MEMORABLE LAUGH

HA! (portrait of Nancy Simon) oil 12x12" Donated to Whitman College, July 2013 in honor of Nancy Simon’s many years of service to the theatre.

This lady is professor emeritus of Theatre Arts at my alma mater, Whitman College. She taught there for lo these many years, many as department head, and retired just last winter (2012).

One memory everybody who studied with her agrees on is her laugh. Like everybody else, Nancy has many different laughs, appropriate to the situation. The one that sticks indelibly in the mind, though, is a sudden, explosive laugh that comes rarely, at times of extreme entertainment or skepticism. “HA! (wide open mouth). Just that. One loud HA, from the diaphragm, just like Rex Harrison’s when, as Henry Higgins, he is contemplating Eliza’s downfall. It’s a gift to get it. I hope people can keep on evoking that laugh forever.

Nancy Simon’s students remember her with great fondness. As teacher and director, she was patient, impatient, thoughtful, mercurial, and intellectual--and also loved a good smutty joke. I hope I got some of her attitude toward life, and toward the stream of kids between the ages of 18 and 22 that paraded through that life. Thank you, Nancy.

I generally don’t show off the green underpainting of a portrait to the sitter. The frog factor is interesting, but perhaps... unsettling.