JANICE PLASTINO Professor of Dance Samuel C. McCulloch Emeritus Professor of History UC Historian March 17, 1989

Transcription

1 INTERVIEWEE: INTERVIEWER: DATE: JANICE PLASTINO Professor of Dance Samuel C. McCulloch Emeritus Professor of History UC Historian March 17, 1989 All right, Janice, this is an interview with Professor Janice Plastino in the Dance Department, Friday, March 17, 1989, St. Patrick's Day. And the first question, what did you know of the Dance program here, Janice, at UC! before you were hired? I mean, you came in 1969? JP: In I knew about the Dance program. I was a tenured professor at Los Angeles.Harbor College, so it makes me kind of a minority in that I was a professor who came from the community college system. I'd also taught at several universities before I came here, both here and in the Midwest. But I was professionally dancing with James Penrod. Of course, I knew of Eugene Loring. I had not studied with him. I knew very little about him, but the program was so young in Dance that no one really. It simply hadn't made its mark yet. UCLA was a big name in Dance, at that point. I likedthe idea that Loring had put in all forms of dance at the university. I taught all forms of dance} but I couldn'tk at Los Angeles Harbor College and at every place else I had taught, I could not give credit for ballet or jazz. And UC Irvine was unique. I believe I'm right when I say that this was the first university that

2 PLASTINO 2 gave university credit for ballet and jazz classes. You might have to Didn't UCLA? JP: No. UCLA didn't. They didn't have ballet and jazz. UCLA JP: only had modern dance and social forms, ethnic forms, those kinds of things. Well, what you're saying, Jan, is that you really came to an institution that was really going to make use of your particular talents; and this was a very nice... that they would have credit for it and so forth. Well, that's... I think that was really interesting. This was probably one of the most unique schools in the country at the time. It was written up in Dance Magazine, in the New York Times, written up several places. It was a school of performing arts but it was not a conservatory. And performance was the basis of the school and still remains the basis of the school, and that was very unusual in those days. All of the faculty You did not have to have degrees to teach here, and this was r;f~,~ unusual. 1 ~-~~J'ljf to have a masters degree. Tha~lt~\. considered~ took this job. I was appointed strictly because of my professional background. Later on, it turned out that the masters degree and then finally my doctorate degree, which I got some years later, was useful, but it had nothing to do with the original appointment; and that made this place very unique and, because of that, it has made UC Irvine Dance Department

3 PLASTINO 3 one of the top departments and~) standard of the industry; Our program has been copied over and over and over again, is now kind of the program that everybody uses. It came from Irvine, which is unusual. Well, I think that's a most important point, that really hasn't emerged in two or three of my interviews. Now, the Dance Program here, I've asked you in question two would you please evaluate the program. I mean the present program, but I'd like to know how it developed, and was Loring a good Chair? And I myself followed the dance very closely because I was so interested and I used to talk with Loring down in the parking lot, you know. He would answer your questions, you know. I think he barely knew who I was, but he knew I was interested. JP: That would be typical of Eugene, God bless his soul. He died in 1981, I believe, 1981 or 1982, of a brain tumor. retired in Was he a good Chair? No, he was not a good Chair. I can't say that he was a good Chair. His idea of putting the performance He into the university was an extraordinary idea, but that really came from Clayton. Clayton, for obscurity. working in all intents and purposes, rescu~~~~~~e from I~-~~ ( tvi \ M_\VYflY" le.a»tjj4 l\)a.ql/;/ Eugene was not choreographing. He was not (~;};,I And the movie industry anymore. He had the school,...,..,,. I The American School of Dance in Hollywood. It was just a school at that point. It was not making a great deal of money. The university provided Eugene with a forum to put

4 PLASTINO 4 his ideas, his educational ideas, into effect and also a place for him to choreograph again. And it did rejuvenate Eugene, there's no doubt about it. He did have some good ideas, but the ideas needed to be revamped. Probably within f;j've r seven years after he came (, < to the university, thosej{f eas needed to be revamped, and the department was not able to revamp them or to even evaluate the program at all until Eugene left. And that made it very difficult for the program to make great headway in the seventies. At one point, we had over 200 majors and ~ 4--?_A A A (-tl?f...a'.x~ly~ Eugene didn't really go out and hire a lot of people. He -7flC'j~ simply would take the faculty he had and just give you more classes to teach. One year I taught thirteen separate classes a week. Thirteen? JP: Thirteen, yes. So, I was teaching contact hours about twenty hours a week of contact hours. trying to get tenure. This ls when I was Because he simply didn't understand the university. He never understood about a budget. He never wrote a budget. He never wrote a request for a teacher. He would go to Clayton and say, "I guess we need tr:j ~ A.JJ.l/f JA.XJV') somebody," and Clayton, of course, would take i~-~ver wrote a letter of promotion or appointment that would amolnt to anything, so, in terms of that, he was a professional choreographer who really didn't know anything about educational institutions. Yet, on the other hand, he had I I

