Kate Magruder talks about producing "Under Milk Wood"
by Dylan Thomas
Kate Magruder
Click here for enlarged photoDylan Thomas was born on October 27, 1914 in Swansea, Wales. His first book of poetry was published in 1934. Besides poetry, Thomas published short stories, film scripts, broadcast stories and wrote the radio play Under Milk Wood. He also did a series of lecture tours in the United States. During his fourth of these tours in 1953, Dylan Thomas collapsed in his New York hotel. He passed away on November 9th in St. Vincent's hospital, New York City just a few days past his 39th birthday.
The following interview took place recently in the new Eagle's nest. Kate Magruder has many kudos to her name, but by all accounts, the performance of Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood was extraordinary. Here's the inside story of how this remarkable event came to pass.
Interviewed by King Collins, Nov. 8. 1999Collins: Tell us a little about Under Milk Wood.
Magruder: It was the last thing Dylan Thomas wrote in his meteoric career. He's Welsh and he burst on the literary scene as a poet when he was just 20. Then he was incredibly successful in a poet's world and in a literary world for the next 19 years. He died at the age of 39 of alcoholism and complications with exhaustion and possibly prescription drugs.
He had just finished "Under Milk Wood", which he had written as a radio play.Collins: What year was that?
Magruder: That was in 1953. He and, I think, 6 other actors performed it in America which was it's first performance. He has more than 70 characters in it. It's about a town that he calls Llareggub, which is 'bugger all' spelled backwards. That was his little school boy joke. Llareggub is very much like many of the towns he lived in. He grew up in Wales and he lived there with his wife, so it's all the characters and the people that he knew and observed all of his life. He pokes fun at them and skewers them but he loves them, loves them deeply. So there's an undertone of great delight in Wales itself and in these curious, eccentric, mad people.
Mr. Pugh (Lee Adams) has an ongoing plot to do in his wife (Jan Batchelder) in Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood.
Click here to see enlarged photo.He had originally called it 'The Town That Went Mad'.
It took him 10 years to write it but he started it right after WW II. News of the concentration camps being liberated had reached him and the horror of what had happened so impressed him that he envisioned, at first, a radio play that describes a town that's filled with people who are mad, surrounded by barbed wire and guards. Then an inspector comes to investigate what goes on in there, and of course it turns out that the whole world is mad and they're the only sane people in the world.That evolved into this much more plotless piece of work called 'Under Milk Wood' which takes place in this town over the course of 24 hours. It starts in the evening, at night when people are asleep, we hear them dreaming. Then they wake up and we see them during the day and then it ends up at night. So it really doesn't go anywhere. It's this incredible language that he's so well known for. Ah, the poetry and he talks...that's something - I should get you my director's notes.
It's a huge degree of difficulty because the language is so rich. It took us weeks to decipher all the images.
Collins: You are talking about your problems as a director to see how you are going to deal with this?
Magruder: Yes, my problems as a director. When I was offered the slot to direct something this fall, and it was supposed to be a small chamber piece because the big musical takes up most of the energy and the funds. So I just checked in with Larry Lang to see if he had any thoughts.
Collins: What is his role in this?
Magruder: He's the technical designer. He designed the lights and the sets. So Larry said "You might want to think about 'Under Milk Wood'". I had never read it. I had listened to a recording of Dylan Thomas and his 6 other actors that was done in '53 in New York. My parents had it as a double album and I used to listen to it as a kid.
Collins: Was that on Broadway?
Magruder: No, it was at The Young Men's Hebrew Association in New York City. The recording happened because someone had the presence of mind to put a little tape recorder down at the foot of the stage that night and Caedmon eventually got the rights to hold on to it.
So I grew up listening to that and just loving it, but really not knowing what was going on because there's over 70 characters and all these voices. Yet the words, I realized as I picked up the script and began to read it, were embedded in me, were in my own vocabulary. 'I'll sin 'til I blow up'! Things like that you just don't want to let go of; those are the most wonderful images.
I looked at it and there are 70 characters in it and I had to decide how I was going to divide it up, so I just arbitrarily thought 'I'll have 7 men and 7 women, and a couple kids.' Then as auditions got closer, the degree of difficulty was enormous because I had no idea if I was going to be triple and quadruple casting people, were they going to end up playing a scene with the other characters they were portraying?
