Flying Funny: My Life without a Net

by Dudley Riggs

  It was all about trust. Trusting yourself onstage and knowing that your partners will protect you if you make a mistake are very liberating. Our friendships grew on the road; Marylyn and Bernie were always close, Don and Robin acted like siblings; we made a point of always being civil to each other. As we became better performers, Fliffus had made us into an ensemble of better, more caring humans.

  But then it was over.

  The Instant Theater tour was not a huge commercial success. The show had tightened up and was usually well received once the audience got past their confused expectations. But we went broke anyway.

  Even though a newspaper review said, “The Instant Theater performance: Showed great promise,” my dream of improvisational success faded as I thought about the future. I was again at liberty.

  Don and Robin went seeking some better-paying activities. Bernie and Marylyn, as usual, bounced right back to work. They took a hotel piano-bar gig, singing at a place called the Norsk Room. I knew that the Shrine Circus would open in spring. But I could no longer ignore the uncertainty of show-business bookings. I thought that if I got my degree I might be able to teach school, even from a wheelchair should I fall again. My health was good, and I had healed up pretty well—but I could not deny the hazards. I was forced to admit that, despite my billing, I was no longer the undisputed King of the Air.

  I signed up for a dozen credits at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

  I joined my new university classmates, mostly theater majors, who were well ahead of me academically and who could not care less about my background. My adviser couldn’t understand why at my age I was still an undergrad. All my family’s show-business history didn’t mean a thing, so I avoided answering questions about my past. I knew I would be going out on the road again when paying work was available, and leaving was not something that would endear me with students and faculty, though some faculty would certainly be happy to see me gone.

  As luck would have it, I got booked for a series of TV shows in Chicago. But the back-and-forth between show commitments and college classes began upsetting people. The WGN director in Chicago worried that my weekly commute between Chicago and Minneapolis was cutting time too thin. “If you got so much as a flat tire, you’ll miss rehearsal and then where will I be?”

  These engagements paid well, but the travel time erased study time and much of the profit. Driving to Chicago on Friday, rehearsing Saturday morning, doing the show Saturday, then driving the four hundred miles back to Minneapolis on Sunday didn’t really leave me in prime shape for class on Monday.

  The head of the theater department couldn’t understand why I refused a nonspeaking role in Oedipus during this time. “Theater students are expected to participate in school productions. You must make yourself available weekends,” read the backstage posted notice.

  I explained again that I was classified “working student” and my television contract required my presence in Chicago every weekend.

  He said he was not going to waste his time on my problems. “You need to decide if you really want to continue in this department.” It was definitely his department. He ruled with religiously warm manners, clear rules, and a sweet cheerfulness. He was held in highest regard by just about everyone. I was out of line. I came here to study stage direction, and I was not taking direction.

  “I need you in the crowd scene,” he said softly.

  I knew I was not making things better when I said, “It would be hard for me to quit a paying job in show business to carry a spear in one scene of an amateur college play.” I should not have used “amateur.” He stood up, and smilingly ushered me out of his office saying, “Again, I think you must decide if you really want to stay in theater.”

  Twenty-five years later, he wrote about improvisation and the Brave New Workshop Theater in his history of Minnesota theater:

  In the good old days when a drugstore sold drugs and a service station sold gasoline, when a Ford was a Ford and a Buick a Buick, vaudeville was vaudeville, opera was opera and the legitimate theater legitimate—a place where properly written plays were memorized by actors for presentation before an audience. That has passed. Today drugstores and service stations sell everything from playing cards to Bibles. Fords and Buicks sell everything from luxury limousines to cramped compacts, and so the legitimate theater also tries to be all things to all people, hesitating not a moment to steal from ballet, variety, burlesque, opera or whatever. Consequently, we can no longer eliminate Dudley Riggs from this book, even though his productions are probably no more “legitimate” than were those of Buffalo Bill or Weber and Fields back in the good old days. (From Minnesota Theatre by Professor Frank M. Whiting, Director of the Universityof Minnesota Theatre)

  Thank you, Dr. Whiting, for the kind thought.

  In those days, I neverthless kept in touch with the agents. I couldn’t seem to stop looking for work. And occasionally they would come through with a short-run contract.

  One memorable Saturday, after the early Shrine Circus matinee in Minneapolis, a small group waited with program and autograph books in hand, eager to give the usual compliments and thanks to the performers. These were real circus fans, always the ideal audience, folks who obviously loved circus and the idea of meeting, of knowing, even briefly, someone in the circus. “If they stayed after, they must have liked the show. Getting backstage is not easy, so they must really want to meet you,” said Dubb Harden. These children were all so giggly and shy, so full of compliments, how could I not get puffed up. I loved them for loving me.

  It had been a great performance, considering the early hour. I had added a new move in the sway pole act, making the descent look a lot riskier, and building to a more dynamic finale. I did it for the adults, for the dating couples, setting up an unexpected moment that would cause them to gasp and then hold each other a little tighter. It wasn’t for the children. I figured that the kids would be distracted by the cotton candy salesman.

