Titling the Memoir

Finding a title is hard.

I wrote thousands of reviews back in the day, and I never faced this problem: on nytheatre[dot]com the title of the show was all that was needed for a headline. But what I am working on now is a book--my memoir; stories from my life--and it needs a proper name.

I started with "Living the List." The idea was that my book was going to be like a bucket list, a parade of anecdotes and incidents that collectively comprised a "bucket list" that I might have constructed for myself if I'd had any inkling of how my life was going to turn out. There was even going to be a self-help-ish moral: don't MAKE a bucket list, just LIVE it. Hence, "Living the List."

This turned out to be a great way for me to jump-start a project that I had wanted to do for years but had not found a way into. But it was not quite what the book ultimately wanted to be about. 

I wasn't writing a self-help book. I was writing about my own journey in life.

So, without using my name, how to find a few pithy words that mean me?

My first impulse was to use the description of myself that I always loved best. It was coined by playwright Kirk Wood Bromley, who, in an interview, said that I was "an engine of enthusiasm for the art." That has always seemed to me to be exactly right in depicting my role in the indie theater community. So, "Engine of Enthusiasm": that was definitely it.

Except that alone, on a cover, without context or explanation, it didn't seem to make sense. Back to the drawing board.

Another idea soon struck my fancy. In junior high school and in high school I had been voted "Most Likely to Succeed" by my classsmates. I thought it would be cool to contrast the likely conception that they had about what that success would look like with what my success ultimately was: that instead of becoming the wealthy and powerful corporate magnate that I seemed destined to be, I became the champion of alternative downtown theater. Subverting norms, that sort of thing; a little irony. I liked it.

But a quick scan on Amazon showed me that only about twenty dozen other authors liked that title too. Nobody would ever find my "Most Likely to Succeed" among the myriad memoirs, biographies, and business books bearing the same moniker.

Ok, what I really need is something specific to ME. Something that is unmistakably Martin.

In my book I recall a pivotal moment in my theater career, when I hosted the opening event for the New York International Fringe Festival for the very first time. I raced to the stage and screamed to the audience "ARE YOU READY TO FRINGE?!?"

Maybe that's the title: "Are You Ready to Fringe?" Or, better: "Ready to Fringe." 

But if you aren't a theater festival person, won't you think a book with that title might be about someone in a radical political movement? Or, maybe, about crocheting?

Still not there.

Sometimes, the answer to your question is literally in front of your face. When I made my Instagram account a few months ago, I needed a very short pithy description of myself, my "tagline," so to speak. I wrote, without thinking much about it: Indie Theater Guy.

I don't know why it took me so long, but finally I remembered it. And once I did, it was like: OF COURSE that's the title. Because, come on, Indie Theater Guy is like my BRAND.

And so, here we are. Indie Theater Guy by Martin Denton. 

(My friend Kelly McAllister actually texted me as soon as he saw it to tell me how perfect he thought it was.)

The hardest part of making this book is now complete! We're about a month away from publication.

Check out the Indie Theater Guy website for updates and info.

Influences

 On my goodreads author profile there's a place to indicate "influences." I thought hard about who I should list there, and I decided I'd share some of those thoughts today.

Of the seventeen books I am credited with creating, sixteen are anthologies of plays that I edited as part of NYTE's publication program. For those books, the main influence on my work is clear: John Gassner. His play collections were the first ones I ever read--checked out regularly from our public library when my sister Nita and I were children. I'm afraid he's mostly forgotten now (here's the piece about him on Wikipedia) but his impact on the work I ultimately did in this field is incalculable, in terms of both inspiration and the ineffable elegance of his books. 

My seventeenth book--which will be published in a couple of months--is a memoir. Now I've read a lot of memoirs in my time, especially by people involved in show biz and the arts. Many of these served as negative examples to me. For example, I love Hermione Gingold's How to Grow Old Disgracefully but the book, while quite funny, doesn't always feel completely candid or forthright (as opposed to true, which it may well be). Stephen Sondheim's two volumes Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made a Hat are invaluable accounts of his professional career and absolutely worth reading, but so much of the man is missing from them. (And yes, George sings, in Sunday in the Park, "I am what I do"; but we all know there's more to a human being than that.) Julie Andrews's first memoir Home is a book I never finished: she reviews her childhood in more extreme detail than I really needed to know. Similarly Joel Grey's Master of Ceremonies is so squarely focused on his sexuality and sex life that the parts of his life that I was most curious about (i.e., his career in theater) were given relatively short shrift.

