Davidson Garrett will perform excerpts from Shakespeare's "King Lear" on Sunday September 7, 2008, in Lafayette New Jersey on a program organized by Sensations Magazine. Check out sensationsmag.com for details.
"Taxi Driver--King Lear of the Taxi" will be screened at The Portobello Film Festival in London on September 2, 2008. Check details at the Portobello Film Festival website.
Recent Press Article about the film: Taxi Driver
based on texts from King Lear of the Taxi
by Flashgun Films
A Much Gentler TAXI DRIVER
Thursday March 20 6:36 PM ET
By FilmStew Staff,
FilmStew.com
Though New York cabbie Davidson Garrett has no kingdom to divide among three daughters, he still finds himself wandering the streets like a dethroned King Lear.
Enterprising readers may already know about Davidson Garrett's 2006 52-page paperback book King Lear of the Taxi: Musings of a New York City Actor / Taxi Driver. Among the author's prose and poetry recollections are a pair involving separate celebrity fares Lauren Bacall and the late Mother Teresa. Now comes Taxi Driver: King Lear of the Taxi, a documentary from Flashgun Films UK. Set to premiere at the inaugural edition of International Film Festival England (June 10th – 13th) in Tamworth, the film is even more of a hybrid than the source book. While Garrett provides the voiceover, the black and white footage was actually shot entirely in UK's Stoke-on-Trent and contextually also references the fact that there has recently been a great increase in the number of violent incidents against cabbies in the west Midlands region. As far as how Garret managed to align himself with one of the Bard's most famous protagonists, well, it's a stretch.
"As I drive my yellow taxi past the public theater on Lafayette Street, I often think to myself, 'I'm lost, like a queer Lear in Shakespeare's masterpiece," the grey bearded hopeful intones in the trailer for the doc. "A dethroned king searching for my elusive theatrical kingdom."
Flashgun Films of Great Britain has released a short film: "Taxi Driver" based on texts from King Lear of the Taxi. Davidson Garrett does the voice-over for the film. To view the film, click the link below.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ujLyiHJoHbI
Davidson Garrett was a featured poet presented by The Greek-American Writers' Association's monthly reading on February 16th at The Cornelia Street Cafe in Greenwich Village.
On January 28, 2008, Davidson Garrett traveled to Laffayette, New Jersey and participated in a reading for the 20th Anniversary of the literary journal, Sensations Magazine.
Davidson Garrett was awarded an Honorable Mention by The Beat Museum in San Francisco for his poem: "Death In Harlem Hospital With Straussian Overtones: 1986." The award was given for the December 2007 Poet of the Month Contest. The poem was published on www.thebeatmuseum.org.
Read Davidson Garrett's article: "The Poet's Decision: Aesthetic Choices in Writing" in the Fall 2007
Issue of the online literary journal: Big City Lit. Go to: www.bigcitylit.com. Scroll down to the articles
Davidson Garrett is featured on Youtube.com. Go to Youtube.com and put his name into: Search.
King Lear of the Taxi was included in the 2007 Showcase
at Poets House located in SOHO in New York City.
For more information on Poets House, click this link:
poetshouse.org
Davidson Garrett was a featured poet for PLGArts
in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn, on April 25th 2007.
For informationconcerning PLG Arts, check website: PLGarts.org.
Davidson Garrett was invited by the Queenborough Public Library
to give a series of readings from King Lear of the Taxi.
He read selections from the book in Bayside and Middle Village Queens in February and April 2007.
Listen to Davidson Garrett being interviewed
by Ken Millstone for Columbia University Radio News.
Click to listen
Listen to Davidson Garrett reading selections from King Lear of theTaxi
from the benefit for the New York Taxi Workers Alliance
held at Rocky Sullivans in Manhattan on August 19 2006.
Listen on www.nysoundposse.com. Click the button under Events
at the right of the page under archives August 2006. Then click
on Save our Yellow Cabbies on August 19th. Davidson reads
in the first 20 minutes of the show after a 4 minute introduction.
King Lear of the Taxi had its first public reading on July 13, 2006
at The World Monuments Fund Gallery in Midtown Manhattan.
Davidson Garrett traveled to Red Hook in Brooklyn on November
30, 2006, where, he was a featured reader of King Lear of the Taxi
at Freebird Books. Also featured was the singer Mickey Ehrlich.
On July 28, 2006, Davidson Garrett was the featured poet
at The Cafe Local in Engelwood, New Jersey.
