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From "The Memoirs, Chapter Three" -

            The Ensemble Street Players were on our way as an acting troupe and I was the leader.  This is where I knew I wanted to be.

            Our first “real” event came when we approached the University of Washington and arranged to perform several pieces on campus in connection with the Freshman Orientation Week which was coming up in early September.  We received $250 dollars in exchange for four days of different shows sprinkled into a score of other events for the freshmen. 

            We took up rehearsing a forgettable off-Broadway piece by beat poet Kenneth Koch called “George Washington Crossing the Delaware,” directed by Russ, with me as George Washington and Bob Gallaher as his counterpart, Lord So-and-so.  We decided to stage it as a huge pageant spread over a large area, recruiting the audience to join various “armies” and forcing them to move around to follow the action.

        Our first performance of “George Washington Crossing the Delaware” was predictably confusing, but we traipsed around the university quad in our cardboard tri-corner hats and managed to attract an enthusiastic audience.  We would remember it later as a big hit, of course.

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   ...NEXT:  SAMUEL BECKETT'S "ENDGAME"