5 PLASTINO a~~twenty-some-odd years of it. So, it was not that he did not know how to do it. run and made a living ou: He simply chose not to do it. And then, of course, with the eighties came the decline of the arts, which is the decline of the enrollments; and we have felt it at Irvine, like it's been across the country. We are down to about 100 undergraduate majors now, though our graduate program is much, much larger. We still remain one of the largest schools in the country, even though our enrollments are down, because arts in general are down. top five diverse. The program has managed to survive and still retains. Across the United States, there's no doubt it's in the to seven programs in the country, because it's so Not only is it performance-based, but it now has a strong theoretical background behind it, and that was the weakness when Eugene was here, was that the theoretical part was never developed like it should have been. But, as always, at least everybody on our faculty believes (-t'~j performance first, and then you can talk ~about the performance after it's over with. But without the performance there is no history, there's no medicine, there's no philosophy, there's no theory, there's nothing l~) because performance is what!f-t comes from. Does that help? Yes, very much so. Yes, that's very useful. Now, we were talking at lunch time, Jan, about the Plastino Plastino, and Penrod- I knew something about it because, as I said,

6 PLASTINO 6 I had to investigate it, and I was much impressed. you tell me something about it, please? Could JP: Penrod-Plastino Movement Theater was the first non-profit modern dance company based in Orange County. As a matter of fact, Jim and I have been approached by two different people this year asking for our archival material. We became non-prof it status from the State of California in 1970 and we disbanded in 1980, so we had a full ten years of work. LCVJ a- /lf..ihl ~ W.) We started the company because Jim Penrod and I had ll been put together by a producer who knew us both and said I think you guys would make a great team; and we teamed up in 1965 and performed throughout Europe. We performed three weeks at the Edinburgh Festival, we performed on BBC TV, we performed in Holland, we performed all ovv Europe, and,.i then came back here and did some theater/\. work. We did an 1'V NBCAspecial that was based on our work and it was really extraordinary. That's one of the reasons I came here was to work. Yes, I wanted to work with Eugene, but mostly I wanted to work with Jim Penrod. He was the one who was here. So, he and I continued this partnership and started the company and worked very hard, culminating really. our biggest years were 1976 through 1980, were our big years when we did big tours across the United States, worked extensively. I must say that most of our rehearsal--! I I

7 PLASTINO 7 told Sam this today at lunch--was held off-campus because we were not allowed to use Fine because of the political Arts facilities for rehearsal There was a falling-out with Eugene and Clayton over our scheduling, over scheduling of classes because we weren't given adequate... We weren't~ l) given any time at all. 'rfo r;~'{/;.j,,,.1./.wff..ioei.upf4rl~ tj I'll just tell you while we're here, Sam. We taught our classes, getting our class schedule for the coming week on a Sunday for the following week! we were not scheduled I from quarter to quarter. We were scheduled from week to week because we have a rotating system of faculty. have the We still rotating system of faculty, but we're able to give everybody a quarter by quarter schedule now. We wrote a letter and it upset Eugene and upset Clayton and, from then on, we were banned from rehearsing on-campus, so, we had to go off-campus to get rehearsal space. We paid for it. We taught class off-campus and it simply became, by 1980, too much of a burden because, by that time, Jim.. if he wasn't. if Jim Penrod wasn't Chair by then, he was about to assume the Chairmanship and I was doing other things. Also, Jim and I were at the age we were about ready to retire from the performance world, and it had been such a struggle. We were very successful in Orange County, but, actually we more successful away from the county than we were in the county probably, because the reviews that we got

8 PLASTINO 8 in the Midwest and the East were quite striking and really quite nice. Having said all that, Jan, I think you really owe it to us and to me to write a little article about what you started out to do, where you danced. I didn't know you had gone to the UK and also over to Europe, and what you did. And the numbers, you know, or something. It would I know a fair bit about it, as I said, because I researched it, but I've forgotten--it was back when you were promoted--so I really would appreciate that, as it would certainly rate a paragraph or so. Did Jim replace Who replaced Loring? JP: Long story. Of course it's a long story because Clayton was still Dean. Yes. (laughter) JP: Eugene... (laughter) Oh, it's funny. It really is. We could make a wonderful soap opera out of this, make some money. Eugene was retired. In his seventieth year he was still teaching full-time and it suddenly became apparent that he had to retire; and, so, with great pomp and circumstance we retired him, complete with dinner and Oakland Ballet performance and Sam was there and we were all there and Olga was on stage and we couldn't get her off stage. And, oh, it just went on and on and on. (I think this whole thing better be censored, Sam.) Anyway, it was great, but Loring retired and, in the middle of "No No,