So, I had lots of ideas about what NOT to do. As for what I did: Well, I have been writing for public consumption for decades. Thousands of reviews, plus lots of incidental articles, profiles, interviews, think pieces, blog posts, what-have-you. I have developed a style over all this time, and it's one that's very natural to me. (Who influenced my reviewing style? Frank Rich, Ethan Mordden, David Richards, Harold Clurman; all the likely suspects, I suppose.) Those who I asked to read the early manuscripts of Indie Theater Guy all agreed on at least one thing--that the book sounds like me. That is exactly what I was hoping for.

Stylistically, I can point to one recent memoirist whom I think I have at least subconsciously been guided by, and that's Andrew Tobias. I recently read two of his books, My Vast Fortune and The Best Little Boy in the World Grows Up, and both are characterized by a lightly humorous, breezy, informal, somewhat self-deprecating style that I enjoy very much and that I think may have affected how I approached the task of writing my own book.

Finally, structurally, Indie Theater Guy owes a gigantic debt to Patrick Dennis's Auntie Mame. Even Nita, who introduced Auntie Mame to me, reading it to me (with great expressiveness and style!) when I was perhaps five or six years old, didn't notice that the structure of my memoir is appropriated from Dennis's framing device. His book is a series of recollections of larger-than-life extravagant adventures (those of his aunt, whose life he compares to that of a Readers Digest heroine billed as the "most unforgettable character"). It will be hard to say this humbly, but: so is mine. 

Check out the official Indie Theater Guy website for more info about the book and related projects.

How I Came To Write a Memoir

So I've written a book. It's a memoir: not the story of my life, but stories from my life. The fun ones, about indie theater. It's called Indie Theater Guy.

Ever since we shut down nytheatre[dot]com and The New York Theatre Experience, Inc. and Indie Theater Now I've pondered what I might do to hold on to the two decades of my life that they encompassed. There are a couple of tangible markers: the sixteen play anthologies that live on in libraries and on book shelves; and the League of Independent Theater. But what about the rest of it?

It seemed to me, for a long while, that the way to process my experiences was to collect all of my reviews into a book. But eventually I realized that while those thousands of reviews comprise a lovely kind of history of New York theater, they don't tell my story at all. 

And I came to understand that it was my story that I needed to tell next.

A chance occurrence gave me the inspiration for how the book could be structured. It took me about three weeks to write the first draft, and those three weeks flew: I was more productive and satisfied doing this work than I have been since the heady days when we launched our website, our podcasts, our play anthologies. When I came out the other side, with a book that I thought might be worth reading, I felt validated, energized.

I recently learned about Erikson's stages of psychosocial development. The basic idea is that as people grow and age they progress through eight distinct phases. In the final stage, which happens around the age of 65 (I'm 61), you reflect on what you've done in your life and ask the existential question "Is it okay to have been me?"

It turned out that in writing this book I was asking that existential question. And I was well pleased with the answer.

The memoir is an account of the journey I took, from being a theater-loving kid (and then man) who decided to make a website about New York theater as a way to learn how the Internet worked, to becoming, well, Indie Theater Guy. It's a collection of adventures with a community of artists who enthralled and inspired me. It's reminded me how much all that happened in those two decades meant to me. And it's made me eager to come back for Act Two.

Indie Theater Guy is going to be available first on Kindle, for release on March 8, 2023. It's available for pre-order now.

2022: A Year of Books

 

This year, for some reason, I really got into reading. I read more than 100 books this year, twice as many as I have typically read in other years. The complete list, in the order I read them, is at the bottom of this post.

I think my biggest discovery this year in the realm of books was the goodreads website. I've been mildly aware of goodreads for a long while, I guess, but for some reason this past fall I decided to check it out more carefully and I ended up establishing a presence there. What I am liking about goodreads is that is provides me with a really helpful way to keep track of what I've read and what I'd like to read--I am a great one for getting excited about new topics, authors, and interests, and they come and go and flux and change, and so rather than just putting titles on my Kindle as they appeal to me (which is what I was doing), I am now able to organize my disparate fancies in goodreads lists, and I can read the opinions of others to try to gauge whether I really want such-and-such a book and remove and adjust the lists as needed. Overthinking, perhaps, but enjoyable to me.

The second thing I like about goodreads is that I am able to find and link up with people whose reading tastes seem to match my own. From these people I have been able to discover a lot of excellent work that I probably wouldn't have found or paid much attention to otherwise. For example, thanks to one goodreads "friend" I have gotten a taste of Young Adult fiction, a genre that never seemed interesting to me but which I now find pretty appealing. So I am grateful for all the new directions my reading is going, thanks to the advice and recommendations of folks I am meeting virtually on goodreads.

