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[Re-post from Playwrights Local]

Millwood Outpost by Tom Hayes opens on Friday, March 18 and runs through April 2. Directed by Rachel Zake, this new drama features Joe Milan, August Scarpelli, Zach Palumbo, Sean Seibert, Quin Johnson, Tom Hayes, and Juliette Regnier. Thanks to Tom for this preview! 

What kind of play is Millwood Outpost, and how did you get the idea for it?

I originally started writing this play many years ago, probably fifteen or so. I was going through a David Mamet phase and I’d just read Lakeboat, a play about a bunch of men out on a cargo boat on Lake Superior. I was fascinated by the window that the college kid provided on the lives of the working men and the stories that they told.

When I was just out of high school, and during my first summer out of college, I worked summers for the Ohio Department of Transportation. I was one of those people you see with “Stop/Slow” signs. I also cleaned-up dead animals and weed-whacked endless miles of guardrail. The environment was both similar and dissimilar to that in Lakeboat: similar, in that there was a hypermasculine atmosphere, dissimilar in that ODOT had several women working there, and they were greatly resented.

That early play, like Lakeboat, was more monologues and two character interactions. Events were episodic and seemed to focus more on the joy of what people said rather than any plot or story. I knew that this approach wouldn’t work, at least, not the way I wanted it to, so I set about moving it toward a more dramatic structure. At first, I was interested in the two college kids (the characters Zak and Nick). They offered that “fresh” insight into the world, and were also not jaded by it. I also was interested in the initiation aspect, that is, men bringing a boy through a ritual ceremony into manhood. But even more than this, I was interested in the notion of a perverse idea of manhood, which made a sort of negative ritual or negative initiation. It occurred to me that another focus for the play was the resentment that these men feel about having to change — or being told to, at least.

The best way, it seemed to me, to get at the problem of forced change was to create an external environment that is threatening everyone inside the outpost. At first, it’s innocuous, normal even. But, as things move along, the character of the threat changes. No one inside can define it. They’re forced to tell each other stories of past experiences that touch on what is undefined, but they still can’t put their finger on it, and it scares the hell out of them. All of these elements combine to create a dramatic play that also has elements of magical realism, I guess. A sort of strangeness that I believe will come through in the production.

As a playwright, were there any other models for Millwood Outpost, or did you see yourself as working in any other particular genre or tradition?

I don’t know that there are any [other] models that I was thinking of for this play. I know I enjoy plays where there are strange, unexpected things going on that point to a bigger universe or dimension. I can think of plays by Mac Wellman, Conor McPherson, Sam Shepard, Will Eno, Erin Courtney, Carson Kreitzer, Anne Washburn, and others. I like plays in which there are not only elements of the theatrical experience in terms of light and sound and strange story elements, but also in the language itself, like Harold Pinter and the patter, unanswered questions, and bizarre situations people find themselves in, as well as the equally bizarre or understated reactions to the predicament.

What has the process been like so far of working with director Rachel Zake and the rest of the cast and staff?

I’ve had a wonderful experience working on the play. Rachel is smart, professional, and demanding. Her process of getting to dramatic moments in the play has been exciting to watch and has drawn my attention to aspects of the play that I either hadn’t noticed or that I hadn’t focused on. She can really see what’s in the script and figure out how to get it out of the actors for everyone to see and experience, which I think is great. Rachel has an eagle-eye for detail and makes actors stay focused when things get a bit…unfocused during rehearsals, which can happen. Rachel’s the first director of this play, which takes a special type of creativity and imagination. 

The actors have been great, too. Sean has brought a stern, ferocity to the character of Rollo. Joe has dredged up a truly mean-spirited Digger which he, literally, spits out. August brings out the no-nonsense dignity of a man who just wants to get his work done and go home. Zach brings an energy and truthfulness to the character of Nick, which is a critically necessary foil to the men at ODOT. Mugs is doing fantastic as an earnest and naive high school grad who is being initiated into something he may want to avoid. 

[I’m playing] the role of Dad and I won’t speak about the process of working with myself because it’s rotten. (Laughs.) I’ll let others answer that question. We also have Juliette Regnier as The Voice, and she does a wonderful job as the ominous expression of doom coming through the radio, striking fear in the hearts of the men.

In addition to being the playwright, you’re also the Managing Director of the company, Playwrights Local. What do you think is the value of this type of new work to the community?

When a group of us founded Playwrights Local in 2015, we wanted to be a theater committed to staging the work of local playwrights. At the time, there were virtually no theaters producing the work of local playwrights on their main stage. There are plenty of theaters around that will run some staged readings or some other small things, but they don’t put local plays on their main stage. The consequence of this is that the plays that come into town are written by people from other cities and other states whose interests and concerns don’t reflect those here in Cleveland. Another consequence is the lack of production of local playwrights creates a huge hole in the theater scene. The people of Northeast Ohio, believe it or not, actually do have something to say, and often have a pretty interesting manner of saying it. That should be represented on the stages in town.

