Oakley Hall III (1950-2011)
Nippertown has a very good obituary here.
John Rodat wrote a preview in 2005 for the week-long run at the Spectrum 8 Theatres of a documentary about Hall, The Loss of Nameless Things. It's a pretty good thumbnail of the story. . . .
Potential is a fearsome thing, and great promise contains the seed of great loss. Throughout the arts and literature one can find cautionary tales hinged on sudden reversals of fortune, of the eminent man brought low. But what of the man not yet fully risen?
In Bill Rose’s lauded film The Loss of Nameless Things—which will begin its weeklong run at the Spectrum 8 Theatres tomorrow (Friday)—the documentarian tells the story of Oakley Hall III, a talented actor-playwright who in the late ’70s founded an ambitious and experimental theater troupe in the Catskills, the Lexington Conservatory Theater (members of which later went on to start Capital Repertory Theatre in Albany). Hall is recalled by friends, family members and fellow actors as an overwhelmingly charismatic and prodigiously gifted young man. He is spoken of, in still-awestruck tones, as a Dionysian figure, an almost archetypal enfant terrible, brimful of drive—dramatic, creative, libidinal, hedonistic. The reverential recollections of his intimates are backed up by evidence that theater figures such as Joseph Papp, William Hurt and Mandy Patinkin all saw signs of nascent—if rough—genius in Hall. Great things were expected of him and, in 1978, hopes were pinned specifically upon the 28-year-old’s recently completed play about the final years of the explorer Meriwether Lewis, Grinder’s Stand.
Before the play could be mounted, however, Hall’s future prospects were suddenly dimmed. In the company of a “dark stranger,” Hall fell—or jumped, or was pushed—from a bridge, shattering his face and inflicting significant and permanent brain damage, which greatly affected his ability with language. The mystery surrounding the event still persists, as Hall himself has no recollection of the fall (and he possesses a very limited memory of his life before that night in 1978).
Here's Ann Morrow's review of a Firlefanz Puppets production of Ubu Rex, adapted and directed by Hall a year ago (Jan. 2010) at Steamer No. 10 Theatre.
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