Remembering Werner and Bob

One of the beautiful things about theater is the relationships you form. 

In some cases, those relationships last a lifetime. I'm married to my costar from a community theater production of The Crucible. One of my best friends in the world I met in a high school speech class. 

And then there are the people who make their entrances and exits, as ephemeral as theater itself. Their lives go on, your life goes on, but you may never again share the same breathing space. And yet, given the peculiarities of what we do, we still feel connected by gossamer strings.

For instance, I haven't been in the same room with my fellow Ozarks alum Brian in over a decade, but he's chummy with a whole bunch of folks who were in the theater company I cofounded in North Hollywood. I also know for a fact that the next time I see Brian--and you never know when paths may cross in this crazy world--we will fall into the same rhythms we shared in the Seay Theatre green room. 

It's strange, looking over my friends on Facebook, how many of them I share a single resume line with. A single show. And yet we continue to interact, staying up on each other's lives, celebrating each others successes, mourning each other's losses.

There have been two such losses recently that have made me a bit introspective.

The first is Werner Trieschmann. I knew Werner as a playwright, but he was, of course, so much more. He led Critics Institute at our statewide American College Theater Festival (ACTF), and was the first person outside my circle of friends to read and give notes on my writing. 

"OK, Those are my notes," he wrote. "I hope they have helped you. However, I would remind you that these are just observations. Writers have to write and follow their own wanderlust. This is a unique and interesting work. You have great promise. Write more. Produce it. Send it out."

That meant the world to a 20 year-old living in Clarksville, Arkansas. Especially coming from an Arkansas playwright whose work I idolized. I did write more, I did produce it, and I did send it out. 

The second is Robert Machray Ward. I met Robert through Paul Storiale. Paul was managing The Sherry and Whitmore-Lindley, in addition to writing and producing his own stuff, including his very successful play, The Columbine Project. I was feeling a bit lost, on the cusp of walking away from the theater I started. Paul suggested I get out and get to know the LA theater scene by becoming a reviewer.

I joined Bob's stable of reviewers in 2010, and did indeed get to know the LA theater scene. For the first time in a while, I felt excited by the prospect of live theater, and reviewing shows produced by Sacred Fools, Theater West, Santa Monica Playhouse, and so many others made my decision to leave my own company a whole lot easier.

If you dig deep into the archives of Mad Theatrics (and I don't really recommend doing so) you will see a shift around the time I started reviewing for Bob. My writing shifted away from Jeremiads about how things went wrong at the old company and toward what was going right at under-99 seat theaters across LA.

I owe both Werner and Bob a debt of gratitude. They brought out the best in me, despite our brief encounters.

On the Importance of Comparing Notes

My wife and I were briefly involved in a group that has since become rather infamous for institutionalized abuse. It's a pretty sad commentary on the world in which we live that I've just described at least a dozen organizations.

While we were in the group, we never really compared notes. We wanted to think the best of this group that we joined. Although neither one of us suffered the worst abuse that has since been reported, we nevertheless paid witness to petty abuses that stood in stark contrast to the stated aims and goals of the group. What led to our departure from the group was finally, at long last, comparing notes.

Patterns of abuse emerge. "You saw that happen? Well let me tell you about this thing that happened!"

When you hold that stuff in, you can begin to doubt yourself. "Did that really happen?" "Am I overreacting?" "Am I just recontextualizing a memory of something that was benign at the time?"

I've been nursing a grudge for a little over thirteen years. It grew out of another group, one my wife and I started this time, rather than joined. I've come to think of it as "nursing a grudge," I should say. I was frozen out, bullied, yelled at, and ultimately bailed on a group I put a significant amount of sweat equity into. The grudge is completely justified.

But years have passed. An ocean has flown under that particular bridge. And so I came to believe that, to some degree, the grudge was on me. Actually blaming myself for the way I felt.

As it turns out, you can still compare notes a decade later. You can hear about others who have suffered very similar (though not identical) treatment at the hands of a particular person. Someone who bullies, belittles, and bellows. Someone who will smile to your face while assassinating your character behind your back. Someone, it would seem, who may just get his comeuppance.

Echoing into Nothing

 

Photo by Marcelo Jaboo

One of the damndest things about theater happens to be its greatest strength: it lives and breathes in the moment. If you weren't there, you missed it. When I think about how many original works have faded back into the shadows, never to be heard of again, it makes my heart hurt. I recall so many nights, sipping cheap wine in storefront lobbies, looking at dusty framed posters of such shows. I have some such posters on my own walls at home (which reminds me, I need to do some dusting.)