  After this particular matinee, a tall, beautiful woman dressed in a black leather trench coat waited patiently until the family crowd had moved on, then surprised me with “I waited to talk to you because I didn’t want to rob you of the children’s sweet little parade of well-wishing.” I was set back thinking, She’s a little sarcastic, rather too direct, but well spoken. Why all that fire in her eyes? This woman was riled up about something! Could she be angry at me? For what? Looking me directly in the eye and standing just a bit too close, she said, “You should be ashamed of yourself!”

  When a lone woman comes backstage, she usually brings flowers and some nice but empty town girl chatter. I confess, I really didn’t mind the giggly chatter—it occasionally led to a real talk—once the backstage fright wore off. After our initial nervous jousting, when the words slowed down, and some personality emerged, it was then possible to have a real conversation.

  Not this time. This lady lit into me as if I had caused a car crash.

  “You should be ashamed of yourself, setting such a bad example for these children,” she continued. “You make reckless behavior look like fun. Don’t you know that if kids try that, they are sure to get hurt! Stop that!”

  Wow! I had grown used to hearing nothing but praise for my performance. What a gutsy woman, I thought. She put it right out there, no concession offered, just an unequivocal “Stop doing that!” She walked away a few steps, and then stopped, and said, “Think about what you are doing, Riggs!”

  She was gone before I could ask how she happened to use my real name. The program only listed me as “The Great Alberty.”

  Two years later our paths crossed again in Minneapolis where I was once more enrolled in college. Vaudeville was dead, concession salesmen were obscuring the art of the circus, and I had no bookings for Word Jazz. The Instant Theater had proved that Fliffus was a useful tool for creating new comedy, but Word Jazz hadn’t generated enough interest to support itself anywhere except New York.

  I managed to stay unpacked and off t
he road for almost a full college year. I had moved so often that I had no idea where home might be. I had been a kid posing as an adult for so long. Now I realized that I had never quite grown up.

  When she and I finally met formally, I immediately realized that I had seen her before—two years back at the Shrine Circus. When it came time for introductions, she brushed right past any kind of protocol.

  “Hi. We’ve met before. I’m Ruth. I’m a PK—a preacher’s kid, I’m on the dean’s list, I edit the college literary magazine, and I make great Indian curry,” she said all in one breath.

  I had to step back and catch my breath. Could it be that this attractive, refreshingly direct woman is asking me home for a curry dinner? I wondered? “Well, hello,” I stammered.

  She made no room for the usual small talk. She was asking me out, and I soon discovered she did cook great curry.

  I had seen her on campus and always had a nagging thought that I had met her someplace before. She stood out, always dressed away from the standard skirt, sweater, and bobby socks uniform. There was nothing standard about this woman. She had an unusually elegant way of holding herself—not haughty, but very self-assured. I soon learned that she was a classical pianist, a poet, and an outspoken social radical. She laughed easily and seemed forever surrounded by her egghead friends. I had kept my distance, unwilling to risk being on the wrong side of that easy, sarcastic laugh. Of course, we became friends.

  In the spring, I was about to leave the university again. I had a contract that would keep me on the road and out of school for six months.

  “Why not stay and finish and maybe have more choices?” Ruth asked.

  “I have to make a living! I have a contract,” I responded, though deep down I knew she was right. “We have a family tradition of always honoring our contracts.”

  Ruth looked me straight in the eye and with a very knowing smile said, “Is that family tradition or just a rationalization that you live by?” (I was hearing an echo of what Marylyn Rice had said to me.) “You can do other jobs, you know. Maybe you should unload some of your circus baggage and give school a chance.”

  It was 1956. I stayed in school, maried Ruth, opened a coffeehouse, and ran Instant Theater, which eventually became Dudley Riggs’ Brave New Workshop. I didn’t leave show business, but I did run away from the circus.

  15

  The New Ideas program

  Ad lib—ad absurdum.

  In the circus, we lived one thing after another, “upping and downing” the circus big top in a new town every day. We would arrive . . . set it up, perform the show, repeat it, sometimes with surprises and catastrophes. But always fun. The uncertainty is why it was fun. Perhaps I’d learned not to make plans because so many plans failed. It’s like a flying act when routines are learned through failure in order to be safe. Many flyers train by learning every “trick to the net”—do the trick, but miss the catch and learn to recover by going to the net. To echo what I told new recruits to the circus: “A failed trick in rehearsal gives you the confidence to complete the trick in performance.”

  In my late twenties, I was still trying to figure out what it was that I wanted to do when I grew up. (I’ve continued to do that all these years.) I was wondering, “Who am I this week?” As Grandmother Riggs said, “Show business is ephemeral. Work goes away.” Well, my work had gone away again.

  I’d gone from The Riggs Brothers circus act to my Instant Theater; great for a while, but it didn’t pay the bills. I said, “Let’s tour it!” The tour only proved that the best audience for Instant Theater was probably college students, but I still went broke. To earn some money, I then joined another circusmid-season, but they didn’t need my act; I was reduced to selling balloons.

  I had run out of touring jobs and needed to just stay in one place and rethink my life. Go home. But where? I realized that I had never thought that I had a hometown. Now I thought I should try to be a settled resident and become known as a “towner” to my circus friends and relatives.

