Just Wrought

TUESDAY now for sale

After dickering with Amazon to prove that I actually owned the rights to my play Tuesday, it's now for sale for Kindle.

http://tinyurl.com/yf36fgz

Jonas Spongeman Crossing

A quick, dirty antidote to any overdose of holiday cheer.

It’s Christmas Night, 1776.  A boat carrying a cannon across the Delaware River during George Washington’s famous crossing also carries snatches of conversation among the two Marblehead boatmen poling the craft and an Irish gunner attached to the cannon.  The bitter rain has turned to driving snow.  The river is choked with ice cakes the size of livestock.  And on the other side are four hundred Hessian mercenaries to be fought come the dawn.  Will they be asleep, drunk from their Yuletide revels, like the Virginian General hopes?  Or will they be waiting for the rag-tag rebel army with their own Christmas surprise?

William Salyers directs a cast of veteran voice talent in this ten minute audio drama. {Adult language}

Jonas Spongeman Crossing by Paul Mullin

For a full script, click here.

The Best Compliment Any Actor Could Receive

I suppose you could say William Salyers is my Burbage. Just as Shakespeare wrote the roles of Hamlet, Othello, Richard III and Lear for the actor Richard Burbage to premiere, I too have been, over the last 15 years wrighting roles with Bill as my primary actor in mind. Now, I should be clear: Bill is not the only actor I’ve written roles for. There have been others. Kellie Waymire leaps to mind, and then my heart breaks again thinking of her untimely passing.

But let me focus on Salyers for this essay. Simply put: knowing Bill Salyers exists has helped me have the temerity to pull parts into the world that I might otherwise have despaired could be properly performed, at least by anyone I knew personally.  Bill would argue that this is nonsense; that I would have written roles like Audie McCall, and my versions of  Louis Slotin,  Stonewall Jackson and Francis Collins even if I didn’t have the hope that he would one day play them.This is just one way that Bill, like so many actors, misunderstands the crucial function played by great performers in the process of making plays.

Bill spent many years doing strong work in Seattle theatre before moving to Los Angeles to make his grab at a slice of the Hollywood pie. (The fact that Equity limited the kind of stage work he could do up here in ways it did not in the Southland was also a factor, but more on that in my yet-to-be written essay “Sacrificing Art on a Dubious Union’s Altar”.) Salyers has been especially invaluable to the development of new plays, originating such roles as Mr. Wickett and Truett in Louis Broome's Texarkana Waltz, Hampstead Hamilton in Jillian Armenante's In Flagrante Gothicto, Audie McCall in my own Tuesday  and of course the title role Louis Slotin Sonata, for which Salyers received a Backstage West Garland Award for Best Actor.

Bill happens to be that old school sort who arrives at the theatre before anyone else and leaves after all the other cast members have already thrown back their first shot. It was well after final blackout one night during the L. A. run of the Sonata when the house manager came backstage and told Bill someone was waiting in the lobby to talk to him. This was odd, since Bill didn't remember having any acquaintances in the audience that night, but the play was pretty controversial, so he figured it might just be someone who wanted to hash out one of the play's divisive points with him in lieu of the playwright.

Waiting for him in the lobby was a slight elderly woman. Bill politely introduced himself, but the lady, in a heavy Eastern European accent, skipped past formalities. "Are you Jewish?" she asked. Louis Slotin had been Jewish, and his struggle with his faith was a principal thematic thrust of the play. Bill, however, was not Jewish, and told the lady so.

"But you are European, no?" she persisted.

"No, ma'am." Bill smiled. "I'm just a country boy from Oklahoma."

"Oh." She seemed puzzled. "Well, then where did Mengele come from?"

During the play Louis Slotin has a nightmare in which he imagines himself as Josef Mengele, escaped from Auschwitz and fleeing East across the Eurasian continent. At this point Bill guessed where the old lady was going. Many Jewish audience members, and scientists, objected to Mengele’s inclusion, believing hotly that no self-respecting Jew, or scientist, would ever envision himself as one of the most heinous pseudoscientific torturers of all time.  Bill began dutifully defending the playwright: "Well, I think what the author meant by Mengele is that often during our deepest feelings of grief and shame we cast ourselves as the most evil character we can imagine."

"No, no,"  said the lady. "Where did Mengele come from... in you? How did you know what he was like?"

Bill admitted, "I didn't. I have no idea what Mengele was like. I can only imagine."

"That's strange," said the lady.

Bill began to feel uneasy. "Why strange?" he asked.

"I knew Mengele," she said.

The very air between them seemed to tighten. "You... knew Mengele?"

"Yes."

