A Complicated Marriage (36 page)

Notwithstanding the obstacles, those three months were the happiest, most fulfilling time I had ever known. I awoke every day at dawn, ready to leap at the day. From public relations to overseeing the front of the house to keeping the company on track, to performing at night while rehearsing the next show most of the day, the more I did, the more I could do. I learned there were no limits to what I could achieve. That summer I blew my mother's “economy” credo to bits. She who had never filled a day with bliss, or anything much at all, who had never run if she could walk. I had even found time to take up with Mark Turnbull, our hapless but adorable nineteen-year-old stage manager.

Toward the end of the season, we were all outside fooling around, laughing after our usual early dinner. My body, my feelings, were strung so tight I thought I would burst. I had to have distance. I walked to the top of the hill behind the house, wondering if I was losing my mind, or maybe just burning out. I looked back at the people below and realized, no, it was just that such happiness, such pleasure in using myself to the utmost, were utterly foreign to me. And more than that, the months in the farmhouse, in the theater, all the wonderful work we had done, all the friendships that had formed, I had made all those things possible, not just for myself but for everyone. On that soft end-of-summer evening, I was not just soaring—I was proud.

That summer was also the cause of my deepest regret. Sarah was six, and there was no way I could have undertaken what lay ahead if she had come with me. I don't remember what Clem's plans were that had precluded her being with him, but I decided the only solution was to enroll her in a nearby summer camp. After seeing a film of the camp and meeting with the woman in charge, Sarah warmed to the idea. I had hoped for the best, but it was a terrible mistake. She was the youngest camper. Notwithstanding assurances from the counselors that she was adjusting and doing okay, I knew it was wrong. I visited twice, Clem
also, and we talked often on the phone, but nothing would make it right. Though I cried when she cried, I let it happen. My stalwart Sarah, she managed, but she never forgot nor forgave. Nor would I forgive myself. It was the first, and I vowed it would be the last, misstep that would mar our togetherness.

Reentry into my New York routine was jolting. I missed having Sy to help smooth the transition as I picked up my home life with Sarah and Clem. I did a few plays, but without classes to attend, my days felt bland. Juggling our social life with my work, once so invigorating, now became arduous, and the effort diminished both. Often, anxious about thoughts of the future, I felt as if a clock were ticking. If my momentum stopped, would the summer's high evaporate? Had my ability to use myself fully been linked to being on my own for the first time, away from the security of Clem and home? Had the years of schizoid shifting between Clem's world and mine kept me from making a full-out commitment to work and to myself, kept me from taking risks?

These questions were too big, too ominous, and I backed off, looking instead for a more immediate solution to my unease. And I found it, filed in my mind under “unfinished business.” Perhaps as a backlash after my romp into the mainstream commerce of Woodstock, I was drawn back to the possibilities inherent in Grotowski's work. I had often wondered if it would be possible to apply his methods to a given text, rather than to an ensemble-created piece. Also whether his stringent techniques could be adapted to suit the work process of New York theater. Maybe this was the challenge I was looking for. I would have to find a suitable play. I would need a workspace and actors. I had never directed before . . .

During the fall of 1969, I mulled over possible scenarios for the project. The pictures in my mind excited me, as the plans shifted incrementally in the direction of a permanent workspace, rather than a rehearsal hall, and from there they took the leap to a space where Sarah and I could also live. I was startled by the audacity of the idea. I never envisioned it as an exchange, one place for another. I saw the space as being an adjunct to 275. Clem and I would be together, but separate. Was such a notion feasible? How would it work?

As energized as I was by thoughts of a new venture, I was also fearful.
I could be putting fifteen years with Clem on the line. As much as I tried to see the step as an expansion that would reconfigure our marriage—as our sexual openness had—I feared that it could just as easily damage, even nullify, our connection. As I talked with friends about my scenarios, I painted them with bright colors and free brushstrokes, and they bought it. But much would depend on Clem, and I knew better than to try to predict his reactions. As a teenager I had never learned how to discuss and negotiate; in those days, when I encountered an obstacle, I would shrug and walk away from what I wanted as if I didn't care. No, discussing with Clem a plan in its early stages was not my way.

