About
“There are, of course, the happy few who find a savor in their daily job…there is a common attribute here: a meaning to their work well over and beyond the rewards of a paycheck.”
– Studs Terkel, from his book, Working.
The Whirlwind of 1968
In 1968 President Lyndon B. Johnson announces he will not run for President. The Democratic National Convention in Chicago where the people protested and the police rioted. Rev, Martin Luther King is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee and Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated Los Angles, California. After Martin Luther King was murdered there were race riots in many cities across the country including, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Baltimore. I remember seeing TV news footage and large parts of our cities were on fire. I watched television pictures of truckloads of National Guard troops roaring into the heart of our cities with their bayonets fixed. In 1968 the country was trapped in a bloody whirlwind. And, way over in one tiny corner, one tiny-tiny corner of all that was happening in 1968, my life was starting to go through changes that brought me to where I am today.
A Different Path to the Stage
A number of people I have known in the theater wanted be in the theater from their early childhood. They started writing and staging plays in their living rooms or in their backyards for family and friends when they were children. Not me. I was playing baseball and dreaming of playing 3rd base for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Because of that, people have asked me, “Why did you go into the theater?” The short answer is, I was in the United States Air Force, far away from home, I was lonely and I wanted to meet girls.
Finding a Start in the twin cities
I was discharged from the Air Force in 1965 and I was 22 years old. I traveled around the country and a lot of the traveling was hitchhiking. Living for brief periods of time in southern California, south Texas and Montana, settling in Minneapolis around 1967. At this point I had acted in three plays in two different colleges and that was all my training. I knew no one in the theater in the Twin Cities and by any standard I was not a good actor. In Minneapolis I was living in a one room apartment with the bathroom down the hall, working as a late-night janitor, taking three courses at the University of Minnesota and sometimes managing to be cast in community theater plays. I was an overweight, out of shape, heavy drinking, theater dilettante. In fact, I was a dilatant in my life. Just doodling around the edges.
I had managed to be cast in two plays at The Eastside Theater, alas no longer with us, in Saint Paul. I was cast in the theater’s production of The Homecoming, by Harold Pinter. That is where I met John Jenkins and Joe Walsh, two men who were fundamentally important in my early theater life. John liked my work so he introduced me to the Children’s Theater Company’s (CTC) artistic director. I was brought into the Children’s Theater because of John Jenkin’s recommendation, not because of my acting ability. I had improved from bad to pretty good, with occasional brief burst of very good. It was 1968 and I was 25 years old. This is the date I use to mark my beginning to work in the theater as a professional.
Discipline and Transformation at the CTC
I could not have accomplished what I have in the theater without discipline. Something I did not have a single grain of before I joined the CTC. Primarily, I learned from Wendy Lehr and John Jenkins. I learned by watching them. I wanted to be like them. Show up on time to every rehearsal. Do your homework so you are ready at the next rehearsal. In your acting be humble, compassionate and courageous. I loved learning how to be a professional actor. It was such a total change from how I had been living my life. Now I had a purpose to my life. I had to learn my lines. Other people depended on me knowing my lines.
I had direction in my life and not from a theater director I mean a direction as in, now I was going someplace, somewhere. I was going to become a great actor. Not because I wanted to be, or expected to be, rich and famous, and that part worked out well, but more than anything, at that point in my theater life, I wanted to be a great artist. Not a star but an artist. I was no longer the doughy, out of shape drunken dilatant doodling around the edges of my life. I had literally transformed, physically, mentally and spiritually. I was in terrific physical condition. If I ever had some time off my idea of fun was to go for a 4-5 mile run. I could sing, dance…a little and could play many different kinds of characters.
