There are two frames for Alan Brasington’s poetic biographical story, The Poem of My Life. One is Alice in Wonderland. Another is his education—from his mother’s reading to him through learning theater in a teacher’s college and finally a scholarship to RADA in London, from which he graduated and went forth to work on and off Broadway and at professional theaters throughout America. Happily, Alan Brasington evidenced every facet of his education in an afternoon in Sarasota, casually dressed, behind a podium, itself before a black curtain. On a pillar in back and to his right: two small representations of a colorful devil. Atop a pillar to his left: a figure of a dressed up egg (Humpty Dumpty?) in a chair. Off farther front and to his left side remained a split picture of a baby with, on top of it, a drawing of a Cat (surely the Cheshire). All symbolically illustrated his story. Among bits of wordplay, Boy, his hero, (actually Alan of course) called one teacher “Tortoise” because she “tortured us.” Later he described a school nurse “wearing a Chinese take-out box on her head.” When he looked at a picture of two circles, he was asked what he saw. “Nothing,” he replied. “How great,” his teacher remarked, “to be able to see nothing!” He actually had fun with Fun with Dick and Jane, though not the kind he was supposed to have. He said a Pledge of Allegiance when the national was not “under God” but rather, under Harry S. Truman. Saturday mornings his education was taken over by movies. He was always scared of the villains. He had his education via film renewed in school by a new science teacher, Scarlet Turner “the Bunsen Burner.” His description of that film, which had landed in class via the largesse of “our very own government,” was a mysterious one having to do with sex. By Alan’s account, one would judge sex remained a mystery until past 8th grade.
Tales of the boy’s being in schools led to his teaching it. He went as an adult to NYC to further his education in theater but went home when he realized that, at his night job, he liked to talk to diners rather than wait tables. But he was back again and finally in London at RADA. His tales of getting in by scholarship rounded out a most satisfying program for listeners in Sarasota. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s asked to go “through the looking glass” of his life in theater for a program for SaraSolo 2017.
