INTERVIEW BY H. CANDEE

CAROLYN KAY BRANCATO

AUTHOR

Interview by Harryet Candee

Harryet Candee: Carolyn, how did you get inspired to write your latest book, The Night Belongs to the Maquis? And, when you are writing, do you travel to a different place? Carolyn Kay Brancato: The inspiration for The Night Belongs to the Maquis came some years ago in an acting class at Ensemble Studio Theatre in NYC. We were asked to create a character then write a monologue for that person. I came up with a situation in which a nun, during WWII in France, was asked for sanctuary by a young German soldier who refused to commit Nazi atrocities. The “stakes” were high for her, since giving him sanctuary would endanger everyone in the church as well as the entire village. After I performed it, my instructor told me I should definitely pursue this dramatic story idea—which I did, first as a play, then more recently as a novel. A few weeks later, the New York Times happened to publish a travel section article about a small Southern French village called Foix, near the border with Spain. It was a critical hub of French Resistance (Maquis) activity to get downed WWII Allied pilots over the Pyrénées and out of France. I was so emotionally vested in the character I had just created that I immediately made plans to travel there later that year. I was fortunate to meet three members of the Resistance, one of whom was the leader of the circuit that got approximately 500 downed pilots and other agents out of France. He had been captured by the Gestapo and tortured by Klaus Barbie, and gave me a copy of his deposition in the Barbie trial in Lyon, asking me to tell his story. Although my novel is fiction, it’s based on true events and real-life people, dedicated to all those courageous enough to fight fascismpast and present. When I write, I completely submerge myself in each of my characters, as an actor would to prepare for a role on stage or screen. Not only do I visualize what they look like in the minutest detail, but I craft their backstory, where they grew up, how they walk, how they eat, sleep, make love, dream, etc. Having quite literally traveled to this village, when I sat down to write, I surrounded myself with maps, journals I’d acquired, photos and other research materials. Then I go deep inside each of my characters’ heads—to find out what they’re thinking and feeling and even how they argue with each other. Often your characters develop minds of their own and do things to surprise you!

What parts of this story did you find the most exciting in creating? When I write, I have all my research in the back of my mind, but then I just sit back and let my characters interact with each other. It’s thrilling to find out what they’ll do when I put them in impossible situations and then raise the stakes even more. Perhaps the most exciting part of writing this novel came toward the end, when I truly did not know how my heroine’s journey would end. Would she be reunited with her former lover or would he be killed by the Nazis? If he did survive, could they put his unsavory past aside or would they have to part? In order to be with him, would she renounce her sacred vows, taken when she thought he was dead? Would they come together to liberate Foix or would they fail in their mission? How many would die along the way? It was exciting to work out these nail-biting issues as I got deeper into the novel.

Do you have an all-time favorite writer and book you treasure? I wouldn’t say I had one favorite writer or treasured book. I grew up with opera on the record player—Italian opera sung by such greats as Enrico Caruso. As you know, opera is one of the most dramatic and passionate forms of art. I was completely enthralled when my father and my aunt took me

not only to the Metropolitan Opera, which was pure magic, but also to thrilling more popular Broadway shows like My Fair Lady. My aunt and one of my uncles used to act out scenes from Shakespeare, and when I was twelve or so, I remember washing my imaginary blood-stained hands over and over after listening to her Lady Macbeth.

If you were given the opportunity to live in a different time period in history, where would that be, and what life would you want to have? I would be a director/playwright living in London—anytime from Shakespeare to the present.

You are presently living in the Berkshires. Tell us about what projects related to the Berkshires you have been inspired to take on? My husband, Howard Greenhalgh, and I moved here about eight years ago. At that time I was working as an economist in my “day-job” at a global not-for-profit company. I had taken a break from theatrical projects and was deeply involved in oil painting. In fact, we originally came up here to paint for two weeks, but ended up painting for one week and looking for a house the second week. After we moved, we were warmly welcomed by a wonderful group of artists and joined with them to found what has become the Guild of Berkshire Artists. We had belonged to a similar guild in the Annapolis, Maryland area, so we enjoyed getting this one off the ground in these exquisitely beautiful Berkshires. I subsequently met an editor, Diane O’Connell, who led writing retreats at the Kemble Inn in Lenox. I redirected my energies from oil painting to novel writing—primarily in order to more fully tell the story of my French Resistance heroes than I had been able to do in my previous playwriting pursuits. Diane subsequently became my editor and publisher at Station Square Media.

