From an Actor's Point of View: "A Letter to Arturo Vivante "
by Gary Swanson

Arturo,

Your writing moves across my mind at least once a day.

In your poetic way you've written me that now, in your mid 80's, you are not well and are confronting that which we all know to be there every day, rain or shine, young or old, male or female; that "thing" that we all know looks over our shoulder at everything we do. You write that you have to go to a specific hospital informing me -- "in a round about way telling you what is wrong with me."

As you read excerpts from your own prose at the Montauk Library on that fall night of 2006, one of the great American playwrights, Edward Albee sat a few feet from you and watched. He listened intently, stilled by your story of your father's love of women -- an old dying gentleman who craved the beauty and the softness of the feminine touch on his arm. I could not help but gaze over at Albee and wonder what this acknowledged master was thinking, or more importantly -- feeling -- as he listened to an other master read his own work in his own voice. 

As you live in this phase of your life as a former medical doctor, currently a philosopher, professor, novelist, poet, playwright you must feel like one of Chekhov's doctors - humble yet weary characters who see everything clearly through scratched bifocal glasses. I've played these parts on the stage and they always live with me.  Any role in a film has gripped me for a long period as I have toiled to capture the essence of the imaginary being.  Even going back to childhood plays in grammar school -- have entered my inner world and still live there. In a strange way, you, not just your characters are now one of those characters that I choose to carry around with me like a politician with a copy of the constitution in his sports coat pocket. 

I watch your plays in my mind, hearing and seeing, feeling the actors move around in a poetic storm of words and emotions. Sometimes I can sense myself on the stage acting in one of those plays. I can see the lights, experience my own movement, hear the other actors, the sound that comes as a result of the combined impulse of my epicenter with the life of the play. My continued work as an actor and director on "Free Love" or "The Master Bed Room" also echoes inside as I do the mundane things of day-to-day life; walking down a city street I might utter some of the words of Cuthbert from "Free Love" as I experiment with the feelings leading to the words.

Every Thursday afternoon from 4pm to 6pm I coach Maurizio, the actor I told you I want to direct in "The Master Bed Room." He plays the ex -- boxer lost in anxiety at his waste of his own life and I (wrongly cast of course) read the young doctor both as a teaching tool and a kind a rehearsal for him. It is something we both look forward to each week and if I'm unable to make it to the session, (like the flu I have today), Maurizio  (6'3" weight lifters body) becomes intimidating like an irritable dog; frustrated, restless and even -- mean; his behavior reflecting that of the character which has invaded his world on the mundane level. As we read, we both take solace in the poetry of the words and and in some secret place inside our artist's frustration we become quieted by your music and the weaving of dreams with hunger -- fear with exhilaration.  

I'm always looking for the right woman... to play opposite me in "Free Love." All this amounts to the road to hell paved with good intentions if the plays are not produced, but I find that our work in the arts is controlled by the call of that form -- it finds us and tells us and then demands; it informs us what it wants and when it wants it. But at it's pleasure, the question arises, are we up to the task at the time of the request?

When you and I had lunch on the upper west side, I knew that this elderly gentleman I was sitting opposite on a sidewalk restaurant table along Columbus Avenue, Arturo Vivante - was the distillation of all that art is or should become; slightly disheveled, but elegant non the less; worn, kind, achy but with eyes that made the madness of the city disappear around their depth and insight. 

I now know you as a rare and humble man with a candle that lights the other candles, guiding those who will listen - into the darkness. I promise to put your words on the stage and you will hear them as Albee listened to them and sat in exquisite silence rendered by a great writer.

http://www.garyswanson.org