THEOLOGICALITIES – RECOLLECTIONS IN 2 PARTS
THEOLOGICALITIES – RECOLLECTIONS IN 2 PARTS
PART 2 - ERSATZ RELATIVES
By DEREK STRAHAN
Part 2 explores influences outside of family and school that provided formative experiences. I choose to call the remarkable individuals who provided these influences my ERSATZ RELATIVES. Part 1 began as musings about theology and belief systems and then morphed into semi-autobiographical recollections of times past. Part 2 continues with these and comes with more pictures and more links to music.
I learned to swim and high dive at Claremont Baths, Perth, Western Australia during the best 3 years of my childhood after evacuation from British Malaya when the Japanese invaded. I imported this passion to Northern Ireland to which my family regrettably returned in 1945. My experiences at school in Belfast are recounted in Part 1 of these recollections. Here I am still high diving in 1948 during a summer holiday at Portnoo, Northern Ireland.
High diving
Theologicalities 7 – AN ERSATZ FATHER
So, in the frequent absence of my biological father during these formative years, who was my ersatz father? Actually I discovered him in 1943 while in Perth, W.A., having evacuated from Malaya following the fall of Singapore – which was then part of Malaya. Music was playing on the radio in the kitchen. My mother was busying herself with distasteful domestic chores, which previously in Malaya had been handled by servants. She commented: “Oh, that awful crooner!” I took a moment to listen more carefully. I liked what I heard and – this being the very first time I had ever voiced a personal opinion on anything – said: “It doesn’t sound too bad to me.” It was Bing Crosby.
Bing Crosby
During World War 2 Bing was on radio a lot, and so I heard a lot more of him and continued to like what I heard. My mother was not happy in Australia – this was not colonial Malaya, there were no servants. After the defeat of Germany and even before the defeat of Japan she jumped at the chance for evacuees to return to the mother country by ship, with military escort. Off we sailed across the Pacific, pausing at Panama. Here, I remember gazing from the deck into the waters of the canal, marvelling as a school of sharks homed in on the ship’s garbage issuing from its hull. We walked along a street – it must have been at Colon. Passing a music shop I looked in at the window and, to my amazement, saw an actual record on display – of course a shellac 10-inch 78rpm disc. The label said: “White Christmas”. Bing Crosby.
White Christmas
Back in Belfast, Northern Ireland, it was some time before my father relented and bought me a portable wind-up gramophone and I was at last able to start my own record collection, using most of my pocket money for records which I made certain were also mandatory as Christmas and birthday gifts for me. Bing Crosby records were favourite, including those with the Andrews Sisters. I also had a strangely varied assortment of swing, comedy, light music and, increasingly, classical music – grand long pieces on 12rpm discs. I have a long history of dedication to phonograph equipment and constantly updated from an early age as these 3 photos indicate.
Self with portable gramophones Mark 1 horn embedded in platform. Mark 2, loudspeaker part of lid. 1948
Self as carpenter making platform & lid for electric pickup. 1953.
During this time I went to as many Bing Crosby movies as I could, on holidays and at some weekends when I stayed at my grandmother’s Belfast home (I could not play “jazz” on the gramophone on Sundays). In Crosby movies of the 1930s and 40s he played non-conformist characters of the kind a stuffed shirt father would not want his daughter to marry. There was a subtle subversion at work here, which I found attractive. Bing’s superb musicianship also seeped into my consciousness. You can read more about my latter-day thoughts on Crosby in this article posted on my website.
BING CROSBY – THE FIRST SCREEN ANTI-HERO
But for or a truly well-researched and perceptive biography on Bing Crosby’s early years read Gary Giddins’ “Pocketful of Dreams”. Gary Giddins is an award-winning author, critic, essayist, producer & educator, well-known for his writings on music, film and American popular culture.
For those waiting patiently for the Crosby sequel there is GOOD NEWS!
Gary Giddins has completed the second volume of his three-volume Bing Crosby biography: “Bing Crosby, Swinging On a Star, the War Years, 1940-1946,” to be published by Little, Brown in the early fall of 2018.
