Today, we shine the spotlight on Alan Bernheimer's play, Particle Arms, which was performed November 21, 1982 as part of the Poets Theatre at Studio Eremos in San Francisco. Particle Arms features a vertible who's who of Bay Area poetics, including cast members Steve Benson, Tom Mandel, Kit Robinson, Eileen Corder, and Steven Rodefer, set designer Johanna Drucker, and even Lyn Hejinian, who wrote the play's program.
The play lives up to its description, as "tracing the trajectory of two men and a woman over an Edward Hopper hotelscape, peopled by psychological misfits, to an economy dependent on stunt work," dabbling in noir delights and failed romance with hilarious results, however Particle Arms is not just great entertainment, but also an evocative time capsule of a close-knit community of friends and artists — as evidenced by the "experiment in collective autobiography," The Grand Piano, which features many of these poets and their contemporaries.
In addition to Particle Arms, Bernheimer's PennSound author page features links to twenty episodes of the influential radio program, In the American Tree, hosted by the poet during the show's 1979-1980 season — including interviews with Ted Greenwald, Erica Hunt, and Bill Berkson, among others — as well as his own November 10, 1978 appearance on the show, as Hejinian and Robinson's guest. There's also a 2001 reading from the St. Mark's Poetry Project and the 1980 talk "Subject Matter" from the New Langton Arts Center. Listeners might also want to check out Bernheimer's collection of photos and documents from the production of Particle Arms, which is linked on the page as well. Click here to start exploring.
