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JOE CHAIKIN A Frame for a Portrait of a Daring Seagull

This chat on theatre, death, breathing,… and on many other little things with Joe Chaikin is a very old one…. it has never before been published in the United States… and it seems, it is overdue…the chat, or interview, was done a long, long time ago in the spring of 1976…a year later, in January 1977, it was published by “Scena” Theatre Magazine from Novi Sad, former Yugoslavia….At that time Joe was already a theatre innovator well known all around the world….an icon of the American avant-garde…teaching at NYU…while I was then a young, curious, eager to learn director…A Fulbright fellow from then existing Yugoslavia… and a Graduate student of directing in Carl Weber’s directing class at New York University… As a matter of fact I came to study to New York, the biggest theatre school in the world, and to New York University, then one of the most challenging, provocative, and vibrant theatre schools in the U.S., because of “the American challenge” in theatre…and along with Ellen Stewart, Richard Schechner, Bob Wilson, Richard Foreman and Michael Kirby, Carl Weber, Jean Claude van Ittalie, Joe Chaikin was certainly in the forefront of that challenge… he and his work with the Open Theatre was a real theatrical challenge … he was that inspiration and model of theatre that I, and many others like me, were attracted to….and came to study in New York…

My first encounter with Joe and Open Theatre was several years earlier in 1971 at BITEF – Belgrade International Theatre Festival… BITEF was at that time, in the late sixties and early seventies, one of the most prominent and important theatre festivals in the world… On their tour in Europe, Joe Chaikin and the Open Thetare were invited to BITEF and performed their “Mutation” and “Terminal”…. And then at the first glance at the festival catalogue I met Joe…. It was his short statement there, in that catalogue, that caught my eye: “The theatre is a collaborative art where often the director gets in the way of the actors, and then the actors get in each other’s way, and then the playwright gets in the way of the play”… and further on, his confession that they “at The Open Theatre are not trying to groom themselves for the current business theatre, but to explore and research….” that they “continually try to come back to the impulse behind the useless war that this country is fighting, and the condition of peril that we live in, with nations pointing prepared nuclear weapons at each other”… and that they “try to make theatre which will make visible human situation when things could be different”…. “Mutations” and “Terminal” later on were a sort of an eye opener for the young aspiring director in me…. a challenge strong enough to start dreaming about my studies in New York.

A few years later, in the fall of 1975, I was one of the most regular students in Joe Chaikin’s class/workshop on “sound and movement”, which he taught at NYU… There, in the classroom, is where I met Joe in person for the first time… in his class… and at that time I was not aware that the meeting with that “remarkable man”, will change my views on theatre, on acting, directing, and consequently would change many of my views on life at large… I was not aware that it will be the beginning of a life-long friendship of the master and his student… Chaikin always liked to work with young actors and directors…. especially those who were eager to learn and were open enough on their road to build up their own aesthetics and personal system of values and world views…

Soon after, during the semester, and thanks to his warmth, inspirational energy, and love for people, we became very good friends… That fall 1975, he was working on his and Jaen Claude van Itallie’s “A Fable” at Westbeth Exchange Theatre… it was a collaborative post-Open Theatre experiment with music, done with a participation of many of the former Open Theatre members…. that was as well his first collaboration with Jean Claude after almost 10 years…seeing my enthusiasm for his work and feeling my inner drive for learning more “from the masters”, Joe invited me to come whenever I wanted and to sit in and observe the rehearsals process of his production of “A Fable”…. What more could a student have asked for at that time…the master had opened the door to knowledge and firsthand experience for his pupil…my ideal of learning that knowledge should be transferred from generation to generation, from the old to the young, from the master to the student was working out before my eyes… Joe was a charismatic person…. His personal magnetism and magic, openness to others even to those who had different views from his drew people into his environment… and the welcoming environment that Joe created for me, the sense of freedom, the powerful working atmosphere, dedicated actors who were completely committed to what they were searching for and working on, the sense of sublime camaraderie and togetherness, …..and the scent of all that esoteric or exotic flora in the air blew my mind away….