For more on this writer visit: https://garygiddins.com
Thus Bing Crosby was, ironically and sadly, a much better father to me than he was to the children of his first marriage, and I carry with me a keen awareness of the flexibility and subtlety of jazz rhythms that I learned from enjoyment of his performance art.
The Andrews Sisters (see below ERSATZ AUNTS) only appeared with Bing once, as guest artists in “Road to Rio” where the song was “You Don’t Have To Know The Language” written by Jimmy van Heusen and Johnny Burke, a perfect showpiece deftly choreographed as you can see in this You Tube clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32rWfaPPz9Y&list=RD32rWfaPPz9Y
Today’s pop singers might find the melody quite hard to sing since many pop songs today use only the (5) notes of the pentatonic scale, whereas pop songs in previous eras used the notes of complex chords as elements of the melody: such as, here, in the key of C, in the chorus using the dominant G9th as part of the melody followed by a brief excursion via E7 to A minor then back to C to close the chorus. Bing and the Andrews Sisters sail through such complexity with brilliant musicianship making it sound simple.
Theologicalities 8 – ERSATZ UNCLES
I have also enjoyed the support of a number of ersatz uncles whose writings and/or music helped me find my own path.
Ludwig van Beethoven, who I first encountered playing a set of 78rpm 12” records of Wilhelm Furtwangler’s interpretation of LVB’s 5th symphony that I found in the school library. For a long time it was hard for me to access more of LVB’s music either in scores or in recordings. Really not until I began to collect records in earnest after leaving University, and really not until (re-)settling in Australia from 1961.
Ludwig van Beethoven
However, some time in, I think, 1953, I did come upon a set of 12” 78rpm records of LVB’s 9th Symphony, to my great benefit. This access occurred during my stay with a French family that my father booked me so that, during a holiday period, I could have some direct experience of speaking French in preparation for my studies at Cambridge. I have to say that such conversations were minimal and polite, were about food and domestic matters, and were restricted to members of that family only, as they lived in a remote chateau far from village or city life. What they did have was a radiogram on carved wooden legs located in the main living area and a record collection that included that 9th symphony. The reproduction of that radiogram was inferior. To be able to hear the bass I had to lie on the floor with my head stuck under the radiogram and my ear pressed to the wooden underboard. Family members passed by somewhat bemused to observe my supine posture, with my legs sticking out and my head hidden under the appliance. Little useful French conversation ensued on the topic of my music listening. Apart from that activity, and wandering lonely around the vast pastoral property, I spent a great deal of time writing long letters in English to my school pal Henry “Joe” Lyde, which were of a somewhat ribald character, as were his letters to me.
Later my father, learning of this through finding Lyde’s letters to me, demanded the return of my letters to him, which he promptly destroyed. He was especially displeased to read, in Joe’s letters, such ribald comments as, during a walk, “tripping over fornicating couples in the park”. Joe Lyde later became a bosom buddy of poet Ted Hughes, about whom please read more below. You can also read more about my later divinations about Beethoven’s philosophical views (The Beethoven File) in a series of 4 articles posted on my website. The first one was published in the Sydney Morning Herald in 1982. Then following 3 more articles further developing the topic that include proof of Beethoven’s strong links to members of “The Illuminati”, notably Beethoven’s patron, Count Waldstein. These radical influences and connections were formed during his early years in Bonn.
https://www.revolve.com.au/polemic/beetintro.html
In 1980 I wrote a Clarinet Quintet as a portrait in music of one of Beethoven’s sponsors, the princes Marie-Christiane Lichnowsky. The recording of it found favour with the ABC and it was frequently broadcast on radio from 1982 onwards. Here is the first movement written in strict classical sonata form employing elements of jazz in the score as can be heard from the opening.
Here’s the link for my Clarinet Quintet No. 1 in D (The Princess) - 1st Movt (Profane Love/Romantic love) – portrait in music of Princess Christiane Lichnowsky, patron of Beethoven –a study in co-existing and equal opposites
https://youtu.be/S-kzVyiSU20
Richard Wagner. Wagner was a remote uncle during these early years, because I did not have access to his work. At school Derek Bell explained to me how Wagner employed advanced harmonies – of the 11th and 13th – to achieve his climaxes, but the only time I was really able to experience Wagnerian opera came during a holiday stay at my grandmother’s in Belfast when an opera from “The Ring” was broadcast – I think it was “Die Valkyrie” and I was able to follow the narrative of the opera because there were copies in the living room bookcase of English translations of the libretti marvellously illustrated by Arthur Rackham.
