The Rake Magazine

I've got to remember to bring a camera to rehearsal so I can post some pictures on this blog. Right now, imagine a photograph that is so cool it makes you want to see Everywhere Signs Fall at Gremlin Theatre. I don't care what you picture as long as you trust your imagination and call 651-228-7008 for reservations.

Saturday's rehearsal felt like a breakthrough of sorts. From what I witnessed on Saturday everyone seemed to be channeling a better sense of the electricity and odd subtext throughout the play. Both scenes that we worked on Saturday were charged with an increasing tense energy. A gun. A hotel room. It's hot. These three people are damaged. . . It seems to be coming along in a heart-stoppingly good way. Which makes me think of three things:

1. Theater can be hard to do. You try to invent an entirely new and believable person/world/story one day. It has its challenges. In some ways, we're stabbing in the dark and hoping that when we stab ourselves it doesn't bleed too much. I've worked a lot of jobs in my short adult life -- from construction to technical writer to goatherd to bartender -- and I find theater harder. More fun but also harder.
2. In my plays, the scenes that appear to be the most confused and hopeless when you read the script, often hold the keys to the success of the play. Though this makes it hard for me to send my plays out to theaters outside the Twin Cities, it also makes me happy. If anyone reading this also saw my play How to Cheat in the 2006 Fringe Festival, you may enjoy knowing that the sex/card game that the audience liked so much is also the scene that made the actors want to scream at me. Saturday, for this show, they seemed to solve one of the most difficult scenes to the point where it was the best rehearsal I'd watched so far.
3. Without great actors, I'm sunk. Thankfully, we have three great actors in this play. Again, though it makes my scripts a little hard to read, it also makes me happy. One of the reasons I stayed in Minnesota after I moved here in 2003 is that I very quickly met a lot of actors who made me look really really good. I was going to include a story about D.H. Laurence here, but I couldn't phrase it in such a way that wouldn't make me look bad. As I write this blog, it occurs to me that I've grown accustomed to actors making me look good. I'm going to have to consider that for a while. For the moment, though, I'll just enjoy it and be grateful.

A short contribution today. . . Tomorrow will be longer. Pictures. Must have pictures.

Everywhere Signs Fallis about a brother and sister who travel around the country investigatingaccidents. They interview and record people who have experienced accidents thathave changed them somehow, then they pack up and head to the next town. Whenthe play begins, we see Juliet and Jeremy interviewing a down-on-his-luckbartender in a hot, seedy motel room in the Phoenix, Arizona in the middle ofthe summer. It’s hot. It’s very hot. And something isn’t exactly right. . .

And so it begins.

The way we’re describing it in our press materials is: “EverywhereSigns Fall is a thrilling psychologicalrollercoaster ride set in a steamy hotel room in hot, seedy Phoenix, Arizona. Outof the Past meets Donnie Darko; Petrified Forest crossed with Memento. After losing their parents under mysteriouscircumstances, Jeremy and Juliet take to the road, recording and analyzingrandom accidents around the country that have changed the course of people’slives. When they bring a down-on-his-luck bartender back to their hotel roomfor an interview, their investigation takes a dark, deadly turn. This play isfor anyone who has ever experienced loss and wondered about whether fate orfree-will control our destiny.”

 Other things you should know about the play:

• They’ve got video equipment. In Jeremy’s words, “We’re really scientific.” Which means that we get to not only have incredible live actors on stage but also beautiful close-ups of their photogenic and expressive faces. We get to do this within the context of the play itself rather than with some large and strange video screen behind the actors that gives nothing more than the impression that someone in the theater thought they had to be multimedia in order to be cool.
• The scenes take place out of order – hence the reference to the film Memento above – and, for some reason, I’ve taken this as an opportunity to do cool things with sound too. (You’ll have to see the play to discover the reason.) We’ve got Ivey award winning sound designer Mike Hallenbeck helping us out; sometimes you  just increase one element of a play’s content because you have the chance to work with someone so good.
• Film noir is fun. A hot motel room. A mysterious stranger. A dangerous investigation. A young beautiful girl. Somewhere in the process of writing this play I slipped in to certain film noir tropes. Some people associate film noir, it seems, with dark lighting, brooding actors, and windows whose blinds are always down in order to make that slatted light effect on a person’s face. What I notice now that I’ve been watching and watching different films is that all the dialogue is damned funny and the characters are usually more amused than depressed. They’re active and strong, and they know what they want and how to get. It’s just the damn corrupt world that keeps getting in their goddamned way. O, and they aren’t really angels themselves either. . . I don’t know. Sounds like life to me.
• The play isn’t film noir. It’s noir-ish.