Due to the college circumstances, I was an occasional guest to the rehearsals, and whenever I was there, I soaked up like a sponge every single detail of what he was doing and what would later be known as his directorial trade mark … he was listening to and breathing with the actors and working from them and with them…and I was doing the same sitting on the side… my observation of the rehearsal process and some occasional chats and coffee meetings after the rehearsals opened the door for more frequent meetings and a deeper friendship…

Later on, after the run of “A Fable” I wrote a review of “A Fable” published in my native country Macedonia… it was rather an impressionistic take on his work…but Joe, however, was impressed with it… with my insights and ideas…

At that time, in 1975-76 it seemed that Joe was searching, as always, for new challenges, new projects that would enter or touch upon new territories… it seems to me today that he was probably figuring out which road to take… the one less traveled or the one that he was a master at… that was the reason probably why after a whole decade-long absence from the stage as an actor he accepted the challenge to do “Woyczeck” at Public Theatre, with “Shaliko Company” and under the direction of Leo Shapiro….Woyczeck was one of the most exciting and thought-provoking productions seen in New York that year… Joe’s presence in it showed the beauty and the richness of his versatile talent… the entire production, in fact, was breathing with his breath… it was breathing with his rhythm… the breath that came from his sense of death and fear…a truly unforgettable event…

A few months later, after seeing both his “Electra” and “Woyczeck” that spring of 1976, Joe invited me in mid-April of that same year, to visit him in his loft at Westbeth and at my request to do the interview that is here now…. there are no words to describe his hospitality, his generosity, his warmth… all that experience there was impeccable … and that all remains as a dear image of my inspiring teacher… I left from his loft with his book “Presence of the Actor” in my hands ….I still reach out to the book shelf and read it as a reference book…

A few months after that I returned to my native land – Yugoslavia at that time – and did not know how long it would take me to see Joe again…

We stayed in touch and our infrequent correspondence lasted for more than ten years. Meanwhile Joe went through many “mutations”… aesthetic, and some of them, not so aesthetic... especially those that severely affected his life… for the next decade or two, Joe was on a journey collaborating with Sam Shepard, had a stroke and became a journeyer who came back from the unknown, from the road with no return… and someone who recovered and continued his journey collaborating with Jean Claude van Itallie again… and someone who was in company with his favorite classic Samuel Becket a lot…

Being back in my native land in the late seventies and eighties, I helped with the translation and publishing of his “Presence of the Actor”, and most importantly doing almost all my directorial work inspired by his model of theatre and touched by his good heart and his optimism..… “even with the last breath you can start fresh” he once said….

It took me more than 30 years to see Joe again… it was at LaMaMa in the late fall of 1997… Jean Claude had his “performing” début in his own “Guys Dreaming”…. and he invited me to come to see him… I went… entering the small theatre I saw in the third row a handwritten sign: reserved for Joe Chaikin… that was so unexpected and exciting… he was still recuperating from his stroke at that time… and he had speech and memory difficulties… I thought that he had forgotten me… so many years had passed by… he entered… I approached him to greet him on his way up to his seat…at the moment when I wanted to remind him who I was, he stopped me by raising his hand…made a pause…struggling with his memory and speech, but slowly and softly, he uttered my name… I was shocked…

After that unbelievable night – that encounter that even any work of art cannot create and describe - we saw each other again occasionally… whenever I would come to New York I would visit him and we would always have long conversations over a delicious meal in his favorite Chinese place next to his loft in Westbeth…. Our discussions touched upon everything from art and theatre to politics and violence, to health and human rights…

Joe did not like obvious political plays…. in his projects he addressed relevant political issues in his own way...in a very subtle personal manner… we talked about that a lot… about the visible and invisible in the theatre… about the inner and the outer… how to make certain things present, seen, relevant…how to address the pain in the world… how to make it visible on the stage… how to heal our wounds…

