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Keyword: ‘Ten Minute Play Workshop’

The Motherfucker with the Hat

September 30th, 2012 No comments

Saw Dobama’s production of Stephen Adly Guirgis‘ play on Friday night, then hit La Cave Du Vin for some beers afterward. On a few occasions during the play I found myself looking forward to the beers, but for the most part it was a good play. I thought the acting was great and Boduszek’s directing was solid, though I don’t know if some of the “longer” parts that made me wish for beer were due to pacing or if they just needed cut down by Guirgis.

The Motherfucker with the Hat is a play about love and trust, and ultimately how love is stronger than a trust that gets violated. This is unfortunate for the main character, Jackie (Jeremy Kendall), who has devoted his whole life to loving Veronica (Anjanette Hall), a woman whose drug addled brain doesn’t seem worth the dedication that Jackie is displaying. Jackie is no saint, having his own addiction problems, and having done 24 months for selling; but at least Jackie is on the wagon and trying to get straight. Helping him cope with the newfound straightness and his past addiction problems is his Sponsor and friend Ralph D (Charles Kartali) as well as Jackie’s long mistreated cousin Julio (Jimmie D. Woody). I say Veronica “isn’t worth the dedication” because right off the bat Jackie comes home, excited, having finally found work, wanting to celebrate, only to stare at a strange hat on the bedroom table. Jackie knows it’s not his hat, and wants Veronica to tell him whose hat it is, hence the title of the play. She won’t, and launches into a tirade about how Jackie won’t trust her. Probably a good choice on Jackie’s part when the inevitable and predictable revelation is made that Jackie’s sponsor, Ralph D, is the offending Motherfucker. How it is that Jackie can smell the Aqua Velva and dick on the bed and not smell the Aqua Velva on his sponsor I will leave you to ponder, but the betrayal comes as a surprise to Jackie.

The play moves in a predictable structure of pairing off–Jackie and Veronica, Jackie and Ralph D, Jackie and Julio, Jackie and Ralph and Julio, Jackie and Veronica, Ralph and Veronica, etc., you get the point. At each interview we are taken deeper into the relationships between each pairing and into the past of each character. Guirgis does a great job with these pairing offs and tells stories and develops characters in a truly engaging way–such that I was pulled in and loved the stories that I heard. However, there were also times when Guirgis got off on tangents of philosophizing that were just too damn long. In particular is the mandatory scene where Jackie confronts Ralph D. about what he has done. There is the necessary physical altercation, during which Ralph D. unbelievably beats down a more physically impressive Jackie; and then the two “discuss” the matter in a more “mature” manner. Undoubtedly the two would fight, especially after the atrocious things that Ralph D. says to Jackie about Veronica (and what he did to her). It is less likely that Jackie would stick around for the ten or fifteen minutes (it seemed to me) that he did to hear Ralph D.’s defense of himself. I can understand the need on Jackie’s part to know why Ralph did what he did. I can understand that Ralph is a no-good amoral scumbag who takes advantage of situations to his own benefit. But the seemingly interminable cyclical nature of the scene was not necessary: Ralph castigates Jackie for ever getting arrested–after all, it was Jackie’s fault that he was sent to jail and left his woman alone–not Ralph’s fault for being a depraved ass-wad. Fine, I get it, but to let Ralph say it three, four times, as he justifies himself in some long-winded psycho-babbled philosophizing was too much. Not that I don’t believe that there are people like that: there are. And not that they don’t drone on and on: they do. But on stage it was too goddam long. And that wasn’t the only section that was long, and strangely so, given the tightness and the pop of other parts of the piece. It’s almost like some self-important workshop director got his hands on this and said “we really need a lot more here from Ralph so he can explain himself”. No, you don’t. You didn’t.

Anyway, there are some truly sizzling moments and Guirgis, to steal from Jean Shepherd, works in “profanity the way other artists might work in oils or clay”. Ultimately, Guirgis wins by painting a painful portrait of people who have betrayed themselves and each other and have tried their best to kill any hope or chance of love they have. Jackie’s love for Veronica is undoubtedly true, and that makes the outcome of the play all them more heartrending, but Guirgis holds no punches.