After two evenings of rehearsal everyone is still feelingtheir way just to the place where they can actually see the way in front ofthem and my thoughts aren’t coherent enough to share. I’m still processing. Ican say that John Middleton can go from looking like a Classics Professor at asmall liberal arts college to Humphrey Bogart just by the way he holds hisshoulders. And Tracey Maloney looks nowhere near the age of the birthday she iscelebrating today. . . I have sometimes seriously thought that we all couldmake more money in theater if we could somehow market it as a real Fountain ofYouth. Think about the theater people you may know in this town. Can you reallyaccurately guess their age? Odds are better than average that you’reundercounting by at least ten years. Isn’t this the type of secret everyonewants to know? If only we could bottle it. . .

Tomorrow, I think I’ll have something more specific to say.For now, let me remind you of the reservation hot line to see this modern takeof a film noiry premise live on stage. 651-228-7008

I’m from Chicago. Chicagoans are different than Minnesotans. Everyone is different than Minnesotans. OK, everyone is different than everyone, but I live in Minnesota now, so Minnesota is what I think about.

When you move to Minnesota, everyone warns you about the passive-aggressive thing. So, you nod and think that you’re prepared. But you’re not really prepared because all your life passive-aggressiveness has been the punch line of a joke on a sitcom. Someone who obviously has no life and incredibly bad taste in shirts, holding his or her hand up to the neck in some kind of clichéd gesture of vulnerability, expresses the opposite desire from what he or she really wants. On television, they usually do it in a high-pitched voice – as though shrillness makes it funnier.

Here, in Minnesota, in reality, however, otherwise normal people – people who wear nice suits and dresses, who look good and not crazy atall – Here in Minnesota, even these types of people won’t tell you what they’re really thinking. And they do it in clever ways that make it almost impossible to know that they aren’t telling you what they’re really thinking. Not only are Minnesotans passive-aggressive, they’ve got passive-aggressive skills. They’re good it. It’s really passive. It’s oddly aggressive. It works.

What does this have to do with my play? Bare with me: Chicago is the City of Big Shoulders. Chicago prides itself on its blue-collar, hard-working, straight-shooting, big, blunt citizens. Chicagoans aren’t exactly aggressive-aggressive as much as they are just, kind of, there. Raw. Decades of slaughterhouses and corrupt politics have nurtured a rough-around-the-edges, unpretentious, bloody, messy thereness.

The character of each city can actually be experienced in the way that theaters do plays. When Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago did a production of Craig Wright’s Orange Flower Water, a play about adultery, there was screaming and shoving. When the Jungle Theater in the Twin Cities on Lyndale did it, well, there was less shouting. People in Minnesota shout less. In general, Minnesotans are more restrained, more stoic. They aren’t really precisely passive as much as stolid. Live theater reflects the community. Hence, the same play is entirely different in a different place.

Unfortunately, because I grew up in Chicago and because I wrote the original version of this play Everywhere Signs Fall ten years ago, there is a certain blunt thereness to the characters that is hard to explain if you didn’t grow up in Chicago. It’s like trying to explain Jewishness to someone. You can read all the books and know all the rules but there is a certain indefinable something. Example: During the Guthrie’s basically enjoyable production of Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was watching a play about the Irish immigrant experience rather than the Jewish immigrant experience. It was just a feeling. While the actors were excellent, there was something indefinably not Jewish about them.

The Chicago acting style has a clear but hard to pinpoint approach. So does Minnesota. Chicago actors are raw, loud – sometimes like a really cool looking bull in a china shop. Minnesota actors are restrained. They’re never false. They’re smart. Intellectual and effective. Their choices are like surgical punches that land. They’re clear and talented and hard-working. But – and – they are stolid. Restrained. Their instinct is to pull back. Like their town.

In this play Everywhere Signs Fall, the characters are working very hard to avoid dealing with the problems they should be confronting. They’re distracted and desperate and irrational. It’s like the house is on fire, but they’re trying to pretend its not. But then moments come for the characters when they can’t ignore that they’re burning and they explode in fear or rage or desperation or humor. Something unrestrained. And aggressive.

I’m just describing how strange it is to watch a play being rehearsed and realize how many ways it can be altered, changed, and adjusted because of the different live energies that different live actors and acting styles bring to a script. Even geography effects the final production.

In case you didn’t know it already, in case you’ve heard it but didn’t really believe it, in case you really did think that “Live theater is always different” is as much a performance cliché as “I’m just taking it oneday at a time” is a sports cliché, please believe me that live theater is always different. I don’t mean that someone might flub a line or forget a few pages of dialogue or say a certain line in a slightly different way. I mean that the show you watch on Thursday and what you feel and think when you watch it will be entirely different the next time you see that play – depending on the actors who do thescript, the town in which you’re watching it, the size of the audience, the style of the director, the weather, the stage, the day, etc., etc., etc.

I’ve heard poets say that their poems should mean different things to different people. In theater, we actually dramatize the concept.

