The latest incarnation of Monique Fowler’s “The Other Life”
debuted at The Cell Theater on Sunday evening.
Fowler’s play is a tribute to Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell’s
friendship, featuring Fowler (left) as Bishop and John Wojda as Lowell. The script draws from the first decade of
letters in the highly acclaimed collection "Words in Air: The Complete
Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell," (ed. Thomas
Travisano) and weaves in fragments of their poems.
If poetry is a dying art form, the letter is a relic. The letters of Bishop and Lowell frolic between gossip, visits to Pound in the hospital or to Hemingway’s
swimming pool, and personal distresses including Bishop’s battle with alcohol
and Lowell
experiences of these great poets, but their thoughts about their personal and
writing lives. Fowler and Wojda expressed the poets' self-doubt and loneliness as well as their wit. As they recited the letters they turned to
one another coyly, extending the affection and humor of the language to the
stage.
While Bishop sits at Yaddo, the artists' colony, “blowing
bubbles,”Lowell carries her poem,
“The Armadillo” around in his wallet. Bishop reacted with cool rationality to Lowell's romantic longings. In a notable letter Lowell wrote, “I assumed
that [it] would be a matter of time before I proposed and I half believed that
you would accept…The possible alternatives that life allows us are very few…But
asking you is the one might have been for me, the one towering change, the
other life that might have been had.”
While romance is always intriguing, the substance of this relationship
was defined by pen and ink. The physical
distance dividing Bishop and Lowell distinguished their camaraderie and even
devotion, which comes through particularly well in this dramatic reading.
In addition to coupling the letters with lines from their
poetry, Monique Fowler included an outstanding variety of slides that were projected
behind the actors throughout the performance.
The photographs revealed the poets themselves, the scrawl of their
writing, and the ever-captivating views of New England seaports. The harbor shots served as a
reminder of the distance between the poets with Bishop writing from Brazil while Lowell
coast. Bishop's diary entries annotate a brief visit she made to Maine. Fowler’s efforts to collage these entries with the poems, letters and
Bishop’s memoir were truly impressive.
During the Q & A an audience member asked if Fowler was an historian,
and she laughed, saying, “No, I’m an actress who loves poetry.” Fowler’s appreciation across the arts brought
poets, actors and letter-writers together for a memorable evening. I suspect this performance will inspire many
to read the newly collected letters, and to bask in re-reading the poems
themselves. Brava!
— Elizabeth Powers Howort