Wednesday, June 06, 2007
My City Fix
What is it about cities? I love living in Indiana, PA in many ways, but from time to time I need my city fix. It's a habit...no, a feeding of my creative spirit...that is periodically necessary.
I'm on a trip to NYC to visit with the director of our season opener, The Beauty Queen of Leenane. I always look forward to trips to the city, and this time I took the train so that I could do some work on my laptop on the way. I was able to work on a set design for The Beauty Queen of Leenane, and my contribution to Footlight Players Theater-for-Youth Company--a script for Stone Soup--Island Style (see www.arts.iup.edu for more about THAT).
Last night I rolled in and, after the familiar scent of New Jersey, was reacquainted with Penn Station at rush hour. Not too bad. The usual entertainment. Seems like the transit authority puts a "extreme" person every few hundred yards just to keep us amused. Found my way to the Westwind Diner on 9th Ave between 43rd and 44th street to meet with director of Beauty Queen, Jason Chimonides. He invited me to sit in on a staged reading of his newest play The Stone Age, at the Manhattan Theater Club (www.mcctheater.org). An off-Broadway theater company that specializes in fostering new plays from a collaborative of playwrights (like Jason), actors, and a few directors.
I love working on new plays, so what a TREAT! We gathered in a small conference room on the third floor, and under the buzz of flourescent lights around a long table with scripts, pads of paper and a few bottles of Poland Springs water the actors assembled gave voice to the printed words. This was Jason's third draft of the play, and its third reading. The actors had studied the script and gave their most confident (appearing) interpretations suggested by the words. I sat listening, compelled by an opening scene between a son (who we find out has returned from near death at a hospital--but we don't know why) and his father (a crude and forceful letch recently served divorce papers and wanting to move in with his son for a while). LOTS of unanswered questions, dramatic questions that I wanted to have answered. As the play unwound each answer to a question revealed lots of other questions. Walter (the son) has recently been left by his girlfriend Hannah, but we don't know why. It's a rather raw set of characters and circumstances (the son was beaten and left for dead by teenage thugs, the father turns out to be a brilliant (genius?) evolutionary psychologist who tries to confront his rival (his wife's lover) but does it so badly that the tables are turned and at the end of the first act he is left beaten and bleeding on the floor of his son's apartment, with an aghast Hannah (who has come by for some things...we know not what yet) looking on, and Walter going into a panic attack--something he's been experiencing since his stabbing.
It was a funny play. The first act is all about the father/son relationship, with continual references to Darwinic evolutionary "fitness" by the Dad (Francis) and Walter's nearly constant frustration with his father's theories that are so politically incorrect as to at once be hysterical and disgusting. (Men are not fit for monogamy...it's all about spreading around the semen, the DNA--referred to in the crudest ways sometimes). The second act is all about the lover/son relationship, with many of the same themes explored from a fundamentally different angle.
Jason's father, interestingly enough, is a behavioral psychologist. Much of what Jason writes about stems from what he's heard, what he's experienced, in living with HIS father. We can only create from the raw materials that we have experienced.
Which returns me to my earlier theme. My city fix. I went to a coffee shop this morning with Jason to discuss set design ideas for The Beauty Queen of Leenane, but couldn't seem to concentrate for the longest time about it because of the need to discuss everything else...life. As Jason put it, he's not as interested in theater as he is about life. That's what we study when we make theater. (His trait, as a playwright, is to create really well drawn, psychologically interesting, characters). I concur. On the way to the coffee shop we talked about Brooklyn (by population, about the size of Finland--could be its own country), museums, gardens, food...all kinds of things. When we got into The Tea House, I just kept looking around at new, stimulating images, textures, colors, that a stranger in a new place sees. The experience of being in a city is so rich and stimulating...THAT's my fix. In order to CREATE art...in order to look at the world and report on it as an artist...I need to continually refill my tank. I remember looking at something as simple as a mundane post--a large round column inside the coffee shop holding up the ceiling--it was plastered with playbills and posters advertising jazz groups and such. I thought, "how interesting...are there any plays in this upcoming season in which I can use this idea?" Perhaps. We'll see. By coming to the city and getting my well refilled with images and experiences, I'll be able to draw fuller buckets from it.
