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2018 The Disembodied Theatre of Edward Gorey Anthony Gunn

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COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS

THE DISEMBODIED THEATRE OF EDWARD GOREY

ANTHONY GUNN

A Dissertation submitted to the School of Theatre in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

2018 Anthony Gunn defended this dissertation on April 3, 2018. The members of the supervisory committee were:

Beth Osborne Professor Directing Dissertation

Jennifer Koslow University Representative

Mary Karen Dahl Committee Member

Samer Al-Saber Committee Member

The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements.

To my wife Lesley and our girls Attison, Thia, and Cleo. They inspire me daily and put up with me while I wrote this dissertation. I sincerely hope it was worth it.

iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To begin, the person who deserves the most thanks for the construction of this work is my dissertation chair Dr. Beth Osborne who tirelessly mentored and lead me through the process. Her feedback, advice, and guidance have been crucial to my success, and I will always be grateful for her kindness and patience.

The committee members have also greatly influenced this work. I so appreciate Dr. Mary Karen Dahl for the way she helped me think through ideas with so much grace and warmth. Dr. Samer Al-Saber gave so much motivation and inspiration as I transitioned from student to candidate, and Dr. Jennifer Koslow provided the tools and mentorship I needed to bridge the gap between theatre and public history.

Other professors in the School of Theatre have also helped to shape my thinking in profound ways. Dr. Aaron C. Thomas, Dr. George McConnell and Dr. Patrick McKelvey all provided helpful feedback and guidance with this and other projects.

I’m very appreciative of my undergraduate assistant, Ellen Boener, who made so many connections and helped facilitate this project into being.

I am also very grateful to my colleagues in the School of Theatre graduate program for their camaraderie. My PhD cohort, Sean Bartley and Kate Pierson, have provided consistent friendship and care that have often buoyed me up when I needed it. I’d also like to thank Rebecca Ormiston, Brian Schmidt, Shannon Hurst, Jeff Paden, Josh Inocencio, Allison Gibbes, Deborah Kochman, Aaron Ellis, Christy Rodriguez de Conte, Devair Jefferies, Elizabeth Edgeworth Sickerman, Shelby Lunderman, Michael Valdez, Cassandra White, Nick Richardson and Kasey Kopp for their friendship.

A very special thanks to Rick Jones and Greg Hischak of the Edward Gorey House for being so generous with their time and forthcoming with information. The Gorey House is in very good hands under their care.

Finally, thanks to my mom and dad, Lorraine and David Gunn, for always being so incredible and supportive to me throughout my life.

And, last but not least, thanks to my wife Lesley and children Attison, Thia and Cleo for blessing my life each and every day.

iv TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures ...... vi Abstract ...... vii

1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

2. MR. EARBRASS WRITES A PLAY: SNAPSHOTS, CAMP, AND THE ART OF EDWARD GOREY’S PAINFUL PLEASURE...... 26

3. TREMENDOUS SUCCESS AND TERRIBLE FAILURE: THE BROADWAY SHOWS OF EDWARD GOREY ...... 55

4. FROM KUNSTKAMER TO COMMUNITY CENTER: AN INVESTIGATION OF THE EDWARD GOREY HOUSE ...... 75

5. PERFORMANCE PRESERVED: LE THÉÂTRICULE STOÏQUE PLAY THE EDWARD GOREY HOUSE ...... 99

6. CONCLUSION ...... 126

References ...... 133

Biographical Sketch ...... 138

v LIST OF FIGURES

1 The front sign of the Edward Gorey House ...... 13

2 Two members of Le Théâtricule Stoïque at the Gorey House ...... 25

3 Frank Langella in Dracula ...... 55

4 Act one set from Dracula...... 62

5 Edward Gorey, back turned, with the cast of Gorey Stories ...... 69

6 The Edward Gorey House ...... 76

7 An old shingle, now on display at The Edward Gorey House ...... 80

8 The scavenger item for “G is for George smothered under a rug,” at the Gorey House...... 95

9 Scavenger item for “L is for Leo, who swallowed some tacks,” at the Gorey House ...... 96

10 Members of Le Théâtricule Stoïque on display at The Edward Gorey House...... 101

11 Dancing puppets, one beaked and one wearing a fuzzy hat, at the Gorey House ...... 115

vi ABSTRACT

Edward Gorey (1925–2000) is primarily known as an enigmatic artist, author, and personality. All told, Gorey wrote and illustrated over one hundred books during his lifetime and designed book covers for countless others. He has an enormous cult following of fans that buy up his numerous books and prints and make pilgrimages to his old home, now a museum, to learn and lurk where he lived and worked in the later stages of his life. What is mostly unknown—both to Gorey aficionados and scholars—is that Gorey wrote, directed, designed, and acted in a wide variety of plays and theatricals throughout his life. Despite Gorey’s reputation as artist and author, his sizable work in the theatre, and his notable fan base, there is virtually nothing written about his theatre work from a scholarly perspective.

Gorey produced “more than a dozen full-length plays and ‘entertainments’ for Cape Cod theatres, plus half a dozen shorter pieces”1—almost all original works—in Cape Cod between

1987 and 1999. He played an active role in these productions, writing, directing and designing many, and even creating an original and unique puppet troupe—La Théâtricule Stoïque—that became a signature aspect of this work. What were these plays and entertainments like? Did they share characteristics with his books? How would knowing more about these performances change the conversation about Gorey’s work? I also began to question how these performances might exist beyond the confines of any given production—if there was some way that one could experience them outside of the original performances.

While these questions initially centered on Gorey, how might they also extend to other performances? Can performances stretch beyond the boundaries of a given space and time in a

1 CJ Verburg, Edward Gorey On Stage: Playwright, Director, Designer, Performer, A Multimedia Memoir (San Francisco: Boom Books, 2012), Kindle edition. Location 34. vii way that pushes past the experience of the text or extant ephemera? And, in line with the dark and somewhat mysterious nature of Gorey’s art, what theatre might still be present after human actors have finished? Can there be disembodied theatre? Do performances continue after they end?

My dissertation will delve into the theatrical and literary art of Edward Gorey, bringing

Gorey into theatre history as a popular and well-known artist, even if he is largely unknown to scholarship to date. Just as importantly, Gorey will also serve as a case study for an exploration of the ontological nature of performance, especially as performance merges with public history.

Gorey is an ideal case study for this exploration because Gorey’s work in the theatre can still be accessed through various public history sites, and I will consider the different ways that the items and sites preserve and showcase these performances. With this work I hope to bring attention to a tremendous artistic talent, as well as contribute to the way we conceive of the potential of performance to endure beyond the liveness of the theatrical encounter.

With this investigation I am testing to see if the spectral meanings of a performance can be transmitted through disembodied means such as archival materials and things on display. I imagine disembodied theatre takes place away from the theatre, in spaces of public history such as a library, archive, or museum space. This is a crucial question in this investigation and one that I will suggest an answer to in the following chapters. I suggest that disembodied performance can exist, but these traces of performance must be available to view and interested spectators must be willing to use their imagination to fill in the gaps left by such materials. This dissertation seeks to both closely analyze Gorey’s theatre work in order to make his plays more well-known, and to test the limits and possibilities of disembodied theatre.

viii

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Thunder crashes as a lightning bolt flashes across the television screen. Bowler wearing, mustachioed men tiptoe by holding flashlights. One of their heads is covered by a handkerchief released from a hand that drifts on the screen from above. The hand, we soon discover, belongs to a distressed damsel who, ankles tied, lets out a few troubled bleats while she ineffectively wiggles her legs. Her predicament takes place on top of a flat-topped, raised monument. She finally stops struggling and places her hand, palm side up, on her forehead. Her body relaxes as she lets out one last sigh. Shift to a cloaked and top-hatted individual who plays croquet in the rain. He strikes his ball and, once it stops, it is crushed by a felled piece of masonry. The camera pans to a headstone that reads “Mystery!” The music reaches the end of a phrase just as the headstone crumbles out of sight. These are a few of the images that populated the opening of

PBS’s Mystery from 1980 through the 1990’s. In fact, they became so clearly identified with the series that some elements still accompany the beginning of the show today. The animated sequence showcases the style of an artist who can provoke a kind of morbid whimsy, and simultaneously invite and mildly repulse with his work: the unique, inimitable Edward Gorey.

artist and author, his sizable work in the theatre, and his notable fan base, there is virtually nothing written about his theatre work from a scholarly perspective.

An Alarming Introduction

Gorey produced “more than a dozen full-length plays and ‘entertainments’ for Cape Cod theatres, plus half a dozen shorter pieces”1—almost all original works—in Cape Cod between

While these questions initially centered on Gorey, how might they also extend to other performances? Can performances stretch beyond the boundaries of a given space and time in a way that pushes past the experience of the text or extant ephemera? And, in line with the dark and somewhat mysterious nature of Gorey’s art, what theatre might still be present after human actors have finished? Can there be disembodied theatre? Do performances continue after they end?

My dissertation will delve into the theatrical and literary art of Edward Gorey, bringing

1 CJ Verburg, Edward Gorey On Stage: Playwright, Director, Designer, Performer, A Multimedia Memoir (San Francisco: Boom Books, 2012), Kindle edition. Location 34. 2

A Gorey Theatre

While it might not be obvious at first, theatre operated at the center of Gorey’s life and work. He stated that his first attempts at writing his own stories were plays penned while stationed at the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah during World War II.2 He claimed that had he decided to “direct himself,” rather than “drift” through existence, he would have worked in theatre more.3 To be sure, his art and literature are significantly more well-known than his theatre work, as evidenced by The Gashlycrumb Tinies (1963) holding the number one position on Amazon’s “Art of Comics and Manga” section. Two other Gorey books, Amphigorey (1972) and The Doubtful Guest (1957), are also listed in the top twenty.4 His theatre work, on the other hand, is virtually unknown.

While best known as an artist and writer, Gorey’s work in the theatre is notable and substantial. During his time at Harvard he was a founding member of the now-famous Poet’s

Theatre of Cambridge where he designed the set for the premiere of Frank O’Hara’s Try! Try! in

2 Robert Dahlin, “Edward Gorey,” Conversations with Writers. Volume 1, 1977, in Ascending Peculiarity, ed. Karen Wilken (New York: Harcourt: 2001), 24.

3 Dahlin, “Edward Gorey,” in Ascending Peculiarity 48.

4 http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/7421482011/ref=zg_b_bs_7421482011_1. Accessed 23 April 2016.

1953.5 After graduating from Harvard, Gorey devoted his attention to books and illustrations where, with time, he gained some fame and notoriety. In 1957 he began viewing every performance—every individual performance—by the New York City Ballet. His obsessive attendance was due to the work of artistic director George Balanchine, who Gorey frequently referred to as “the great genius in the arts.”6 This devotion to Balanchine demonstrates Gorey’s enduring passion for the performing arts and explains the ways that studying and absorbing the work of Balanchine would influence and shape his own.

Gorey’s first noteworthy contributions in the theatre were his set and costume designs for

Dracula at the Nantucket Stage Company in 1973. The production’s enormous success led producer John Wulp to transition the show to Broadway, and in October of 1977 Edward

Gorey’s Dracula opened in the Martin Beck Theatre. The show proved to be very bankable, running until January of 1980 for a total of 925 performances. It also had productions in London and Australia and is still remounted with Gorey’s designs from time to time.7 Gorey’s designs were key to the identity of the production; it was marketed as Edward Gorey’s Dracula even though the sets and costumes were his only contributions to the show. With Dracula came theatrical notoriety and security. Gorey won the Tony Award for costume design and gained

5 Other notable members include Richard Wilbur, John Ciardi, Richard Eberhart, John Ashbery, Donald Hall, Lyon Phelps, V.R. Lang and Gorey’s one-time roommate Frank O’Hara. Thornton Wilder was a guest faculty member at Harvard that year, and after a performance of Try! Try! He gave an impassioned speech to the audience about the state of the poetic theatre in America which can be heard here: http://woodberrypoetryroom.com/?p=129.

6 Tobi Tobias, “Balletgorey,” Dance Magazine, January 1974, in Ascending Peculiarity, ed. Karen Wilken (New York: Harcourt: 2001), 15.

7 There are two recent productions, the first through Theatre Workshop of Nantucket in August of 2013, and the other at the Alley Theatre in Houston in 2014. American Theatre did a small piece on the Alley production, which can be found here: http://www.americantheatre.org/2015/02/06/getting-gorey-with-alley-theatres-dracula/

financial stability from the long run of the production. With that money he was able to purchase his home on Cape Cod.

The success of Edward Gorey’s Dracula also brought other opportunities for theatre work. A team of writers from the University of Kentucky developed Gorey Stories, an adaptation of many of his short stories, for the stage. It premiered in an Off-Off-Broadway production in the

WPA Theatre on 8 December of 1977 and ran for twelve performances as a part of their season.8

In October of 1978 the show attempted a move to Broadway with sets and costumes designed by

Gorey. Hindered by decidedly mixed reviews, the Broadway run lasted sixteen previews and a night that served as both the opening and closing on October 30, 1978. Gorey Stories is available through Samuel French and productions still pop up from time to time. More importantly, Gorey

Stories set Gorey’s interest in seeing his own words and stories on stage in motion. He went on to write two more high-profile shows that were produced away from Cape Cod, Tinned Lettuce or The New Musical (1985), which premiered at New York University’s Tisch School for the

Arts and for which Gorey also designed the costumes and set, and Amphigorey the Musical

(1994), which was produced Off-Broadway.9

Gorey’s design work for stage was also steadily increasing at this time. In 1982 he designed Swan Lake and Giselle for Eglevsky Ballet. The following year he designed The

Mikado at Carnegie Mellon University.10 In 1986 he designed Murder, a David Gordon ballet

8 Dan Dietz, Off-Broadway Musicals, 1910 – 2007. (North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2010) 18.

9 CJ Verburg, Edward Gorey On Stage: Playwright, Director, Designer, Performer, A Multimedia Memoir. (Boom Books, 2012), Kindle edition, location 123 – 150. Both productions are also mentioned in The World of Edward Gorey, (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1996.) 181, 184.

10 Carol Stevens, “An American Original,” Print, January/February 1998, found in Ascending Peculiarity, ed. Karen Wilken (New York: Harcourt: 2001), 134.

originally performed by American Ballet Theatre.11 Gordon reportedly informed Mikhail

Baryshnikov that he intended Murder to be an "Edward Gorey-esque" ballet in that the work would include “19th-Century style, whimsical forms of death and deliberate ambiguity of effect reflected the distinctive sensibility and preoccupations of Gorey's four-dozen hand-lettered, illustrated books.”12 Before Gordon knew it, Gorey had been hired to design the ballet.

Gorey’s move to Cape Cod in 1986, made possible by his earnings from Dracula and his decreased interest in the New York City Ballet following the death of Balanchine, ushered in the final stage of his theatrical career. On Cape Cod he wrote original work for the stage that he would eventually produce, design, and direct in theatres all over the area. His first play, Lost

Shoelaces, premiered in at the Woods Hole Theatre in 1987. The last, The White Canoe, played in 2000, a few months after his death at the Cotuit Center for the Arts. With this theatrical resume, a Tony award, design credits at a range of professional and educational institutions, and over a decade of original theatre work that is virtually unknown, the theatre of Edward Gorey is ripe for exploration and analysis. He has been called “an American original,”13 “a man of enormous erudition. […] An artist and writer of genius,”14 and “one of the most original artistic and literary minds in late 20th century America.”15 Overshadowed until now by his more famous

11 The World of Edward Gorey, 181.

12 Lewis Segal, “Edward Gorey’s Danse Macbre,” Los Angeles Times, March 2, 1986, accessed February 22, 2018, http://articles.latimes.com/1986-03-02/entertainment/ca-1281_1_gorey.

13 Carol Stevens, “An American Original,” in Ascending Peculiarity 126.

14 Stephen Schiff, “Edward Gorey and the Tao of Nonsense,” The New Yorker, November 9. 1992, in Ascending Peculiarity, ed. Karen Wilken (New York: Harcourt, 2001), 139, 140.

15 Thomas Curwen, “Light from a Dark Star,” The Los Angeles Times, July 18, 2004, accessed February 22, 2018, http://articles.latimes.com/2004/jul/18/entertainment/ca-curwen18 6

art and literature, my research will add Gorey’s theatrical achievements to the scholarly conversation, thus deepening and complicating the current picture of Gorey’s work.

Disembodied Performance

Any approach to understanding Gorey’s theatrical work, particularly his work on Cape

Cod, carries with it an interesting assortment of challenges. First, none of the plays are published and while archived copies exist in the filing cabinets at the Gorey House, they are not readily available to the public. Second, many of the performance venues and theatre companies have moved, changed hands, or burned down, and the identity and character of theatre on Cape Cod has changed dramatically since Gorey’s final production in 2000. Finally, the fact that I have not personally experienced any of Gorey’s productions poses a problem since Gorey’s work was so utterly theatrical and, as first-hand accounts frequently suggest, varied enormously from one performance to the next.

The first two issues have straight-forward solutions. The scripts, at least so far, are not published, but I have obtained access to one script and other archival data through the Edward

Gorey House. One of my hopes with this project is to generate enough interest in Gorey’s plays to justify their publication, making them available for future productions and scholarship. As far as the Cape Cod theatrical landscape, while there have been many changes to the venues and personnel at the theatre companies, there are still many people on Cape Cod who knew Gorey and/or were involved in the productions whom I have met and interviewed. The lost institutional knowledge and memory can be accounted for in some way through the stories and experiences of the Gorey collaborators, who formed a bit of a rag-tag “institution” in and of themselves and can still represent what it was like to perform and be a part of Gorey’s creative work. For this investigation I have interviewed three collaborators—Joe Richards, Cathy Smith, and Eric

Edwards – who all worked on more than a dozen Gorey productions. Their insight into all aspects of Gorey’s theatre has been invaluable.

The third issue—that of missing out on the live experience of Gorey productions— provides the impetus for the larger theorizing in my project. It is a problem that is in no way unique to this project because theatre historians must frequently consider how to research a performance that has effectively vanished. As with many historians, my work on Gorey’s theatre will begin with a gathering of archival and material remains from his productions. A production might end, but the traces of performance are still available. A careful study of those traces offers a way to think about how a performance can endure through the experiences of participants and the various ephemera that remain. And, as I’ve argued, this is different from the performance, but is still a remnant of the performance.

One of the most appealing and frequently discussed aspects of theatre is the “liveness” that audience members enjoy, of being in the room with performers and other audience members and witnessing details that are unique to that performance. This impulse to experience the ephemerality of live performance may be what drove Gorey’s devoted New York City Ballet attendance as well as witnessing each presentation of his shows on Cape Cod. As longtime

Gorey collaborator CJ Verberg states:

Edward attended every performance for the same reason he’s attended every

performance of Balanchine’s New York Ballet: to watch the thing evolve, to catch

the instants of inspiration, the actors’ burgeoning confidence, courage, and

experimentation. When something delighted him, he rewarded the perpetrator

with a distinctive hooting laugh.16

16 Verburg, location 605, Kindle Edition.

Theatre researchers and historians who miss performances must find ways to compensate for the considerable gaps that result from not experiencing that performance. The disappearance associated with performance is often cited as key to performance itself. As Peggy Phelan argues:

Performance’s only life is in the present. Performance cannot be saved, recorded,

documented, or otherwise participate in the circulation of representations of

representations: once it does, it becomes something other than performance. […]

Performance’s being, like the ontology of subjectivity proposed here, becomes

itself through disappearance.17

In this well-known and highly contested stance, Phelan suggests that one of the values of performance is its liveness—its presentness. Performance is ephemeral; it cannot be repeated, recorded, or distributed en masse or it ceases to be live, and this characteristic of disappearance allows it to resist being subsumed into capitalist culture. In fact, this characteristic is so integral to Phelan’s definition of theatre that performance literally “becomes itself” only when it disappears.18 Phelan later clarified the statement when she suggested that the appeal of the performance is the opportunity of mutual transformation that can occur between spectator and performer.19

17 Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance. (New York: Routledge, 1993) 146.

18 Philip Auslander, in his book Liveness (New York: Routledge, 1999), takes notable exception to this idea. Auslander claims that the idea of liveness was not a concern in theatre until there were options for a performance not to be live. He also claims that disappearance also occurs in broadcasting, as the image is in constant flux. He points out that many live performances are mediatized and media like, and that many long-running Broadway shows often become very stagnant and predictable in their presentation. In addition, Rebecca Schneider’s Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment (New York: Routledge, 2011) also contests this ephemerality of performance in ways mentioned later in this introduction.

19 Peggy Phelan, “Performance, Live Culture, and Things of the Heart,” Journal of Visual Culture, 2.3, 2003: 5.

While the conversation about the ephemerality of performance is likely to continue, clearly aspects of performances do disappear, and part of the appeal of a performance is the fact that actor and spectator can affect each other. However, it is also clear that not every aspect of the performance vanishes. Performances leave behind material traces that resist disappearance.

Also, performers and materials can affect and be affected long after the performance has ended.

Aleksandra Wolska attempts to shift the focus on performance away from this emphasis on disappearance, “Regarded as a process of becoming, performance cares not for the end, but grows through it into other forms of continuance. It transforms the world into a theatre where a show is but one phase in a process that goes on continuously in real life.”20 Considering performance as a “process of becoming” rather than only a single event gives rich nuance and validation to the entirety of the performance as it takes on other “forms of continuance.” Material traces such as costume renderings, production images, production journals, and oral histories of performers’ experiences are all aspects of the performance that resist disappearance and continue to transform over time.

The prospect of performance as a “process of becoming” or a continuation has been addressed recently by various theatre scholars. Rebecca Schneider seeks, among other things: 1) to validate and justify performance as a body-to-body transmission of knowledge, thus pointing toward Diana Taylor’s concept of repertoire rather than archive;21 and 2) to complicate how ways of knowing are transmitted in the archive and over time. Schneider focuses on the notion of re-performance and its ability to “touch” a past time, thus standing in for and continuing the

20 Aleksandra Wolska “Rabbits, Machines, and Ontology of Performance,” Theatre Journal, 57.1, 2005: 92. 21 Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas, (North Carolina: Duke Press 2003).

knowledge that the original performance produced without replicating that original experience.

While my focus will be on how a performance can continue through memory and ephemera, one of Schneider’s discussions is particularly relevant:

Performance becomes itself through messy and eruptive re-appearance. It

challenges, via the performative trace, any neat antimony between appearance and

disappearance, or presence and absence through the basic repetitions that mark

performance as indiscrete, non-original, relentlessly citational, and remaining.

It is not presence that appears in the syncopated time of citational

performance but precisely (again) the missed encounter—the reverberations of the

overlooked, the missed, the repressed, the seemingly forgotten. Performance does

not disappear when approached from this perspective, though its remains are the

immaterial of live, embodied acts. Rather, performance plays the “sedimented

acts” and spectral meanings that haunt material in constant collective interaction,

in constellation, in transmutation. 22

Here Schneider focuses on “citational performance” and the “missed encounter,” considering different ways that embodied performances reverberate through time and complicating rather than reinforcing a binary between disappearance and presence. For Schneider, performances remain in this way: through haunting, with spectral meaning, “material.” How do the material remains of a performance—remains that were in contact with the performance and are then showcased for interaction with spectators—continue to create meaning over time? Can these items bring about some sense of the “missed encounter” that is not the same as the original, but has some sort of citational connection that resonates with that original performance? Can the

22 Rebecca Schneider, “Performance Remains,” in Perform, Repeat, Record, ed. Amelia Jones, and Adrian Heathfield, (Bristol, GB: Intellect, 2012), 143. 11

material traces of a performance provide a spectator with an avenue to the original through the

“syncopated time,” or the connection between the then and the now, of the encounter? How might these materials enable new avenues of thought and creativity that perhaps are not connected to the original show at all?

Perhaps encountering materials can bring unexpected results and cause thinking unfettered by the original production. I am not focusing on re-performance, or on Marvin

Carlson’s notions of hauntings which all take place in theatrical settings and with dramatic texts.23 I am rather testing to see if the spectral, or ghost like, meanings of a performance can be transmitted through disembodied ways such as rehearsal scripts, reviews, and various things– such as props, costumes and puppets—on display. I imagine disembodied theatre takes place away from the theatre, in spaces of public history such as a library, an archive, or the museum space. This is a crucial question in this investigation and one that I will explore in the following chapters. I suggest that disembodied performance can exist, but these traces of performance must be available to view and interested spectators must be willing to use their imagination to fill in the gaps left by such materials. One way that performance can continue is through the avenue of public history.

A Theatrical Way of Presenting History

To best understand how a performance can continue in a public history setting it is important first to define public history and contextualize it with ideas from theatre and performance studies. Public history is a broad term that refers to a presentation of history that is made available to the public and takes place outside of an academic setting. In 2007 the National

Council of Public History crafted this basic and broad definition: “public history practice is a

23 Marvin Carlson, The Haunted Stage: Theatre as Memory Machine, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003). 12

multidimensional effort by historians and their publics, collaborating in settings beyond the traditional classroom, to make the past useful to the present.”24 These useful collaborations can take place in many ways and really can be anywhere that history is presented, such as in archives, museums, historic sites and houses, and even through oral histories when those

Figure 1: The front sign at the Edward Gorey House histories are recorded and made available for public use. From large institutional museums with federal funding, such as the various Smithsonian museums, to small spaces where private history is made public like the Gorey House (figure 1), the avenues by which public history takes place are many and varied. While this categorization might seem broad, it is similar to Richard

Schechner’s almost all-encompassing definition of performance, which states that anything framed by social context or convention, such as “Rituals, play and games, and the roles of everyday life” are all considered performance. 25 Since both performance and public history involve presenters and viewers, and both have somewhat loose ontological parameters, I’m keen to see how museums perform, and how items from performances exist in museum spaces.

24 Debbie Doyle, “Public History Defined?” AHA today, June 5, 2007, accessed Feb. 22, 2018, http://blog.historians.org/2007/06/public-history-defined/.

