Night Kitchen: Sendak’s Quest for a U.S. Children’s Theater

One might imagine that the combination of Maurice Sendak and theater for children would be one of life’s few sure bets. One would not be taking into account, however, the climate of today, a climate growing more ominous with each new Supreme Court ruling. Somehow, author-artist Sendak, even after 40 years as the supreme interpreter of the deepest impulses of children, is still regarded as a maverick.

Eight months ago, Sendak announced the formation of the Night Kitchen, his visionary national theater for children, created with fellow author-playwright and librettist Arthur Yorinks.

Sendak envisioned theater that will do what his books have always done: acknowledge the trials and triumphs of a child’s life. Plays, musicals, operas, ballets--every form of live theater that, as Sendak described, “will allow kids to have the same complicated, wonderful time that we have at the theater, God willing.” In the Sendak “Nutcracker,” for example, after all her trials, little Clara would not be forced to sit on a satin couch while an interloping Sugar Plum Fairy took the spotlight. It would be Clara’s moment, well earned.

With Sendak the artistic director and Yorinks the associate artistic director, Night Kitchen productions would be workshopped and tried out at the State University of New York at Purchase, where the not-for-profit company has been invited to establish a residency. The shows would then be co-produced with theater and opera companies all over the country.

The Night Kitchen is, of course, named for the second in Sendak’s great trilogy that began with “Where the Wild Things Are” and ended with “Outside Over There.” “In the Night Kitchen” was his vision of a gleeful little boy who, for starters, falls into a pan of cake batter in a city a lot like New York. As free-falling as a dream, as satisfying as warm milk and cookies, the book has been called a celebration of childhood sensuality. The same year as its publication, 1970, Sendak became the first American to win the Hans Christian Andersen International Medal for the body of his work. The book also set legions of worry-warts to work drawing diapers on its young and cheerfully unclothed hero, Mickey.

Sendak was in Los Angeles briefly on a dual mission. To be the centerpiece of a recent Freedom to Read celebration at the bookstore-gallery Every Picture Tells a Story, one of the country’s rare galleries to treat illustrative art seriously. And to find angels for the Night Kitchen. At his hotel the day after the gallery opening, Sendak looks so much like a tamer Wild Thing that he’d be recognizable before one heard his name. Even in jeans and a blue work shirt, he has the air of a man who’s ready to let the wild rumpus begin. More than ready, eager.

There is already a proposed first Night Kitchen season, with theaters attached. The 1992-1993 season includes a musical version of Sendak’s “Really Rosie” for St. Louis, music by Carole King; a chamber opera based on Yorinks’ Caldecott Medal winner “Hey Al,” about a painter, his dog and transformation from the inside out, with music by Peter Schickele (P.D.Q. Bach), for Lincoln Center and the Houston Grand Opera; and a newly adapted dramatic version of “Peter Pan” by Sendak and Yorinks, for the Kennedy Center in Washington.

What Sendak is searching for now is, in effect, Sendak-lovers with money. He’s as optimistic about finding them as he is pessimistic about the opportunities for young artists today.

“If I had to get established now, I would kill myself. I wouldn’t get established,” he observes morosely. “If I was as good as I am now and I were young, that would doom me from the beginning. Exactly what has happened to film has happened in the publishing business in America. It’s an industry. It’s (concerned with) making money and it’s rationalized by ‘Look how expensive everything is to do.’ I was given 10 full years to be an apprentice, without ever being reminded that I wasn’t making money for Harpers.

“My editor was Ursula Nordstrom, my guiding spirit. She was, thank God, there to groom me, water me, make me grow up to be a person of taste--which I was not when she found me, at the age of 21.

“She passed me, with my little dopey sketches, on to Ruth Kraus and Crockett Johnson, Ruth’s husband who did the comic strip ‘Barnaby,’ and they were my education. I didn’t go to college or art school. Ruth and I did six books together. He gave me reading lists, Dostoevsky, Melville. They were my parents. There’s nobody who does that any more; there isn’t time. And that’s what apprenticeship is all about.

“Ursula died two years ago. How do you lose a major mentor? I thought I could establish a little repertory theater, and I could be Papa Nordstrom and teach, just the way I was taught. Until I croak, look what I have to offer!

“So many charming young people came flocking around at the gallery. It happens wherever I go. Young stage designers. Illustrators. Artists. I can teach them not to worry about big bucks, but to learn, and then put them immediately onstage.”

His face is illuminated as he says, “It’s so clear to me that I am re-creating what I had with Ursula. She would love this, she would so love this whole idea.”

The Night Kitchen’s first major grant, announced last October, probably came too easily. “It was miraculous, and it spoiled me,” Sendak says wryly. George Craig, CEO of Sendak’s publishing company of 40 years, once Harper & Brothers, now HarperCollins, immediately, and with no strings attached, pledged $1 million start-up money in $250,000 increments over four years, and office space. No strings, in this case, meant no book expected in return.

Since that grand show of faith, things have gone more slowly. “Everyone wants to support us,” Sendak says firmly, “one major corporation in particular, then they tell you how much trouble they’re having.

“I have to get over this clumsy feeling about asking for money. For anybody else, I’d crawl . If it was for my sister, I’d kill. It seems so vulgar to bring up money, but I guess I’m ready to be vulgar.”