Richard Wagner
Illustrated by Arthur Rackham.
I remember sitting spellbound through the 3-hour broadcast, heard in very low fidelity on a small radio, moving from character to character in the text as the singing progressed. It was not until 1964, during my 3 years as a film director/writer with AKTV2 in Auckland, that I was able to start collecting LP sets of Wagnerian opera, buying the Georg Solti version one opera at a time. Later I recognised strong connections in Wagner’s libretti to that same “underground stream” of European literature that I had encountered years ago in my school studies of radical French literature. I have posted an article on this topic on my website. It was also recently published in part in the ABC Limelight Magazine.
www.revolve.com.au/polemic/wagner.html
George Bernard Shaw whose insights became available through “books contained in the school library”. In their radical content they were a splendid complement to my reading of those radical and rascally French “philosophes” (as described in Theologicalities Part 1)
David Young, my incredibly good-looking blonde god English teacher at Campbell College whose wise encouragement helped me “find” drama by casting me in a series of Shakespeare’s plays: as “Ophelia” in “Hamlet” (before my voice broke); as “Feste” in “Twelfth Night” (after my voice broke) and also for suggesting I taught myself to play the guitar to accompany myself in that role. The headmaster blocked my taking the lead in “King Lear” saying – “We don’t want stars in this school”: but he didn’t mind student sports heroes parading around school flaunting their prowess by wearing caps with a star emblem on them. David Young then suggested I appear as Henry in Henry IV Part 1, but I declined, explaining to him that, by then, I was allergic to British patriotism.
Albert Camus (as above) for revealing to me the concept of the “outsider”. A French philosopher, author, and journalist, his views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as absurdism. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957, about the time that I read his novel “L’étranger”. I knew little about Camus at the time and therefore read his novel “raw”. Although the revelation that I experienced from my reading resulted in what could be described as an existential change in my outlook, I later learned that Camus did not consider himself to be an existentialist despite usually being classified as a follower of it, even in his lifetime. In a 1945 interview, Camus had rejected any ideological associations: "No, I am not an existentialist. Sartre and I are always surprised to see our names linked."
Albert Camus
Georges Brassens (as above) for revealing the secrets of applying satire in modern popular song. He was a French singer-songwriter and also a poet who came to prominence during the 1950s. He wrote and sang, with guitar and double bass only, more than a hundred of his poems. He also set to his distinctive musical style texts from many other French poets such as Victor Hugo, Paul Verlaine, and Louis Aragon. Some verse was plaintive, and some was satiric, made wide use of “argot” (French slang) and its content was designed to “épater le bourgeois”, meaning to 'shock the middle class”, a phrase that came into play as a rallying cry for the so-called “Decadent” French poets of the late nineteenth century including Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud. Brassens-type shock was applied through humour and irony and often, among the “argot”, were four-letter words. The French have always been much more tolerant of such language, and less easily shocked than English-speaking Anglo-Saxons, and they used it and continue to use it casually in everyday speech - but still Brassens was the first to use such language in popular song – and Brassens was there among French pop singers as regards popularity and record sales. But not much known outside France. I collected most of his albums as they appeared on 10” LP records.
Georges Brassens
Many can now be heard online. Here are two examples, the first a pastoral whimsy about first love:
“La Chasse aux Papillon”: Cendrillon, a village girl, accepts an invitation from “un bon petit diable” – a “right little devil” - to go hunting butterflies.
In French verses 3 & 4 read:
Cendrillon, ravie de quitter sa cage, /Met sa robe neuve et ses bottillons; /Et bras dessus bras dessous vers les frais bocages / Ils vont à la chasse aux papillons. /Ils ne savaient pas que sous les ombrages, /Se cachait l’amour et son aiguillon, /Et qu’il transper?ait les c?urs de leur age, /Les c?urs des chasseurs de papillons.