25 Richard Schechner, An Introduction to Performance Studies, (New York: Routledge, 2002), 30.

Another aspect of public history that is relevant to performance, and specifically Gorey’s plays on Cape Cod, is Tammy S. Gordon’s analysis of private sites made public. She asserts that, while large institutions might homogenize ideas and information, small local museums can assert their uniqueness by sharing history from an individualized perspective. Every aspect in an exhibit, right down to the fingerprints on the glass, help to explain individuals and communities to outsiders while tying insiders together through the shared narrative of historical experience.26

These aspects of community building and the shared narrative experience are also key for many performers who wish to create unique and memorable experiences for their audience members.

A key difference between performance and public history is the lack of performers in museums that feature artifacts on display, yet in “Dances With Things: Material Culture and the

Performance of Race,” Robin Bernstein theorizes a way to imagine some objects—including some artifacts—as a specific kind of thing. As she defines these terms, Bernstein explains how things might stand in for a performer:

A thing demands that people confront it on its own terms; thus, a thing forces a

person into awareness of the self in material relation to the thing. When a thing

makes a human body a “thing among things,” it upsets the boundary between the

person and object. The thing and person are unmoored from fixed positions of

difference and twirl in sudden mutual orbit, each subject to the other’s gravity

[…]. An object becomes a thing when it invites a person to dance.27

26 Tammy S. Gordon. Private History in Public: Exhibition and the Settings of Everyday Life. (Lanham: Altamira Press, 2010).

27 Robin Bernstein, “Dances with Things: Material Culture and the Performance of Race.” Social Text 101, Vol. 27., No. 4, Winter 2009: 70. 14

Bernstein coins the term “scriptive things” to refer to things that compel people into certain performances. These things seem to embody a “script” that encourages people to act in a certain way. Her examples include how a human-sized cardboard figure of an African American man eating a watermelon encourages white people attending a fair to step up next to it and take their pictures. Even a rejection of the original “script” is, Bernstein argues, scripted because the scriptive thing includes both the original and that rejected action. Bernstein does not claim that scriptive things perform in and of themselves, but that the things prompt people to interact with them in specific ways—to “dance” as she says—and that this prompting is built into the very thing itself. A handkerchief is made to dab at tears or wave goodbye to a lover; a child’s doll is made to cuddle. This idea is useful to the notion of a performance as a process rather than an event in that certain scriptive things from performances such as props, ephemera, and even puppets continue to elicit specific responses from viewers. It is possible that a thing can continue a performance, or that the performance is now taken up by the thing and people observing the things as they stoop, look, and consider in a public history setting. I also want to argue, in certain scenarios of disembodied theatre, things stand in for absent performers.

It may seem at first that a thing standing in for a human might violate the basic components of performance, but it is not out of the question when considering the way that

Wolska configures performance as process of becoming. In this way the performance has not disappeared but has shifted so the items from the performance continue to perform. Even the parameters set forth by Phelan, who clarified that within a performance a performer and spectator can experience “mutual transformation,” can also be brought about when the thing stands in for the performer. The effect the thing has on a spectator is obvious, as they squint and stare at a thing in an exhibit. Sometimes they make audible sounds to express their satisfaction or

amusement. The spectator also has a direct effect on the thing, although this is not as obvious.

With touch, spectators physically wear down, damage, or alter the artifacts, as is seen with

Lincoln’s discolored knees at the Lincoln Memorial. This motivates most museums to protect their exhibits with ropes or glass, so dangerous is the potential harm the visitor might inflict.

Spectators also effect things through their attention and inattention. An artifact that generates a lot of attention and interest is bound to be prominently displayed, whereas one that attracts little or no attention will, in most cases, be put into storage. The attention of a spectator can affect a thing in many ways; therefore, Phelan’s condition of mutual transformation lends itself to an encounter between a thing that affects a spectator and the spectator’s effect on the thing.

I am not suggesting that a museum showing artifacts and a theatrical show are the same; however, I am suggesting that there are enough ontological similarities that when objects used from a performance enter into an archive or museum they could be considered a continuance of the performance. I want to suggest that, perhaps, performance can continue as long as materials are given the space to reverberate when observed by spectators. So, rather than a performance ending and disappearing, it has the potential to last, in some form, as long as the traces, both the physical objects and the recalled memories, endure through public history sites.

Gorey & His Work

Before an investigation of Gorey’s theatre can commence, it is first important to understand the landscape of writings about the man as an artist. The literature on Gorey is extensive as far as the writer, and very limited when it comes to scholarship focused on his work.

Being something of a celebrity, or perhaps an enchanting oddity, Gorey gave more than seventy interviews between 1973 and 1999.28 Interviews appeared in such publications as The New York

28 Karen Wilken, “Edward Gorey: An Introduction,” in Ascending Peculiarity, ed. Karen Wilken (New York: Harcourt: 2001), X. 16

Post, The New York Times, Esquire, The New Yorker, The Boston Globe Magazine, People,

Newsweek, The National Post (Toronto), and even live on The Dick Cavett Show.29 While many of these writers gave thoughtful insight and some analysis of the author’s work, most were more interested in the man. He was famously reclusive, but could, in the right circumstances, be surprising loquacious. As a sort of verbose, peculiar hermit, many interviewers found Gorey very entertaining.

Interviews with Gorey could span a wide range of subject matter. His love for art, literature, popular culture, collectables, cats, and the ballet of George Balanchine provided an interviewer with a virtual cornucopia of kitschy, funny, silly, and profound insights into both high and low culture, and Gorey was fond of and an expert on both. Art historian Karen Wilken, who has done the most thorough literary and scholarly analysis of Gorey’s work, notes:

Routine or ill-informed questions bored him, although he would answer politely,

gently correcting errors of fact and interpretation, almost without appearing to do

so. But when an interviewer had deep, specialized knowledge of something Gorey

was obsessed by, then he held nothing back.30

Gorey’s personality—charming, self-effacing, and eccentric—made it easy for interviewers to focus on the artist rather than the art. As Michael Dirda articulates in his “Review of The World of Edward Gorey,” “The real Goreyphile yearns for more biographical information.”31 Perhaps his mystique is what intrigued fans and readers most, and publications can be forgiven for

29 A great many of these interviews can be found in Ascending Peculiarity, ed. Karen Wilken (New York: Harcourt: 2001). Others I will note throughout.

30 Wilken, “Edward Gorey: An Introduction,” in Ascending Peculiarity, XI.

31 Michael Dirda “Review of The World of Edward Gorey.” Smithsonianmag.com, June 1997, accessed Feb. 22, 2018, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/review-of-the-world-of-edward-gorey-138218026/?no- ist

focusing their articles in such a way yet focusing on the man rather than the work undermines

Gorey’s tremendous artistic accomplishments.

Most interviewers seem to like Gorey and his books and write from a position of admiration. There are a few, however, that are clearly put off by the assignment. D. Keith Mano, who wrote a piece for People after Gorey’s Tony win, seems mildly uneasy about Gorey and his art. He remarks that Gorey “resembles a walking Brandy snifter” and his beard “seems to be on loan from some less fashionable furbearer.” Mano takes a final jab at Gorey’s earrings, which he claims look like “an inept secretary stapled each lobe.”32 These comments are catty at best and unnecessarily nasty at worst, but this article is a rare instance where Gorey’s work is appraised by a non-fan. It is a helpful reminder that, while I admire Gorey’s work and find nuance, humor, and deep levels of meaning, others may not “get it,” may be unnerved by it, or may have no interest in it at all.

Most articles focus primarily on Gorey’s personality, many make some attempt to analyze and contextualize his work, and very few analyze the work thoroughly. Usually the observations and critiques can be classified in a few simple ways, and most focus on labeling

Gorey as macabre, an oddball, or both. Mano, responding to the fact that Gorey has a business called Doomed Enterprises that sells tote bags and t-shirts for the Dracula production, describes

Gorey as the “Charles Schulz of the macabre. [. . . The work is] extremely peculiar [. . .] like a rare case of dengue fever—and about as cheering. Real upbeat stuff.”33 Mano certainly does not

32 D. Keith Mano, “Edward Gorey Inhabits an Odd Work of Tiny Drawings, Fussy Cats, and ‘Doomed Enterprises,” People Magazine, vol 10, No. 1, July 3, 1978, accessed Feb. 22, 2018, http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20071196,00.html

33 Mano.

hide his disdain, but he is not alone when focusing on the darker tones of Gorey’s work.

Alexander Theroux, a friend of Gorey’s, wrote in an article for Esquire:

The books seem frightfully old-fashioned and biscuity, as if they had been

secretly pressed out and printed in suspiciously limited editions in the cellar of

some creepy railway warehouse in nineteenth-century England by some old

pinch-fisted joy-killer in a black clawhammer coat with red-hot eyes, a weeny

neck, and a grudge against the world—and then managing to survive the must of

long years by their sheer nastiness and earnest horror.34

While these classifications might seem accurate, especially when one considers that both articles are humorous in tone, Gorey argues that macabre and gloom are simply not what his stories are about.

In an interview with Robert Dahlin, Gorey stated that he was “annoyed” at being “stuck” with the moniker of being macabre, although he admitted that it could seem like that was his goal. When asked by Dahlin to clarify his work, Gorey responded, “I don’t really know what it is

I’m doing; but it’s not that.”35 This aversion was not just to being labeled macabre; Gorey resisted any classification at all, a fact he often repeated in interviews. In an article by Tobi

Tobias, Gorey discussed his artistic influences: “I’m very fond of Japanese and Chinese literature. I like to work in that way, leaving things out, being very brief.” The article finishes with Gorey explaining, “I would agree with George (Balanchine) that when people are finding meaning in things—beware.”36 He deepens this notion in a conversation with Richard Dyer: “All

34 Alexander Theroux, “The Incredible Revenge of Edward Gorey,” Esquire, June 1974: 110.

35 Dahlin, “Edward Gorey,” in Ascending Peculiarity 35.

36 Tobias, “Balletgorey,” in Ascending Peculiarity 23. 19

the things you can talk about in anyone’s work are the things that are least important. [. . .]

Explaining something makes it go away, so to speak; what’s important is left after you have explained everything else. Ideally, if anything were any good, it would be indescribable.”37

Clearly Gorey was averse to explaining his work, aiming instead at art that defied description and categorization. In this way Gorey’s work reifies the Rancièrian notion of emancipated spectatorship (or readership, for Gorey’s literary works). Rancière focuses on a

“new idiom,” one that “requires spectators who play the role of active interpreters, who develop their own translation in order to appropriate the ‘story’ and make it their own story. An emancipated community is a community of narrators and translators.”38 Gorey’s work is ideal for this approach. Rather than wanting a reader to think a certain way, a Gorey narrative inspires readers to make meaning for themselves. Labeling Gorey’s work as merely macabre categorizes it in a way that is limiting rather than comprehensive, helpful, or accurate.

While my focus here will be on Gorey’s work as a theatre artist, his theatre work is closely tied to his work as author and illustrator. This relationship is almost certainly present with creative writers and artists in general, but with Gorey the crossover is unavoidable. His books and illustrations are inherently theatrical. Coupled with the artist’s inclination toward performance, it is not surprising that Gorey participated in the theatre and created many plays and entertainments towards the latter part of his life. It is strange that an artist whose work is so noteworthy and whose talents are so admired produced all these plays, many of them original works, and there is almost nothing written about them.

37 Dyer, “The Poison Penman,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 123.

38 Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator. (London: Verso, 2009), 22.

The secondary literature on Gorey’s theatrical work consists of one item: CJ Verburg’s memoir Edward Gorey on Stage. Verberg was involved in almost all the Cape Cod productions and her memoir recounts her time working with Gorey. It is an important document in that it is the only published record that gives any information about the plays and performances of

Gorey’s work on Cape Cod, but it reads very much like a memoir by a friend rather than a thorough description or nuanced analysis of the performances. Instead Verberg offers interesting tidbits about the plays and the process:

The director’s job, [Gorey] liked to say, is to keep the actors from running into the

furniture. He took great pleasure in watching his gifted amateur troupe expand his

work from two dimensions into four. Although he usually had an idea how he

wanted a piece to look and move onstage, he left most of the details—including

who should play which parts—up to the actors.”39

This approach seems to key in on Gorey’s excitement about the theatrical process itself rather than a focus on adhering to the typical role of the director. Other anecdotes reinforce this perspective: “His directing always focused more on choreography than expression; he scoffed at motivation.”40 This suggests that Gorey’s attention to the visual composition of the event was a priority and he had little interest in realism, driving home the connection between Gorey’s illustrations and the actual stage tableaux that he imagined on stage.

The Verburg memoir is full of these types of observations about how Gorey worked in rehearsals, peppered with the occasional insight into how the performances were received. Like so many of the previously mentioned interview pieces, Verberg seems to revolve around Gorey

39 CJ Verburg, location 582, Kindle Edition.

40 CJ Verburg, location 297, Kindle Edition. 21

as a personality. His work, while discussed, is secondary. Because of this, Verberg is a valuable resource, but Gorey’s productions demand a further and more detailed analysis.

To address this lack of scholarship on Gorey’s theatre I will explore the topic from as many viewpoints as possible so as to best understand how Gorey’s theatre operated. To do so, I will first use textual analysis of Gorey’s books and a literary analysis of a rehearsal script from one of his plays, English Soup (1998). In my analysis of Dracula (1977) and Gorey Stories

(1978), two Broadway plays, I will analyze both extant scripts and images, so as to explore how

Gorey created meaning both theatrically and visually. Each production analysis will also employ reviews to trace critical response. Finally, I view and analyze available video evidence of a

Gorey puppet show, Cautionary Tales for Children (1996). I hope that through these different forms of analysis that a picture of Gorey’s theatre will become clearer, and that the monikers of being only morbid and macabre can forever be put to rest.

This dissertation will also employ approaches more closely related to performance studies scholarship as I relate both how the Gorey House performs as a museum, and how it preserves aspects of Gorey Theatre on Cape Cod. I have visited the house on five different occasions between July of 2013 and April of 2018, and have experienced five different featured exhibits, which I detail in chapter four, as well as seen how the “permanent” exhibits, such as the case with Gorey’s puppets, change over time. Both approaches call on my personal experiences of the space and are mostly subjective in nature. This individual perspective is important to the project, as I will argue that performances preserved in public history have an overtly individualized effect on those who experience them.

Lastly, to provide details and nuance of Gorey’s theatre on Cape Cod, I have interviewed three of Gorey’s most frequent collaborators, Joe Richards, Cathy Ericson, and Eric Edwards, to

get a full glimpse of all the aspects of the productions, and get their insights on Gorey as an artist, as they were his friends and trusted colleagues. As actors, each appeared in over a dozen of the shows and all performed as actors and puppeteers. With these combined resources, my project will seek to give these performances increased exposure and visibility and serve as a case study in the potential of public history to continue the life of a performance.

A Dreadful Overview

Chapter one will focus on Gorey as an author and links Gorey’s literature to his theatrical work by analyzing the play script of English Soup (1998). Karen Wilken has argued that Gorey’s words, “are always subservient to his images. Pictures are probably more crucial than words to our sense of what Gorey is about.”41 While this is not a particularly surprising assertion from an art scholar and Gorey’s pictures are indeed crucial to his creative identity, I attest that his words are just as important. To explore this idea, I will engage in a comparative study between the script and Gorey’s literary work by giving an in-depth analysis of his books as well as a few key scenes in the English Soup play script. This chapter will focus primarily on two areas of Gorey’s writing style–his use of a snapshot form and camp content–and argue that these two elements are key components in all of Gorey’s writing.

The second chapter will examine Gorey’s two Broadway shows that played concurrently in the late 1970’s, Dracula and Gorey Stories. I submit that the reason for Dracula’s success and the failure of Gorey Stories is that Gorey’s visual aesthetic, while morbid and dark, is easily consumable by a mass audience, especially when paired with a show that provides a recognizable plot structure. In contrast, Gorey’s narrative style, featured in Gorey Stories, is complex and can be unsettling, making the show a difficult sell for Broadway. This chapter will

41 Wilken, “Mr. Earbrass Jots Down a Few Visual Notes,” in The World of Edward Gorey, 111. 23

parse out all the details of these shows in order to gain an understanding of the limit of Gorey’s popular appeal.

Chapter three will shift to examining the interplay between theatre and public history by looking at how the Edward Gorey House presents the art and life of its subject. I first outline basics of museum history and argue that museums are, at their center, very theatrical and share many characteristics with theatre productions. I then argue that the Gorey House preserves, manicures, and presents aspects of Gorey’s life and work in a way that bridges the gap between historic house and art museum. The result is a community center that serves devout fan and casual visitor alike.

Chapter four will begin an examination of the possibilities of performance continuing in an area of public history by providing an analysis of the exhibit of Gorey’s puppet troupe, Le

Théâtricule Stoïque, at the Gorey House. The troupe is made up of hand puppets made from a simple base material with a celluclay head placed on the pointer finger (figure 2). There were scenes in almost every Cape Cod show performed by the puppets, and some shows, such as

Heads Will Roll,42 were solely for the puppets. Using theories of space, scriptive things, and

“nonidentity” I will examine the puppetry exhibit to explore how things in space continue performance. What sort of experience might a display of this type give? What are the similarities/differences of the puppets in an exhibit as opposed to a performance? This chapter will explore these questions and begin to theorize around the interaction of performance and public history. I argue that performance does in fact continue after the final curtain falls, but the onus is on the viewer to create meaning left by displayed ephemera.

42 The name comes from the fact that the puppet’s heads would commonly pop off the puppets and roll to the back of the theatre. 24

Figure 2: Two members of Le Théâtricule Stoïque at the Gorey House

My investigation will 1) draw attention to the overlooked aspects of Gorey’s art, 2) bring to light his forgotten theatre work, 3) integrate the connections between a performance and sites of public history, seeing both the theatrical in a museum space and the continuance of a performance in exhibits of performance ephemera, and 4) add nuance to the connection between performance and the material traces that it leaves to recover as much of Gorey’s theatre work as possible. The hope is that the imprint left in public history sites, even after all this time, is clear enough that the performances—in some form—can still be experienced and enjoyed. If this endeavor proves successful it could change the way that Gorey is understood and considered as a great visual artist and illustrator, but also an author and theatre artist of note.

CHAPTER TWO

MR. EARBRASS WRITES A PLAY: SNAPSHOTS, CAMP, AND THE ART OF EDWARD GOREY’S PAINFUL PLEASURE.

Edward Gorey’s first published book, The Unstrung Harp; or, Mr. Earbrass Writes a

Novel (1953), details the process and existential horror that an author experiences as he undertakes producing a new manuscript for publication.1 Two aspects of the book stand out when compared to others that Gorey would later write. First, while Gorey’s distinguishing settings and costumes are on display, the character design differs from Gorey’s usual style. All characters, Mr. Earbrass included, share the same shoebox-type head, long-pronounced chin that juts out from the neck, a large nose that connects to a round eye, no mouth or forehead, and an ear that seems to connect face to neck. The second noteworthy aspect of the book is the large amount of prose that attends each picture. While most Gorey prose is made up of very concise statements, perhaps a line or two, to go along with the illustrations, The Unstrung Harp has six or seven lines per picture. While the story is still short, the odyssey of Mr. Earbrass is downright loquacious in comparison to the works that follow.

The basics of the story fit very well into an understanding of Gorey as an author, although they do not support his macabre reputation as one might expect. Mr. Earbrass, an author of some notoriety, struggles mightily to piece together his next novel. The book, with its tongue firmly placed in its cheek, shows him conceive, write, revise, publish, and publicize this finished work. Almost every step of the way Mr. Earbrass is a continual mess of anxiety, depression, and ennui. Even after the book is published, as he heads out for a few weeks of rest on “the

1 Edward Gorey, The Unstrung Harp, or Mr. Earbrass Writes a Novel, (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1953). 26

continent,” but there seems to be a dark cloud that hangs over him as he waits for his ferry to cross the channel.

The Unstrung Harp is different than many of Gorey’s other books in that there are no untimely accidents or tragedies that befall any characters. It is instead a presentation of the rigid and somewhat melancholy existence that accompanies the everyday bourgeois life of an author.

Although this was Gorey’s first book he seems to know a lot about the painful process of writing a novel, no doubt from watching his many author friends from Harvard battle through the process. His portrayal of the tedium of writing, revising, and seeing a book to print, while undoubtedly a bit exaggerated, rings true for any who have so labored, and therefore is very amusing.

The Unstrung Harp, while perhaps not what a casual fan might expect, reveals key aspects of Gorey’s writing style. Rather than being macabre and gothic, he writes some of the wittiest camp about everyday existence and provides excellent examples of many formal postmodern concepts. While Gorey is often admired for his considerable skill as an illustrator, his work as a writer is often overlooked and not given ample consideration. An example of this is that, while he authored many plays and entertainments, they have not yet been published. This chapter will seek to rectify that neglect by detailing Gorey’s notable abilities as an author. I will first detail how others have classified and categorized his books, then I will focus on two characteristics which are prevalent in his work, but almost always unnoticed, his use of snapshot form and camp. With snapshots, Gorey provides non-linear stories, brought frame by frame in a way that defies traditional storytelling. Gorey’s stories also contain camp sensibilities that emphasize a sense of irony and humor. More details about Gorey’s use of snapshots and camp are forthcoming later in the chapter.

By focusing first on Gorey’s literature, I hope to show the incredible importance of the prose in his books, to bolster Gorey’s reputation as a writer, and put forward the notion that

Gorey should be thought of as an author above all else, even when considering his marvelous illustrations. Then, once some basics of Gorey’s literature are set forth, I will analyze a few examples from his dramatic texts, all from his entertainment English Soup, to provide: 1) a brief portal into his dramatic work; and 2) to consider how his unique style exists in a performance space. I hope that this analysis will incite interest in Gorey’s dramatic texts and will provide support for their need to be published and made available to the public to read and perform.

The Gorey Details

While Gorey dodges explaining his work, as noted in the intro, there have been many attempts at classifying elements and details that appear and repeat in his stories. Theroux gives this lengthy but helpful explanation about Gorey’s style and “Goreyisms”:

His is an unclassifiable genre: not really children’s books, not comic books, not

art stills. Gorey’s works–sort of small and humorously sadistic parodies of the

obsolete Victorian “triple decker”–are in fact midget novels, each the size of a

hornbook, withered into a kind of giacomettian reduction of twenty to thirty

doomful pages of scrupulously articulated and curiously antiquarian Gothic

illustrations and a spare but sequential just-about-conclusive narrative: often

merely wistful and understated captions of distracting economy.2

Theroux points at the typical arrangement and structure of a Gorey book, but he also singles out a key characteristic, the “small and humorously sadistic” element of parody that is present—and even prevalent—in many titles. Karen Wilken, one of the very few who has written about Gorey

2 Theroux, 110.

from a scholarly perspective, describes Gorey’s parodies of “tragic innocents of nineteenth- century literature” and explains that these stories “simultaneously obey the conventions of the genre and mercilessly parody them, underscoring both the inherent pathos of these tales and their inadvertent over-the-top absurdity.”3 Allusions and parodies are key to Gorey’s work. As Wilken points out, following “a lifetime of voracious reading,”4 Gorey will reference a universe of signifiers with which a reader will most likely not be familiar. Recognizing the references “is not essential to enjoying Gorey’s work, but it can enhance the pleasure his books offer and in no way diminishes appreciation of his originality.” She states that his allusions are mostly “flirtations” with conventions, and that recognition from a reader can bring about an admiration that he is able to “transform the known into the remarkable, to make something personal and fresh out of the familiar.”5 Gorey is clearly a master of pastiche, stringing together stories from his vast knowledge of narratives from both high and popular culture. While some critics, such as Fredric

Jameson6, are highly critical of pastiche, Gorey’s mastery of the technique produces exciting works that simultaneously seem familiar and new. Another vital characteristic of Gorey’s work—and one that tends to seem old-fashioned—are the people who inhabit his books. Wilken describes Gorey’s usual suspects, or stock characters as:

3 Karen Wilken “Mr. Earbrass Jots Down a Few Visual Notes: The World of Edward Gorey.” Found in The World of Edward Gorey, (Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, 1996), 63.

4 Wilken, “Mr Earbrass Jots Down a Few Visual Notes,” In The World of Edward Gorey, 47.

5 Wilken, “Mr Earbrass Jots Down a Few Visual Notes,” in The World of Edward Gorey, 90.

6 Fredric Jameson, “Postmodernism and Consumer Society,” 1983, accessed Feb. 24, 2018, http://art.ucsc.edu/sites/default/files/Jameson_Postmodernism_and_Consumer_Society.pdf. One of Jameson’s critiques of pastiche, “in a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, all that is left is to imitate dead styles.”

Mustachioed men in ankle-length overcoats; elegant matrons with high-piled hair;

athletic hearties in thick turtlenecks; imposing patriarchs in sumptuous dressing

gowns; kohl-eyed wantons with alarming décolletages and nodding plumes;

solemn children in sailor suits and pinafores; frivolous housemaids.7

While this list does not cover all of the characters in Gorey’s canon, it certainly is a good starting point as some of these characters typically appear in almost every one of Gorey’s books.

Wilken also points out that the books are typically set in an “Edwardian era,” although some seem to be out of “someone’s vision of the 1920’s” and the setting appears to be

“England,” although “small town America is suggested.”8 Many article writers and interviewers are surprised when it turns out that Gorey is an American from the twentieth century, assuming he was a British writer from the nineteenth century. Schiff supports this notion when he posits that Gorey’s work looks as if it is from “long ago and far away.”9 This characteristic is one defining feature; it appears to come from a distant past, yet it also contains a wry humor that appeals to current sentiment. Perhaps one reason for Gorey’s considerable cult fan base is that he gives the impression that the reader has discovered something from “long ago” that seems to speak to them directly. Gorey’s work is simultaneously nostalgic, dark, troubling, and humorous, and because of this unique combination it is particularly memorable.