I have also been reviewing everything I read now, which is a nice way to put to practice the skills I learned reviewing theater for all those years; and also a nice way of setting down the reading experiences in a kind of permanent way, something I never did until this year (except for plays, of course). The process of thinking about and writing about what you've read is useful and edifying, and I am glad that I am doing it. Links to my goodreads reviews are at the bottom of this post.

Best Books of the Year

So which books mattered the most to me in 2022? At the top of the list has to be Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, which is a book I tried to read when I was much younger and abandoned; and then came to it at precisely the moment I was ready for it and needed it, this past October. It is such a rich, profound work full of wisdom and love; it filled my heart in a way that few books ever have. I will cite two sentences that really resonated with me:

And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another.

He saw: this water ran and ran, incessantly it ran, and was nevertheless always there, was always at all times the same and yet new in every moment!

The other book that really stayed with me was Michael Cunningham's Flesh and Blood. I came to it because, as I was going through my old theater reviews to prepare some of them for goodreads, I discovered that I had seen a dramatic version of this book at New York Theatre Workshop, about twenty years ago. Yet, I had no memory of it whatsoever. I thought it might be interesting to read the source material. And I am so glad I did: Cunningham tells the story of a family so vividly and intimately and with such immediacy that I found I could not turn away and I could not stop getting more and more wrapped up in their lives. It's a beautiful book about love and the eponymous stuff--flesh and blood--that goes with it.

Flesh and Blood has drawn me into fiction in general--I rarely used to read fiction except for mystery/suspense/detective genre novels and stories--and into romantic/love stories in particular. These I always avoided, I guess because I thought they were sappy; I realize now it was probably because I thought they'd remind of what I didn't have in my life. Either way, I am glad to be embracing all of these kinds of reading and look forward to more in 2023.

Discoveries of the Year

I read more widely this year than ever, and along the way I came upon a few new (to me) authors that I have really enjoyed:

1. Howard Fast: I have no idea how I didn't know about Howard Fast until this year! I already wrote something about him in this blog post. Since that post in September I have finished the Masuo Matsuto mysteries and read a big book of Fast short stories. He is a wonderful writer, and a deeply humanist one (although the whiffs of homophobia I detected in a few of his pieces troubled me just a bit). I'm not sure how much more of his work I will read in the future, but I am glad to have spent a lot of this year with him.
2. Christopher Rice: On a whim, I bought Light Before Day, an early work by this writer (who is the son of Anne Rice of Interview with the Vampire fame). This is from the review I posted: "It's a vivid, intense account of a young journalist who finds himself in the middle of (quoting from the goodreads summary) 'a deadly conspiracy involving runaway sugar daddies, salacious A-list parties, and three handsome young men who have vanished without a trace'. Now, I would not normally ever read a book with a description like that, let alone love such a book, but Christopher Rice takes this material and makes it transformative." He's a fine, humane writer, and the second book of his I read this year, Sapphire Sunset (writing as C. Travis Rice) was, for sheer enjoyment value, my favorite book of 2022. It's a purely romantic tale of two young men who come to realize they belong together; there's a neat suspenseful plot in the background, but the focus is on the growth of a deep and loving relationship. I am looking forward to Rice's sequels (there are two of them, so far) next year. 
3. Richard Stevenson: I rediscovered the Donald Strachey mysteries this year. I know I read one of them when it was new (or newish), thirty or more years ago; this time I started with the first one, Death Trick, and I'm really enjoying them. (I'm nearly halfway through the third one now.) These date from the 1980s and are set in Albany, New York, featuring a gay private detective, which was definitely a rarity back then.

Books by Friends and Colleagues

I am lucky to have so many people within my circle who are also marvelous writers. This year, I was deeply moved and inspired by a pair of books about the Covid years, Julia Lee Barclay-Morton's The Mortality Shot and Micah Bucey's The Book of Tiny Prayer. They are very different from each other but share two important aspects: both, while serious and somber, are filled with love and hope; and they are as conventional as their authors, which is to say that they are not conventional at all. I am grateful to count both of these talented artists as friends, and was enlarged in 2022 by their work.

