ENTERTAINMENT
November 29, 1984 Page 6
The University Daily KANSAN
Joe Wilkins III/KANSAN
Harry Crews, writer in residence
A truck, a typewriter, two quarts of Scotch and he's cruisin'
By PEGGY HELSEL Staff Reporter
Harry Crews left the University of Kansas last night to pick up the 5:15 flight to Atlanta. His suitcase was a little lighter than when he had arrived Sunday evening because he'd finished off the two quarts of Scotch he had brought with him and had tossed the bottles.
Crews is the writer in residence at the University of Kansas, part of a program sponsored by the department of English. Monday morning he meets with students and conferences, lecturing to classes and giving readings from his work.
"I brought the Scotch for an emergency 'cause I knew I was comin' to Kansas on a Sunday," said the gravel-voiced English professor from the University of Florida as he sat in Wescoe yesterday.
CREWS IS A rough-talking, hard-drinking good ol' boy from southern Georgia. He is the author of screenplays, magazine articles and novels, although he says he can't remember how many. But he does remember some of the titles like "Florida Frenzy," "Blood and Blood."
ORIS, CAR and PEDISTRIKE.
He also was a columnist for Esquire "sometime in the late '70s," but he wasn't exactly sure of that either.
Crews has a reputation for being a mean writer. He writes about harsh men and hard places with a touch of laid-back Southern humor.
"I'm not a mean man," Crews said. "He said he probably got that reputation from taking magazine story documents that no one else would take.
"Aetactly, I am a man of the contradictin' extremes. I work out with weights every mornin' until the sweat's rollin' off me and I'm 'bout to smoke in my lungs around and smoke my lungs out. I've been drinkin' since I got here."
"PEOPLE PROBABLY get the impression I'm mean when they find out I've busted my nose nine times, cracked my skull twice, broken ribs, fingers, both knees and feet. It's not because of any predisposition towards violence on my part, but rather the hallways and roadhouses outside of town places where violence seems to gravitate.
"But my idea of hell is like two beers. What the hell is good is two beers? If you're going to drink beer, we're talking 'all day and night and all the next day. In that way I am a man of the rankest extremes."
HE STILL LIKES to live that way.
He isn't married and says that he shuns the "materialistic trappings of society."
"I like my pickup truck and my typewriter," he said. "The rest you can have tomorrow; I don't need it. I don't own a white shirt, or a tie, or a suit, or leather shoes. Who needs it?"
Crews was born in the backwoods of Macon County, Georgia, by the Okeenakeen Swamp. His parents were sharecroppers as poor as the dirt they lived on, he said. His father was a drunk who fought "quite constantly with my mama, to the point that we'd hear shotguns going off in the middle of the night." He called his childhood a nightmare.
"DAY In, day out, a nightmare. And not just cause we were as poor as you can get and hungry half the time," he said. "I had infantile paralysis and was severely scalded when I fell into a pot of boiling water used for butchery dogs, meat, and wool. We have doctors or dentists. We were living in the hookworm and rickets belt of the country.
"Every crop year, we'd load up the wagon and mule and move on down the road from one patch of farmed-out land to another."
He has written an autobiography, called "A Childhood: biography of a place," based on the years he spent on tenant farms with his family.
Crews said he couldn't remember a time when he wasn't writing or reading anything he could find, borrow, steal or beg. He read most detective stories, which were, in his estimation, "the rankest kind of literature you can imagine."
WHEN HE WAS 17, Crews said, he did what all good, starving Southern boys did — he joined the Marines.
"I did a lot of troopin' and stompin'
but nothing of significance. It did
allow me to go to school at the University
of Florida through the GI bill," he said.
Crews got a master's degree in education through "jumpin' through the hoops, makin' up papers, takin' bibliographies, footnotes and quotes." After he published his first novel, "The Gospel Singer," Crews was offered an assistant professorship at the university in 1968.
I wrote 10 books in 10 years, plus my essays for Esquire and Playboy, and still taught classes. It was the speed freak days, ampethemine city. I didn't sleep a lot," he said. "I don't do that anymore. Probably be dead if I did.