I am aware of your involvement in the theatre, as a choreographer? Tell us about that. I was such a Tom-boy growing up that my parents made me take dance classes to learn a little grace. Well it stuck. I went from ballet, jazz and tap to directing and choreographing at theatres in the Washington D.C. area and New York City—all the while working at my day job. I also choreographed a jazz ballet for the D.C. City Ballet and was the choreographer for the dance sequence in the Francis Ford Coppola film Gardens of Stone. I continued to write and some of my plays were produced at the former John Houseman Theatre in NYC, at Steppenwolf in Chicago, and at the Church Street Theatre in Washington D.C.

I hear you like to paint in oils. Tell us a little about your visual artistic side? Do you share your paintings or is it a private art for just you? Does it help with writing books? What was your artistic involvement in the covers of your books? Some years ago, I accompanied my husband on a painting vacation in Tuscany. He and the other artists were having entirely too much fun painting in the glorious vineyards of Italy during the day, then eating pasta and drinking wine from those same vineyards at night. So, I decided to learn more about painting by taking art classes in New York City and Scottsdale Arizona, as well as going on other plein air trips with him to France, Mallorca, and the Sierras in California. I find many similarities between painting and writing: (1) contrasting light and dark, to achieve dramatic effect; (2) getting the viewer to enter a painting and want to spend time there; and (3) influencing the emotions of the viewer through intensity of color, depth of paint application, and crafting of edges to emphasize the painting’s focal point. The goal of translating a two-dimensional surface into what you hope will visually become a threedimensional canvas is quite similar to writing: you start with a flat surface—your blank page—and you hope to create a fully realized novel of vibrant three-dimensionality. A few years back, I showed some of my mainly still-life and French Provencal landscapes at various Guild of Berkshire Artists shows at the West Stockbridge Historic Town Hall and at the Welles Gallery in the Lenox Library. As with painting, when I write, I constantly visualize my scenes. For example, I hope that my little village of Foix becomes for the reader another character, as you walk from the train station where the Germans deported the refugees, to the fountain the Nazis used for target practice, to the allimportant church of St. Volusien, where my heroine decides to pose as a nun to work in the Resistance. As for the covers of both my published novels, I believe a good cover not only gives the reader a thumb nail impression of what the book is about, but draws the reader into the story. I was fortunate that my publisher assigned the same talented designer, Steven Plummer, for each book. We had many productive discussions, as he came up with options reflecting my visions of both novels. I sent him photos of my French village and was thrilled when he incorporated the three identifying towers of the Château overlooking Foix. For The Circus Pig & the Kaiser, my husband contributed a marvelous painting of Sasha the Pig dressed in the Kaiser’s helmet for the first cover; when that cover was redesigned, his little pig was just too precious to lose, so we kept it on the spine!

Stunning book jacket designed by Steven Plummer

Growing into adulthood, were you affected by some world events that led to your interest in history and politics? Tell us about these years and what were you focusing on? Can you tell us a bit about your childhood as well? My father was a Flight Surgeon/Colonel in the Army-Air Corps during World War II. He and all six of his brothers, first generation Italians from Sicily, served in the war. My father was also stationed in Germany after the war when the Russians brought down the iron curtain.. His hatred of tyranny and love of democracy was so ingrained in our family that we all had to jump to attention whenever the Star Spangled Banner was played before a ball game on radio or TV.