9 PLASTINO 9 Nanette" rehearsals, Clayton was rehearsing, he announced to the cast that Roy Fitzell would be the new Chair of the department. Roy didn't know a thing about this. Roy was not consulted. The faculty was not consulted. Nobody knew about this, not even the man who was going to be Chair~l'Ucf~o, Roy assumed the Chairmanship. And it was a disaster. Roy(;:/~ was not Roy was a professional dancer with no education, was a lecturer, was not a professor. He was a lecturer. I believe he was SOE by then, but he was simply a lecturer. A lovely, lovely man, but not suited Say what SOE is. JP: Oh, security of employment. Lecturer with security of employment, which means they are tenured, for all intents and purposes, but they do not have the stature that the professorial rank has. it was a total disaster. running the department and And Roy assumed the Chairmanship and Not only from the standpoint of not understanding about budgets and appointments and those kinds of things, but he developed a debilitating illness--which he's recovered from now--that forced him to retire from the university, and at that point Jim assumed the Chair. Now, Roy was Chair probably for about two years, somewhere along in there. Then Jim assumed the Chair and since then the department has slowly grown back to what it had been, so that it is organized and ready to move on.

10 PLASTINO 10 Well, I'm going to interview Jim at some point. I'm intending to try to take some of the administrators in the summertime when they're usually around, whereas the ninemonth people... I assume you're a nine-month, and you're gone. So, going back, really, to evaluating the program in Dance, what impressed me as I went to most every spring concert that Loring gave with his students, and maybe more often as time went on. He began to get a very... he had a better cut of student, ability-wise. That I think, for example, in the first year there was a student, Palesky was her name and she was from the East. And do you remember her? She danced very well. She was probably the best that you had in the first year. She's... JP: I wasn't here. Oh, you weren't here. Okay. Well, P-A-L-E-S-K-Y, Palesky. JP: Jim will know her. Yes, he'll know her because... Well, whatever, this was the very first year, , and she stood out very much. But a lot of the dancers What impressed me about Loring was that he could choreograph for all these not too capable dancers and make them look pretty good. And they were happy doing... going through what. There was one girl who was all of six feet and weighed about 190 but she danced away, you know. So, I felt that in your program that, as time went on, you were getting better students. I liked. I always enjoyed the students' concerts, but

11 PLASTINO 11 then, again, well, you brought the Oakland Ballet Company, you brought what's-her-name that you know, who has the JP: little mini-bus with all the cups hanging up there. oh, Belalevsky. ruj}_q Mwi+sUL( ( t...~wi+<e.fl~) Belalevsky, I liked that. That was great. So, have you any more comments on the program as it went? JP: Jim Penrod, myself, and Loring. Loring was hired as the first person; Jim was the second person aboard. El Gabriel was hired as the third person and El got deported JP: because El didn't have a green card. (laugh:~r!_ ~ ~noir~(}a-<j I" wqgdered what happened to him. ( tq,.tltr1a /J.l,ll'lJA.Ltf/ o,_, Fv Q.JlcL(t1 '\ ~ s,d' E:. I ~ And I, in fact, took El's place. I was searched. It was a search position and I was the one that was hired. So, when I came aboard, I was the third person--but that was There were other people in place who were the unit eighteens, the part-time people that we still have--! mean, that we still have a lot of them. But we were hired, the three of us, as choreographers--not as scholars, not as writers--but as choreographers and as performers. particularly were as his primary interest, as Jim and I hired to do that. Jim still retains that choreography and performance. I, of course, have gone on into Dance Medicine but I still do a great deal of choreography. And, in the early days, the dancers ~ould come, we. {) IW1tl1 ~ dt. would audition them. We had one classjl"of~allet 2, 3 and 4~~ all in the same class. That was the first year I was here.

