‘Cycle’ No Documentary, Author Reminds Kentuckians

As Robert Schenkkan’s “The Kentucky Cycle” moves from Los Angeles to a fall opening on Broadway, it has encountered a whiff of controversy--from Kentuckians.

The first sign of trouble came a year ago in a series of seven essays about the “Cycle” by Appalachian-reared writers in the Kentucky-based Ace magazine. The articles appeared soon after Schenkkan won the Pulitzer Prize for the six-hour-plus epic, which covers 200 years of family history in a fictitious patch of eastern Kentucky. Much of the commentary were quite critical, but only one of the essays was written by someone who had actually seen the show (at the Mark Taper Forum); the others were based on a reading of the script, which has since been partially rewritten.

Washington, where the “Cycle” is currently playing at the Kennedy Center, is a lot closer to Kentucky than Los Angeles. And now several Kentucky residents who saw a preview of the two-part production at the Kennedy Center on Aug. 28 are making strenuous objections to it.

“The first three hours of hillbilly violence could have been compressed into 30 minutes,” said Artie Ann Bates, a physician and political activist from Elk Creek holler, near the tiny town of Blackey in eastern Kentucky.

Bates thought the second half was a lot better--until the last scene, which she felt “sugarcoats” the truth about Kentucky when it indicates that a wolf has returned to the mine-devastated countryside, implying hope for the healing of the environment. “The audience can walk out complacently,” she said.

Bates also cited some “one-liners” that used “anachronisms” (in 1861, a character says that a cut on his thumb was “nothin’ to write home about”) or took “cheap shots at Appalachian culture” (a farm girl in 1890 says the devil would have to wait a long time for “an innocent virgin to come along . . . in these parts”).

However, Bates added, “my Appalachian sensibility was not insulted. I could let that stuff go because I felt there was a higher purpose. The play is a good opportunity to bring new light to the problems we struggle with every day. . . . I certainly hope its imperfections will be corrected.”

Nancy Adams was less hopeful. A free-lance writer and a longtime Kentuckian who now lives across the West Virginia border, Adams taped the reactions of the Kentuckians who were at the Aug. 28 performance for a local radio program. While she agreed with Bates that the second part was better than the first, she found most of the people in the play “two-dimensional--evil and greedy” and said that Schenkkan omitted “true rounded characters” and “the feeling of community, the feeling that people here are not out to stab their neighbors in the back at every turn. He left out the good parts.” She acknowledged that a strong heroine does emerge in part two. “But there are strong men here too.”

Schenkkan, speaking of the Kentucky criticisms in general from his Washington hotel room last week, said the critics misunderstand his intent: “If you insist on looking at it as a literal historical document, you’ll be disappointed. It’s not even naturalism.

“Wouldn’t it be sad,” said Schenkkan, “if people came to Arthur Miller’s ‘The Crucible’ as if it were a documentary on our Puritan forefathers, if they insisted on playing it as some kind of insult to the people of Massachusetts? Nobody comes out of (“The Kentucky Cycle”) looking down their noses at Appalachia. They see a mirror of their own communities.”

Schenkkan said he had been approached by Kentuckians who liked the play, but he couldn’t recall their names: “I didn’t feel I had to take notes.”

But Adams doesn’t buy that argument: “It’s not going to be that easy (for Schenkkan to) let himself off the hook” by saying that the play is really about America, not Kentucky, Adams said. “He got the idea for the play when he visited here, he set the play here, he used our history. I have to conclude he was writing about Kentucky.”

SAN BERNARDINO SHIFT: C. Dale Jenks has retired after 44 years with the San Bernardino Civic Light Opera. He ran the organization for many of those years, serving as general manager since 1968. He’ll be replaced by Keith Stava, formerly of the Long Beach and Los Angeles Civic Light Operas. Stava arrived a year ago, and the past year has been a transition period.

NAME CHANGE: The Pacific Theatre Ensemble recently switched to a more long-winded name, the Pacific Resident Theatre Ensemble. Why bother?

“We’ve been everywhere from Pasadena to Venice to Hollywood, but now we’re here to stay,” explained artistic director Stephanie Shroyer, speaking of the group’s year-old home on Venice Boulevard. She wants “the community of Culver City” to think of the new PRTE as its own.

There’s only one slight hitch: The theater is not in Culver City. It’s in Los Angeles, just north of the boundary (and therefore the group can still apply for L.A. city grants, noted Shroyer). However, the group eventually hopes to move into a location within the Helms Bakery building that’s on the Culver City side of the line.