FIRST PRIORITY CLUB NEWS
FURTHER READINGS A READING SERIES THAT FURTHER EXPLORES THE WORK OF OUR FAVORITE PLAYWRIGHTS.
I AM A CAMERA March 31st At the Mint Theater
Free for FPC Members Call FPC Hotline to reserve: (212) 315-0231 Or go to: minttheater.org Address: 311 W. 43rd St. Suite 307 New York, NY 10036 Box Office: Mon.- Sat. Noon-6pm Sun. Noon-3pm (2/1- 3/30) We will be offering this reading exclusively to First Priority Club Members until February 28th.
by John Van Druten
“A feverish and fascinating theater work, uncommonly alive, thoroughly adult and, above all, richly stuffed with feeling.” The Brooklyn Eagle, 1951 Fifteen years before the 1966 musical CABARET theatricalized Christopher Isherwood’s semi-autobiographical Berlin Stories, playwright John Van Druten provided Broadway with a far more intimate take on the British expatriate’s experience in preWWII Germany. While Kander and Ebb’s musical revealed the sordid world of the Kit Kat Klub and its indomitable Emcee, I AM A CAMERA offered audiences an exquisite character study of the inhabitants of a Berlin rooming house—a would-be writer called Christopher Isherwood and a young nightclub singer named Sally Bowles. Although the collective theatergoing memory of I AM A CAMERA has been partially eclipsed by the impact of CABARET, Van Druten’s play remains a surprising and unique theatrical accomplishment, and paints a moving portrait of two young people trying desperately to find themselves amidst a society on the brink of fascism. Van Druten named his leading male character—the “camera” of the play’s title—after Christopher Isherwood, himself (CABARET book-writer, Joe Masteroff, would later adapt this protagonist into a character named Cliff). Isherwood’s initial reaction to Van Druten’s character was that he seemed to be “much more attractive and interesting than the original.” However, Isherwood’s first meeting with Sally Bowles—in the person of actress Julie Harris—provided the author with an altogether different and rare experience: “Out of the dressing room came a slim sparkling-eyed girl in an absurdly
tart-like black dress, with a jaunty little cap stuck sideways on her pale flame-colored hair and a gay, silly, naughty giggle. This certainly wasn’t Miss Harris; it was Sally Bowles in person—my unserious, somewhat shopsoiled but always endearing heroine. Miss Harris was more essentially Sally Bowles than the Sally of my book, and much, much more like Sally than the real girl who, long ago, gave me the idea for my character.” 1 I AM A CAMERA opened at the Empire Theatre in New York City on November 28, 1951 in a production directed by the playwright. It was a critical success for both Julie Harris’ performance and John Van Druten’s sensitive adaptation and staging. “A striking, intelligent and steadily arresting play,” hailed Richard Watts Jr. of the New York Post, “I AM A CAMERA makes the theater once more worth bothering about.” Harris went on to win her first of four Tony Awards for Best Leading Actress in a play, and I AM A CAMERA won the New York Drama Critic’s Circle for Best American Play of the 1951-52 season. Mint Theater is proud to once again present Christopher Isherwood and Sally Bowles in their original theatrical incarnation, in a one-night-only reading of John Van Druten’s “absorbing and challenging”2 I AM A CAMERA. 1
The Sunday Sun 2 Variety