Travels with Eleanor #12: The White House and Diane Kondrat

              One very cold night in Bloomington, Indiana the struggling Black Box Theater held a fundraiser. The Black Box folks rented a sort of warehouse space with a small wood stove for heat. Maybe it was something as luxurious as a gas heater. In any case it was inadequate for the space even on a mild winter’s day. That night the place was packed as various local performers stepped up to contribute their artistry so that the theater could keep going. I went to add my bit and stood shivering near the heater. An actress named Diane Kondrat had just stepped off the stage and as she walked past in the pitch dark, I said hello. “We should get together,” I offered, “we have the same love.”  I might have said “lover”. Diane looked startled and moved on to clear the aisle. She made sure we did get together, and I am the better for it.

               Diane is the finest actress I have ever seen (and I’ve seen some great ones). She had been transplanted to Bloomington when her husband became part of the faculty at Indiana University. She soon realized that if she wanted plays that included meaty roles for women, she would have to produce them. Obviously, such plays are not usually commercially attractive to “regular” theaters, be they professional, educational, or community institutions. It was even more true in the long-ago late 1980’s, so Diane formed Oasis Productions and soon had a reputation for offering excellent plays and actors. Eventually she met Martha Jacobs, who had come to town under the same circumstances. Both of them had had successful acting careers in larger cities and the cultural change must have been a shock.

One day in about 1990, Diane called and asked if I would like to play Gertrude in an Oasis production of Gertrude Stein and a Companion. I immediately said yes. Martha Jacobs would play Alice B. Toklas, Diane told me. I didn’t ask about the rehearsal schedule, or when the performances would happen, or anything else. I didn’t consult my new partner, which was odd and pretty rude. I just said yes and jumped into rehearsals with enthusiasm.

Martha is a skilled teacher in the Meisner Technique for actors and as part of our rehearsal process, she began to teach me some of the technique. The actual training as Martha teaches it takes at least two years. It is a deep experience that offers a lot of self-discovery and spiritual work for the actor. For our purposes with this production, I got a glimpse of the keys that open up the play script and characters like magic. I have discovered that magic often takes work and that was true for the new technique. And I was an “old dog” attempting to learn new tricks – I’d been acting for over 40 years. I had some acting training in college, but mostly had developed my technique intuitively. To my surprise, it often matched or merged well with the famous Meisner. Still, I felt like a real amateur with the two pros and scrambled to keep up. As I remember it all now, I see Diane’s surprised reaction to moments in rehearsal when I got it right. And by right, I mean I touched on the truth of the character.

About four years later, Diane and Martha asked to meet with me and proposed that Oasis produce Dear Mrs. Roosevelt for a run in Indianapolis. The play would appeal to a broad audience and, we hoped, bring some financial renewal to the company. The “hitch” was that Martha would also teach me more of the Meisner Technique and direct the play. How could I say no? Martha and I set to work. My favorite memory of that time is her reaction as we read through the script early on. We were doing table work, where the actors and director read the script carefully, discovering the beats, the underlying motivations for the characters, and applying the tools of the technique. This process can take months if a company has the luxury of time. 

I must have needed a lot of help, because we did indeed spend months in rehearsal. One day we read through one of my favorite scenes. I had written the script based on Eleanor’s autobiographies, and the moment was one that changed ER’s life. She had visited a hospital ward for shell-shocked veterans, men who suffered from PTSD. As I read the scene, the air in the room changed. I looked up to see Martha near tears and she said, “You are an actress. You really are an actress.” What a boon for me, externally focused as I am far too often. If an authority said I was an actress I must be one (after 40+ years of experience). Ah well, life lessons never end, do they?

Diane went to work too, building an audience for the play. She contacted the Indianapolis press, American Legion posts, and other veterans’ organizations. We were hopeful that we could fill the theater. By theater I mean the small basement performance space in the Phoenix Theater building. It had once been a church, converted by a lot of labor and love. The basement was still, first of all, a dark, damp basement. The stage platforms and seating could be moved to meet the needs of a production, but one important factor was the basement drain. That drain needed to be flushed often, lest the sewer gasses and smells waft back into our performance space. I remember a lot of incense, a lot of sewer stink, and a lot of worry.