Scott Baldauf highlights another trademark, “Gorey creates tension by suggesting violence, rather than showing it. Inanimate legs jut out from underneath shrubs or out of doorways, and the only hint that something awful has happened is from a wry footnote.”10 These

7 Wilken “Mr. Earbrass Jots Down a Few Visual Notes,” in The World of Edward Gorey: 45.

8 Wilken, “Mr Earbrass Jots Down a Few Visual Notes,” in The World of Edward Gorey, 45.

9 Schiff, “Edward Gorey and the Tao of Nonsense,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 136.

inanimate legs are notable reoccurring images that embody one aspect of Gorey’s work—the allusion to something dreadful. Gorey is a master of giving little hints, sometimes to be delicate, others times to be funny, but an observant reader will notice that everything is in place for the ghastly, or a moment of great horror, to happen. In other cases, the ghastly has just occurred and the image captures the aftermath. This defining element adds a fun bit of anticipation and the potential for shock to Gorey’s images and is another reason that his art is so exceptional.

Many articles link Gorey to the likes of Lewis Carroll, stating that he works in the realm of nonsense. Wilken mentions this connection and states, while downplaying the “whimsical,”

“Gothic,” “macabre,” or “fey” aspects of his writings, that “Victorian nonsense” in the mold of

Edward Lear is a better way of explaining Gorey’s work. She argues that Gorey makes declarations that are “illogical” in a manner that make them seem completely “commonplace.”11

Another article by Stephen Schiff mixes insights about the man and the art with further discussion of this thread of “nonsense” in Gorey’s books. While he and Gorey dance around what the term nonsense actually means, they focus more on how unknowable the world is. Gorey admits to Schiff, “I think there should be a little bit of uneasiness in everything, because I do think we’re all really in a sense living on the edge. So much of life in inexplicable.”12 Schiff’s definition is much more refined than simply labeling Gorey’s work as “nonsense.” Many stories, especially those for children, reify a sense of order and meaning in the world. Even tragic stories often support an idea of poetic justice, reason that there is a purpose to everything, and end with a restoration of harmony and stability. Gorey’s books work expressly against this notion. Rather

10 Scott Baldauf, “Portrait of the Artist in Chilling Color,” The Christian Science Monitor, October 31, 1996. Found in Ascending Peculiarity, (New York: Harcourt, 2001), 174.

11 Karen Wilken, “Mr. Earbrass Jots Down a Few Visual Notes,” 56-57.

12 Schiff, “Edward Gorey and the Tao of Nonsense,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 156.

than being nonsense, his works reconfigure everyday life in a way that mirrors, more truthfully, the dangers and mundanity of lived experience. Sometimes terrible or boring or unimaginable events occur and there is no real reason for it. As Gorey frequently states, “I write about everyday life.”13

While it is easy to think that Gorey is simply playing with his audience with such statements, this perspective is key to understanding his work. He is able to focus on moments and experiences that are upsetting, unpleasant, or mundane and bring those often-overlooked incidents into view. The narratives bob and weave in such a way as to continue to be surprising, resisting easy classification or reader digestion. Listing Gorey’s work as “nonsense” or “strange” or “macabre” makes the work easily dismissible and categorizes it as unimportant—or just odd—the workings of a weird eccentric that are trifles or things of naught. Instead, Gorey’s work points to the moments of daily life that are glossed over or willfully ignored and does so in a way that is truthful, but somehow also humorous. As Schiff explains, “For Gorey, existential dread isn’t the subtext, it’s the punch line. The books are as appallingly funny as if they were parody, but they’re not parody, exactly, because in some way they also seem absolutely true; their chill is authentic.”14 All of these tendencies and characteristics are part of the Edward Gorey universe.

Chilling, yet funny, tales where the characters seem doomed—if not to a violent end then at least an exceedingly mundane afternoon. Rather than purge fear and pity, the stories incite amusement, discomfort, or bewilderment, and sometimes all three.

13 Schiff, “Edward Gorey and the Tao of Nonsense,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 145. Also, Theroux, 148. Theroux builds his article to make this assertion the climax of the piece. Like a twist ending.

14 Schiff, “Edward Gorey and the Tao of Nonsense,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 145 32

Form: Snapshots

While aspects of Gorey’s work have been noted and analyzed, there remain crucial aspects that have gone mostly unnoticed. The first of these is the snapshot form present in nearly all his books. This is not to say that Gorey’s works are all the same as there is an abundance of deviation in terms of subjects, plots, and characters, yet almost all share the same snapshot structure in which each page of the book features a quick glimpse of action in the life of the character shown in tableau, briefly described by the text. The next page gives another brief glimpse of action, and then another, and then another with great fluidity as to how the story unfolds with sometimes jarring leaps in time and space. The stories are, however, anchored by one of three devices: a distinct theme, one or multiple characters, or a unique place. With this snapshot form Gorey actively reconfigures the traditional narrative style that tells a story with a fixed plot that moves chronologically and predictably through time. These snapshots, while fixed by theme, place or characters, are much more unpredictable, and defy traditional logic in that events occur in ways that feel unconnected and isolated. This unfolding of a story shows the limits of traditional reasoning and highlights chance and chaos in a way that, somewhat frighteningly, mirrors everyday existence.

The Gashlycrumb Tinies, while being Gorey’s most famous book, is a terrific example of this snapshot form centered around a distinct theme. The book begins “A is for Amy, who fell down the stairs.”15 While the page opposite reads “B is for Basil, assaulted by bears.”16 The book continues in this way, presenting the deaths of twenty-six children, one for every letter of the alphabet, in rhyming couplets. While there is great disparity in how the children meet their end–

15 Edward Gorey, The Gashlycrumb Tinies (New York: Harcourt, 1963), 1.

16 Gorey, The Gashlycrumb Tinies, 2. 33

some by accident, some by carelessness, some by murder and others by silly reasons such as ennui—the deaths of the children, in and of themselves, provide the thematic thread that give the book its cohesion.

Other Gorey books also center on a central theme, including many of his other abecedariums, or ABC books. One such book, The Glorious Nosebleed, highlights letters through adjectives that are displayed in each picture. For example, for the letter A the caption reads, “She wandered among the trees Aimlessly,”17 while the illustration shows a woman, handbag in hand, walking on a snowy landscape in between three trees. Turning the page, the next caption reads “The creature regarded them Balefully,”18 while the illustration shows three mop-topped children on a pier while a strange sea-creature hangs off the end. The woman from the first page and children from the second have nothing in common. The thematic thread that ties the book together is that each page contains an adjective that corresponds with a letter of the alphabet which is then illustrated. My favorite page shows a family of six–all wearing overcoats, hats and absurdly long scarfs—while the caption reads “She knitted mufflers Endlessly.”19

Other books that are connected by theme include The Utter Zoo, an abecedarium that details twenty-six strange animals and their various behaviors, The Awdrey-Gore Legacy, a homage to a fictional mystery writer patterned after Agatha Christie, and The Broken Spoke, which is a collection of postcards about bicycles.20 These books show a disparate group of characters and events only tied together by theme rather than a traditional plot.

17 Edward Gorey, The Glorious Nosebleed, (New York: Bloomsbury, 1974), 1.

18 Gorey, The Glorious Nosebleed, 3.

19 Gorey, The Glorious Nosebleed, 9.

20 Edward Gorey, The Utter Zoo, The Awdrey-Gore Legacy, and The Broken Spoke in Amphigorey Also, (New York: Congdon & Weed, 1983). 34

While some Gorey books showcase a centralized theme to connect disparate characters and events, others showcase the mundane and chaotic in the world by highlighting and focusing on one or a group of characters. In The Willowdale Handcar, characters Edna, Harry, and Sam are bored and go to the railway station to see if “anything was doing.”21 Once there they find a handcar and decide to go exploring. The book provides snapshots of the things they do while journeying around and through various towns. These activities include visiting historical sites, seeing homes of interest, calling on family members, and attending community events such as a baked bean cook-off. They also have run-ins with people they know or have read about while intrigue swirls around what they stumble upon, such as finding a live baby in a bag “hanging on a hook intended for mailbags.”22 They seem to always just miss out on learning the juicy details of those encounters. Instead, the three characters, as well as the reader, are left to guess about the meaning of what they are experiencing. While the snapshots seem disjointed, there is a trajectory given through the main characters as the book follows them until they venture into a tunnel and never “come out the other end.”23

Other character centered Gorey books include The Blue Aspic, which focuses around a famous opera singer and a devoted fan, The Gilded Bat, about the rise and early death of a premiere ballerina, The Beastly Baby, which centers on an infant that is a terror to all around him, The Pious Infant, about a child so righteous he is too good for the world, and The

Loathsome Couple, which features a pair who murder children, based loosely on the Moors

21 Edward Gorey, The Willowdale Hancar, (New York: Harcourt, 1962), 1.

22 Gorey, The Willowdale Handcar, 19.

23 Gorey, The Willowdale Handcar, 30. 35

murders in England.24 All these stories follow one or two characters as events transpire, but there is often little cause and effect explained. Rather, an unruly assortment of happenings occur.

The last way that Gorey presents compelling stories that complicate traditional narrative, and therefore complicate typical modes of rational thought, is through the unifying element of place, which comes through the snapshot form. A fine example of this is The Iron Tonic which details the goings on at “the grey hotel.”25 Through rhyming couplets different happenings are explained such as “The guests who chose to stay aloof/are wrapped in rugs upon the roof.” The accompanying illustration shows three bundled up individuals in chairs looking over an expansive field. Through a circle, in the middle of the illustration, Gorey provides a close-up of what the prose mentions. So, in this illustration, the circle focuses in on the above-mentioned group of bundled, aloof, roof-goers. This illustrative technique, of showing a close-up in a circle in the middle of an expansive background, repeats throughout the book. The only unifying element is the place as the snapshots show various people and things throughout the manor.

While many books use one unifying factor, there are many hybrids among Gorey’s compendium. The Doubtful Guest combines character and place, as the book details the arrival of a strange, tennis-shoe-and-scarf-wearing creature and its subsequent eighteen years of residence at a manor.26 Chinese Obelisks, an abecedarium, centers around character and theme as the book describes an author’s excursion and untimely death.27 The Lavender Leotard also combines

24 Edward Gorey, The Blue Aspic, (Petaluma, CA: Pomegranate, 1968). The Gilded Bat, (Petaluma, CA: Pomegranate, 1966). The Beastly Baby and The Pious Infant in Amphigorey Too, (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1975). The Loathsome Couple, in Amphigorey, (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1972).

25 Edward Gorey, The Iron Tonic, (New York: Harcourt, 1969).

26 Edward Gorey, The Doubtful Guest (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1957).

27 Edward Gorey, Chinese Obelisks, in Amphigorey Too, (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1975).

character and theme as a brother and sister take part in various ballet performances and exercises.28 The Stupid Joke combines character and place as a boy who pretends to be sick stays in bed all day and suffers dire consequences.29 Finally, The Other Statue combines theme and place as the story follows the attendants of an ill-fated gathering at Backwater Hall.30

In all these books Gorey challenges traditional narrative forms in which stories follow a central plot from an inciting indent through a climax. Gorey resists following established norms that imply that there is a distinct and rational order in the universe. Instead his stories highlight the danger and boredom that happen to people every day with events that occur, at times, with no discernable cause.

While all discontinuous narratives aren’t necessarily postmodern, myriad postmodern concepts can and should be connected to Gorey’s literature. As I mentioned before, Gorey is a master of pastiche. He also actively works against traditional notions of what a book ought to be, especially a small book that appears to be for children, or what a book should or should not mean. These attributes align with questioning of Grand Narratives, which is positioned by

Lyotard, and notions of meaning residing with the reader, put forward by Barthes. 31 All these postmodern qualities are artfully and beautifully realized within Gorey’s work.

While Gorey, no doubt, had no intention of being an example of post-modern literature, he demurred espousing any cause or meaning with his writing and his work whole-heartedly

28 Edward Gorey, The Lavender Leotard, in Amphigorey Too, (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1975).

29 Edward Gorey, The Stupid Joke, in Amphigorey Also, (New York: Congdon & Weed, 1983).

30 Edward Gorey, The Other Statue, in Aphigorey Again, (New York: Harcourt Brace, 2006).

31 Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). Roland Barthes, S/Z, trans. Richard Millar (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974).

rejects any semblance of tradition, order, or logic. His writing also puts the onus of creating meaning squarely in the minds of the readers. No easy conclusions can be drawn from the stories, and instead most end mysteriously, or at least with a measure of uncertainty. Gorey embraces that doubt, and while he teases on the back cover of The Willowdale Handcar that the

“discerning Reader discovers Meaning in [the characters] Progress,”32 the discerning reader also knows that this statement is meant as a joke, and that meaning can be quite hard to pin down in all his books.

In this way the snapshot form serves Gorey very well. By withholding enormous amounts of information and only providing snippets he effectively overturns all expectations and provides, instead, an avenue that creates the potential for thought in the reader. The reader creates meaning from the books, much like a viewer looking at inkblots, seeing humor or terror or misery or whimsy. All reactions are possible depending on what the reader sees and brings to the texts.

By better understanding Gorey’s technique the reader understands important aspects of postmodern form, including questioning Grand Narratives, fragmentation, irony, and situating the reader as the locus of meaning. Gorey’s books becomes vital for showcasing postmodern narrative form, which all begins with his use of snapshots. This is the first key to understanding a

Gorey story. The second is comprehending Gorey’s wryly constructed narrative content which is a vivid example of camp.

Content: Camp

Only one commentator gets to the heart of Gorey’s writing style and is succinctly able to define what Gorey is doing with his books. Theatre critic John Simon, in his review for the

32 The original punctuation from the back cover is presented. 38

much-maligned Gorey Stories, which will be highlighted in chapter two, shows a tremendous sensibility for Gorey’s work. He states, “It is sophisticated entertainment for anyone bored with virtue and children and normalcy. Here is tasteful perversion. In short, camp, but at its smartest, as close as we can get today to Noel Coward.”33 While highly visible to a theatre critic due to the ubiquity of camp in the theatre, the idea that Gorey writes “camp,” or “tasteful perversion” is completely overlooked by his literary admirers where camp is not nearly as prominent.

Easily noticed, but difficult to define, camp was first classified by Christopher Isherwood in his book The World in The Evening. A side character explains to the protagonist, “True High

Camp always has an underlying seriousness. You can’t camp about something you don’t take seriously. You’re not making fun of it; you’re making fun out of it. You’re expressing what’s basically serious to you in terms of fun and artifice and elegance.”34 While this initial definition is limited in scope, Isherwood does provide a helpful starting point. Much of what Gorey does in his work is make something fun out of overly serious topics, sometimes to the point of making readers not “in on” the joke uncomfortable.

Susan Sontag provides a more detailed take on the subject in her “Notes On Camp.” As the title suggests Sontag does not present a definitive definition, but rather a series of her thoughts on the topic. Among them, Sontag claims that the essence of camp is “its love for the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration,” and that it is “esoteric, something of a private code.”35

She goes on to state that camp, “converts the serious into the frivolous,”36 and that camp does not

33 John Simon, “Gorey Stories,” Cue Magazine. November 4, 1978.

34Christopher Isherwood, The World in The Evening, (London: Random House, 1954), 110.

35Susan Sontag, “Notes on Camp,” first published in Partisan Review, 31:4, Fall 1964: 515-530. Accessed Feb. 23, 2018, https://monoskop.org/images/5/59/Sontag_Susan_1964_Notes_on_Camp.pdf. 1

36Sontag, 1. 39

admire beauty, but rather “stylization,”37 She gives numerous examples of camp, none that have any connections to the others, and specifies between “naïve” and “conscious” camp, the former being camp on accident and the later being camp on purpose.38 While she ultimately claims that the “pure examples of camp are unintentional,”39 some of her most convincing uses are conscious, such as Oscar Wilde’s epigrams. Gorey, in this context, certainly falls under the banner of conscious camp as he is highly aware of the irony of the stories he writes and achieves a camp aesthetic quite on purpose, as will be documented a bit later in the chapter.

Many of Sontag’s points are salient and helpful in understanding camp there are, however, points that are highly contested. To start, Sontag claims that camp is “non-political, or at least, apolitical.”40 She also asserts that camp certainly has an affinity for homosexuals, although not all homosexuals display camp taste. She asserts one reason homosexuals are purveyors of camp is that it is “a solvent for morality. It neutralizes moral indignation, sponsors playfulness.”41 Yet she also states that camp taste is “more than homosexual taste,” and that if homosexuals “hadn’t more or less invented Camp, someone else would.”42 Sontag’s stance on homosexuality and camp seemingly both validates camp’s place within the homosexual community, yet also diminishes their role in the aesthetic.

While “Notes on Camp” offers some vague ideas about the camp aesthetic while underplaying camp’s relationship to homosexuality, Jack Babuscio explicitly ties the two

37 Sontag, 2.

38 Sontag, 6.

39 Sontag, 6.

40 Sontag, 2.

41 Sontag, 12.

42 Sontag, 12. 40

together, stating that camp is a “relationship between activities, individuals, situations, and gayness.”43 Babuscio also gives four elementary aspects of camp: irony, aestheticism, theatricality and humor,44 which makes his definition much more specific than Sontag’s. While

Babusico explicitly ties camp to homosexuality, he also states, people who have camp personas or are responsible for camp material “need not be gay.”45 I point this out only because Gorey kept his sexuality private, stating when asked about his sexual preferences, “I’m neither one thing nor the other particularly.”46

While Babusico gives more concrete sign posts to what it means to be camp, Ann

Pellegrini brings needed insight and nuance to some of Sontag’s more contested points.

Pellegrini uses Sontag’s own changing thoughts on camp over her life, as well as what other scholars have written on the subject, to highlight camp’s highly political relevance, including how it is used as survival strategy, a form of communication, a visionary practice, and a way to make queer social agency and visibility. 47 Pellegrini also seeks to close the divide between camp and moral seriousness that Sontag suggests by highlighting aspects of camp that Sontag overlooks. She mentions that camp, at times, veers into, and not away from, “the painful and tragic.” Rather than “make fun out of” a serious or uncomfortable topic, camp can turn attention to it, often in uncomfortable ways. Pellegrini explains, “perhaps, then, camp does not so much

43 Jack Babuscio, “The Cinema of Camp (AKA Camp and the Gay Sensibility),” in Camp. Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader, ed. Fabio Cleto, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 118-119.

44 Babuscio, 119.

45 Babuscio, 119.

46 Lisa Solod, “Edward Gorey,” in Ascending Peculiarity, ed. Karen Wilken, (New York: Harcourt: 2001), 101.

47 Ann Pelligrini, “After Sontag: Future Notes on Camp,” in A Companion to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies, ed. George E. Haggerty and Molly McGarry, (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), 168 – 193. 41

‘neutralize the sting’ of social disapproval as multiply and extend it. The ethical call of camp extends itself in space, asking the audience to take up its share of the pain - and pleasure, too.”48

Pelligrini lists Sarah Silverman sporting a Hitler mustache in the publicity materials for Jesus is

Magic, or Sasha Baron Cohen, as Borat, singing “Throw the Jew Down the Well,” as two prominent examples of this sort of camp.

These ideas on camp are essential to understanding Gorey’s literature. Almost all of his work has a fun element to it, and none is meant to be taken completely seriously. Humor and irony seep throughout all his books, and to be offended by them is to misunderstand their purpose, which is typically to parody both social norms and a universe of stories and situations only known to him.

At the same time, Gorey’s camp is one that is not merely fun, but does contain a certain sting that, in some way as Pelligrini suggests, “multipl(ies) and extend(s)” the pain in the stories to the reader. It is not fun to watch kids die in The Gashlycrumb Tinies. The humor lies in the skewering of moralistic abecedariums that seek to caution children against the dangers of the world. But where a traditional cautionary tale provides clear examples of what not to do, Gorey’s extreme examples show how ridiculous those moralistic tales can be. They also show that real danger exists in the world that cannot be controlled. As painful as it might be, sometimes children die for no good reason, such as falling down stairs or choking on a peach. Gorey provides no comfort and lays bare the stark reality of chaos in the world, and yet, because of the clever word play and the pitch-perfect parody of Victorian sentiment of child discipline, he also provides a humorous read.

48 Pelligrini, 179. 42

The pain and pleasure of camp can also be seen in The Remembered Visit.49 In the book

Drusilla, aged eleven, goes “abroad” with her parents. On this trip she is “made ill by curious dishes,” and “called upon to admire views,” along with other activities that children, no doubt, must endure on a vacation with their parents. One day, “for some reason or the other,” her parents embark on an activity without her, leaving Drusilla with Miss Skrim-Pshaw for the day.

They go and visit Mr. Crague, an older gentleman, “who had done something lofty and cultured in the distant past.” While sitting to a “colorless tea” Ms. Skrim-Pshaw and Mr. Crague discuss

“a great many people who had done things.” Mr. Crague then asks Drusilla if she likes paper as he would like to show her his “collection with beautiful pieces of it, but they were up in his room.” Drusilla agrees to send Mr. Crague some pretty insides of envelopes that she has saved once she returns home. After years have passed somehow Drusilla remembers the promise she made to Mr. Crague. She notices, from a newspaper lining her drawer, that he died the fall after her visit. This causes her to feel “sad and neglectful,” and then a breeze picks up a few of her pretty pieces of paper and whisks them out of her window.

The camp qualities in The Remembered Visit are very subtle, but they are still present to the discerning eye. The story points out the very strange world of being an older, only child on a long vacation with parents in a highly ironic and humorous way. Drusilla is constantly doing things she doesn’t seem to like, eating food that she feels is weird, or looking at art she doesn’t understand. The book expertly and subtly points out just how awful it is to be a child on a vacation with adults.

It is also humorous that her parents suddenly are gone for the day, no doubt taking part in activities that Drusilla cannot be a part of, and before she knows it, she is with people she does

49 Gorey, The Remembered Visit. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965). 43

not know well at a tea that leaves her “more hungry” than before they ate. The story skillfully parodies the awkward social interactions that accompany being an older youth and interacting with the grown-up world.

It also parodies the realities of old age. In my reading of the book, Mr. Crague, a bearded older gentleman who wore furs in the past, stands in for Gorey himself. He doesn’t wear socks, the topiaries around his home are unkept, and the tea he offers is weak and pale. Gorey shows the little slips in his everyday life. It is a sadness everybody will experience as they watch their parents and themselves get older. It certainly is humorous, but also contains some real pain and feeling.

The story really shines when the characters of Mr. Crague and Drusilla have a shared moment of emotional resonance about their paper collections. There is an awkwardness to the visit, yet it impacts Drusilla to the point that she feels guilty about her neglect years later. This captures an aspect of being human, to feel remorse over something as trivial as failing to fulfill a promise to send the insides of envelopes to a person you hardly know. It is ridiculous and completely relatable. As the book ends with the pretty paper flying out Drusilla’s window, the reader must decide what this all means. Perhaps the paper flying represents Drusilla’s feelings of remorse, which are as ethereal as those floating envelopes. Perhaps the papers vanishing out the window are a representation of life and how it is fleeting and can be over in just a moment.

Perhaps it means both or neither of those things, it is up to the reader to decide a final meaning for themselves. Through camp Gorey can tell a witty, ironic tale that still has an emotional impact. The camp is very subtle and refined as it does not mock the characters, but rather the strange customs of forced social interaction, and how confusing the world can be for a young person.

I have shown thus far that the snapshot form and camp content are staples to any Gorey narrative. He expertly reconfigures narrative as a way to reconfigure sense, and his camp provides humor and sincerity at the same instant. These same characteristics are also on display through Gorey’s play texts, which also operate within a similar form and content. The remainder of this chapter will focus on Gorey’s dramatic work by looking at the structure of one of his plays, entitled English Soup, and by analyzing a few vignettes from the production. What similarities and differences arise when comparing Gorey’s literature with his dramatic texts?

Gorey as Playwright

After seeing Gorey Stories on Broadway and Tinned Lettuce at NYU, Gorey finally got around to producing his own work on Cape Cod in 1987 with Lost Shoelaces, a collection of short plays and vignettes grouped together in a sort of variety show format that included performances by actors and puppets. Of the eighteen productions that followed from 1990 –

2000 at least seven followed the “entertainments” format. The last of these, English Soup, premiered at the Cotuit Center for the Arts on Cape Cod in October of 1998, and traveled, on invitation, to Los Angeles, California, to perform three sold out shows at Storyopolis, a giant bookstore that has since gone out of business. English Soup makes for an appealing object of study for a few reasons. First, performed in 1998 it was Gorey’s final entertainment and his use of the form was at its most polished. Second, while the script has not been published, the Gorey

House has a copy of English Soup in their archives, which they have allowed me to read and take notes on for my research.50 I was not allowed to make copies of the text or to take a copy with me. While there are obvious limitations from working this way, reading the script gave me

50 To be clear, the rights to the script are owned by the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust, and while I have reached out to them many times, they have not been forthcoming with permissions to use unpublished material, or to make this material available for my use. The Gorey House, on the other hand, have allowed me to read the script and make some notes for this chapter. 45

insights as to how Gorey’s entertainments were structured, and what a performance might be like. Taking insights from the script the snapshot format and camp aesthetic of Gorey’s books are very prevalent in his theatre work. I imagine this type of item, a script used for a specific production, marked up by performers, and unavailable except for special circumstances to be an example of disembodied theatre, whereas a published script would fit more into Carlson’s

“haunted text.”51

The program for the show reveals several characteristics of a Gorey entertainment.52 To start, Act one features an Overture and seven vignettes: “The Phthyical Xiphapagus,” “Ferry

Tale I,” “With Love All Things are Possible,” “The Epiplectic Bicycle,” “Ferry Tale II,” “The

Forgotten Trip,” and “The Lawn Party.” Act Two includes an Overture, and five more pieces:

“The Doubtful Guest,” “Ferry Tale III,” “The Eggplant Frog,” “Horror at Hamstrung Hall,” and

“Litanies.” The program also states that music for the evening was by “Vivaldi, Ferdericks [sic],

Muller, Mozart, Rosser, and frogs.”53 Further down it continues, “Ferry Tales from Contes au bac by Madame Machine, englished by Mrs. Regina Dowdy.”