I had a great audition with a lot of people who I had never seen before. They hadn't necessarily known the script but were drawn to Dylan Thomas because they knew his poetry and thought this would be neat. It ended up that I had a cast that was perfectly suited for the characters they needed to play. In their souls they matched and they each got to say, after we had read it many, many times who they were particularly drawn to. It turned out that almost every one was able to play almost all the people they wanted to play. Then I just had to map it out, literally, on this huge piece of paper and had to diagram who and where everybody was. Then I could see how I could multiple cast them.Collins: I wondered how you accomplished all that.
Magruder: I almost busted my head.
Collins: It verged on being a scientific, technical problem on one level.
Magruder: I should have been able to put it in a computer.
Collins: A spreadsheet.
Magruder: Exactly, but I don't have those skills so I did it on this huge sheet of paper, and it worked out. Then I had to figure out how I was going to have what turned out to be 14 actors and 2 narrators, first voice and second voice. The person I cast as second voice had to drop out half way through and I had to take over as second voice. I had to figure out how I was going to keep these 14 actors all on stage almost all at the same time and change roles right in front of us. Larry helped with that, with the design of the set. I had a wonderful costumer who deftly figure out what simple pieces of costume people would need to change. It took us weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks to get to the point where we could just rehearse the play on our feet. But on the way, I had everyone listen to that first recording. I also got a recording of Richard Burton and a cast of Welsh actors doing it. I played people other Dylan Thomas pieces: 'A Child's Christmas in Wales' and other poems that he recorded so that we could get immersed in the language. Because it was written as a radio play, it was difficult to stage it. It wasn't meant to really be staged, but it worked the way that we did it. The words were the thing. The language. The deliciousness of those sounds. Everyone dove in and gave it their all. It was really a wonderful experience.
Collins: Leslie Saxon West said it was one of the best things that ever happened in that theater.
Magruder: It was very, very lovely. It was an ensemble in the best sense of the word. Everybody was knitted together. There was a group of 8 children too that we had racing in and out, careening through the streets. And song, and to have cello, Marcia Sloan. I knew I was going to need some live music to weave it together. I had in my mind a cello because I had heard her play once and I remember thinking 'If I could ever do something with Marcia Sloan . . . this would work.'
The children of Llarggub play timeless games in Under Milk Wood. Katherine Hardey, Ashly Oldham, Sarah Hardey, Abrey Mann, Mischa Steiner and Martina Magruder.
Enlarged photograph.Collins: Cellos are a good instrument for the undertones.
Magruder: The richness of that, the heart, the soul, the longing of it. And she did all that. It was just joyous.
Collins: Was the sound good on the recording that you did?
Magruder: I don't know. I haven't heard it. I hope so. The sound will be critical.
Collins: Will there be a chance that this will ever be done again? Do you think there's any way to do it again?
Magruder: No. Everything's gone. Poof! That's what's called theater. Poof.
Collins: I was afraid of that.
Magruder: I want to look at 'A Child's Christmas in Wales' as something to do in an upcoming Christmas time, just because this is language you don't hear often enough. It is absolutely heightened language - and funny, and bawdy. He likes that. It astonished the audiences who first heard Under Milk Wood. There's a wonderful story about the people who first heard it in New York. Everyone was sitting very quietly and listening to the opening sequence. Then about 5 minutes in, where Mog Edwards who is describing his love for Miss Priceis talking about 'I will lie by your side like the Sunday roast', as he scoops low over her lonely, loving hot water-bottled body' and the audience realized that they could laugh. It was just this uproarious venture from then on because it was simply ribald and very, very sensual.
Collins: It reminds me of John Prine's music.
Magruder: I love John Prine. One of the things I realized while doing this play is that, especially with kids, this is absolutely politically incorrect. There's husbands plotting about killing their wives, men who are drunkards, everybody's drinking, and the kids are singing songs about keeping a baby in a milking pail and slapping it on the head. One night in the middle of it I thought 'What am I doing?' In the morning I thought 'No, you're doing this because it's glorious literature and we should not hide from it.'
Mrs. Dai Bread 2, a gypsy (Camille Foster) tells the future to Mrs. Dai Bread 1 (Jan Batchelder).