Out of that passionate ongoing dialogue and friendship an interesting idea came out… the idea was that I should do “Cherry Orchard” in a radically new way…it should be about death, politics, betrayed ideals, and the last breath…. the whole story should be done in a form of a flashback, seen through the eyes of dying Firs at the last minute of his life and the last minute of the play… and of course Joe should have been Firs in that production… it was inspired by his breath and the whole project in fact was meant for him… he liked the idea a lot… that was a challenge for him at that moment…but he was living with challenges all his life… I saw in his calming and soothing blue eyes that deep in him the actor is struggling with the reality… it was very difficult for him to commit to the project….but… he did not say no… he was not a person who liked to say “no”… as a matter of fact he hated to say “no” to anything….he did not like to hurt my feelings...Shami, his sister, his angel guardian who loved him so much and cared for him all his life, also did not feel that he will have physical strength to do that… we left that idea to brew and to grow more… over the time we added more yeast to it… however, many unfavorable things worked against the project…unfortunately, the final blow came in the Fall of 2002… the Virginia Theatre from Richmond under the artistic driection of Benny Sato Ambush, which was commited and ready to do the project closed overnight… the dream to do “Cherry Orchard” with Joe did not come trough…

In the late Fall of 2002, I saw Joe for the last time… it was at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center at a gathering to honor Martha W. Coigney, on the occasion of her retirement after 37 years with the ITI... he moved slowly… accompanied by his most devoted friend, Jean Claude van Itallie…. I was happy to see them both there… and today, I am very thankful that I saw him that evening out… we talked for few moments… in that crowd… and before I left I hugged him as I always do when we part…I did not know that it was going to be our last meeting…several months later… he stopped his fight with the breathing…he entered the eternity…

“The Village Voice” paid a huge tribute to him… “The New York Times” and “The Los Angles Times”, “Boston Globe” and “The Atlanta Journal - Constitution” did the same… many European theatre journals marked that sad event in their own way… “American Theatre” made a note of his death also… on its cover page there was only a black box with his name and the date of birth and date of death… just that….nothing more, nothing less…. it seemed as if Mozart of American theatre was gone…

This belatedly published dialogue with the daring Seagull – [the root of the name Chaikin comes from the Russian word Chaika, which means Seagull - what a coincidence ] - with the master and my teacher, with the one who was my friend and who influenced my life, is in his honor… It might not bring new light to our road to a new, exciting, and relevant theatre…but it is done in belief that the shadow of our unforgotten ancestor, of our teacher should not vanish…

Naum Panovski
August 2, 2008
Washington, DC

THE INTERVIEW

Panovski: It is interesting that you are both director and actor. You begun your theatre journey and your life in theatre, as an actor with Living Theatre. You have spent quite a good time with them. Tell me a little bit more about your real beginnings as an actor.

Chaikin: At first, I studied acting with different teachers in NY. At that time, also at this time, but at that time most of the acting teachers were teaching realism. That was in fact an Americanized version of Stanislavski. In that a way teachers had psychological approach to theatre. They were preoccupied and obsessed by Stanislavski. They were preoccupied by post Freudian views and ideas. They were deeply absorbed in looking for the subtext of the entire material. And when someone was studying acting he had to study the characters and the characteristics of that character, motivation, objectives, goals, and all those things that came with Stanislavski. In that time that was the only available actors’ training. There was nothing else. That was my acting training too.

Later on, after my acting studies, I wanted to work to be a working actor, and I went to audition for Living Theatre. At that time I did not know them. They were then, just one more theatre in NY. They were nothing special, except that they have worked on new and different plays. After the audition, they cast me in Paul Goodman’s “Cave” which was not very successful. But never the less we run the show for 10 weeks. Although that no one was coming to the show. It was a summer and very hot and humid. They were usually three to four people in the audience. They were usually in the house only for the first half of the production and then they were leaving for the rest of the show. Some were leaving even earlier. It was the same every single day.

In that time Livings had on their playbill “Many Loves” By William Carlos Williams, “The Connection” by Jack Gilbert, and I had parts in them.

