AC_1965_Web
10 AN T I OC H CO L L E G E C L A S S O F 19 6 5 5 0 t h A N N I V E R S A R Y B O O K A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z B A L D W I N and published books and papers on Saint-Denis, among others. For the last ten years she has been work- ing on a biography of the Canadian director, Jean Gascon, who also had a theatrical career straddling French and English theater. For the last five years she has been an on- line theater critic. We have taken numerous trips to France, England, Quebec and Ontario while she pur- sued her research. We have made friends through her interviews, met fascinating people, seen interesting places, attended many shows and had many delicious meals (and some not so good ones). At the time Jane and I married I had never lived in one place for more than a few years, either be- fore or after Antioch and certainly not while at Antioch. Jane and I sold our respective houses and bought one together in Sherborn, a west- ern suburb of Boston.We have lived here ever since.When we moved in, the house was a small thirty-year- old single story with a large back- yard. It lacked a dining room when we bought it and I promised Jane to add one.The following summer I converted the breezeway to a din- ing room.As I was cleaning up after the construction, I realized that this space would be much more suitable for the kitchen. A year later we had a kitchen put into that space, and I converted the old kitchen into the dining room. Since then, I have had ample opportunity to employ my handyman skills and have spent the last thirty years remodeling.We have put on several additions, repurposed rooms, and added doors and win- dows. I discovered an interest in gar- dening,and we now have a vegetable garden in the back of the yard and flower gardens around the house. The house now has five doors open- ing onto the large backyard which is (as they say in French) “f leuri” and secluded—you cannot see the neighbors’ houses in the summer. About twenty-five years ago, I took a course in stained glass, and began designing and making stained glass objects.The house is now well sup- plied with stained glass lamps, mir- rors and boxes. Jane brought to our marriage a daughter, who has also become a theater historian,but with a specialty in twentieth-century Russian the- ater. She and Jane were involved in making a film in a Russian women’s prison about the time of Glasnost and then collaborated on a workshop on Meyerhold’s Biomechanics. Kathryn married a former Russian actor and they now live in California. Because of her, we have become much more aware of contemporary Russian theater and connected with post- Glasnost Russian émigrés. Seventeen years ago they had a son, Grisha, whom we have watched growing up, mostly from afar.Fortunately, technol- ogy has minimized the effect of this distance.For the last four or five years we have been tutoring him. Jane has weekly Skype sessions with him in French. I currently Skype with him on Math, but we have done Biology and Chemistry in the past. (The ses- sions often wander off into the most varied of topics.) These two fields have greatly changed from what I learned in high school. However, the tutoring has brought me up to date, at least at the high school level. I ap- preciated having the clear exposition of material that I have been reading about for years. It has been a re-edu- cation. Two summers ago when Grisha was fifteen we took him to France for two weeks. He is interested in writ- ing and was working on a 500 page novel that evolved out of Dungeons and Dragons, a game he has played for years. He worked on the novel in off moments; there were many as he flew across the country, then the Atlantic and while waiting for Jane and me.We showed him around the Paris that we have known, drove to Versailles, to Tours (where I found the café of my youth still filled with eighteen year olds), to Vézelay (where Richard the Lion Hearted set off on the Second Crusade) to visit Saint-Denis’s daughter-in-law and then went to the Côte d’Or where Copeau had lived. It was a delightful trip, with long French dinners and interesting people and places. We got to know Grisha better, and he got to know us in a setting he had not previously been able to imag- ine.When he got home, his mother found him a different kid from the one she had sent off. He is grow- ing into an interesting young man. Perhaps he will apply to Antioch. I will certainly mention it to him. Jane and Kathryn at Giverny. Jane and Larry—2007.
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