In English: Cendrillon, delighted to leave her cage / Donned her new dress and bootees / And off they went arm in arm to the fresh woods to chase butterflies – Little did they know that hiding in the shadows was Love with his arrow / Waiting to pierce young hearts like theirs / The hearts of those who hunt butterflies.
In verses 5 & 6 they return to the village vowing to go hunting butterflies together many times, for as long as they love each other, or until they go only to wander through the leafy groves.
Hear “La Chasse Aux Papillons” on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS2WMOWOJRI
“Marinette” portrays in 6x4-line verses the failed attempts of the poet to win over “la belle”, each verse ending with the same 2-line lament, adjusted for a different circumstance. You must hear it to appreciate it as an ironically upbeat song, but here is the 4th verse in French, then in non-metric literal English. The word “Belle” means (of course) “the beautiful one” or “the beauty”. The word “chose” means “thing” but here stands for whatever – maybe “hot under the collar”?
Quand j'ai couru tout chose au rendez-vous de Marinette /La bell' disait: "J't'adore" à un sal' typ' qui l'embrassait /Avec mon bouquet d'fleurs, j'avais l'air d'un con, ma mère /Avec mon bouquet d'fleurs, j'avais l'air d'un con.
When I ran all hot to a rendez-vous with Marinette / The “belle” was saying “I adore you” to a dirty type who was kissing her / With my bunch of flowers I looked like a cunt, oh mother / With my bunch of flowers I looked like a cunt.
Here “Marinette” on You Tube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZoCco8zJqQ
Hear also “La Mauvaise Réputation” (The Bad Reputation”)
The final couplet reads:
“When I am hung everyone will come to see me die, /Except the blind, of course.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26Nuj6dhte8
If you catch these clips you will notice that there is no showbiz razzamatazz about Brassens. What you get is the man, the voice, the guitar, the song, the music and the meaning.
Ted Hughes: for shaking me back to reality during my sojourn at Cambridge University when I inadvisably tried to give Christianity another chance following a visit to Cambridge by evangelist Billy Graham. For more on this please read my article on my website: “Ted and Sylvia – I was there”.
https://www.revolve.com.au/polemic/ted-and-sylvia.html
Ted Hughes
Yeshua - aka Jesus Christ – for the wit and wisdom of his teachings as revealed in his “sayings” as preserved in documents contained in the New Testament, a Christian adjunct to the Jewish “Torah”. For me, it is the “sayings” that reveal the true man, not the reconstruction of his life after the fact by scribes intent on creating a “legend”. The accounts that have most currency are those contained in a book called “The Bible” and they began to take final form following a meeting of 1800 rabble-rousing quarrelsome street preachers (also known as bishops) at a Council at Nicaea (in what is now Turkey) convened in 325AD by the unbaptised Roman Emperor Constantine who was seeking to maintain stability in the increasingly fractured Roman Empire, and had decided to use Christianity as a “glue” to hold the pieces together. The decision to confer divinity upon “Jesus” was passed by vote carried only by a narrow majority (in some accounts only 4 votes) – in other words “divinity” was conferred in the usual way, as an honorary title granted posthumously to ordinary humans who live extraordinary lives. I think George Bernard Shaw was correct in commenting that Christianity should really be called Crosstianity because the theological emphasis is not on the life of Jesus but on the death of Jesus, since the core Christian beliefs are centred around the death of Jesus and its aftermath.
The Crucifixion – Painting by Salvador Dali
The sayings of “Jesus” indicate that he always preached a relative morality ("Judge not that ye be not judged" "Do unto others as you would they should do unto you" "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone."). The compassion that he preached is retained in corporate form in the work of “charities” and many individual Christians are entirely sincere in the work they do to help the less fortunate and in their personal relations in their private lives. Other aspects of Christianity are less admirable and many, myself included, regard these as injurious to personal happiness.
