Playing It By Ear

About the Book

The author of All the King’s Horses and All the King’s Men: Love, Alienation, and "Reconciliation” in a Big, BIG Mormon Family (Xlibris, 2000) and the controversial Equal Rites: The Book of Mormon, Masonry, Gender, and American Culture (Columbia University Press, 2004) is at it again. American historian by day and Canadian jazz musician and playwright by night, Clyde R. Forsberg Jr. has also written five original “jazz-musicals.” A word of explanation is required. These five plays, four of which have been tested on stage and not found wanting, do not obey many of the rules of so-called dramaturgy. The playwright has no real right or claim to the office or title of playwright. Having the good fortune to be able to call upon the help of a wide array of extremely talented musicians and actors, he brought forth a relatively new type of theatrical expression and experience—a jazz and theatre synthesis that had an important historical, social justice, intellectual/musical, autobiographical, and monologue angles. Originally, the idea was for a history professor who played jazz to use the stage to convey a message of some historical importance, augmented by music, as an experiment to see whether the theatre was not a better medium than the classroom. There is no doubting the important fact that the public cast their vote . . . and quite decidedly in the affirmative, despite it all. And so, some record and testament to all the hard work that went into each and every one of these plays seems justified. A memoir of another sort, Playing It By Ear: The Jazz-Theatre of Clyde R. Forsberg Jr. explores such public events and social issues as the Canadian ice storm of 1998 and the urban-rural divide in Canadian society that it revealed, Louis Armstrong’s arrangement and interpretation of “Black and Blue” and the relationship between racism and domestic abuse hidden between the lines, the end of the nuclear family and death-rattle of patriarchal authority evident at family holiday gatherings, the degree to which the penis as well as the vagina are taboo, and finally, what Forsberg’s seven-year trek along the Silk Road (2003–2010) in search of self understanding and personal renewal would cost him—but also reward him for venturing outside of the box.

About the Author

Clyde R. Forsberg Jr. holds a Ph.D. in Cultural and Religious History from Queen’s University (Kingston). His academic writing includes published book and film reviews for the Journal of American History and Church History (University of Chicago), as well as peer-reviewed articles for the Journal of Historical Geography, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, and the John Whitmer Historical Association Journal. He is also the author of Equal Rites: The Book of Mormon, Masonry, Gender, and American Culture (Columbia University Press, 2004). An assistant professor at Oxford College/Aletheia University in Taiwan, he teaches a wide array of courses in American Studies. He also directed and performed in the 2009 university production of “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.” And he is the featured international jazz artist ever Friday night at Sapere Café in Tamsui, Taiwan.