Connection as very demanding and difficult because it was depressing play. It is a play about drag addicts…about heroin addict, and I had problems with it. Doing that character was very difficult and depressing for me. The character I was doing was a man who no matter how much heroin had consumed he wanted to do it more, to consume more. He was never enough high… he was continuously saying: “I am not high, I ma hot high…” It was interesting with that character that he had to be high all the time, and to be unconscious all the time…However, in spite of my desire to work and to act, I quit because the work was very difficult for me… on the other hand there were in the group people who were drug addicts themselves…and that process was for me a kind of encounter with a model of theatre where the borderlines between theatre and life were so lose, blurry, almost erased. In addition the people who were drug addicts did not like me, they were very antagonistic to me, because I was an actor who has never tried heroin
and I had to do a drug addict… That part in Connection was not something that I will call “my huge acting achievement”. I really did not know what I was doing or how I was doing…

I left Livings and went to my old job, working as a waiter in a small place in the Village. Then something else happened… I was in a play by Yates… and it did not run for a long time as well…after that play, and working like a waiter, I felt I had to return to theatre and to continue my work… I called Judith and Julian if there is some way that I can return to theatre. They said that I can come back, but I have to accept all my old roles, because just at that time the actor who has replaced me has left them. I have accepted that because I wanted more to be an actor, than to work as an waiter and to waste my time . I went back to my roles. And at this time I did not let the work depress me so much as I did before …and I found another way a strength to do it… and afterwards it was easier….

Panovski: According to what you say it seems that your involvement with The Living Theatre was essentially as an actor. What about directing? Where do we have to search for your directing roots? According to what you have done in theatre it is apparent that you have had that directing drive hidden somewhere deep inside you at that time. When did you became interested in directing?

Chaikin: Seven or eight years before I met Livings I studied acting at Herbert Rogoff studio in NY. That is a professional theatre acting training studio. However in addition to acting I was taking directing classes as well. So, I organized a group of students and we worked together for almost year and a half. That was my first encounter with directing. I did not know what I was doing, but I was directing. We did Pirandello, O’Casey, some other American playwrights… but as many other things at that time… the group did not last long… many groups and plays at the time did not last long, as well… and we did not have audience…as of the actors they did not like to work the way we worked at the time…I don’t know how I directed but they did not like to work that way…the way I directed…They wanted to work on something that they can use to audition for the commercial Broadway theatres. They just wanted to do different kind of theatre. Since producers and managers were not coming to our shows - we performed in a small loft on a lower east side then - and since the audience was not there, the actors lost their interest in the work and we stopped working together as a group… I did not know what I was doing, and consequently no one knew what was doing… so we disbanded.

Panovski: Did this unhappy directing experience suppressed your interest in directing? Or is that reason why you turned again to acting and went back to work with Living Theatre… What happened there… ?

Chaikin: So when I returned to Livings I continued to do my old stuff acing in “The Connection”… At that time Julian and Judith started working on a new play… “In the Jungle of the Cities” by Bertolt Brecht. And I got a role there, too. That play introduced me to a new kind of theatre and I was influenced by it enormously…And since the performance was successful – I don’t remember who directed it Julian or Judith – they decided to do another play by Brecht. It was “Man Is a Man.”…. and I was in that play as well… Until then, I did not really care what I was doing, what kind of play is that that I am in, what is the material about….I wanted to be an actor, and I did not care what I was doing… I was doing what most of the actors in New York did – as long as the material is juicy, and you have some kind of audience and some chance for acting you don’t really care what you are doing. But in this case, the material, the idea, the power of “Man is a Man” have captured my attention. I became somewhat possessed by the play. I was truly preoccupied by the role and I was happy about it. I started to think about the play a lot, and to care, to be aware of what and how I am doing…I think it was so good because I believed that I am projecting to the audience things that I have discovered, things that I have learnt about the play as well as things and truths that are in the play itself. That encounter with Brecht had enormous impact on me.

After that I went with The Livings to Europe… and acted in “The Connection” for a long time… However, the entire time I had a feeling that I am not in a company, in a collective or a group…There is no a tradition in American Theatre to stay together as a group for a long time. Even Living did not stay for a long time together… Living theatre as a group was not a very cohesive group of people…people were coming and going… We were doing plays that had very different styles, different references, that were done for different reasons…. and because of all that, I had this urge for an ensemble group… for a collective… It seemed to me that there are two things that are very important: that is, I am actor as a an independent body, and second I am actor as a part of a group - we are actors as a group.

