University of Southern California
BAREFOOT IN THE PARK
Brian Blashaw and Michele Dedeaux rehearse play.
—Photo by Pat Merriman
"Barefoot^ production begins to take shape
By KATHY RETHLAKE
What happens when a wild and wacky girl marries a stuffy, genteel young attorney? The mad results are portrayed in “Barefoot in the Park,” the Drama Department’s Summer Mainstage production.
The play centers around the attempts of Cory, the girl, and Paul, the husband, to adjust to each other. Cory tries to unbend her conservative husband by suggesting crazy things like walking barefoot in the park in 17-degree weather. Paul’s annoyance at her immature antics
increases until both have to
face the problem of their disintegrating relationship — adjust or split up. The two also manage to mix Cory’s mother
up with a debonair but aging
friend, Victor Velasco, who
has side effects on Cory’s and Paul’s relationship.
Brian Blashaw makes his USC debut as Paul, the young
attorney, who at 26 often acts
like 56. Blashaw has had no previous acting experience other than high school productions, although he has done
some directing. He is currently enrolled in the Drama Department’s summer workshop.
“I was especially interested in “Barefoot in the Park” because il had directed parts of the play before and really liked
it,” said Blashaw.
Blashaw views Paul as a very inhibited person who hates himself for it.
“Paul sees these crazy tendencies in his wife like running
barefoot in the park. He admires her for it, but it drives
him crazy. <
Paul is an unsympathetic character. He’s OK but that’s it. It’s not until the end of the play that the audience really begins to identify with Paul.
The play was written by Neil Simon, who also wrote “Promises, Promises,” “Come Blow Your Horn.” and “The Odd Couple.” among others. “Barefoot” has been made into a film also. Blashaw feels pro-traying Paul on film would be much easier.
“Paul is often subtly sarcastic. In a film you can catch the detailed stuff easily, but in a play you must make this obvious to the audience. You must make it obvious yet still subtle and low-key. That is very hard.”
Michele Dedeaux plays Cory. She has previously appeared in the USC .productions of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” in which she received excellent reviews. She has also appeared in “Mad Woman of Chaillot” and “Our Town,” and “The Boys from Syracuse.”
Cory’s mother is played by Judith Shogren, and the dashing Victor Velasco is played by Wynn Pearce.
The rest of the cast will be made up of Eugene Carlson, the telephone man, and Chuck Jones, the delivery man.
Blashaw wras enthusiastic about the cast. “It’s the greatest bunch of people I’ve ever worked with personally and professionally. I have to keep from falling in love with my leading lady — she’s only been married four months.”
The play runs from July 23-25 in Bovard Auditorium.
SUMMER
TROJAN
VOL. LXII.NO. 7
LOS ANGELES. CALIFORNIA
FRIDAY, JULY 10, 1970
Four riddles of education need solving, Rafferty says
The role of a school is to teach organized, disciplined subject matter to children, Max Rafferty, who is running for reelection as the state superintendent of public instruction, told a large audience at the Faculty Center luncheon Wednesday.
Structuring his talk as a parable to the myth of Oedipus and the sphinx, where the answer to one riddle was enough to save Oedipus’ people, Rafferty spoke of three riddles or areas of concern which he said educators must answer.
The most important, he said, was the question of life adjustment education versus education in depth. He accused some instructors of being more concerned with a student’s ability to be popular than with teaching subject matter.
“Ignorance, inaccuracy, unenlightenment, all the immemorial enemies and targets of education, must now take a back seat to this new and supreme offense—unpopularity, unadjustability,” Rafferty said.
“But the purpose of a school is not to make pupils popular, or universally accepted; it is to make them learned, period. It is to teach them to use the tools which the race, over the centuries, has found to be indispensible in the pursuit of truth.
“It is said by some that subject matter is secondary to the main goal of education which is acceptance and adjustment. But I say to you that the schools exist to teach organized, disciplined, systematic subject matter to the children.
“For this, they were created; for this, they are maintained by the millions of Americans who support and populate them, and for no other reason.”
He added that if the schools did not teach subject matter the children would never learn it, whereas the home and social organizations are available to instruct children on life adjustment.
“But only the school can forge for the child the wonderful, shining sharp-edged sword of subject matter,” Rafferty said.
Teaching students to react to an “evershifting environmental kaleidoscope” is a way of teaching with which American democracy cannot coexist for much longer, he said.