Here are other books by folks I know or have known that I got to read this past year:

• Iphigenia in Aulis by Edward Einhorn: a wonderful new version of the Greek tragedy, as a drama and a graphic novel
• Life on the List by Jeffrey Essmann, a very funny sexy book by the (former) performance artist (he is now, I believe, a priest)
• Song of Spider-Man by Glen Berger: an intense, funny account of the birth of the musical Spider-Man, written by the playwright who was that show's co-librettist
• The Lost Conversation: Interviews with an Enduring Avant-Garde by Sara Farrington: interviews with more than two dozen indie theater artists like Richard Foreman, Mac Wellman, and Ching Valdes-Aran; wonderful to hear their voices and know they're being preserved here
• All We Buried by Elena Hartwell Taylor: a gripping, highly engaging mystery novel by a playwright whose humane and readable work (dramatic and non) I always enjoy

Some Random Notes

I finished Harry Kemelman's Rabbi Small novels early in the year; I am so happy to have come to this series! They are warm, gentle mysteries (I guess we'd call them cozies nowadays) and I learned much about Judaism and humanity in reading them.

I started re-reading Ellery Queen's works this year; I have largely abandoned the project. I found that I prefer the earliest ones, where Ellery is insufferable but indisputably the main attraction of the books. Starting with Halfway House, I found the stories to feel more and more like second-rate Agatha Christie, with perky heroines and sappy love stories that she can write but he cannot.

I also tried three of the Philo Vance novels and concluded that two were plenty. Vance is as insufferable as his critics suggest. I re-read a Nero Wolfe novel that I discovered lurking on my shelf, The Second Confession, and I found that it pretty much soured me on that series. I'm quite proud of the review of this that I wrote on goodreads if you care to learn more.

I read Andrew Tobias's memoir about financial life, My Vast Fortune, and got quite a bit out of it. I emailed Mr. Tobias to let him know how much I liked this book and his earlier memoir The Best Little Boy in the World and to my surprise I got not one but two emails back from him (signed Andy). It's nice to know how approachable he turned out to be! And I am looking forward to reading his subsequent memoirs (a new one is said to be coming out next year).

I read several other memoirs and bios; the only one that really stood out was Jim Grimsley's How I Shed My Skin, which is an honest and thoughtful account about growing up inherently racist in the South in the 1960s-70s. It's a smart and courageous book.

And I read Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt, and it really surprised me. It is an excellent novel! Very modern feeling, with lots of good lessons for living packed in that don't ever feel didactic or dogmatic.

All the Books I Read in 2022

(links are to reviews on goodreads)

