http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0129812/
David Cale is an English born actor currently living and working in New York City. Predominantly known as a solo performer, he has also performed on the screen as well as on Broadway. His current projects are with fellow actors both performing and writing.
His solo works include but are not limited to; Lillian Somebody Else’s House, Deep in a Dream of You, The Nature of Things, Smooch Music, The Redthroats, Betwixt, Floyd and Clea Under the Western Sky, The History of Kisses and, Welcome to America. And his works often feature music either in the background of the piece or as a part of the performance itself.
David Cale is influenced by the work of playwrights such as; Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter (as well as other predominant writers).
He is inspired by things that are close to him but have not necessarily happened to him. He is also inspired and interested by people. People he passes in the street or in shops etc. that amuse him. Therefore, his work is more personal than autobiographical adding that the material and inspiration used is often performed in a way that is different to its original form.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I15dpMZ-Zs
Lillian (1998)
Lillian boasts a common plot of a “proper, married, Englishwoman who risks everything for the love of a wild, young man” says David Lefkowitz of Playbill.
Ben Brantley of the New York Times said “Mr Cale (…) emerges here as a potent foe of those who would break personality down into quantifiable elements and influences.” And said that Lillian “is a wondering and accepting look at the clear, intricate patterns that develop over time from the ordinary muddle of daily life”.
Not simplifying emotions or personality but exploring them and presenting them on the stage.
An unusual feature of its performance is its presentation, as its main and only character is that of a woman, however she is performed by a man.
The History of Kisses (2011)
The History of Kisses is a One-man show lasting 90minutes. It includes “appealingly vulnerable characters” (Wren, 2011) such as Robert Grundy, Lisa and a grieving construction czar.
The History of Kisses plays out on a stretch of unkempt sand featuring an easel and a concertina lying on a rock.
Throughout the piece Cale sticks to an all-black costume, performing his characters through accent and body language.
- Robert Grundy is a folk singer who has settled himself in a Californian motel ready to practice for a coming sea chantey festival. Cale, through the character of Grundy, strikes up a chantey every now and then, and the “plangent tones and insistent rhythms compliment a play whose dominant metaphor, the ocean, conjures up visions of danger, expansive possibility and longing.” (Wren, 2011)
- When performing Lisa a gentle divorcee whose life changes after a serendipitous encounter on a Portuguese quay, he changes his posture and manner by sitting with knees together on a lifeguard chair hands folded demurely on his lap, occasionally slicking a lock of invisible hair behind his ear.
- When Cale wanders across the sand with a world-weary hunch and slight shuffle, he is a grieving construction czar who just happens to run across Judy Garland on a beach.
- And when his voice plunges to a particularly low register, he’s the soda entrepreneur who yearns to be a Park Ranger. You get my drift…
Here David Cale talks about the process of creating The History of Kisses.
And here is a preview of The History of Kisses. In it Cale is performing Grundy the folk singer.
Deep in a Dream of You (1993)
Probably my favourite performance that I’ve researched, Deep in a Dream of You is a monologue consisting of 12 ‘sketches’. The monologue is performed with the backing of a Jazz quintet. Some of the sketches are performed in the first person while others are performed as a narrator telling the story. “Thread through each [sketch] is a theme of emotional and sexual longing” (Evans, 1993). In this performance Cale is “presenting characters whose longing is refracted through memory” (IBID).
Each of the 12 sketches “veer from humorous to sad, soothing to shrieking, culminating in the works high point, “Blue fir Trees” in which a man remembers a lover who died of AIDS” (Evans, 1993).
Here is the ‘mini-monologue’ of the ‘high point’ within the performance, Blue Fir Trees.
“Blue Fir Trees.
I will never forget you on the patio next to that lake in the New Hampshire, doing the Jane Fonda workout to a Philip Glass record. How the wind blew the music across the lake. The blue fir trees surrounding the water barely moving at all. There was one cloud in the sky. Stretching your pale limbs into unnatural positions and holding them there.
I read it somewhere that when the body dies, the soul leaves through the top of the head. I remember seeing my grandfather’s body laid out in my grandmother’s room and thinking his body looked like a shell and automatically wondering, Where’s the soul gone? and instinctively looking up at the ceiling as if I was going to see it hovering there.