12 PLASTINO 12 By the second~ar I was he~~'..n.~'d been able to go to Ballet 1 and ~and Ballet 3 and 4-rvMbdern 1, Modern 2-3 by then, so we were combining things. But I would imagine by my tenth year here, maybe seventh year--somewhere along in there--we had just oodles and oodles and oodles of students. And with numbers comes quality. That just is kind of the way that it is. The more numbers you get, the better the quality. When I.. I can't remember when Eugene was here than anybody would have been placed, coming in as a fres~ in Ballet 4. That is not an unusual situation now. l~~ Students come to us now that automatically are... C'Nobody ~y ' who's a Dance major goes into Ballet 1.) It just doesn't happen. When Eugene was here, and again that's 1979 he retired, nobody... I mean, everybody practically went to '\"'JlMVt Ballet 1 and maybe 2A So, the level has gone u~ extraordinarily~~d.jf (}.A.J_,JQ;(_j_,~ {)-0 ~.ia1lf,i- { J &Y r Number one, there are a lo[ more dancers ct/ P::, Cf in the world. We~t an extraordi~ary dancer to start with and we also get the kid who also has a lot of ballet training, because Irvine--even though we teach everything--it somehow has the reputation that we only teach ballet. That, of course, is not true at all. We teach Ballet, Moder~z, Historical Tap, Ethnic F~~s. We teach all kipds o~ forms but we have that~~~~~~, But, back to the choreography, all of us had to choreograph every year at least two concerts, because we did

13 PLASTINO 13 the musicals, And we had to out and hire we did everything, wh~we don't do anymore. choreograph to~~rl~ ha~. We could not go the dancers. The orchestra could go out and hire musicians and all of that business, but we had to use the dancers that we had because, in our program, all the dancers have to be in a performance, a faculty-sponsored performance. So, we had You have to choreograph and make them look good for what they were doing. And to make the dancer look bad is the mark of a very unprofessional choreographer, regardless; but, of course, the choreographer. is you'd like to do choreographically. the students will look good as. that. it does hinder That means you cannot really do what it You have to do what But Loring was very good at Yes. Well, that's very interesting and I have. It leads to a question we do not have here but is obviously important. Do you as a Dance Department have people speaking in the high schools or giving out materials, showing your program and so on? very good cut of students. Because, clearly, you get a JP: We're heading into a recruitment program. Currently, which was discussed this morning, the new requirements to get into the UC system has negatively impacted Fine Arts extraordinarily. I had a student call yesterday who has 1160 SATs and a 3.3 grade average and was denied admittance to Irvine as a Dance major. That kind of.. I have to

14 PLASTINO 14 call it blatant discrimination because they're not looking at herl~~~~e is a scholar. With 3.3 and 1160 SATs she's good enough to come here, - but we have no way to get all the dancers here. I don't know what we're going to do. It's become a major problem now. It was not a problem when Loring was here because it was not difficult to get in. You decided you wanted to come to Irvine, you can come to Irvine. It's not that way anymore. Well, that makes me feel unhappy because Clay and I used to talk about this. He would have his problem with important musicians or artists. I would have problems with creative writers in our Creative Writing Program here; and, as deans, we talked about it but we were able to somehow get the Admissions to let them through under special, you know, two percent or four percent or whatever. JP: It's two percent now, but we don't know how many of these two percents there are. Are they all going to go to Fine Arts or are they all going to go to Music? Our new dean is a musician and Dunning is a musician with a son who's a Music major, so this becomes politics so we're working on it. But about the recruitment, I take a group out into the schools and we perform all over southern California with the touring groups that I take out. And then we have a high school day and a junior college day at the beginning of every year and we probably get 500 or 600 students who come

15 PLASTINO 15 in to take class with us one day a week, that one day-- extraordinarily successful. I know that we have 125 freshman applicants right now. We just had them in because we decided to talk to them before they got rejected. I think they've accepted three ouf of the whole 125; so, that is a major problem for us. We cannot take the students who won't make it intellectually. On the other hand, a lot of them can make it. They've just been dancing, they haven't ~ been necessarily doing those other kinds of things(fhjjj1f ~.ll~ap4 Well, that's an interesting.. a good answer, and it gives me some food for thought. Now, Jan, I didn't take up 1question three. It's obvious that the budget did inhibit the execution of the program. The question is how much? JP: Who knows? A combination of Clayton using the money for his I mean, this is common knowledge. Clayton used the money for his own productions, took sets to Italy, did all those kinds of things, Clayton using what funds were available to Fine Arts, which weren't very many. I know they were not good funds. I mean, they were not huge amounts of funds. Him taking his things to Europe taking his things to Europe. My goodness, English major in the undergraduate level. Loring unable, unwilling, not knowing how to ask for more money and not able to justify it. The combination, I think, was deadly. We had extraordinarily dedicated faculty and, I mean, I was one of

