Mark Rylance - Nice Fish

Mark Rylance & Louis Jenkins

NICE FISH

NICK HERN BOOKS
London
www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Nice Fish Nice Fish was originally commissioned and produced by the Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, Minnesota (Joe Dowling, Artistic Director) in 2013. It was further developed by the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts (Diane Paulus, Artistic Director; Diane Borger, Producer), and subsequently transferred to St Anns Warehouse, Brooklyn, New York, on 14 February 2016. The play received its UK premiere at the Harold Pinter Theatre, London on 15 November 2016.

The West End cast was as follows:

Poetry, Prose and Play

Louis Jenkins is a prose poet and here is his description of a prose poem.

The Prose Poem

The prose poem is not a real poem, of course. One of the major differences is that the prose poet is incapable, either too lazy or too stupid, of breaking the poem into lines. But all writing, even the prose poem, involves a certain amount of skill, just the way throwing a wad of paper, say, into a wastebasket at a distance of twenty feet, requires a certain skill, a skill that, though it may improve hand-eye coordination, does not lead necessarily to an ability to play basketball. Still, it takes practice and thus gives one a way to pass the time, chucking one paper after another at the basket, while the teacher drones on about the poetry of Tennyson.

I suppose every play involves collaboration between imagination and life, poetry and prose. When I was working on this play, I used to sit on the bed of my friend James Hillman, who was dying of cancer. James had studied the psyche all of his life and we would chat about the emerging characters in this play. One day he said to me, You know imagination exists. It is not in us. We are in it.

Autumn Leaves

And you call yourself a poet! she said, laughing, walking toward me. It was a woman I recognized, though I couldnt remember her name. Here you are on the most beautiful day of autumn You should be writing a poem. Its a difficult subject to write about, the fall, I said. Nevertheless, she said, I saw you drinking in the day, the pristine blue sky, the warm sunshine, the brilliant leaves of the maples and birches rustled slightly by the cool west wind which is the harbinger of winter. I saw how you watched that maple leaf fall. I saw how you picked it up and noted the flame color, touched here and there with bits of gold and green and tiny black spots. Im sure that you saw in that leaf all the glory and pathos, the joy and heartache of life on earth and yet you never touched pen to paper. Actually, I said, most of what I write is simply made up, not real at all. So? she said.

What is this play about? I dont know. I will be making sense of it, word by word, as you are. We have read and re-read the hundreds of poems Louis has written and selected poems and passages to stitch together like an old American quilt of worn beloved garments, each one bearing a pattern of history, an experience. The Minnesota poet Robert Bly, who encouraged Louis, heard the competing voices of a child and an adult in Louiss first book. My experience of the Midwest of America took place in my teenage, as I moved from childhood to adulthood. Perhaps that early search for an identity that encompassed both experiences drew me to these poems.

Jazz Poem

I always wanted to write one of those Jazz poems. You know the kind, where its 3 a.m. in some incredibly smoky, out-of-the-way little club in Chicago or New York, April 14, 1954 ( its always good to give the date ) and there are only a few sleepy people left in the place, vacant tables with half-empty glasses, overturned chairs and then Bird or Leroy or someone plays this incredible solo and its like, its like well, you just should have been there. The poet was there and you understand from the poem that jazz is hip, intellectual, cool, but also earthy and soulful, as the poet must be, as well, because he really digs this stuff. Unfortunately, I grew up listening to rock and roll and decidedly un-hip country music and it just doesnt work to say you should have been in Gary Hofstadters rec room, July 24, 1961, sipping a Pepsi, listening to Duane Eddys latest album and playing air guitar.

Between 1969 and 1978, I lived primarily beside the crumbling shores of Lake Michigan in one of the many crumbling industrial cities of the North Midwest, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Louis began his life in the dust of Oklahoma and followed his heart to Duluth, Minnesota, where he too has lived by a big lake, the deepest of all, Lake Superior. Perhaps it is our shared experience of these deep, dangerous and beautiful lakes bordering our cities that has brought us together. Perhaps it was just the cold, the snow and ice, burying every living thing under a white sheet until the spring wind arrived.

The Lake

Streets run straight downhill to the water. The lake brings the city to an end. It is there, always, changing the direction of my walks. Sometimes I go for days without coming near, catching only a glimpse through the trees: a sail, a white speck turning on the dark blue. Perhaps someone very old touched the back of my wrist, lightly, for only the briefest moment, or you said something to me. What was it? The waters close above my head suddenly without a sound.

But I think what really draws me to Louis is his ability to express an internal reality of what it feels like to be a human being through the description of an apparently external landscape. Perhaps James was right, The imagination is not within us, we are within it.

Stone Arch, Natural Rock Formation

It is higher, more narrow, more treacherous than we imagined. And here we are in a spot where theres no going back, a point of no return. It has become too dangerous to continue as we have. We simply are not as sure-footed and nimble as we were when we started out. Theres nothing to do but sit down, carefully, straddling the rock. Once seated, Im going to turn slightly and hand the bag of groceries back to you. Then Im going to scoot ahead a few inches and turn again. If you then lean forward carefully and hand me the bag you will be able to move ahead to the spot I previously occupied. It is a miserably slow process and we still have the problem of the steep descent on the other side. But if we are patient, my love, I believe we will arrive safely on the ground again a few yards from where we began.

I came up with the initial idea of making a play using the poetry of Louis Jenkins, but the words and story and images you will read here have arisen from collaborative play with my fellow actors, stage managers, director, designers, friends, all focusing on the lifes work of Louis Jenkins. Now, of course, the play lives or dies in your imagination, and the final, essential, collaboration hopefully takes place. I hope our play returns you safely to the ground only a few yards from where you began.