1. The Day the Rabbi Resigned by Harry Kemelman
   
2. New York: A Bicentennial History by Bruce Bliven,Jr.
   
3. Virginia: A History by Louis D. Rubin, Jr.
   
4. That Day the Rabbi Left Town by Harry Kemelman
   
5. West Virginia: A History by John Alexander Williams
   
6. Vermont: A History by Charles T. Morrisey
   
7. Massachusetts: A Bicentennial History by Richard D. Brown
   
8. The Adventures of Ellery Queen by Ellery Queen
   
9. Delaware: A Bicentennial History by Carol Hoffecker
   
10. Knot My Sister's Keeper by Mary Marks
    
11. Rhode Island: A History by William Gerald McLoughlin
    
12. Jack & Susan in 1913 by Michael McDowell
    
13. North Carolina: A History by William S. Powell
    
14. Tennessee: A Bicentennial History by Wilma Dykeman
    
15. The Tragedy of X by Ellery Queen
    
16. Georgia: A History by Harold H. Martin
    
17. Totally Pawstruck by Sofie Ryan
    
18. Dummy Days by Kelly Asbury
    
19. The Siamese Twin Mystery by Ellery Queen
    
20. Stamp Collecting by Charles F. Adams
    
21. Master of Ceremonies by Joel Grey
    
22. Castle Skull by John Dickson Carr
    
23. The Chinese Orange Mystery by Ellery Queen
    
24. Death of a Hollow Man by Caroline Graham
    
25. The Spanish Cape Mystery by Ellery Queen
    
26. Murder on Wall Street by Victoria Thompson
    
27. All About Me by Mel Brooks
    
28. The Tragedy of Y by Ellery Queen
    
29. The One Penny Orange Mystery by Morris Ackerman
    
30. Halfway House by Ellery Queen
    
31. Fun and Profit in Stamp Collecting by Herman Herst Jr.
    
32. The Gracie Allen Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine
    
33. Lost Countries by Stuart Laycock & Chris West
    
34. Rest You Merry by Charlotte MacLeod
    
35. A History of Britain in Thirty-six Postage Stamps by Chris West
    
36. The Door Between by Ellery Queen
    
37. The Man Who Died Laughing by David Handler
    
38. The Floating Lady Murder by Daniel Stashower
    
39. The Tragedy of Z by Ellery Queen
    
40. The Case of the One-Penny Orange by Howard Fast
    
41. The Official Stamp Collector's Bible by Stephen Datz
    
42. Patrick Henry and the Frigate's Keel; and Other Stories of a Young Nation by Howard Fast
    
43. The Case of the Angry Actress by Howard Fast
    
44. The Official Dick Van Dyke Show Book by Vince Waldron
    
45. The New Adventures of Ellery Queen by Ellery Queen
    
46. The Affair of the Christmas Card Killer by Jack Murray
    
47. Full Service by Scotty Bowers
    
48. The Case of the Russian Diplomat by Howard Fast
    
49. The Scarab Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine
    
50. Generally Speaking by Lawrence Block
    
51. Death Trick by Richard Stevenson
    
52. The American by Howard Fast
    
53. Drury Lane's Last Case by Barnaby Ross (Ellery Queen)
    
54. The Case of the Poisoned Eclairs by Howard Fast
    
55. Broadway Babylon by Boze Hadleigh
    
56. Light Before Day by Christopher Rice
    
57. Jokebook About American History by Ray Ginger
    
58. Bodies in the Library 5 edited by Tony Medawar
    
59. The Four of Hearts by Ellery Queen
    
60. How I Shed My Skin by Jim Grimsley
    
61. The Case of the Sliding Pool by Howard Fast
    
62. Citizen Tom Paine by Howard Fast
    
63. Two Tall Tails by Sofie Kelly
    
64. The Mortality Shot by Julia Lee Barclay-Morton
    
65. New Leaf by Andrew Grey
    
66. Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn
    
67. Tao of Thoreau by Mark J Bozeman
    
68. The Essential Enneagram by David Daniels
    
69. Productivity for the Depressive Polymath by Brennen Reece
    
70. Elephants in the Distance by Daniel Stashower
    
71. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
    
72. On the Other Hand, Death by Richard Stevenson
    
73. You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train by Howard Zinn
    
74. The Art of Zen Meditation by Howard Fast
    
75. The Second Confession by Rex Stout
    
76. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
    
77. The Goat Parva Murders by Julian Worker
    
78. Time and the Riddle by Howard Fast
    
79. Sapphire Sunset by C. Travis Rice
    
80. Dazzler: The Life and Times of Moss Hart by Steven Bach
    
81. God Said, Ha! by Julia Sweeney
    
82. Facebook for Dummies by Carolyn Abram
    
83. The Case of the Extra Grave by Christopher Bush
    
84. Iphigenia in Aulis by Edward Einhorn
    
85. Government Gay by Fred W. Hunter
    
86. Center Square: The Paul Lynde Story by Steve Wilson & Joe Florenski
    
87. The Zen Book by Daniel Levin
    
88. Sleight of Paw by Sofie Kelly
    
89. Django 4 for the Impatient by Greg Lim
    
90. Flesh and Blood by Michael Cunningham
    
91. The Kennel Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine
    
92. Comfort and Joy by Jim Grimsley
    
93. Helping Gay Men Find Love by Israel Martinez
    
94. The Case of the Kidnapped Angel by Howard Fast
    
95. My Vast Fortune by Andrew Tobias
    
96. Out of the Pocket by Bill Konigsberg
    
97. Life on the List by Jeffrey Essmann
    
98. Song of Spider-Man by Glen Berger
    
99. The Lost Conversation: Interviews with an Enduring Avant-Garde by Sara Farrington
    
100. Birthday Boys by Simon Strange
     
101. The Houdini Specter by Daniel Stashower
     
102. The Unexpected Heiress by Frank W. Butterfield
     
103. Bourbon Street Blues by Greg Herren
     
104. All We Buried by Elena Hartwell Taylor
     
105. The Case of the Murdered Mackenzie by Howard Fast
     
106. The Book of Tiny Prayer: Daily Meditations from the Plague Year by Micah Bucey
     
107. Making the Naughty List by Darryl Banner
     
108. The Boys by Katie Hafner
     
109. Two Christmases by B.J. Smyth
     
110. After the Ecstasy the Laundry by Jack Kornfield
     
111. Men Are Pigs But We Love Pork by Woody Miller (aka Michael Alvear)
112. Flamer by Mike Curato
     
113. Is It Hot in Here (Or Am I Suffering for All Eternity for the Sins I Committed on Earth by Zach Zimmerman
     

Elephant - A Plays and Playwrights Memory

In the heyday of the New York International Fringe Festival, the last days of August were always much needed downtime for me: after two-and-a-half weeks of non-stop theater-going and review-writing, -editing, and -posting, I was glad of a little breather until Labor Day. But after the 2004 festival, for some reason I was persuaded to check out a new play at the Ontological Theater called Elephant, which was nearing the end of its run. I knew a couple of the people involved with it, notably actor Arthur Aulisi (of whom I was and remain a huge fan); but as I remember it, more than one colleague emailed me and urged me to check this play out, because it was something special.