If you don’t believe me, you should spend the next month seeing a few plays three different times. As an added bonus, if you actually pay for three tickets to the same show, you’ll earn the undying love of every theater in town. Love is good. Enjoy.

Rehearsals for my play at Gremlin Theatre begin this evening. For a playwright, rehearsals are the beginning of a particular kind of hell. For an actor, rehearsals are sometimes the best experience of the play. Anything is possible in a rehearsal room. You don’t know the character yet. You start crawling in to the skin of another person and playing around – like Tom Hanks in Big, only better. For a playwright, there is very little to do now except worry about what needs to be fixed. When playwrights go to rehearsals, we wind up hiding in the corner somewhere, biting our nails or trying to keep our legs from jittering loudly while we watch the actors play around, discover, explore, stumble, experiment, etc. All the while, we’re wondering whether the reason that they can’t seem to say a particular line effectively is because, “I am the worst writer on the face ofthe planet! What was I thinking?!?!” Personally, neurotically, I wear hats to rehearsals so that I have something to hide under and, also, perhaps, as a disguise. If the actors can’t recognize me, then, I figure, they can’t blame me.

Other kinds of writers probably never experience this unique type of torture. Like all writers, the playwright has to confront critics who believe the writing isn't up to par. Oddly, we sometimes confront those people live and in person as they are experiencing the work itself. In a room full of 100 people or more the odds are high that at least one person is going to despise whatever is happening. Really despise. Like, want to get revenge despise. Playwrights, theater people in general, invite all those people into the same room, join them in that room, then shut ourselves in together. (As I write these words, I suddenly realize what sadomasochists we must be. That’s a revelation that’s gonna smart.) The overarching torture of being a playwright is that, no matter how good or bad we are, we’re dependent on so many other people to put the words – and the world of the play those words create – out to the audience successfully. I confess this to you now, but trust me, you’ll never hear me say it again. It’s incredibly bad form, when someone criticizes your play, to point petulantly at the lighting designer and say, “It wasn’t my fault! It was her! Of course you can’t enjoy the lines when you can’t SEE the people saying them! You don’t understand! It wasn’t my fault! I swear!”

Of course, the reason I am a playwright is because I actually love actors and theater and the unique and dangerous energy in a roomfull of diverse people who have come together, live, in order to see a show and create a show. The best experiences I have ever had with any kind of art have always been in theaters where I felt as though I could quite precisely feel exactly what the character on stage was feeling. Watching an actor in Dario Fo’s We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay! reach slowly toward his chest, I could feel – even though I was 50 feet up in the most ridiculously steep theater seating in the world – I could literally feel the heartache that the character felt. In other situations, I’ve felt clarity or sensuality or anxiety or confusion. Fear, delight, desire, and tragedy. But more clear and transcendent in a way that I can’t comprehend in everyday life. I’ve felt – not often, but enough– that somehow the confusing and overwhelming chaotic truth of life has been distilled like crack cocaine into the very air around me. I’m not kidding. Like, the world in a bottle in my hand, in my lungs, in my blood and my brain. Universes of emotion and understanding that I could never experience in my day-to-day, moment-to-moment, who-walked-the-goddamned-dog-this-morning life. If I hadn’t felt that, then I’m confident I would have given up theater years ago – and probably been happier or, at least, more financially prosperous.

What am I saying? I guess . . . playwrights are like sadomasochistic, nail-biting crack addicts with shaky legs. O, and some of us like to wear silly hats.

Wait! Go see my play! Have I mentioned this yet? Seriously. Don’t take any of the above rambling as an indication that the play isn’t worth seeing. Getting you to see the play is the reason I’m writing this blog. Buy tickets. The reservation number is 651-228-7008. It’s called Everywhere Signs Fall, starring Tracey Maloney (incredible actress!), John Middleton (amazing actor!), and Paul Cram (I don’t really know his work yet, but he gave a heartbreaking audition, and he seems like a serious guy!). It runs from April 18 to May 11 at the Loading Dock Theater in St. Paul. It's produced by Gremlin Theatre. And it's directed by Leah Cooper, who I’d praise to high heaven for all her various talents, but she also happens to be my wife, so, you know, if I tell you too much about her charms, you might try to steal her from me. Yes, while you may think positively of her already because you may know that she used to run your favorite Minnesota Fringe Festival, I really need to keep her true brilliance secret, so that I can keep the competition manageable.

I think the content of the play is pretty phenomenal too. I really do. All playwrights do. We wouldn’t write the plays that we write unless we thought that they were going to blow your mind into the next time zone. At least, I hope we do. That’s why I write plays. I assume that’s why other people do too, because I know for a fact that they don’t do it for the money. I personally cherish the experience of having my mind blown, and I want to share it. I believe we all have a mind-blowing pleasure node in our brain. It may be buried deeply underneath the stare-at-the-internet-for-no-good-reason pleasure node or the television-is-shiney-too pleasure node, but it exists. I’m sure of it.

