Malia Movement Company's Blog

Dialogue with Lanny Harrison: Performer, Artist, Mother, New Yorker by Hannah Pearl Walcott

18 Aug 2010 3 Comments

by maliamovement in Community Blogs Tags: artists, company, dance, Daughter, Hannah, Harrison, Lanny, malia, Mama, Mothers, movement, NYC, old, Pearl, school, support, Theater, Walcott, women

Dialogue with Lanny Harrison: Performer, Artist, Mother, New Yorker By Hannah Pearl Walcott 

Hannah Pearl: Hi mom

Lanny: Hi Hannah Pearl

HP: So, we’re here today in the kitchen of our apartment on 19^th street, where you have lived for how many years?

L: Let’s see, probably since 1982, something like that. Before that, we were upstairs in apartment 62 where you were conceived. And at that time we could see the empire state building from our kitchen, our red kitchen. There was an old dumb waiter that I had painted trees on. It kind of looked like you were in a forest with red air.

HP: Tell me an early urban theatrical memory

L: Well really early on, I was working with the open theater, with Tina Shepard, who was the first of all of us to move into this building. She was also in The Salomon Yakim Pantomime Theater, aka the Israeli Mime Troupe. Salomon saw me do a tiny role in Princeton, NJ and remembered me. Tina told me he was auditioning for an American tour his troupe was doing. I had a lot of training, but not mime, so Tina offered to train me and then I auditioned for Salomon, who looked like he was angry all the time. He was a Sabra as was his wife, which means they were born Israelis and fought in the war, so they were like little warrior people. His wife was Mena, and we called him Moni. Moni and Mena. So I got into the troupe. I couldn’t believe it.

HP: Tell me a memory from that tour

L: There are so many, but it was really the first time I had seen the west. We went to Santa Fe in the winter, just a little propjet flying from Albuquerque, flying over the mountains, landing on this little strip, the air was crystal clear, and we were this crazy little troupe debarking the plane. It was so breathtaking.

Then there was Colorado Springs, driving in a giant station wagon, followed by our crazy stage manager in another car, stopping at the garden of the gods, an extraordinary formation of rocks. We rented a little house and lived there for a month, cooking, rehearsing, doing god knows what.

One morning over breakfast and coffee, Moni said ‘everyone has to make a solo’, we didn’t even know the group pieces yet.

I had brought paint with me, and I made this solo in a hotel room, where I would reach under a scarf, and the audience didn’t know what I was doing, and I would have paint on each hand and I put my hands up to my face and painted it, so the audience would eventually see half of me in blue paint and the other in white paint, and I did some movement along with it, it was the 60’s u know.

HP: What was your first one-woman show?

L: My first one-woman show was around 1972, I made it in the country. The solo was about a number of characters, one of them being a ‘hermitess’, because I was alone a lot in the country when Collin (late husband and father) was on tour and sometimes didn’t even have a car. So this character was like a hermit, and her voice was all over the place. I performed it at Meredith’s loft, with an invited audience, maybe 20 people, we stayed at the Chelsea hotel and I rehearsed there. It was called ‘A Showing’. The first line of it was ‘I should like to tell you a story’. I didn’t change costume; I just had props, like handmade glasses and crazy books. I was very nervous and people loved it. Then we had a big dancing party.

HP: Tell me about you and Meredith (Monk)

L: We went to Sarah Lawrence together, but didn’t really know each other then. After that, when I was living in New York City, somebody at La Mama (theater) said to me that I should work with her. So I called her and asked her if I could come over and talk to her. She says that I was wearing a big orange hat. We talked for hours. I went to some of the first workshops at 597 Broadway. I was there all the time. Then she invited me to go on tour with her. I took a woman named Madeline’s place in Juice. And we went on tour.

HP: What do u still carry with you from your 30 plus years of working with Meredith?

L: One of the most important things is that there was no pigeon holing. We didn’t have to say this is dance, this is theater. It was more like ancient theater was. Like Balinese theater is. I still feel that if you want to have movement, lighting, music, singing, that all of these things are performance. We did it all in those days. It had to do with what we were as artists. It was the whole picture, a natural thing. What I am is all of those things, and that was completely encouraged and supported. I carry a lot of that to my teaching and shows.

HP: And how about your most recent one-woman show?

L: Well, the Isba show…I wanted to put some pieces together that I hadn’t had a chance to do. I was highlighting Collin’s music. I also had Meredith’s music and some tunes from New Orleans. The inspiration for the show was music and poetry. The subtext is ‘dreams, memories, and other lives’. I was tying various threads together. Isba comes from a game of dictionary that we are all playing one night. The real definition of Isba is a thatched Russian hut, but the definition that I wrote down was ‘goddess of the present moment’. So that’s what she is here.

HP: What was one of your favorite performances you’ve done?

L: Cooking Up A Storm. Collin and I wanted to make a duet together, and we had a daughter, so we wanted to make something that included you. So we made a duet about our lives together. It was about us. We let it rip. He did a brilliant piece called Travel By Night on the sitar in sunglasses. We did it in New York, with Don Cherry calling out the whole time. It was wonderful.

HP: I know this may be a cheesy question, but for the sake of carrying on oral tradition, what would you like to say to the many women and men who are creating and performing right now?

L: I don’t think that’s a cheesy question, I think it’s a good question. Because performance is at the bottom of the totem pole right now, its less safe than it used to be, because rents are so high and all of that. It’s a hard to career to enter in and stay in. but if someone is draw to performing, to communicating with people through your body, voice, and mind, your imagination, the most important thing. If you are drawn to that, you cant say no to that force within you, and the only thing you have to be careful about and listen to is your authenticity, so that you are true to yourself, and that will mean you are true to others, the ones that are getting the goodies. If can’t say no the that from your heart, then say yes to it.

HP: Hallelujah. Thank you miss Lanny Harrison

L: Thank you miss Hannah Pearl Walcott

HP: Love ya

L: Love you too