Bill had to ask. "You were at Auschwitz?"

"Yes."

"You actually saw him face to face?"

"Many times."

"I—I don't know what... to say."

"Your performance was very convincing."

Bill made a motion to touch the lady, on the arm perhaps, some gesture of common humanity; but the woman stiffened, instinctively pulling back. She politely bid him good night and left the theatre, leaving Bill to ponder, less with pride than baffled awe, how it could be possible to blindly reach across the chasm of half a century to summon up the monster that still haunted this woman's memory.

Some times such is the power of theatre, such as it is.

 

***

 

I think  anyone who has actually witnessed Salyers’ transformation from Slotin into Mengele can vouch for how disturbingly uncanny it was.  An off-hand Teutonic arrogance entered his voice and something very palpable died behind his eyes, as he began to speak these words:

 “My name is Doktor Joseph Mengele.  I am physician and a scientist. I am wearing the skin of a foolish Canadian Jew who tried to kill me…”

 

 

***

 

 (I wrote an earlier version of this essay in 2003.  I have revised and posted it here in anticipation of using it to support my essay “Why Locally Grown Plays Matter”, which I hope to have published by January 15, 2010.)

 

 

Under the Weather - Seattle Solstice

Is it a how or a why that you're here again
at the bottom of the year again?
What's to be done with your frustration, your fear again?

Driveling sickness, nagging notion
of a marriage fading to fondness and resent?
What's to be done?
                                         – hark!
                                                            hear the bells

Spring is implicit, one supposes, in the swim down
into darkness, but there should be a deeper,
soberer, more permanent name than "patience"
for what you need ("grim grit?" that's not it)

For the faith not only to believe
that the days won't keep shriveling
forever but that there's even a sun still
somewhere above that blanketing lichen sky
                                            (no, that's not it
more like a ugly gray breaker
punishing you down, naught to do
but give up and hope you don't drown under
               (Sweet silver bells)
                                        no, not quite-- heavier...

leaden-- pummeling dimly shimmering molten cold--
that's the sound that spreads to the West
beneath your high-rise conference room illusion)

And it's not an old glory that whips in the sound wind
And it's not the wind that whips either,
and, no, it's not your mind, clever, but nothing moves

except that one forlorn electron
back and forth through time,
infinitesimal pin-prick nose-so-bright.

Drink to that!
Three Maker's Marks for Mister Quark!

                            Hark.
                                                The herald angels sing glory
            Sing, bourbon, glory

                                                                Hallelujah

--2005

Huge High Five to Theatre @ Boston Court in Pasadena

They just announced their 2010 season and it's a slate of four world premiere plays!

http://www.bostoncourt.com/the_sea.htm

What's even cooler about this is that Boston Court isn't mandated to do all brand new work, they just want to.  They're committed to it, in fact, and not just fancy, such as some facile codicil of their mission statement or as an utterly empty quote for The New York Times.

When we build the West Coast Pipeline of plays, you can bet they'll be a player, as will Tom Jacobson, my colleague and co-conspirator in said pipeline planning.  After retiring as Boston Court's Literary Manager, he's world premiering his The Twentieth-Century Way in May, '10.  I really hope I get to see it, and also The Good Book of Pendantry and Wonder.

If you're in So Cal, check them out.  If you're not, then keep your eye on them, or do what I do, and send 'em a little money.  They're worth it. (And you won't hear me say that about most begging theaters.)

Wow! The Sunbreak covered my blog's kickoff.

http://thesunbreak.com/2009/12/16/paul-mullins-crusade-to-make-seattle-a-world-class-theatre-city

I'm flattered, and a little flustered, like when you realize your mic is live and you're not completely sure what you're going to say.

Aw, screw it.  Who am I kidding?  I love a live mic.

Towards a World Class Theatre

Playwright’s rule of thumb #3: if you don’t know what you’re doing, raise the stakes.  This is also a favorite for anyone losing an argument.  Arbitrarily up the ante and things become more interesting.  More interesting equals intrinsically good in a play.  In an argument, it’s… well… whatever it is, it’s more interesting.

Over a year ago I was given a “Genius Award” in theatre by Seattle’s weekly newspaper The Stranger.  It’s one of those honors that cannot, and probably should not, ever quite sit right: the kind of recognition any artist craves not just for the added publicity and legitimacy it brings your work, but also because, let’s face it: it’s a delicious ego stroke and the $5,000 cash that comes with it helps ease any pointless pangs of guilt over being singled out.  Beyond that guilt, however, looms another misgiving which grows out of the fact that the honor is bestowed not in recognition of any particular piece but one’s entire body of work.  You’re forced to wonder, “What the hell am I going to do next?  And how the hell will that be good enough to garner such praise in the future?”  I had no idea.  Still don’t. 