Even a quick glance at the program calls attention to Gorey’s use of the snapshots and camp. Gorey and company presented twelve separate pieces, not including the two overtures, and while there does seem to be some connection in a few of the pieces, such as the three Ferry Tale vignettes, it seems a disparate assortment of stories. Two of the scenes should stand out to Gorey fans as “The Epiplectic Bicycle” and “The Doubtful Guest” are well-known books in the Gorey canon.

51 Marvin Carlson, The Haunted Stage: Theatre as Memory Machine, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2003), 16-51.

52 A copy of the program can be found in Carol Verberg, Edward Gorey Plays Cape Cod, (San Francisco: Boom-Books, 2011), 28 -29.

53 The [sic] is listed in the program. 46

Camp can be found even in the program as the idea that the “Ferry Tale” stories were, apparently, from some French tale by Madam Machine. Fans would be aware of this fib, as well as the fact that Regina Dowdy was one of Gorey’s many anagram pen names, and would, at least in theory, be in on the gag. The performances would be full of these little winks and inside jokes to the amusement of those in the know and to go over the heads of the un-oriented. The listing of the classical music composers includes such well-known names as Mozart and Vivaldi, but many other names are ponderous. I don’t know why there is a [sic] by “Ferdericks,” other than it looks misspelled, or what is meant by including “frogs” in the music listings. These are, perhaps, jokes that have even gone over my head.

The reviews for the play are mostly positive. Critics from around Cape Cod would have been familiar with Gorey’s entertainments by 1998. Both Cindy Nickerson of the Cape Cod

Times and Joanne M. Brianna from Falmouth Enterprise enjoyed aspects of the play and gave praise to the writing and to the actors. 54 Both specifically enjoyed the “Ferry Tale” pieces as they featured the puppets of La Théâtricule Stoïque. Brianna claims, “people in the audience were applauding,” before the third puppet skit “even began.” Both also enjoyed “With Love All

Things Are Possible” which centered around each member of the company relating the good and bad from succeeding or failing to send along a chain letter. One member of the company stated that his neglecting to participate had resulted in his death.

At the same time, both critics specifically point out the weakness of one the vignettes, the finale of act one entitled “The Lawn Party.” Brianna states that the piece is “dragging” by the end, and Nickerson suggests that the skit was “tedious,” but admits “true Gorey fans will probably appreciate the utter daffiness of the goings-on.” So while both of these reviewers

54 Cindy Nickerson, “English Soup has Whimsy and Wit.” Cape Cod Times, October 4, 1998: D-7. Joanne M. Brianna, “Edward Gorey’s Latest Bizarre, Twisted, Wonderful.” Falmouth Enterprise, October 9, 1998 47

enjoyed the show as a whole and recommend audience members attend, both found their patience tested by “The Lawn Party.” Most of the shorts were presented as a narrator tells a story while actors portrayed the events, as would be the case with “The Doubtful Guest,” and all the

“Ferry Tale” vignettes. “The Lawn Party,” on the other hand, is a series of conversations by the seven cast members who are attending a party that no one seems to be enjoying. The conversations occur between two characters at a time and as a topic ends one person will leave and another take their place for another conversation. The scene was noteworthy as it was the only vignette driven by dialogue rather than a narrator. For the remainder of this chapter, I’ll first detail the “Ferry Tale” vignettes to explore how narrator driven scenes were constructed, and then analyze the somewhat maligned “The Lawn Party” to see how it differs in dramaturgy from the rest of the scenes.

The three “Ferry Tale” shorts are all centered around families who are preparing to go on a vacation or have just returned from one. “Ferry Tale I” details the “Smudgepot” family, and how they went on a trip and returned “the same way.” Once home they took “several weeks” to unpack all their things, and then began the arduous task of displaying their souvenirs and arranging them throughout the house. After their trip, they take pains to read books from the library that mentions the places they visited. In the end though, all their beloved items from the trip end up in the attic and become “forgotten.” “Ferry Tale III” tells a similar tale, but from a different perspective. This time the “Toadwarp” family prepares to go on a trip. The story tells how they read literature to prepare, and use guidebooks to meticulously plan every step of their journey. They bring along a “steamer trunk” even though it is cumbersome, so that they can have an ample supply of “Q.R.V.,” a mystery product often used as a joke by Gorey in stories and poems. The story ends stating that the family “remembered almost nothing” of the journey once

they had returned home.

Both of these “Ferry Tale” vignettes are less than a page in length, and the written prose would be spoken by a narrator while puppets performed the events.55 While I don’t know exactly what the puppets were up to in these pieces, it is easy to see the appeal in the way Gorey camps on the frustrating ordeals of travel. Both families spend an enormous amount of effort in recovering from or preparing to go on a trip. Despite all their rigorous efforts in organizing or remembering their journeys both stories end in a similar, ironic way, with items ending up in the attic and memories fading away. While pessimistic, both give a humorous tone to the much-ado required for traveling.

Camp is also very clearly shown in “The Lawn Party.” The conversations, by characters who seem to vaguely know each other yet seem cool and detached, all center around basic small talk, misunderstandings, worry over hors d’oeuvres, and a fascination with the haha, a recessed barrier that doesn’t disrupt the view of the landscape. So, a haha will keep the sheep in place and a person might not notice it until they step into it and hurt themselves. In “The Lawn Party,” the haha is a constant topic of conversation as seemingly all of guests in attendance are quite concerned about others falling into it. It is first brought up when the character Three, speaks to

Two in the scene’s second conversation:

THREE: That’s all right then. Although I could have told all of you at once at the

same time not to go near the haha.

TWO: I take it this applies to everybody present?

THREE: Yes indeed. It is filled with nervous sheep.

55 The puppets from La Théâtricule Stoïque are explained in greater detail in chapter four. 49

TWO: I shall be sure to inform anyone I encounter. (As TWO exits, to someone

unseen offstage.) Do not go near the haha.

Social anxiety, and anxiety about social anxiety, persists as FOUR meets FIVE for the first time:

FIVE: I wonder why I bother to come.

FOUR: I’ve been wondering the same thing for some time.

FIVE: I’ve only just arrived.

FOUR: I’ve been here for at least seven or eight minutes, maybe more.

FIVE: I expect they’ve already run out of hors d’oeuvres.

FOUR: Quite probably. At least I’ve not been offered any, not even a round of

toast spread with a nameless paste.

FIVE: But if I’d come earlier there would have been nobody here.

FOUR: I dawdled in the lane for what seemed like an eternity as it is.

FIVE: I went near enough to the haha to overhear the sounds made by morose

sheep.

FOUR: I have been told they have become nervous since then.

FIVE: There don’t seem to be many even now.

FOUR: Sheep?

FIVE: People.

Pause.

FOUR and FIVE do not seem to want to be at the party, and spend the time chatting about the what a grind it is to there. They also mistake, or conflate, when they are taking about people or when they are talking about sheep, alluding to the herd mentality of such an event. Awkwardness and concern continue as character SIX first enters and talks to character FIVE:

SIX: I had no idea you were going to be here.

FIVE: Nor I you.

SIX: There is no need to be insulting (Six exits, states as he’s leaving) Let

someone else tell her to stay away from the haha.

The skit is a whopping nineteen pages of social missteps, mix-ups, and musings on the ha-ha. The piece ends with one of the characters stating that it sounds as if someone is “running amok” with the garden roller, and then the skit, at least in written form, abruptly ends.

“The Lawn Party” does in fact go longer than a typical skit about social awkwardness.

While the “Ferry Tale” vignettes offer quick and funny anecdotes about the perils of travel, “The

Lawn Party” seeks to create the awkwardness and, as Nickerson pointed out, tediousness of social interaction within a party setting. If Gorey had presented a six or seven-page rendition of the play, with a few jokes and a timely conclusion, then the true frustration and awkwardness of forced social interaction could not be fully appreciated. Only if Gorey carried on, made the skit much longer than it needed to be, would the audience fully experience the pain of forced, awkward, social encounters. Gorey, clearly, is not just trying to present funny stories, but also endeavors to create aspects of lived realities that are realized through the audience’s discomfort.

The play is camp in the way that it queers forced social interaction.

The skit also exhibits the snapshot form. These short conversations feature all three of

Gorey’s unifying elements: theme, character and place. Providing small snippets of what everyone is up to without ever giving too many details ensures a discombobulated feel rather than a concrete beginning, middle, and end. This approach, while non-traditional, perhaps better mirrors the uncomfortable feeling of attending a party.

In many ways these plays mirror his books in that they will not be enjoyed by everyone,

especially people looking for a well-made story that would be traditional and easy to follow.

Gorey’s performers often have noted that it would be typical for about half of the audience to leave at intermission.56 I asked Eric Edwards, an actor in many of Gorey’s productions his thoughts as to why this might be:

The myth of Edward would float by and everybody would get a sniff of that and

say, oh I want to try that. Yeah, by halftime they'd seen enough. […] If you're not

into absurdity, I don't know what I mean by that exactly, have to unpack that. But

if you're not into that, and your sort of rot gut relentless Protestant realist types

with a little twinge, you know, a little faint burn edge of the modern, then you're

not going to want to stay. So we figured, out then.

Edwards paints a terrific picture of the sort of audience members who might not be fully into what these performances were attempting. While some might be curious about Gorey, or had heard of him, often they could not maintain an interest past a certain point. The main difference between Gorey’s books and plays is the fact that the reader can control the duration of a story by how fast they read, or if they got confused or offended they can put the book down and not read it. An audience member at a play, however, has no control as to how the story will be presented and, outside of leaving the theatre, must endure what the performers are presenting. This use of space and duration are what make the plays distinctive from the books, and perhaps what made

Gorey interested in writing and performing his work. He states in interviews his admiration for

Samuel Beckett,57 and this appreciation shows in his similar use of form that Edwards, with

56 This fact is almost ubiquitous among writings about the plays, but Vergberg first alludes to in in Edward Gorey on Stage, 32.

57 Tobi Tobias, “Balletgorey.” In Ascending Peculiarity, ed. Karen Wilken, (New York: Harcourt, 2001) 23.

some hesitation, labels as absurd. While it’s not clear if Edwards means that Gorey’s works mirror Martin Esslin’s definition in Theatre of the Absurd, where the plays use form to express an existential philosophy, or if he’s referring to the popular meaning of the word, meaning ridiculous or strange, but either might characterize Gorey’s plays, and just as there were audience members who would check out early, there were also devout fans who would attend every production.58

Edwards’s use of the term absurd also recalls a key difference between the books and the plays. While the books, untethered to any living body, can quickly jump between space and time, the plays are bound to the temporal limitations of actors on a stage. While the snapshot form is in place in that there are many short vignettes presented through the evening, the vignettes themselves are much more contained by time and place than Gorey’s books. This binding effect seems to place the dramatic work more in line with Esslin’s thoughts on absurd theatre, in that,

"[it] strives to express its sense of the senselessness of the human condition and the inadequacy of the rational approach by the open abandonment of rational devices and discursive thought."59

While I don’t think Gorey’s books are displaying this absurdist sensibility, at least not completely, the dramatic work appears to lean that way. Clearly, a further investigation is warranted as the playscripts become available to a wider audience.

The snapshots and camp so prevalent in Gorey’s books are readily seen in his dramatic texts, and the plays are unique in that, rather than being paired with his illustrations, they are meant to be embodied by performers or puppets. Even within the examples I’ve provided here, which make up only a small portion of Gorey’s dramatic work, it is easy to see Gorey’s inventive

58 This also is mainly anecdotal, but in my interview with Eric Edwards we talked about the fans who would attend each production.

59 Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd, (New York: Vintage, 1961), 24. 53

and spirited use of form and content in his plays. His plays surely deserve publication and distribution so his cleaver genius can be embodied by other theatre and puppet troupes everywhere.

CHAPTER THREE

TREMENDOUS SUCCESS AND TERRIBLE FAILURE: THE BROADWAY SHOWS OF EDWARD GOREY

On October 20, 1977 in the Martin Beck Theatre on Broadway, a revival of the Hamilton

Deane and John L. Balderston play Dracula opened after five preview performances. The original production premièred in New York on October 5, 1927 in the Fulton Theatre starring

Bella Lugosi in the titular role. This new production was notable for two reasons. First, it starred a young and very attractive Frank Langella as Dracula, a sexy rather than a terrifying vampire

(figure 3). Second, the production featured set and costume designs by Edward Gorey, mostly known at the time for his illustrations. The production was a rousing success, playing for over two years and for 925 performances.

Figure 3: Frank Langella in Dracula. Photo by Martha Swope © The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

The next fall featured another Gorey production which ran concurrently with Dracula on

Broadway. On October 17, 1978 Gorey Stories began previews. Coined as “An Entertainment with Music” the 90-minute play featured enactments of seventeen of Gorey’s short books with musical accompaniment. Gorey designed the set and costumes but the cast of 5 men and 4

women were all virtually unknown to Broadway audiences. The production officially opened, and closed, on October 30, lasting only one performance and sixteen previews.

While the shows were both on Broadway at the same time, and both prominently featured

Gorey in their advertising, the length and profitability could not have been more different. Why was Dracula so successful and Gorey Stories not, and how was it that someone as talented but adverse to the mainstream and famously reclusive as Gorey could have two shows on Broadway at the same time? Through this chapter I will argue that there is one aspect of Gorey’s work, his macabre designs and illustrations, that is marketable and extremely popular given the right circumstances. However, there is a second aspect, his narrative style and structure, which is deeply polarizing, loved by some, misunderstood by or off-putting to others. Gorey’s Broadway shows beautifully exemplify these two aspects of his art, and this chapter will showcase the visual and narrative aspects of both shows. I will first give details concerning how Dracula and

Gorey Stories came to be, their journeys to Broadway, and their critical reception once there. I will then analyze archival pictures of the set and costumes for both shows, as well as “Edward

Gorey’s Dracula Toy Theatre,” which is a paper model of the set, in order to compare the design elements for both shows with the narrative structures of the plays. Finally, I will contextualize the in terms of Gorey and his mixed feelings about the productions. He roundly enjoyed Gorey

Stories and only tepidly accepted Dracula. All of this will demonstrate that what Gorey is most well-known for, gothic and macabre design, is not a full representation of who he is as an artist.

Dracula: A Sumptuous, “Bloodless”1 Hit.

The idea to produce Dracula came from John Wulp – an artist and theatrical jack-of-all- trades who ventured into production as an avenue to showcase his own work. He formed the

1 Richard Eder, “Theatre: An Elegant and Bloodless Dracula.” New York Times, October 21, 1977: 55.

Nantucket Stage Company and in 1973 went about producing their first summer season in the auditorium of the Cyrus Pierce School on the island. The plays included one of his own, The

Saintliness of Margery Kempe, as well as Marco Polo Sings a Solo, a new play by John Guare.

Welp felt like he needed a crowd pleaser for the season and along with collaborators decided to produce the old Deane and Balderston script for Dracula. A visibly drunk Bobby Bushong recommended they hire Edward Gorey to do the sets and costumes.2 Wulp reports in his autobiography that when he called Gorey—as his number was in the phonebook—explained the project, and asked him to design Gorey replied, “Sure, why not?”3

While the other productions fizzled for a variety of reasons, Dracula became an enormous hit. Reviews were overwhelmingly positive both locally and nationally. Newsweek called the show “delicious” and “extraordinary,” stating that Gorey’s designs provided “the right atmosphere of sophisticated scariness.”4 Cape Cod Illustrated gushed that the play was “one of the most unique dramatic offerings to be presented so far this season. It is a stunning production.”5 Things fell apart for the Nantucket Stage Company the following year,6 but

Dracula had been such a stellar success that Wulp endeavored to move the production to

Broadway. While he obtained the amateur and summer rights for the script, Harry Rigby, a

2 John Wulp, The Bing-Bango Orchestra, (self-published, 2016), chapter 12, page 4, accessed Feb. 23, 2018, https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/29b477_1a8e7fc76de144d0a24e523e146c2355.pdf. 3 Wulp, chapter 12, page 4.

4 Charles Michender, “Nantucket Gothic,” Newsweek, July 16, 1973, available at http://goreyana.blogspot.com/2014/07/1973-dracula-review.html.

5 Evelyn Lawson, “Dracula, undead on Nantucket,” Cape Cod Times, July 5, 1973.

6 Wulp reports that the bleachers they used in 1974 badly warped the floor of the High School and they weren’t welcomed back. As theatre spaces on the Cape were limited, he struggled to find a suitable replacement. Finally, after procuring a space it burned down shortly thereafter. He claims he sold his house to pay off the debts he acquired to run the company, and moved back to New York, tears streaming down his face. The entire story can be found in John Wulp, The Bing-Bango Orchestra, (self-published, 2016), Chapter 12, accessed Feb. 23, 2018. https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/29b477_1a8e7fc76de144d0a24e523e146c2355.pdf 57

longtime Broadway producer and friend of Gorey’s, grabbed the first-class rights as soon as the favorable reviews for the Nantucket production came out.7 What followed for Wulp was years of waiting to get back the rights so he could raise the needed funds for a Broadway production.

The Hamilton Dean and John L. Balderston script for Dracula follows a recognizable melodramatic plot structure. In the English countryside on the estate of Dr. Seward, his daughter,

Lucy, has taken ill and no one can tell the cause. The only apparent symptom that accompanies her weak state is two dots on her neck. The show begins as her fiancée, Jonathan Harker, and Dr.

Seward’s former professor and mentor, Abraham Van Helsing, have traveled to the manor to be with Lucy and assist in her treatment. Van Helsing identifies a vampire as the cause of Lucy’s troubles and the group uses Lucy as bait to identify the vampire. Their plan succeeds as they recognize Dracula, the Seward’s new neighbor, as the villain and attempt to hunt him down.

While they are gone, Dracula visits–and seduces–Lucy in her boudoir. In act three Lucy’s condition worsens, but the characters realize that Renfield, one of Dr. Seward’s patients at the manor, is under the Count’s spell and Van Helsing tricks him into leading the group to the vault where Dracula rests during the day. Once there Harker jams a stake into Dracula’s heart, killing him and restoring Renfield and Lucy to their full health.

Harry Rigby’s plans for Dracula, which centered around Ricardo Montalban playing the lead character, never came to fruition as he was unable to secure the needed funds. He signed the rights, not to Wulp, but to a different producer, Bruce Mailman. A lengthy legal battle ensued.

Only after Edward Gorey wrote a letter stating that he would only design the show for Wulp did

7 John Wulp, The Bing-Bango Orchestra, (self-published, 2016), chapter 13, page 2, accessed Feb. 23, 2018. https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/29b477_0adebc2d21824c56aff37062a8b584dc.pdf

Mailman eventually release the rights to him.8 Wulp secured the $300,000 funding for the show from several sources, including Jujamycn theatres–who owned the Martin Beck at the time—art collector Max Weitzenhoffer, and his next-door neighbors Elizabeth McCann and Nelle Nugent who wanted to get involved in show business.9 He retained Nantucket director Dennis Rosa, hired Frank Langella as Dracula, and scheduled previews in Boston with a Broadway opening in

October of 1977.10

Even before opening the press was very favorable. On October 17, 1977, three days before the official premiere, Mel Gussow of the New York Times gave a rousing introduction to the production and to Gorey, as the article tells more about Gorey than it does about Dracula. He states, “This is ‘the Edward Gorey production of Dracula’ though Gorey is not the author, producer or director. But more than anyone, he is responsible for the evening; it is his comically malevolent spirit that infects this Dracula.”11 Gussow goes on to tell of Gorey’s books and history as well as the design aspects of Dracula in the lengthy article, framing the show as a massive hit based on the Cape Cod production. He points out that the sumptuous scenery and special effects, which accounted for about an eighth of the production’s $300,000 budget, were

“more lavish and detailed than is usual on Broadway.”12 Gussow, after praising Gorey for the entire article, finishes with “I can testify it is a thoroughly Gorey evening with Dracula.”13

8 Wulp, The Bingo-Bango Orchestra, Chapter 13, page 2, accessed Feb. 23, 2018, https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/29b477_0adebc2d21824c56aff37062a8b584dc.pdf. Welp asserts that this is the case. although Gorey never told the story in any interview I’ve seen.

9 Wulp, Chapter 13, page 3.

10 Wulp, Chapter 13, page 3 – 4.

11 Mel Gussow, “Gorey Goes Batty,” New York Times, October 17, 1977: 222.

12 Gussow, “Gorey Goes Batty.”

13 Gussow, “Gorey Goes Batty.” 59

Immediately after opening a wave of positive reviews followed. Along with Gussow’s introduction, two other New York Times stories appeared. Richard Eder’s review gave the show some praise but quibbled a bit about the “bloodless” production. He enjoyed the direction, lighting, and Gorey’s designs, even if they were “too clever” at times. He found most of the acting “polished,” but “not very interesting.” While there were “stylish” and “tense moments,” along with a “bone-shaking ending, […] generally…the effect of this Dracula is a beguilement, that appears and submerges, separated by stretches of mere patience.” He gushes that Frank

Langella is “stunning,” “beautiful and sensual,” even if he “notably lacks terror.” Clearly, while there are aspects he liked about the production, Eder gave a decidedly mixed review.14 Walter

Kerr, in an article about parody on Broadway, also had mixed feelings about both Dracula productions playing at the time.15 He commends the opulence of Gorey’s designs, as well

Langella’s performance, “a superb Dracula as Draculas go,” but dislikes the campy aspects that permeate the production, seeming to prefer a less self-aware production. While the show was fun it lacked seriousness for Kerr.16 While these reviews indicate mixed feelings about the production, the fact that the Times ran three different stories, all prominently featuring pictures of

Langella, greatly boosted the profile of the production. Dracula was also mentioned in other

Times articles, including a “critics favorites” piece, that ran in December of 1977, in which

Gussow places the play as one of the best running at the moment.17 This blanketing of coverage from the Times certainly helped the show become a hit.

14 Richard Eder, “Theatre: An Elegant and Bloodless Dracula.” New York Times, October 21, 1977: 55.

15 The productions were Gorey’s on Broadway and The Passion of Dracula which was playing downtown at the Cherry Lane Theatre, which, according to Kerr was even campier.

16 Walter Kerr, “Parody in and Out of Focus.” New York Times, Oct. 30, 1977: 79.

17 Mel Gussow, “The Critics Choose Their Personal Favorites.” New York Times. Dec. 9 1977: C6. 60

Dracula also received positive reviews from other newspapers and media outlets. Martin

Gottfried for the New York Post lauded the “spectacular” production, pointing out that, while designers do not typically receive the most credit for a play, Gorey “dominates this one, sets the tone and propels it.” Only a “spoil sport,” Gottfried concluded, would not enjoy the production.18

Edwin Wilson for The Wall Street Journal also called the visual aspects of the production

“spectacular” and commended the “style” of the play.19 The overall positive critical vibe for the show certainly contributed to its success.

Another key to the success of Dracula was the deft way the production presented macabre, and slightly silly, darkness that was contained by the end of the show. This push and pull was achieved through the pairing of Gorey’s designs with a recognizable melodramatic story. While the designs suited the dark and Gothic tone of the production, they also provided support for the story. Rather than using Gorey’s drawings to render a scenic design that looked like an estate, the producers took Gorey’s drawings and blew them up to enormous size. The proscenium arch featured drawn shrouded female statues in bat-framed plinths on the right and left while an enormous skull with bat wings adorned the top of the arch. While the three set locations were in disparate locations–a library, a bedroom and Dracula’s vault–all felt as if they took place in luxurious crypts surrounded by cobblestone walls and five high archways, adorned with bat capstones. Bats and skulls, both large and small, continued within the set design in each act and heightened the overall sense of the macabre. Act one, the library, featured bat winged skulls above both a door and window that led to outside of the manner (figure 4). Act two,

Lucy’s boudoir, featured skeleton cherubs that parted the curtains both to Lucy’s canopied bed

18 Martin Gottfried, “Dracula is Pure Escape, Great Fun,” The New York Post, October 21, 1977.

19 Edwin Wilson, “The Bloody Count Rises,” The Wall Street Journal, October 25, 1977. 61

and to the drapes to her balcony door. Bat wallpaper also lined the partition while a winged skull, with a rose underneath, adorned Lucy’s bedspread. Act three, Dracula’s vault, featured the enormous bat archway outlined by cobblestone and piled skulls. Astute audience members could see a plethora of bats, skulls, and other creepy crawlies drawn into the nooks and crannies of each act.

Figure 4: Act one set from Dracula. Photo by Martha Swope © The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

The bats were also present in the costume design and serve to visually separate those who are under Dracula’s spell from those who are not. The sleeves on Lucy’s dress in act one resembled wings and bats adorned her night gown in act two. Renfeild, who is also under

Dracula’s control, wore pajamas with large bat buttons. The bats were not present on any of the other costumes, which captured the sense of Edwardian evening wear that Gorey is famous for in his drawings.

This costume and set design is certainly campy, as many critics pointed out, but is also effective in communicating story. The bats and crypt-like appearance in the drawing room and

Lucy’s bedroom symbolize how Dracula has infiltrated all aspects of life at the manor as they

now mirror his vault. The costumes further emphasized Dracula’s effect on other characters.

Lucy’s subtle wing-sleeves and bat imprints on her clothing show how she is being influenced by the Count. The large bat buttons on Renfeild’s costume show that he is totally under Dracula’s control. Dracula’s cape, which he wears in acts one and two, provide him with bat wings that visually connect his costume to Lucy’s and Renfeild’s.

While the costume and set design provide creepy and campy fun for the audience to enjoy, Dracula follows a very tried and true melodramatic plot structure. The play presents a problem that needs solving: clever heroes battle an evil, yet intriguing and sexy, villain and good triumphs in the end. The story, through predictable, is reassuring as problems faced in the world can be fixed and evil put in check. While Gorey’s visual aesthetic is key to the production, his fondness for narrative complexity is noticeably absent.

