REED: The Poets' Theatre is something that you were involved with that...
people who're writing about American Poetry, twentieth century, are very excited about.
It, it seems this moment in time with amazing people all in the northeast.. MATCHETT: Oh...(CROSSTALK) they all get, they all get it wrong.
They all get it wrong because
Alison--well she was Alison Bishop then she went back to her maiden name Alison Lurie--
she wrote a biography of V. R. Lang.
And in that you would think that V. R. Lang was The Poets' Theatre.
And I said--I knew Alison very well--and I said to Alison, "Look, you haven't even mentioned...
the man responsible for The Poets' Theatre. Why isn't he in your book?"
And she said, "Oh, he needs a book of his own, and I didn't want to spoil this one on Bunny." [V. R. Lang's nickname]
Well the result is, he doesn't get the credit for starting The Theatre: His name was Lyon Phelps.
He was William Lyon Phelps, and he.. And when I first knew him he was BILL Phelps.
But then he took on his uncle's, his great-uncle's, name because...
William Lyon Phelps, his great uncle, was a very famous professor at Yale.
But anyway, he's the one who started The Poets' Theatre, and he gets no credit for it!
REED: And how did it get started, was it just a group of undergraduates that-- MATCHETT: What? Uh...
Well, yeah, undergraduates and some graduates, me--I was a graduate student at the time--
and [we] got together a group of the
of the real poets there: Dick Wilbur, John Ciardi, [Richard] Eberhart, um, MacLeish...
got all of them to--they didn't do--they backed it. They were willing.. Except (LAUGHING) unfortunately, Eberhart being Eberhart--
(Again, he's the one who wanted to give the Roethke Reading here. We didn't want him.)
He was determined to run the Poets' Theatre. And,
he wrote the dullest play. You may see it anytime you want. It was put on there.
People left in the middle. It was terrible.
But that's alright with Dick. He thought it was a great success.
And when he taught out here,
he talked to Glen Hughes, who was with the Drama Department here...
He told him about this great success he had with his play in Cambridge.
And got Glen Hughes to put it on out here. Bob Heilman said,
he had never spent a more miserable evening than when he had to watch that play here!
which they'd been told was a great success.
But, uh, Dick was just..
He was the eternal optimist about his own greatness. I mean...um...if...
Elizabeth's letters are full of her references to Dick, and you look for them, and there they are
I mean she's got him absolutely straight.
He had a wonderful wife. I was very fond of Betty. Well, I was sort of fond of DIck.
During all the Vietnam business
there was a whole group that was raising funds for some good cause,
and they asked Dick to read as part of a program they did down at the [Pike Place] Market.
And I was.. I picked him up at his motel
and here he was headed to the market in...
a suit that looked like he was headed for business in an insurance company, I mean,
and he didn't, he didn't have any...
I said, "Dick they want you to read, don't you need some..."
He said, "Oh, I always carry papers in case somebody asks me to read!"
(LAUGHING) So! So he had them in his pocket. (LAUGHING) REED: On no!
MATCHETT: Oh dear!
REED: So is when, when The Poets' Theatre was founded was it, uh,
(and that's the era when T. S. Eliot is doing his verse dramas, and...) was that "in the air"?
MATCHETT: I think the FACT of the matter is that Lyon wanted a Poets' Theatre in order to get
HIS poetry plays put on. (LAUGHTER)
I think that's the fact. REED: (CHUCKLING) That's fact.
MATCHETT: But, they, I mean, you know, who was involved?
Ted Gorey did all our posters--he was an undergrad back then. REED: Yeah
MATCHETT: He did all our posters.
Frank O' Hara was there; we put on several plays of Frank's.
McCUE: Those were not dull. MATCHETT: What? McCUE and REED: Those were not dull.
MATCHETT: No, they were not. (LAUGHTER) They were not. And, um,
and then did a number of Yeats plays--
very well done in the Fogg Museum courtyard--
but also Lyon's play. We put on a couple of Archie's radio plays-- we put on as though they were real plays! Not radio plays.
REED: Did you put on J.B.?
MATCHETT: No no. No that.. although he [MacLeish] was writing J.B. right then and, but it was headed for Broadway. No.
That was, that was over us.
But uh, no, we put on a lovely little one called, "This Music Crept By Me on the Waters."
It's a radio play takes place in, I think, in Nassau [Bahamas].
But, we also published a Poets' Theatre series of plays Harvard Press took on.
And Archie's "This Music" was the first. But Lyon's "Gospel Witch" was the ne[xt].. Poor Lyon, I mean,
he had such a sad life. He, um,
he wrote a number of int--good plays--but he brought out "The Gospel Witch" about the trials,
just as Arthur Miller's play [The Crucible] hit Broadway.
He finished it just as Miller was taken...
Then he thought he had another great idea: He would
tell the Romeo and Juliet story...(LAUGHTER)
REED: Set in Kansas? MATCHETT: It was with dance, and just as he finished that "West Side Story" came out.
But for that, Lyon wrote all his own music, I mean...
He had, well, he finally died with a brain tumor and I...
rather hope that that explained an awful lot of his bizarre...
last couple of years.
But that's another story. McCUE: What was Frank O' Hara like?
MATCHETT: What? McCUE: What was--
MATCHETT: I didn't know him that well. But he was zany in a wonderful way, I mean his play was, was fun.
But no, they all graduated and Ted Gorey and Frank O'Hara graduated and left Cambridge, so we saw less of him after that.
Another one was sort of on the
edge of that was... oh goodness...
the poet who... McCUE: John Ashbury?
MATCHETT: John Ashbury, yes he was very much on the edge of them, but he didn't write any plays.
Thank you.
I have a terrible time with-- I can't understand-- McCUE: I could feel the John Ashbury underneath that.
MATCHETT: Yeah I, he was a lovely man. I liked him very much.