Davidson Garrett has published several poems
in Sensations Magazine. Visit the website: sensationsmag.com
Newspaper Article about King Lear of the Taxi
Times Ledger Newspapers Queens, New York City
Boro Libraries Host Readings of City Taxi Driver's Poems
By Jennifer Saavedra
02/15/2007
When Davidson Garrett was young, he would run into his high school library in Louisiana seeking protection from the lunch-time bullies. His interests in the arts were strange and different in the eyes of his classmates, so they hit him to knock the strangeness out of him.
All grown-up and out of Louisiana, Garrett enters the Bay Terrace Library on Feb. 2 not as a place of refuge, but as a place where his artistic talents are embraced and recognized. He has been invited to recite a selection of poems from his book, "King Lear of the Taxi: Musings of a New York City Taxi Driver/Actor."
He begins with the poem, "Blasted Out of Dixie," about his departure from his home city of Shreveport, La. The last stanza reads: "Rain, snow, hail, ice/ a tempest only befits my Southern goodbye-/ as I escape the darkness of hate."
"As a closeted gay child it was very traumatic for me because I always had inward terror," says Garrett, now in his 50s.
To eliminate the fear of being an outsider, Garrett pursued drama.
"It was the only way I could relate to others. It was my way of feeling that I existed," he says.
The acceptance he felt on stage ignited his ambition to pursue acting seriously.
At 20, Garrett moved to New York City and enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Yet, as he explains to the 17 attentive heads in the audience, "you feel before you get to New York like you are the only person in the world that has this dream, and New York is a rude awakening, you are not quite as unique as you thought." This sentiment is confirmed in his poem, "Welcome to New York": "Ya'think you're so unique, Buster?/ Get a grip on your ass!/ don't quit your day job Honey-Lamb/ Go out and buy some bulldozer balls!"
But at first it was difficult for Garrett to get that bulldozer confidence. Not only was he shaken after realizing there were countless other aspiring actors, but his studies at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts further discouraged him from his dream. His poem, "Dramatic Arts," describes the major conclusion he derived from the school: "Find cheap rents and easy day-jobs!"
His easy day-job became driving a taxi for a living.
He has been a taxi driver for 27 years now and leases his taxi from Queens Midtown garage in Long Island City. Garrett explains that driving a cab has given him the freedom to go on auditions and opportunity "to study humanity from my rearview mirror." Yet, the hours spent behind the wheel can be very depressing and incarcerating. Such contrasting perspectives are evident throughout his book, where he refers to his taxi as a "yellow chariot," "yellow zephyr" and "yellow jail."
He expresses equally mixed feelings of his experiences as an actor. Most of his poems sway from optimism to pessimism, with the traffic red light signifying an opportunity to enter a fantasy world of discovery, only to quickly switch back to the traffic green light, when he is brought back to the reality of an undiscovered actor. The last four lines of his poem, "Taxi Driver," published in the Metropolitan Diary of the New York Times, read: "soon to be locked behind the wheel/ for hours, while the brain plays games/ with bold dreams that disappear/ when the red light blinks back to green."
Disillusioned and disheartened, Garrett says he was about to stray away from his artistic path until one day when he drove to Connecticut and saw a production of "King Lear" starring classical actor Morris Carnovsky. He describes this as the single most important moment in his life, a moment which rekindled his love for acting and inspired the title of his book.
"Carnovsky's raw emotion and commitment to the language was so strong that I cried as I left the theater," Garrett says.
Since then, half of Garrett's book was a finalist in the 2000 Gival Press Chapbook competition, and his poetry has been featured in the New York Times, Xavier Review (New Orleans), Sensations Magazine, The Unknown Writer and the Wild Angels Poets and Writers Anthology from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. His poems cover a range of his experiences, including his encounters with the famous, most notably Mother Theresa and actress Lauren Bacall. His book can purchased from amazon.com or his Web site adventurepress.com. Passengers can purchase his book while riding his taxi.
After Garrett's reading, 47-year-old writer and Bayside resident Neala Borvina says, "He left a good impression on me. I am taking the book home."
"I really felt that taxi drivers are not just drivers, they see, experience, and are many different things," says Abraham Montz, 83-year-old retired salesman and Bayside resident.
Garrett's next reading will be held on April 2 at the Middle Village Library.
Garrett says years of experience and psychoanalysis have led him to conclude, as stated in the first three words of his preface, "You are enough."
©Times Ledger 2007
