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the world am like a drop of water
That in the ocean seeks another drop,
Who falling there to find his fellow
forth,...confounds himself."
<U
The Comedy of E rroro
A
V
by William
Shakespeare
JANUARY 8 - FEBRUARY 5
Ò
Oregon gybakespearefestival
In the Intermediate Theatre of the
Portland Center for the Performing Arts
1 I I I SW Broadway
Tickets $9 - $30
Box O ffice 274-6588
Tickets also available at Fred Meyer Fastixx
224 TIXX
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A rtist at the
b attle lines
"/ to
TT
when he realized that the world of Shakespeare and
T.S. Eliot did not welcome him, or even compre
Price of the Ticket (1989) is an hom
hend his experience.
age to a complicated and controver
In 1948, Baldwin left the U.S. to live in Paris.
sial man. Baldwin was a writer who
When
he arrived, he had $40 which he spent in two
searched, who pondered, a writer
days. He stayed in Paris nine years, finishing three
who explored the large questions of the human
books in that period: Go Tell It on the Mountain,
heart and trusted no simple answer. He was a man
Notes o f a Native Son and Giovanni's Room. In
who said that love was more important to him than
Paris he found his voice as a writer and for a time
power.
was
“free” from the constant assault of racism. B ut
The film, made two years after Baldwin’s death,
in the U.S., events were brewing that would call
features documentary footage from various peri
Baldwin home. The movement for civil rights was
ods of his life (his years in Paris, and in Turkey),
gathering momentum and he knew his heart was
and incl udes rare clips from television appearances
there.
and public spee
Baldwin was
ches. Commen
an
eloquent and
tary and anec
influential voice
dotes are supplied
on the side of jus
by colleagues and
tice during this
lifelong friends.
country’s battle
With these views,
over civil rights,
we are helped to
but he drew criti
ward an under
cism
on two points
standing of a man
from members of
who is neither
both
the non-vio
easily categ o
lent and the mili
rized nordefined.
tant arms of the
James Bald
movement. One
win was bom in
was the fact that
Harlem, in 1924;
he was, and al
his mother Berdis
ways had been,
Jones was a 19-
openly gay. James
year-old girl who
Campbell, in his
cleaned
the
biography Talking
houses of weal thy
at the Gales, A Life
white people.
o f James Baldwin,
Three years later,
L I) W I N
I L M
suggests that in
she married a
formation gleaned
p re a c h e r— the
from FBI taps of
stern, fiercely
the conversations
religious, much
older David Bald
of Martin Luther
win— and with
King, Jr. shows
him brought eight
that King disap
children into the
proved of Bald
world. Young
w in’s sexuality.
An homage to writer James Baldwin
James, early on a
King never pub
at the Clinton Street Theatre
talented student
licly stated such
and budding wri
v
views. Eldridgc
ter, would often
Cleaver, however,
by Kelly M. Bryan
study or write
in his book Soul
with a baby in his
On ice, virulently
arms. At 14, and not without reluctance, he began
attacked Baldwin’s gayncss, calling it a “racial
preaching at the Fireside Pentecostal Assembly.
death wish.”
He found he was suited to it; his knowledge of the
The other bone of contention was the degree to
Bible and his articulate, inspiring way with words
which he had addressed white people in his writ
made him popular with the congregation. He con
ing: working to expand their awareness of the
tinued preaching for three years, but quit, as he
African American experience, urging them to ac
says, when he realized that his listeners were
cept responsibility for the institutions of racism
looking to him for answers—and he had none.
that pervade this country and exhorting them to
To leave the Church meant to break with his
approach the black people in a healing dialogue.
father, so he left home and took the heady chal Amiri Baraka, among other younger, more mili
lenge of life in Greenwich Village—work by day,
tant, leaders and writers, accused Baldwin of want
drink and write by night—often getting rooms
ing to be white, and referred to him as the “Joan of
incognito, because “Negroes” weren’t allowed.
Arc of the cocktail party.” Yet some 20 years later,
Baldwin’s later work seems to spring from the
Baraka praised Baldwin in a eulogy at his funeral,
harsh, adversarial relationship with his father, and
which opens the film, “Jimmy was God’s black
his keen perceptions of the demons that haunted his
revolutionary mouth—if there is a God. And revo
father. In the film, Baldwin reflects on his father’s
lution his righteous natural expression.”
brutality, on the rage that eventually brought his
It is the artist’s dilemma, when faced with a
father to die, insane, in an institution, remarking, “I
political imperative: how to further the struggle
now realize that one of his problems was that he
and yet remain true to the soul. Baldwin said in an
was unable to feed his children." This understand
interview in 1963, the year he published The Fire
ing is indicative of the evolution of a rebellious boy
Nex/Time, “[IJt’s not my life, and if I pretend it is,
into an artist. Baldwin scrutinized the pain that his
I’ll die. I am not a public speaker. I am an artist.”
father endured—in a country that first viewed him
As the world witnessed the assassinations of Med gar
as property and then as a “problem” to be hidden or
Evers, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X,
silenced— before he even realized that this pain
Baldwin became increasingly angry, which he
was also his own.
expressed in his writing. Critics found him bitter
In another clip, Baldwin is speaking to an
and polemic.
audience, describing the sentiments of a black 16-
The film The Price o f the Ticket portrays a man
year-old boy from the South who told a white
who, in the face of adversity, never stopped work
reporter he had no country and no flag. Baldwin
ing or loving, and never gave up. The title comes
relates the pain of a child who pledges allegiance to
from the introduction he wrote to a volume of his
a flag only to discover that the flag has not pledged
collected non-fiction works, published in 1985. It
allegiance to him. One can hear in this the shock an
refers, perhaps, to the package of cultural, moral
intelligent African American boy must have felt
and historical responsibility we each bear—the
dicnThoTscn’sJames Baldwin.The
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