Thursday, September 26, 1968
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
5
Kanan Pkoto by Mike Gunther
PLEASE, GEORGE, COME HOME!
Bruce Levitt, left, Kansas City, Mo., graduate student, and Doug Wasson, right, Chambersburg, Pa., senior, run through a tense scene from Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman."
Theater company plans Iron Curtain journey
Next spring a KU theatrical company plans to travel behind the Iron Curtain to present the "Kaleidoscope of the American Dream."
Under the direction of Fredric Litto, professor of speech and drama, excerpts from eight American plays will be presented to audiences in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Rumania.
"Kaleidoscope" which is KU's sixth European tour production, is divided into two parts.
The first part is made up of plays written before 1960. Scenes from Eugene O'Neil's "Harry Ape," "Awake and Sing," by Clifford Odets, "Of Mice and Men," by John Steinbeck, "My Heart Is in the Highlands," by William Saroyan, and Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman," will be presented in the first half.
The second half of the production consists of plays after 1960. "Chicago," by Sam Shepard, Edward Albee's "The American Dream," and the motel scene from "America, Hurrah!" by Jean Claude van Italie are included.
Satirical songs will be interspersed throughout the excerpts.
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The name "Kaleidoscope of the American Dream" implies what we are trying to impart to our audiences, Littio said.
"We are trying to show what people have looked for in coming to America ... the ideals they have held and still continue to believe in."
"The idea that America is a
Cast members selected for "Kaleidoscope" include Cherie Shuck, Atchinson junior; Valda Aviks, Wichita junior; Jerry Koellsted, Massapequa, N. Y. senior; Doug Wasson, Chambersburg, Pa. senior; Bruce Levitt, Kansas City, Mo. graduate student, and Judy Howell Levitt, Hinsdale, Ill. graduate student.
Tryouts were held to give all theater students a chance at this opportunity to spend two months behind the Iron Curtain, Litto said.
Due to the recent crisis in Czechoslovakia, tours scheduled to be made by other universities have been cancelled. However, according to Litto, the KU theater group has received no word of any such cancellation.
virgin land where a man can make a new life for himself still exists. Some playwrights believe this myth and others are extremely cynical about it. We shall show both sides," he explained.
"Around January or February the State Department will advise us concerning the political situation. If the situation is clear and if the new administration includes funds in its budget for cultural affairs such as this, we will probably be allowed to go," said Litto.
"Kaleidoscope" will be presented at KU Oct. 18, 19, and 20. The group will play in Parsons on Oct. 25, Chanute Oct. 27, and Fredonia Oct. 29.
LONDON (UPI)—An authoritative naval publication suggested Tuesday that Soviet Russia and Communist China might clash in a showdown over control of the coast of Southeast Asia if the United States ever leaves Vietnam.
Sees showdown over Asia
Aesthetics and technology long time enemies, met and embraced yesterday as five KU poets read from their poetry in the Kansas Union Forum Room.
Jane's Fighting Ships, which draws its information from unofficial, as well as official sources, said America's allies apparently do not fully realize what a service the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, naval airmen, troops and amphibious forces have been rendering in and off Vietnam.
The poets enveloped their poetry in an array of sounds emitted from televisions, stereos, tape recorders and radios, which surrounded the audience.
As Bill Berkowitz, New York senior read, "Home is where all good things end soon enough," Mike Wallace, moderator of a CBS afternoon talk show, chatted with Chris Connelly on a television screen to the poet's right.
Herb Williams, Oradell, N. J., senior, read poems about a New York bus ride and an "Iowa City blue glass bottom boat."
As the poets read, the audience nibbled on carrots, lettuce and celery which had been passed out earlier.
While radio static and soft folk music blended, Wayne Propst, Overland Park senior, read poems about his summer of working on the railroad, about "cold beer America" and about the death of a child.
One of the most emphatic poems read was "Martin Luther King, Jr., Kansas City Ragtime Rock and Roll Blues," by Berkowitz. It is about poverty and depression as shown in the faces of black children.
"It has been a discouraging, puzzling and enervating war and the U.S.A. has had little material
Poetry reading unites with sound and food
Both Berkowitz and Propst read poems about a friend in the Topeka State Hospital. Berkowitz dedicated his poem to his "friend at Topeka State Hospital who is waiting for all of us."
support from most other nations," the British annual said. "There is a growing feeling among senior U.S. officers that never again ought the United States to venture into any foreign mainland conflict and that once the war is over, U.S. forces will never set foot in Asia.
Ken Irving, Rochester, Minn.
senior, said during the opening
Also reading was Lee Chapman, San Francisco, Calif., a former KU student.
of the session. "With all due respect to Chancellor Wescoe, I think I'll learn more here today than in all the classes I skipped last week."
The reading was sponsored by the Cottonwood, formerly the Cottonwood Review.
China vs. Russia
"If and when the U.S.A. pulls out the whole Pacific seaboard from Siberia to Sumatra would be wide open to infiltration or to conquest by the largest and most interested environmental power or powers. The final showdown might be between Communist China and the U.S.S.R."
Jane's said the rapid buildup of the Soviet navy into a vast fighting force second only to that of the U.S. has changed the character of the Mediterranean from an international ocean passageway for the Far East into an uneasy lake.