“Within it lay the seeds of the rumbles and the riots, the frantic, desperate search for kicks on the part of our confused young, the newsstand filth and the cinematic garbage which mark the last dissent to the clawing, clinging sickness of ultimate decay of every civilization which has ever permitted this infection to overcome its resistance.”
Another riddle Rafferty discussed dealt with patriotism. He said that Americans are about to be sold a bill of goods which runs this way:
“There is to be no open expression of patriotism in the schools, for this would constitute indoctrination, and this we must not have. We must teach America’s history and the Constitution absolutely dispassionately and without emotion, taking great care to balance each national virtue with a prominent national vice, no matter how deeply we have to dig to dredge up one of the latter.”
He said whereas in years past it was natural for a person to openly express his love for America, today a person who does so runs the risk of being branded a right-winged extremist, a para-
(Continued on page 4)
New conductor to invite nonmajors and experimentation to orchestra
Daniel Lewis, who has been conducting for the past 25 years, will be directing the USC Symphony Orchestra this year and expects to try a few experimental changes.
Lewis is currently the music
director of the Symphony Orchestra of Orange County.
What he has in mind for USC is to open the orchestra to nonmusic majors and have the orchestra perform faculty and student compositions.
“I would like to open to nonmusic majors the whole marvelous area of being able to play with a symphony if they are qualified,” Lewis said.
In most colleges and universities there are people who have studied an instrument for
seven to eight years and played
in orchestras through high school, but when they chose another major in college the op-
Current African history to be topic of lecture Monday
The first of three lectures on African and Afro-American studies will be given Monday at 1:15 in Founders Hall 226.
Dr. lima Oke Eleazu, assistant professor of political science, California State College at Dominguez Hills, who will give the lectures, was born in Biafra Nigeria and has written such books as “Political and Administrative Aspects of Economic Development,” “Electoral Administration in Nigeria,” “Nigeria, Biafra and the Organization of African Unity: Self-Determination versus Territorial Integrity,” and “The OAU and the Nigerian Conflict: An Assessment.”
The other two lectures will take place Monday, July 20, and Monday, July 27.
Monday’s will be on “African History in the Second Half of the 20th Century.” The other two lectures will be concerned with “European Imperialism and African Responses,” and “Africa and the Afro-American: Myth and Reality” respectively. The lectures are free and open to the public.
portunity was no longer avail-abe, Lewis said.
Any nonmusic major who is interested in playing for the orchestra should call Booth Hall, 746-2485, to make an appointment for an interview with Lewis, and possibly an audition.
Lewis said that by opening the orchestra to nonmajors he hopes to have about 70 people performing.
His plan to have the orchestra perform student and faculty works, along with pieces by internationally-known composers, seems to have been sparked by his enthusiasm about the personnel on campus.
“The reason I accepted the invitation to come to USC was because of the quality of the students and the illustrious faculty,” Lewis said. “There’s no doubt in my mind that it is the finest music college on the coast.”
For five years Lewis was the director of the Idyllwild Festival Orchestra, in which many USC students performed. Each semester the group performs at least two concerts, one opera and one performance combined with the Choral Department, plus some chamber orchestra experience. The first concert will be held Oct. 27.
The major difference between conducting a student group compared to a professional orchestra, Lewis said, is that the purposes are different.
“The purpose of a college orchestra is to create a valuable learning experience for the personnel,” Lewis said. “In a professional group the major purpose, of course, is to simply play literature, which is perhaps less comprehensive in scope. Hopefully, the results will be similar.”
He added that it usually takes longer for students to prepare a program than a professional group. But even so, most concerts are prepared in about 11 rehearsals over a seven-week period, Lewis said. Most of the music students at USC have been studying their instruments for seven or eight years.
Lewis is replacing Stefan Bauer-Mengelberg, who will be teaching in New York. Besides conducting the Symphony Orchestra of Orange County, Lewis has also directed the La Jolla Chamber Orchestra, the San Diego Symphony and the
Alaska International Music
Festival in Anchorage.
In addition, he has taught at both Cal State Fullerton and UCSD. Lewis is a graduate of San Diego State College and Claremont College and studied at the Munich Academy of Music. His major instrument is violin and he was first violinist with the Modern Arts String Quartet in San Diego.
DANIEL LEWIS