Class breaks opera stereotype
BY CHRIS CLEARY Staff Reporter
Thirteen students took a class this semester that was a little different from their other classes.
Instead of enrolling at Strong Hall, they had to audition at Murphy Hall.
Instead of homework, there were rehearsals. Instead of notes to take, there were notes to sing. And now instead of a final, full-fledged opera for them to perform.
The class is the opera workshop, and the opera the students are performing this semester is "Hansel and Gretel." It opens tomorrow night at 8 p.m. in the Inge Memorial Theatre of Murphy Hall. The show runs through Dec. 7. Tickets, available at the Murphy Hall Box Office, are $3 and $1.50 with a KU ID.
Opera workshop teaches students the techniques of moving and singing, said Norman Paige, professor of music and voice.
"IT'S ONE THING to stand and sing," Paige said. "It's quite another to sing and move."
The thirteen students and one faculty member each have a role in the opera. All parts are double cast and each student will perform in four of the eight public performances does not perform a major role, he or she will play a member of a group of angels.
"Iansel and Gretel," a German opera written about 90 years ago, tells the famous fairy tale of a brother and sister who get lost in an enchanted forest. The story returns little children into gingerbread屋.
But no matter what the story is, operas usually conjure up images of rotund singers with braids and Viking helmets who are singing in a foreign language.
BUT THATS NOT necessarily true, said Karen Hummel. Lawrence graduate student, who plays one of the Gretels. Even though "Hopeful and Gretel" is an opera, students
will have no trouble understanding it. They might even like it, she said.
"Not many people our age are interested in opera." Hummel said. "They should at least try it. 'Hansel and Gretel' is a happy opera. It's fun, lively and magical with witchies and witches."
Paige said everyone should be able to understand the story.
"We're using the English translation which we tried to improve a bit to make it easier to understand," he said.
Stacy Simons, Topeka junior, who plays a sandman, said opera could broaden students' horizons.
"OPERA AND THEATER are something that everyone should be exposed to." said Simons. "It makes people more well-rounded. I've always been a theatre major, but I go to basketball and football games too."
However, most of the cast members have not had time for recreation while preparing for the opera.
"We work during class time plus extra time," said Hummel, "For at least a month, I spent a few hours each day on singing, bodily gestures, facial expressions and moods."
"It's worth all the work. I'd do it even if it wasn't a class, I only think about quitting when I'm exhausted. It passes quickly. You aren't really serious about quitting."
However, Hummel said she had not always enjoyed opera this much.
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Opera came into her life partly because the voice department leans toward opera per performance versus other classical repertoire, Hummel said.
"I WASN'T thrilled," said Hummel remembring her first encounter with opera. "I didn't understand the language. It was very stylized and stilted."
Before opera caught her eye Hummel was singing soft rock and accompanying herself on the piano and guitar in nightclubs in Lawrence, Kansas City and Topeka.
*Opera is a sort of style of writing for the voice*, she said. "You can use your voice to the fullest. It takes everything you’ve got."
WHILE SINGING opera may not be like singing rock songs, operas are like many musicals except that the actors sing instead of speak to each other. Paige said. Opera isn't much different from other music forms — the music tells a story.
"It's the highs and lows. You could sing Carole King songs with everything you've got and still not be able to sing opera."
"While the music style is different, the intention of the music is the same." Paige said. "What's neat is that melody, harmony and rhythm are in all music. You can find it in a song from '1776' or a rock opera."
Paige said he thought that people were more affected by singing than by speaking
"Emotions are heightened by the song melody rather than by a spoken text." Paige said. "Most people respond to vocal music"
BRIAN WARDILL ANDREI
Gretel, portrayed by Lori Rieger, Hiahawa senior, and Hansel, portrayed by Roberta Ricci. Leawood senior, sing and dance while their parents are away from home. To the right, Christina Pieknik, Lawrence senior, portrays the mother of Hansel and Gretel.