November 27, 2024
I first met Murray Mednick at the second iteration of the Padua Hills Theater Festival, which was staged on the grounds outside a theater in the foothills of Claremont. There was a grove of olive trees whose branches were the support system for stage lights that came on soon after dusk. An evening would often feature four substantial plays, and things would start around 6 p.m., with the fullness of summer light still going full tilt. The indoor theater had been locally fomous earlier in the century, but an earthquake had damaged ir beyond being useful as a theater. There were buildings around the perimeter, however, that were able to serve as sets for plays, including a kitchen.
Mednick was one of the earliest members of the off-off-Broadway movement that included Maria Irene Fornes, Robert Patrick, and Sam Shepard. When Mednick moved to L.A. in the 1970s, he didn’t get involved with “the industry” at all, but focused on theater that was closer to the stage’s ancient sense of its consciousness as a ritual involving poetry. From its inception in the late 1970s, the Padaa Hills Festival became almost overnight the one place those in the know regarded as a “must attend.”
It was immediately clear to me that Mednick was not just a playwright, and I included his writing in POETRY LOVES POETRY in 1985. Now, thanks to poet Peggy Dobreer, Murray Mednick’s first collection of poetry is now available. “Living Poetry” deserves to be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, at the very least. There is no other book of poetry quite like it. When Peggy said that Murray would like me to write a blurb, I was thrilled to do so.
“Murray Mednick’s LIVING POETRY is both a startling debut and a culminating distillation of a life that could not have yielded anything other than these dauntingly memorable poems. All of the greatest dramatists wrote their plays eihten as verse or prose poems, but Mesnick’s poems stand apart from his extraordinary plays as a summit few others have attained. A sternly exultant, street-level ferocity encapsulates his poems within a clairvoyant wisdom that is second to none. “The owl of Minerva flies at dusk.” Any readers who find themselves caught in the throes of regret or wistfulness will find their longed for succor in the visionary condor of Mednick’s indominatble poems.”
For those curious about is plays, here are some.links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Mednick
A conversation wit Murray Mednick:
https://www.conversations.org/story.php?sid=566
THE GARY PLAYS:
Murray Mednick Stages L.A.’s Interior Sprawl in ‘The Gary Plays’
About Bill Mohr