At the Heart of Edna

Divine as Edna in the original John Waters film

Think creating the part of Edna Turnblad for our production was simple? Think again. Robert Aubry Davis is a nut for history. Place him in a musical rich with historical context and you can bet he's going to do his homework. How much, you ask? Robert graciously shared this email exchange between himself and Dr Beicken, a professor of German history at UMD and long lost friend. Acting as a witness to their reunion is thrilling but hearing them expound on the importance of a show like Hairspray brings the enjoyment to a new level.

Behind its endlessly jubilant music and uproariously witty humor, Hairspray is rooted in an incredibly important historical movement. And as Dr Beicken says himself: "The way you played Edna's changing self from ironing domestic to staunch supporter of equality is worth an essay."

Think of this as a little light (no pun intended) reading between your holiday festivities. Enjoy!

Dr. Beicken's initial email:

Dear Robert,

Even after more than 30 odd years since we saw each other at the Goethe "Faust" performance way back in the cultural middle ages of DC, you and your daughter in tow, I was happy to see you in today's hilarious (and very successful and thrilling) performance of "Hairspray". I am a friend of Rose Ann Cleveland who invited me to come. And I was excited to see you again, live on stage, and briefly afterwards. As I said, you were very excellent on stage, even more appealing than the red sweater breasted cultural icon of DC (and suburbs). You did your role of Edna with a great sense of a weight challenged social outsider and an equally  great vulnerability of someone who's not really a stage experienced pro, but has all the prerequisites of a true 'stage animal'. It is a testament to your creative persona that them kids on stage did not intimidate you but you had your moments/run of glory giving Edna an intelligence hardly commensurate with your typical Baltimorian (pronounced: Ballimorian) overweight lower middle class domestic/housewife. 

I have watched you and heard you for decades as royalty of our local cultural scene. But I deeply appreciate your venturing onto the stage at Signature. The show is a bright spot in American musical theater, because the heart is on the right side of human and political enlightenment. The way you played Edna's changing self from ironing domestic to staunch supporter of equality is worth an essay. Here you showed your wonderful compassion, intelligence and finesse. Filling this role made you larger than life. While Tracy is the all-too-facile mouthpiece of radical change, a kind of American trumpeting optimism, your portrayal of Edna brought the human touch: how can  a colossus change, how can a mass of neurotic over-eating get a handle on life and politics and human commitment. You did this brilliantly. Please keep at it for the rest of the show. I am glad you're not Travolta or any of the others. You elevate Edna to intellectual and totally believable human  insight. Her departure from the iron is like the decision to built the electric car (not going to the moon as going to the other side of town is the challenge of the hour). 

It was fun to watch. Supreme fun. All characters are within the parameters of American musical. But Edna has these extra dimensions. She's a reflective person -- all others are reactive. It starts with her girth and ends up with her liberation from her former self. Whereas Tracy, her daughter, is a bundle of teenagerness, Edna, the big person contemplating her bigness, undergoes a true reformation and remarkably significant change.

I understand you like the cast so much and talk to all and everyone lovingly. I also hope you will articulate your creative experience on stage in some form or another. It must be quite an experience. And it is not a matter of drag. It is really about humanity and who we are as we define ourselves beyond being defined by others.

I totally enjoyed myself. In view of 2012, this musical has a big place politically as the conservative onslaught is strong and frightening. 

Dear Robert, find the energy and love to shine all the way through this show and may it be a life changing experience for you. 

Best, Peter Beicken

Robert's Response:

Peter!

Well, first Fayre (my daughter's) reaction:

Wow, SO cool! I remember Faust! One of the most impactful memories of being 3? 4? And I remember the alley.!

Second, thank you for the deeply thoughtful analysis. I think I am in a unique position to do this role for a variety of reasons.

I lived through these actual events--I watched Buddy Deane (the original show on which all this story--a heightened version of a true event--was based) when the antenna picked up Baltimore, and we had our own milt Grant Show here in DC--where I could have qualified to dance on Sixth Grade Day, but as a chubby kid was not one of the Beautiful People they wanted represented. The original John Waters film also includes the attempt to integrate Gwynnes Park, which like Glen Echo here was segregated. I remember going to Glen Echo soon after desegregation and my friends and I were a small minority of white faces, since once they opened to people of color, few whites would go anymore.

And, as a (as one former boss called me) Unreconstructed Flower Child, I lived through so many of the events that the '60s and late '70s brought. 

As to Edna, we have clues about her Real Steel. The Suffrage movement in Baltimore, inspired by the remarkable Edith Houghton, who became a doctor at Johns Hopkins, married a fellow physician (Dr. Hooker), and quickly created a Suffrage party, newspaper, and even a Men's Suffrage League (where Dr. Hooker often led meetings) was an intelligent and powerful bunch. We know Edna's mother moved in those circles. If Edna's mom was, say, 20 in 1905, Edna must have been born around 1915 or 1920 at the latest. We can put her courtship with Wilbur during the Depression--his quixotic quest to run a joke shop seems even more windmill-tilting if you put in in context. 

And, while he was off for the war, she began gaining more weight as she took in ironing (and probably boarders) to make ends meet ("For 20 years I have been washing and mending and ironing other peoples' clothes"). 

Wilbur comes back from the war, Edna gets pregnant right away--we know Tracy was born in 1946--but based on the unusual alchemy of both Wilber and Edna's natures, I think a person like Tracy would have been real. I knew improbably optimistic girls like that then, and I respect that spirit more and more as I age.

In any event, I have built such an affection and loyalty to this amazing cast and crew that Eric has assembled, it is important I make this work for them--I do and have done many many things, but they are mostly all at the start of the vector of their career.

Again, thanks for the insightful analysis. As an aside, I studied German lit. with Hermann Salinger down at Duke. He used to have this signed picture in his office of a smiling well-dressed, grandfatherly person playing with what was obviously a grandchild. I asked him who that was, and he said "Oh, I wrote Hermann Hesse after years of teaching his works, and asked to have an autographed picture--and that was what he sent!" It was a truly Zen mind-altering moment for me--something I could barely apprehend at 22, but makes a lot more sense at 62...

RAD