Plays / Chronology / Rembrandt's Gift / More About Rembrandt's Gift The following articles appeared in Actors Theatre's subscriber newsletter prior to the 2002 Humana Festival REMBRANDT'S GIFT Polly Shaw and Walter Paradise have been married forever. But as they settle into their sixties, they find themselves literally up against the wall. Their Manhattan loft has turned into an obstacle course. Walter, a former actor, has become a hoarder who can’t throw out his old costumes. Towers of kingly robes and pantaloons block the windows and doors, creating a fire hazard. Polly, a world-famous photographer, can’t even find her camera in the debris. To add to their troubles, their landlord is on his way to evict them—with the fire department. When Polly finally howls that she can’t take it anymore, Walter assures her something will come up: “It always does—an act of God, a bureaucratic glitch, a man bearing gifts…” Thanks to the magic of the theatre, and the whirlwind imagination of playwright Tina Howe, a man bearing gifts does show up—the great Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn—in the flesh. With Rembrandt’s Gift, Tina Howe has crafted a play that tests the limits of art, old age, and love. What begins as a magical visitation from a mysterious stranger soon turns into a tense triangle. When asked what inspired this curious love story, Howe talks about her interest in fidelity: “As somebody who’s been married to the same radiant man for forty years, I’m very interested in the pain and beauty of longtime fidelity.” Since most playwrights seem besotted with infidelity, Howe was eager to explore the other side of the coin. “I wanted to write about a long-term marriage that was being threatened,” she says, “so I knew that threat had to be pretty intense. Who better to come barging through the door than Rembrandt van Rijn? If I was going to test this marriage, then by God, I was going to come up with a worthy opponent.” Like many of Tina Howe’s plays, Rembrandt’s Gift is a play about artists. Howe says she believes the artist is the last hero available to us, “because true artists will sacrifice everything for their vision. They aren’t motivated by money or worldly goods. But then what of the aging artist?” she asks. “What are the sources of their inspiration and where do they find the courage to keep going? Because we’re such a youth-oriented culture, the traumas of the older generation are largely ignored. Why not show the passions and flirtations and the sexiness of the older generation, for a change? It’s wildly fertile ground for a dramatist like me.” Fertile ground indeed. In this keenly imagined world, all three characters are artists struggling to adapt to the vicissitudes of old age. Walter loses himself in a host of obsessive compulsive rituals. Polly abandons her career as a world-class photographer of nude self-portraits to look after Walter. Or is she using his affliction as an excuse not to go on? And then there’s Rembrandt, whose muscular style went out of favor as he aged, dying a pauper, subsisting on bread and cheese. As the three collide, they not only rediscover the sources of their inspiration, but also—for a brief moment—exult in the possibilities of the future. When asked where this play fits into her body of work, Howe replies, “This is one of my naughty plays. I do my WASPy thing—about the once-mighty Brahmins pacing up and down their New England beaches in an alcoholic stupor—and those plays do very well. But there’s also a naughty and mischievous part of me that likes to stretch the form and see how far I can take it. I’m fully aware of the risks of doing a play like this, because I’m asking the audience to surrender to some pretty outrageous and disturbing realities.” It was, in fact, the risky nature of the play that attracted Howe to the Humana Festival. “It’s why I wanted to come to Louisville,” she says. “Having seen the work at previous festivals, I realized Actors Theatre embraces experimental, rangy voices. So if there was one place I’d feel safe exploring the limits of my imagination, it was here!” We can’t think of a better place for her to be. — Tanya Palmer TINA HOWE “The great joy of being a writer is that you get to inhabit all these different skins,” says award-winning playwright Tina Howe, who lives vicariously through her characters. From painter Margaret Church finally winning parental approval in Painting Churches, to Mabel Tidings’ heroic swim across the English Channel in Pride’s Crossing, these characters demonstrate what Howe sees as the inherent paradox of being an artist. “Artists are monsters of a sort because they’re both arrogant and insecure at the same time,” she says. “On the one hand I’m wildly egotistical, convinced I can drag an audience into any world I want, but on the other, I’m a bundle of neuroses, completely inept at maneuvering in the real world.” Although she has grown accustomed to navigating that real world, Howe, whose awards include a Tony Award nomination for Coastal Disturbances and an Obie Award for Distinguished Playwriting (among many others), reveals that she’s “overcome with embarrassment at being visible.” Howe claims she turned to writing plays because “I needed to create my own world, a world where I could disappear.” Coming from a family of artists, Howe was quick to absorb her mother’s “eccentricity” while adopting her father’s penchant for hard work. She set off to find her own niche in the world of letters and discovered playwriting. Her goal with every play is to “ignite transcendent climaxes in which the characters rise off the ground.” She longs to whip up chaos, challenging audiences to “experience the familiar in totally original ways.” This is where her ego comes into play, for as Howe laughingly admits, “All my plays are about myself or my fantasies.” She starts with an idea or dilemma out of which her characters emerge. She then plasters her writing area with outlines, notes, quotations and a blizzard of angry reminders to PAY ATTENTION. It takes her at least two years to whip a play into shape. Rembrandt’s Gift was surprisingly fast. She says it took her only six months after eight months of being lost in the wilderness. Like her characters, Howe finds herself consumed by her work. “I think obsession is a large part of being a serious player,” she says. Howe encourages her students at Hunter College and New York University to write every day, believing that it’s dailiness that ultimately saves you from despair: “If you have a bad Tuesday, there’s always Wednesday and imagine the glories that might await on Friday!” She’s also responsive to the panic of deadlines. “When a deadline approaches you often go into this gear where Truth is suddenly revealed,” Howe explains. Howe’s talent for turning the commonplace into the sublime has made her a vital force in the American theatre. In each play she sets out to achieve “a moment when the characters are transformed.” From the cross-country journey of Approaching Zanzibar to the sandy beach of Coastal Disturbances, Howe’s imagination has covered a lot of ground. Now, she invites us to join her in a claustrophobic Manhattan loft to receive Rembrandt’s Gift. — Nancy Vitale