RECORDS: Another Thrill
By MIKE SHEARER Arts & Reviews Editor
I read a couple articles recently that lamented the fact that success would surely take that passionate violence out of Janis Joplin's voice
It's pure hogwash. Janis Joplin, with her inspirational flask of whiskey, could never sound like an Anita Kerr chorus girl—success or no success. The reason? She isn't singing poverty blues; she's singing heartbreak blues, blues of the rich and of the poor, blues of the ugly and of the beautiful.
On I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama', Janis does have those kozmic blues again, those blues down deep where most singers don't sing.
"It begins to pale after a while and I start looking to find one good man," wails the Cheap Thrills girl, and you simply know that no romance could ever fill that vast void Janis' voice knows so well.
While I thought Big Brother and The Holding Company was not an exceptional group, it at least seemed to augment Janis' flaming voice. Retaining only San Andrew from Big Brother, Janis' "personnel" on this album is decidedly poor. There is the tragic beauty of pain as in Janis' voice and then there is hurting—just plain hurting—as in her backup.
But it is still an exceptional album. Janis is still, as they said on the Cheap Thrills album, "one great, great broad."
BOOKS
THE TOWER BABEL, by Morris L. West (Dell, $1.25)—The latest by one of today's most popular writers of adventurous, suspenseful tales that have a bit of social comment going for them as well. This new one is about the Middle East on the brink of the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. There are five key figures: an Israeli spy in Damascus; the director of security for Syracuse; a terrorist of the Palestine Liberation Organization; an international banker, and the director of military intelligence for Israel.
THREE INTO TWO WON'T GO, by Andrea Newman (Dell, 95 cents)—About a salesman and a little hitchhiker named Ella, a tramp with whom the big man takes up and then comes the confrontation with the wife. It's old stuff, sexed up for the sixties, and it's to be a movie with Rod Steiger and Claire Bloom.
THE CANCER WARD, by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn (Dell, $1.25)—A vast book that already is a modern classic. Its author is one of the most brilliant of contemporary Russian writers, and he describes here a provincial hospital in Soviet Central Asia—Ward 13, where the cancer patients come to meet death. The book, incidentally, has not been published in the Soviet Union. Like "Doctor Zhivago" it has too much to say about the relation of the state to the individual to make it a document palatable for Russian authority.
Oct. 13
1969 KANSAN 5
COMING INTO EXISTENCE, by Raymond Rogers (Delta, $1.75)
—A consideration of the problems individuals face to achieve personal identification. The content offered here is that man has a vital, active will and an impulse to construct a self and maintain its integrity. The book is a thoughtful one that should interest many readers, especially students.
GREAT ESSAYS FROM THE 16TH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT, edited by John E. George and John A. Goodson (Dell, 50 cents)—An anthology that includes many famous names: Montaigne, Addison, Steele, Swift, Jonathan Edwards, Rousseau, Dr. Johnson, de Quincey, Carlyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mark Twain, C. Northcote Parkinson, Isaac Asimov and Agnes de Mille. Many others are here as well, in a collection varied and interesting.
By GENELLE RICHARDS
A drop-out "meets" the war
Is it really a long way to Tipperary? From the University?
Kansan Staff Writer
War and a young college drop-out's encounter with war are the topics of "Summertree," a play by Ron Cowen.
Directed by Stephen Reed, Wichita senior, the play opens Oct. 16 and runs through Oct. 18 in Swarthout Recital Hall.
"I like the play because it comes directly out of many of the new movements of the theatre in the U.S." said Reed.
Part of the play's uniqueness is its purposeful lack of chronology through a series of flashbacks and peeks into the future. For example, one moment the scene is an apartment—the next, Vietnam.
"Summertree" is the story of a young college man who wants to transfer to the School of Music, but his father won't let him. So he quits, is drafted and goes to Vietnam.
Although trapped in this system, no one actually realizes he is trapped. Eventually, the system becomes murderous, but the people involved still can't realize what it is all about.
Even though "Summertree" appears to be an antiwar play, it doesn't focus on war's horrors. Instead it centers around people and their relationships with the system and with each other.
"Summertree" can be classified as a pessimistic play, showing no real hope that the deadly system can change or that people can even realize they are trapped in it.
The new movement gets away from the old idea of a "realistic" play. It forms something that does not have plot in the traditional sense, as in "Summertree" with the absense of chronological order.
"The reason for doing this is that the playwright becomes so involved in the complication of the plot and the audience comes to expect this. They become more interested in the complication of the plot and how things go to the eventual end," said Reed.
With "Summertree," Reed becomes the only undergraduate to have directed in the experimental series of plays. For the past two summers, he directed the KU theatre company in Creede, Colo. His acting experience includes
John Green, Wilmette, Ill., junior, portrays the young man. Green has appeared in "Destroy Rides Again," "The Day the Fish Got Away" and "Gypsy."
"The Crumbling Citadel." "Im-
inary Invalid" and "Gypsy."
Christy Brandt, Wilmette, Ill., junior, plays the girl. Miss Brandt also played in "Destroy Rides Again" and this past summer she played Emily in "Our Town" with a summer stock company in Pennsylvania.
John Ingle, Kansas City, Mo., junior, who plays the father, had the title role in "John-John" last year and this past summer belonged to the KU summer repertory company.
Ruth Forman, Kansas City sophomore, portrays the mother. Miss Forman also appeared this summer in the KU repertory company.
Chris Schoggen, Nashville junior, plays the soldier. Schoggen appeared in "The Day the Fish Got Away" and was a member of the Creede Company.
Kevin Brooking, 12, plays the little boy. Kevin is the son of Jack Brooking, professor of speech and drama.