16 PLASTINO 16 them. I literally killed myself. Everybody did in those days, teaching all these overloads and all this business. And now we're trying to make up for it. Those lack of budgets ten years ago are what are inhibiting now. The production faculty and the staff used to work twenty-hour days, seven days a week, for the nine months that we were in session. Now, we cut. They say we can't do it anymore, so now what happens is we have to cut back on productions because there's no support for it. Clayton simply would say this will happen and this, meaning THIS, and, of course, it would happen. Now, that's not the way it works. People put in their eight hours and it should be looked at as a job~a,~;0ft.. f-m~ So, the budgets had an extraordinarily bad impact time that we should~ej;1jrowing, at a we were growing, when the arts were really full of life and vigor in the late sixties and early seventies with all the federal programs and all that business; and then in the eighties when they dropped back, it was felt very strongly at Irvine. Well, I'm afraid that's very much a fact that you said. Now, turning to five, you already made some comments on the question of the dean, that he was... did not consult his faculty [departments]. That his budget was run out of his shoe. JP: Oh, yes, yes.

17 PLASTINO 17 That he was enormously successful with his.productions of drama, that he was dealing with a Chair, you have just told me, Loring, who really didn't know how to write letters of recommendation, how to write a letter asking for an FTE, or asking for equipment or whatever, whatever. But I'd like a sort of an overall evaluation of Clay and then which led to details of which you did tell me, but I'd like to have them on the record, even if we keep it quiet for awhile. JP: I love this. This is wonderful. Anyway, Clayton's original idea was brilliant. His original idea to make this school what it was was brilliant, and it stayed brilliant for probably the first ten years. Even though he didn't consult and even though he did run the budget out of his hip pocket and even though he ramrodded over people and even though he begged, cajoled, begged, and begged and begged, and played with us and manipulated us and did all the things he did, he had a brilliant idea and I can never take that away from Clayton. He began to lose it probably about... I probably couldn't put my hand on the date, though I probably could if I'd go back and look in my diaries, I could put my hand on the date. He really began to lose it when he began to think of what the university. of what Fine Arts could do for him instead of what he could for Fine Arts. He became less of a... of his ability to see what could be in the future, instead of taking care of Clayton Garrison. And that was because he was in the job too long.

18 PLASTINO 18 I really think it could have been... If he'd ever been really reviewed, he was The one review that I was involved with was a joke. If he'd ever been really reviewed, like now it wouldn't be probably wouldn't last five years now. tolerated, of course, he But his original idea was brilliant and the fact that he brought in bring in Loring. I guess his best thing he did was to The other departments... Music didn't bring in anybody who was really spectacular and he brought in. Art Studio, though he now has emerging artists l~) Tony Delap and Craig Kaufman and John Pau1 rw:fi6 have really made names for themselves, they've not done much for the program. They've made names for themselves. His one coup was Loring and Loring did make. That was a terrible thing. I mean, back that up. Drama, he(~~t in Bob Cohen who was his student, so you can't call that a coup of any kind. Bob has developed beautifully, but, at that point, it was somebody that Clayton could control; and he could control Loring because Loring didn't know how to do what had to be done. But we must never take away from what Clayton's original idea was and from the fact that Dan Aldrich could see that. I got very upset with Dan toward the end, too, with what was going. He was just here too long. But, at the beginning, there was an extraordinary foresight of what was the cutting edge, it really was, and then to have allowed it, particularly in the last. The

19 PLASTINO 19 last ten years have been disastrous--it really has--in Fine Arts, [with] the bureaucracy that's been built and the lack of support n}hat's happened. I'm just hoping with this new tl Lt~ personnthat that's not going to continue on. But to return to the question of Clay's resignation, it was a question of not consulting anybody. And ~ apparently, hist\ wife being insisted that appointed and minute. the History of Art people said, "Well, We haven't been consulted." JP: I might as well set it straight. It was Art Studio. JP: JP: Art Studio, was it. And it was his daughter. Oh, his daughter. And he forged faculty members' names. I remember that, yes. having, she be wait a JP: And the only reason.. That was the only time in the whole time I've been here that the faculty in the School of Fine Arts agreed on anything, and the majority of the faculty did. We met at seven-thirty in the morning and we called Jim McGaugh and I said, "Jim," I called him and said, "you'd better get over here because you've got an uprising on your hands." A few of the faculty weren't there--the faculty that were basically loyal to Clayton, of which there were maybe five or six at that point--but almost all the faculty were there. And Clayton resigned that same day, was asked to resign that same day. Because the only reason we