I'm on a trip to NYC to visit with the director of our season opener, The Beauty Queen of Leenane. I always look forward to trips to the city, and this time I took the train so that I could do some work on my laptop on the way. I was able to work on a set design for The Beauty Queen of Leenane, and my contribution to Footlight Players Theater-for-Youth Company--a script for Stone Soup--Island Style (see www.arts.iup.edu for more about THAT).
Last night I rolled in and, after the familiar scent of New Jersey, was reacquainted with Penn Station at rush hour. Not too bad. The usual entertainment. Seems like the transit authority puts a "extreme" person every few hundred yards just to keep us amused. Found my way to the Westwind Diner on 9th Ave between 43rd and 44th street to meet with director of Beauty Queen, Jason Chimonides. He invited me to sit in on a staged reading of his newest play The Stone Age, at the Manhattan Theater Club (www.mcctheater.org). An off-Broadway theater company that specializes in fostering new plays from a collaborative of playwrights (like Jason), actors, and a few directors.
I love working on new plays, so what a TREAT! We gathered in a small conference room on the third floor, and under the buzz of flourescent lights around a long table with scripts, pads of paper and a few bottles of Poland Springs water the actors assembled gave voice to the printed words. This was Jason's third draft of the play, and its third reading. The actors had studied the script and gave their most confident (appearing) interpretations suggested by the words. I sat listening, compelled by an opening scene between a son (who we find out has returned from near death at a hospital--but we don't know why) and his father (a crude and forceful letch recently served divorce papers and wanting to move in with his son for a while). LOTS of unanswered questions, dramatic questions that I wanted to have answered. As the play unwound each answer to a question revealed lots of other questions. Walter (the son) has recently been left by his girlfriend Hannah, but we don't know why. It's a rather raw set of characters and circumstances (the son was beaten and left for dead by teenage thugs, the father turns out to be a brilliant (genius?) evolutionary psychologist who tries to confront his rival (his wife's lover) but does it so badly that the tables are turned and at the end of the first act he is left beaten and bleeding on the floor of his son's apartment, with an aghast Hannah (who has come by for some things...we know not what yet) looking on, and Walter going into a panic attack--something he's been experiencing since his stabbing.
It was a funny play. The first act is all about the father/son relationship, with continual references to Darwinic evolutionary "fitness" by the Dad (Francis) and Walter's nearly constant frustration with his father's theories that are so politically incorrect as to at once be hysterical and disgusting. (Men are not fit for monogamy...it's all about spreading around the semen, the DNA--referred to in the crudest ways sometimes). The second act is all about the lover/son relationship, with many of the same themes explored from a fundamentally different angle.
Jason's father, interestingly enough, is a behavioral psychologist. Much of what Jason writes about stems from what he's heard, what he's experienced, in living with HIS father. We can only create from the raw materials that we have experienced.
Which returns me to my earlier theme. My city fix. I went to a coffee shop this morning with Jason to discuss set design ideas for The Beauty Queen of Leenane, but couldn't seem to concentrate for the longest time about it because of the need to discuss everything else...life. As Jason put it, he's not as interested in theater as he is about life. That's what we study when we make theater. (His trait, as a playwright, is to create really well drawn, psychologically interesting, characters). I concur. On the way to the coffee shop we talked about Brooklyn (by population, about the size of Finland--could be its own country), museums, gardens, food...all kinds of things. When we got into The Tea House, I just kept looking around at new, stimulating images, textures, colors, that a stranger in a new place sees. The experience of being in a city is so rich and stimulating...THAT's my fix. In order to CREATE art...in order to look at the world and report on it as an artist...I need to continually refill my tank. I remember looking at something as simple as a mundane post--a large round column inside the coffee shop holding up the ceiling--it was plastered with playbills and posters advertising jazz groups and such. I thought, "how interesting...are there any plays in this upcoming season in which I can use this idea?" Perhaps. We'll see. By coming to the city and getting my well refilled with images and experiences, I'll be able to draw fuller buckets from it.
# posted by Brian Jones @ 11:23 AM 