The Poor Theater & the Co-Founding of MET
I wanted to act in lead roles. I felt I was ready but I knew that would never happen for me at the CTC. Then Joe Walsh called me and told me he had adapted Alice in Wonderland and could I come and see it. And, as with the CTC, I was blown away. Knocked out. During the play I was aware I had never seen a play done in this way. It was completely the opposite of the theater world at the CTC. I loved that world. Grand sets designed by Jack Barkla, hall-of-fame! Wonderful costumes, live music, that theater world was so thick and rich it was a like a double chocolate layer cake of theater. The show I saw had no set. Set pieces were brought on and taken off and something like a chair could be a chair or a tree or a horse. They had no costumes. Well, the fact that they had no costumes were costumes. There was music but they made the music with whatever was on stage, clapping, using their voices, things like that. I was amazed. At one point one of the actresses stood on a chair and simply became the Cheshire Cat. The actress playing Alice stood and looked up and talked to the actress in the chair like she was the Cheshire Cat so she became that cat, that character, for me. I loved it. And more. I knew I would thrive in this kind of theater.
What I did not know at that time but the way this play was staged was part of a theater way or style that was sweeping the western theater world. I believe it started in Poland by Jerzy Grotowski who wrote a book called Towards a Poor Theater. He developed what is known as the Grotowski method. This approach to theater had a significant impact on my work as an actor, director, and writer. One of the main ideas, as I understood it, was that theater could not compete with movies and TV so don’t try. Strip all that away and you are left with the actors. That is what the production of Alice in Wonderland did. I called Joe and told him what I thought and he was delighted. He said he wanted to meet with me. It was around 1970 when Joe Walsh and I co-found the Minnesota Ensemble Theater (MET). I have thought for many years that I acted at the CTC and then I acted and worked at the MET. Two separate times. Four years at CTC and four years at the MET. I did some research into my own past and discovered I was wrong. It was somewhere in my second year acting at the CTC Joe and I started working together at the MET. At first, I mainly acted at the CTC. It was my home. But at the MET I started playing lead roles. I know I was only qualified to play these lead roles because of my training and continued training at the CTC.
Life at the Walker Church
When we started, the MET did not have a home. Joe knew people and was a great hustler so we moved around. I believed that helped the actors at the MET, including me. Because we rehearsed in many different settings in many different circumstances, we could perform under any circumstances in any space. We finally moved into the Walker Church on 16th Ave. and 31st Street, Minneapolis. Our theater was what had been the chapel. In the same building was an office to help you avoid the draft (for the Viet Nam War), and an office to help you if you were on the run from the military. If you were as they say, AWOL, Absent Without Leave. Or, if you were a deserter they could help you with your legal problems and in other ways as well. In my memory, they could not legally help you escape to Canada or Sweden, but I was always certain that they knew who could. In the basement, a Methodist Church. One day several puppeteers gathered in the basement and they bloomed into The Powderhorn Puppets who became The Heart of the Beast Mask and Puppet Theater. This was an extraordinary building during those years.
Success, Scandal, and the Birth of The Palace Theater
At the MET I wrote and directed my first play in 1971, Fresh Meat. Later that year I played the lead in Macbeth. My first play received great reviews and my performance in Macbeth at the MET also received great reviews. “Stowell is a giant in the role of Macbeth.” I was 28 years old and riding high. The MET imploded when Joe Walsh was arrested for sexual assault. He withdrew what little money the theater had in the bank and fled to New York City. Months later Joe returned and then began a long legal process ending with Joe being sent to the Minnesota state prison. I do not remember what Joe pleaded guilty to but I clearly remember thinking his sentence was ridiculously short considering I had been told by people close to Joe that he admitted to them that he did rape the woman. The entire time Joe was gone we went on running the MET. Producing plays, paying the rent, making artistic and business choices. Without any help from Joe. Joe was released from state prison and placed on parole and at our first company meeting Joe told us the next year’s theater schedule, that is, the plays we were going to be doing, had to be approved by the county district attorney. The head cop passing judgment on what kind of theater we can try to create. There was a passionate argument about that and Joe and I had to be pulled apart because at one point we literally leaped at each other’s throat. A group of us split off from The MET and formed The Palace Theater in 1974. A small personal twist of fate here. I left the CTC to dedicate myself to building a theater, the MET. The MET blew up in 1974 and I was still acting in plays at the CTC until 1976. And, I continued acting in plays at the CTC for two years after I co-founded The Palace Theater in 1974.