20 PLASTINO 20 got Jim McGaugh to ask for his resignation was because we threatened to go to the Times, the L.A. Times with I'm wondering it. Now 1.0,,J1DM-) if we shouldn't have, because what h~id was absolutely illegal; and he just does what he wants to do now, anyway. But that's the story and that's why he was asked to resign. He had had a mixed review. A lot of people were unhappy, but nobody was willing to go against Clayton. He was simply too powerful. allowed him to be that. The administration Yes, well, thank you for correcting me. However, I also heard that you people were going to take it to the Academic Senate. JP: We were. I was Vice Chair of the Senate. Because that also... The Los Angeles Times would be very JP: bad, but the Academic Senate would be even worse. I was Vice Chair of the Senate. Because he could be forced to resign. JP: We were. We were going to the Senate and I was Vice Chair JP: JP: of the Senate at the time. Yes, I kn~~..u.tcf So, we (inaudible) both places at the same time. Yes, yes, right. And he stopped... McGaugh stopped us. Insisted by getting him to resign, yes. Now, our next question is about his successor, Dr. Garfias. And I'm interested in all this because I happened to hear him speak

21 PLASTINO 21 up at an important conference at Berkeley. It had to do with the Fulbright Program--all of those of us who had been Fulbright Professors were there--and he was the provost or the assistant provost of [the University of] Washington, which is a very fine institution, which is a very fine position. And he gave a rather brilliant speech. But I can only conclude from what I hear that he did not do well as Dean. JP: It was an unfortunate choice. Bob Garfias is a very nice man but he's not a performer. He does not understand the performance situation. I think the whole thing that sums up Bob Garfias happened one day when Jim Penrod was in the middle of dress rehearsal and he had missed an appointment with the Dean. Well, during performances, nothing else counts. And the Dean went to one of the Associate Deans and said, "Where's James?" and "I'm upset with him," and where, da, da, da. "Well, he's in rehearsal." "Well, what has that got to do with running everything?" and "I want him now," and blah, blah, blah, and went on and on. And, if you have a Dean like that in a performance situation, it's not going to work. And I think that one time summed up Bob Garfias' failure. Bob also was very hard on the staff, very difficult to live with. Always very nice to the faculty, but very hard on the staff, personally, and that makes it very difficult to work for a Dean. I understand, in

22 PLASTINO 22 retrospect, that he was able to increase the budgets. I don't know whether that was because the budgets would have been increased anyway due to inflation and all that, or whether Bob actually did do what- he should do. I do know that he put himself.. If you would just look at his office, and being into performance and movement analysis and all this business, he put himself in an office where you had to go through a maze to get to his office. Never left his office, never went to the production studio, didn't even really attend that many performance events. So, I think it was a bad choice, regrettably, and it's unfortunate that he has. that he absolutely despises everybody, he hates everybody in Fine Arts now, won't speak to anybody. That's unfortunate. I certainly think it's unfortunate. It's amazing. Now, returning now, next, to his successor, I notice that you had a search committee and you had candidates. I happened to meet your present Dean, of all places, over at Four Seasons where I was. where Eloise Kloke and her husband were giving Sally and me a luncheon. Next were the important people, like Executive Vice Chancellor Lillyman, Bill Parker who, by the way... did you know. Well, I'll stop this and tell you. (tape is turned off) Okay, we'll now continue and we were discussing... JP: The new dean.

23 PLASTINO 23 The new dean and, as I was saying, there was Bill Parker and there was a couple of other very high, the very highest JP: Muckety-mucks. The only person not there was Aldrich. JP: As I said to... Somebody this morning asked me, I was at the Committee on Committees meeting, somebody asked me- Howard or somebody, Howard Lenhoff or Grover Stevens--and I said, "Well, the jury's out still on the new dean, you know. He's only been here since the middle of December." My feeling is this, and these are only feelings, and this is not to be published. (inaudible) JP: Okay. Not to be published. I think that he will favor Drama because they're the largest, they alway_\s ~.~I largest. They're the largest in th~_...~ountr~ance at ~, fu~ Irvine is huge, in terms of Danc.t but, in terms of Irvine, w~ it's a tiny, little, bitty little thing. And I know he'll ~ take care of the Music Department. He's a conductor. He is - ~~ a good conductor. He has to conduct, like Clayton had to be ~~c:.,~ in Drama. I mean, he has to be. He's a performer. I understand that. He will make sure we have a good orchestra. Now, that's going to be great news for the community and desperately. for the university. We need a good orchestra Our orchestra, as my daughter would say, sucks. Right?