To quote the poet, "This isn't meant to last/This is for right now." It's just the nature of the beast, and like I said at the top, it gives live theater its particular strength. Our audiences are present witnesses to the creation of our art. Sure, we meet and rehearse and build sets and hang lights and all of that. But the whole thing doesn't mean anything until at least one warm body watches as it all comes to fruition.

And when it's all over? It's all over. Unless some forward-thinking person took pictures at a rehearsal, or some packrat happened to hold on to a program, there is precious little evidence that anything magical actually happened. We have our memories.

Oh yeah... and we have reviews.

Let's say you see one of those dusty posters. Maybe you recognize an actor's name. Maybe you just like the art. You whip out your mobile device and see what else you can find out about that show. You might find some archive on the theater company's website. But maybe that company went through a nasty divorce with some past members, and petulantly deleted all reference to them. Maybe you find a resume line on an actor's website. Maybe, just maybe you find a review.

I'm somewhat inclined to rev Mad Theatrics back up, if only to keep a running record of productions that won't live past their original run. If only there were more hours in a day.

This is just to say...

I have changed
the theme
that was on
this weblog

and which
you were probably
annoyed
to look at

You're welcome
this is much better
so dark
and theatrical

'Tis Drama Tech*

My wife and I started this blog back in 2006. It was a place for our idle thoughts about theater, and eventually grew into a middling source of reviews and opinions of and about Los Angeles theater.

We effectively killed it off in 2016, around the time we decided to move to Texas. I've posted a couple of times since then, mostly to direct folks to our "new digs" at Wordpress.

I haven't really done anything with the Wordpress site.

Mad Theatrics is staying up as an archive. Mostly for the reviews. Apparently my old design doesn't work on mobile, so I picked a boring design that does. Boy howdy, does the blog look like shit now. Yikes.

 *(an anagram of Mad Theatrics)

"Acrobats of the Soul": A Revisitation and Review

I recently revisited a book I haven’t read since college, Ron Jenkins’ Acrobats of the Soul: Comedy & Virtuosity in Contemporary American Theatre. It is a time capsule from the late eighties, each chapter sketching a portrait of a variety artist or circus. Performers such as Paul Zaloom, Penn & Teller, Spalding Gray, Avner the Eccentric, and the Flying Karamazov brothers; Circuses ranging from Cirque du Soleil's then-nascent techno rock show to the scrappy one-ring Pickle Family Circus.

When I first read the book, I did so with the wide-eyed wonder of a teenager in Arkansas, amazed that such performers exist. Coming back to it about a quarter of a century later, as someone who follows in the variety arts tradition both as both a solo artist and as one-half of Mr. Snapper & Mr. Buddy, my appreciation for the performers and their acts is much deeper. Jenkins’ book is a great jumping-off point for further discovery, providing descriptions of acts and some script excerpts.

Where it fails for me is in Jenkins’ attempt to politicize the performers and acts. Granted, he doesn’t have to read much into the politically charged work of Zaloom or Gray, but his analysis of Cirque (as a for instance) feels particularly contrived. Jenkins is attempting to make an overarching point about the resurgence of variety artists in the ‘80s as a reaction to Reagan conservatism.

Without a doubt, opposition to the powers-that-be has always been and always will be a powerful motivator for great art. The fact that these same artists continued to thrive through the Clinton years and beyond speaks to a more fundamental quality, something that defies mere politics. And this is the greater lesson I take away from the book now: commitment to one’s craft, and active concern with audience engagement is more lasting than the heat of the political moment.

It speaks to our moment, as well. One of my greatest pet peeves is when performers make a meal out of low-hanging fruit. Going for the obvious gag, playing fan service to an audience who already thinks the way you do. Low-hanging fruit is at best a light snack; a fun size Snicker bar that gives you a burst of endorphins but little actual sustenance. The acts in Jenkins’ book had and have staying power precisely because they provide sustenance.

Off-the-cuff jokes about Reaganomics may have given audiences to The Flying Karamozov Brothers a jolt of delight; the mind-blowing synchronization of various and sundry objects passed between the “brothers” hits on something way deeper. The force of Zaloom’s stage presence, his lateral-thinking satirical observation is more resonant than the party affiliation of whoever is in the White House at the moment.

The lesson I take from Acrobats of the Soul defies the political patina Jenkins washes over everything. Rather, it’s the dialectic between Jenkins’ approach, and the longevity of the performers he profiled that reaches the slightly less wide-eyed adult who read the book most recently. Focus on your act and focus on your audience with fierce dedication.

"... there of their own accord and acting from their own free will."

"I think of the security of cages. How violence, cruelty, oppression, become a kind of home, a familiar pattern, a cage, in which we know how to operate and define ourselves …"

- Eve Ensler, Insecure at Last