched his immobile face for signs of a response as I spoke. A slight stretch of one side of his lips told me he was laughing. When I told him I have cancer his face contorted and I wished I hadn’t said that. I assured him that I’m in the midst of a treatment that will give me many more years and I hope that made him feel better. This man, in his situation, cared about mine. Overwhelming.

Whenever I looked up at Velma, there were tears streaming down her face. Her love for her husband was written there.

Beginning in the 70’s all of us at The Groundlings watched Little Chrissy grow up. Chris came to workhops and shows with his Dad. The outgoing messages on Kip’s phone were the voices of father and son doing Kip King schtick. The tutoring was happening and Chris was learning.

Chris became the first second generation Groundling.

Helen Hunt told me a story about working with Chris on Saturday Night Live. She and Chris had been rehearsing a scene for a couple of days and Helen thought that Chris seemed familiar to her on a personal level, but she couldn’t figure out how. She finally asked him if they had ever met.

According to Helen, Chris said, “Yeah. You used to babysit me.” Kip and Helen and Chris were in our early workshop family. And here was Chris, realizing the dream his Daddy had for him.

Kip didn’t realize the fame he deserved, but then fame is about being known to strangers. We who are not strangers to Kip know him in ways that strangers cannot. To us he is the greatest star.

Keep it comin’ Kip, keep it comin’.

Woody Guthrie