Gorey Stories: “Too Smart for Broadway”20

Just as Dracula began as a project that recruited Gorey as a designer, Gorey Stories began without any input from the artist at all. In 1974 Stephen Currens, then a student in the theatre department at the University of Kentucky, collaborated with music student David Aldrich in creating a one-act play based on a few of Gorey’s short stories for the University’s All-Night

Theatre Festival. In 1975, the theatre department at UK produced a full-length Gorey Stories for their main stage season.21

Currens then went to New York to attempt to find a producer for the play and, after many rejections, found a fan in Howard Ashman. Ashman would later help write Little Shop of

Horrors as well as several very popular Disney musicals, but at the time was the artistic director

20 Martin Gottfried, “Theatre: Grown-Up Theatre,” Saturday Review, January 6, 1979: 48.

21 Rich Copley, “Gorey Stories Come Full Circle,” Lexington Herald Leader, October 8, 2010, accessed Feb. 23, 2018, http://www.kentucky.com/entertainment/performing-arts/article44053254.html#0. 63

for the WPA Theatre, a small Off-Off Broadway venue at 138 5th Ave. Ashman produced Gorey

Stories as a part of WPA’s 1977 season where it ran for twelve performances and proved to be a great success. In a glowing review New York Times critic Mel Gussow stated that the play was,

“exquisite…a merrily sinister musical collage,” and that that it had “wit, economy, and malice.”22 Encouraged by this review and, perhaps, the success of Dracula, Harry Rigby—the same friend of Gorey who had initially grabbed the rights to Dracula—partnered with John

Wulp, Terry Allen Kramer, and Hale Matthews, and moved Gorey Stories to the Booth theatre on Broadway for a Halloween opening in 1978. The producers also hired Gorey, who had not been involved with the show up to that point, to design sets and costumes for the Broadway production. All was in place for a Halloween smash following a formula that paralleled the highly successful Dracula.

Gorey Stories presents a series of short vignettes, along with a few poems, based on

Gorey’s books, many of which were highlighted in chapter one. The first act, set in a Victorian drawing room, begins with the actors frozen in a tableau. One by one they unfreeze to recite a limerick from The Listing Attic and then freeze again as the next poem begins. Following the poems, the actors proceed to act out other Gorey books one at a time, mostly pantomiming the various sets and props needed for each story.23 The second act affords a bit more of a structure as a narrator explains that one Mr. Earbrass, an author, is trying to write his next novel. The text is directly from The Unstrung Harp, explained in chapter four, and the play now takes on the narrative trajectory of Earbrass attempting to string together a good story. Vignettes from six

22 Mel Gussow, “’Gorey Stories’ are Exquisite Playlets,” New York Times, Dec. 15, 1977: C19.

23 The stories from the first act include: The Hapless Child, The Wuggly Ump, The Curious Sofa, The Sinking Spell, The Gilded Bat, The Insect God, The Willowdale Handcar, The Doubtful Guest, and The Blue Aspic.

different Gorey books then play out, all with Earbrass’s narration.24 The plot occasionally shifts to Earbrass’s process of writing, but then shifts back to the stories themselves. At the end, we are told, Earbrass has indeed published his work, and now he stands on his property at twilight while words–such as anguish, turnips, and conjunctions—flood through his mind, mirroring the ending of The Unstrung Harp. The actors then exit the stage but return to sing one final song of Gorey’s most famous book, The Gashlycrumb Tinies, set to music in a sort of curtain call.

The press response to the Broadway production of Gorey Stories was very different than the reception for Dracula. A few prominent accounts state that a newspaper strike and lack of reviews led to the production having difficulty finding an audience.25 This is true to a point, but deserves parsing out. The newspaper strike only affected The New York Times, and while a favorable review from Mel Gussow, who loved Dracula and the WPA production of Gorey

Stories, would have certainly been beneficial, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee that the production would have been any more successful. The Times did publish a short piece on the show a full four months before previews began, although it reads more like gossip than a preview as Gorey and director Tony Tannor seem to grumble more about the difficulty of the process of making the show rather than effectively promote it.26

24 The Pious Infant, The Osbick Bird, The Deranged Cousisns, The Eleventh Episode, The Lost Lions, The Loathsome Couple and The Gashlycrumb Tinies.

25 Ascending Peculiarity, ed. Karen Wilken (New York: Harcourt: 2001) 264. In Wilken’s endnotes for Richard Dyer’s “The Poisoned Penman,” she states that the newspaper strike is a main cause for the shows short run. Wilken also has the incorrect dates for the WPA performance. Stephen Currens also blames the newspaper strike in Rich Copley’s “Gorey Stories Come Full Circle,” Lexington Herald Leader, October 8, 2010, accessed Feb. 22, 2018, http://www.kentucky.com/entertainment/performing-arts/article44053254.html#0.

26 John Corry, “Broadway: Gorey Stories could drive an author and director Batty.” New York Times, June 23, 1978: C2

Although limited coverage from the Times certainly hindered the production’s success,

Tanner later gave this insight as to how other publications reacted, “The Post and The Daily

News were ambiguous. We got raves from John Simon. Basically, it was killed by two television critics: Dennis Cunningham and Pia Lindstrom.”27 A transcript of Cunningham’s television review exists, in which he positions himself as someone who knows about and enjoys Gorey’s books, which “read well, but sure don’t play well.” He goes on, “I hated virtually everything I cast my bored eyes on this evening, and I am trying, at this very moment, to restrain myself from saying some very nasty things.”28 Cunningham also stated that the play “shouldn’t be playing much longer.” The Post review, by Clive Barnes, is as ambiguous as Tanner expressed. Barnes, like Cunningham, positions himself as a fan of Gorey’s work, but claims that the stories work better in book form. He also states that the production is “unique, odd, perverse, and engaging

[…] It has the style of Gorey’s unique sensibility. It also has the impact of a mildly dampened rag.”29 Another mixed review comes from the Philadelphia Inquirer where William B. Collins gives a bit more insight into how Gorey’s books were presented, “as acquired tastes, this one takes a more perverse sensibility than some of us are able to bring to the theatre. A suitably cuckoo cast…striking Goreyesque attitudes, mime the stories to narration that is distributed among them.” He states that the first act, made up of vignettes of Gorey books is, “terribly precious, an entertainment devised by effete for true believers.” He lightens a bit about the

27 Janice Arkantov, “A Sick Slant on Life from a Gothic Artist: Tony Tanner, director who stage the Broadway debut of Gorey Stories presents the work in Hollywood 13 years later.” Los Angeles Times, February 2, 1992. http://articles.latimes.com/1992-02-02/entertainment/ca-1826_1_tony-tanner

28 Dennis Cunningham, “Gorey Stories” WCBS-TV 2, October 30, 1978, in Journal of New York Theatre Reviews 1978, vol. 38: 199.

29 Clive Barnes, “Staged Gorey Looks Pale,” The New York Post, October 31, 1978. 66

second act, which, because of the increased structure of including Mr. Earbrass as the writer of the stories, “nearly makes up for the archness of the rest of the production.”30

Although some reviewers were puzzled or bored by the show, others gave tremendously positive reviews. I previously quoted John Simon but will repeat it here because of the value of his insight. He states, “It is sophisticated entertainment for anyone bored with virtue and children and normalcy. Here is tasteful perversion, in short, camp, but at its smartest, as close as we can get today to Noel Coward, and beautifully made.”31 Months after the show had closed Martin

Gottfried lamented that “Gorey Stories was smart, too smart for its own good. Too smart for

Broadway.” The show, “abandoned to the television reviewers […] was condemned soundly and roundly by the lovers of Grease and The Wiz.”32 Both Simon and Gottfried argue that Gorey

Stories was sophisticated and intelligent entertainment and imply that the critics who did not like it were not smart enough to enjoy it. However, since they were published after the one-evening run, these positive reviews could not help an audience see the show.

Visual Aesthetic vs Narrative Structure

A key difference between the shows is what aspects of Gorey’s work each emphasized.

While Dracula focused on the artist’s visual aesthetic, Gorey Stories concentrated on the author’s narrative style and did not have the same sumptuous and luxurious visual aesthetic, focusing instead a style that relied mostly on the audience’s imagination. Another key difference is that Dracula’s tried and true melodramatic structure gave a dark show and story a happy ending. Gorey Stories, presenting Gorey’s snapshot and campy stories, is decidedly more

30 William B. Collins, “Gorey Stories: It’s Halloween on Broadway, Philadelphia Inquirer, November 2, 1978.

31 John Simon, “Gorey Stories,” Cue Magazine, November 3, 1978.

32 Martin Gottfried, “Theatre: Grown-Up Theatre,” Saturday Review, January 6, 1979, 48. 67

complicated from a narrative standpoint. The shows, while both centered around Gorey’s work, are fundamentally different in their design choices and the way they tell story.

While archival materials for the set design of Dracula are many and varied, there are no archival photos for the set design for Gorey Stories. However, the utility of the set can be inferred by comments made by critics and the show’s printed script. Reviewer John Beaufort noted about the set design in Gorey Stories, “whether to save money or for other reasons, Mr.

Gorey’s designs have been limited to Lady Celia’s drawing room and the summerhouse–neither of which has inspired Mr. Gorey to heights of antic creativity.”33 Collins wrote of the set, “In the first act, their creator has given them a drawing room with wallpaper that, like some addled dowager, cannot decide on a suitable paten. Watched from above by a cutout cat in a fake window.”34 The set description in the printed play affirms the simplicity noted by the critics,

“The lights come up on a Victorian drawing room sparsely furnished except for chairs and a lightweight settee or sofa. In addition, there is a light weight dressing screen and perhaps a cloak- tree up stage left.”35 The beginning of act two reads, “The setting is the same as before.”36 It is clear that the set did not attempt to capture visual spectacle in the same way that Dracula had, a point director Tony Tanner lamented long after the show closed. “‘I was kicking and screaming all the way,’ Tanner said, referring to the move to Broadway. ‘The Booth is too big a theater.

People paying $27.50, or whatever the price was then, don't want to be told to use their

33 John Beaufort, “Gorey ‘comics’ brought to stage: Scary Tales Miss Mark on Broadway.” The Christian Science Monitor, November 1, 1978.

34 William B. Collins, “Gorey Stories: It’s Halloween on Broadway, Philadelphia Inquirer, November 2, 1978. 35 Stephen Currens, Gorey Stories, (New York: Samuel French: 1983), 7.

36 Currens, 38.

imagination. They want to see it.’”37 Tanner’s insight not only speaks to a Broadway audience’s expectations of spectacle and visual pizzazz, but also gives an idea as to how the play was staged, using minimal design elements, counting on the actors the paint the picture and the audience to use their imagination to create Gorey’s world. This approach is the antithesis to how producers staged Dracula with its opulent set and spectacular special effects.

The costumes in Dracula and Gorey Stories are similar in that they both indicate style

Figure 5: Edward Gorey, back turned, with the cast of Gorey Stories. Photo by Martha Swope © The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. and period, but where Dracula’s costumes for Lucy and Renfield communicated what was happening to the characters in the story, the costumes for Gorey Stories provided versatility as all the actors play various characters throughout the evening, and their costume corresponds with the types of roles they will be portraying (figure 5). The script lists the character names along with the kind of stock characters they will be playing: maid, butler, hostess, spinster, singer, child, opera fan, author, and young man.38 The costumes provide utility for the actors and

37 Janice Arkantov, “A Sick Slant on Life From a Gothic Artist: Tony Tanner, director who stage the Broadway debut of Gorey Stories presents the work in Hollywood 13 years later.” Los Angeles Times, February 2, 1992, accessed Feb. 22 2018, http://articles.latimes.com/1992-02-02/entertainment/ca-1826_1_tony-tanner.

actresses to play all the types in the Gorey canon, as Gussow put it, “a gaggle of Goreys,”39 as well as present a Goreyesque aura of a distant and distinct past as they performed the various stories and poems throughout the evening.

The narrative structure of Gorey Stories is as unconventional as Dracula is predictable.

The show creators had difficulty wrapping the show in a recognizable narrative package, trying to present the short stories in a way that brings them together in some sort of whole. There is no discernable narrative through line other than Mr. Earbrass attempting to write his novel in the second act. Gorey’s stories are presented one by one, and as I detailed in chapter one, they can be disquieting, hilarious, or both depending on who is viewing them. To have some kind of idea as to how the actors performed the stories, I turn to Simon who mentioned that the performance featured, “the most refined people doing the most macabre and unnatural things with the best of taste.”40 While I do not know for sure how the stories were presented, the text from the playscript exactly matches the text in the books with virtually no stage directions, but from Simon’s description it is clear that the actors were refined in their presentation, which emphasizes the camp aspect of the stories when terrible things happen

While the narrative structure of Gorey Stories doesn’t follow the Aristotelian plot construction so common in movies and plays, its structure does have some precedent as plays such as Spoon River Anthology (1963) and For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide

When the Rainbow is Enuf (1976), which had just finished a two-year run at the Booth theatre in

38 Stephen Currens, Gorey Stories, (New York: Samuel French: 1983), 3.

39 Gussow, “’Gorey Stories’ are Exquisite Playlets.”

40 Simon, “Gorey Stories.”

1978,41 also follow non-traditional, patch-work quilt approaches to story. The issue with Gorey

Stories can be seen not only in its unconventional narrative form, but also in its content, which some might find bizarre and off-putting in the way that dark themes are presented as fun. The tantalizing naughtiness of Dracula is contained by the end of the show, but Gorey Stories offers no such comfort. There are no virtuous endings or poetic justice to make all right with the world.

Sometimes stories are deliberately terrible for comedic purposes, such as The Hapless Child where a little girl, Charlotte Sophia, is unintentionally run over by her own father while he is desperately looking for her. Other times they end with no closure, such as The Willowdale

Handcar where the protagonists go into a tunnel and never come out. To end the evening with

The Gashlycrumb Tinies, undoubtedly Gorey’s most famous work, further can alienate as the story is an abecedarium of how various children have died presented in rhymed couplets.

Audience members not in on the joke, rather than being titillated and soothed as they were in

Dracula, might find this experience repugnant.

Producers wagered that Gorey’s narratives could appeal to and satisfy a Broadway audience, but the bet did not pay off. Dracula’s success and the failure of Gorey Stories rather suggests that recognizable and comforting narratives surrounded by macabre, yet lavish settings can be fun and profitable, but sophisticated and challenging stories with limited visual accoutrement does not have a place on the Broadway stage.

Gorey’s Thoughts on Both Productions

Gorey’s take on the two shows indicates that his sentiment was exactly the opposite of

Broadway audiences. It is easy to assume that Dracula would be a project he would have been excited for, and maybe even have initiated, but that is far from the truth. Instead, he admitted, “I

41 Production information of the Booth theatre can be found at https://www.ibdb.com/theatre/booth-theatre- 1071 71

would never have taken that project to my bosom if they hadn’t offered lots of money. Not that I have anything against it; it just doesn’t interest me very much.”42 In the same interview, which occurred before the show opened, he stated, “I’m just designing this. They’re calling it my production, which I think must make the director feel a trifle idiotic.”43 Gorey makes it clear that this project was not his idea, and he is mystified by it bearing his name. In a further display of artistic unease Gorey told John Corry that he “did not like the execution” of the sets.44 He repeated as much to Dick Cavett, stating that he “practically had a cardiac arrest” when he saw the set for the first time. He explains “I felt the scale was wrong, that I should have done them on a larger scale. I don’t like blown-up drawing very much.” He later clarified, “everything was much too open.”45 Obviously, Gorey, while not being opposed to Dracula in principle, was not particularly enthusiastic about the production and not happy with how the set was realized. It is curious that the namesake of a hit production balks at taking credit or showing enthusiasm for it.

Conversely, Gorey’s reaction to the WPA production of Gorey Stories is just the opposite. He admitted years later, “I went down and saw it, and the minute I heard things I’d written coming out of other people’s mouths, I absolutely adored it, and I went to every performance. In the later previews for Broadway, I thought it was the best ensemble acting I had ever seen in my life.”46 He also admits in the interview, “It was the only time I appreciated my

42 Dahlin, “Edward Gorey,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 34.

43 Dahlin, “Edward Gorey,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 26.

44 John Corry, “Broadway: Gorey Stories could drive an author and director Batty.” New York Times, June 23, 1978.

45 Edward Gorey, interview by Dick Cavett, The Dick Cavett Show, WNET, New York, November 30, 1977. Found in Ascending Peculiarity, 63.

46 Richard Dyer, “The Poison Penman.” The Boston Globe Magazine, April 1, 1984, in Ascending Peculiarity, ed. Karen Wilken (New York: Harcourt, 2001), 122. 72

own work, because it had nothing to do with me–somebody else did it.”47 This suggestion that

Gorey might not like a production once he’s involved is strengthened by his own seeming exhaustion with the project once he was involved telling John Corry four months before the

Broadway opening, “I guess I’ll go see Gorey Stories when it opens. But then again, maybe I won’t. I’ll probably be in such a snit I won’t want to see it.”48 These comments followed his admitting that he didn’t like the realized set design for Dracula and suggests that he would not be happy with the set for Gorey Stories either. Whether or not Gorey was being facetious with these comments is hard to tell.

For an artist as subversive and polarizing as Gorey, the process of seeing his work realized and paraded about on Broadway must have been both thrilling and nauseating. It is widely known that Dracula’s commercial success gave Gorey the financial flexibility to purchase his home on Cape Cod, yet it also forever paired him with a production he did not seem to like very much. Gorey Stories, while not nearly as financially successful, inspired him so much that he saw every WPA performance and, while that enthusiasm might have cooled as his involvement increased, it also inspired him to produce his own plays on Cape Cod in the late

80’s and throughout the 90’s.

While many factors contributed to the financial triumph of Dracula and the disappointment of Gorey Stories, clearly Gorey’s visual aesthetic is much more easily marketable and consumable than Gorey’s narrative style. Perhaps if Gorey Stories had sought a smaller Off-Broadway venue following its initial run at the WPA theatre, or had provided more

47 Dyer, 122.

48 John Corry, “Broadway: Gorey Stories could drive an author and director Batty.” New York Times, June 23, 1978.

opulent settings the outcome could have been different, but Gorey’s narratives, meant to make people “uneasy,”49 will always be a tough sell on Broadway as they compete with feel-good musicals and star-powered revivals. While Gorey Stories didn’t last on Broadway, his theatrical adventures were just beginning.

49 Richard Dyer, “The Poison Penman,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 110. 74

CHAPTER FOUR

FROM KUNSTKAMMER TO COMMUNITY CENTER: AN INVESTIGATION OF THE EDWARD GOREY HOUSE

The Edward Gorey House, located in Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts on Cape Cod, requires, for most, a kind of pilgrimage to attend. While there are flights into “Hyannis, Martha’s

Vineyard, or Nantucket,”1 the closest major commercial airports are either Logan International in

Boston or Green Airport in Providence, Rhode Island, which are both over 75 miles away. As I always have flown into Boston, usually coming from Florida, the drive from a major metropolitan area into the more and more provincial surroundings on Cape Cod have had the soothing sensation of escape as the hustle of the big city disappears in the rear-view mirror. The drive is often congested, especially in the hectic summer months, but I have always been fortunate enough to drive into the Cape during the off-peak times and seasons, so the skyscrapers morphing into cottages and lobster shacks seems carefree and easy. As MA – 3A S becomes US-

6 E, and then 6A heading east, the anticipation continues to grow until I take a right onto

Strawberry Lane in Yarmouth Port.

The Edward Gorey House is the first home on the left after that right turn. Like Gorey and his work, his former home and current museum are off the beaten path. While tourist friendly spots – such as the beach, shops, or putt-putt golf courses – abound in other areas of the

Cape, the Gorey House is on the edge of a residential and business area and is the only tourist destination within considerable distance – unless one deems Jack’s Outback, the diner Gorey frequented, or Hallet’s store, which serves ice cream, to be of such ilk. Even Captain Frosty’s, a

1 "Plan Your Visit." | Edward Gorey House. Accessed January 25, 2017. http://www.edwardgoreyhouse.org/plan-your-visit. 75

popular counter-top fish and chips stop, is three miles up the road. Those who make the journey will find a beautiful early nineteenth century, two-story cape style house with central chimney, dormer windows, and gray shingles that cover the roof and walls (figure 6).

Figure 6: The Edward Gorey House

This chapter will consider the Gorey House and how it presents and shapes Gorey’s life and art for public view. Rather than preserve the house as it was when Gorey lived there, a practice many historic homes follow which I will detail below, the Gorey House actively shapes and curates the space to showcase Gorey’s art and personality in a way to maximize visitor enjoyment and education. I argue that there are theatrical aspects to museum presentations in that exhibits are organized around a common theme and then a concept is implemented as to how to best showcase pieces and artifacts. Items are then included or excluded based on the information and experiences that curators wish visitors to have. While not theatre exactly, the presentation of information organized in an appealing way mirrors a theatre production which chooses a script, incorporates a production concept which unifies the all aspects of design and performance. This

curated production is then exhibited at given times in a specific place. Rather than being a shortcoming, this theatrical aspect is what best allows museums to be community centers that appeal to both those previously initiated to the subject(s) and casual visitors alike. A way in which to parse these questions is to explore a museum space which contains both theatrical and non-theatrical artifacts to gauge the theatricality of the museum, and the possible continuation of the theatrical event. The Edward Gorey House is an ideal location for such an inquiry as it is a space that contains Gorey’s art, literature, personal items, and ephemera from his theatre work.

This chapter will first, briefly, detail the various museum spaces that influence the Gorey House including Kunstkammers, historic houses, art, and community museums. My focus will then shift to the Edward Gorey House, first as it existed for Gorey as a home, using Kevin McDermott’s book as the prime reference, and then contrast that with how it functions as a museum based on my multiple visits. My goal in this investigation will be to show the basic theatricality of the museum space and the potential for disembodied performances to continue through exhibits in his house. I analyze one such exhibit, a display of puppets from La Théâtricule Stoïque, in chapter four.

Gorey’s home and Gorey House

Like most things Gorey, the museum that bears his name is not traditional in many senses. The House’s 2017 exhibit, entitled Cabinet of Curiosities, presented items that Gorey collected throughout his life and suggested that the author, perhaps sub-consciously, created a personal Cabinet of Curiosities, or Kunstkammer, in his home when he lived there. This suggestion seems apt for Gorey, famously enamored with all things from the past, as

Kunstkammers were popular amongst the wealthy between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Art historian Francesaco Fiorani, provides this definition:

The Kunstkammer contained an impressive variety and amount of objects:

minerals, fossils, plants, stuffed animals, ancient and modern sculptures and

artifacts, paintings, scientific instruments, and automatons. A place of delight,

refuge and intellectual entertainment, as well as a means to express self-

promotion and political and intellectual prestige, the Kunstkammer was regarded

as a microcosm or theatre of the world, and a memory theatre.”2

Edward and Mary Alexander provide this insight to who audiences for cabinets in Italy or

Kunstkammers (sometimes called Wunderkammers) in Germany would be, “Both types of collection rarely were open to the public and remained the playthings of princes, popes, and plutocrats.”3 These definitions give the sense that the Kunstkammer was full of wonders, both from the natural and mechanized world, arranged for the delight of exclusive invited guests of the aristocracy. The fact that Fiorani uses the term “theatre” twice in her definition should not be overlooked, as seeing these wonders of art, science, and machinery all displayed together has a theatrical quality. Those lucky spectators would be treated to a show organized and presented for their enlightenment and amusement.

Contrast the Kunstkammer with the historic home museum in that, rather than showcasing a highly curated experience of the wonders of the world for a select few, historic homes preserve a person’s house to inspire the masses who visit. Scholars Patricia West and

Edward Alexander both mark Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington, as the first historic home which would set the template for those to follow.4 West argues that the aims of

2 Francesaco Fiorani, review of The Lure of Antiquity and the Cult of the Machine, by Horst Bredekamp, Renaissance Quarterly 51.1 (Spring 1998:268-270) p 269.

3 Edward P. Alexander and Mary Alexander, Museums in Motion: An Introduction to the History and Functions of Museums, (New York: Altamira, 2008), 5.

Mount Vernon, commissioned just before the onset of the civil war, and the early historic home movement are rooted in the desire to “provide the ‘rootless’ populace with a shared ancestral home and sacred heritage.”5 West states that these early homes were a part of the “cult of domesticity”6 of the nineteenth century, when there was a belief that the presentation of an idealized home would have a uplifting and steadying effect. This impulse is apparent in the preservation of Orchard House, home to Louisa May Alcott, as West explains, “it was posited that one of the best textbooks for character teaching is biography,” and that the “single-family suburban home began to take on mythical dimensions as the potential savior of American morality.”7 While West focuses on the political motivations of such museums, and the politics have certainly shifted over time, it is clear that these early historic homes have had a meaningful impact on the methods used by many historic homes today. While the “cult of domesticity” may have faded, the idea of the power of biography is still in force, as historic homes aim to impact society for the better by preserving the living spaces of meaningful individuals in such a way as to better those who visit.

The tension between the Kunstkammer and the historic home is what I wish to first investigate within The Edward Gorey House. To best gauge how the House exists as a museum I want to first see how it existed for Gorey, and how it could be presented as a historic home. I

4 Patricia West, Domesticating History: The Political Origins of America’s House Museums, (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1999). Edward P. Alexander, “Ann Pamela Cunningham and Washington’s Mount Vernon: The Historic House Museum,” in Museum Masters, (Nashville: The American Association for State and Local History, 1983), 177-204.

5 West, 3.

6 West, 1.

7 West, 54.

then contrast the lived-in Gorey now with the Gorey House museum today to demonstrate the

Figure 7: An old shingle, now on display at The Edward Gorey House connection between the museum and theatricality.

Gorey referred to his home as Elephant House, for reasons that nobody knows. Friend and photographer Kevin McDermott speculates it could be because of either its size, or perhaps the flecked-off gray paint that used coat to the outside shingles which gave the appearance of elephant skin (figure 7). “Yet it seems a more whimsical explanation is the most likely. When

Edward first toured the interior of the house he discovered, in an upstairs bathroom, an antique white porcelain toilet shaped very much like an elephant. In typical Edward fashion, he had the bathroom removed but saved the toilet, later incorporating it into the design of an end table.”8

After his death on April 15, 2000, McDermott was given access to photograph Elephant House before items were organized, cataloged, and moved into storage. McDermott met Gorey in 1985

8 Kevin McDermott, Elephant house, or, the home of Edward Gorey (San Francisco, CA: Pomegranate, 2003), as there are no page numbers in the book, I will give the section of the book from where the information is given. This selection comes from “The House.”

when he performed in Tinned Lettice, another adaptation of Gorey’s books for the stage, at NYU.

