I was so sad
to learn this morning of the death of Tina Howe. I loved Tina and her plays. She was by far my favorite contemporary
playwright, and possibly my favorite ever. I interviewed her many times, including for my
second master's thesis, which was a study of her life and work. I have wonderful memories of sitting in her
West End Avenue apartment talking to her. She was always generous with her time.
I first
encountered her in the mid-1980s when I saw Painting Churches at
Baltimore’s Center Stage. That was the beginning
of my love for Tina Howe plays.
A decade
later I taught her plays one summer at Brooklyn College and my students, some
of whom had never seen or read a play, fell in love with her too. Although there wasn't a WASP among us -- and
Tina was a WASP who wrote about that world -- they understood her plays because
she frequently has characters talking at cross purposes in their frustration to
be listened to. My students, many of
whom were immigrants, knew about that. They
even volunteered to take parts and read her plays out loud, which students are
usually reluctant to do. I can still
hear their thick accents and laughter.
The course
had been the dreaded but required English 2, the term paper. The department chair had told me to mold it
around something I liked so I chose four of Tina’s plays – Museum, The Art
of Dining, Painting Churches and Coastal Disturbances. I taught the students how to look for
themes and make comparisons. I sent them
to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts for research, this being
in the days before the Internet. They
had never been there and didn’t know where it was until I told them.
I also
required them to read the theatre stories each week in the Arts & Leisure
section. I had talked to them about how
Tina loved to use absurdist humor, explaining what that was and getting them to
identify it in her work. One Sunday A&L
featured a story on Samuel Beckett and one of the students excitedly said: “He’s
like Tina.” Tina laughed when I told her that.
Beckett had been one of her idols since she discovered his work during
her year living in Paris, with her best friend Jane Alexander, after college. I told her she was the students’ point of
reference as far as all theatre went.
Our
classroom was on the fourth floor of Boylan Hall, right under the roof, making
our hot, unairconditioned classroom even hotter. On our final day as we were summing up I told
the students they were now Tina Howe scholars.
They laughed as if I was kidding but I told them many people love Tina’s
plays but they hadn’t studied them in depth and made comparisons. I insisted they were, indeed, Tina Howe
scholars. I could see them sitting up straighter
and smiling. They probably hadn’t thought
of themselves as scholars of much of anything, and certainly hadn’t expected to
become one from a term paper course.
One of the
students said she had been dreading the class but ended up loving it. The others chimed in with their
agreement. I told them I felt the same
way. When I called Tina to tell her
their reaction and how much they loved her plays, she humbly said, “I think
it’s because they had a good teacher.”
No, the real reason was Tina and her plays.
When I interviewed her for my thesis and told her how I adored her endings, she said she always went for an epiphany. That was Tina, a shimmering light. I have tears as I write this. How blessed I was to have known her. How blessed we all are with what she has left us.
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