Enlarged photo.Collins: We shouldn't bury it because it doesn't have the 'right' words. That's a problem with a lot of theater.
Magruder: Exactly. It's the dark side of life, it's the dark side of human nature, but Dylan Thomas was saying 'See, see'. He was also saying 'Who's to judge: no one should judge. Everyone is his own remarkable self, weird and wonderful - and hooray!' That's what gives us vitality.
Collins: That's what is remarkable about him - that he was able to do that.
Magruder: He was this absolutely full soul, open, nerve endings just tingling, could remember everything about his childhood and the vibrancy of it. He was an absolute jerk (his widow Caitlin has been quoted, "Dylan was a shit") to live with, to be with. He drove people crazy. He would steal from friends. He was terrible. He was always begging money off of everybody. He actually had money but he couldn't keep track of it. He was a very difficult person, but he burned with a glorious light and left us some unforgettable poetry.
I did a lot of research on him as I love to do when I work on a project. Then I get context. One fellow who knew him well and knew his wife, talked about him being the first, almost in the forefront of the British rock stars, in that you had to hear him to really appreciate him. The way that he sang his own words. His words were written to be spoken, not just to be read.
He drove people wild. On his tours in America people, especially women, were just beside themselves. They would throw themselves at him. He had no protection, no manager really. He had no way of buffering himself from that and he just fell over backwards. People would want to take him out and have him drink and have him entertain them, and he would do that. He had no thermostat, no off switch, and he couldn't handle it. It killed him.Collins: I guess we do that to our poets - give me, give me, give me. And Bob Dylan, who took his name, found a way to insulate himself. He was hated for that, and he talked in obscure metaphors lot of times when he was in public.
Magruder: He did that to tease people. People would say the same thing to Dylan Thomas. 'What does this poem mean?' He'd say 'I don't know. That's the way I heard it.' He didn't have time for that. But he was very, very disciplined in his poetry. He agonized over what he wrote. He had great respect for the poem. Maybe not for himself, and not for other people, but for the work.
So it was a joy. And I think the thing that was neat was knowing 'Under Milk Wood' was not a play that was going to get done in a main stage season at UPT for instance. It's not a commercial piece. It's not something people are going to flock to, as we saw here. People didn't flock to it. It was very lightly attended.Collins: They didn't have time.
Magruder: Well that, too. But it's something I'm so grateful to the college for its support. It's exactly the right kind of piece literary, obscure, gloriously beautiful, challenging, tough on all levels and a remarkable experience for the actors and the community.
Magruder: I'm working on "The Good War" Project. It's a collaboration between Ukiah Players Theater and a whole bunch of local cultural and civic organizations and institutions and individuals who have designed a variety of opportunities over the next several months for each of us to examine and share our stories in relation to, what I think is, the greatest global and pivotal event of this century: the second World War.
This project is one of seven Community Heritage programs across the state that has been funded by the California Council for the Humanities in partnership with the Irvine Foundation. The purpose of a Community Heritage program is to encourage people to tell their stories and recognize how those stories have shaped their communities.
We just finished the inaugural event of "The Good War" Project this past weekend at Ukiah Playhouse. It was called "Telling the Truth in a Small Town." We had seven local people telling their personal stories about their connection with WWII (from all different perspectives), and then a guest speaker added deeper context about the war and the times, followed by an extraordinary discussion with the audience. It was very moving and provocative.
For the next six months "The Good War" Project will be hosting forums, video and speaker series, a community book club, photographic exhibit, and memoir-writing seminars. Everybody is encouraged to reflect on how WWII has impacted their life and the life of their community. Stories and photos will be published in the Ukiah Daily Journal on a weekly basis. People can contact me at Ukiah Players Theater if they want to know more about this (462-1210).
This has all sprung from a production called "The Good War" that I produced at Mendocino College last fall. I had adapted Studs Terkel's book of oral histories about WWII into a theater piece with music and slides. It was clear from audience response, that our community needed to tell its own stories about that war. So this project was designed. In May of 2000. I will restage my adaptation of Terkel's "The Good War" at Ukiah Players Theater. Auditions will be in March at Ukiah Playhouse. They are open to everyone.
Copyright MPFA 1999
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited
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