SlowLearner: DIVE BAR

Some other thoughts on the same subject as my cranky post below from Matt Freeman and cgeye on Parabasis. Both are correct, I think, that bloggers aren't required to do journalistic work like fact-checking and so forth. I guess what I mean by having a "journalistic response" to something means that you rigorously parse what you know and what you don't know and only base your opinions on the former. But both are also correct that without the attention this story received from the blogs, it's unlikely that the Boston Globe would have picked up on it.

I have a few unresolved thoughts on this, but I don't know what they are yet, if that makes any sense.

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Tonight and tomorrow night are the closing nights of Nosedive's superb SUBURBAN PEEPSHOW. James's playwriting over the last seven years (that's right, folks, I've been following this guy's career for seven years) has sharpened its mission to a tight focus on a nation full of people who, while feeling bored and aimless and nebulously sad, are at the same time locked up inside the noisiest, most relentless pop culture imaginable. They're numb and unhappy, but they're not even allowed the privacy of silence that would let them start wondering why they're numb and unhappy. So they drink and philander and kill and end up just where they were before. (This show IS a comedy, by the way.)

James and I have similar backgrounds, voices, and sensibilities, but he's less afraid than I am of being caustically nasty, and less concerned than I am with redemptive elements.

I don't know of any other company like Nosedive. In the whole ongoing debate about writers and directors, James and Pete have what appears to be a bizarrely low maintenance relationship, where they mostly stay out of each others' way and then go drinking later. Pete and Nosedive produce each of James's plays, regardless of length or genre or demanding elements, without workshopping or critiqueing them to death, and in return, James hangs back and lets Pete stretch out and explore the play with a bit of license.

I know that in NERVOUS BOY, the character I played became much more outgoing and engaged with the audience than he was initially described in the script, largely through little adjustments Pete made with me throughout rehearsal. I even took James aside after we opened (the only time I've ever asked a playwright a question without the director around) and asked him if Nervous Boy had become too cozy with they audience, but James seemed pretty chill about it, seeing it as the natural evolution of moving the character from an idea on the page to a reality on the stage. Pete also makes the plays wonderfully visual, with assists from Steph, Cat, Becky, Patrick on the auditory tip (sound design is particularly crucial for Nosedive shows, as concerned as they are with the never-ending presence of ambient sounds in our lives) and numerous others.

The result is a company that's been around for a long time (seven years is an eternity Off-Off Broadway), with a stable of awesome recurring members and a reputation for delivering unmediated theater every time.

A fun thing about writing for a particular director is the chance to take advantage of their strengths that you've seen displayed. I knew I was writing the curtain-raiser Trailers for Patrick, and I knew that Patrick really enjoys soundtracking and "traffic-directing" (elegantly moving a large number of actors around the stage), so I wrote a play with about a million characters spoofing that most music-dependent of forms, the movie trailer. In a way, Trailers is the most directed production of anything I've written, just in terms of elements added by the production to the script. There are frames that light up, more costume changes than you've ever seen, and an intricately detailed soundscape. At one point, Patrick even found a theatrical way to represent the split screens of 24.

Anyway, last two chances to catch SUBURBAN PEEPSHOW are this weekend. I hope I will be there for one of them. I'm having a hellishly busy couple of days, as I'm moving from Astoria to Bushwick this weekend. Does anybody know what that does for my cred? Increases or decreases?

--SlowLearner