Wednesday, August 30, 2023

Remembering Tina Howe

 


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.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/29/theater/tina-howe-dead.html


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