Lucy’s Forbidden Fruit Salad

December 15th, 2011 No comments

Loneliness is the key ingredient of the fruit salad I am about to prepare for you.

Wrapped up the Writing from Character workshop this evening at CPT and it was a blast.

The evening started out much as the evening started Monday with a lot of intense movement work. This time we were in Parish Hall, so we had quite a bit more space and a nice wood floor to move around on. We started in a circle and did a quick refresher on names and then moved on to Sun Salutations. Again, I was happy that my P90X work came in handy–as I felt like I was working straight out of CardioX. We started with some pretty intense yoga salutations that increased in speed. There was a little bit of plyo in the jumping–you know, we mixed it up; because variety is the spice of life. Sorry, channeling Tony Horton. Next we imagined that the large expanse of floor was gridded up at 90 degree angles. We all moved along in lines, redirecting when we encountered others. We played with tempo (speeding up our movement and slowing down); we played with spatial arrangements; we kept each other in our soft vision areas–periphery–and mimicked each other; we changed our core body positions in height: slinking down, rising up, crawling, tumbling, jumping. The sweat was pouring off all of us when we were finished, and I know that my legs will be sore tomorrow.

We took a break and then came back in costume: dressed as our personas from Monday. We walked about as before, getting a sense of ourselves in our characters. Then Jeffrey divided us into groups. We were charged with creating a 5 minute ensemble piece in :50 minutes which we then performed for the other groups. For those of you who’ve seen Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant, you have a sense already of what the pieces were like, as they revolved around the creation of one course of a meal. For those of you who haven’t seen Conni’s, your time is running out. Very like Conni’s, the segments that we created had to have several components: 1) we were working with food, so we had to create a dish (the food was very basic: carrots, boiled eggs, apples, lemons, nuts, etc.); 2) the dish that we created had to fulfill a need of one of at least one of the characters in our group; 3) there had to be a song; 4) audience participation was greatly encouraged; 5) something in the piece needed to reveal more about each of our characters (deepen them); 6) there should be movement involved (i.e. no static tableaux); 7) we had to work together to create the piece, accepting as much as possible all ideas, suggestions. It was a challenge.

Fortunately, I worked with a great team. A great team! I was in a group with Lynna Metrisin, who was fantastic in my thesis play Patterns and who directed Cat Kenney’s play that ran on the same bill as mine in Springboard; Katie Nabors, who recently starred in The Underpants at the Beck Center; and the always fabulous Lauren B. Smith of concon fame. Our short piece centered on getting love for Lucy (Smith). This was accomplished by the other characters: Luna (Katie) my “hay rollin” cousin from the farm days; Bernie (Metrisin) who played a dispirited Browns fan turned coach for our team; and myself, Schnitzel Fritz: ponderer extraordinaire, who happens to be skilled at animal husbandry. Our piece started with a quick dance routine that was energetically and spontaneously created by Luna. The dance involved using paper plate bowls in either hand, choreographed movements, clapping of plates, and a quick spin around our protagonist, Lucy, as she sang about her need for love. Bernie, Luna, and I then gave Lucy a quick going over as we circled around and concluded that she needed a “stud,” whom we obtained from the audience (Randy Muchowski–who is an Actor Teacher at Great Lakes Theater Festival and who is also fantastic). Luna blew up a latex glove and Fritz gave Randy a quick instructional session on handling large breasts and how to clench a nipple firmly while pulling: Luna was quite inspired. We then guided Randy to a nearby dinner table where Lucy awaited his company. Luna dolled out some dishes to the audience while the two love birds at their appetizer course. Luna and Fritz then served up the “Intercourse” segment of the meal, but not before presenting it to the audience for inspection. Luna carried a thick, long carrot with two appropriately placed hardboiled eggs at the base; while Fritz carried a plate with the nippily ends of two lemons upward and a succulently halved and spread red pepper resembling another portion of the human anatomy. The meal was the generative portion of the supper which, after being presented to the dining pair was eaten with great enthusiasm, culminating in the orgasmically spontaneous noshing of an apple by Lucy. Then she was sleepy and laid down upon Randy. Later Lucy was heard to say that while it was not love, it was satisfying.

Such was our stint into the dynamic world of character creation and character in action, a la Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant!

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