I went and saw The Internationalist (Anne Washburn) last night at convergence and was quite happy with seeing it. I was a bit worried initially as I read a New York Times theater review of the play and, while the reviewer was clearly interested in the play it was not favorable review. In fact, it put a bit of fear in me that I was going to endure yet another evening of theater that was so-so. But, as I mentioned at the outset, I was happily surprised and engaged by it.

The plot loosely follows the character Lowell (Tom Kondilas) who has come from the United States to a strange and unknown/undisclosed country on business. Lowell is suffering from jet lag, cannot speak the language in the country, and suffers certain impudent assumptions about his character based on his being from the ole US of A. While the plot follows Lowell’s experiences, many of which are strange, the plot also dallies with the sexual relationship between Lowell and Sara (Laurel Hoffman). In many instances the play takes on a sort of Noir detective feel that is pleasantly enhanced by Laurel Hoffman’s costuming, Clyde Simon’s set design, and certainly Lisa L. Wiley’s light design.

Much of my concern at seeing the piece was over the various “rumors” I had heard all over the place describing the unintelligible sections/swaths of text. The sections are provided when the “natives” are speaking their language. When talking with Clyde after the show, he spoke of how massive the swaths of this text are and how there is no stage direction provided as to what to do with the text. Given this fact, I can say unabashedly the Clyde did a fantastic job in directing the piece as he turned these huge chunks of strangeness into very meaningful sections: sections with grace, urgency, energy, even genuine emotion and longing. Laurel Hoffman did, predictably, a fantastic job with her role and is always worth seeing. The massive sections of glossolalia that she has to spit out are spit out with an astonishing fluency. God knows how much time she spent working it out and my mind laughingly speculates on Laurel and Geoff at home of an evening speaking this language together around the fireplace. (Congratulations to them on their marriage as well!) But, in truth, every one of the actors did a fantastic job with the gibberish that Washburn crafted, as did Clyde. Especially Clyde. I have not read the play so I do not know what is or is not in the stage directions, but according to Clyde there is nothing to give direction to the massive swaths of foreignness that reign on stage. Clyde does a great job with providing not only an interpretation of the text, but offering the audience an opportunity to understand it. These sections prove again and again that theater is a visual medium as much as an aural and logically crafted one. Much of what is understood during these strange sections is understood by watching the physical interaction between the characters/actors and how they physically manifest the text. Handled poorly, these sections would become a real drag. They were NOT handled poorly. Ray Caspio, as James for instance, does a masterful job telling a story/joke in Washburn’s gibberish, gesticulating all the while to make it clear what is going on. Caspio is equally worth seeing in his role as the Ancient Bartender, in this role I took no end of delight in watching his rickety tottering, the manner in which he meticulously maintained the lanky rigidness of the aged Nazi-poisoner.

The play itself consists of a thin plot about the goings on in a foreign company which Lowell has come to work for/with. His relationship to the company is unclear, but he seems to be some sort of financial manager slash troubleshooter. The goings-on in the company are complicated by his sexual tryst with Sara, who announces herself as a “colleague” when she picks Lowell up at the airport. This turns into trouble later when Lowell discovers that she is a secretary rather than “an equal” in terms of position, salary, etc. Interspersed with this story are various episodes, the strangest of which is Lowell’s encounter with a prostitute on the street. Some of these episodes are not materially relevant to the plot, perhaps, but add significant texture to the play. I say “perhaps” because it is not clear precisely what the plot of the play is. This is where, I think, the New York Times review was the toughest on Washburn, and perhaps rightly so. Is the story about Lowell’s experience in a strange land? Is it about the company that Lowell is working for? Is it about his relationship with Sara? Is it about his strange experience in a foreign land? In the end, it is likely about all of these things, but I believe Washburn is aiming mostly as the sense of strangeness that comes with being out of place: locations are disjointed/distorted, cultural practices are distorted, language is distorted, and even scenes are oddly shaped and distorted. Having read Washburn’s play Apparition: An Uneasy Play of the Underknown in New Downtown Now, it is clear that she likes to experiment with what is vague, indistinct, and unclear–as well as what may be eerie to some. In The Internationalist, Washburn explores this region again and places the audience in a location where nothing is ever explicit or certain as demonstrated by the conclusion of the play (which I won’t spoil here).

The cast of The Internationalist at concon is fantastic, including Laura Starnik, Geoff Hoffman, and Robert Hawkes, who is wonderful in his dual roles as both Simon and Paul. The play is definitely worth seeing and runs through Saturday, December 17.