Remembering Marketa
Marketa Kimbrell (1928 – 2011)
Her classes were held at 721 Broadway in a windowless room that was also a passageway. Students from other classes shuffled around the room, letting the metal doors slam loudly into the lock. It went through marrow and bone. Marketa didn’t mind: with the same perpetual concentration, she spoke to us, listened to us, looked at our work on the search for truth and humanity with an uncorrupted eye.
Even today, I can see her sitting on an uncomfortable chair, leaning slightly forward, following a scene with fascination and considering it personal happiness when it succeeded.
I was not an actress and never wanted to be one. But those hours made me a director who could put aside her fear of actors and turn it into a passion for them. Sometimes Marketa would quietly take you aside and, in sentences like brushstrokes, give you something to take with you that would move you forward artistically. She had seen through my Swiss good behavior and knew I was an angry young woman with something wanting out of me.
She talked about politics, directly. Everything was political. For her, being an artist (and becoming one) had little to do with self-realization. She was imbued with the conviction that art could and had to change society. With her New York Street Theater Caravan, she consistently followed this path. She took it to the suburbs, playing in refugee camps, Native reservations, coal towns. Her eye and love was for the overlooked. Some students who were clear about seeking money and fame in Hollywood were challenged by Marketa’s worldview. She was a feminist of the first order, but there were no theories about it to be heard from her. She was simply a living example for us women who left her classes empowered and attentive to power relations.
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Marketa had her secret. She was a decided leftist, which was not opportune in Cold War America. Certainly, that’s why she missed out on roles as an actress. And she was not suited to become a disciple of Lee Strasberg, although she had studied with him. She sometimes referred to him with a simple “Lee said …”, then put him and his theories aside again to spur us on in her words to take courage and risk failure. We came away from her classes inspired and imbued with a sense of purpose.
Certainly she had had to pay for her independence with a dose of loneliness. She would have had the makings of a guru, but she renounced everything that would have made her the center of attention. Surrounded by her students, she appeared happy.