Panovski: Do you mean actor as a separate entity isolated from a group versus an actor as a part of a whole, a group, a collective where all actors should work together integrating their creativity and act in sync as one body…

Chaikin: Yes, that’s correct. In other words, it was like in music, the actors had to find a way like in music to find the same key and to play together…So, I set down and put some ideas on paper and invited some students that I worked with to come…At that time I started teaching acting… Some people accepted my invitation and they came...and we started working…we started with some exercises that I knew, but honestly I did not understand them a completely…I don’t know why people worked with my and why they supported me and my work… I had a lot of enthusiasm, but all of that that I was doing was not substational, the ideas were not substational …but in spite of that, we continued our work stubbornly…and I also asked Judith and Julian to come to these sessions….to try to bring about a kind of ensemble value to it…and they came…and some actors came…and then they stopped coming…and it was like most of these things… they started and stopped rapidly…but I continued to be very interested in this… in what I was doing…Meanwhile The Living Theatre started working on “The Brig”, and I had planned some improvisations with Judith and Julian at that time… they hadn’t ever done improvisations before.. never once they had tried improvisations… and the reason for the improvisations at that time was not so much because that they were so useful - it is sad I don‘t think they are always very useful - but because the improvisations can be also a way to observe action…which then can be a vocabulary…. in other words, if an actor can say, let’s create an improvisation to investigate a certain kind of image, to find out a common experience of behavior on the stage…and so you can do an improvisation… and then you drop the improvisation, and it is not about the improvisation itself only, but the improvisation becomes a part of the history of the people who have done it… and then it becomes a kind of vocabulary…and then you say “in that we didn’t do it, in that we did it, in that we did that”...and so on and so on.. in that way we have more experiences to develop certain things… that was the use of improvisations as it turned out…it is not to preserve the improvisational approach, except that to do things that we did not have in the productions…or we did not have in the theatre… So, anyway, I continued to work with different people who were willing to come and work.

Panovski: Was that work with these people and the work on the improvisations was the beginning of The Open Theatre?

Chaikin: Yes it was, but we did not have the name at that time… that was the germ of the theatre… and we worked as a group and we worked in one of the rooms of The Living Theatre on 14th st…and as I said at that time The Living Theatre started to do “The Brig”. I was not in it…. And I became very engaged with this study…and then, there was this great incident with the tax people, with the federal income tax… and they, The Livings, decided to leave the country in amore or less permanent way…so I thought… what to do.. I had an odd enthusiasm to go with them or to stay and work on this thing that I begun. I felt very torn about it, because up to that time I have never been so close to anybody in a working situation… but I decided to stay because I wanted to develop this thing… not so much that I wanted to stay in America but because I wanted to develop this work that I had just begun…Meanwhile, they Judith and Julian were actually in the begging of this work “The Bring”, too, but just for few weeks... I stayed in New York and continued this work for about a year and a half and asked couple of writes to come and join us… Megan Terry came and Jean Claude van Itallie came after her…and then Susan Yankovitz came… but she was very, very quiet, she never spoke…for months she never said anything

Panovski: Meg and Jean Claude are very close to you and they were members of group… what did their presence mean to the group… or how did they work as a part of the company… what was their influence to the group… how did the interaction between the group of actors and the playwrights work in the process of collaboration, especially how did it work in the process of “ Serpent” and “Viet Rock”. What was their creative process?

