Georg Osterman, Linda Chapman and I thought of making a play about Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson. Georg and his partner at the time, Mark Beard, knew Virgil. We met him once. He sat very comfortably in his chair but he was stone deaf. Georg could do a drop-dead imitation of Virgil.
So Georg, Linda, and I wrote a play called Gertrude and Virgil. The premise was that Georg and I were trying to write a play about Gertrude and Virgil and in doing so, we made and took some of Alice [Toklas]’s hashish brownies. That put us in dream-like state: we imagined we were actually Gertrude and Virgil. Alice was there as an offstage voice. Georg told stories of Virgil and I told stories of Gertrude. We argued about money. We took a lot of it verbatim from the letters they wrote to each other arguing over the money coming in from Four Saints In Three Acts. Gertrude wanted it split 50-50; Virgil wanted it 60-40. Virgil believed the composer does more while Gertrude argued that the librettist does just as much: “I wrote the libretto for you” and so on. This went back and forth, back and forth, insulting each other along the way. She won. This money argument went on as a skit by itself in the “Three Ways to Get Your Man” evening Georg and I did. It went over beautifully. The audience was delighted by this exchange of letters.
Soon after that, Georg passed away. Steven Watson interviewed me for a book he wrote on Andy Warhol. He asked me about Georg. When I told him [he had passed]… the look on his face, I can’t express it. It was too terrible for words. That was how people felt about Georg. He was very loved. There was a lovely memorial for him at the New York Theatre Workshop.
Later in its evolution, the play became Gertrude and Alice. One enormously wonderful reading of it was when we had taken on Melanie Joseph as a producer. We planned on doing a full-scale reading. Mark Beard offered his loft as a place to do it. He had lent it out before to other people to raise money for their projects and he was happy to offer it to us. Melanie had this stroke of genius which was to write the invitations on airmail onionskins and put them in airmail envelopes. Some people actually thought they were getting a letter from Gertrude and Alice! It was wonderful. Mark Beard, being a sculptor as well as a painter, had made a giant vase that he put huge gladiolas in. That’s what greeted people when they came in so everyone felt as if they were at Gertrude and Alice’s salon. The reading was packed; people had to stand on the terrace. Betty Bourne of the Bloolips and her partner, Precious Pearl, entertained everyone with twenty-five minutes of their show, singing and tap dancing. There were also two very old women in attendance who were very well known in the arts. One of whom wasn’t as old as the other, and everyone thought they were Gertrude and Alice. They weren’t of course, but the older woman had actually met Gertrude. Overall, it was a masterful evening. We raised over twenty thousand dollars which blew even Mark’s mind.
At the Signature Theatre, many people came to see us, and we’d come out after the performances. One time, a beautiful girl threw her arms around me. I was very happy, but I didn’t recognize her at first. It was Cynthia Nixon – she had her eyebrows shaved off! Once she told me who she was, I gave her a big hug. Carey Perloff also came. She too gave me a big hug. We also played Gertrude and Alice in St Louis when there was a symposium on Stein there. Carey Perloff’s mother was a Stein scholar so she was there. She didn’t like the play. She felt we had reduced Gertrude and Alice from their ‘grand perch’ down to ‘domestic women who fought’. Well, as I see it, that’s what they were! That’s what was in the literature!
We were also invited to do the play in the large theater at Dartmouth. We got to stay at the Hanover Inn which I have wanted to do for a very long time. There was a very good museum attached to the campus. They had a little painting by Juan Gris, one of my favorite artists, and one of Gertrude’s favorites. Chris Grabowski got it from the museum and we had it on stage on an easel during Gertrude and Alice. That was one of the most wonderful readings we did, even though it had bad acoustics and we weren’t miked.
Melanie also got us to England to perform at a venue that was famous as a gay venue, run by two very enterprising gay women. We played to packed houses of gay women who loved the play, especially the beginning of it. When it got on to where Gertrude and Alice argued more and more, couples who might have been sitting close to one another moved away from their partner – as the going gets tough…! In London, we also met up again with Betty [Bourne] of Bloolips. She invited us to her house. She had a wonderful top hat that I liked. It was broken along the brim but she gave it to me because I begged her for it. She also had a mirror, a magic mirror, in her bathroom which showed your face as other people see you. I had never seen my face like that. It was fantastic.
Gertrude and Alice got poo-pooed by reviewers, though it was reviewed thoroughly. The exception was Frank Marcus, an American theater critic writing for an English theater paper. He understood the play and the nature of Americans’ attitude towards Gertrude which is full of fun and appreciation. He wrote us a glowing review. I realized the English didn’t have the popular attitude towards her that Americans had, that it wasn’t so serious. She herself said that – if you like it and you enjoy it, then you understand it. If you don’t, then don’t read it! Don’t bother about it.
Gertrude and Alice won me an Obie for Best Performance, and was a GLAAD Media Award Nominee.
Linked here is The Foundry Theatre’s recording of the 1999 performance.
