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Introduction

Teatime with the Maestro
Kirk Trevor confronts rumors, Knoxville's peculiar audiences and the 21st century

The Screen House Effect
Film in Knoxville in the year 2000

Shadows and Light

What's going on?
Check the following schedule of local arts and cultural events.

An electronic look into Laestrygonians, theater, world premieres, and Knoxville

by Adrienne Martini

In the old days, playwrights founded their own companies to produce their works, and each script was tediously copied by hand. Generally, plays were produced in the same town in which they were written. Widespread dissemination was difficult, largely because travel was so difficult. But there were few other entertainment options.

Now, of course, we live in a world of cable TV and the Internet. While theater has flashier technical toys, the basics remain mostly unchanged—except that a playwright in a small town in Ohio can easily have his work produced anywhere in the world.

Which brings us to Don Nigro, whose play Laestrygonians has been brought to life onstage by Knoxville's Actor's Co-op. Director Brian Prather found this Nigro piece by emailing the playwright himself. A meeting of the minds occurred, despite a separation of quite a few miles.

Nigro is an internationally known playwright with over 200 scripts in his repertoire. His plays have been produced in 48 states, as well as in such diverse places as South Africa and Hungary. Twenty or so of his works chronicle the Pendragon family, a fictitious clan that he follows through the better part of a century. Laestrygonians is one of the Pendragon plays and the title refers to a tidbit of Homer's Odyssey.

The Actors Co-op has been on an odyssey of its own lately, in terms of searching for a permanent home for its outstanding work. For now, the company has been producing shows in the attic of Jackson Ave. Antiques and the performances have been fairly well-received despite the unusual quarters. The company has won a slew of Knoxville Area Theatre Coalition (KATC) awards but, more importantly, produces interesting work that challenge the actors and audience alike. Laestrygonians fit quite nicely into this category; the play does touch on some sensitive issues about sex.

So, what better way to get to know a bit about this play, the family on which it's based, some insights into the nature of the form and those who practice it than through the phone lines and computer links that make email possible?

To: "Don Nigro" From: Adrienne Martini Subject: Question One Cc: bprather@xxx.

DN and BP—

First question is for each of you to answer on your own. Take your time and don't fret about finding a number two pencil.

And away we go!

Brian, how did you find this script?

Don, who are the Pendragons?

Back to the grind,

Hope all is well,

From: Brian Prather Subject: Re : Question One

Easy one. I wrote to Samuel French requesting information on all the unpublished plays in the Pendragon Cycle, the guy who received my email knew Don, forwarded my request to Don, Don emailed me offering any assistance he could in all things Pendragon, so I asked him, "if you could pick one full-length Pendragon play as a sort of introduction to the cycle to be produced by a growing small company, which would it be?" He sent me Laestrygonians and another play, both unpublished as of yet. I read both, and decided Laes. was better suited for the Co-op.

Come on, give me a tough one.

From: Don Nigro Subject: Who are the Pendragons?

The Pendragons are a family, people who start out in Wales in the 1700s, eventually get to America, and move to Ohio, where one of them builds a house and then can't seem to stop, adding on room after room for his whole life, until he's created a kind of gothic, haunted-house labyrinth, which is I suppose the objective correlative for the nightmare labyrinth of their family history, which is complex, tortured, and bizarre to say the least.

A good deal of their early history is a kind of distorted American Gothic mirror image of Arthurian legend, as Pendragon was actually King Arthur's father's last name, and many of the characters early on in the saga have Arthurian counterparts, although they eventually take on other characteristics and evolve into quite different people than their doubles in Malory and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and various other wonderful moldy old mythological sources.

The cycle of plays takes them from 18th century Wales up to the present, and is still evolving, forwards, backwards, and internally, with long plays, one acts, monologues, all interconnected, with characters that we see young and middle aged and old over long stretches of time. Part of the joy of it for me is being able to work both within the boundaries of individual plays and on the larger epic canvas of a complex labyrinth of interlocking plays, and to deal with these characters in different times in their lives and different periods of history.

And each play, long or short, has got to make sense first on its own while also connecting back to what's come before it in the story and forward to what's to come. And as I did not write these plays in chronological order, I have had some rather happy times figuring out what happens to these people between one play and another. In a play called November, for example, I wrote about three old ladies, then later wrote about them as young girls, and then as middle aged women, and the process was a kind of investigation, for me, of how people turn slowly over time into other people.

From: Adrienne Martini Subject: Round two

Y'all—

Another one where you each get a question of your very own.

Brian—What are the challenges of directing/producing a new, unpublished work? And how do you feel Laes fits the Co-op's strengths?

