Authored by Elizabeth Beneke

Karl Anderson – Weaving Through The Grid

William Harris was a theatre editor for SoHo Weekly News and magazine editor of Theatre Crafts Magazine. During his time in New York City he created a collection of clippings, photos, posters and much more, which in a way was Mr. Harris’ way to preserve history.  In a way Mr. Harris contributed to the work that we are doing today, he was practicing Archiving before it became a full-blown concept.

Mr. Harris was a born April 9, 1951, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and died July 27, 2000 from a massive coronary in New York City.  Mr. Harris’ collection can be found in the Marymount Manhattan College Library.  His collection consists of 96 scripts, 4,450 folders of clippings and a collection of photographs during the period of  forty years from 1960 to 2000.

Karl Anderson is portrayed in this picture, under his one-man show in “Weaving Through the Grid” where he rants, raves, and spouts of statistics about crime, etc. He walks around stage and stops every couple of minutes, ‘drinks’ tea from a teacup which he takes out of his pocket. He takes off one suit, only to still be wearing another suit underneath.  In a way this could symbolize how we wear layers, and that we cannot always peel the outer layer to start fresh, but that the outer layer is the same as the layer underneath.

Personally, I feel that if it wasn’t for the effort that William Harris had put in to preserve the arts in his way, then I wouldn’t have selected this picture and found out that it was part of this one man show.  Karl Anderson is still involved in the arts.

Bibliography

“Harris Guide.” http://www.mmm.edu/offices/library/archives.php (accessed May 12, 2014).