Poo-Wá-Bah, 2010-2012
Spotlight on…
Susan Van Allen (Van Benthuysen) ’80
An adventurous road has taken me from the Hofstra Drama department to becoming the author of 100 Places In Italy Every Woman Should Go. The Drama bug bit me in high school—I loved EVERYTHING about being in musicals and comedies at Shore Regional in West Long Branch, New Jersey (that’s “Shore” as in Down the Shore). But I didn’t imagine theatre would be my grown up job. I also was itching to travel. My mother was Italian American, and my maternal grandparents and relatives instilled in me a love and curiosity about Italy. Instead of going to college right away, I took a year off, worked at a plant store and sold Avon to get money for a trip to Europe. That summer I set foot in Rome for the first time, and my love affair with Italy began. I went to Hofstra as an anthropology major, drama minor. That lasted about two weeks. As soon
as I was cast in the Gray Wig production of Gypsy (directed by Andrew Glant ’76), I got swept up into the fun of the Drama Department, and there was no turning back. It was the family of students that drew me in. As drama majors we went through life’s dramas together—having a blast working on scenes for class and auditions, making costumes and sets to the soundtrack of the Talking Heads, Patti Smith, Joni Mitchell, and Neil Young. To this day, Hofstra has kept us together. I was just in New York at my classmate/apartment-mate Barbara Fasano’s cabaret show at The Algonquin, sitting in the audience with Rob Weiner (’80), Risa Bell (’80), her husband Jon DeVito (’81), and Peter Coyne. I was a character actress and got small parts in Rope and The Winter’s Tale (both directed by Dr. Richard Mason), and The Orchestra (directed by Dr. Miriam Tulin). I especially loved being in Rob Weiner’s directing project production of The Happy Journey from Trenton to Camden, with Moira Wilson (’81), Drum Sullivan (’79), Michael Grant (’78), and George Gale—who sadly passed away in 1996. We were so fired up about rehearsing it that we figured out a way to break into The Little Theatre late at night—climbing through a window! I adored Prof. Howard Siegman’s classes—he introduced us to the classics—Strindberg, Ibsen, Chekov, O’Neill, Williams, Miller.
We’d all sit there riveted, with our Grand Teacher up there chain smoking and reading scenes aloud in his distinctive booming voice. To this day, whenever I sit through a production of one of those playwrights, I hear Prof. Siegman in the background. He was our own Alexander Woolcott. Also, there was a great Shakespeare teacher, Dr. Chalfant, who was so passionate about the Bard, steering us to fully experience the emotions in all of his plays. I have Dr. Mason to thank for turning me on (in Styles class) to the wild writings of Antonin Artaud. This was the late 70s and Artaud-influenced experimental theatre was flourishing in downtown New York. Rob Weiner and I would spend Hofstra weekends in Manhattan seeing shows at The Public, the Performing Garage and La Mama—blown away by such productions as Andrei Serbian’s Trojan Women. After graduation, while most of my classmates headed to New York, I moved to San Francisco and got involved performing in the exciting experimental theatre scene there. It was an “anything is possible” time, and many people were writing original plays or doing solo shows. I began to write monologues, which I performed with groups and then wrote and performed my own solo shows. My most successful one was Jersey Girls, about 5 ItalianAmerican women on the Jersey shore over a Mother’s Day weekend. I toured it to Seattle, New
“I loved EVERYTHING about being in musicals and comedies” 29