Gorey’s will dictated his house be sold upon his death.9 McDermott explains, “I realized the uniqueness of Edward’s home would soon be gone and that it need to be preserved in some way.” 10 On April 22, 2000, a week after Gorey died, McDermott photographed both the exterior and interior of his house as it looked when Gorey lived there. This is now an invaluable reference as it I compare the house in which Gorey lived to the museum that bears his name.

The book details everything about the house, from the exterior appearance to the eleven rooms of the interior.11 McDermott begins in the more public spaces—the front porch, the entrance room, and the kitchen, then progresses to areas where visitors would rarely, if ever, visit, including the bedroom and a “hidden room” that even close friends did not know was there.12

Like almost everything else written about him, Gorey as a person and personality becomes the focus of the book. The first passage, “The House,” gives some details about the structure and history, but mostly tells amusing anecdotes about Gorey such as how he hired someone to paint the exterior of the home and this painter– whom he paid upfront-disappeared before the work was all done. Another story centers on a time when Gorey became interested in gardening and bought a bunch of black pansies from a local nursery. McDermott explains:

9 McDermott, “Preface.”

10 McDermott, “Preface.”

11 The Front Porch, The Entrance Room, The Living Room, The Kitchen, The Ball Room, The Television Room, The Studio, The Library, The Alcove, The Bathroom, The Bedroom, and The Hidden Room are all sections of McDermott’s book.

12 McDermott states that one entrance to this room was blocked by a bookcase, and the other was at the back of closet in the master bedroom. He happened upon it when he realized he hadn’t gotten a photo of a bust of Charles Dickens which looks out from the front window and went looking for it. It was hidden in this room.

He requested help from his friend Rick Jones, regarding the appropriate way to

plant them. Edward stood on the porch as Rick took a flower, dug a small hole,

and planted it. Edward watched intently, then asked Rick to plant another. Then

another. Soon Edward went back into the house, and Rick planted all of the

pansies.13

This story reveals aspects of Gorey’s character more than it does the house. The fact that he was interested in black flowers and tricks his good-natured friend into planting them for him lets us know a bit more about this mysterious, but jovial character. He is clearly beloved by friends, including the author of the book. A person looking for details about a historic home might be disappointed in the book’s broad gestures about architecture, but a Gorey fan will enjoy the details of the artist’s personal life.

In that way, the book and the museum both serve a similar goal, to give fans some information about Gorey and provide an experience that will further their appreciation, or least curiosity, about him and his work. As noted, for good or for ill, Gorey’s personality is at the center of McDermott’s book and is showcased throughout the museum. It is clear, even if one attempts to avoid it, that to understand Gorey’s work one must understand aspects of his personality as the stories and images seem to radiate the mixture of guarded cynicism, ironic humor, and love of the eccentric that Gorey himself, based on accounts from friends, exhibited in his daily life. Knowing aspects of Gorey’s public persona helps visitors and fans better appreciate his work.

One of the first aspects that a reader of McDermott’s book will come to understand about

Gorey is that items, objects, and junk were very much part of his everyday life. McDermott

13 McDermott, “The House.”

relates a time when Gorey laid a series of small stones along the incline in his backyard that led to a barn, referring to it as a “serpent.” When McDermott remarked that it would be hidden when the grass grew longer Gorey responded, “Precisely, it’s waiting to be discovered.”14

This “joy of discovery” could be seen throughout the house as unexpected things and assemblages lurked throughout, waiting to be encounter by visitors. “He liked to bestow relationships on a group of objects, raising juxtaposition to a new level of insight and eccentricity.”15 Alexander Theroux adds, “Objects placed together become an ‘installation.’ It was the cumulative effect that pleased Gorey.”16 Both writers indicate that Gorey was not just collecting items but was curating them as well. His assemblages were displayed for the amusement and delight of any and all who encountered them, himself included.

So what sort of things did Gorey collect? McDermott notes, “Edward appreciated objects that indicated some degree of prior use–things that had had a life.”17 Theroux’s appraisal is much more wide ranging. He states that, while Gorey had a certain cynicism towards people, he had a soft spot for things. “Gorey collected everything,” he explains and then gives a list more than a page long of some of the items that could be found in the house from seashells to a mummy hand.18 The joy of discovery held true for Gorey as he found new things at yard sales and antique stores, and as he displayed his things for others to discover. In addition to items, such as pewter salt and pepper shakers and vintage cheese graters, he also collected books, magazines, CD’s,

14 McDermott, “The House.”

15 McDermott, “The Porch.”

16 Alexander Theroux, The Strange Case of Edward Gorey, (Fantagraphic Books, Seattle WA, 2010), 51.

17 McDermott, “The Living Room.”

18 Theroux, The Strange Case of Edward Gorey, 50.

VHS tapes, and paintings. McDermott notes that his collection contained works by “Delacroix,

Vuillard, Bonnard, Balthus, Manet, and Burchfield,”19 but also a fair amount of “kitsch,” as well as “sand paintings.”20 The pictures in McDermott’s book show rooms that seem cluttered, where there are literally items displayed, paired, stacked, and shoved into every square foot of every room.

With so much stuff it is easy to wonder how to store it all, a fact that Gorey tangled with regularly as his home was packed to the gills with his collectables. McDermott gives a keen insight over a somewhat mundane detail about the way Gorey stored his things that were not on display. “When Edward first discovered the house, he decided he did not want closets. He preferred keeping things in old blanket chests.”21 While the difference is subtle, there is an unmistakable distinction between hiding objects in a closet and placing them in a chest. The act of opening and reaching for a prized possession out of chest, like a buried treasure, bespeaks a different mindset about how a thing should be kept, as a treasure waiting to be uncovered rather than an item stored away and forgotten.

There is also ease of access that comes from items being left in sight or stored away in a chest. A closet space, while keeping a space tidier, also makes an item forgettable and expendable. Having items in space keeps them in mind. Gorey could, on a whim, see his items and rearrange a display. This ease of access, and availability of items for arrangement, are two key factors that gave his home distinction. Where many might see commotion and turmoil,

Gorey, perhaps, saw endless possibilities with his collections.

19 McDermott, “The Living Room.”

20 McDermott, “The Entrance Room.”

21 McDermott, “The Entrance Room.” 84

While these storage and display choices are unorthodox, they don’t bespeak neglect or apathy, but rather a sort of chaotic order. For example, Gorey’s studio was, comparatively speaking, neat, tidy and symmetrically organized. There are still lots of items placed together in various areas, particularly to the left of the drawing desk where bookshelf and file cabinet overflow with books, pictures, and art supplies, but Gorey’s desktop looks like a space ready for an artist to draw. This studio image gives a sense of how the rest of the house might function.

The apparent mess throughout provides a living space that enables the artist to work. The home and office combination serve as an untidy but highly functional place where Gorey could both produce his art and live his life with his many cats.22

Looking through the pages of McDermott’s book recalls some of the nuance and complexity of Gorey as a person. He is best known for his drawings, which are pristine, exact, balanced, and orderly. Yet Gorey’s home reflects aspects of his narrative style, which is thick with allusion, pastiche, mystery, and inside jokes. His love of discovery and engagement with items that showed wear, had life, and gave off the texture of decay is readily seen in his art and stories. McDermott’s pictures and written insights suggest that Gorey surrounded himself with a reservoir of inspiration, his own Kunstkammer. His environment was a cornucopia of art, things, books, videos, and CD’s that could be called upon to incite and arouse ideas for his work. That

Gorey, who was so skilled at making stories with allusions to little known stories and songs, would situate himself within a home brimming with discovery isn’t surprising given the amazing amount of artistic output he generated over the years. In this way, the physical space Gorey created and occupied demonstrate his thematic and stylistic predilections, reinforcing the symbiotic importance of his space.

22 Gorey, apparently, could have up to six cats at any given time. He is quoted as saying that seven cats would be “too many.” https://www.biography.com/news/edward-gorey-biography-facts 85

House as Museum

While Gorey lived in a space that inspired his art, The Edward Gorey House is a space that honors and showcases it. The mission statement reads, “The Edward Gorey House celebrates and preserves the life and works of Edward Gorey [… and] displays his diverse and extraordinary talents and reflects his distinct personality.”23 Hence, curators must perform a bit of a balancing act between showcasing the work and maintaining enough aspects of the home to bring forthGorey’s “distinct personality.” While Gorey lived in a home that provided a well of inspiration to him, the Gorey House must limit and contextualize all his stuff in such a way that it serves the visitors. I will first detail the Gorey House as it exists through my personal experiences and based on my observations categorize it among museums.

The house now is vastly different to the home presented in McDermott’s book, and many aspects of Gorey’s private world are not apparent. I submit that the Gorey House is successful at presenting and adhering to the mission statement to showcase Gorey’s art and reflect, if not his private world, at least his public persona. This curation also makes the house a community center, or a place that welcomes fan, bystander, local, and tourist alike. It appeals to a wide variety of visitors.

As I walked up to the Gorey House I noticed the porch has been transformed from a habitat of stone frogs to a neat and tidy spot where visitors can sit in one of many porch chairs.

The exterior is pristine and especially inviting on the many sunny days I have visited. The front door points visitors to enter in a door to the right, where various welcome signs and some Gorey art surround a side door that now acts as the only public entrance.

23 "About the Gorey House." | Edward Gorey House. Accessed January 25, 2017. http://www.edwardgoreyhouse.org/about-gorey-house 86

The area that McDermott labeled “The Living Room” is now where visitors enter the home. When a patron comes through the door they first pay an entrance fee in a small gift shop area. Many historic homes and museums have some sort of shop where items and souvenirs may be purchased, and this space is typically right next to the entrance/exit. While it is easy to think of this placement cynically, that a person can’t get out of the house without encountering a chance to spend money, many fans will be eager to purchase items as the house will have a more extensive inventory of Gorey books, prints, T Shirts, souvenirs, and other various bric-a-brac that can only be found in person at the Gorey House. It is also worth mentioning that the profits for items sold in the house go to supporting Gorey’s charitable trust, which supports many charities handpicked by Gorey.24 For those not inclined to purchase items, there is an opening that leads to the first room in the museum by which a person can ignore the shop altogether.

The rest of the living room opens into the first, and biggest, display in the house, which features a temporary exhibit that changes from year to year. The subjects of these exhibits have been quite diverse featuring Gorey’s book cover art, rare artifacts from his archives, and a close look at The Vinegar Works–Gorey’s trilogy of short stories that includes The West Wing, The

Insect God, and The Gashlycrub Tinies. These temporary exhibits are situated in lit glass cases that are positioned towards the center of the room and along the east wall. The north and south wall cases show the more personal side with displays of Gorey’s private collection of things. One case shows many of Gorey’s rings as, the story goes, he would occasionally wear rings on every finger. In the northeast corner, there is a mannequin behind glass wearing an outfit that Gorey

24 Gorey’s charities include: Tufts Veterinary School, Bat Conservation International Foundation, Animal Rescue League of Boston, Xerces Society, Carrie A Seaman Animal Shelter, The Elephant Sanctuary , International Fund for Animal Welfare, Massachusetts S.P.C.A., National Marine Life Center, Pet Partners, Wild Care, and Wildlife Rescue & Rehabilitation. More details on each of the charities can be found: http://www.edwardgoreyhouse.org/about-gorey-house. 87

was famous for wearing: a yellow shirt, blue jeans, tennis shoes, necklace, and a knee length fur coat. The clothing display features a prominent placard that points out that later in life Gorey stopped wearing fur due to his increased awareness of animal wellbeing, but this outfit came to be his signature look throughout most of his life.

This room embraces the house’s mission of presenting the work and personality of

Gorey. It literally surrounds his work on two sides with items and information from the author’s life while letting the work take center stage in the middle of the room. The special exhibits are pristinely showcased in generic display cases, while the personal items sit behind glass on shelves in wooden cases that look like they fit within the confines and style of the home, suggesting that the personal items belong to and are a part of the house, whereas the rotating exhibit items are temporary.

A small alcove that connects two larger rooms is next, and displays ephemera associated with productions of Dracula. A few reviews, a telegram of congratulations–dated October 1977– from the Shubert Organization, and a photo of Gorey with Frank Langella all hang on the alcove wall. In a small display case lie sketched designs for both set and costume, some correspondence, playbills, publicity buttons, and, most notably, Gorey’s Tony Award for Costume Design he won for the production.

The alcove placement for Dracula is both permanent and slightly hidden. An unobservant visitor might pass by without noticing. This fixed-yet-tucked-away placement mirrors Gorey’s own ambivalence about the production. As mentioned in chapter two, Gorey only took the project after they offered him “lots of money.”25 Andreas Brown, chairmen of the

Gorey trust, informed me in a private conversation that Gorey turned down designing the

25 Dahlin, “Edward Gorey,” in Ascending Peculiarity, 34. 88

Broadway production multiple times until the offer became so rich, including a share of the back-end profits, that he couldn’t say no.26 The fact that the production was such a big success and yet wasn’t very exciting or noteworthy to Gorey, makes the alcove between rooms an ideal location for the Dracula display.

Exhibits continue in the next room, which McDermott labeled “The Entrance Room.”

During my first visit to the Gorey House in the summer of 2013 this room was filled with Gorey puppets, creatures, and posters for his plays on Cape Cod. It also contained a movable façade for puppeteers, consisting of two doors fastened together and painted gray. Puppeteers would hide behind this set piece and lift puppets aloft, over the crest of the doors. Originally, I had thought the theatre exhibit was a permanent one, as it had nothing to do with the rotating exhibit, which that year was centered on The Vinegar Works. When I returned to the house in 2014 to begin my research on Gorey’s theatre work I found that most of the theatre artifacts had been taken back to storage in New York, while a few items were moved into a different room. The entrance room was now an extension of the rotating, yearly, exhibit. When I asked Rick Jones, the curator of the house, he informed me that Andreas Brown, chairman of the Gorey trust, had taken much of the exhibit back, and it was too bad I wasn’t there a few weeks ago, as the exhibit had been at the house for years.

This disappearing theatre display is another example of the commonality between museum exhibit and theatrical event, in that both offer presentations that are ephemeral. While traditional archival presentations are thought to be permanent, or have an aspect of stability, all archives, regardless of how secure they appear to be, are in fact temporary and can disappear.

What was a “permanent” display for years one day was bundled up, carted away, and not on

26 Andreas Brown, in a private conversation with the author, March 15, 2015. 89

display anymore.

The next room over is the Kitchen, a room that has cooking, dining, and sink areas roped off. This section exhibits items personal to Gorey. Various trinkets and doodads sit along the roped off area that look native to the kitchen. Two items stand out from the rest, both of which hang on the wall of the walking area. The first is a framed waffle that hangs above the door to the hallway. A card lets spectators know that it was the final “waffle of the millennium” from

Jack’s Outback, a restaurant in which Gorey ate breakfast and lunch almost every day. The second item is a month’s worth of framed receipts, which affirm Gorey’s devotion to the restaurant. The kitchen as it exists in the Gorey House mirrors how the kitchen functioned for

Gorey. McDermott writes “The kitchen was the room in which Edward usually met with people visiting the house. Few were invited past this room.”27 McDermott explains that Gorey typically would meet with friends or visitors at locations around the Cape, and his home was his “private world.”28 As such, the Kitchen exhibits the Gorey that people knew, one that went to Jack’s

Outback and collected items and trinkets. The fact that Gorey enjoyed cooking, and was said to be good at it, isn’t displayed at all in the kitchen. Such information is hidden away in other sources.

Another way this area responds to the private nature of Gorey and the way he kept his home are two stairwells surrounding the kitchen, both of which are both are closed to the public.

While most of the house is open for guests to explore at their leisure, the upstairs areas are only for administrators and invited guests. It is in this area that I’ve pursued Gorey’s unpublished

Cape Cod plays as well as clippings from his shows in what used to be the television room. I

27 McDermott, “The Kitchen.”

28 McDermott, “The Kitchen.” 90

have noticed that the area acts very much like offstage, in that the museum staff keep important items, reserve stock for the gift shop, and their offices on this floor. While the area is not open to the public, there is certainly nothing secret or strange happening behind the closed doors, and folks who would like, as I have, are welcome to enter the area with permission.

The next and final exhibit room is bright with big windows on three sides. What

McDermott called the Ball Room, as Gorey had collections of balls showcased and stacked throughout the room, now houses a TV with the Mystery theme on a loop, several displays of

Gorey’s handmade stuffed toys, his typewriter, a small reading area with books by or about him, and the remains of the Cape Cod theatre display, which contains twelve members of Gorey’s puppet troupe, Le Théâtricule Stoïque, as well as buttons that correspond with the a few of the shows and placard that quickly explains Gorey’s theatrical endeavors on the Cape. Two posters are attached at the base of a display case. I will analyze this case at length in the next chapter.

Clearly, the Edward Gorey House is very different than the home where Edward Gorey lived. To understand details of how Gorey’s home became the Edward Gorey House it is important to remember that Gorey stipulated that the house be sold upon his death, which his

Charitable Trust carried out after they moved his possessions and belongings into storage.29 They sold the home in 2002 to The Highland Street Foundation, which purchased it and worked with

Rick Jones, the same Jones who helped Gorey plant black pansies, to turn it into a museum.30

Jones, being a close friend to Gorey for many years, is still the director at the home, while Greg

Hischak joined the staff in 2014 as curator. Neither is trained in museum studies per se, although

Hischak jokes about the two of them, “We have a diploma around here somewhere that spells it

29 McDermott, “Preface.”

30 “About the Gorey House,” The Edward Gorey House, accessed November 8, 2017. http://www.edwardgoreyhouse.org/about-gorey-house 91

all out.”31 While Jones and Hischak collaborate with the Gorey Charitable Trust, the two organizations are separate and work independently of each other. Jones, Hischak, and the House board of directors, ten members that include “family members, friends, bibliographers, collectors, members of the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust and members of the Highland Street

Foundation,”32 ultimately choose a theme for the house depending on items available through the charitable trust’s archive and decide what will be showcased at the museum from year to year.

There is an aspect of performance in the curation of any museum, a fact highlighted by theatre scholars who have focused on museums in their work. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimlett’s work on the presentation of ethnography and Scott Magelssen’s book on performance in living history museums are two prime examples.33 Both write that those presenting history, either though exhibits or performances by actors playing historical figures, tell the audience more about the interests and affiliations of the institutions that control museums than they do about the actual history. The Gorey House is neither displaying ethnographic materials, nor are they attempting to repurpose and present history through reenactment, however, they do select and present aspects of Gorey’s life and art that they deem most important or interesting. The Gorey House certainly has an agenda: to further Gorey’s work to as many people as possible. In so doing they have created a space that is very different than when Gorey lived there to best create a community center that serves residents of the Yarmouth through bringing tourism to the area and hosting

31 Greg Hischak, email message to the author, Feb. 21, 2018

32 Greg Hischak, email message to the author, Feb. 21, 2018.

33 Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage (Berkeley, Calif: University of California Press, 2009). Scott Magelssen, Living History Museums Undoing History Through Performance (Lanham, Md: Scarecrow, 2007).

community events and beckons to fans all around the world. By curating a space that showcases

Gorey’s art with some details of his personal life, curators of the house present a kind of memory theatre that appeals to Gorey devotees, casual fans, and residents around Cape Cod and has the potential to create a meaningful community experience between these disparate groups. Having this sort of wide spread appeal is fostered only by thoughtful curation.

The idea that sites of history can actively build community was introduced by Robert

Archibald, as he persuasively argues:

We know that objects, whether built environments or small personal effects, are

symbolic memory devices; that is, they stimulate remembering. […] Memory is

an ongoing process through which we create usable narratives that explain the

world in which we live, stories that inevitably connect us to each other, history

that builds community. The community we create is founded in shared

remembrance and grounded in place, especially those places that are conducive to

the casual associations necessary for emergence of shared memory, common

ground, and commitment to the common good. Places, memories, and stories are

inextricably connected, and we cannot create a real community without these

elements.34

For Archibald, the act of remembering is facilitated through the keeping and maintaining of historic places and the display of historic objects. He claims that history is “a process of narrative creation.”35 In this way, the curation of the Gorey House acts to ensure interest from as many as possible by creating a narrative about Gorey that both introduces newcomers and satisfies

34 Robert R. Archibald, A Place to Remember: Using History to Build Community (Walnut Creek: Altamira Press, 1999), 24.

35 Archibald, 29 93

devotees. While keeping the house as it was when Gorey died might have some limited appeal for diehard fans, it also assures that those with a casual interest and those just in the neighborhood would avoid the house altogether. To facilitate the creation of a “real community” the place must be “conductive to casual associations.” A fair amount of curation is needed to make a place that is an appealing community center where interactions from all walks of life can occur. One way the Gorey House does this is by bridging the gap between historic house and museum, showcasing both Gorey’s art and just a hint of his personality. Another way is through a scavenger hunt, which I will detail towards the end of the chapter.

Tammy S. Gordon further elaborates the importance of small, unaccredited museums and how they help to foster community:

Americans use small community museums and other settings of daily life to

create exhibits that tell a history from an individualized perspective. Historical

curation is much, much more than a professional practice. It is a social one, a

practice in which strangers discuss their views of the past with one another […]

Historic objects serve to explain communities, families, and individuals to

outsiders and tie insiders together around a shared narrative of historical

experience.36

Gordon points out the importance of unaccredited community museums, as they offer individualized perspective, and serve both those considered “outsiders” and “insiders” of their community. Gordon specifically investigates smaller, often privately-owned museums as they prioritize emotion over the ordering of knowledge that is typically offered by prominent institutions. The Gorey House is curated in this manner, rather than keep the house as it was

36 Tammy S. Gordon. Private History in Public: Exhibition and the Settings of Everyday Life. (Lanham: Altamira Press, 2010) 4. 94

when Gorey lived there, they seek to present a narrative of Gorey that serves fans and the non- initiated, maintaining aspects of Cape Cod history, but also seeking visitors from afar. The community they seek is both local and global.

While curation and presentation of art and artifacts have theatre-like qualities as visitors walk through manicured space, the Gorey House also features a unique activity that increases visitor interaction with the exhibits. In 2013, to accompany the exhibit of The Vinegar Works, curators developed and deployed a Gashlycrumb Tinies scavenger hunt throughout the house.

Guests were given a checklist with a picture of all the unfortunate tots from the book and were invited to find items that corresponded with each child. While some items were overt, such as the

Figure 8: The scavenger item for “G is for George smothered under a rug,” at the Gorey House. feet poking out of a rug for “G is for George smothered under a rug,” (figure 8) some were subtler, such as the canoe for “I is for Ida who drowned in the lake,” or a box of tacks with a few strays in front for “L is for Leo who swallowed some tacks.” (figure 9) While the exhibit for The

Vinegar Works has moved on, the very popular scavenger hunt has remained. Each year I have visited I have noticed certain scavenger hunt items improved as the activity becomes more and more of a permanent feature in the house.

The scavenger hunt for The Gashlycrumb Timies emphasizes the theatricality of this, and many other, museum spaces. Throughout the corridors of the house the curators have conceived of ways to promote visitor interaction and enjoyment and have organized the exhibits and the house itself to promote Gorey, but also to engage and excite visitors. None of what transpires

Figure 9: Scavenger item for “L is for Leo, who swallowed some tacks,” at the Gorey House. happened by happenstance; it was planned and meticulously executed. Rather than having visitors sit while a story is acted out in front of them on stage the Gorey House tells the story throughout the space and lets visitors move throughout at their own pace and rate. It isn’t theatre, but there are certainly theatrical aspects to it, which make the experience more enjoyable for visitors.

While there is a notable shift that occurred from when Gorey lived in Elephant house to how it now exists as a museum, public reaction on social media sites are mostly positive. The house has on overall five-star rating on Trip Advisor and a four-and-a-half-star rating on Yelp.

The individual reviews are glowing in their praise of the house, the upkeep, and Gorey himself, but one review, out of the many, strikes at the heart the focus of this chapter. Yelp user Matt W. from Niskayuna, New York writes mostly positively of his visit, but does slide this one criticism into the review:

We are locals and I’ve been to the house a few times while the subject was still

alive, and it’s utterly unlike anything I remember seeing or smelling. The glory of

this house once upon a time was its mish mash of sights and smells, the

overgrown riot of bushes and vines and trees and uncut grass, the jumble too

much to take in at once, and the kind of eerie presence of its owner/occupant and

his posse, from the five toilets in the hallway to the boxes that were seeping

something you couldn’t identify in the kitchen. My folks knew Ed from Jack’s,

and he definitely had his way about him that is a little hard to find within the

walls these days. Sic transit Gloria. What are you gonna do? You couldn’t show it

the way it was. But I’ll always carry the memory.37

While details in Matt W’s account are impossible to confirm, such as the five toilets in the hallway, he makes an excellent point. Even as curators for the house attempt to serve Gorey’s memory, they have chosen not to preserve the house as it was as it would be too chaotic to try to shuffle people through the organized mess. As a fan of the artist I personally would prefer to see exhibits carefully presented and maintained rather than a time capsule of Gorey’s home as the curated experience facilitates more enjoyment and learning for visitors.

Because there is a loss in turning the house into a museum it is helpful to think of the

Gorey House not as a Kunstkammer he created, but as one in which he is the subject. Rather than experience the world in which he lived we are really experiencing a snapshot of what he was like. This shift, so subtle in some ways, completely changes how a space is experienced. This is another way that museums are theatrical, in that something about them is necessarily simulated.

We can’t really experience Gorey’s home as it was; it would just be too messy and weird. Where

37 Matt W. from Niskayuna NY. “Review of the Edward Gorey House.” Yelp review. June 14, 2016, https://www.yelp.com/biz/edward-gorey-house-yarmouth-port. 97

would we even start? The curators and staff of the Gorey House present a nicely packaged experience that provides manicured entryways to learn about Gorey. By introducing order they may take away some authenticity, but the house presents the artist in a way that is much easier to understand and learn, and yet still presents Gorey in a way that feels genuine.