And so I weighed my plan, and the more I did, I understood that it was not as precipitous as it had felt originally, that it was the result of a sequence of events that had started nine years earlier, with the death of our baby and the years of analysis that followed, and that had slowly awakened me to the possibilities of a life beyond Clem. Even as my interest shifted toward the theater and we both became romantically involved with others, Clem and I remained emotionally and sexually close as we brushed against each other day to day. And always, we were doubly bonded through Sarah. Clem was my touchstone, and I had always believed that it was our bond that enabled me to move forward and take chances. Now, I was about to take a step toward independence that would stretch that bond. No, my leave-taking was not impulsive or precipitate, nor was it inevitable or unavoidable. It was a choice, made with my fingers crossed.

And, my fingers still crossed, I talked to Clem. I called the plan “an experiment” involving a project and a place to do it in. Downplaying the possibility of living there, I compared it to an artist's renting a loft. I would cap the cost at $150 a month. If money ran low, we could always hand off another painting to an art dealer to sell—by that time, that was beginning to be our way of life.

As I write about this, I want to take my decision back, to say, “I came close to leaving, but at the last minute I couldn't do it.” I want to write about the different life that would have played out if I had stayed. But there my imagination falters; I see only obstacles and walls without doors. I exaggerate. More realistically, I envision a rather frivolous
continuation of careers, each less committed to than the last, a rather frivolous succession of lovers, until the intricate dance steps of romance no longer seemed worth the effort, and a succession of analysts, until I despaired of hearing anything new. I see my steps through life as becoming increasingly small and tentative, my spirit doggedly resigned to maintaining a status quo.

As I play with the past, it is only my past. Clem's path was a through-line unaffected by my choice. It fulfilled the promise of the career line in his palm that was so deep and long and unbroken, that line that so clearly proclaimed a life devoted to the steadfast pursuit of learning and the achievement of his goals. I had not been so blessed. I always felt unformed, had always searched for answers. Goals, even fantasies, evaded me. But Woodstock had demonstrated to me a simple truth: I needed, wanted, to use myself completely. For the first time, I had touched my own power. No wonder I wanted to open the door and see what was around the next corner. And no wonder I still wanted to cry out,
Stay! You can discover all that at home. Stay where your life will be so much easier
.

WHEN I TIPTOED OUt of the Central Park West apartment, the door didn't click behind me. It wasn't even ajar. It was more like a revolving door. I took nothing at first. Then, over the next weeks and months, I took some clothes, books, records, which I threw into the back of the car. All the chattels passed down through the matriarchies of my family, all the things Clem and I had accumulated over time, most of my clothes and “stuff,” all that stayed in situ, where it belonged.

No drama, no fanfare. I moved out so slowly and quietly that Clem never noticed I had gone. So I would tell the story for years, usually getting a fond chuckle over Clem's obliviousness. But fact is, it was true, and it wasn't funny. I still tremble at my brashness. One of those people who seem to have all the answers once said to me, “Only if you shut a door completely can you open the next.” How tidy. Tidy as I always was in the way of washing dishes and making my bed, I never could shut doors. I saw my life as a long, drafty corridor, lengthening as I moved from room to room, the doors behind me creaking to and fro in the breeze. A habit no doubt etched on the slate of me when my parents slammed their doors on each other with a ferocity that must have awakened me with a cry from my innocence. No, my doors with Clem would always be open.

Through a painter friend, I had found a loft at 500 Broadway, between Spring and Prince Streets, for $150 a month. Originally industrial space, the nineteenth-century cast-iron building was now mostly vacant. The top floor, four thousand square feet of raw space with a small living area enclosed at the far end, was like a football field, with banks of windows at both ends. Big enough to stage an opera, big enough for Sarah to ride her bike, learn to roller-skate, and shoot hoops, and big enough to share. With us were my friend Mark and Robert Liebowitz, who had
been costumer/actor/general factotum at Woodstock. They brought the fun and spirit of the summer with them and, in return for a place to live, would help put the loft into shape.