24 PLASTINO 24 (laughter) JP: But, in the meantime, it'll be interesting to see what he does with Art Studio, which has been given the short shrift by Clayton, by everybody. I mean, the Art Studio graduate students have their studios off-campus now, in Santa Ana somewhere. It's not even safe. It's a deplorable situation. They've had their studios taken away from them, made them into drama studios. It's just a deplorable situation in Art Studio..Dance is hanging on by because they're so damn good. You can't do anything about them except stick with them, and they're going to make it t+ ~'-e,;\l.o (L happen no matter what. I don't think he's going to put money into that. I think he'll put the money. This is just what I've seen. I'm not a Chair so I'm not privy to everything. But from what I've seen, we'll see the Music Department and we'll see Drama get the money. Well, this is interesting about playing favorites and people, you know, one department getting more than another. It never occurred to me. I noticed when I retired as Dean, several people said several nice things, you know, in public, giving me a present. And they said that one, the most important thing about me that I was fair. And it never occurred to me that I'd act otherwise, but I can understand, you see. The English Department wants something, the History, see, Foreign Languages, and they were And I had to toe the line and say, "Well, this is it, you know.

25 PLASTINO 25 You get so much." And what I'm thinking, Jan, is that if you're not fair, there's a lot of grief, a lot of grief. How, how has the opening of the Orange County Center for the Performing Arts helped your program? And I might add something to that, too, as to what effect the new theater being built right in front of the Administration Building, what effect is that going to have? JP: I really can't tell you how the Orange County Center has really affected our department, or even the school. I don't think that our attendance records are up extraordinarily. I mean, that would be one of the few ways that you could tell it. We've not been given huge amounts of money by any outside group here. (inaudible) JP: Ho great benefactor has come in and dumped a million dollars on us. I can't see... I do know I was standing in line not too long ago and somebody was talking about a dance situation they were going to see, and they didn't even know that Irvine had a Dance Department. So, I don't think that the Orange County Center for the Performing Arts has done anything for Fine Arts at Irvine. I really don't. On the other hand, the new theater, we will be given a third of the time in the theater. Everybody has a proposal. Bob Cohen wants to have another Irvine Repertory Theater, doing Shakespeare. The Dance Department wants to put in a dance company. There is no dance company in Orange County and I,

26 PLASTINO 26 of course, think that that should be a priority. The Music Department wants to put in their choral concerts and those -1~ kinds of things, and t.ae+r Betty Tessman's group, which is the Committee for Arts, all of those things have to go in there. I think, finally, there will be a few more performing opportunities, but it's not going to be a huge amount. I just don't think it. The new Irvine theater is really a touring house. You bring the stuff in, you set it up, you do your thing, and you go on to the next gig. There is no more space to build anything. For ins~p~ce, ~pa..,) there's no more production space to build things. 1There's no real set-up, so everything that we do will still have to come out of the School of Fine Arts. And, right now, there is no way for that to happen, so there's going to have to be extraordinary amounts of funding. Something will happen. I'm not sure what that something's going to be. It's definitely up in the air, but everybody has their pet project that they want to... The Music Department, Dance Department, and Drama Department each have a project that have been asked to be put in there. Whether it'll continue or not, I don't know. That's the question I thought, Jan. Often in those things, you can somehow get the, say, little theater or studio or something underneath the stage or wherever and that we would be given the right to use it X percent of the time.

27 PLASTINO 27 JP: We are, but it's very complicated. The big thing they have not done, the School of Fine Arts put in their bids without taking into account that Betty Tessman gets as much time in there, plus they're going to have classes in there. There is no rehearsal space. There is no The big thing is there is no place to build anything. Now, how can you have a production without anything being built, A:._~ht? So, it means it still has to be in the production1;'a't Fine Arts. That's the problem and there is no time and there is no space in Fine Arts. So that's where I see the extraordinary dichotomy of this, is we all put in these extraordinary ideas and how much they're going to cost, building all this stuff somewhere in Santa Ana or in Costa Mesa and then trucking it in here and... It will impact. I'm not sure how yet. Don't you have still room on campus if they want to build some more studios and things for you? They can do that. There's room. JP: There's plenty of room. They've got to. They have to. And I think that's got to be first priority of the Dean to push this onto his five-year program. Now, the tenth question, you really have explained to me the Penrod Plastino Performing Group and that I am asking you to write an article about it, which I'd like to append to information used by the UCI historian because it sounds really interesting. Now, eleven, are there any events occurred

