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Theatre season opens with Guys on Ice
Once again Lake Superior Theatre (LST) raises the curtain on another
spectacular season. Since this was the summer that seemed a long
time in coming, it seems quite appropriate that the LST season
begins with Guys On Ice.
“Sitting outside in the freezing cold, building a little
nest for yourself…is the ultimate expression of the strange
Midwestern ethic,” says James Kaplan, coauthor of Guys on
Ice, a play set in a Wisconsin ice shanty that’s been performed
nationwide. Kaplan was amused by pictures taken this winter of
guys ice fishing in front of the Lake Superior Yacht Yard, home
of Lake Superior Theatre.
While Guys On Ice has been playing to sold-out audiences who love
the comedic musical, it is a new first for the play—being
performed on the shores of Lake Superior where ice fishing actually
happens each winter. This charming comedic musical directed by
Shelley Russell tells the story of two ice fishing buddies from
Northern Wisconsin who talk and sing about life, love and the
one that got away. With musical numbers like “De Wishing
Hole,” “Ode to a Snowmobile Suit” and “Fish
is de Miracle Food,” Guys on Ice will charm your wool socks
off.
It is a story every yooper can relate to, and it is surprisingly
touching. From their ice fishing shanty, longtime pals Lloyd and
Marvin keep warm with a mutual appreciation for good bait, cold
beer and the Green Bay Packers.
As Marvin waits anxiously for his opportunity to appear on a cable
TV fishing show and share secrets of his life “on da’
lake,” Lloyd ponders a recent squabble with his wife concerning
plans to spend their anniversary at Lambeau Field. Both pals scramble
to protect their cold ones from fellow angler, Ernie the Moocher.
The season continues with a celebration of the famous Anatomy
of A Murder, also directed by Shelley Russell, who has put together
an incredible cast that will make this a performance you won’t
want to miss. Does temporary insanity justify murder? And what
really did occur in the darkness of the great north woods. Come
along to find out as LST celebrates the anniversary of this cinematic
great with local connections.
What happens when you mix Shakespeare and Sci-Fi? You get Macsith
. . .
—Peggy Frazier
U.P. poet writes of film,
family and life
The Child Who Loved Movies
By L.E. Ward
Upper Michigan poet and Iron River native, L.E. Ward, is a two-time
Pulitzer nominee (in 1992 for criticism and in 1999 for poetry).
When one reads his poems, it’s easy to see why his work has
received such attention.
Born in Iron River in 1944, Ward has written several volumes of
poetry, including The Collected Poems and The Land Within. As
a movie critic and writer, he has published 1,000 long and short
articles on American film history in numerous film periodicals,
as well as been published in newspapers, magazines, poetry anthologies
and encyclopedias. His poetry consists of a variety of themes,
including memoirs of his childhood, gay Eros, the ancient world,
the movies, the arts and literature, the lives of writers and
other artists, world paintings and painters and human rights.
In The Child Who Loved Movies, a touch of each of those themes
is present, but the predominant theme is that of his childhood
in the 1940s and 1950s, engrossed in a cinematic world and recalling
the comfort of those years with his parents. Both middle-aged
readers and movie buffs will be enthralled with Ward’s memories
as well as his fascination with films that have lived in his head
for more than half a century, influencing his thoughts and verse.
The opening poem of The Child Who Loved Movies is titled “Christmas
1944-54,” and while it recalls the joys of the typical Christmases
of his childhood, such as “The two books of carols, which
briefly emerged/annually from the piano bench, on seasonal parole.”
And “The Little Golden Book and the Whitman Paperback”
as well as the usual Christmas decorations, what Ward wants us
most to do is:
Remember that all that ever matters
Is the human—what is experienced,
perceived, and felt.
Remember in all the world of ice and cold,
The house where parents were,
where it was warm.
Ward has a tremendous sense of the value of his family. While
many modern poets rage for line after line about their dysfunctional
upbringings, Ward continually recalls the warmth of his childhood.
While he writes endlessly about films and the pseudo-heaven created
by Hollywood in his youth, as an adult he notes, “Little
did I know that that innocent childhood/With my parents was the
true heaven,” and now he realizes “the presence of parents
and home—/a heaven long vanished.”
