A Lifetime of Pouring Out Art

By T.M. Bradshaw

Fred Feldman used a quote from Langston Hughes as a subtitle for his play, Mishkin’s Paradise: “What Happens to a Dream Deferred?” The play explores shattered familial relationships; there is a parallel and a contrast as lead character Leon Mishkin’s deferred dream is of building a resort, a family-oriented paradise. The resort, which he intended to name “Mishkin’s Paradise,” is itself ignored and buried under Leon’s relentless pursuit of financial success, the same pursuit that destroys his family. The dream resort eventually becomes a means of rebuilding the connections between what remains of the family. Fred Feldman himself is not in the habit of deferring anything. He just goes along working and creating in various forms, doing the work, even if he doesn’t always have an immediate opportunity to present the work to the public.

The 72-year-old Feldman became interested in writing at an early age. “I used to write little things when I was seven years old. My parents exposed my brother and me to all sorts of things. We lived out on Long Island and we used to go into the city. We would stay at the Piccadilly Hotel and go to theaters and museums. I was real excited about that, especially the theater. I have always been interested in creating, especially writing.” He studied English literature, moved to Manhattan, and wrote a novel. In order to take care of his family he decided on something to fall back on, and found it rewarding in itself.

“I taught elementary school for 28 years, mostly fourth grade, on the Lower East Side. Now it’s called ‘LOHO’ and it’s the trendiest spot, but when I was there it was not,” he says. “It was tough, but I loved it and it became very important to me. At a certain point in my career I said to myself, ‘I took this as a day job, but it’s just as cool as writing.’ The kids were fantastic. Not all of them were wonderful, there were some very tough kids, but there were so many that were just fabulous. I would do a lot of art with them, I would draw a picture and write a story about it and they would do the same—they were very creative. Their stories and art were fantastic—so fresh. Of course, I kept writing too. Painting came later.”

The novel Feldman wrote in the early seventies and recently published, The Moon Canopy, is set in the SOHO art scene. He was absorbing painting lessons as he was working on his book. “The downtown apartment I lived in was totally bare. It was in a seedy, ugly building. I started painting pictures to put in the apartment. The writing translated in some ways into the painting; they’re like short stories, really.”

Feldman’s paintings are executed in bold blocks of strong colors. The subjects range from flowers to people and they are more interpretative than representative. His work has been featured in several galleries, but Feldman keeps coming back to writing. “Painting is therapy,” he said, “writing is an agony, but I have to do it.”

His play, Mishkin’s Paradise, is currently in the early stages of its fourth production. It has had well-received runs in successively larger theaters—from its first production off-off-Broadway on Ludlow Street, to St. Clement’s on West 46th Street, and then at The Producers Club Theatre on West 44th Street. The actor Eli Wallach called Mishkin’s Paradise “well written—insightful and touching.”

This new production was originally planned for a November opening at the Henry Street Settlement but, due to scheduling conflicts, will likely not open until the late winter or early spring. Margot Crupi of Gilbertsville is directing; her husband, David Beadle, is creating the sets and managing the technical aspects of the production. The couple met Feldman as a painter through the art group in Gilbertsville. Crupi said of the production delay that it’s better to do it “right rather than quickly.” Following the Henry Street run, she believes a tour of colleges and universities would be especially appropriate, because Mishkin’s Paradise is “extremely powerful” and illustrates how “making the wrong choice can affect the rest of your life.” Through their Repertory Theatre Ensemble, Crupi and Beadle have presented plays to benefit the restoration fund for Major’s Inn in Gilbertsville; next summer they plan on mounting productions of several of Feldman’s one-act plays at the Inn.

Feldman is eager to see the new production get underway, but also remembers the previous productions with affection. “The most wonderful thing was hearing the actors find the poetry in the dialogue. That blew me away. I had a lot of really wonderful actors, and one in particular, Lee Winston. The tragedy is the he was never a big star and he should have been, he was as good as anybody out there. He recently passed away. He was in the first three productions as the lead character, Leon Mishkin. Leon is an immigrant from Eastern Europe, who came over, worked very hard, is very smart, and became very wealthy through business and real estate. Lee Winston just nailed it. This character is very complex and Lee Winston had the complexity of my Leon. I have a feeling Lee is going to be sitting in the balcony watching.”

Feldman’s work processes draw energy and inspiration from the home he has built in Treadwell, in Delaware County. “I do a lot of landscaping around here, ” he said, “in fact I do all the landscaping. I can landscape and that puts my mind in a certain place and I’m writing plays while I’m changing the flowers. Landscaping is wonderful for that. I have this small tractor to cut the lawn. That’s the perfect place to write in my head, just riding around the fields, that’s the best. It’s a drug—a legal one. I actually write a play in my head before I even put one word on the page, so when I start, it’s all there. It makes me feel safe, to have it all, the plot, the interactions. Just writing when you don’t know where you’re going is scary. Later, when you start trying the dialogue out, you might change it—just because you have it in your head, doesn’t mean it’s good dialogue, it might not work. You have to test dialogue.

“Painting’s different, it’s a much slower process. Writing and painting alternate—I work a few months on this, a few on that. I can’t keep two things in my head. I always have two, or three, or five projects that are started; it’s a matter of which one I’m going to work on this month, and once I get into something really seriously, then I keep going until I finish it. I have to finish everything.”

Feldman paints mostly in oils, but occasionally watercolors. He is now incorporating tiles, which he got into while building the Treadwell house, into his paintings. “This stuff is great,” he said. “I go to these tiles places and they have such a variety now, they’re so beautiful. I thought ‘this goes with painting.’ No more wood frames, I paint right on a board with a tile frame that suits the image. That’s something brand new.”

Feldman’s daughter Jennifer has followed him into teaching. She also helps her father with the computerized aspects of his work, like preparing manuscripts for publication. “My daughter helps me with all this computer stuff. When I saw that the whole novel fit on a little diskette, I just couldn’t believe it. I’m old-fashioned, I come from another era. It’s like visiting a foreign land, when I think of all these technological wonders. But you know what? It doesn’t write for you, it doesn’t paint for you, and it doesn’t even spell very well.”

Fred Feldman seems to be able to handle those things on his own.