As indeed it was: Elephant is a beautiful work; a comedy that touches on tragedy with grace and insight. We were already well into planning Plays and Playwrights 2005 by this time, but we decided to add an extra slot rather than wait until the next edition, because we wanted this lovely play to be read and seen and experienced by as many people as possible. We met Elephant's author, Margie Stokley, and happily she agreed to include her play in our book.

Elephant became one of the most popular works we ever published. I am grateful to whatever (karma? fate? luck?) made me decide to see a play during a week when I didn't want to see one.

nytheatre.com review -  August 31, 2004

The daughter, Michelle, is recovering from a nervous breakdown in a hospital. The mother, Kathleen, is so terrified of dentists that she has to be given a teddy bear to get through an appointment. The father, Henry, is driving cross-country, from New Jersey to Arizona, with a mysterious hitchhiker.

And yet they're the most functional family I've seen on stage in a long, long time. Margie Stokley's Elephant, a gorgeous, inventive, and dazzlingly warm-hearted and theatrical new play, reminds us of the things that actually matter: spontaneity, respect, love; above all, caring about people, things, each other. It's being presented by the relatively young ANDHOW! Theatre Company, with a solid staging by artistic director Jessica Davis-Irons, exquisite performances by actors Arthur Aulisi, Amy Brienes, Maria Cellario, Jessica Dickey, and Stan Lachow, and superb design by Neal Wilkinson (sets), Joshua Briggs (lighting), Anastasia Williams (costumes), and Jill BC DuBoff (sound). Talented artists all, collaborating to create one of the most moving and rewarding theatre experiences of the year. This one's not to be missed.

Elephant is about a family dealing with grief. Jay, a marine in his twenties, has recently died in a car accident, leaving behind his parents, Henry and Kathleen, his sister Michelle, and his pregnant girlfriend, Ellen. Separately, they deal with their loss, and together, they find ways to move forward. The play has a fluid structure that takes us into the physical worlds of each of the living characters and also inside their heads as they remember times they spent with Jay. Michelle is in a hospital with an apparently ineffectual therapist named Rich, obsessively over-applying makeup and lashing out at the world as she battles her sadness. Henry is on the road, delivering Jay's German shepherd Blaze to the Arizona breeder where he was born. Ellen, an artist, is in her studio, painting over a big picture of an elephant. And Kathleen is at home alone, holding down the fort, checking in on (overseeing?) her family's progress toward healing.

The memories are vivid, funny, and real: Ellen recalls her first meeting with Jay, in college, loaded with awkwardness and resulting in an unintended rejection when he asks her for coffee and she replies "I don't drink coffee." Henry drives by the Grand Canyon and remembers a long-ago vacation when he watched his son stretch out his arms, dangerously near the edge. Michelle conjures random moments like one at a family gathering, playing a game with the just-found-out-they're-in-love Jay and Ellen. It's all gentle, sweet, inconsequential: trivial details that add up to a life.

I love that Stokley focuses on the ways that the members of this family love and care for each other: Mom is bossy and difficult, but also unwaveringly smart and nurturing; Dad is detached and impetuous, but also thoughtful and warm. Stokley's not interested in trading in stereotypes or archetypes, but instead in carving out real people with whom we eagerly empathize and whom we genuinely like.

I also love how Stokley constantly surprises us and makes us re-evaluate what we understand about these people and their relationships, springing new details on us as she cannily tells her story non-linearly and non-chronologically. There is, in particular, a wonderful revelation about midway through the play that I absolutely will not spoil for you here, for it's also the heart of Elephant—one family member coming to another's rescue in a truly remarkable way.

Afterthoughts

I am positive that I did not realize that I had seen Margie Stokley in one of Mel Miller's Musicals Tonight! productions (The Roar of the Greasepaint-The Smell of the Crowd, in 2002)--I even mentioned her in my review. I saw Margie in several other shows thereafter; she is a fine actor as well as a gifted writer.