Chaikin: When they first came in we were doing always different kinds of exercises… different kinds of studies…many of these exercises were completely useless…many were just variations on variations…and some of them were the beginning of what we worked on all the time.. at time we did not have criteria to know which was which…and they came in and they started actually writing little tiny plays….sometimes they will write only a structure…usually in response to some of the things that we were studying…sometimes developing certain things that we were studying…sometimes introducing some other things.. they [the actors] also gave them a kind of range and language to write in, besides the range of this psychological theatre that was going on every place else…So then Meg Terry did a couple of little tiny plays - we did quite different plays - that we performed on nights when the theatre was dark – on Monday nights… we will take a theatre and we will pay three dollars for the rental and we will ask 50 cents for the audience to come and we will perform these things that we will do… and Meg said she would like to make a play with the group…and she worked with the group through improvisations and made “Viet-Rock,” which was at that time very, very strong…it was especially very strong politically…
****
Jean Claude did not work in the same way as Meg did….he was watching us working and improvising and then he will go home and write... that is how he wrote “America Huraaaa.” His writing did not came out of his work with the group... he did not do improvisations…he will just watch and then he will go home and write…and the next day he will bring a scene or a play and then we worked on that play… Meg and Jena Claude have worked on two completely different ways at that time… it is very interesting that one of the actors who worked on “Viet Rock”, decided to capitalize from the exercises and improvisations that we worked on… so, he wrote “Hair” and he brought it to us... he said he wrote this musical piece specially for the group…I did not like it at all…I though it was banking on “Viet Rock… which was as I said politically very, very strong piece..

Panovski: Since it was a turbulent time, with a strong political and student movement…can we say that these two things were connected in some way… that this politically charged time has influenced your work a lot…

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Chaikin: I think in a way that Viet-Rock was essentially quite ahead of the time…
Actually, the time of political activism had not yet come. Political activism did not exist yet. Maybe it was just a beginning in that time because there was political unrest. And, because I remember feeling myself that what I was,… that what we were doing was very, very dangerous. No one at that time was working on something like that, at least I can’t remember that I heard that anyone was doing something like that or was making those kinds of plays. There were none of the people that I knew accreting this kind of opposition. Meg was intelligent enough to do all that with enough humor and irony, with enough song in it, so it was not like a didactic lecture. Apart from the play, there was a lot of irony and contractions in the piece. Either way, the play was extremely powerful and explosive both in the material and in the political sense. Her explosiveness was also dominant in the form as well. It was really unusual open form.

Panovski: Can we say then, that “Viet Rock” was one of those rare moments in the world of the theatre where in one point, in one place, we can see how new forms and approaches to theatre meet social and political activism and suggest new roads of dramatic expression. Very often in the past it happened that these two moments usually happened at different times. Either the theatre is ahead of time or the time is ahead of theatre. It seems that “Viet Rock” in this sense is a very rare, but happy moment for the theatre itself .

Chaikin: I think so too… But, I think, that moment went through “America Hurrah”, and continued later in our work in New York and London… it was extremely successful moment and it gave quality to the work. That success, however, had a very bed effect on the group. It was bad on all of us. At first it seemed wonderful…. ss success feels … it seemed very flattering,… we all felt great, incredible, euphoric, and everyone was able to earn a living from the theatre. Until “America Hurrah” everyone was working outside the theatre in order to do our work and to survive. We didn’t have any financial help then, and that’s why that success kind of drugged us.

Another thing that I learnt about success through “America Hurrah” is actually, that success is like a perfume. You feel it, and it feels nice, you feel it… but is also a deodorant, it is covering, it is concealing, it acts in the complete opposite way, it is a kind of decay, a kind of a decomposition, something that brings death, a creative death. So that was very painful to me.

That was extremely important at the moment when “America Hurrah” was at the top of its success.

I think that the most painful thing to me was when many people who were in it wanted to give up working and wanted to accept success. It wasn’t so much about the public’s view towards us, as much as people were not interested in continuing to develop what we had only begun.

So, I came back to New York from London and I wanted to work mostly with new people…At that time there was a women whose name is Lee Worley…who had gone to Europe and thought The Living Theatre company the exercises that we had worked on. And out of these exercise they did few pieces, including “Mysteries”… and that piece was made up from exercises from Open Theatre….very early exercises which we have abandoned …

So, Lee Worley, who was working with me earlier, returned from Europe, and she was now working on these exercises for about two years with new people, young actors. And so I begun with these new people…. Some other actors joined this group as well, actors who came with me from London and who did not want to do other things, but wanted to perform our creations… So, we begun working on “The Serpent”, which was, in a sense a major piece, where for the first time we applied all those new approaches and things that we were working on at that time. And we worked on “The Serpent” with Jean Claude van Itallie.

