Cluchey, (Douglas) Rick(land) 1933-

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CLUCHEY, (Douglas) Rick(land) 1933-

PERSONAL: Born 1933. Married Barbara Bladen (a columnist), 1968 (divorced, c. 1974); married Teresita Garcia; children: (second marriage) one son, one daughter.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—San Quentin Drama Workshop, P.O. Box 93471, Hollywood, CA 90093.

CAREER: Playwright, producer, and actor. Founder of San Quentin Drama Workshop, 1960s. Actor in plays and in television adaptations, including Beckett Directs Beckett: Waiting for Godot, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), 1988; Beckett Directs Beckett: Krapp's Last Tape, PBS, 1988; and Beckett Directs Beckett: Endgame, PBS, 1990. Associate producer of Beckett Directs Beckett: Endgame, PBS, 1990.

AWARDS, HONORS: Italian Drama Critics Award, 1985.

WRITINGS:

PLAYS

The Cage (produced in San Quentin, CA, 1965), Barbwire Press (San Francisco, CA), 1970.

(With R. S. Bailey) The Bug, produced in Edinburgh, Scotland, 1974.

The Wall Is Mama, produced in Edinburgh, Scotland, 1974.

ADAPTATIONS: The Cage was adapted for television, directed by Cluchey, 1990.

SIDELIGHTS: Rick Cluchey was serving a life sentence in San Quentin for armed robbery and kidnapping when he discovered the work of Samuel Beckett. Cluchey founded the San Quentin Drama Workshop with Alan Mandell and directed and acted in more than three dozen prison productions. He corresponded with Beckett and later met the playwright.

Cluchey was helped with his prison project by John Hancock, who in 1965 was the director of the San Francisco Actors Workshop. Hancock took a production of Beckett's Waiting for Godot to San Quentin, which resulted in an ongoing professional relationship with the drama group as well as with Cluchey. As prisoners were released, Hancock found them acting work. When Cluchey's sentence was commuted, Hancock and his partner, Ken Kitch, helped the former convict set up a nationwide tour, including the New York production of Cluchey's own play, The Cage.

Hancock directed, and he and his wife, Dorothy Tristan, wrote the screenplay for Weeds, a film about Cluchey's life in San Quentin and the years following his release when he was married to celebrity columnist Barbara Bladen. Bladen had attended a production of The Cage at San Quentin and praised it in her column. When Cluchey was released from prison, he contacted her and asked that she meet him as a free man. The chemistry was instant, and the man who had been imprisoned for twelve years and the beautiful journalist spent the next six years as husband and wife. Although the story is based on fact, parts of it were fictionalized, and so Cluchey, played by Nick Nolte, is renamed Lee Umstetter, and Bladen, played by Rita Taggart, is renamed Lillian Bingington.

In 1985 Beckett directed the San Quentin players in three of his major plays, Waiting for Godot, Krapp's Last Tape, and Endgame under the umbrella title, Beckett Directs Beckett. The plays were performed in North America, Europe, and Asia, and Cluchey acted in each. They were adapted for television and aired on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in both English and French versions.

Washington Post critic Nelson Pressley reviewed three Beckett plays being presented at the 1999 Beckett Festival and noted that Krapp's Last Tape is a recreation of a 1977 production in which Cluchey was directed by Beckett. The author plays the role of the old man who listens to a tape of his own voice, made thirty years earlier, that fuels regrets over long-ago decisions. "Beckett advised Cluchey to be wary of putting too much color in the line readings, and you can hear why," wrote Pressley. "The stops and starts become crucial; the rhythm takes over . . . creating a dark, musical quality and a sense of time—long, long ago—that becomes palpable. Cluchey is cantankerous and explosive in the role, ultimately erupting in a burst of bitter fury that sends the lamp over his head swinging back and forth, casting Krapp in and out of the darkness as he sits unhappily with his memories."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Chicago Sun-Times, October 23, 1987, Lynn Voedisch, "Weeds Director Marks Films with Social Consciousness," Weekend Plus section, p. 97; July 12, 1988, Elizabeth Kastor, "Beckett Plans to Direct His Plays for TV," section 2, p. 39.

Chicago Tribune, February 1, 1999, Richard Christiansen, "Beckett Trio 3 Unerring Stabs in the Dark," Tempo section, p. 2.

Los Angeles Times, November 24, 1997, F. Kathleen Foley, "Beckett 'Weekend' Is a Stark Exploration," p. 11; August 28, 1998, Laurie Winer, "Beckett, with a Pinch of Sentiment," p. 23.

People, December 7, 1987, John Stark, "Columnist Barbara Bladen Sees Her Love Story with a Convict Flower Onscreen in Weeds," p. 85.

Washington Post, April 14, 1999, Nelson Pressley, "Bleak Beckett at Scena," p. C8.