Yesterday I spent too long in transit (car, subway, bus, etc.) with no time to write This morning I began to solve some of my writing problems while swimming (also useful time for planning menus and grocery lists). I will be at home today cooking chili con veggie (tofu ground round) for a vegetarian friend who is coming for dinner.
Cooking and thinking time.
And now, when I return to write my blog, something else has happened. The internationally famous actress Zoe Caldwell (born in Australia)l has died at the age of 86. Another one gone. If you read her obit you’ll see that she spent time at Stratford but also, not mentioned, at the (now Royal ) Manitoba Theatre Centre. That’s when we knew her, Bill more than I at that time, because the children and I were in the process of moving from Winnipeg to Stratford, while Bill called himself a theatrical yo-yo, bouncing back and forth between the two theatres (Manitoba Theatre Centre and the Stratford Festival Theatre.) Zoe starred in Mother Courage at MTC, directed by John Hirsch, and was a memorable Cleopatra at Stratford in Shakespeare’s creation of that legend. Zoe also imitated her smuggled cat on the train to - Chicago, I think, - Stratford had a run there—or maybe it was Montreal. Anyway, cats were not allowed on trains.
Later, after she was an icon in New York (FOUR Tony awards), we had a correspondence. She liked my writing (plays and poetry), though not enough to back any of it.
She was a legend in her own time. And now, I, “of ladies most deject and wretched… see that noble and most sovereign reason Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh “ (Zoe had Parkinson’ s Disease)…Oh, woe is me, T' have seen what I have seen, see what I see!"
In late November , the playwright John Murrell died of leukemia (1945-2019), a Canadian icon, another international star.. i think one of my plays is in his archives somewhere. I was one of his enclave of playwrights at the Banff Centre where he held court.
Here I am—remote, unknown, unsung— left to mourn my contemporary stars and idols. i’m older than any of them but I still have my marbles. It doesn’t seem fair, does it?