The Entertainer (Kansas Alumni issue No. 6, 2001)

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Man on a Mission A Kansan sculpts a nation’s monument to D-Day

BY JENNIFER JACKSON SANNER

ary Karen Dahl checked her voice mail late in the day on Sept. 26 and nearly dropped the phone. One of the messages was from Mandy Patinkin, ’74, winner of Broadway’s Tony award as the fiery Che Guevara in “Evita” and a TV Emmy as the tortured Jeffrey Geiger on “Chicago Hope.”

Patinkin posed a casual question to Dahl, chair of the department of theatre and film: Could he stop by Murphy Hall the following week to chat with students while he was in Kansas City for a performance?

Hmm. Star of stage and screen calls alma mater and asks to visit after three decades ... this was a no-brainer.

Why the return after so many years?

Perhaps because Patinkin had just moved his own son to college a few weeks before. Perhaps world events caused him to recall pivotal times and relationships.

Whatever the reason, one week later, Patinkin sauntered down the aisle of Crafton-Preyer Theatre, where he had performed for two years as a student.

Dressed in a white T-shirt, jeans and running shoes and carrying a backpack, he settled into an overstuffed chair on-stage and, like the favorite guest at a cocktail party, told story after story, entertaining

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students and fans with punch lines and poignant commentary between swigs of bottled water.

In the midst of a five-month, 37-city concert tour, Patinkin seemed to welcome a nostalgic escape, reminiscing about his KU performances in “Lysistrata,” “Indians” and “Fiddler on the Roof.”

“My father saw me here when I played Tevye,” Patinkin recalled. “He was dying of cancer and they brought him here.

This was the last place he saw me perform.”

The actor’s KU memories are confined mainly to the stage because, as he readily admitted, he didn’t warm many desk chairs in class—at one point carrying a three-hour class load.

He recalled when he knew his KU days were numbered: “The dean called me in and said, ‘We have a little bit of a problem. We are a university here, and you’re not taking any classes.’”

Friends back then knew Patinkin’s meager academic efforts belied his astounding gifts. Doug Wasson, c’69, directed Patinkin during summers at the repertory theatre in Creede, Colo., founded by KU faculty and for years an enclave for Jayhawk actors. “We went to Creede together when he was 18,” Wasson recalled. “I could tell immediately this guy was really talented. He could do anything. He was a bubbling, enthusiastic worker— creative without parallel.”

At the urging of faculty and fellow students, Patinkin left KU for The Juilliard School in New York City, where he stayed nearly three years. “I have five years of collegelevel education and the grade equivalency of a first-semester freshman,” he joked.

But in professional achievements and honors, Patinkin’s standing is secure. On

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Broadway, he starred in “The Secret Garden” and Stephen Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park with George.” His film appearances include “Yentl,” “Ragtime,” “Dick Tracy” and “The Princess Bride,” which, judging from the response of his KU audience, has attained near cult status. hen Patinkin began his current tour in September, New York Times reviewer Anthony Tommasini praised Patinkin’s “astonishing gifts” as a singer and actor, musing that Broadway lovers might wish to have Patinkin all to themselves instead of sharing him with film and television audiences. Tommasini especially hailed Patinkin’s “gloriously imperfect” voice, fiercely powerful bass one moment, gorgeous tenor or airy falsetto the next.

Hunched in his comfy chair in Crafton-Preyer, Patinkin displayed similar mesmerizing contradictions without singing a single note. A student’s question about Patinkin’s preferred acting discipline yielded a 35-minute soliloquy that veered from hilarious memories to harrowing confessions. Patinkin began with a tribute to former longtime KU theatre professor William Kuhlke, g’59, (“to this day one of the greatest actors I have ever worked with”), then traveled to his first encounter with famed director Gerald Freedman, whose only criticism of KU’s production of “Indians” in the finals of the American College Theatre Festival in

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THE 1971 was reserved for Patinkin’s performance: “He said only one thing bothered him: It was the unbearable, overindulgent performance by the actor who played Chief Joseph. And that was me,” Patinkin recalled to appreciative laughter. “He was very kind—in the way he destroyed me.”

ever want to hear that any of us took our lives, because thank God we live in a time where there is help with therapy and medicine. ... We live close to the edge.

Don’t ever hesitate to share your journey, your struggle.”

Critical to Patinkin’s journey have been his collaborations with his accompanist and co-arranger, Paul Ford; Freedman; producer Joseph Papp; and composer Sondheim, whom he calls “the Shakespeare of our time.”

From a conversation with Sondheim about sons and mothers came Sondheim’s song “Beautiful,” written for Patinkin to sing as painter Georges Seurat in “Sunday in the Park with George.” Talks with Papp of their shared Jewish upbringing moved Patinkin, known for his finesse with dialects, to record Yiddish songs and to incorporate his heritage in his concerts. Patinkin said Papp’s encouragement and his own lifetime roles as a husband and father convinced him to embrace his faith and abandon his earlier fear of being typecast as “the guy from ‘Yentl.’”

For many who shared the afternoon with him in Murphy Hall, Patinkin is still the guy from “The Princess Bride.” Urged by a student’s plea and a wild ovation, Patinkin rose from his chair, struck a pose

Mandy Patinkin returns for a surprise encore

stage, where he signed and grinned for photos. After the fans had gone, Patinkin stayed on, touring Murphy Hall, strolling Jayhawk Boulevard and sharing dinner with old theatre-department friends until late in the evening. “He was so kind and gracious; it was like we saw each other last week,” Wasson said.“We just picked right up. It is really indicative of the kind, intelligent, gracious person he is. He realizes the only thing that endures is friendship.”

Though all too brief, Patinkin’s appearance satisfied an alumnus’ nostalgic yearnings and the affectionate curiosity of students, faculty and friends. And, like his KU performances of old, it made for great theatre.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY EARL RICHARDSON

Of course, in the kind of dramatic irony actors relish, Freedman later became Patinkin’s mentor at Juilliard and a lifelong friend. It was Freedman who taught his protégé the acting “method” Patinkin uses most: distilling a character down to single words, vivid verbs, that best describe a character’s action in a particular scene.

Scrawled on a script or a note card, such words focus Patinkin. “What am I trying to do now?” he asked his audience.

“I’m trying to hold your attention, hold you, embrace you, tickle you, inspire you, infuse you, remind you, whatever those key words are.

When I finally got the process, I use it in everything I do. It’s how I sing every song; it’s how I play every part.”

Along with words, Patinkin is guided by the wonders and heartaches of life itself. The best acting comes from simply living, he said, but he warned young actors to guard against succumbing to life’s glorious imperfections. Creative people, he said, often suffer manic depression or similar illnesses because “they feel life more intensely and it costs them more dearly.

E ENTERTAINER “So the greatest advice I have is to say that any time you feel terrible, lost, scared or in a kind of pain that is not familiar or endurable, ask a teacher, ask a therapist for help. I went to therapy for 10 years and graduated and thought I was fine, but then other things affected me. ... I don’t

as the Spanish swordsman from the 1987 film and intoned his famous lines: “Hello.

My name in Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!”

As the audience roared and stood to thank him, Patinkin put on a souvenir KU cap, then beckoned autograph-seekers on-

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