We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Daniel Kehde a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Daniel, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?
As a playwright/librettist I always take risks. Nothing bores me more than seeing a “brand new innovative production” that’s nothing more than a hodgepodge of stolen ideas and a rehashing of the basic boy meets girl scripts. I suppose one of theriskiest shows I wrote and produced with the late composer Mark Scarpelli was a contemporary opera based on the Dachau War Tribunals. I had to create a libretto that held true to the emotions of the testimonies and still allow for Mark’s musical interpretation and our choreographer, Rob Royce’s, vision. I designed the set to hold the death camp on a 12×24 superstructure 6 feet above the stage floor with the courtroom below, the witnesses seated in risers stage right and the defendants on risers stage left. The testimony was then enacted in the camp above. I wrote the entire libretto in blank verse and the composer responded with a magnificent 2 hour tone poem that the choreographer interpreted with raw movement and the actors with terrifyingly realistic portrayals. We performed it on the stage of an old movie house before houses of less than half of the 1100 seats full. For all of us it was a victory, stunning the audience, moving them and us to tears night after night, and stretching the boundaries of the art to memorable proportions.
Daniel, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I’m what you’d call a GDI, a goddamned independent. While I published nearly a dozen plays in the early days, in the past twenty five years I’ve opted out of creating for the sake of marketability and instead created what I wanted. So I’ve written and produced over 50 plays, wrote the book and lyrics for over 20 musicals and, at last count, more than 500 monologues: all fully produced. I’m currently the managing director of the Elk City Playhouse, privately funded with the sole purpose of allowing me to continue to create and produce. I’m old, occasionally tired, constantly angry, and continuously thankful for having fallen into the circumstances that allow me full artistic freedom in a world where any degree of artistic freedom is unheard of. My audiences are the faithful few, but the playhouse only holds seventy these days and that’s plenty for my ego and that of my actors. I got into this mess back in the 1970’s writing songs and librettos with composer Bob Whitmore when we were in DC and then after he moved to NYC as well. After that I wrote a few projects with composer Roger Ames, held down innumerable jobs around the east coast, wrote more songs, performed, got married, did the business gig for a few years and directed any place I could. I’ve been in West Virginia for the past 45 years, the same number of years I’ve been married, not coincidentally, and, for the past 35 years or so, I’ve been who I am today. I don’t know whether I write shit that matters or just that it matters to me and I guess I really don’t care as long as I can still write sharp dialogue.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
As the child of two mentally ill and emotionally abusive parents, I have fought the shadows of my youth my entire creative life. In this I am not alone. Many of us creatives have found our only peace in the hours we spend immersed in our respective art. After all the years hearing the voices of my past deny my talents, impune my aspirations, and denigrate my accomplishments, I
still find myself fighting for the right simply to create, much less celebrate the works I have spent a lifetime creating. For a creative, it’s not a matter of resilience, it’s a matter of survival and many of us don’t make it. This battle is not a matter of “manning up” or “dealing with it”, this is an all out blood-and-guts fight to the death over every script, every idea, every final scene, every rehearsal, audition, and opening night. There is blood on the stage every night of every show and it is mine. Those of us who go through this–those of us who are left standing–well, maybe we are strong, or stubborn, or crazy, or just plain lucky to be in a place which lets us continue to wage the war for the rest of our lives–I don’t know. I do know that it never gets easier, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?
Forgive me. I wrote this years ago as a monologue for a group of teenaged artists. I think it’s appropriate here:
I Am An Artist
I am an artist…
Please don’t try to teach me to be like you
Or judge me when I’m not;
For my brain works differently than yours.
Don’t try to understand me or try to be part of the process
And don’t be insulted if I don’t ask your advice.
I do not learn the way you do,
Dream the things you do,
Or ask of life what you may ask of it.
I see the world in ways you can’t imagine
Just as you see the world in ways I’ll never understand.
I create with my mind,
And with my body,
And with my spirit,
And with my soul.
And while I can create for other people,
My art is only my own.
Every morning I awaken wondering who I am
And each night I go to sleep questioning the value of what I have accomplished.
That I can create is forever miraculous
And yet nothing I create is ever good enough for me.
I have a gift that few possess and fewer still are fully allowed to use,
And with it I try to give the world beauty.
Though at times it seems as if I must fight for every piece I create,
Still I cherish my art and the gift within me that creates it.
For, despite ridicule and ignorance,
Disdain from the short sighted,
Advice from the long winded,
And endless critiques from the unknowing,
I still will always be,
–without apology–
An artist.
Contact Info:
- Website: cyaccharleston.com; the plays and monologues of Daniel S. Kehde; Daniel S. Kehde
- Facebook: Contemporary Youth Arts Company of Charleston, WV
- Other: e-mail: [email protected]
Rob and Dan’s Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, I Heart Radio and others
Spotify: The Best Of Scarpelli and Kehde soundtrack