Panovski: You mentioned that “The Serpent” was one of the first big production of The Open Theatre. I think that “The Serpent” represents a turning point in your work…namely, from “The Serpent” begins something that is presents also in your other more important works, “The Mutation Show”, “Terminal” and “Night Walk”. More concretely, I mean in some way you abounded working on the road of explicit politicization and entered into the realm of bare human life. To be even more precise, you begin to work on questions of life, death, birth, time, existence, changes --- simply put, you entered a metaphysical world. How and why did you make that shift in that direction?

Chaikin: I don’t know exactly. I think that we became politicized in such a way, actually, because we put the explicit politics in the background… because the material, the ideas, the issues that we were working with were not really openly and explicitly political, but deep down there, inside us, there was some strange subversive sensibility that appears in our work… in “The Serpent”, and in “The Mutation Show”, and in “Terminal”, and everywhere in our later works. . “The Serpent”, had 20 people when we began working on it. It was a combination of some certain improvisational elements together with certain very precise things and goals that we were working towards. And it was a about eating the apple that man was not supposed to eat. That was our foundation, but in had a little piece which had to do with the assassination John Kennedy, with the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., then the piece was a kind an anatomy, it had a scene where a surgeon cutting open a man’s head, a type of anatomy of the brain, etc. That was an attempt to go to the original utopian mythology, which is actually, inherited mythology…. To me, “The Serpent” was some times very, very strong, and some times very, very weak. We did not relay find in that piece what we believe in …. it was not a complete success…. We did not have in it what we had later in “Terminal”… that is: a much stronger way of unifying the segments of the piece … unifying the ideas, issues, and form. “Terminal” was not done in that way… it did not even have improvisations at all… At that point, we gave up on the improvisations within the performance. But on the other hand “Terminal” was built on improvisations. And here was Susan Yankovitz who joined us on this work. She was at Yale, and now that she came back, and she started to talk. She was a really silent person, who always sat in the back, and who was afraid to say anything to anyone for almost a year (as a matter of fact, I did not talk to her for almost a year), and now that she was back, she started to talk. She brought a piece that I read and that was really interesting. I asked her if she would work with us on “Terminal”. She accepted. I think that she is a really good writer, a true poet of the theatre. And so, working together on “Terminal”, we wanted to do this a piece on American death. The way it is disguised.. and so, when we come on the subject of death, when you talk about death, it’s very hard not to have certain metaphysical elements, along together with some social and political elements. It is just really very hard if you ignore them….

The other interesting thing associated with “Terminal” is my illness…when I was a child I had illness that affected my heart… and so the doctors did not think that I will live even when I am nine years old. ….And I carried that feeling of death within me. That was really part of my experience since I was six years old… and I lived with that feeling that I could die any time… and that was also a kind of unavoidable thing in my personal life too…

Panovski: Talking about that, I think that the presence of death is very apparent in your work, both as a director and as an actor. One can see that in your direction of “The Mutation Show”, in “Terminal”, in “Night Walk” and in “A Fable” as well. One can see it your creation in Woyzcek. To me, in fact, that is your way of communicating with the world, a conversation, a dialogue on a very personal level…there is a very strong, a very visible signature there, and when people see it, they say: yes, that’s Joe.

Chaikin: I don’t know… I suppose it is because I was carrying that within me all these years, since I was born….that was ever-present. But then the “The Mutation Show” was about how we all change, how we mutate, how we are made by circumstances and conditions in which we are… That’s why we took the story of Kaspar Hauser … and a story about little wolf-girl from India... both of which are true stories…. to work, to observe our own kind of mutation, our own kind of peculiarity, and that again was in a sense very deeply political… but in not explicitly way.

Panovski: What is the relationship between politics and art?

Chaikin: Oh, that is a topic for a large discussion, but I think, essentially in a way they cannot be separated. On the other hand, they are antagonistic.

Panovski: The reason I asked you this is a recent conversation I had with Schechner. Talking about you and the Open Theatre, he said that you never did political plays, and that in your work, in your pieces, you did not really want to have political language, but that you much wanted rather to perform your works for free for the poor, on town squares, in hospitals, in prisons, in retirement homes…

Chaikin: Yes, that is true, but I have to say that we did do one small piece that had a didactic ending, actually a political point. However, I did not want to go about things in that manner. I think it is much better to go among the people and do something for them.