While leaving The Gorey House recently, as I browsed items in the gift shop to purchase

I noticed a young woman, probably in her mid-teens, who looked like a devotee. Her hair was bright red and pulled down her back into two braided ponytails. She wore a black dress, black- and-white-striped tights, and dark black eye-liner. As she entered the gift shop area from the museum her parents, both wearing gray t-shirts and denim shorts, hugged her and told her to

“take as much time as you want” before they exited the museum. She browsed around, selected her items, and checked out in front of me. Observing this teenager and her parents highlighted the importance of the house as a community center. The young woman deepened her appreciation of Gorey, while her parents, who seemed tentative while in the space, learned more about an artist that their daughter admires. This community building quality is facilitated by careful and theatrical curation which provided a memorable experience for this family and for many others who will visit. The informative and interactive nature of the exhibits appeal to the fans while appeasing bystanders. While the house is no longer Gorey’s home, his legacy continues to inspire those who visit.

CHAPTER FIVE

PERFORMANCE PRESERVED: LE THÉÂTRICAL STOÏQUE PLAY THE GOREY HOUSE

In Gorey’s The Raging Tide: or, The Black Doll’s Imbroglio four creatures assault, pester, and annoy each other for no discernable reason.1 The first page states, “Skrump flung a damp sponge at Naeelah.” The corresponding illustration shows a long-beaked, fuzzy beastie who wears a long string of pearls and roller skates in the motion of throwing a sponge which hangs suspended in the air. On the receiving end is a white rag doll with a bow on its head. Its gloved hands cover its face in anticipation of the incoming sponge. The floor on which the two characters stand is a pattern of recurring speckled teardrops while two thumbs as large as the creatures, one by Skrump and the other behind Naeelah, protrude from the floor.

The reader selects where they would like to go to next based on instructions on the bottom of every page in the style of a choose-your-own-adventure-book. The text on the bottom of page one reads “If you are interested, turn to 6. If you aren’t, turn to 2.” If the reader is interested, page six reads, “Naeelah went for Skrump with a feather-duster,” and the white rag doll is now chasing the fuzzy, roller-skater with the mentioned cleaning apparatus. If the reader continues to have positive feelings about this story, and chooses accordingly, the story continues to center around Skrump and Naeelah.

If the reader is not interested in Skrump and Naeelah, and therefore turns to page two, it reads “Figbash scattered cracker crumbs on Hooglyboo.” The illustration shows Figbash, a long- armed creature well known to Gorey fans, standing on a protruding thumb, reaching a dangling arm towards a teddy bear-like creature, Hooglyboo, who has a pot on its head, an arm in a sling,

1 Edward Gorey, The Raging Tide, or The Black Dolls Imbroglio (New York: Beaufort Books, 1987).

and is missing a leg. His crutch leans, in this illustration, on a bent thumb that he sits upon. The cracker crumbs fly away from Figbash and towards Hooglyboo. The instructions at the bottom of the page read “If this makes you uncomfortable, turn to 3. If it doesn’t, turn to 8.”

The book continues like this for thirty pages as at least two, but sometimes three and all four of the creatures, surprise, impede, and vex each other. The text at the bottom of each page directs the reader to choose between two new destination choices. If the reader is continually interested, charmed, or not put off by the images, the story loosely follows a describable order.

At any time, however, the reader may change course to follow the second path that alters the trajectory of the narrative. For example, one option on page nineteen directs “For a meaningful aside, turn to 15.” Page fifteen then reads “Short sheets make the bed look longer.” All four characters, Figbash, Skrump, Hooglyboo, and Naeelah, almost sheepishly stand around a bed with a sheet that only reaches two-thirds of the way up. Another diversion comes as one directive on page twenty states “For a brilliant apophthegm turn to 18.” Once there the text reads “There’s no going to town in a bathtub,” and the illustration shows the four characters perched on and in a tub, seemingly waiting for it to begin moving.

While the text gives specific options for where the reader should go next, the reader can read the book however they want. They read in a totally random order, or from start to finish in the traditional way. While the book suggests paths a reader can take, the reader can do whatever they please. There is no penalty for reading the book outside of the confines of the instructions, although in doing this the reader misses out on the carefully planned nuances and jokes that

Gorey built into the book.

The Raging Tide is a clear example of Gorey’s playful use of narrative form, but it also shows his fascination with creatures and things. As someone famous for his various collections,

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as outlined in chapter three, it should surprise no one that Gorey created a puppet troupe, Le

Théâtricule Stoïque, for his shows on Cape Cod. A few of these puppets are now on display in the Edward Gorey House (figure 10) in Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts. Like the creatures in The

Raging Tide, the displayed puppets have been posed in a frozen state of action but, unlike those four dueling characters, they still contain the possibility of movement and performance if they are paired, once again, with a puppeteer. The puppets are of interest to me for two reasons. First, they are an avenue by which to understand Gorey’s theatre work on Cape Cod as all of Gorey’s plays and entertainments featured puppets in some way. Second, they provide a physical example of how a performance can continue after a show has ended. This chapter will address both how the puppets perform, and how they continue the performance in a space of public history.

Gorey’s theatre on Cape Cod presents some unique challenges to those who wish to learn more about the performances. As detailed in chapter one, the plays have not yet been published, so we must rely on other markers of performance. The puppets give tangible evidence of the productions and, for a visitor to the Gorey House, might serve as an introduction to his extensive theatre work on the Cape. What did Gorey use as puppets? How did they perform? What were their performances like? I will use the puppets as an entryway into Gorey’s theatre work on Cape

Figure 10: Members of Le Théâtricule Stoïque on display at The Edward Gorey House.

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Cod. To begin, I will offer a brief history of Le Théâtricule Stoïque and the productions they were involved with. I will then analyze a Gorey puppet show which was filmed by documentarian Chris Seufert in 1997 and is now available on YouTube, entitled Cautionary

Tales for Children, to provide further contextualization of the puppets within Gorey’s performance practice. Understanding the basic history of the puppets, and seeing them in action, is crucial to understanding the nuances of Gorey’s theatre, including his use of the ridiculous and the sublime.

The chapter will then consider how the puppets preserve aspects, or portions, of performance through their exhibition within the Edward Gorey House. When a museum presents items associated with a theatrical performance, do those exhibits continue the performance in some way? Are public history sites viable as sites of theatre history? Of theatre? Of performance? Of all the above? I argue that a museum site that showcases artifacts from past theatrical events actively preserves a portion of those performances, and that performances dissipate, rather than completely disappear, following the final blackout. However, for disembodied performance to be engaging, the onus is on the visitor to fill in the information gaps with their own effort and imagination. Like The Raging Tide, museums typically provide information and direction as to how to experience an exhibit, but visitors have the freedom to follow their own whims, within reason, as to how best experience the space. This emphasis on imagination and an unfettered experience may at first seem like a shortcoming, but I argue it is beneficial for those who care to explore, envision, and daydream about productions they did not have the good fortune to see. I will pursue this inquiry using a methodology heavily influenced by theories of things, space, “nonidentity,” and performance’s lasting nature to gauge how these puppets prolong performance in a museum space. By investigating how the puppets performed,

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and the aspects of performance they carry with them into the Gorey House, I hope to further comprehend and appreciate Gorey’s unique theatrical practice on Cape Cod.

As I will be addressing the puppets throughout the chapter, my understanding of things is based on Robin Bernstein’s theory of scriptive things. Bernstien characterizes an object, “as a chunk of matter that one looks through or beyond to understand something human. A thing, in contrast, asserts itself within a field of matter.”2 Bernstein states that a knife is an object for an amateur who clumsily chops an onion as a “means to an end,” but that same knife is a thing that a trained chef “negotiates.” However, if the amateur slips and hurts themselves, the knife is now a thing that has asserted itself.3 Bernstein’s summation is that “The difference between objects and things, then, is not essential but situational and subjective.”4

Gorey Puppet History

Alexander Theroux remembers a conversation he had with Gorey that indicates when his interest in puppets began. "'I got interested in puppeteering by reading Seneca's plays,' he told me. 'I thought wouldn't it be fun to do Seneca with puppets.'"5 Gorey would, eventually, perform a version of Thyestes with puppets in Chinese Gossip (1991), which Carol Verberg called “airily campy” and “hard to follow.”6 However, the use of puppets began with Lost Shoelaces in August

2 Robin Bernstein, Robin Bernstein, “Dances with Things: Material Culture and the Performance of Race.” Social Text 101, Vol. 27., No. 4, Winter 2009: 69. Also Martin Heidegger, “The Thing,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 174 –82.

3 Bernstein, 69.

4 Bernstein, 69.

5 Alexander Theroux, The strange case of Edward Gorey (Seattle, WA: Fantagraphics Books, 2011), 149.

6 Carol Verburg, , Edward Gorey on stage: playwright, director, designer, performer (United States: Boom Books, 2012), (page number)

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of 1987, and would continue for all of Gorey’s productions thereafter.7 The stage for each show would include “a small square or rectangular performance space for live actors, a rectangular screen to serve as a backdrop and puppet stage,” while the cast, “(preferably) four men and four women…doubled as puppeteers.”8 Each entertainment consisted of “fifteen to twenty pieces, each perhaps three to ten minutes long, featuring live actors in two-thirds and puppets in one- third, with some overlap.”9 The puppets even appeared during Gorey’s production of Salomé which featured a puppet preshow of the Stuart Walker play, Six Who Pass While the Lentils

Boil.10 Other productions, like Heads Will Roll, named for the frequency in which a puppet head would pop off during a performance, and Cautionary Tales for Children, were exclusively puppet shows.

The puppets, in and of themselves, were very simple. Verburg gives this description:

Le Théâtricule Stoïque [were] clothed in three-fingered gloves which [Gorey]

sewed himself. The two end fingers fit over the puppeteer’s thumb and pinkie to

create arms; the index or middle finger is a neck, capped by a papier-mache head.

Male puppet heads Edward sculpted to look like small textured white eggs with a

hint of a nose and tiny black dots for eyes. Female heads are the same except for a

bun on top. 11

7 Carol Verburg, Edward Gorey on stage: playwright, director, designer, performer (United States: Boom Books, 2012), 18.

8 Verburg 18

9 Verburg 19

10 Goerge Liles, “Goreys Salome takes wrong turn.” Cape Cod Times, February 6, 1995: B-6.

11 Verburg 21

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Theroux remembers, “he made his puppets out of Celluclay, always baking and painting them himself, tight little white squirrel-sized heads with winsome faces that looked like his drawings.”12

While the humanoid puppets were the most common, making up about eighty percent of

Le Théâtricule Stoïque, other creatures also appeared including “dogs, cats, alligators, and aberrations.”13 The aberrations were often still hand puppets created by Gorey, but sometimes might include an object repurposed for performance. Joe Richards remembered one character he portrayed:

The Oracular Watering Can, and I had the part, two lines, and, all summer they

were looking for a watering can, that he could put on a stick, and nothing pleased

him [Gorey]. We were rehearsing in the Old Woods Hole fire station, which is

being renovated, the bathroom was apart […] I said "Edward, I need to have

something to work with." So he looked around and he picked up a toilet float. A

bar with a blub. He said, “use this” so I put it up and the first line I think was "If I

were you I would not take, the pathway leading to the lake" I was trying to get

something between Orson Welles and Sheldon Leonard from Guys and Dolls and

he liked it. Ok, so I said, I was selling hardware at the time, this thing was black,

they make these in copper, he said try it, so I got the copper one next time, he

liked that. I was doing that and I said, do you mind if I make it spin? He said no.

So I got this old auger, from my dad, got it in there, so when the ball cock came

up, "If I were you," and the thing just spun around. That was the other thing that

12 Alexander Theroux, The strange case of Edward Gorey (Seattle, WA: Fantagraphics Books, 2011), 149.

13 Verberg, Edward Gorey on Stage, 21.

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happened, when he asked what that was, "what do they call this" Greg said, "Isn't

that part of the ballcock?" and he was like [ spoken in Edward's voice] "Oh, of

course!"14

This example illuminates not only Gorey’s ability to collaborate with his actors, but also the way in which he used things as performers. It wasn’t only the use of puppets and things that

Gorey liked, it was the marriage of puppet/thing with performer. In the example of the Oracular

Ballcock not only did it move distinctively, by spinning, but Joe Richards also gave it a funny voice. The desired effect came together through the amalgamation of person and thing. The ballcock—a unique, weird, funny, creature–came to be beloved by the company. It appeared, sometimes briefly, in each production thereafter.15 It was also in attendance at the scattering of

Gorey ashes with those of his cats.16 After the ceremony, the funeral party joined together in a

New Orleans style procession. Richards, with the ballcock in tow, concluded the parade.17

Another story of how things performed in Gorey’s productions commonly gets shared with the performers, and even made it into a story in the Boston Globe after Gorey’s death. For an adaptation of The Bug Book the performers were given different colored clothespins to use for the different bugs. “Gorey rebuked the puppeteers for just moving them ‘up and down and side to side.’”18 “We were so frustrated,” Cathy Smith said in her interview, “we had puppets that

14 Joe Richards in a discussion with the author, June 2016.

15 Carol Verburg, Edward Gorey on stage: playwright, director, designer, performer (United States: Boom Books, 2012), 18.

16 Some of Gorey’s ashes where spread out in the Atlantic Ocean. Some were saved until all of the cats he owned at the time of his death had passed, and they were scattered together on the ground of the Gorey house. While Gorey died in 2000, it took until 2010 for all of his cats to pass on. For more details visit, http://www.edwardgoreyhouse.org/blog/gorey-house-transformation.

17 Joe Richards in a discussion with the author.

18 Ellen Barry, "Master of the Weird," Boston Globe, September 2, 2000.

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were literally clothes pins…a wooden clothespin with the eyes painted on it.”19 She continued,

“He [Gorey] said, ‘You’ve got to make them show more emotion.” Joe Richards remembered

Cathy responding back with much frustration, "Edward, these are Clothespins! They don't do much else!"20 Eric Edwards, who remembered the interaction occurring over a different production, Cautionary Tales, added this insight to the of the interaction: “What he probably meant […] was her voice. Move with the voice. Make it the relationship between moving with the voice. Otherwise […] it's just a clothespin.”21

The use of clothespins also shows that the objects in and of themselves were not what

Gorey was interested in. Just having them bounce around was not enough, there had to be a certain level of intensity and variety with the actor’s vocal performance. Gorey used puppets and objects not because they were weird or funny (although those reasons might apply), but because of the expressiveness that can occur with the combination of puppeteer and thing. Both graceful, precise, balletic gestures and exaggerated comedic contortions, the ridiculous and the sublime could be realized when performer and thing united.

Gorey Puppet Practice

Before considering how the puppets continue performance in a museum space, it is helpful to analyze how the puppets were used by Gorey in performance. Two unique yet disparate qualities, the ridiculous and the sublime, are on full display in a recording of the original production of Cautionary Tales for Children.22 In the video, available on YouTube, the

19 Cathy Smith in a discussion with the author, June 2016

20 Joe Richards Interview.

21 Eric Edwards, in a discussion with the author, June 20116.

22 Edward Gorey's Cautionary Tales for Children, dir. Edward Gorey. Video dir. Christopher Seufert, perf. Edward Gorey, Eric Edwards, Joe Richards, Cathy Smith, Jane MacDonald. , YouTube, April 4, 2011, accessed April 5, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0Uf2Sb963k&t=298s.

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puppets perform five stories23 from Hilaire Belloc’s book of the same name, as well as short dance/movement pieces in between each tale.24

A humorous tone is clearly what Belloc had in mind, as he writes in the introduction, first published in 1907:

And is it true? It is not true.

And if it were it wouldn’t do,

For people such as me and you

Who pretty nearly all day long

Are doing something rather wrong.

Because if things were really so,

You would have perished long ago,

And I would not have lived to write

The noble lines that meet your sight,

Nor B.T.B. survived to draw

The nicest things you ever saw.25

Belloc takes care to let readers know that these stories aren’t real, and his tone shows, as if we could not tell, that the book is supposed to funny. Belloc skewers the sorts of stories that try to

23 The stories performed include: “Jim, who ran away from his nurse and was eaten by a lion,” “Henry King, who chewed bits of string and was early cut off in dreadful agonies,” “Matilda, who told lies and was burned to death,” “George, who played with a dangerous toy and suffered a catastrophe of considerable dimensions,” and “Charles Augustus Fortescue, who always did what was right and so accumulated an immense fortune.”

24 Hilaire Belloc (1870 – 1953) is considered one of the most consequential writers of early twentieth century England. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/hilaire-belloc.

25 Hilaire Belloc Cautionary tales for Children. (United Kingdom, Eveleigh Nash Publishing, 1907). Accessed at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/27424/27424-h/27424-h.htm. There is version illustrated by Gorey, published by Harcourt in 2002. In that edition the introduction replaces the illustrator, B.T.B., with Edward G. A quick google search reveals that B.T.B. stands for Basil Temple Blackwood (1870 – 1917), a noted lawyer and book illustrator.

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scare children into obedience by taking his tales to outrageous lengths, for while it might be dangerous for a child to let go of their nurse’s hand, they probably wouldn’t be immediately eaten by a lion. Gorey’s production doesn’t show this introduction, but the use of the puppets, with their stoic faces and exaggerated movements, help to emphasize the satiric nature of the stories.

The ridiculousness of Gorey’s puppet performance is made clear through the video, such as in the story “Jim who ran away from his nurse and was eaten by a Lion.” The silliness in

Belloc’s story is exaggerated through the juxtaposition of the humanoid puppets with enormous plush animals, kids toys used for the performance, that represent the creatures in the zoo. As several human puppets look at an enormous flamingo, Jim slips free from his nurse and before anyone can react, a lion, three or four times his size, pounces and gobbles him up, leaving behind only a small puppet head. The sheer enormity of the lion emphasizes the satiric quality inherent in Belloc’s verse, and emphasizes humor rather than terror. Another size juxtaposition joke is repeated after the last line of the story, as the narrator states, “and always keep a hold of nurse, in fear of finding something worse.” The something worse, in this instance, is a large moose, the same size as the lion, who falls upon another unsuspecting little puppet. This size disparity is unique in this story of the puppet show as it is not present in other stories, nor is it in Belloc’s book.

The stories are well served by the juxtaposition of the puppet sizes. The overwhelming magnitude of the animals compared to the humans is so great that it is preposterous, and while any child being mauled by a lion would be terrible, the idea of a lion instantly eating a person who has, only that moment, slipped free of their keeper is overtly extreme. In this instance use of puppets of different size nicely emphasized the ridiculousness of the story.

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The exaggerated movement of the puppets, paired with an overly melodramatic vocal delivery, also portrays a level of silliness in the presentation. In “Henry King, who ate bits of

String, and was early cut off in Dreadful Agonies.” The puppet of Henry has two different bits of string taken from him before he successfully eats a piece. Upon eating he immediately begins to convulse, shake, and hit his head with his hand. Around the spectacle his parents try, and fail, to soothe him. Doctors are called in, who appear as if they are coming from a golf course with putters in hand. One declares, in a faux Sigmund Freud voice, “There is no cure for this disease.

The child…will very soon…be dead,” Henry steadies himself to make his final declaration, his tiny arms gesturing to ensure each point is noticed. “Oh, my friends, be warned by me, that breakfast, dinner, lunch, and tea are all the human frame requires.” The word “requires” is blurted out, as if the puppet is in great pain, the narrator then states, “with that, the wretched child expires.” The puppet begins, again, convulsing and contorting much like a Looney Tunes character who is pretending to die. Upon his final “BLAH” he stops his contortions, and slowly, ever so slowly, fades out of sight under the puppet stage with his parents, only to suddenly disappear with a huge thump to end the story. This gradual death fade was also used by Joe

Richards in Blithering Christmas, another Gorey play, in which a character named Baby Boo met an untimely end. Richards held up his finger and explained that the slower he made Baby Boo slip under the stage “the more the audience lost it.”26

Here again, the puppet performance emphasizes the comedic qualities of the story. As

Henry convulses on the floor there is no sense of sadness or tragedy, but rather one of silliness.

The outrageous idea that a boy could die an instantaneous, horrible death from nibbling on a bit of string is perfectly reflected in the exaggerated motions of the character and the melodramatic

26 Interview with Joe Richards.

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vocal delivery. Belloc’s satire of the Victorian cautionary tale is impeccably presented by the ridiculousness of the puppets.

The movement of the puppets, however, was not only used for comedic over- exaggeration, but also to provide a sublime, dance-like fluency in the performance. Theroux states, “It was to ballet…that Edward Gorey gave, I believe, most of his adult passion. ‘I have to say I have always been entiché [infatuated] with gracefulness, it is so rarely found, anywhere,’ he once told me.”27 That gracefulness that so infatuated Gorey—impossible for his talented, but not ballet-trained performers—could be found with the puppets. Verberg gives some credence to this idea as she states, “he was fascinated by the expressiveness of the human hand.”28 While the screwball antics of the puppets are on full display during the Belloc stories, the interludes that occur between those tales show polished sophistication. In the first interlude of the video two puppets, a white dog with black spots and black horse with white spots, dance to Beethoven’s

“11 Bagatelles, Op. 119: No. 4 in A Major.” They meet, embrace on the right cheek, then the left. They join hands and waltz. The dog gives the horse two kisses on the cheek, the horse nods and the dog adds one more. The dog places a yellow veil on the horse and the horse places a pink veil on the dog. They drift back and forth with the veils flowing around them, kiss again, the veils are taken off and they strike a quick pose and disappear again. One after the other the two puppets appear, quickly streak across space with the veils flowing behind them several times, and then, finally, veils snuggled between them, they embrace cheek to cheek as the music ends and they disappear.

27 Theroux, The Strange Case of Edward Gorey, 142.

28 Verburg, 19.

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This dance emphasizes the sublime aspects of presentation. While a horse and dog dancing together is mildly comedic, it is different than the Belloc shorts in its charm, sweetness, playful interactions, and moments of shared affection. The hand puppets, with fabric bodies and celluclay heads, are simply made, but capable of graceful and fluid motion as the dog and horse pose, waltz, and embrace. Paired with the veils there is a sense of refined beauty as these little creatures effortlessly glide through the air. For non-trained performers, these puppets approach the gracefulness of ballet that Gorey so admired.

Another aspect of the fluency of movement is shown in the second interlude which is set to Chopin’s “Funeral March,” a piece of music well known to many. The scene takes place as puppets, all dressed in black, some wearing top hats while others wearing veils, move from right to left across the stage in a single file line. A notable exception is a black bird, to scale with the rest of the characters and with many black feathers, which flies overhead. The bird is obviously attached to a stick but seeing the apparatus does not take away from the eloquence of the bird’s motion. It glides to the front of the line and lands on a top hat, is shooed away, and continues to fly back and forth as the procession fades, finally exiting the stage.

This funeral procession is difficult to categorize. Neither overtly funny nor balletic, but containing traces of both, the scene feels like an actual funeral procession, with all its formality, procedure, and emotion as the last two puppets walk in an embrace, their movements conveying a sense of grief. The bird, all the while, betrays the order of the event. This moment shows how nature interferes with a precise happening, while also expressing the wonder of a bird in flight.

The procession embodies a serious moment of humanity and the transcendence of nature, all within two minutes.

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A final moment from the performance that emphasizes both the ridiculous and the sublime is found in “Matilda, who told lies and was burned to death.” In the story Matilda, as a punishment for telling lies, is not permitted to see, “That interesting play, The Second Mrs.

Tanqueray.” Beloc references a play by Arthur Wing Pinero, a melodrama from the nineteenth- century. After mentioning the title, Matilda’s story pauses for a moment while a small drawn proscenium arch appears while one blue and one yellow clothes pin act out a scene from The

Second Mrs. Tanqueray. Clearly Gorey’s rebuke to Cathy Smith, whether it was about The Bug

Book or Cautionary Tales, is remembered by the performers as both manipulate the clothespins in a very active manner, spasming at times as the puppeteers speak the lines, gesturing back and forth to emphasize certain key phrases. Their vocal intonations perform the melodrama earnestly and with vigor, as the two characters are deep in an intriguing situation, one that is filled with drama and intrigue, yet the specifics are lost on the audience. Once the short scene is finished, the story returns to Matilda and her ultimate demise. The clothespins perfectly parody the

Victorian problem play as they flail about reciting the overdramatic lines.29 This overwrought and overdramatic play is lampooned, not by words explaining how silly the play was, but by seeing these clothespins do their best to present a very serious story.

At the same time, there is a gracefulness, even within the overly comedic story. When

Matilda’s home catches fire, the flames are represented simply by yellow-orange felt that has been fashioned into pointy gloves. The puppeteer wiggles their fingers very slightly at first, but as the fire grows so do their finger and hand movements. Eventually the fire surrounds Matilda and consumes her as the two fire hands grab the puppet. While the fire is simply presented, the

29 Michael R. Booth, Theatre in the Victorian Age, (London, Cambridge Press: 1993). Booth states that domestic melodrama dealt with “social problems like drink, gambling, crime, poverty, homelessness, strikes and the slave trade” (53). He also states that The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, while using aspects of “modernism” also “owes much to an inheritance of melodramatic stock character types” (176).

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puppeteer’s movement creates a delightful illusion of a dancing blaze. While Matilda’s fate is terrible, the playfulness of the fire communicates the comedic aspects of the show.

Seeing the video for Cautionary Tales clearly shows that Gorey’s used puppets for these two primary reasons. To be ridiculous—or to set a humorous tone about the terrible things that might occur to the puppet’s characters—and sublime–or to perform elegant, graceful movements and gestures, that were outside the ability of his actors alone. The puppets demonstrate the playful tone of Gorey’s theatre, and juxtaposition of forms and styles that he was interested in.

