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Arts & Entertainment

The Loudest Pencil in the Room: A Celebration of the Life and Work of René Moreno

A packed Dallas City Performance Hall paid tribute to one of the most visible figures in the history of the city’s theater community.
By Christopher Mosley |
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The sudden passing of Dallas theater figure René Moreno in late March left the arts community stunned. He was 57 years old. Almost exactly one month later, Moreno’s personal book collection was on display, spread across four long tables in the lobby of Dallas City Performance Hall. Admirers filed in by the hundreds on Saturday afternoon. They ran their fingers across aged copies of Cary Grant biographies and collections of historical photographs before taking their seats. It was not immediately clear why the books were there.

There are questions to which we never get definitive answers among the living: Who will care when you’re gone? What will happen to your things—books, for instance? If Mr. Moreno ever fretted about either of those concerns, a brilliant and loving theatrical tribute from artists all over the country on a muggy weekend afternoon would render them unfounded.

René Moreno began his creative career as a pianist, with a concentration in music at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. Degrees in theater and dance followed at SMU. His continent-spanning work over several decades is difficult to summarize, but Moreno’s life included Broadway productions, Off-Broadway work, film, acting, and directing. Aside from being a lifelong Shakespeare devotee, Moreno was also drawn to seldom-produced works such as 1999’s The Drawer Boy.

In an extended eulogistic performance that lasted nearly two hours, Moreno’s many colleagues read excerpts from a staggering 17 productions and eight different companies. Documentary clips, film scenes, live music, and even a promotional spot for Shakespeare Dallas were used to convey the extensive arc of Moreno’s endlessly fruitful career.

Actor Mark Oristano did a gentle job as host, but he maintained one overriding theme: that the celebration was to be a celebration. “Today is not about being sad,” Oristano said and suggesting that tears be “left outside.” While the performances did stick mostly to the script, there were heavily emotional asides, as well as some joking anecdotes. Oristano asked the audience how many people in the near-capacity venue had acted in one of Moreno’s productions. It seemed like every other person in the building raised a hand. There were references to Moreno’s past struggles with alcohol, which he claimed made him an expert on the proper hue of prop wine.

“I maintain that René Moreno had the loudest pencil of any director,” Oristano said of the director’s famously heavy editing hand. “I used to ask him: Why don’t you get one of those gel-point pens that don’t make any noise?”

The most potent example of Moreno’s directorial acumen was Oristano’s own one-person show, And Crown thy Good: A True Story of 9-11. Oristano and Moreno worked together on the monologue.

“That’s not what the author meant there,” Oristano quoted Moreno as saying to him as they read the script. “’I’m the author!,’” shouted Oristano with Pagliacci-like bewilderment. The audience exploded with a response weighted with recognition. “He said, ‘I know you’re the author and that’s not what you meant there,’” recalls Oristano.

Without any warning, actor Barbra Bierbrier started the event by launching into a reading from Martin Sherman’s Rose, which was produced by WingSpan Theatre Company. She was the last actor to work with Moreno, just the month before.

Getting to see actors reclaim roles they performed years ago is a rare privilege, like stumbling upon a favorite band giving an unannounced reunion performance. That was the feeling seeing Ashley Wood once again take on the sweat and lust of Rev. Dr. T Lawrence Shannon, along with an equally (and wonderfully) inappropriate Cindee Mayfield as Maxine Faulk, in Tennessee WIlliams’ The Night of The Iguana. I caught the original in 2012, and it was easily one of the best performances I witnessed as a critic that year, in any genre. Terry Vandivort, too, reprised his Night of the Iguana role, as Nonno.

Before reading, Vandivort shared a personal remembrance of Moreno. “I know this isn’t supposed to be a day for sadness, but I’m just not real good at these things,” Vandivort said. His remembrance acknowledged Moreno’s 1991 accident that led to the rest of his life being spent in a wheelchair. Moreno fell from a fifth story window in Washington D.C. when he was just 31.
Moreno once asked Vandivort if he wanted to hear more about the fall. “Do you remember anything about it?,” Vandivort remembers asking. “Do you remember falling? Do you remember the sky as you fell? Do you remember the impact?” According to Vandivort, his friend replied with the following: “I remember the sound of the air, rushing past my ears.”

Moreno’s acting work in the pioneering independent film Late Bloomers brought director/producer Julia Dyer to the stage. She introduced a clip from the 1996 comedy, featuring Moreno’s grasp of nonverbal communication in his acting. Dyer explained that Moreno had developed an extensive backstory for his character’s small part, which resulted in changes to the script. Moreno was directing, even when he wasn’t.

While WaterTower Theatre was only one of many houses with which Moreno worked locally, he had a number of successful productions there going back to the 1990s. Tracy Letts’ August: Osage County is one such hit, and former artistic director introduced three cast members from the 2012 production. Pam Dougherty, Sherry Jo Ward, and Kristin McCollum took the stage as the terrifyingly profane Weston/Fordham family. That included three silver dinner plate props successively thrown to the floor before the actors triumphantly took their original seats.

The breadth of Moreno’s career was obvious with each whispered Shakespeare performance, which would then be interrupted by aggressively rude comedic scenes and even Sartre’s No Exit, which included the infamous conclusion that “Hell is other people.” Cameron Cobb’s almost disturbingly intense Hamlet was complete with skull.

An excerpt from the short film Journey to Health: Mind, Body, Spirit by the aforementioned Julia Dyer broke up the live performances. In it, Moreno opens up about his “chair days.” The director described feelings of self-pity and anger, before explaining why he ultimately persisted with his original ambitions, which he says he owed to the encouragement of his friends and peers.

Moreno’s parents received a long, warm, standing ovation, as did his three sisters. T.A. Taylor of Shakespeare Dallas delivered the final performance, with a reading from Shakespeare’s final work, The Tempest. Moreno’s partner, Charles McMullen, delivered closing statements that included a dizzying amount of thank yous to the many co-conspirators in the performance hall. He shared fond memories of late night parties with friends and family during the holidays.

“I didn’t know it was possible,” said McMullen of the ease with which their relationship existed in this environment. “My brother and I grew up in a small town in East Texas. It doesn’t always happen like this, that a gay man and his partner would be accepted by my family, the way that I was. It doesn’t always happen this way. Even today. So I will be grateful to you for the rest of my life, for the love and the acceptance that you showed my partner, René; for the respect that you showed to us as partners.”

The books in the lobby were ultimately gifts; the audience was encouraged to take one last piece of their friend home with them. Attendees lovingly held stacks of books as they stood on Flora Street, discussing where to head next. A woman sat solemnly on the steps, staring across the street at an empty Booker T. Washington, Moreno’s alma mater. Two men made a promise to get together soon. The celebration of René Moreno’s life was less an acknowledgement of the past, as much as it is evidence of how influential the artist will continue to be.

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