Even in a hallway at Actors Theatre of Louisville, where the most eccentric persona can lumber past without notice, there was no mistaking him: rumpled clothes, New York-flavored mumbling, eyes that invite you to tell all. It was Jimmy Breslin.
As he made his way from a tucked-away office to a board room for an interview, Breslin left nothing behind, as if he were moving permanently.
In clenched fists and under his arms, he gripped a raincoat, sports coat, a loose stack of papers ready to fall, a sloshing coffee cup and an ever-present cigar, its sour smell marking his passing.
Breslin is no stranger to Louisville, having covered numerous Kentucky Derbies for various publications.
”I remember that walk between the Seelbach (Hotel) bar and the bar at the old Kentucky Hotel,” Breslin said, heaving his load into an empty chair. He sat, put his feet up on a shiny table and puffed the cigar back to life.
”I spilled I don`t know how much of my life away on that walk. I love to drink, but I can`t take the hangovers anymore. It`s that simple.
”At that time, if I`d taken a couple of hours away from the bars to write plays, I`d be better off. Then I lie to myself and say I couldn`t have done a play unless I`d been through all that other life.”
Breslin`s columns in the New York Post earned him a Pulitzer Prize in 1986. He was cited for ”consistently championing ordinary citizens.”
He was in Louisville not as a working journalist but as a novice playwright.
Last year Jon Jory, Actors Theatre`s producing director, commissioned Breslin to write a play. The result is ”The Queen of the Leaky Roof Circuit,” scheduled to debut Feb. 25 during the theater`s 12th annual Humana Festival of New American Plays.
”Leaky Roof” is fiction. It focuses on a subject Breslin has covered for years in New York: abandoned black women and their children, in neighborhoods where poverty, hunger and crime fester against a backdrop of drug dealing.
”You might expect Breslin to write a play about a cop or an Irish construction worker or maybe gangsters,” Breslin said. ”But the thing I know the best about is people who are poor and living in desperate circumstances. So I wrote about them.
”Sixty-five percent of my business in New York involves dealing with poor women, most of whom are black and Puerto Rican. You go to the courts in the Bronx or Brooklyn, and when the guy goes through the door to the detention pens, and you`re left out in the hallway with the wife or the mother weeping. ”If there`s any sickness or trouble or living without heat or water, you climb three or four flights of stairs to get to the apartment. And it`s always women there. It`s never men. They`re never there in times of trouble. They`re just not.
”There`s always more humor in these situations. The pain is so bad the laughter is louder.”
A native of New York, Breslin worked for several New York newspapers as a sportswriter until the mid-1960s. His first book was about ”Sunny Jim”
Fitzsimmons, a renowned trainer who had three Derby winners.
Breslin then became a columnist, covering general news, and worked for various newspapers and such magazines as New York and New Times.
He had a short-lived television program, ”Breslin`s People,” in 1986. He also has published other books, including ”Can`t Anybody Here Play This Game?” about the first season of the New York Mets; ”How the Good Guys Finally Won,” about the impeachment of former President Richard M. Nixon; and his latest, ”He Got Hungry and Forgot His Manners.”
Breslin`s novel about a bumbling Mafia gang, ”The Gang That Couldn`t Shoot Straight,” was made into a film. His novel of last year, ”Table Money,” is to be produced as a film by actress Kathleen Turner, who will star.
”`The Gang That Couldn`t Shoot Straight` was a huge success, but I blew the money, so I had to keep the newspaper job. If I was doing this right, I`d have a 70-year-old woman sponsoring me, living with her in the south of France, and writing. But I never met a woman with a lot of money, so to support my habits I have the newspaper job.”
Breslin and his second wife, the former Ronnie Eldridge, have between them nine children.
”A best-selling novel, unless it`s a runaway, enormous thing, is not going to keep you going the four or five or six years it takes to do a novel,” he said. ”I`m very slow with them. So you have to keep the newspaper job while you`re trying these great artistic endeavors.”
