Ah, Paris. The 1920s were a fertile time for the arts in the City of Light. The Murphys were there, along with musicians, writers and artists looking to break with convention and create a new age post World War I.
In one small corner of Montparnasse (the Haight Ashbury of the '20s), artists Marcel Duchamp and Fernand Léger, poets Jean Cocteau and Ezra Pound and writer Ernest Hemingway could all be found living within a stone's throw of each other. They gathered at bistros that included Hemingway's favorite, Closerie des Lilas on Rue Notre Dame des Champs.
Hemingway, his first wife, Hadley, and son, Jack, lived over a sawmill on the same street for two years. When he arrived he brought letters of introduction to both Pound and Gertrude Stein, whose home at 27 Rue de Fleuris housed a brilliant art collection.
It's this milieu that David Blampied, as Hemingway, will evoke at the "Hemingway in Paris" Café Soiree, Friday, Sept. 21, from 8 to 10 p.m. at the nexStage Theatre in Ketchum.
Blampied, who with a beard bears an uncanny resemblance to Hemingway, will again manifest the author in a monologue of remembrances for this soiree. A Wood River Valley-based actor, Blampied first played Hemingway in 1999 for Hemingway's 100th birthday when he presented Scott DeGroot's one-man show "Papa" at The Community School Theater,
"Ninety percent of it is quotes attributed to him and 'A Movable Feast'," he said. "I'm really focusing on Hemingway in his own words."
The theater will be set up café style and will offer deserts, coffee and champagne as well as period jazz music. Blampied was helped in finding the correct music by Hilary Justice who compiled a list of the albums found at Hemingway's Cuban home, Finca Viglia.
"I talked to Valerie Hemingway (Ernest Hemingway's daughter-in-law) at The Big Read in Boise this year, ("The Sun Also Rises" was the featured book) and asked if he ever sang. She laughed. 'Oh that's funny. He didn't sing in key,' she said. 'But he did listen.' Whatever influences the music might have had on him we don't know."
The music Blampied has compiled includes Cole Porter, Jelly Roll Morton, Bix Beiderbeck and other jazz classics.
A special appearance will be made by Edith Piaf (Sara Gorby) who could have been standing on corners in Paris where Hemingway might have seen her.
Blampied's connection to Hemingway was formed long before anyone suggested he sort of looked like him. In 1972, Blampied, too, had a running-with-the-bulls experience in Pamplona, Spain. During the fourth day of running he was knocked down and gored by a bull.
"I became a sort of hero, he said. "The Society of Running of the Bulls came to visit me in the hospital. That brush with death is my link to Hemingway."
He has reprised "Papa" several times since the 100th birthday and has appeared as Hemingway at the festival and the Big Read, and other places perhaps another 20 times.
Tickets for the "Hemingway in Paris" Café Soiree are $35. For more information, visit ernesthemingwayfestival.org or call (866) 549-5783.
There will be an auction for furniture in the Hemingway Collection by Thomasville.
David Blampied will channel Ernest Hemingway, Friday at the nexStage Theatre.