Puppets Preserved

The final production for Le Théâtricule Stoïque was a collaboration between Gorey and composer Dan Wolf entitled The White Canoe: An Opera Seria for Hand Puppets. The was produced and directed by Carol Verburg as a tribute to Gorey, and ran September 1 – 23, 2000, five months after his death.30 Since then the puppets have been the exclusive property of the

Gorey Charitable Trust. The trust allows a few puppets to be displayed in a permanent exhibit in the Edward Gorey House. The rest of the chapter will detail my multiple encounters with the exhibit and my analysis for how the performance of the puppets continues in the Gorey House.

The puppets are arranged in a two and a half feet by one and a half foot display case that stands about four feet off the ground. They are posed in five different groups – three pairs and two triplits – each group performing a tableaux, as if frozen in amber mid-gesture. Seeing the puppets in person confirms Verberg and Theroux’s descriptions. Some of the fabrics that make up the bodies are solid colors such as black, white, or red, while others have checkered, or polka- dotted textures. On top of each neck sits a celluclay head. Many heads, like in the video, are pale white, beady-eyed humanoids. The male characters are bald, while females have the appearance

30 Verberg, 64.

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of hair tied in a bun, the same color as the head, which extends up. One puppet looks to have the head of a cat with pointy ears, painted brown with black patches. One female is yellow and looks a bit like a summer squash, while two others have rosy faces, distinctive from pale color of the others. One beaked nose creature resembles the titular character from The Doubtful Guest. Some wear hats, one wears a mask, and one holds a tiny umbrella. A dancing couple stand on a raised platform in the middle of the display (figure 11), while the other four groups pose on the four corners. Taking in the entire scene at once makes for a fun tableau with layers of distinct potential for action, while looking at the pairings up close provides more nuance and detail.

The modest puppets are nonetheless vibrant and expressive and beam with promise and potential. I can see several Gorey character types within the tableaus, including an undertaker, a refined lady in the fuzzy hat, and the above mentioned beaked creature. As a Gorey fan, while not knowing the specifics, I immediately felt as if I was familiar with these little puppets as they so clearly fit within Gorey’s visual aesthetic. Even before I had seen the Cautionary Tales video

I could imagine the intrigue and misfortune that they might have experienced in their various

Figure 11: Dancing puppets, one beaked and one wearing a fuzzy hat, at the Gorey House. stories. I got very excited upon discovering them as I stooped closer to the exhibit to get a closer

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look. Soon I found myself moving around the room to see details and experience the display from different angles.

Clearly, the experience of the puppets in a case is not the same as seeing the puppets perform on stage with puppeteers. While the puppets in action perfectly display the ridiculous and sublime found in Gorey’s work, the puppets posed in a display bring about more opaque conclusions. The onus switches from the puppeteer to convey story and meaning to a curator to pose the puppets in meaningful arrangements. Visitors then interpret the arrangements and make meaning for themselves. The interaction of visitor to puppet is the crux of how the puppets continue to perform. For almost every visitor to the museum, unless they were lucky enough to see the shows decades ago or happened upon the video on YouTube, this will be the first and only interaction that they have with Le Théâtricule Stoïque. For the rest of the chapter I will explore how things in space continue performance.

As noted earlier in the chapter and in the introduction, Robin Bernstein coined the term

“scriptive things” to refer to items that compel people into action. Bernstein does not claim that scriptive things perform in and of themselves, but rather they prompt people to either interact in with them in specific ways or to reject the intended action. With either acceptance or rejection a person “dances” with the thing.31 A puppet is a scriptive thing in that it compels onlookers to pick it up and play with it, as I can attest each time I pass a puppet rack in a toy store. The script for these puppets, as they were hand made by Gorey and are now considered valuable artifacts, shifts away from that of a typical toy. Now behind glass these puppets are to be looked at, but never touched. The onus on movement and story, rather than coming from the puppet, comes

31 Robin Bernstein, “Dances with Things: Material Culture and the Performance of Race.” Social Text 101, Vol. 27., No. 4, Winter 2009. 70.

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from the observer. Scriptive actions, such as swooping in for a closer look while one squints to take in all the details or walking around the exhibit to see all the puppets, takes the place of the puppets performing with a puppeteer.

As the script for these puppets has shifted, so has the experience that an audience member will have by encountering the puppets in space. This experience will be unique and different for each visitor and will vary greatly depending on the kind of effort and attention that the visitor is willing to give. While observing puppets in a case is not the typical way to experience them, there is still an interaction that occurs when visitors encounter the display in a museum space.

For one, the puppets are still things that are meant to perform. At any moment, someone could remove the glass, and perform a show with them. While this is highly unlikely to occur, it could happen. Though the display presents the puppets as static art objects, they can be called upon to perform at any time.

Interaction also occurs within a museum space in that viewers share the space with the puppets and control the duration of shared time rather than having the puppets brought into and foisted out of their view as the play dictates. Doreen Massey writes about the possibilities of and complexity of space, and attempts to move the understanding of space away from the idea that it is just a container that people and things exist upon, toward a much more dynamic series of

“interrelations as constituted through interaction… space is the sphere of possibility.”32 She continues “perhaps we can imagine space as the simultaneity of stories so far.” Massey’s ideas imagine space as a vibrant sphere that is constantly changing, as she states, “space unfolds as interaction. In that sense, space is the social dimension. Not in the sense of exclusively human sociability, but in the sense of engagement within a multiplicity.”33 So Massey emphasizes

32 Doreen Massey. For Space. (London: SAGE, 2005) 9.

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possibility, interrelations, and the unpredictability of engagement within a space. She also wishes to complicate the notion of place, which is too often thought of as a neat and coherent. On the contrary, Massey purposes:

The throwntogetherness of place demands negotiation. In sharp contrast to the

view of place as settled and pre-given, with a coherence only to be disturbed by

‘external’ forces, places as presented here in a sense necessitate invention; they

pose a challenge. They implicate us, perforce, in the lives of human others, and in

our relations with nonhumans they ask how we shall respond to our temporary

meeting-up with these particular rocks and stones and trees. They require that, in

one way or another, we confront the challenge of the negotiation of multiplicity.34

Massey’s project specifically points to political aspects about the governing and understanding of space, yet the direct application of her ideas onto the interaction that occurs within a museum space provides a fertile sphere by which a performance continues. This approach deemphasizes museums as places where static things sit idly by while visitors observe them and then leave, and rather purposes a museum space to be vibrant realm of interaction and interrelation where people and things encounter each other in ways that are curated but not fully controlled.

Being in the back room of the Gorey House, and being able to interact with these little things, giving them my full attention while others in the room also look and ponder, creates an example of Massey’s “coexisting heterogeneity”35 While I had no script, reviews from newspapers, or crew notes to go on, I could imagine the aesthetic of these shows and characters

33 Massey, 61.

34 Massey, 141

35 Massey, 9.

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just being in the proximity of the things. Within a shared space the viewer experiences an aspect of the performances which is fundamentally different than reading a script or a review. I experienced whimsy and dread as I formulated scenarios for these puppets. I admired the homespun charm of the creations, and appreciated the care put forth in their construction and preservation. Unique ideas and experiences come from interacting with things in space that can only be experienced through a lived encounter and are individual to everyone. I do not mean to besmirch textual research and analysis of literary texts and historical documents which also offer unique modes of experience, but rather to recognize lived encounter as a unique mode of transference of knowledge. Only by seeing the things up close can one really appreciate Gorey’s distinctive approach to the puppets and appreciate how very personal these productions were to him.

In the corner of the room are chairs and reading materials including some of Gorey’s books, such as The Doubtful Guest, as well as books about Gorey like, The World of Edward

Gorey, Ascending Peculiarity, and Edward Gorey On Stage.36 This enabled a further acquisition of details about the puppets and performances, giving me a space to look, observe, and perhaps even to dance with the things, and then a separate space to read and ponder. I was able to gain impressions of the puppets, the room, the other visitors, while they all gain impressions of me.

The entirety of a performance object in a museum space consists of many interactions across multiple planes. A visitor’s willingness to negotiate this multiplicity will largely determine what they glean from the encounter being able to learn, or not learn, whatever they please. Repeat visits will further complicate this encounter in that the person will experience different

36 Edward Gorey, The Doubtful Guest (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1957). Karen Wilken, The World of Edward Gorey, (Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, 1996). Karen Wilken, Ascending Peculiarity, (New York: Harcourt: 2001). Carol Verburg, Edward Gorey on stage: playwright, director, designer, performer (United States: Boom Books, 2012).

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sensations and thoughts based on different multiplicities found in the space. There are limitless possibilities for insights a person can gain.

It is worth considering that, while many avenues of knowledge exist for a visitor to the puppets in the Gorey House, there will always be aspects of the puppets, and shows they were connected to, that remain unknown. Theodor Adorno, as a part of his negative dialectics, writes about this inability to fully understand a thing:

What we may call the thing itself is not positively and immediately at hand. He

who wants to know it must think more, not less, than the point of reference of the

synthesis of diversity, which is the same, at bottom, as not to think at all. And yet

the thing itself is by no means a thought product. It is nonidentity through

identity. Such nonidentity is not an “idea,” but an adjunct.37

Jane Bennett, while outlining her vibrant materialism, gives clarity to this idea:

Nonidentity is the name Adorno gives to that which is not subject to knowledge

but instead “heterogeneous” to all concepts. This elusive force is not, however,

wholly outside human experience for Adorno describes nonidentity as a presence

that acts upon us: we knowers are haunted, he says, by a painful, nagging feeling

that something's being forgotten or left out. This discomforting sense of any of the

inadequacy of representation remains no matter how refined or analytically

precise one’s concepts become.38

This idea of nonidentity intrigues as it posits that there are aspects of knowledge about things that we can simply never know or understand. So, while we can see these puppets, learn about

37 Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E.B. Ashton (New York: Continuum, 1994) 189

38 Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, (Durham: Duke Press, 2010) 14.

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certain aspects, and can theorize about their performances we cannot possibly ever completely understand them.

It is interesting to note that heterogeneity to Massey emphasizes how exciting it can be to have diversity of action and multiplicity of thought within a shared space, whereas Adorno uses the term to point out that we can never fully understand a thing regardless of how well we conceptualize around it. Within this tension there is an interesting room for inquiry into the nature of theatre history. Even after a performance has ended, artifacts from that performance remain. Observing these items can inspire thought and understanding, but those processes also point out the many aspects that cannot be grasped, reminding the viewer of all the things that they don’t understand, bringing the inadequacy of knowledge into the forefront. Rather than letting this inadequacy frustrate the viewer, Bennett points out Adorno’s advice to “think more, not less.”39 Taken to heart by those who inquire about missed productions, the wide gaps that accompany objects on display must be met with considerable thought and care. Adorno suggests, speaking specifically of Hegel but the advice is apt for this investigation, “The un-naïve thinker knows how far he remains from the object of his thinking, and yet he must always talk as if he had it entirely. This brings him to the point of clowning. He must not deny the clownish traits, least of all since they alone can give him hope for what is denied him.”40 The clowning, or whimsy, with which our daydreams of productions past can help to fill in the enormous gaps left by what is unknown, and yet, we must temper and connect our clownish traits to rational, thorough, focused thought. While we may never fully comprehend everything in and around a thing, we must strive and grasp at all that we can. The gaps in understanding encourage us to

39 Adorno, Negative Dialectics, 189. Bennett, Vibrant Matter, 13 - 14

40Adorno, Negative Dialectics, 14.

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continue our inquiry, and our clownish thoughts give an avenue by which we can attempt to fill in those gaps.

Performance Preserved

While things, in this case puppets, can both inspire and make viewers aware of what is unknowable, they also contain a continuation of a performance. Aleksandra Wolska, as mentioned in the introduction, gives ideas about how performance continues even after a show has closed. She states that performance, rather than ending with a final blackout, is rather a

“process of becoming.” She explains:

When theatre functions only as an organizing force, creating a matrix of

predictable causes and effects, it tolls its own vanishing. After all, shows end.

Performance, however, never does, for it unfolds in the world where the

performative abides in everyday reality…. As a rhizomatic proliferation,

performance sustains culture at its broadest most vital echelon.41

This concept greatly shifts the ephemerality of performance. Wolska, in this moment, differentiates between theatre and performance in that shows end but performances continue. It is a fine hair to split, in that performance occurs both in the theatre and in everyday life, but for my purposes, I am examining the performance that occurred within Gorey’s theatrical presentation.

Wolska suggests that any performance continues to grow and shift over time. The Gorey puppets do point back to the shows that have ended, but they have also morphed and are now something like a theatrical theatre history that continues to evolve and perform before our eyes. The glee,

41 Aleksandra Wolska “Rabbits, Machines, and Ontology of Performance,” Theatre Journal, 57.1, 2005, 92.

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amusement, or even dread that accompanied the puppets in performance still resonates with museum visitors.

The “rhizomatic proliferation” that Wolska mentions points to Deleuze and Guattari and their system of thinking that complicates and rejects traditional dualist and linear modes of thought, which they compare to a tree. Instead, Deleuze and Guattari suggest, “Make rhizomes, not roots, never plant! ...Don’t be one or multiple, be multiplicities!” They continue:

A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things,

interbeing, intermezzo. The tree is filiation, but the rhizome is alliance, uniquely

alliance. The tree imposes the verb “to be,” but the fabric of the rhizome is the

conjunction, “and…and…and…”42

Deleuze and Guattari’s insights into the nature of rhizomatic thinking fit together with other ideas, previously mentioned, about space and things. I also notice they too encourage

“multiplicities,” which Massey champions in her work. This further inspires the possibility of seeing performance as a series of events constituted through long hours of rehearsal, design and construction leading up to a show, and the show itself, as well as the items and memories that are left after the dropping of the final curtain, as all being a part of the performance. If, as Wolska suggests, performance “unfolds into the world” those performances continue through the memories of performers and audience members and through the various ephemera that remains.

Many props and costume pieces will be placed back into storage to be used again in a different show. Some treasured keepsakes will be taken home by cast members wishing to retain a piece of the performance for themselves. In very rare instances, the ephemera, such as in the Gorey

House, will be put on display for fans and onlookers to continually enjoy.

42 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 24 - 25.

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With ephemera available to consider, something very complicated and deeply satisfying occurs for the viewer who missed the show but can still observe things involved with the production. 1) Interacting with things in space allows for multiplicity of ideas and experiences.

Some of these ideas are directed by the exhibit itself, but many would be unique to the individual visitor. 2) Encountering a thing makes manifest the shortcomings of our understanding of that thing and the show it was involved with. Understanding the existence of this deficiency inspires the onlooker to continue to search for meaning and answers, and 3) The ability of spectators to view these items allows for the performance to continue and shifts performance from an event into a process that is ever-changing, allowing for more rhizomatic modes of thought.

Throughout this chapter I have tied together notions of things and space to show how interconnected the concepts are for this kind of study. Things are only experienced through space. In this way a display of public history and a theatrical performance can feel similar, because they both rely on directly lived interaction. Performance preserved through public history acts as a site of theatre history, but also as the continuance of that performance. For researchers and dramaturges this encounter can galvanize the desire to learn more through other more traditional research methods. For many who visit the Gorey House these puppets will be the only interaction that they will ever have with Gorey’s theatre on Cape Cod. In this way, the performances continue through the puppets.

This chapter began with an explanation of The Raging Tide to show how important things are in Gorey’s storytelling. Not only did Gorey love to have things around him, but things often played a crucial role through his narratives. As with Figbash, Skrump, Hooglyboo, and Naeelah, the puppets in the Gorey Houses have no discernable order by which a visitor needs to interact with them. While both suggest how a visitor could proceed, via the “choose your own” page

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progression or the written placards that accompany the puppets, viewers have an enormous amount of freedom as to how to experience the things, ensuring that no two people will have the same experience, regardless of how many times they read the book, or visit the puppets.

Clearly there is a stark distinction between seeing the puppets perform, either live or on video, and seeing them in a display. The video shows the ridiculous and the sublime of Gorey’s theatre, while the exhibit both points to performances that have occurred and has the potential to continue performances in the minds of the visitors. Both experiences, while not giving the exact experience of seeing a show live, give unique perspective and experiences to viewers who mourn missing shows that closed long ago

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CHAPTER SIX

CONCLUSION

On February 10, 2018 a special, temporary exhibit about Edward Gorey opened at the

Wadsworth Athenium Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut. Gorey’s Worlds explored his work through the lens of his art collection, which he left to the museum after he died. While stopping just short of saying the art inspired Gorey, the museum, smartly, rather gathered the pieces together to give a picture of what Gorey liked and what he created. Knowing that many in attendance would not be familiar with him, the museum also gave some basic biographical information, and showed popular aspects of his art, such as the opening of Mystery on a loop, so that museum goers could become acquainted with the eccentric genius. While the exhibit was expertly arranged and presented, it omitted one important fact: Gorey performed and produced his own theatre on Cape Cod for over a decade. This omission is not overly surprising through.

Gorey has been largely written out of theatre history. One of my primary goals in writing this dissertation is to bring Edward Gorey into the world of theatre and performance scholarship.

My first memory of seeing anything associated with Edward Gorey occurred when I happened to see the introduction to Mystery on PBS as a child. Those cartoons mesmerized and frightened me in a way that I still remember. I was always disappointed when the show began as

Sherlock Holmes or Poirot were never as compelling as the opening. My next encounter with a

Gorey work occurred in a Barnes and Noble sometime around 2003. My wife showed me a copy of The Gilded Bat which we immediately purchased.1 I was flummoxed by the opaque story and vibrant images as I read it for the first time. The pages told of Maudie Splaytoe and her journey from childhood prodigy to prima ballerina including her untimely and tragic death. After I read

1 Edward Gorey, The Gilded Bat, (Petaluma, CA: Pomegranate, 1966). 126

the book I mistakenly thought 1) that the story was based on a real person, and 2) that the writer was from nineteenth century England or some other faraway place. The book, like the introduction to Mystery, compelled, intrigued, and confused me. I immediately wanted to read more Gorey books.

In 2011 as a new PhD student and full-fledged Gorey fan I noticed that his Wikipedia page at the time claimed he was a playwright without providing any other information. Curious, I began to search for the plays. Instead I found Edward Gorey Plays Cape Cod by Carol Verberg which compelled me to investigate further. I found that the plays, as I’ve noted many times throughout this dissertation, are not published, and that other than the Verburg texts, there was not any scholarship on Gorey’s theatre at all.

The fact that Gorey, as noted in the introduction, was famously averse to explaining the meanings of his work make placing him within theatre history a tricky endeavor. Throughout this dissertation I have written about how Gorey plays with postmodern and absurd sensibilities to challenge narrative norms, while also skewering and questioning society through his use of camp. This tension between the absurd and postmodern makes Gorey an interesting study for the transition point between the two historical moments, and perhaps can help to bridge the gap between the two movements.

Gorey is postmodern, as I specified in chapter two, in the way he rearranges traditional narrative structure as a way of reconfiguring traditional sense and logic. That, with his use of pastiche, make him an ideal case study for postmodern sensibility and structure. He defies genre and form in his books, which appear to be for children but only seldom are, and his theatre consistently challenges traditional approaches. His crosshatch style of his illustrations is so distinctive and theatrical as to easily be accessible for stage productions, as was documented in

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chapter three with Dracula on Broadway. His books are theatrical in their use of tableaux and his theatre is amorphous tending to only subscribe to whatever subjects interested him, such as presenting Seneca in puppet form, or casting himself, then over seventy, as a boy scout for one of his productions. His willingness to always try to new things, while also embracing the unknown and illogical, make him a captivating example how the postmodern and modern intermingle.

Gorey’s Cape Cod theatre, which is not nearly as well-known, adds complexity to how his art is comprehended. Gorey’s theatre, while returning to his trademark snapshots and camp, seems to, at times, lean more towards an absurd sentiment, both in the how the form emphasizes an existential philosophical bent, and how the content displays a sense of meaninglessness of everyday occurrences, such as preparing to go on a trip or the forced interaction that goes along with attending a party. Yet the works are short and disjointed, showing many vignettes in one evening, and offering only vague connections between all of the pieces. When considered in all its complexity, Gorey’s work displays aspects of the both the modern and post-modern and showcases how the two styles overlap and collide. This makes him a compelling subject in theatre history as it shows that, while scholars place and categorize artists into recognizable groupings, there are often are outliers that goad us to think more carefully about the classifications we make.

Regardless of any of the above stated issues, Gorey makes an excellent case study for theatre studies in several areas. His plays can be paired with Theatre of the Absurd writers to show a distinctively American take on similar themes.2 He can be placed with postmodern writers as an ideal example of how the modern becomes postmodern through middle and late twentieth century. Keying in on the geographic area and spirit of artistic invention one could

2 Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd, (New York: Vintage, 1961). 128

place him next to the pioneers of the Little Theatre Movement and the Provincetown Players who also experimented with theatrical form on Cape Cod . Any of these placements would bring clarification or stimulating insights to these areas of theatre history.

Gorey is also notable because of his connection to two Broadway shows that ran concurrently. These productions are examples of the thrill of having a hit, and the despair of a production not finding an audience. The fact that the designs for Dracula, with their creepy but campy aesthetic, and the script for Gorey Stories, with its silly dreariness, are both still produced show the viability to the designs and suggest that Gorey’s off-beat narrative structure can be appealing given the right circumstances.

Also, Gorey’s productions on Broadway reify his status as an artist of substantial influence. To have two shows running at the same time, neither initiated by Gorey, yet both using his aesthetic for advertising and branding indicates the robust nature of Gorey’s appeal. It is certain that his unique and indelible style has inspired many, including the likes of Tim

Burton, Neil Gaimen, and Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket) to name just a few, in addition to the producers and artists that were associated with these productions.

The notion of disembodied theatre occurred to me in a somewhat desperate moment. I desired to understand and appreciate Gorey’s theatre, and especially his shows on Cape Cod, but

I needed to find other ways to investigate and analyze the work other than published plays. I sincerely hoped that theatre and performance could continue through and extend past the interaction between actors and audience members that takes place in darkened auditoriums. I wanted theatre to stretch into realms of public history. In this study I have investigated archival materials, such as newspaper articles and rehearsal scripts, along with things used in performance that are displayed in museum exhibits to gauge the extent of this disembodied

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performance. Through the investigation I found that the traces of performance both provide and withhold information, offer insight and contradiction, enlighten and stupefy, and yet the stupefaction is helpful as it alerts the viewer to all the things they don’t yet know. As I learn more I am constantly prodded and coaxed to pursue greater amounts of information, as such is the character of disembodied theatre.

Gorey is also noteworthy to theatre scholars in that, as a known visual artist, the puppets that he made for La Théâtricule Stoïque have value outside of the performance venue, and therefore are worthy of being showcased in a museum, allowing me to test the boundaries of performance in a public history space. Performance artifacts are not often displayed in such a manner. Gorey’s fame and fanbase dictates that his theatrical artifacts are preserved and presented for public viewing. However, most performances, by either famous and ordinary individuals, do not have remains on display in museums as various performance ephemera are more typically placed back into storage, personal collections, archives, or discarded. I wager that most disembodied theatre is hidden away, completely out public view. As I have written about in chapter five, for performances to continue, the remains from those performances must be able to be viewed by interested parties. While bringing Gorey to light and placing him within theatre history are two of the main projects of this dissertation, I also hope to see more theatre artifacts on display through spaces of public history so that the disembodied theatres of those items can be enjoyed by more people. I would love to see more museums dedicated to the art and practice of theatre.

One area that I haven’t addressed, although I have utilized it to understand Gorey’s theatre, is the use of oral histories as disembodied performance. Oral histories about past performances, which are typically recorded by audio devices, begin with a gesture towards

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Schneider’s concepts of citational or re-performance in that interviewees will often perform, if just conversationally, moments from past shows.3 This re-performance quickly turns disembodied as the recorded voice can be called upon again and again to perform and become printed words on the transcript. Even a video recording is disembodied, giving a sense of the performance, but losing a some of intimacy and immediacy of the live encounter.

The recordings of oral history and their printed transcriptions, like all disembodied performance, both inform and withhold. This became clear to me as I interviewed Joe Richards.

He told me about the freedom Gorey gave them as actors, and about a choice he made in one particular performance. The vignette was about a woman whose husband had done everything for her, and after he had died she was quite bewildered by the complexities of her existence. A narrator called upon Richards to help the woman remove staples from a magazine as well as do

“other things” for her. Richards mimed for me that he interpreted the “other things” as opening a window. On the recording this mimed action takes place over moments of silence. Even now, as

I look at the transcription, the moment is very muddled and hard to follow, while my recollection of our discussion is crystal clear.4

This moment is one that shows the limits of oral history to recapture past performance.

While Richards was still able to perform the moment from the play, the audio recording device missed his actions and facial gestures. The transcription then cannot account for those silent moments on the audio file. While oral histories do give valuable insights and details, they cannot possibly fill in all the gaps of a missed production as the recording techniques cannot capture all the subtle nuances of a subject’s performance. Perhaps video recording oral histories would

3 Rebecca Schneider, “Performance Remains,” in Perform, Repeat, Record, ed. Amelia Jones, and Adrian Heathfield, (Bristol, GB: Intellect, 2012).

4 Joe Richards in a discussion with the author, June 2016. 131

provide further details missed by an audio recording alone, but the transcript would still withhold the information, and the interaction of viewer to recorded image would still be different, even slightly, from the live encounter.

Which brings me to a final point about disembodied theatre, a point that will sound obvious, but was not apparent to me as I started this investigation. The rehearsal scripts, reviews, and artifacts on display all cry out for new productions to take place, like the proverbial unseen voice that seeks justice for past wrong-doings. Disembodied theatre wants to become theatre again and compels onlookers to make the shows happen once more. Until that time, the materials wait, giving hints as to what occurred, and prompt onlookers to daydream and imagine what could be.

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Tony Gunn is from Provo, Utah. He has a BA in Theatre Studies with an Emphasis in

Directing and an MA in Theatre History from Brigham Young University. He also holds a PhD in Theatre Studies from Florida State University. His research interests include the theatre of

Edward Gorey and Thornton Wilder. He also is interested in the interplay of performance with public history and sports punditry. He has directed plays for New Play Project, Brigham Young

University, and Utah Valley University. In his spare time, he enjoys cooking and spending time with his family.

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