This show was my first acquaintance with the work of AndHow! Theater Company, but I became a steadfast fan of their work after this, and another show they produced, Andrew Irons's play Linus & Alora, is in Plays and Playwrights 2009. This was also the first of four plays featuring actor Arthur Aulisi that were part of our anthology series.

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Survivor: Vietnam! - A Plays and Playwrights Memory

The first time I ever saw a real improv show was also the first time I ever went to The Red Room and it was also the first time I encountered the mad talents of Rob Reese. The year was 1998. The show was called Honey Harlowe, a double bill of comedy acts, the last of which featured Reese and his company Amnesia Wars doing (according to my review) "some of the sharpest, smartest, and funniest theatre in New York."

Those adjectives have applied to everything I've ever seen Rob do since that night almost 25 years ago. There have been multiple Amnesia Wars improv and comedy shows, but there have also been scripted works. In 2000, Rob adapted and directed Mary Shelley's Frankenstein for the stage (originally performed in New York at the Pelican Studio Theater)--a remarkably faithful and intense rendition of the classic tale that featured four actors as the Monster. (That play eventually ended up in my anthology Playing With Canons.)

Rob's next play was this one, a satire of the then-popular Survivor TV franchise. It opened at the PIT on a Saturday at 10pm, which is late for me; subsequent performances were at midnight.

nytheatre.com review - May 17, 2003

Rob Reese—actor, writer, director, improv teacher, and world traveler—can now add Ultimate Capitalist to his impressive curriculum vitae. In Survivor: Vietnam!, his new parody of a certain very popular reality TV show, now running late nights at Peoples Improv Theatre, he gives the world the consumer product that it's been waiting for. It's called "Wipe 'N Go, the completely disposable two step cleaning system": all you need to do is open the package and then throw it away and you're done (see, two steps).

I give away just this one of Reese's dead-on satirical barbs to show you how on-target his writing is. In two hilarious, brilliantly-crafted "commercials," Reese both deconstructs and fires cautionary warning shots at the state of marketing (and consumer gullibility) in America today (he presses some other buttons as well). Performed simply at two microphones by Reese and Jason Evans, they're neat gems of comic wisdom, all by themselves worth the price of admission to this subversive little show.

Which is not to imply that the rest of Survivor: Vietnam! isn't worth your time. It is, but as sometimes happens in the world of TV, the commercials really are the best part. The premise of Survivor: Vietnam! is that a desperate network has set its newest reality show in the midst of the Vietnam War. Never mind the fact that this war ended some thirty years ago; the media honchos have thoughtfully recreated it, bombing raids and all. Oh, but this time a lot of the Viet Cong are portrayed by beautiful models in skimpy bathing suits.

Reese gives us six rather typical contestants to rough it through combat for a chance at a multi-million dollar prize. There's ditzy vegan Julia (Julia Motyka), naive student Mike (Marcus Bonnée), vaguely lascivious warrior Orf (Daniel Berman), militant feminist Erica (Eric Brenner, in extremely unconvincing drag), and a married couple, controlling Angela (Angela DiGenarro) and her doormat of a husband, Darryl (Darryl Reilly). Egged on by annoyingly chipper host Kennedy-Johnson-Nixon (Nitra Guiterrez), they are made to play "games" like a version of Russian Roulette involving six beer cans (one of the cans has been pre-shaken so it will explode when smashed against someone's head). The women are also encouraged to lift their t-shirts frequently. It's just like TV.

Of course, even as his spot-on parody of this or that reality show goes its merry way, Reese has something a bit darker up his sleeve. Eventually, the remaining survivors find themselves up against authentic danger, perpetrated by an exec-gone-mad named Kurtz. They (and we) wind up in Conrad country, exploring the limits to man's capacity for exploitation and evil (or, more accurately, the apparent lack of such limits) as Survivor morphs into Apocalypse Now.

Not that things get too serious: the finale is a silly, slapstick combat-chase sequence that feels as much like Keystone Kops as anything; Reese's primary objective is to keep us laughing, and he succeeds. Especially with those two commercial interruptions.

The company is fearless and enthusiastic and maintain the requisite high energy level to put over the gags. The staging is simple and minimalist, as befits a director whose roots are in the world of improv; don't worry, you've seen enough of the kind of TV this show is parodying to fill in all the blanks in your mind's eye.

Afterthoughts

As I noted in the review above, Rob is one of those Renaissance indie theater hyphenates we frequently come upon: he is an actor, a director, a producer, a lighting designer, a stage technician, an improv teacher, a standup comic, and many other things as well as a fine playwright. I have encountered him in all sorts of unlikely places in the course of our friendship, everywhere from the makeshift stage at The Parkside Lounge in the Lower East Side to behind a giant follow-spot at The Public Theater.

