1939-2025
By ANTHONY CHASE
The last time I spoke with Kathleen Betsko, we talked about the opening night of Wendy-Marie Martin's play The Day I Learned to Fly. I made a joke about the after party being too lavish for a new play, telling her that crackers and Cheese Whiz, a box of wine, and theater staff bolting into the night without saying goodbye – leaving the playwright stranded without a ride to her hotel – would have been more appropriate. She chuckled quietly, her voice sounding very small. She was in Roswell then, nominally fighting cancer but in truth being overcome by it. She died on Thursday.
My quip was a reference to stories Kathleen had shared over the years about the treatment of new plays and their aspiring writers. She had always been a fierce advocate for playwrights, particularly women playwrights. Her 1987 book "Interviews with Contemporary Women Playwrights," which she co-wrote with Rachel Koenig, stood as a landmark work – the first collection of its kind. What she pioneered has now inspired countless similar volumes.
Kathleen’s own career skyrocketed with a production of her autobiographical play, Johnny Bull at Yale Rep, directed by none other than Lloyd Richards himself in 1982. It would be made into a television film starring Jason Robards, Colleen Dewhurst, and Kathy Bates in 1986.
As Malcolm L. Johnson of the Hartford Courant described the play: “Betsko’s remembrances of things past begins with a monologue that defines the gap between the great expectations of a 19-year-old Cold War bride and the grim and grimy reality of her husband’s hometown. Having had her head filled with sweet and dreamy images of Eisenhower’s America as projected in Doris Day movies, the playwright’s alter ego suddenly finds herself in the midst of the coal fields of Pennsylvania’s Monongahela Valley during hard times.” Buffalo United Artists did a first-rate production starring Michele Ninacs, Joe Giambra, Mary Loftus, Jennifer Hill and Michael Karr in 1992.
The story was autobiographical. Kathleen did come to America as a war bride, and she did think she was about to live the Hollywood life of Doris Day. Far from it.
Born Kathleen Yale on May 6, 1939 (Betsko was her first husband’s name), she had grown up in working-class Coventry, England, described euphemistically in Johnny Bull as “an industrial area.” This is the town that Winston Churchill allowed to be bombed so that the Germans would not know that the British had cracked the Enigma Code. As a child she would be evacuated to the country, with a suitcase of clothes and with a tag indicting her name and destination, like another piece of baggage. It was only in recent years that DNA testing revealed what Kathleen had long suspected, she was not her father’s biological daughter, but the result of a tryst between her “naughty mum” and a transitory Irishman named Gilhooly. Kathleen cherished her working-class origins and was a strong advocate for working class voices in the theater. A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney was a favorite of hers.
To be with Kathleen was to be regaled with stories and laughter. Some of these were tales of the theater. John Dexter, nasty director of the original production of Equus, in which Kathleen toured for seven months in the role of the nurse. Or Kathy Bates with whom she remained friends for the rest of her life. Or director Lloyd Richards, head of the National Playwrights Conference and dean of the Yale School of Drama, who cultivated and directed the plays of August Wilson and who hailed Kathleen as a “major talent.” Or her agent, Esther Sherman, who also represented Edward Albee and who told off producers interested in Kathleen’s work with the same hardball-hardboiled belligerence she used for her more famous clients, rejecting contracts as insulting while Kathleen was living on tuna from the can. Other stories involved a colorful litany of relatives: cousin Hazel, Auntie Lena, Aunt Gert, her mother.
After “the War,” her mother was highly suspicious of the Yanks (i.e. American servicemen) who came round after the Coventry girls. Mum insisted that a boy who had come courted come into the apartment to meet her. She admonished Kath not to get carried away because these Yanks were only after one thing. But remember, these were lean times in Britain, with stringent rationing and hunger serving as the enhancing sauce for every meager meal. The American G.I.’s had access to the lavish provisions of the military commissary. The young man arrived, in uniform, and carrying a box of Black Magic chocolates so large that it “filled the door frame.” Pragmatic Mum, seeing this luxurious box of chocolates after so many years of severe deprivation, pulled Kath into the kitchen and hissed into her ear, “Love will come after!” and sent her daughter out on her date.
There was the story of the auntie who was the last white widow on her cul-de-sac, and who, hugely suspicious of her new brown neighbors, would recruit the neighborhood children to inculcate their parents with her idea of proper British behavior, using with “bickies,” or cookies – short for biscuit – as the bribe. “Now Abullah, I’m going to give you this bickie, but first you must promise to tell your mum that she shouldn’t leave her washing hanging out the window in front of the house. Do you understand me?”
This might have been the same aunt who, seeing an unfamiliar brown man minding his own business on the roof of the adjacent house, took it upon herself to notify the police that, “There’s a Paki on the roof of the house next door!”
“But is he doing anything ma’am”?
“Well … not yet!”
There was the devoted cousin who came to New Haven to be by Kathleen’s side when Johnny Bull opened. She was entirely swept up in the glamor and thrill of it all. At a press reception, her cousin picked up on the fact that John Simon, vicious critic for New York magazine, was influential. She made him her mission. Dressed up in her high heels and her “bit of fur,” she saddled up to the odious man. He was alone of course, because nobody else would talk to him, and she coyly urged him, “Go get us a glass of champers (that’s champagne) ducks, and let’s go sit over in that corner where we can talk … just ourselves.” To everyone’s amazement, Simon did it! The dear cousin then went to work. “Do you know Athol Fugard? (referring to the famed South African playwright). He and my Kath are like this,” she told him, crossing her index and middle fingers.
These stories, of course, were enriched by Kathleen laying on her working-class Coventry accent as thick as she could. The story of an aunt attending opening night performance of Johnny Bull in Coventry, who, realizing that Kathleen had omitted that she would have already had a child by the time the story took place, but not understanding that a child character in a stage production is a colossal complication, called out for all to hear, “Pack o’ lies! Pack o’ lies!” The story only really works with a Coventry accent.
The career that had started with a roar was stalled when Kathleen’s next play was in development. Stitchers and Starlight Talkers continued her autobiography. Now the lead character, a working-class English girl, befriends a university professor and proves to be, not just a remarkable student, but in many ways, more astute than he. There was growing excitement about the play and then… Willy Russell’s Educating Rita about a working-class girl from Liverpool and her relationship with a university professor became a hit.
Kathleen continued as a superior teacher, as an actor, and an activist and inspiration. She was one of the founding participants and planners of the International Women Playwrights Conference when it was launched in Buffalo. Locally, she appeared at many theaters, including Irish Classical Theatre Company, Buffalo United Artists, and Theatre of Youth. She particularly enjoyed being cast as the Queen of England in one Theatre of Youth production, a distinctly non-working-class role.
Playwright Donna Hoke, who's most recent play, "Brilliant Works of Art" opened on the day Kathleen died recalled, "The indomitable Kathleen, who helped found the International Center for Women Playwrights right here in Buffalo, was a role model, shero, and inspiration who tirelessly supported women in the arts and who, every time I saw her, never failed to tell me to continue to carrying the mantle and 'keep writing. You need to keep writing.' More importantly, she was a warm, witty, and wonderful human being and every time I saw her, I smiled, so happy to be afforded another opportunity to delight in her presence. And she was a presence--one that will achingly be missed."
I am glad that our final conversation was about a woman playwright scoring a successful opening. I will miss hearing her recount the exploits and follies of her most fabulous life. Kathleen Betsko Yale was certainly one of the most talented and most wonderful people I have ever known.