The PALACE
The Palace blazed a theatrical trail for ten years and if you were ever at one of our company meetings that would amaze you. We argued like hell in our meetings and then could put all that away and rehearse. For the first couple of years, we had no home and, like the MET, we bounced around. We rehearsed in a couple of storefronts, the Children’s Theater Company’s scene shop and in my car. One day we just moved into what was once a bookstore and is the building where Mixed Blood Theater is now. At that time I think the city owned the building. It was during this time I adapted Pierre and we rehearsed it on the small grass covered area behind the building where The Mixed Blood now has a small parking lot. I wrote and we, the actors and me, created, Asi es la Vida, in the basement. After we had been in the building a few months another group of theater people moved into one of the empty offices upstairs. They were the folks who eventually started the Playwrights Center. For a while this was a very interesting building.
One of the Palace members, Jessica Zuehlke, found a warehouse space in downtown Minneapolis where the rent was so cheap, even we could afford it. We rented a large space on the 2nd floor of an older red brick two story warehouse. The ground floor was a parking lot. Located on 4th street and 5th avenue, next to The Little Wagon bar. We had one third world bathroom and in the winter our space had a heater that barely heated and those are just two of the reasons the rent was so cheap. We created, rehearsed and performed The Act Itself there. Legally speaking, this was a rehearsal space and not a performance space. We got away with using it once but we wouldn’t be able to do that again.
I was told by a member of The Guthrie Theatre staff that The Guthrie Theater was one of three major theaters who received large grants and The Guthrie used the grant money to open the Guthrie 2 in what is now The Southern Theater. I remember The Guthrie 2 hung on for a couple of years and when they pulled out the building was in a kind of limbo. For a short period of time The Palace was still rehearsing in the warehouse but performing our plays at The Guthrie-2. Once The Guthrie Theatre moved out of the building the Guthrie 2 building became a tiny part of a very complicated deal involving many moving parts, including the City Council, the Metrodome Hotel, The People’s Center, affordable housing, politicians, developers, a powerful group of grass roots organizers, and a sizable amount of money. In the original architectural designs, The Guthrie 2 was to be torn down and an access/delivery road to the back of the hotel would go there. The upshot of a great deal of political maneuvering was, the building would not be torn down and The Palace Theater would be the buildings caretakers. The building was officially put into the hands of The Minneapolis Arts Commission, alas, no longer with us, but if you wanted to rent the building you called The Palace. We had our office there. I am very proud of playing a key role in saving the building that is now The Southern.
During the decade of extraordinary theater The Palace Theater created a unique theatrical language. Certainly, there was nothing here like it before and there has been nothing like it since.
The Theater is My Path
I do believe I have been a trailbreaker in this artist community. When I was co-founder of the Minneapolis Ensemble Theatre in 1970 the theater scene in the Twin Cities looked completely different than it does now. For example, The Illusion, Mixed Blood, The Penumbra, The Frank Theatre, The Powderhorn Puppet Theatre, The History Theater, The Park Square Theatre, The Jungle Theater and The Playwright’s Center did not exist.
Years ago, a reviewer said I was “lucky” to have such a great job. Yeah, I said, but I worked like a fiend to get here. I am proud of how hard I have worked over the years. That is not to say I never screwed up. I am confident I have made many, many mistakes. Late for an entrance, early for an entrance, and so on and on and on, the list of possible mistakes you can make at any moment stretches out to the crack of doom. But in theater, I have another chance to do it right during the next rehearsal or performance. I learned by working with great people to take advantage of the basic belief in theater, every rehearsal and every performance is a chance to achieve excellence. I learned that in the theater I had a chance to go to work where I would change and learn and have fun, sometimes laughing until you fall down. I had a chance to be challenged to grow and become more than what I believed to be my best. Like everyone, there have been days when I said to myself that maybe I should have done something else…be a musician for example and make a little money for a change. But I know better. The theater is my path. That is where I think of myself as lucky. I love my work.