{"id":6030,"date":"2011-02-14T10:58:46","date_gmt":"2011-02-14T14:58:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=6030"},"modified":"2011-02-14T10:58:46","modified_gmt":"2011-02-14T14:58:46","slug":"oakley-%e2%80%94-a-grin-on-his-face","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/oakley-%e2%80%94-a-grin-on-his-face\/","title":{"rendered":"Oakley \u2014 a Grin on His Face"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Very sad to hear this morning of the passing of Oakley Hall III<\/strong>. Below, the mail just sent out by his family. Oakley had a complex, difficult life as a man and artist \u2014 with great successes against the odds after his fall. Only this\u00a0past\u00a0year did he finish & publish a marvelous book, Jarry and Me: The Autobiography of Alfred Jarry<\/a> for which I wrote the following blurb: “Is this Alfred Jarry finally writing Oakley Hall III\u2019s autobiography or the other way around? It reads \u2014 magnificently \u2014 as both at the same time, thus as another instance of that hidden wisdom: we are never only one, but always the occasion of many. Maybe it is Ubu himself fondling the hen, I mean holding the pen? Was there ever pathos in Pataphysics? If not, here it is: one bridge further, Oakley Hall III is at it again, biosplicing his & Jarry\u2019s life in the theater and Jarry and his theater in life. You are hereby introduced into the Hall of Post-Pataphysics.” A shame and\u00a0infinitely\u00a0triste <\/em>that Oakley had to leave us so soon.<\/p>\n

\n

We are sorry to announce that Oakley Hall III, \u201cTad,\u201d died of a heart\u00a0attack this past weekend. He was 60 years old.\u00a0Oakley Hall III, eldest son of the late novelist Oakley Hall, was a\u00a0playwright, director, and author. \u00a0In the mid-70s, when he was a\u00a0rising star in the New York theatre scene, his play Mike Fink<\/em> was\u00a0optioned by Joseph Papp of the Public Theatre. He founded and was the\u00a0Artistic Director of the legendary Lexington Conservatory Theatre<\/strong>, in\u00a0upstate New York, where his plays Grinder\u2019s Stand<\/em> and Beatrice and the\u00a0Old Man<\/em>, and his adaptation of Frankenstein<\/em> enjoyed their premiere\u00a0productions. Lexington Conservatory Theatre moved to Albany in 1979\u00a0and continues today as Albany Rep.<\/p>\n

In 1978, Oakley suffered traumatic and massive head injuries in a\u00a0fall from a bridge. He eventually returned to California to live in\u00a0Nevada City near his family; his play Grinder\u2019s Stand<\/em> was produced by\u00a0the Foothill Theatre Company, directed by Philip Sneed. \u00a0The story of\u00a0this production, entwined with Oakley\u2019s fall and the slow process of\u00a0creating a new life, are movingly told in Bill Rose\u2019s award-winning\u00a0documentary, The Loss of Nameless Things<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Oakley made a life-long study of the surrealist playwright, Alfred\u00a0Jarry, and over the years translated several of his plays from the\u00a0original French. In 2008, Hall moved to Albany, New York, to live with\u00a0Hadiya Wilborn, who helped set in motion a collaboration with\u00a0acclaimed puppeteer Ed Atkeson. This resulted in a production of one\u00a0of those translated plays, Ubu Roi<\/em>, at an Albany theater, Steamer 10,\u00a0directed by Oakley, with Steven Patterson in the title role. \u00a0In the\u00a0fall of 2010, Moving Finger Press published Oakley\u2019s novel, Jarry and\u00a0Me<\/em>, in which Oakley intertwines a memoir of his own life with a sly\u00a0\u201cautobiography\u201d of Jarry. One of the last sentences of the book is,\u00a0\u201cJarry dies with a grin on his face.\u201d We are told that Oakley too had\u00a0a grin on his face, at the end. As Oakley would say: \u201cMerdre.\u201d<\/p>\n

He is survived by his two children, Oakley and Elizabeth, his mother,\u00a0Barbara E. Hall, his sisters Sands Hall, Tracy Hall, and Brett Hall\u00a0Jones, four loving nephews and a niece\u2014Justin, Nico, Hunter, Dashiell,\u00a0and Emma\u2014and his cherie, Hadiya Wilborn.<\/p>\n

\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Very sad to hear this morning of the passing of Oakley Hall III. Below, the mail just sent out by his family. Oakley had a complex, difficult life as a man and artist \u2014...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76,817],"tags":[957],"class_list":["post-6030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-obituaries","category-theater","tag-oakley-hall-iii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6030"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6039,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6030\/revisions\/6039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}