But the show must go on, and on it rolled. I have clear memories of veterans in the audience. One man, clearly a World War II vet, standing and saluting when I made my first entrance. I had to gulp the tears and keep going. I remember friends bringing flowers and I remember the critics coming. This was a big deal. It meant more recognition for Oasis, for one thing. And I had never had a review by a theater critic. Well, I’d had one.

An Indianapolis community theater had produced Moliere’s The Imaginary Invalid in which I played Beline. When the review came out it said that I had played a different role and couldn’t act my way out of a tissue paper bag. It also said that the actress playing Beline was brilliant but named the young woman who played the ingenue. I had the nerve to call the critic and ask for a correction (!), but he refused and told me I didn’t know which character I had played. So, when the critics came to see my beloved Dear Mrs. Roosevelt, I trembled at the thought of what they’d say about my script and acting. At least they couldn’t mistake me for another actress. They raved.

At the end of the year, Jay Harvey, leading critic at the Indianapolis Star named the play one of the five best of 1995. Thank you, Diane Kondrat and thank you, Martha Jacobs!

It must have been after that happy run of performances that Diane suggested I contact Hilary Clinton’s office at the White House and propose a visit by my Eleanor.  So we did. Diane sent a video (though I don’t recall that we had a good one) and someone from Hilary’s staff answered. They were interested. My fantasy life took on new excitement. I envisioned a performance in the East Room, broadcast by PBS across the country. I thought I’d better be brushing up on the etiquette of a White House visit and wondered if a Secret Service background check would find anything in my history, such as those marches for gay rights in the late 1970’s. I worried about finding a dressmaker for a new and fancier costume. Could those shoes from the Opportunity House thrift store be OK for the White House?

Diane responded to Hilary’s staff as my agent.  Here was a woman who had great and entirely well-founded ambition for a noted professional career, and she was serving as my agent with Hilary Clinton’s staff. It was all beyond belief. Then came the news that they wanted me to come perform at an event at a future date to be determined. It would occur at an event Hilary hosted at a location, probably in D.C. and not at the White House proper. Fine with me!  But “a later date to be determined” could have been letting us down gently.

Then Dave Barry, a satirist columnist for the Miami Herald who hated the Clintons (and still does) got wind of a conversation Hilary Clinton had in 1994. The Clintons had invited a group to meet at Camp David to help them understand the Democrats’ loss in the 1994 congressional elections. Bob Woodward wrote about the meeting in detail in his book, The Choice, in 1996.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/choice.htm  Woodward describes it as a group of self-help authors, including Stephen Covey, Anthony Robbins, and Marianne Williamson, whose names were leaked publicly prior to the meeting. As with many leaks, this may have been a deliberate public relations ploy, or it may have been a genuine sneak attack with information sent to the press one way or another. Two others were present, but their names were not leaked”: Jean Houston and Mary Catherine Bateson.

In any case, Woodward’s 1996 account reads like a transcript of the conversation. When he isn’t quoting someone, Woodward is often sneering about the people present. The punch line is that Hilary was encouraged to participate in an imaginary conversation with her great role model, Eleanor Roosevelt. This technique is not all that weird, one just imagines what one’s hero would say or do in a particular situation. But it hit the press and Dave Barry’s column trashed Jean Houston and Mary Catherine Bateson and amplified the whole thing, much to his obvious glee. As I recall from Barry’s column, he said that Hilary had been an enthusiastic part of a séance with Jean Houston and Eleanor Roosevelt.

No wonder we never heard from Hilary’s staff again.

But I still have the memory of Diane Kondrat pacing my living room as we waited for the call Hilary’s staff had set up. Her friendship sustains me now even more than it did then.

www.dianekondrat.com


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