The distortions of the teachings of “Jesus” begin in the manipulation of the accounts of his life. The truth is there, hidden in plain sight, but disguised by clumsy and amateurish alterations, the purpose of which is to deny “Jesus” ordinary humanity and portray him in magical terms. From 1982 I began to delve into a variety of books on various topics falling under the umbrella label of “the underground stream” of European thought – and of hitherto supressed literature. These include books exploring the long-held surmise that “Jesus” was married and that his wife was Mary Magdalene. That supposition has finally surfaced in popular entertainment via Dan Brown’s novel, ”The Da Vinci Code” its content derived largely from a book published in 1982 titled “The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail” – two of whose three authors sued Dan Brown for plagiarism, unsuccessfully - since this surmise has long been hidden in plain sight.
To sum up the findings, as I see them: “Jesus” – Yeshua, which name also translates as “Joshua”, was the heir to the throne of an occupied country, Palestine, where numerous cabals were vying for secondary power under the overall authority of Rome. He would never be able to rule as king, nor could his father (not his uncle) Joseph (of Arimathea). Instead he took on the role of teacher (Rabbi) and, after 30 years of study, founded a movement based on tolerance, compassion, forgiveness and non-violence. As a Rabbi he would, of course, be married. Some writers opine that “Jesus” was a member of the Essenes, an ascetic sect whose members lived apart from society, and that “Jesus” modified their strict rules to live among the common people from the time he elected to devote his life to furthering his mission. His popularity threatened rival groups conspiring to confront Roman rule with armed resistance. (A familiar story?) They conspired to get “Jesus” into trouble with the authorities. They succeeded. Hence the trial and crucifixion.
In passing it’s worth mentioning that “Jesus” had a twin brother, referred to in the scriptural account as Thomas Didymus. Curiously the name Thomas derives from the Hebrew “teom”, meaning “twin, as does Dydimus which is derived from the Greek “Didymos” which also means “twin”. Thomas was one of the twelve apostles and is known in New Testament scripture as “doubting Thomas” for his doubts about the resurrection of “Jesus”. He is also known from ancient Gnostic literature discovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945 as the author of the Gospel of Thomas which purports to contain the secret sayings of “Jesus”. The mind boggles at the thought that there were twin brothers since only the first born would be the true heir to the throne of Jerusalem and the second born would be only a “Contender” – “Book of Thomas The Contender” being another Nag Hammadi discovery.
It is also possible to wonder which twin was crucified, and, if one brother died on the cross, which brother survived as the supposedly resurrected dead twin. All such questions have been swept under the carpet of reconstructed “history” and replaced by carefully reconstructed theology; and setting all such controversy aside, the more pertinent question is this: Why did the Church, under Rome, hide the reality of the domestic life of “Jesus”?
Constantine needed a state religion that would unify the Roman Empire. Thus the new religion had to combine two elements that suited the essentially political purpose of the new faith and which, as a consequence, were foreign to Judaism. The two elements were: Paganism and Greek Dualism, since the new state religion had to appeal both to Pagans as well as to Christians who were themselves fragmented into rival sects. Thus these two elements had to be combined by theological fusion in a newly concocted religion that “borrowed” the name “Christianity”. Thus the “mother of God” is portrayed as the Christian equivalent of a pagan goddess who is visited by a deity to give birth to a Son of God deemed, by theological ingenuity to be the same God – a device used to portray Christianity as a monotheistic belief system under cover of which label sub-deities could be introduced, labelled “saints”.
The concept of a resurrected God was also compatible with many pagan beliefs regarding rebirth that derived from fertility cults associated with regeneration of crops and harvest. For further proof of the essentially pagan nature of many Christian sacred events one need search no further than Christmas and Easter. December 25th is not the birth date of “Jesus”. It follows the final day of the Roman Festival of Saturnalia, a riotous 7-day holiday lasting from December 17 to 23, when slaves dressed up as masters and presents were given.
Saturnalia
Regarding Easter, as can be found on many online websites, “All the fun things about Easter are pagan”. Easter actually began as a pagan festival celebrating spring in the Northern Hemisphere, long before the advent of Christianity. Spring itself represents the resurrection of life.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2010/apr/03/easter-pagan-symbolism
The “borrowing” of these Pagan festivals was done deliberately to facilitate the conversion of pagans to Christianity. In similar fashion further work needed to be done to modify elements of the existing accounts of the life of “Jesus” to enhance his aura of spirituality and his magical qualities to render him more appealing to pagans. And here we return to the theme of the truth being there all the time, hidden in plain sight. The following are my deductions.
