Just got an email from the Getty, announcing Outdoor Theater is back at the Getty Villa Museum, Pacific Palisades.

Annual production, Thurs. through Sat., Sept. 5 through 28. Co-Produced by the Classical Theatre of Harlem, written by Will Power. Sounds interesting. I think we’ll try to see it, get tickets early.

Listed as Getty Pacific Palisades. And I always thought the Getty Villa was in Malibu, just past Gladstone’s, where Sunset Blvd. joins Hwy 1 along the coast. At least that’s where it’s always been every time I’ve been there. Then I looked at a map.

When you go some place so often, you don’t need a map. You know where it is. Going north on the coast route, I always paid attention to the ocean on my left. I never thought much about what was on my right. Now I know better, or at least more. But it’s still Getty Malibu to me.

The announcement prompted me to post my Getty Villa blog early out of order. Here it is, as written:

In case you don’t know, the Getty Villa is a world class, how shall I say it, presence, establishment, campus, no, more than that, a complex, buildings, gardens, a…

Well, in the days when the Big Boys with Big Money wanted to play Philanthropist and built temples in their own name where the populace could gather in homage without having to kneel and could parade through the museum collections of whatever fetish the Money assembled, Carnegie built libraries. That was good. Norton Simon scoured Europe for the renaissance and middle ages and brought it all to a lovely setting he was happy to find and take over, the former Museum of Contemporary Art, visible every year as backdrop to the Rose Parade, but just a little small for his entire collection which has to be rotated on display. Friends visiting from Europe would exclaim, “But this is the Great Art, a museum on the level of Europe’s best, and unbelievably right here in Pasadena!” And we would smile and nod and say, “We know.”

But back to Getty, who apparently was richer. That was confirmed by a guard at the Norton Simon who when asked about stature and working conditions said something like, “This is a great collection, intelligently assembled by good taste with a real sense of high art, but the Getty – that’s Real Money!”

Yes, money, and J. Paul Getty had it and used it to buy up his fascination with ancient art, mostly Greek and Roman, mostly Roman which was more available. The Getty Mansion is perched on the edge of the cliff on the right heading north on Highway 1, over looking Malibu and the Pacific Ocean. The mansion is closed, somewhat derelict, in disrepair, waiting for the Getty Trust to decide what to do with it, maybe renovate, maybe tear down, maybe replace. It fronts adjacent to the entrance to the Getty Villa, a magic recreation of the past, modeled on a real Roman villa, with authentic period gardens with appropriate plants, walkways with statues everywhere, and fountains, and a multi-level museum with individual galleries including, one of my wife’s favorites, a collection of ancient glass, goblets and phials and vases and jewelry that of course drew her, and iridescence and millennia, and this was only one small room of the many. And iconic statues, Greek and Roman, in their own alcoves. And a gift shop with a strategic offering of everything, and stairs and elevators leading to the upper level with a patio and balcony where you could sit in splendid comfort and be served the Roman-sounding menu and you could sip and watch the ocean at the bottom of the hill below.

And you overlooked the outdoor amphitheater where plays are still being performed in the summer, the Greek and Roman classics brought again to life. And we saw many of them over the years.

All classics. The best of them I think was Prometheus played with power by the black actor who should be better known, Ron Cephas Jones. Or the time Olympia Dukakis, the Oscar winning actress we loved and not just because she was Greek, who by herself had to represent a whole chorus of women and we said they may be saving money but they’re distorting the play, it’s not her fault. Or the time a Greek tragedy was played like a cheap raunchy TV sit com and the tragedy was gone out of it. And we said is this their idea to “modernize,” to kill the classics and bury them again? The Getty should know better and do better.

And then there was that time after an unsatisfying performance, when Shirley, my beloved beautiful wife Shirley who turned heads and knew everything more than I did, as we were among the last to leave standing by the elevator to the parking level discussing the performance and noticed a man in a suit also waiting and listening intently to what she was saying and she thought she recognized him as the newspaper drama critic and the next day in the paper his revue covered all the points she’d made and she said Aha, or something like that.

But I digress. Back to Homer and the Getty. Unless, speaking of the Getty, maybe as more context a mention of the bigger greater Getty, a whole hill top looking over L.A. just off Sepulveda and just beyond the Skirball Culture Center which had its own presence and we liked the intimate feel of their courtyard performances of folk music and Jewish tradition and their own museum worth every visit.

So when people speak of the Getty it’s usually not the Villa but rather the hill top with several buildings, I could say many, individual galleries and museums, and of course a cafeteria restaurant because there always needs to be food, and the famous down the hill garden with concentric circles like a maze you can walk through. And you park your car at Sepulveda and take the fun shuttle winding to the top, excitement at entering almost another world, the Acropolis of L.A., or Asgard or Valhalla, and the privilege of breathing rarefied air for a full afternoon.

But the Villa. And reading Homer. We must have heard about it on KPFK, that marvelous and progressive radio station where we were on the Community Advisory Board and where we recorded a promo they still broadcast. The Getty Villa was sponsoring/hosting a reading of Homer’s Iliad, and we could sign up and be given our lines to practice ahead of time. The wonderful woman in charge had directed similar readings across the country, maybe even the world, and she introduced the proceedings to a hall filled with an audience of readers waiting for their turn.

The translator of the text we were using, Stanley Lombardo, was there to talk about the way he tried to keep the cadence and feel of normal speech. His book was on sale and we bought a copy which he inscribed to us.

Center stage was a rostrum with a microphone, four chairs to the right, four to the left. Readers were seated in order, the one nearest to the rostrum rising to replace the speaker who had just finished, the others moving over one, and a new reader seated at the end, brought up from the audience by one of the nervous officials carrying their lists and making notations. Shirley and I were fairly close in our assigned order, and our dear Yugoslavian friend, Irena, who came with us in the enterprise actually read before us. We each read our lines and moved over. Shirley created a small sensation because she was reduced to long pauses as she read about Hecuba and tried, unsuccessfully, not to break into tears. The woman directing the event told her, instantly bonding, that she herself always breaks down and cries over those lines.

It was an all day affair. We broke for lunch. It was a hot day. We walked chatting with Stanley Lombardo the translator as if we had been friends for years. Friendships can be forged instantly. We had a small bottle of water and we were all thirsty. We shared water, and that act and even this wording of it immediately felt epic, a moment in time that we would remember.

The organizer of the event came up to me during the break and asked if I would read another passage. The scheduled reader had dropped out and they needed a replacement. I wondered why they chose me. Maybe they liked something in my voice, the way I took the lines seriously and didn’t rush through. I looked at the passage, all Greek names, and thought, “No wonder he dropped out!” I tried a few syllables, had no time to practice, stepped up to the microphone and sailed through the tongue-twisting mouthful. They weren’t supposed to, but the audience applauded.

Walking through the gardens along a path to the parking lot three fellows who had also read that day saw me and told me how impressed they were by how I had managed the thick barrage of Greek names. They asked how long I had prepared and I told them I was given the lines just before going on stage and had to read them cold.

They were astounded, wanted to talk more, but I kept on to the parking lot, shy but absurdly pleased by the accolade of what turned out to have been an unexpected triumph.

It was a great day.

I hope the Getty recorded it. I hope a recording is available and I can have a copy. Shirley, my darling wife, died October 2022, and if I can get a recording, I can hear her voice. I can play it and relive that day, and relive our life, over and over, again and again.