In a poem “To Louisa May Alcott,” he feels the warmth
that Alcott created in her novels, and the loss that happy world
eventually brought because everything passes away; “everything’s
on loan.” He is especially grateful for his mother as he
states in passages, such as “I wish I could say how great
she was” and “She is always there in all my feelings.”
Comparing life to a train ride, he writes of his grandparents,
“I never chose the journey/Yet I miss the old special passengers.”
Ward wears his heart on his sleeve, but he never crosses the line
into being overly sentimental. It is refreshing that there are
poets who still write about warmth of heart and home and appreciation
for the past. And while Ward is aware others might not understand
why he stayed at home—he lived with his parents almost all
his life, except a few years when he taught, returning in 1970
when his father died, to live with his mother until her death
in 1999, one cannot help but appreciate that a son would be so
devoted to the two people so devoted to him.
Second only to his parents was the influence of movies upon Ward’s
life. He continually mentions going to films with his parents
at the Delft Theatre in Iron River—he provides a photograph
of the theatre in the back of the book along with pictures of
himself and his family. It’s easy to understand how films
had such an impact on him when he grew up in the golden age of
Hollywood. At times, he allows himself to envision meeting the
great movie stars. He writes poems of conversations he has with
Marilyn Monroe after her death. He dreams of being friends with
Roddy McDowall; as an adult, he wrote a movie tribute to McDowall,
for which the actor thanked him.
To Ward, movies are a glorious invention.
I clocked years by them
Age nine, my favorite year
They came and went.
(Like the days; themselves).
The August evening, company left.
Scandal At Scourie was playing Monday;
Followed by Ride Vaquero, on Tuesday.
Movies were something Ward felt he owned, something he was as
invested in as were the stars, directors and producers themselves:
“Hollywood existed not only in estates and front offices,/but
in the comfort it brought to/lonely little people, making their
lives less ordinary.”
Ward is aware that film does not always depict life realistically,
but rather than let himself be disillusioned, as is the case with
the title of Manuel Puig’s novel, Betrayed by Rita Hayworth,
Ward unashamedly declares, “Hooray for the courage/and idealism,
films have given through the years.” He is not in denial
that films provide an enhanced version of life, as when he writes
of, “Doris Day in April in Paris—/in an April, more
April than April—/more Paris than Paris.” And of the
Disney films of his childhood, he says:
Alice, Cinderella, Peter Pan, Pinocchio, Snow White,
Who, with a heart and mind, would not identify with them?—
Young, beautiful, innocent, idealistic.
They do not betray us. Time and life betray us.
Childhood leaves, and parents die,
And we pull the drapes and lock the door.
But they live, anyway, somehow inside us
Where each song they sang to us
Still sings in us and will sing in us,
forever-more.
L.E. Ward’s poems speak of a better world. He perhaps glosses
over the pain in life, the romance that never came, his being
misunderstood by others, but he predominantly chooses to focus
on what was good in life. Although he never mentions the film
Man of La Mancha, no doubt he would agree with Peter O’Toole’s
character, Don Quixote, when he says, “Maddest of all is
to see life as it is and not as it should be.”
In one of the last poems of The Child Who Loved Movies, Ward states,
“And in my poems those I loved, live/may their memory survive
forever-more—” and of his mother, clearly the greatest
influence on his life:
Mother was my chauffeur, companion,
Confidante, and best friend.
We faced fate, the weather,
the fickleness of nature, politics, relatives, people, ignorance
and prejudice,
together for decades.
She left life at age 90—
a year and a half after
She broke her hip—
certain she’d be forgotten.
As if she could ever be, by me,
or ever has been.
Ward reminds us of what is good in individuals, in the human
spirit, and how it is reflected in film, art and literature. He
makes us think and see the world in a better light; he asks us
to hold onto what is memorable, and he leaves us nostalgic, but
happy. What more can a poet hope to accomplish?
—Tyler Tichelaar
Editor’s Note: Tichelaar is the author of The Marquette
Trilogy. All books reviewed in this column are available in local
and online bookstores.
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