They built two more bedrooms, spray-painted the place white, and sanded and stained the floors. On the Lower East Side, for next to nothing, I picked up some beautiful old oak furniture and an artist crafted a red lacquered bunk bed for Sarah, red being her color of the moment. My bed, more mundane, was from Bloomingdale's, and, thanks to André Emmerich's designer discount, I bought two Eames chairs, caramel colored, not white like the Kootzes'. In the open space, we put the old upright piano an actor friend had given us, strung up a big hammock, and installed a stereo and enough speakers to fill up the emptiness with Jimi Hendrix and Jefferson Airplane. Within a few months, everything as ready as it would ever be, Sarah and I took up residence in our virtual playground.

Our new area—one couldn't call it a neighborhood—was best described as “below Houston.” There were artists sprinkled here and there, with more creeping in all the time, but mostly it was still home to small industry. Our loft may have been a playground, but nothing came easily—no garbage pickup, an elevator that worked when it felt like it, and no market, drugstore, or restaurants for tens of blocks in any direction. After six o'clock, the streets emptied out, dark and desolate. It was then that I knew we were living on the edge.

My new routine was framed by driving Sarah to her school on Ninety-sixth Street and Fifth and fetching her at the end of the day. While I continued singing lessons with Graham Bernard, I no longer went to the Actors Studio. I missed working with a group, yet didn't search out a new one. All my focus and energy went into planning my own project.

I picked Strindberg's
Dream Plays
to work on because of its amorphous structure, which lent itself to interpretation and adaptation by a large ensemble. Casting was difficult because, unlike the usual month of rehearsals and flexible hours, I was asking for at least two months and long hours. Add to that no money and no more than three weekends of showcases at the end.

The biggest stumbling block for many I auditioned was the sound and
movement group work. I certainly understood actors liked parts, preferably large parts, and scenes they could get their teeth into. Ensemble work was a hard sell. It defeated the whole point of doing a workshop you could invite a potential agent to. The final group, after the usual first-week dropouts, came to ten. Not bad, except that none had worked in ensembles before, much less were familiar with Grotowski's method, and three of them were non-actors. Not to mention that this was my first time out as a director. But I plotted the exercises, and we dove in. What went right was the willingness of the actors to open themselves to each other and to the exploration of themselves emotionally and physically. I had counted on that, knowing that was what actors love to do. Fortunately, the group gelled and we all learned as we went forward.

The problem, from first to last, was the play. It was too abstract, too highfalutin, too earnest and heavy-handed, and more and more I let the text go and encouraged the group to personalize it.

And then we were ready. Mark and Robert did the lights and marked out the space. There were no costumes, per se, but we went wild with hair and makeup. Though I had originally thought blankets and people sitting on the floor would be good, I finally caved in to renting chairs. To cover all our asses, I presented it as a work in progress. After each performance, everyone, audience and actors, partied hard. I have no idea what people thought, but I'm sure most dismissed it as just one more “happening” sort of exercise. I knew Clem was disappointed; he couldn't find the play he had come to see. For me, the success was in the personal journeys the actors took. I had watched their faces and bodies change in those months as they shed their facades. I had taken that trip when I was with Tony's group and knew the bravery and power of it. Yes, the choice of play was wrong. My leadership wavered—sometimes too strong, sometimes too hesitant. But what disappointed me most was that my experiment had failed; I had been unable to adapt Grotowski's method to a standard text in a restricted amount of time. I accepted it and would never attempt it again. His work was part of me; that would have to be enough.

After
Dream Plays
, I continued to perform in a few plays with Albert and also started to audition more earnestly for mainstream productions.
There, I ran headlong into rejection for the first time. I could understand when the part wasn't right or the chemistry was off or I had screwed up the audition. More difficult to deal with was when I would be called back repeatedly, only to lose out in the end.