Saratoga News

Saratoga Stereopticon

Willys Peck

Living in the past leads to the future

This is shaping up as a very satisfactory summer, déja vu-wise. For those of us who revel in the designation "old codger" or its scatological equivalent, the vu can't have enough déja. It's called living in the past.

For one thing, there was the annual Saratoga Grammar School reunion, attended by people who had graduated as far back as the early 1920s. High school and college class reunions are commonplace, but for elementary school alumni to feel such a bond says a lot for the town and the school. Saratoga was that kind of place and that kind of school. There were four of us from the 21-member Class of 1937 there, one coming from as far away as Lake Havasu, Ariz.

I probably commented on this earlier, but I associate the replacing of "grammar" with "elementary" in school names with the advent of classroom computers, regardless of the interval between those occurrences. While I will admit to the desirability, if not the necessity, of having children learn about equipment they will no doubt use in whatever occupation they pursue, I can't help but think that pocket calculators and the computer's spellcheck function are robbing kids of a valuable learning experience.

OK, so I'm old-fashioned, but I'm glad I had to learn multiplication tables by rote in Mrs. Grace Poole's third grade. The same goes for all the spelling tests, grammar drills and mental arithmetic exercises that came later.

Somehow it seemed almost sacrilegious for all those computers to be in my old first-grade classroom, but it's now part of the media center. I felt as if I was facing the wave of the future while being caught, helpless, in the undertow of the past.

But then there's Shakespeare, Shakespeare at Wildwood, now in its second season; what a great idea, and what a great tradition. Again, this is a topic dealt with in an earlier column, but, like the Bard's work itself, is worth revisiting. As to tradition, the current season conjures up images from the 1930s, when Dorothea Johnston's Theatre of the Glade was in full flower.

This outdoor theater was behind the old Saratoga Inn, site of the present Saratoga Inn Place condominiums. The first production there, in the summer of 1934, was A Midsummer Night's Dream, with Olivia de Havilland playing the part of Puck. While this production in itself was not the catalyst, it seemed only natural that Olivia would go directly from Saratoga to Hollywood, her way having been opened by influential friends in the arts community who recognized her rare talent.

Her first appearance there was in Max Reinhardt's Hollywood Bowl production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and, in the following year, she was cast as Hermia in Reinhardt's memorable film of the play, in which Mickey Rooney played Puck and James Cagney was Nick Bottom, the weaver.

But that was Hollywood, and this was Saratoga. Miss Johnston, who had considerable professional theater experience in New York but came back home at her mother's urging "to give out what you know to the community," continued with her Glade productions. In 1935 it was As You Like It, with Miss Johnston playing Rosalind. One thing about those plays in the Glade: Everybody got into the act. While Miss Johnston recruited many lead players from the Peninsula and the San Jose area, there was plenty of opportunity for townspeople to tread the boards, or maybe it was the sod. I have a lot of good memories of walk-on and bit parts in As You Like It, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream (1940 reprise) and Merry Wives of Windsor.

The final act of this memory script has a bittersweet tinge. Whether through genetics or exposure to productions that I had staged in my own backyard amphitheater--inspired by the Theatre of the Glade--starting in 1952, my son, Bill, was motivated to inaugurate, with his high school drama teacher, Judith Lyn Sutton, the Valley Institute of Theater Arts (VITA) in 1975. VITA had a 15-year career, including highly successful seasons at the Mountain Winery. When that venue became unavailable, the move to Sanborn County Park proved unsuccessful, and VITA folded in 1990.

As Hippocrates wisely cracked back in B.C., "Ars longa, vita brevis" (Art is long, life short).

The torch has been passed.

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