Enter the Arena: Liz Coe

THE BULL Gets the Matador Once in a Lifetime--a great title for a play, don't you think? Suggestions of living drama set under some Iberian sun, grace and artistry, pageant and danger, a la Hemingway. When the expected-unexpected happens, the chance all the crowds really come for: the bull gets the matador and the arena roars.

And that really is the spirit of Liz Coe's new play, albeit transposed into the desperately dramatic world of show biz, and the cosy arena of Agassiz Theater. Hopefully it's not once in a lifetime, but it's certainly the first time in a long time that a Radcliffe undergraduate playwright has had access to a stage this big. Radcliffe Grant-in-aid and Adams House Drama Society are sponsors; the show premieres tonight.

But how to get from the drama of the bullfight to the drama of Casey Cowen, age 25, struggling comedian in New York City? "I like the irony in the title," says Liz Coe, "I see the comedian as synonymous with the matador, very much in an arena, and required to defend herself with the only weapons available. She has what can be likened to a sword--her aggressive sense of humor. Her cape is her sense of humor used as a disguise."

Casey Cowen's bull is her audience, which she must goad and challenge to laughter. "There is something about a comedian standing in front of an audience and saying, in effect, 'I'm here to make you laugh," says Coe. "Casey has to fill the stage with her personality, ever active, ever activated, and always in control. With satellite figures, she is the play. And as she becomes more successful, more self-confident, a dichotomy arises between possession of the audience and her own personal life." Fluttering her soul in front of the audience as her cape, Casey must either control or be crushed.

NOW LIZ COE herself is no novice at handling the dramatic sword and cape. She began both writing and directing plays in high school, and has studied playwriting under William Alfred. The Bull Only Gets the Matador Once in a Lifetime numbers as her fifth product. Beyond this, she has done extensive directing, including productions of Joe Egg and Look Back in Anger at the Loeb last year, and two one-acts, Black Comedy and The Public Eye, last fall. In May she returns to the Loeb to direct the Harvard Dramatic Club Production of Moliere's Imaginary Invalid.

But perhaps the most important thing that she did at the Loeb was early in her freshman year when she met Emily Mann, who directs The Bull Only Gets the Matador Once in a Lifetime. "We were standing in the lobby and started talking," remembers Coe, "and Emily said 'I love No Exit; I directed No Exit twice,' and I said 'I hate No Exit' and so that's how we became friends." A classic meeting of minds, if ever there was one, followed by collaboration in Look Back in Anger, when Mann acted and Coe directed. And Emily Mann was still around when Coe was actually writing The Bull and recalls, "there was one point where for about a week she was just throwing one-liners at everybody."

As a result of the friendship. The Bull has had the sensitive direction which a new script demands. "It really is a very courageous thing to direct an original script," says Coe, "because you have to convince your actors and really get them caught up in the newness of the thing and of course you have to convince the audience...Our friendship and mutual respect really have been important." From this relationship arises a sort of interplay between the different demands of loyalty to the script and of convincing production, an interplay which is like--well, not so very different from the dramatic kinship of matador and bull.

Both Coe and Mann are pleased with the growing recognition of Radcliffe dramatic talent which large-scale production of The Bull Only Gets the Matador Once in a Lifetime represents, but also feel what Mann symbolizes as, "I don't want to be thought of as a directress; I am a director." Both are quietly confident of script and cast, and Casey Cowen takes the stage tonight for the first time, with figurative sword and cape.