  In our show-business life, whenever my family was booked into a new city, we followed a family ritual. We’d ask each other, “What does this town need?” Taking turns around the table, each of us would declare what each town we found ourselves in needed to be a better place:

  . . . you could buy chicory-free coffee in New Orleans.

  . . . L.A. would have a kosher deli.

  . . . there would be opera in Tulsa.

  . . . bread that was not sourdough would be available in San Francisco.

  When I came back to Minneapolis and married Ruth, I had decided to stay put. And my answer to what this town needed was good bread, espresso, and satire.

  In 1956, Stefano’s Pizza—a tiny atmospheric café on Cedar Avenue near the university—became the new home for Word Jazz, the Instant Theater, and the New Ideas Pro‑gram. These titles seemed grandiose, but less so when set in the humble storefront with its all-jazz jukebox and low lighting. A sign over the door read, “Pizza, Jazz and Thou.” I was half expecting flack from local scribes or from people I had known at the university who might have been inclined to ask, “Who do you think you are and what qualifies you to talk about new ideas?” But, to my surprise, no one challenged it. People seemed to think it was cool. Such were the times.

  As a newly married man, I needed to be a civilian, act like a regular adult, and find a suitable job. Most of what I had learned on the road and at the university so far failed to qualify me for employment in the regular workforce. I knew I would have to create my own job. I needed to establish a home base, create something new, do some shows, make some noise, have some fun, and bring people together. Maybe even generate some of what I, in my callow wisdom, thought this town needed.

  Stefano’s was only the second pizzeria to open in the Twin Cities, and it stayed open until 2 a.m. Pretty exotic for a city not yet known for its nightlife. In the 1950s, Minneapolis was a very quiet community. Late-night entertainment options in Minneapolis and St. Paul were few, and the very idea of late-night live entertainment was branded sinful by most. Bernie introduced me to Tony, the charming Italian owner, saying, “You guys need each other.”

  I signed a lease for Stefano’s and produced the first late-night poetry and jazz concert. Nice crowd, mostly curiosity-driven, but they had a good time, and I promised more to come. No one knew what to expect from this shoestring enterprise, so “more to come” almost sounded like a joke. That may have been part of its charm.

  “Free entertainment at midnight” became popular with the audience and with the musicians, most of whom had paying jobs elsewhere. At Stefano’s there was no booze, no curfew, so jazz riffing and theater works in progress often ran late. Musicians became protective of the place, and we maintained a nearly Sunday school behavior code to help me ward off any activity that might put my license at risk. Troublesome un-hip types were cut from the clan. The mood was free and easy, but with rules, so that artists could stay focused on their art.

  Stefano’s served as a magnet for artists, musicians, and a few experienced student actors who found that they tired of only being cast in community or church basement stage productions. Such were the times. When I came to town, there were seven theaters and six critics. The Guthrie Theater would not arrive until 1963.

  “Instant Theater presents The New Ideas Program” came to mean a potpourri of staged readings of new plays such as The Bald Soprano or In-Visible, Beat poets such as Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg read to jazz, chamber music quartets, and modern dance. Adding poetry and modern dance helped create the “something new” I had promised myself that I wanted to offer along with entertainment and surprise, thoughtful surprise. And I hoped the audience would give us a thoughtful reaction and regular attendance.

  I cast a dozen actors in a few productions of new and locally unseen works—Baraka, Ionesco, Beckett—each lightly produced in a Reader’s Theater format. Some actors came to the first rehearsal excited but dubious about the neighborhood and the unfamiliar sc
ripts. The young women worried that appearing onstage at Stefano’s might harm their reputation; the guys thought it would help theirs. Yes, such were the times.

  We began to conclude each evening’s performance with midnight Word Jazz. The audience was growing, seemed older and more receptive to fresh sounds and ideas, just more hip. Actors from the university were interested but restricted by the late hours and fear of offending their theater professors. I kept trying to introduce actors to the Fliffus con‑cept, but I took criticism from the university theater department, which claimed we were being disrespectful to the power of the playwright because “they just make up the script!”

  I printed off the first issue of The Broadside, the “official newsletter” of The New Ideas Program. Money was short, and this was to be our only paid-for advertising. We proudly papered all the dorms. Attendance grew. We sent it to Will Jones and Don Morrison at the daily papers, and they would occasionally pick up on our events. We had no other way to announce our existence or our programs because we were not part of the tightly established theater community. We mailed a few broadsides to names on the progressive Walker Art Center members list. Attendance grew. But we also received three letters from Walker members requesting that their names be removed from the Instant Theater’s mailing list.

  I also posted flyers advertising a Fliffus workshop for actors:

  FLIFFUS:

  An ongoing effort to expand the acceptance of free association speech by theater artists and audience.

  A workshop to introduce free-flowing ideas.

  An actor’s exercise to try to create original scenes through free association.

  At the first session, I gave eight actors audition scripts to read through, then asked them to run the first scene. Most stage-wise actors can perform easily when they have the authority provided by a physical script. With pages in hand, even from an unfamiliar or discredited work, they can move convincingly about the stage and respond to cues, in character and with some conviction.