My college years at Barnard, then living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan after graduation, additionally introduced me to many activist political movements like the civil rights movement and the Anti-Vietnam War movement. Censorship issues, in particular, have been a life-long interest and I’m distressed that they’re coming to the fore once again in the movement to ban books and to make other destructive incursions into our First Amendment liberties. I suppose the issue I feel most passionate about is the threat of fascism. The idea for my first novel, The Circus Pig and the Kaiser, came when I was working as an economist with my mentor, the late Nobel Laureate Wassily Leontief, and the subject of fascism and censorship arose in one of our conversations. He was born in the former Soviet Union and had been arrested by the precursor to the KGB for advocating academic freedom. He was only allowed to leave the country because he was gravely ill. Fortunately, he recovered and developed the economic system of input-output analysis, which traces all the inputs into each industry of an economy. (For example, the output of one car requires a series of inputs from other industries such as glass, rubber, aluminum, leather, etc.) Wassily worked with the Allies in WWII to identify that it was ball bearing factories that the Allies should bomb to most effectively cripple the inputs to most of the industries creating German war machine products. Wassily told me the true story of Vladimir Durov, a Russian clown who taunted the warmongering Kaiser in 1907, prior to the buildup of the First World War. Durov dressed his prized pig as the Kaiser, who wore an outrageously ostentatious uniform, and ordered similarly elaborate uniforms for his troops, in order to gin up public support for the war. Durov’s pig flipped a helmet onto her head, mocking the Kaiser, and Durov was arrested for sedition. That’s all I needed to hear to inspire me to write a play, and eventually a novel, about that hilarious but dangerous act of defiance in the face of tyranny! Have you come across different angles to parts of any of your two books that you think about and would like to alter in some way, like the destiny and fates of characters? Someone once suggested I write a sequel to The Night Belongs to the Maquis about the two children, Deborah and Elias, as they might have lived their lives in Israel. But that always seemed like an anti-climax. As they say in theatre, “leave ‘em wanting more.” Carolyn, can you share with us some thoughts and beliefs you have on world affairs, the Arts, life in general? How have you contributed to world affairs? During college at Barnard, I was majoring in theatre, but didn’t have the money to go to graduate school. So I decided to change my major to Economics, to support myself in a day job while I pursued theatre part time. I ended up getting a Ph.D. from NYU and loving the public interest work I was drawn into, including working as an environmental economist for the New York City Environmental Protection Administration. Decades ago, we identified that plastics would do irreparable environmental harm and were successful in getting polyvinyl liquor bottles banned. We also saved Storm King Mountain from becoming a Con Edison pumped storage plant. This work led me to The Congressional Research Service in Washington D.C., where I analyzed leveraged buyouts and the mergers and acquisitions movement of the 1980’s. In turn, this paved the way for my founding the Global Corporate Governance Research Center and Directors’ Institute at The Conference Board, a global not-for-profit think-tank established in 1916 to further the role of business in society. I traveled the world to work

with CEOs and Boards of Directors in the U.S., Europe, India, the Middle East, Hong Kong, Singapore and China; I still run some corporate governance programs in Europe. My focus is to help corporate executives and boards achieve ethical standards, good governance and transparency. Along the way, I was the Director of The Conference Board’s Commission on Public Trust that investigated the Enron scandal and came up with recommendations for businesses to be better stewards of their capital, not only for the benefit of their investors but for society at large. My work in corporate governance, focusing not only on short-term earnings but on longer-term corporate value creation, has contributed to companies’ adopting ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) standards that promote climate-change, diversity and gender equality, and more equitable work place practices. As satisfying as all these endeavors were, during all these years, I would snatch time for my first love—theatre—to write on airplanes and work in theatre as often as my schedule would allow. What would you like to write next about? I’m currently part of an innovative group of playwrights called “Berkshire Voices,” which operates under the auspices of The Great Barrington Public Theatre. Its goal is to develop professional theatre projects written, acted and directed by Berkshires residents. I’m currently workshopping a play about a young woman investment banker trying to finance economic development in a favela (slum) in Rio de Janeiro, but she’s coming up against unsavory people and threatening obstacles. I guess I’m always tilting at windmills. Maybe I should have a favorite book after all—Don Quixote! What resonates most with you about the current political climate? In researching The Night Belongs to the MaCarolyn Kay Brancato, Still Life with Red Jug, Oil on Linen quis, I learned that, after the Germans invaded Poland and then broke through the Maginot Line to overrun northern France, more than six million people from Belgium, the low-countries and northern France became refugees. They made their way in total misery to southern France. In 1940, the City of Toulouse, near my village of Foix, swelled from a population of 200,000 to over one million in a matter of months. These refugees had lost their homes and everything they owned. They carried their meager possessions and some even pushed their elderly in wheelbarrows, often strafed by German aircraft. In all my extensive research, with my intense visualizations, I never came close to imagining the chilling scenes we are witnessing every day on T.V., as millions of Ukrainians flee the horrific Russian onslaught. If I could add anything to my novel, it would be to amend my dedication, “to all those courageous enough to fight fascism… past and present,” to add a salute to the heroic Ukrainian Resistance fighters of today. Note: Berkshires author Carolyn Kay Brancato’s two novels are: “The Circus Pig & the Kaiser,” (available on Amazon at https://amzn.to/2GgWrRa) and “The Night Belongs to the Maquis: A WWII Novel” (available on Amazon at https://amzn.to/3pe4GFN). She will be reading from “The Night Belongs to the Maquis” at the Lenox Library, Lenox Massachusetts at 3 pm on May 3rd . Thank you, Carolyn! Z