Nor did I have any idea back then about what I was going to say when I accepted the award at the Moore Theater on that Saturday, September 13, 2008.  I did know that the folks at The Stranger enjoyed presenting the awards in flamboyant and entertaining ways.  (For instance, Paul Constant channeled an old time booming-voiced boxing announcer when he handed the prize for literature to Sherman Alexie.)  So this much I determined: as show people, I’d be damned if I let some tabloid scribbler upstage me.  I had to say something engaging other than just “thanks a lot”, but what?  That’s when I remembered rule #3.  Raise the stakes.

I began my acceptance by magnanimously allowing that Seattle was a pretty good theatre town.  The crowd approved.  Then I lofted my caveat: we were good, but we weren’t great.  The crowd grew quiet, restless.  I said I believed we had everything it takes to be great, but we weren’t great; and worse, we didn’t even seem to be moving in the right direction.  More awkward noises.  Then I said I believed we could be a world class theatre city within 5 years, but only if we wanted to.  We had to want it.  The crowd liked this.  They clapped, they hollered.  It felt great.  Lots of toasts and backslaps afterwards.  I made a self-congratulatory moment into a community-wide challenge.  And every one seemed to slurp it with a spoon.  Success, by any definition.

Since then, however, not many people have mentioned my acceptance speech, though there is one particularly notable exception.  A month after that night I got an email from my sister Margaret.  It said simply:  “Just in case you were wondering.  9/13/13.  Make it so!”  Since odds are about even that you do not know my sister, allow me to unpack her cryptic note and translate it plainly into the words I know she intended.  “Dear Brother, in case you were thinking that you could make that challenge publicly solely in order to arbitrarily raise stakes and thus add empty entertainment calories to your speech, hoping no one will remember, please think again.  I will remember.  I will hold you to it.  I will publicly mock you if you fail.  So deliver me a world class theatre town by the Fall of 2013, or prepare to face my undying scorn.”  You see, I come from a very loving and supportive family.

Upping the ante is painless and risk-free if no one is paying attention.  Thanks to my sister, such is not my fate.  But I am, after all, a collaborative artist.  If she intends to hold me accountable over the next four years, then I intend to share her attentions with all of my beloved fellow theatre artists in this amazing city.  My discomfiture will become their discomfiture, or at least as much of it as I can artfully manage to share.  Which brings me to these essays.  This is the introductory first of ten or twelve I intend to write on the subject of theatre in Seattle.  During my last 22 years as a theatre professional here and in New York City I have come to some strongly held conclusions about how I think theatre can be made better.  I have shared these opinions with friends and colleagues in one-on-one conversations or in small groups in social situations.  Now I think it is time for me to share more formally and more widely—to raise the stakes.

A few weeks back, I began keeping a little folder on my computer with text files in it.  Some contain embryonic notes and outlines, the beginnings of these future essays.  Others consist only of tentative titles, like the following:

• Why Locally Grown Plays Matter
• What the Hell does “World Class” Mean Anyway?
• Why Craft Won’t Save Us
• Good Friend for Jesus’ Sake Forbear and Never Build another Proscenium Stage
• Since When Are Directors Indispensable?
• The MFA Virus
• Building the West Coast Pipeline Alternative to New York’s Hub and Spoke Failure
• Playwrights and Designers: The Overlooked Partnership
• Don’t Let the Big Houses Fool Ya, Money Has Almost Nothing to Do with It
• Stop trying to be Respectable, You’re in Show Business.
• America loves Playwrights!—The Deader the Better; or How The English Speaking World Wields its Greatest Playwright  as a Club to Kill Theatre
• Sacrificing Art on a Dubious Union’s Altar
• The One-Person Show: The Lazy Artistic Director's Best Friend

The essays will be written with primarily my theatre colleagues in mind; but I fervently believe we need to also invite non-show people into these conversations because, as a self-identified neo-Vaudevillian, and in sharp contrast to the rising class of theatre academic elite, I believe that what the audience wants and needs actually matters.

Potshots of prose alone cannot go any significant distance toward making theater better here in Seattle or anywhere.  Only making great theatre will make theatre great here.  This series will be about sharpening my arguments and placing them in a public place, where they may serve to convince or be dismissed, or maybe even dismantled and built into something more useful.  I am done bitching in bars.  I am pushing my stakes on the table and I encourage my colleagues, especially those who disagree with me, to do the same.  Our stock-in-trade is dialogue.  Maybe we can employ its power to discover the way forward towards a world class theatre in our own home town.