Hiding the truth involved “reconstructing” all references to his earthly family. Sifting through numerous sources I am tempted to suppose that the real father of “Jesus” is the man portrayed as his great uncle (the uncle of his mother, Mary), Joseph of Arimathea who is then, in reality, the same person as the man also called Joseph who is portrayed as a humble “carpenter” who is described in all accounts as the husband of Mary. The two Hebrew words “charash” and “teknon” both mean in a wider sense “craftsman”. All Jews were expected to learn a useful craft of some kind. I read that the use of “charash” in the Talmud can also signify a very learned man. I therefore deduce that the father of “Jesus” was a learned man who taught “Jesus” well. Both father and son, as teachers, were Rabbis, as you certainly expect heirs to the throne to be, and both were therefore married. The siblings are all referred to as his “cousins”? Again why? The reason is to be found in the aforementioned application of Greek dualism to Christianity as it became formalised as the new state religion of Rome.
Dualism portrays the human being as composed of two contrasting and irreconcilable attributes. Spirit and Matter. These two facets are in constant conflict with each other. Purity of “spirit” is incompatible with the venality of “Matter”. “Jesus” has to represent spirit – “purity” – and therefore all vestiges of venality had to be stripped from his image, especially the venality of sexuality. This is why all vestiges of normality had to be expunged from the existing accounts of the life of “Jesus”.
The corrosive effects of this distortion have polluted Christianity for two thousand years and today, the results can be seen in one manifestation – the sexual malformations of behaviour that result from obligatory celibacy in the Christian clergy. In the wider public sexual repression can also lead to bizarre behaviours.
Theologicalities 9 – ERSATZ AUNTS
On a lighter note, I now identify my two ersatz Aunties: well, actually 4, but 3 of them were singing sisters: namely the Andrews Sisters, Patti, Maxine and Laverne. Also Leslie Caron. I will explain. I did have several actual familial aunts two of whom were co-opted by my parents to look after my sister and me during school holidays. They were kind, generous of heart, devout Christians and managed to cope with us adequately – not always an easy task as we were both somewhat exuberant. But it was from my Ersatz Showbiz Aunties that I learned useful life lessons. Please understand that my love of music drank from a very small pool, limited to what I heard on radio and what I could afford to buy of 78-rpm recordings. From the Andrews Sisters I learned about the delights of close harmony singing, and consistently tried to hear all 3 voices.
The Andrews Sisters
I did also have 1 record of the Boswell Sisters, somewhat worn, that I bought 2nd-hand at the Smithfield market: singing two songs from “42nd Street”, the title song and “Shuffle off to Buffalo”. The twin mysteries of who they were and where the songs came from were solved much later. The significance is that, at the time, no one in my familial circle or indeed at school had any knowledge of or interest in either popular music of the 1930s or Broadway musicals and thus the music meant little to them. So much for musical education. My knowledge of music began to widen from around 1952 onwards, with the advent (for me) of LP recordings, and the beneficial gift of program notes that came with them.
The Boswell Sisters with Bing Crosby. I downloaded this pic from the website of Jeff Meskel who provides a good biog of the Boswells (known in showbiz as "The Bozzies") Bing frequently featured the Bozzies on his early radio shows and made a fabulous series of duo recordings with Connie Boswell, who was Ella Fitzgerald's favourite singer - as I learned much later! https://www.jmeshel.com/105-the-boswell-sisters-crazy-people/
Hear the Boswell Sisters singing "42nd Street" with the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra.
For the first 17 years of my life I had no contact whatsoever with women outside my family circle. At Campbell College it was an all-male environment and in this ghetto I had no opportunities to embrace or explore any female sexuality, apart from what I glimpsed at the movies – until I saw Leslie Caron in “An American in Paris”.
