by: Joshua Brazee
Marketing Intern
The power of things inheres in the memories they gather up inside them, and also in the vicissitudes of our imagination, and our memory--of this there is no doubt.
-Orhan
Pamuk, Museum of Innocence
Orhan Pamuk’s 2008 novel Museum of Innocence is a story about a failed love that attempts to
understand how objects help to create our emotional worlds, how something as
simple as an earring, a chair, or a candy wrapper can transport us to worlds of
our past, long since forgotten. For
Kemal, the novel’s protagonist, the museum of innocence represents an obsession
and his inability to move on from a lover who has turned away from him.
At the
Wisconsin Union Theater, though, we celebrate our
past. The objects that fill the
theater remind us of all the good times we’ve had here, and they can help us
relive some of those most touching and stirring moments. If you were lucky enough to be here on
May 16
th, 1958, then you will likely never forget a speech by then
Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy.
The theater was so crowded that even Jackie Kennedy couldn’t find a
seat.
 |
| Our dressing room chairs. |
We don’t think very much about chairs. We spend so much time sitting in so
many different seats, that it never occurs to us think about whose behind has
shared the seat you’re sitting in now.
But at our theater, thanks to painstaking archival work
by many of our staff members, we have a good idea of what famous fannies have
occupied some of the best seats in the house.
Among those who have visited and performed at the Wisconsin
Union Theater, many important behinds have nestled in our dressing room
seats. Besides our own future
president, prominent statesmen from all over the world have spoken at our
theater. Though the auditorium was
too small to hold the crowds of people waiting to hear him, the US State
Department decided that the theater would be the perfect place for Jawaharlal
Nehru, the recently elected Prime Minister of India and one of the founders of
the modern nation, to speak on November 4th, 1949. Nehru’s visit to Wisconsin was
especially important, according to The Daily Cardinal, because his newly minted sovereign nation was
teetering between capitalism and communism.
Nehru's speech on Gandhi's death, "A light has gone out of our lives..."
Even notably apolitical entertainers sometimes found a
political stage in Madison. Louis
Armstrong performed at the Union just a week after a heavily publicized
critique of the Eisenhower administration. “Ike,” as the president was affectionately known, had
mishandled the “Little Rock Crisis” in which Governor Orval Faubus helped to
prevent Little Rock Central High from being desegregated. Armstrong, who had been a goodwill
ambassador, performing on behalf of the US government all over the world, said
that Eisenhower “had no guts.” But
when The Daily Cardinal interviewed
“Satchmo” before his performance, he said, “Yes, sir, everything’s all
right. Ike’s my man.” The Eisenhower administration had by
then intervened to force desegregation.
“Ike just took so long[,]” said Armstrong, “I’m not trying to prove
nothing. I’m no leader, but
sometimes you just can’t take it.
I swelled up inside. But
everything’s all right now. I’m
back to side. Ike sent me a nice
long telegram. What got me the
most was that Alabama thing. They
beat up that preacher. His wife
and little girl got hurt. That’s
when I got sick of it.”
One of Louis Armstrong's most beloved songs, "What a Wonderful World."
Of course, some young performers, those just starting to
make a splash, come to the Wisconsin Union Theater to play, to dazzle, and to
touch the hearts and minds of the University of Wisconsin community. Students and community members
throughout the 1980s were treated to the cellist Yo-Yo Ma and violinist Itzhak
Perlman who were then becoming the stars we now know them to be.
Yo-Yo Ma playing Bach's Suite for Solo Cello No. 1
While they may not look like much, our dressing room chairs
are something special. These
modest chairs, whose practical design allows them to be hung easily on the
dressing room tables, so that the floors may be more easily cleaned at night,
have borne the burden of history.
Like so many of the theater’s furnishings, these chairs are threads of a
meaningful emotional fabric, so much so that we couldn’t imagine a future for
the theater without them. We’ll be
bringing them back after the renovation, newly upholstered, and ready for
another hundred years of supporting history in the making.
