Anthony Herrera's Poetry Theatre
Edwina Sandys, Bill Yates Help As The World Turns Star
Oct 19, 2009
Anthony Herrera dreams of implementing Poetry Theatre into every school from The Magnolia State and on, with a little help from Mississippi construction mogul and fellow Sigma Chi fraternity brother Bill Yates, and progressive British sculptor, painter and author Edwina Sandys.
For years, audiences have loved to hate Herrera as super villain James Stenbeck, on soap opera As The World Turns. He showcased his love of poetry in a one-man show, The Lunatic,The Lover and The Poet, which featured the prose of Great War poet Robert Service and American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. He is also a screenwriter and playwright (The Wide Net, about Eudora Welty, on American Playhouse Series, and the mystery-comedy Smoke and Mirrors).
Poetry Theatre From Buenos Aires to Mississippi to New York
You plan to put Poetry theatre into the Mississippi school curriculum. This is very timely when you consider recent trends in poetry through slam poetry, hip hop, and rap and its the theatrical elements.
Anthony Herrera: "We’ve had two sponsors for this including my old friend Bill Yates who has done extraordinarily well. Bill, still lives in a little town in Mississippi. We were in the Ole Miss Sigma Chi fraternity together, and he said I was awesome on World Turns. (Herrera laughs)
"We have a plan laid out to the Mississippi Arts Commission, and even though I was in Argentina, for almost a year, on three different occasions, I was meeting with Richard Kaplan and Edwina Sandys. They are wonderful, exciting, dynamic people and they are brilliant. Edwina started talking one night about putting imagery around the poems.
“So now we plan to lay in all the imagery around the actor in a movie format, so you can take much longer with the poem. I love the idea of imagery, the music fading in and out. I have a path. I would like to put Poetry Theatre in every high school in Mississippi. - because this is tailor-made for the schools and I'm hoping to use my home state as the template.”
"When we started working on Poetry Theatre, I found some kids from Argentina (Herrera lives in Buenos Aires) that are just glorious, so smart and so beautiful. I also worked with a woman who started a theatre for teenagers, so by doing that, I nearly doubled our work. I was down in Argentina and realized doing this from there wasn’t practical, even though I have had a wonderful romance with Buenos Aires, so (co-producer) Steve McGraw and I met in Mississippi. Then I thought I need to be here in the States. This is too good of a project ,so I moved back to New York, so that’s kind of how it all evolved."
Tandy Cronyn, Hume Cronyn, Frances Sternhagen
Anthony Herrera: “Tandy Cronyn, (who recites Shakespeare Sonnet # 60, and Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins) who helped us get our start, asked her father Hume Cronyn to participate. (Cronyn recites British poet A.E.Housman, and American poet / humorist Ogden Nash). We also met Francis Sternhagen (Broadway actress also known for roles on TV’s Sex and the City, The Closer) who is just wonderful. (Sternhagen recites American poets Emily Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and British poet Anna Wickham). In the next two months we are going to finish filming the kids in Mississippi. I am going to do three poems by Robert Service.”
Poetry in Motion, Sir Alan Bates
Anthony Herrera: “I have recently received a special grant from the Mississippi Foundation of the Arts, for a project called Poetry in Motion. This will be like a television pilot so we are on a quest to find a big star."
Herrera, who studied with New York’s legendary acting coach Stella Adler is hoping to recruit Lynn Redgrave and Angela Lansbury. But Herrera is sad that one artist was not able to be part of Poetry Theatre - Actor Sir Alan Bates, who died of cancer in 2003.
Herrera now in remission for Mantle Cell Lymphoma, after going through several stem cell transplants(one autologous, one donor) wrote about his experience in The Cancer War, and spoke about the importance of this medical treatment before the US Senate.
Herrera met Sir Alan Bates on several occasions through the years. In 2002, when Bates was in New York performing his Tony winning role as Kuzovkin in Fortune’s Fool by Ivan Turgenev, Herrera handed him a Poetry Theatre package after the show.
Anthony Herrera: “Time went by and I was really tired one Friday afternoon, and lay down and the phone rang. I hear this voice with a British accent who said ‘Is this Anthony Herrera? I said yes, he said ‘This is Alan Bates.’
“I am rarely starstruck. I have met some of the biggest stars and we chatted for 15 minutes. He couldn’t have been lovelier on the phone. He wasn’t really familiar with this concept so he said, ‘Tell me what it is you want me to do. I said ‘Mr Bates, what I need to do is put a camera on you and record any poem you want to do.’ (Bates was wrapping up Fortune’s Fool, and heading to Canada to shoot a film.)
“I had put The Cancer War card in the packet with the poetry stuff and the last thing Alan Bates said was, ‘And congratulations on your health.’ I said thank you. I go to Argentina. I come back six weeks later, I walk into Steve's apartment. And Steve said isn’t it too bad about Alan Bates? He died four or five weeks later of cancer.”
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