Leslie Caron
There is a dance sequence near the start where Gene Kelly and Georges Guétary exchange descriptions of aspects of their girl friend’s character (unknown to each it is the same girl). These are illustrated by brief dance cameos performed by Leslie Caron. In one of these she dances with a chair. I was deeply impressed by the sexuality she displayed in her relationship with that chair! And also deeply entranced by the “gamine” personality she projected – “gamine” being a French word that, in both masculine (gamin) and feminine (gamine) uniquely signifies a mischievous child – uniquely in that no other language (that I know of) has a word that quite denotes the same combination of charm and rascality. My response to that movie experience did much to expand and advance my own sexuality.
Leslie Caron and that chair
It was not until the early 1980’s – about 30 years later – that I realised I was not alone in my reaction to Leslie Caron’s romance with that chair. On a TCN interview with her, she revealed how worried MGM management was about that segment. They thought it too sexy! It was nearly cut! In that interview Leslie Caron commented – in her French accent and with “gamine” innocence – “I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. It was only a chair!”
At the close of THEOLOGICALITIES – PART 1 I indicated that I would provide a log of plays that I have written “on spec” during periods when, through lack of adequate funding, I went “on strike” as regards writing music. A search online for titles (except for one-act plays) will take you to the Google Books page to read extracts. Here is that log:
LIST OF PLAYS/SCRIPTS for dialogue-driven projects suitable equally for theatre and/or media. Presentation. Ready for production by a producer/director who seeks non-judgmental satiric drama that will entertain.
“EVERYTHING ELSE” a play by DEREK STRAHAN - Four wives find out what each husband really wants and then each wife allows her husband to have everything else.
“PLEROMA” a play by DEREK STRAHAN - A composer and his manager decide that the composer’s music will be better received and will earn more money if the composer is thought to be dead. The composer hides in exile on a tropical island, still composing. The manager, getting nervous, plans to have him made really dead.
BULLET-PROOF PYJAMAS a play by DEREK STRAHAN - Four women are in love with the same Russian millionaire, but he is in love with the young gay Spanish private eye he has employed to spy on his young wife whom he suspects of infidelity.
“MEET THE FRACTALS” a play by DEREK STRAHAN - The trials and confusions of a racially mixed group that chance throws together, in circumstances that prompt them to explore the benefits and hazards of polyamory.
SODOM & TOMORROW a play by DEREK STRAHAN - God visits earth in the guise of a media magnate. Assisted by his lawyer, Lucifer and by Venus, God throws a weekend party for the staff of the lifestyle magazine “Enjoy”, plus selected others: ostensibly to discuss whether or not to feature an article on Sodomy in next month’s issue; but actually to enable God to decide, on the basis of evidence, whether or not (once again) to visit cataclysm on the human race.
“AEROBICA” – A musical by DEREK STRAHAN. Tangled web of relationships that develop among a group of people attending a gym. 12 songs recorded as demos by Marty Rhone and Kirri Adams
A NIGHT AT ELSINORE a musical comedy by DEREK STRAHAN - Three brothers, Rudy, Tony & Rondo with unemployed revolutionary Karl, are zapped through a rogue time portal from Ricardo’s Pizzeria in New York in 2014, to Denmark in 873 where, finding Hamlet in trouble, they contrive to bring his story to a happy ending.
NIGHT LIGHT – 1-Act play by DEREK STRAHAN. Conan Doyle’s belief in fairies survives his meeting with Houdini who denies using occult powers to achieve his amazing stage escape acts.
‘‘TRIPLE SIX” – by DEREK STRAHAN 1st Ep of a proposed series. A psychic investigator posing as a market researcher triggers the Apocalypse by tracking down a young secretary and inadvertently revealing to her that she is the anti-Christ.
The following versions of drama are the full-length theatre plays from which opera libretti may be derived. Opera has always plundered other art forms for content (myth, poetry, novel, theatre & current events). It is my intention before too long to plunder my own work for this purpose and, in the meantime, present the work as theatre, with perhaps some elements scored with music (as in operetta/singspiel).
“TAKEOVER” a play/libretto for an operetta by DEREK STRAHAN - A woman journalist is involved with three men. The first represents old money: his family owns an established media empire. The second represents new money: he is a corporate raider. The third represents no money: he is a composer. A stock market crash acts as a catalyst in bringing conflicts to a climactic resolution.