I’ll talk about the specifics of the play more in upcoming blog posts. I’ll introduce myself in some more concrete detail. And I’ll give more details of the odd stuff that happens in a rehearsal room. But seriously, call now – 651-228-7008. Make reservations.

Because while I love a good rant, I really wouldn’t be writing this blog if I didn’t hope that you, Rake reader, can be convinced to spend an evening with this play. I’d rather not have the personal attention really. I prefer to translate what I’m feeling and thinking in to actual, creative narratives that aren’t about me, serve you a good evening of entertainment, and, just maybe, blow your mind. Unless you have the Guthrie's budget, however, its pretty hard to market theater. So I’m writing this blog, getting the word out. Because it isn’t really theater unless there are people in the audience for it. Not just a few people but a bunch of people. I don’t know what the precise number is, but somewhere over 50% capacity, the experience of the play changes completely for everyone involved, audience and performers. Have I mentioned the theater’s phone number? Why haven’t you made a reservation yet?
 
I really don’t blame you for missing all the other great, intimate productions that get produced on a monthly basis in the Twin Cities. How were you supposed to know which ones were good? And I bet you feel that there are few experiences worse than bad theater. You’re trapped. You can’t step over people to escape. You’re forced to laugh occasionally at some lame joke because you feel so bad for the actors who are standing 10 feet from you, live, and trying so hard. You start to wonder whether your watch has stopped – and the time-space continuum has been forever mangled right there during that insufferable show. Meanwhile, on stage, you know the playwright is lecturing at you about some news item that you were hoping to ignore until your monthly utility bills got paid and your goddamned dog got walked. You’d actually like to stick forks in your eyes in order to dull the pain of the play you’re watching and the experience you’re having. Bad television is never this bad.

But with great risk comes great reward. At least that’s what my fortune cookie said last week. And this play is great. At the very least I can promise you that I don’t lecture in my plays. I rarely write directly about current events. I think people are more important than issues. Or, at least, issues are subordinate to people. And the multitude of people in this world and how we all try to live in this world is enough fodder, the only real fodder, for the best art. I don’t need or want to whack you over the head with a metaphorical pedagogical baseball bat. If I did, I’d be a well-paid and infinitely useless political pundit.

Mostly, I just love the real spinning of real good yarns. Really, good, engaging, complex, active stories. – This is a great play. I’m not kidding. If you go, you will stroke the pleasure node in your brain that likes complex intellectual and emotional engagement. I’m telling you, so now you know. No excuses. Call for reservations right now 651-228-7008. It’s produced by Gremlin Theatre at the Loading Dock Theatre in St. Paul. It’ll be worth it.

Future blog posts will be more brief. Today’s verbose rambling is brought to you by my "first day of rehearsal" jitters.

Sunday was all about getting home. It's always bittersweet leaving Austin. It really is such a unique and interesting town. So as we drive away from the skyline and part of me fantasizes about sleeping in my own bed, another part of me can't help but look back an extra time and take it all in.

Here, I present my overall musings about the trip:

• The first thing that strikes you walking the streets and standing at bars is the sameness of everyone. In any normal day, in any other town, most of the hipsters descending on Austin's streets might seem unique and cutting edge. But here mod haircuts, skinny jeans, horn-rimmed glasses, beards, vintage-esque clothes, leggings, Vans, and white belts are the norm, and suddenly, no one looks different. It's an odd feeling I experience at every music festival I go to. Christian called it "different the same." I like that.
  
• I'm frightened to see plaid and flannel coming back as an ironic fashion choice. Black and red plaid is just not hip. And I'm old enough to remember it the first time around. It's basically the last original trend there was, way back in the early '90s. I just didn't think it looked good the first time around. Are we going lumberjacking? Plus, this is it; nothing people come up with to recycle will be original anymore after that. It's recycled recycling from here on out.
• People like free booze and will wait in excruciatingly long lines to get it, even when they don't have a clue what bands they'll be listening to inside.
  
  Continued advertisement
• Feet are not meant for this kind of punishment.
• Texas knows chips and salsa. They always taste better down there.
• The sound at venues during festivals is sub-par no matter how much the band complains about it (which they always do) or how much they compliment the sound guy (which I saw for the first time this year... didn't help. It was feedback galore even after that!)
• Value is always on the menu at Luby's.
• Waking up to an alarm clock blasting Norteño music is jarring. Especially when the person closest to the clock can't get it to turn off.
• Texting is a necessary evil at SXSW.
• There is something refreshing about being out of touch with current events for a few days. Waiting at the airport and seeing even CNN resorting to sensationalized tabloid-style presentation of the news is very sad.
• Sonic. We need Sonic up here.
• Inside jokes are just a natural occurrence when people spend that much time together... hairsuit.
• I love my job.