Nationwide Workshop

In St. Louis one evening last week, a tall, commanding-looking Negro in a dark suit and vest walked into the main rotunda of the city's Old Courthouse. For 30 minutes, he stood there and told TV viewers the story of the slave Sam Blow who picked up the nickname Great Scott-pronounced Dred Scott in Sam Blow's Gullah accent--whose suit was tried twice in that courthouse, in 1847 and in 1850.

It was a kind of lecture, really, with choral interludes by costumed singers, discussing the illiterate man whose petition for freedom was finally turned down by the U.S. Supreme Court. The lecturer was Marc Hannibal, formerly a professional basketball player with the razzle-dazzle Harlem Globetrotters. He had never before been on television, and that was the whole idea.

In New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia, similar programs were broadcast at the same time, using little-known or totally unknown young performers. This is the CBS Repertoire Workshop, a joint project of the five TV stations owned by the network, intended not as a fling for amateurs but as a springboard for apprentice professionals. Each station will produce seven shows, and all 35 will be seen in all five cities.

Monk & Rasputin. Los Angeles' premiere show last week was a musical revue called Who Tied the Can to Modern Man? It was Julius Monky business, and not quite ready to come out from under the stairs. Nonetheless, some moments were passably funny, like the skit about the fellow who buys an apartment so fully automated that it looks after his emotional needs and sings He's a Jolly Good Fellow to cheer him up, but eventually turns against him. A cannon rolls out of the wall and shoots him dead.

WCBS-TV New York started its series with an original modern dance by 28-year-old Norman Walker. It was arty, erotic, and somewhat constipated, centering on a noble youth who seemed to have trouble deciding in what direction his basic current flowed. It seemed to dazzle the audience, however, since the Repertoire Workshop's ballet scored higher ratings than its competition. NBC's The Virginian and ABC's Wagon Train. Philadelphia showed young actors in Thornton Wilder's Pullman Car Hiawatha. Two Chicago housewives--whose principal credits are six children--contributed a short play to Chicago's WBBM-TV about how difficult it was to kill the monk Rasputin. Actor Val Bettin was a triumph of holy lechery with a soft ten-inch beard around smacking wet lips.

Ghettobound. Future workshop shows will include any kind of performance that an eager young pro can get past an audition: pantomime, improvisation, poetry readings, musical recitals, monologues, one-acters, sermons--anything. Philadelphia's second contribution to the series will be the first play written by Cartoonist Jules Feiffer. Distantly echoing Harold Pinter, it is called Crawling Arnold. Arnold is in his 305. but he crawls because he wants to be complex again ("Children are complex, adults are just complicated''). The dialogue is built out of fey remarks about Jews, Negroes and psychiatric social workers who sleep with Arnold to make him feel like a man.

CBS opened its new series in midweek prime time for one night only, instantly kicking it into the ghetto of weekend afternoons. Nonetheless, a project like this is more than praiseworthy. Mainly unsponsored. it represents money generously spent by the network on the potential of young performers.

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