EDEN IN ATLANTIS a play/libretto for an opera by DEREK STRAHAN - Adam and Eve story re-written. Lucifer is a dissident scientist expelled from Celestium (at Antarctica before the pole shift), exiled to an island in the Atlantic, where a matriarchal society rules. Only Lucifer and Eve survive the catastrophe of an asteroid strike that overwhelms Paradise.
POSEIDON IN ATLANTIS a play-libretto by DEREK STRAHAN - Brothers Poseidon and Zeus sail north from now icebound Celestium to conquer new territories and dock mid-ocean at Atlantis. Poseidon falls in love with Cleito, Queen of this matriarchal island society and decides to remain there. Zeus sails further north to pursue his own destiny.
CALYPSO IN EXILE a play-libretto by DEREK STRAHAN - On the death of Poseidon, Calypso and her sister Circe are exiled from Atlantis for practicing magic by the new ruler, their father, Atlas, and each now inhabits an isolated island. Circe forms a political alliance with the Amazons and Gorgons to defeat Atlas, but Calypso, consumed by her love for Ulysses, brings about a different ending to this ill-fated venture.
ATLANTIS LOST a play-libretto by DEREK STRAHAN - Prometheus predicts the celestial conjunction that will overwhelm Atlantis. Epimetheus, the corrupt ruler of the empire disregards this advice, being more preoccupied with a pending invasion by Pelasgian forces. Prometheus ensures the escape of his son Deucalion, with Pyrrha, daughter of Epimetheus, on a purpose-built ark, carrying with them valuable records of Atlantean civilization.
I have concluded that the only way these plays will be brought to the notice of the public is if I form a Troupe to present them, if necessary as semi-rehearsed readings, but, in any case, at minimum cost as “portable” productions - very much like those staged by a theatrical company to which I belonged for around 6 months in London, around 1955, touring schools in the counties. Today such presentations could be enhanced by use of new technology, such as to provide screen backgrounds for scene changes.
For more on this proposal please read my article ‘THE TROUPE MOVEMENT’ at my Linked in page.
Why have none of these been staged? It’s not as if I lack experience, or that my work has not passed the test of public approval - having written approx 220 TV scripts including 212 for Australia’s first TV series “Number 96” working happily for the production team of the late Don Cash and the late Bill Harmon (Cash-Harmon) then for a miscellany of other TV shows, also around 20 scripts for film/TV documentaries; then about a dozen feature film scripts of which 3 were funded, produced and released.
Live theatre is another matter entirely. The problem lies with the nature of live theatre: that, in Australia (and probably everywhere), it operates in small fiefdoms all of which compete for government funding. The bodies that decide who gets such funding are influenced by fixed parameters in turn influenced by various forms of political correctness that favor serious-minded “preaching” in drama and also the telling of “our stories”. What results are works that are praiseworthy but parochial in nature and have little appeal to overseas audiences, and have little chance of MAKING MONEY! (The same applies to funding for film production, but let’s not go there, not here anyway.) As a result theatre in Australia remains a government-funded cottage industry – NOT A BUSINESS! One of my Ersatz Uncles, G B Shaw, was a member of the Fabian Society and thus somewhat concerned with issues pertaining to social justice, and all of his plays do, if you like, "preach" a lesson; but being a showman he knew that "lessons"will not be learned unless the pill is sugared, in his case, by humour. All comedies teach a lesson of some kind, by the very fact they deal in human nature, and reveal, through the plot, outcomes - and what is an outcome but a judgement (of some kind).
George Bernard Shaw
However, never fear! Do not abandon hope! I freely will that my plays will be staged, and that some of them will morph into operas and, for those, more music will be written. Should you wish to read any of these plays, for staging anywhere on this planet, they are available as pdf files so please get in touch with me either online or by email at:
I trust you have enjoyed my Theologicalities. They have been offered as entertainment. Advisedly, since comedians are less likely than priests and prophets to be martyred for their beliefs – especially a comedian who, like myself, has no beliefs – other than the above-asserted “belief “ in “free will”. I use the word “comedian” in its widest sense and wildest sense, as derived from the Italian – commedia dell’arte.
Yours faithfully – Derek Strahan