Among Rob's subsequent produced plays after this one are Keanu Reaves Saves the Universe (2004; arguably his most popular work) and  a musical whodunnit called Miranda (2012; co-written with composer Kamala Sankaram).

Last Call - A Plays and Playwrights Memory

When I was reviewing theater, it was almost never the case that I had read the script for a brand new play before I saw it performed. But Kelly McAllister's Last Call is the rare exception to that rule. It was part of the 2002 New York International Fringe Festival, and as it happened that was the second year that I was an adjudicator. That meant that, working with two other people, I evaluated 30 applicants to the festival. One of them was Last Call, for which a very early draft of the script--I think it was only the first act--was submitted. Even in relatively raw form I loved this play, saw that it could really work, and would be a great fit for FringeNYC. My two colleagues agreed with me, and Last Call made it into the festival.

At some planning meeting subsequent to adjudication, actor Jack Halpin let a bunch of us know that he would be appearing in Last Call, and that he would be naked in it. Armed with that information, I decided not to bring my 16-year-old niece to see it, and that's why uncharacteristically I went to Last Call alone. It was performed at Theater for the New City, which provided several festival venues that summer. As you'll see below, I loved it. Within a few days I introduced myself to Kelly at another FringeNYC show and told him we wanted to publish the script in Plays and Playwrights 2003.

nytheatre.com review -  August 15, 2002

I hope it doesn't trivialize the events of 9/11 to say that they were a wake-up call for a lot of people, but I think that's true. It's certainly one of the themes of Kelly McAllister's stunning new play Last Call. Set in a bar in a suburban California town, Last Call tells the story of a group of friends who have known each other all their lives. Now in their mid-thirties, they seem to be stuck in ruts, professionally, personally, and emotionally; the dreams and ideals of their youth seem far away, if not entirely lost. Suddenly, David, the friend who "made good"—got a high-powered job and moved to New York City—returns, and like a modern-day Hickey (from O'Neill's Iceman Cometh) he sets out to free his barfly friends from the illusions that have them trapped.

Trouble is, David's pals' illusions are achingly, bitterly real: they're the soiled fabric of real life—unrequited love affairs, unsatisfying jobs, unhappy marriages. David works hard to shock these people out of their inertia (one of the things he does is take off all his clothes; there is a bit of frontal nudity in this play). His own catharsis came three months after the World Trade Center attacks, when he contemplated suicide on a subway platform; after all the carnage and loss, he thought, how could buying and selling and talking and trading matter?

David's reappearance in town catalyzes everybody into violent reaction, though how much finally changes among them is uncertain. McAllister shrewdly keeps David somewhat shadowy; the protagonist of the play is probably Jerry, the friend whose life seems to be most stunted (his big news during the past ten years was that he moved out of his parents' house into their garage). And the leading character of Last Call is neither of the above: he's a sad, damaged fellow named Jack, another friend, who lost the love of his life in a car crash fifteen years before and has never quite recovered. Space doesn't permit me to introduce the rest of the circle to you here; suffice to say that McAllister has created people we understand and care about.

Last Call is beautifully written: it's messy and poetic, like life. This production, directed by Jerry McAllister and produced by Hope Theatre, is spectacularly good. The cast is excellent: Jack Halpin (Jack), Matthew Rankin (Jerry), Brett Christensen (David), and Christine Goodman, R. Paul Hamilton, John Patrick Nord, Vinnie Penna, Masha Sapron, and Sara Thigpen. This one deserves a life after FringeNYC (but go ahead and see it now, just in case.)

Afterthoughts

I got to know Kelly and many of the Last Call cast members very well and nearly twenty years later I'm still mostly in touch with them. Kelly wrote several lovely plays in the years that followed, including Muse of Fire (2003), Burning the Old Man (2004, which was the first winner of Best Full-Length Script at the New York Innovative Theater Awards), Some Unfortunate Hour (2005), Fenway (2006; an adaptation of Uncle Vanya), and April's Fool (2014). For a long time, Kelly was also one of nytheatre.com's reviewers, and he wrote the Foreword to Plays and Playwrights 2011.

Kelly moved to Colorado about ten years ago, and there he has his own indie theater company, teaches acting to kids and adults, and has produced and directed a wide range of plays and musicals. I miss seeing him, but knowing that he's continuing his high-energy humanist practice of theater a couple of thousand miles away from New York is reassuring.