Panovski: I don’t know why, but I feel the need to return back to the issue of death. Do you feel that the break up of the Open Theatre was in a way also a death? Why did you accept it? It seems to me that you could avoided the “death” of the Open Theatre.

Chaikin: Yes, it seemed like dying… At that time, a majority of the members of Open Theatre worked independently. Some of them were even directing. It was interesting that we did the last play really, really quickly, but we wanted the whole play to be some kind of a sign, like a symbol of our collaboration… of us working together. I also told them then, that if they wanted to, we can continue working together even after that. They wanted rather to break up, and that’s how it was. After that, everyone went their own way. The period after the end of Open Theatre was like a morning to me, a new day.

It’s really interesting how human body works in the same way as the events in life . I was really worn out and my old problem with my heart came back. I had to go and to have open heart surgery. No one knew what was going to happen to me – whether I was going to die or not. It is really fascinating how things go together in life.

Panovski: At that time when the group broke up, The Open Theatre was already recognized as a theatre model, aesthetics symbol. A large number of young actors and directors were inspired by your work and experiences, and many were looking to find their way into theater inspired by you. Was that not a reason good enough for Open Theatre to continue its own work and theatre research?

Chaikin: No. That was all more reason for us all to go our own ways. We realized that a lot of young people were copying us, but on the other hand, in a way we ourselves felt trapped. And we wanted to do something different.

Panovski: After that you did “Seagull” which was totally different from everything else you had done before. Last fall, you did “A Fable telling about the journey”, which is very close to the experiences and aesthetics of Open Theatre. On the other hand, a great number of the actors in it are former Open Theater memebres. Is the return to collaboration with them - the former members of Open Theatre - a kind of resurrection of the group and the time of Open Theatre creative heights.

Chaikin: With “Seagull” I wanted to do something new and that was good. But I felt a strange kind of nostalgia for the time of Open Theatre and maybe that’s the reason why we did “Fable. It was also a very demanding and difficult work, but it was a beautiful piece. We did the whole piece, just like we did all our work in Open Theatre.

Panovski: “A Fable” was an amazing play even though it was not done during the time of Open Theatre. I think it was a real and moving demonstration of the aesthetics of Open Theatre. But there is something else interesting in “A Fable”. That is, the idea of time and space, their presence both in philosophical and practical terms. The manner in which you react to it, how you work with it, and how you address it. Time and space are broken, thrown around, almost non-existent. It seems every thing is in fragments… life is fragmented, torn apart in pieces…but time and space are still present in a wholesome way, and we see them spread out all over the stage.

Chaikin: Yes, yes, I know what you mean. But I can’t explain it. It is what I feel, and how I work, but I can’t find one rational way to explain it. Maybe even this conversation is like that – fragmented.

Panovski: Yes, I agree… let get tlo the last fragment then…after a long, long time, you returned this season to acting. You did Woyzcek at Public, with Leo Shapiro from Shallico Theatre Company directing it. Was that choice a result of being kind of tired of directing, or an old dream of return to acting some day in a major role?

Chaikin: I carried Woyzcek deep inside me for a long, long time. Before anything, I wanted to direct it, but, because I did not have that opportunity, I realized that it was best that I can do that role. Shapiro called me and I was very happy to work as an actor after such a long time. There’s something very striking in that play. That’s the whole problem with broken structures, they attract me, and I was very happy to do that.

Panovski: And what was the work on Woyzcek like? What comes after that? What is the next step?

Chaikin: It was a very difficult work. We didn’t get along with Shapiro, and we disagreed very often. But I tried to put myself in the shoes of an actor, and did not say much. On the other hand, he tried to adapt himself and that’s how we found a common ground road and that is how we worked to put this project together. Either way, I am really glad I returned to acting because I do not know when the next time I will do that. For now, I only know that after this very tough season I need to rest, to find new impulses inside me and to do new things. What will that be, I still don’t know. At this moment, I can’t predict anything.

April 1976. Westbeth, New York.