CELLBLOCK VISIONS

A.P.E. GALLERY

Phyllis Kornfeld’s Cellblock Visions will be on exhibit May 7 – 29, 2022, at the A.P.E. Gallery in North Hampton. On Saturday, May 14, there will be an artist reception 3-5 pm with an artist talk at 4 pm. The artwork being exhibited at A.P.E. was created between 1983 and the present by incarcerated men and women across the country in those prisons and jails that offer classes led by artist/teachers and with limited access to art supplies. Phyllis Kornfeld has been working directly with these artists for over 39 years—in all levels of security from county jail to maximum security to death row. “These artists did their work with care and passion. Though inexperienced, they seemed to know what to do and how to do it, without instruction. They trusted something, an unseen guide. The art is beautiful in its sincerity even where the truth is painful to see. Art has always had the power to transform lives.” Phyllis Kornfeld is the author of Cellblock Visions: Prison Art in America, Princeton University Press and is the founder of several public projects whereby prison artists donate their artwork to benefit people in need. The Envelope Project: Incarcerated Men and Women Making Art for a Cause sold hundreds of original pieces of envelope art at the Outsider Art Fair in NYC to benefit a children’s literacy nonprofit. Other publications include “Truth, Goodness, and Beautiful Art: Set Free in the Penitentiary,” for Art Education Beyond the Classroom, Palgrave MacMillan. Journal contributions include Encyclopedia of Southern Folk Art, Raw Vision: International Journal of Intuitive and Visionary Art, Mountain Record, Art and Antiques Magazine. Phyllis Kornfeld lives in western Massachusetts and due to the Covid pandemic, is currently waiting to return to teaching at the Berkshire County House of Corrections.

Artist Bio: Phyllis Kornfeld is the author of Cellblock Visions: Prison Art in America, Princeton University Press and is the founder of several public projects whereby prison artists donate their artwork to benefit people in need. The Envelope Project: Incarcerated Men and Women Making Art for a Cause sold hundreds of original pieces of envelope art at the Outsider Art Fair in NYC. to benefit a children’s literacy nonprofit.

A.P.E. Ltd.- Available Potential Enterprises, Ltd., 126 Main Street, Northampton, Massachusetts; 413-586-5553; www.apearts.org

FOOD AS MEDICINE

This month’s topic will return to our five senses and their influences on the mind. I’ll also talk about the importance of maintaining clarity of mind via the process of cleansing the sense organs that are affiliated with the five senses - sight, sound, smell, taste and feel. These are the experiences which informs one’s brain. Sight. Our perception relies not only on what the structure of the eyeball is physically seeing, but our interpretation of that image. If one’s head is congested with mucus, our attention would typically be drawn to a runny nose or congested throat however, the eyes can also hold mucus. And for that matter the entire cranium could be congested, causing brain fog or cloudy eyes, both contributing to some degree of altered perceptions of reality. Sound. The vibrational interpretation of a subject at hand. The brain interprets sound waves, which imprint on the mind …but what came first, the chicken or the egg? Does the sound imprint the image, or is the sound given an image? Whichever you choose, reality deems that you must first receive the vibration through the ear canal. There are conditions that could disturb or compete with the sound waves, such as, accumulated earwax and tinnitus (ringing in ears), which could influence and affect the interpretation. Smell. This sense, while supplying the brain with olfaction information, it also plays a part in taste. Which would explain why when our sinuses are full, the sense of taste may not be present. While there are several sinus cavities, the ethmoid sinuses could arguably be the most influential because of their proximity to the brain. An effective Ayurvedic cleansing technique, referred to as Shiro-Abhyanga-Nasya, focuses on flushing these sinuses, which results in amazing clarity of eyes and mind. Taste. There are 6 potential ways to inform the brain of taste: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent, and astringent. Foods are also categorized as hot or cold, dry or unctuous, and light or heavy. On the surface, the sense of taste may appear to be only about our digestive pleasures, however, the foods we eat and their qualities play a major role in dictating how efficiently and effectively our digestive system works. A cleansed palette can help guide us to proper digestion of food. Feel. Touch is the act of placing one’s fingers and palms on another person or thing to give information to the brain. But, it’s not that simple. Our interpretation of that information hinges on the input from our eyes, ears, nose, and tongue. Proper discernment, the ability to obtain accurate, sharpened perceptions can only be done when the five senses are in optimal working condition. Discernment is sometimes referred to as a hunch, intuition, a guess, a prediction, knowledge …in other words, a good thing. And how do we make a good thing better? We cleanse it. Please see our ad in this issue of the Artful Mind, and refer to our column in previous issues for more information on cleansing.

Be well and heal thyself! Lakshmi’s Garden Terrel Broussard, Ayurvedic Practitioner, Herbalist, Bodyworker; 413-329-5440