In Louisville, Breslin has been rewriting his play as it goes through rehearsal.
”No, I don`t sit through rehearsals. I write through them. It`s like going back to the high school classroom. You gotta sit there for four hours and keep quiet and pay attention. I can`t do that.
”Even in long government hearings you can take a walk for a cigarette, and when you get back somebody can fill you in. But here you can`t take a minute because you`re the one that has to see and hear it.”
Still, Breslin thinks that the American stage is the best place for a piece of work that has something to tell an audience.
”The theater is the place for anger, and there`s no anger at all on Broadway,” he said.
Breslin said the last play he saw in New York, Lanford Wilson`s ”Burn This,” was in the company of Michael Dixon, of Actors Theatre.
Breslin told Dixon that he had outlined the story of his play, ”The Queen of the Leaky Roof Circuit,” to a producer in New York, and that the producer was not encouraging.
”It made him very uneasy, this idea that even if you`re a black man who has hit bottom, if you`re hopeless or dead, that you have the right to run out on a baby. This guy told me the play read like stuff black playwrights wrote about in the 1970s.
”I told him that I just won a Pulitzer Prize for writing the same stuff in the daily newspaper, so don`t tell me what to be comfortable with and what not to be comfortable with.
”I handle this for a living. I know the women are screaming about the guys selling drugs, and the children of the women are the ones taking the drugs. They`d make you a hero in Bedford-Stuyvesant for shooting a drug peddler. If you`d hang them from lamp posts, the women would run you for public office.
”But only the women, they`re the ones who are so violently against this, and they get no help. And I`ve been writing it for a long time.”
NEW AMERICAN PLAYS IN LOUISVILLE`S LINEUP
Here is the lineup of shows in Actors Theatre of Louisville`s 12th annual Humana Festival of New American Plays. The festival began Wednesday and runs until March 26:
Channels, by Judith Fein: A woman`s mind and spirit begin to disconnect after she resigns her university job. She begins to see her husband, mother, lover and best friend in nightmarish episodes on the television screen of her mind. Opened Wednesday.
The Metaphor, by Murphy Guyer: An absurdist play. A prisoner`s resistance to his interrogator disrupts everything, including the performance of the show. From the author of ”American Dream,” about a man who appears full grown at the moment of his conception in the 1960s, and ”Eden Court,” a comedy about a woman who worships Elvis Presley. Opens Saturday.
The Queen of the Leaky Roof Circuit, by Jimmy Breslin: A caustic comedy about a poor black woman who, on the eve of eviction from her New York tenement, challenges the system to save her children. Opens Feb. 25.
Alone at the Beach, by Richard Dresser: Six lonely Manhattanites at a Hamptons beach house for a summer of fun and frolic turn a carefree vacation into a summer of discontent. Opens March 1.
Whereabouts Unknown, by Barbara Damashek: By the author of the musical
”Quilters,” this work integrates images, sounds and stories of the homeless of Louisville, based on interviews with transients. Opens March 5.
Lloyd`s Prayer, by Kevin Kling: Bob, who has been raised by raccoons, learns he is a boy when he is caught in a trap and subsequently displayed at sideshows and revivals by Lloyd, a huckster. When a beautiful angel is sent to stop Lloyd`s blasphemy, a struggle ensues for Bob`s soul. Characters include a beauty queen, a half-eaten man and a porpoise that sells religious artifacts. Opens March 11.
Sarah and Abraham, by Marsha Norman: A play-within-a-play involving an improvised drama based on the biblical story of Sarah and Abraham contrasts the lives of the performers with their biblical counterparts. Opens March 19. Three of the works, ”The Queen of the Leaky Roof Circuit,”
”Whereabouts Unknown” and ”Sarah and Abraham,” were commissioned for the festival. ”Sarah and Abraham” is being staged as a workshop production, or a play in progress.
Most shows have a half-dozen or more performances through March 26 at Actors Theatre`s stages at 316 W. Main St., Louisville. A schedule, reservations and other information are available by phoning 502-584-1205.