I will never forget the times I craved you. Couldn’t get enough of you. Wanted you so bad it made my stomach ache.
The times I was embarrassed by your displays of physical affection. Worried about how it would look. Embarrassed to be wanting you, or something. Feeling that you weren’t pretty enough and that was ludicrously some reflection on me. Or that you were too effeminate, and that was somehow incriminating.
I used to dream of being driven at night by some anonymous driver. Along an American highway. No words. Just to be staring out the window like some Garbo creature. Moody and silent. Deep inside myself. When we drove through Pennsylvania that night I thought, This may not be it, but it’s pretty close.
In the night the lake looked like it had died. You wondered if what you wanted in another person is really what you would like to be yourself. The trees made sounds. When you shouted your voice echoed in the mountains. You could duet with yourself.
I will never forget flying in that plane over Boston in the middle of the night, with a black coffee in one hand trying to figure out how I could feel something so strongly then stop feeling it altogether and considering it was gone for good.
I will never forget the look on your face when you told me how you felt and how I couldn’t speak, how the words wouldn’t leave me because I felt absolutely nothing. I didn’t realize I had such a vicious streak till you were kind to me. I will never forget how soft the skin on your back was. I will never forget how you laughed at everything I said. I will never forget how I never believed you when you said I looked good or what I did was good, thinking that you were so in love that you would say anything to please me. That your opinion was invalid.
When nothing makes sense there’s always sense of humour.
I will never forget that joke you told me about Ginger Rogers. When asked how much she weighed, Ginger replied, “145 pounds, 133 without makeup.” How every time you told it you cracked yourself up.
I will never forget how when you danced, it looked like someone had taken you over.
I will never forget meeting your mother for the first time and the look on her face that seeing the two of us together was in some way confirming her most unsettling suspicions.
I will never forget how meticulous you were. I will never forget that horrible cologne you wore. I will never forget those kids yelling ‘faggot’ at you on the street. I will never forget you saying very quietly, ‘Ignore them’.
I will never forget seeing you in that anonymous hospital. Laying in the bed with your eyes focused on something that I couldn’t see.
I will never forget you laying there asleep. Still with your eyes wide open.
I will never forget after visiting you in the hospital how I sobbed uncontrollably on the telephone and felt relieved afterwards that I could feel something for someone other than myself.
I will never forget not being able to leave that room because I knew I wouldn’t see you again.
But I will never forget when you finished doing that exercise all those years ago. How the music still kept playing. You came up behind me. Touched my neck oh so gently with your lips. Standing there. Miles from anyone. The blue fir trees still. The water quiet. The one cloud moving very slightly. Our chests rising. Hearts floating across the lake. Over the trees. Up into the single cloud. How it moved into the distance still beating.
And you whispered, ‘When it gets late tonight. I want to take you swimming in the dark. It’s something you’ve never done. It’s something you’d like to do. I know a lake…'”
(http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=17475)
To end this post on a lighter note, take a look at this video of Cale performing a ‘song’ about the people that are only in your life for 30seconds.
Works Cited:
Wren, C. (2011) Review of David Cale’s ‘The History of Kisses’ at Studio Theatre. The Washington Post. [Online] 20 June. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/review-of-david-cales-the-history-of-kisses-at-studio-theatre/2011/06/20/AGZuXNdH_story.html [Accessed 15 February 2016]
Brantley, B. (1998) THEATER REVIEW; Finding the Mystery in the Mundane. The New York Times. [Online] 20 June. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/20/arts/theater-review-finding-the-mystery-in-the-mundane.html [Accessed 15 February 2016]
Lefkowitz, D. (1998) Her Name Is Lillian, And She’s Played Off-Bway By David Cale, June 15-28. Playbill. [Online] 15 June. Available at: http://www.playbill.com/news/article/her-name-is-lillian-and-shes-played-off-bway-by-david-cale-june-15-28-76017 [Accessed 13 February 2016]
Evans, G. (1993) Review: ‘Deep in a Dream of You; Memory Tricks’. Variety. [Online] 22 April. Available at: http://variety.com/1993/legit/reviews/deep-in-a-dream-of-you-memory-tricks-1200431954/