28 PLASTINO 28 that we haven't... that you know isn't recorded, such as certain people being fired, things like that, or any actions you'd like to comment on. (laughter) JP: I love it. I still to this day don't know why Maurice Allard resigned. There has always been black clouds over that. The rumors were--this is not to be written--rumors were that he was requiring anybody who, to sing in his choir, had to take private class with him and pay. That was one of the rumors. I have no idea what really... But he left a tenured position for a very obscure kind of whatever. Remember the whole scene.with Casuto? The conductor? That has to be in the. He finally went to Connecticut, didn't he? JP: I don't know where he finally went, but this was this extraordinary Portuguese conductor who was also a lawyer, who they paid an extraordinary amount of money to, so that Clayton could have his operas conducted properly, and the guy got paid all this money and never showed up to teach anything. It went on and on. And then, of course, there's the Jerzy Gratowski thing. How do you spell that? C~ _j ~ ~o-roujg~j:-~ Afl JP: J-E-R-Z-Y Gratowski, G-R-A-T-0-W-S-K-I. we'll have to look that up. Brought him on a big. He is the Theater of the Absurd from the sixties. where they give you a. What are those grants called I want to say an FTE. It's not FTE. Focused Research Program, FRPs, and he stayed for a

29 PLASTINO 29 couple or three years and then he's gone off somewhere else. He's being funded at... They're still getting him back1 an extraordinary amount of thing. He's yet to do a production. He will never do anything, but he smokes a lot of cigarettes and he never takes a bath. He's Polish. (laughter) Anyway, he's the big number in Drama. Of / ~ Ate- i<-a-y ""y;:. course1 we must not leave without knowing that Donald MGHale will be coming aboard. The great black choreographer will be coming aboard as of Monday of this week, as of the whatever. So, the Dance Department continues to grow and to move, without much help from the School of Fine Arts. That was a"farget of fpportunit~tg~ition, which our new Dean is taking all the credit for and I'm the one who did all the work. Sam understands that, right? Those are some of the things that have gone on in our Arts School. Oh, we could go on and on of the personalities. Anthony Tudor being here for all those years. at least six or seven years. Brewster Mason. He was here every winter quarter for JP: Brewster Mason who was here. Bill Inge, who was the first playwrighting person. there. Those names need to be mentioned in Do you know why he didn't come. continue? Before he JP: committed suicide, he didn't come? That was before me.

30 PLASTINO 30 This is true. This is a true story. Well, he would have an off ice up on the fourth floor and I was the Dean from the fifth floor and I would go by and say hello to him because I really res,pected that 1 Picnic, and the other things he did. JP: Oh.1 yes. And he had this great big dog. And, finally, with all the student uprisings and so on, there were just too many dogs around and so Dan Aldrich said, "No dogs. They're infecting our laboratory dogs." They may or they may not, but that was it. So, he just... And then his boyfriend, you know 1 just wouldn't drive him down anymore 1.ift'Lf fg t L./-- (J)r D.,.uv-/' so we lost Oeat'l Inge.. ~fp- JP: And then he committed suicide shortly after that. f)jojl"f Then he committed suicide 1 yes, put the. Yes, he put the gasoline... he put his automobile exhaust. JP: I didn't know that. (inaudible) Jan just mentioned the great Canadian performer... JP: Shakespeare actor. Shakespeare actor. JP: William Needles. William N-E-E-D-L-E-S, yes. JP: Yes.1 he was another one. He came for years and years as a. JP: Yes, he was. You know why he doesn't come anymore? No.

31 PLASTINO 31 JP: It's a damn pain back and forth between Canadian... foreign (inaudible) Oh, yes, I know it. They're very unreasonable. Australians are getting that way, too, toward their money down there. JP: Yes. What I wanted to say about Maurice. I knew Maurice pretty well and used to go listen to everything he did, and I respect him. He was a good musician and I said, "You're out of your mind to give up a tenured position." And he said, "I just can't stand the administration." JP: That's not the reason. No, that's probably not the reason, no. That's the one he gave them. JP: That's right. That's why I would like to know (inaudible) what the reason is because there are all kinds of situations. I'm trying to think if there was anybody else who was here for any period of time. There was the one who did I want to say, to conclude this, Jan, this has been a very interesting tape and I'll let you see it and if you want to hold it back five or ten years, why, you certainly can do that. Though it's highly unlikely that anyone will ever go to the archives to look at these. I'll be the one who uses them and I will definitely, Jan, let you see what I say about the Fine Arts Department [School]. In the first place, you might need to correct me, you know. Second is

32 PLASTINO 32 that maybe there is some sensitive stuff in there that might well not be there. END OF INTERVIEW