Today, I begin a new series in which I will discuss shows that I have produced, directed, or written in the past. The purpose is not to revel in nostalgia, but rather talk about the lessons leaned with each production and how those things inform what I do now. These installments will be occasionally tossed in between the regular review segments at irregular intervals. Hopefully, some of you will enjoy going down memory lane with me.
The first play I ever wrote started as bits and pieces of a screenplay I was working on in high school in 1992, which is the year I graduated. That movie script was going to be called The Pioneers (after the name of the OCHS sports team), and it was going to be a topical teenage drama about a lot of different things, from bullying to abortion to being gay and in the closet. Remember, in 1992, some of these things were only just beginning to have a public forum, and there was a lot of politics surrounding such topics, just as there is today, except the details of the struggle differ slightly from back then.
By the time I had taken acting and theatre appreciation classes in college, I had developed a real affection for live theatre. I wanted to write a show that I could produce as a student project as Clackamas Community College where I was getting my transfer degree. I decided to revisit the abandoned Pioneers screenplay and see if I could mine it for some dramatic gold. I'd have to choose just one of the several story lines to focus on. I settled on the story of the closeted gay boy (Martin), and I found a way to work in two of the screenplay's other characters as foils for his self-examination: Zeke Marvel, the outspoken lead singer for a garage band, and Wendy, the leader of the high school Christian club. I asked myself, "What would happen if these three people were locked in a room together and forced to talk for a couple of hours?"
Of course, my problem--which would never actually be resolved--was that there was no good way to force these characters to be together outside of their own will. One early critique of the script went something like: "I cannot make myself believe that these three people would willingly stay in the same room together after hurling insults at each other, having nothing in common, when it would be so easy to just leave." But I did my best to overcome that challenge by setting up a situation where everyone had a reason to want to talk to each other. Martin just needs someone to confide in, and he figures Zeke is the school freak who's got no room to judge anybody. So Martin invites Zeke over. Zeke comes over because he likes to exploit people's dramas for song-writing material. And Wendy comes over, uninvited, because she thinks she can bring the recently-outed Martin to Jesus and ultimately repentance from a sinful lifestyle. So there they are. And they argue. And they fight. And the reconcile. And they have a million reasons for leaving, and a million and one reasons for staying. They hash it out. The text reads a little bit like a political debate between a gay rights activist and a preacher with a little heckling thrown in. It was didactic. But it was such a balanced discussion of the issues, I must say I was pretty pleased with myself by the finished product, which I called Minority Status Quo.
I got the opportunity to direct it as a student project, thanks to newly installed drama chair, David Smith-English, in spring of 1995, which was the last term before I got my Associates Degree. It was an intense whirlwind of a time because I had a LOT going on that term. That was probably one of the busiest times ever for me. I got a mostly great cast, featuring Craig McCarty as Zeke (I had worked with Craig in some projects in acting class the previous year, and he had become a rather big cultural influence in my life, and I think I ended up modeling the character of Zeke partly from the way I saw Craig in my mind) and Jennifer Johnson as Wendy. The central character of Martin was played by Jeffrey Woods, and here's the first lesson I want to talk about from this play. And this is nothing against Woods. He has gone on to become an amazing lighting and set designer, but has mostly left acting behind. He wasn't terrible, but I can see why his strengths were more in technical theatre. I cast him because I simply liked him and wanted to work with him, but his performance as Martin was very low-key and lacked the urgency of the inner turmoil of the character. And I was a new director too, so I didn't know how to draw out a stronger performance. In hindsight, it would have been better for me to look harder for a better match for that character.
Shifting now to some comments on the set, which I think I'm more proud of than anything. The mainstage production at the time was Betty the Yeti. The set for Betty the Yeti was several large mounds of dirt scattered across the small stage. Now, when you're doing a student production, you can usually move some furniture and things from the mainstage to accommodate your needs. You still have to live with the immovable parts of the set (the walls, etc), but it's something you can adjust to pretty easily. Not the case here. We could not move the giant mounds of dirt! So the question became, how do we hide them? Well, fortunately, there was a large area, down center, that had no dirt. I guess it was the primary playing area of Betty. So what we did was took a couple of 2-foot high knee-walls and created a boundary in front of where the dirt began. They were at a 90 degree angle from each other to represent two walls of our set. But because they were only two feet high, we had to do something to suggest the rest of the wall. Of course, this is a high school boy's room, and it's going to want to have posters of favorite bands and movies, etc. But without walls, how do you do it? And I don't remember if it was me or my brilliant lighting/set designer Chris Steffen who came up with this, but we got long narrow strips of 1x4, but the same length as the knee-walls. We attached those to the ceiling and then attached posters through varying lengths of wire to hang down from the boards and create a brilliant wall effect. And because there were two "walls" at a 90 degree angle, it looked very realistic. It didn't matter that there was no tangible wall in between the posters. The posters themselves did the job. (And I want to give a shout out to Chris Steffen, who has gone on to work in all kind of high profile film and TV stuff as a techie.)
I should backtrack a little bit here to talk more about the development process. When you're doing a new work--and especially if the writer and director are the same person--there is a lot of room for flexibility and collaboration and feedback. This process was sometimes challenging (I was thin-skinned and, you know, your works are your babies), but also very productive and rewarding. There were some things that got changed in the process. One my great mentors, the late Barbara Bragg, read an early version of the script, and her response was, "Where's the drama?" In other words, I had plenty of thoughtful and topical content in my dialogue, but none of it was very high stakes. I needed to learn ways to heighten the tension, and also to make it less static. One thing I did was add moments of physical conflict, times when the characters would get so heated that a beverage got tossed in someone's face, a brownie got shoved down someone else's throat, and a role-playing game got out hand and turned into a brawl. One could argue that I over-compensated here, and had more physical stuff than I needed to, but it served the purpose of punctuating the intensity of the conversation.
Another thing I explored was creative movement. I added sort of an expressionist interpretive dance piece where the characters transformed themselves into a lion, a lamb, and a snake. This game helped to bring out the characters' inner prejudices. This was very influential for me, going forward. As a writer, I would continue to explore that kind of experimental aspect, plunked right down in the middle of the ordinary. I also added a celebratory slam dance towards the end of the play when the characters had more or less become simpatico. In the end, these additions may have made the play less realistic, but a lot more interesting to watch.
I learned the value of getting audience feedback. Barbara did something unusual for me with this one. She always made her theatre appreciation class attend and write up the student one acts. She collected a whole bunch of the reviews that students had written and gave them to me to read. It was such a special and rewarding experience because we had an audience of a wide range of different beliefs and philosophies. Some people thought I leaned on the Christian side, others thought I was totally on the gay side, never realizing that both perspectives were from my own life experience. But the really awesome thing is, no matter what people's religious and political leanings were, they loved the play. They thought it was honest and sincere and moving. They did not have to agree with every point of view expressed in order to get something from it.
I've done many productions since that time, but Minority Status Quo will always have a special place in my heart.
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