Don—Why would you give a new, unpublished work to a small company in Tennessee? Is Brian that much of a charmer or are there advantages to Knoxville's size and location?

Sniffly and sneezy,

From: Don Nigro Subject: Advantages of Knoxville

Dear Sniffy, Sneezy, and all the other dwarfs:

I let the Actors Co-op do Laestrygonians because:

(1) I thought Brian's communications were smart and perceptive and he'd clearly done a great deal of thinking about these plays,

(2) because the group seemed interested not just in one particular play but in the cycle as a whole, and hoped to do several of the plays in a way which would help the audience begin to see the interconnections between them (many of these Pendragon plays have been produced over the years, but nobody has really tried to do a bunch of them together),

(3) because I checked these people out on the Internet and liked the farm animals on their web site, and also thought their last season was smart, ambitious and brave, and

(4) most importantly, they actually wanted to do it, as opposed to, say, telling me how great they thought it was but then deciding after much soul searching to do The Odd Couple instead.

It's often been the case in my seriously weird career as an American playwright that younger companies have been willing to take the kind of risks that bigger and more established theaters sometimes don't think they can afford to take. And my work is usually perceived as a big risk. Of course, pretty much all theater is a big risk—all theaters are about two steps away from disaster at any given moment. If they're brave enough to give it a try, I'm delighted.

As for the last part of your question, I am uninformed about the advantages of Knoxville's size and location, but I'm sure there are many. Wherever brave theater is being done at any given moment, that stage is the center of the universe, as far as I'm concerned. Earlier this year, the center of the universe (at least of mine) has moved from the falling apart Judith Anderson Theatre in New York (where a great young company called Inertia Productions was doing five of my one acts), to Theatre X in Milwaukee (a great old experimental company finding new life lately, did the world premiere of Quint and Miss Jessel at Bly), to the Open Stage Theatre in Pittsburgh to my wonderfully deranged friends at the Shadowbox Cabaret in Columbus, Ohio, who've done three of my plays this year, two of them world premieres, to the International School in Vienna, Austria, to festivals in Felixstowe, England, and Vancouver and Winnipeg and—well, the point is, you never know where or when a really wonderful piece of theater is going to happen. It's just as likely to happen in Knoxville as anywhere else if you have the right play, the right people to do it, and an audience willing to come see it and give it a chance.

From: Brian Prather Subject: Re : Round two

Of course, the benefit of doing an already established show is that usually someone else has seen it, or done it before, or there is some record of a past performance which the director and cast can refer to for ideas—rejecting some, keeping others. We have none of that. But actually, I've found it to be incredibly liberating. No one has any preconceived ideas—that's when the imagination really gets to let loose and we are able to explore the material in the most honest way possible. And Nigro's script really makes it easier for us because everything we need is there: a solid plot, characters with incredible depth, and dialogue with layers of meaning and interpretation.

And how do you feel Laes. fits the Co-op's strengths? First of all, there is the simple fact that it is a small cast show (6 characters), and does not require a lot in the way of sets, lighting and sound, allowing us to concentrate on the acting as we like to do. The play is very intimate, and has a real ensemble feel, which I believe are two of the hallmarks of the Co-op. Also, I believe there's a good balance between the comic and dramatic in this piece, allowing us to stretch all our muscles.

From: Adrienne Martini Subject: Third question

Now that we're all warmed up, time for the toughie. This is the question for which I encourage looking at each other's papers. Therefore, the following scheme:

DN answers as best he can and sends to BP, who answers as best he can and who is free to comment upon what DN has said. BP then sends back to DN, who comments and/or elucidates and/or tells BP he's a big fat poopy head. DN will then send the whole shebang to AM, who will decide what happens next.

A note: Please preface your words with your initials, so words are credited to the proper person, for good or for ill.

If none of this makes sense, please let me know. I'm a little sick and not thinking as clearly as usual, which really isn't saying much but I thought I'd throw it out there in hopes of sympathy.

Anyway, the question:

Why make/do/write/direct theater?

Subject: 3rd Question

DN: The central human characteristic, the thing that makes us what we are, is imagination, which is the basis of all art, all science, all human culture. You can't walk around on the moon until some fool has actually had enough imagination to picture being there, and then told some other fool a story about it, and over a few millennia you get to Jules Verne and then H. G. Wells and then Arthur Clarke and then Alan Shepherd is hitting golf balls on the moon. Imagination first, then everything else follows after.

Art is the pure form of imagination, it's the story we tell to communicate what we've imagined, and get it inside other people's brains. And imagining what is inside other people's brains and telling ourselves a story about it is also the beginning of that form of imaginative identification, which is the basis of compassion, which is the basis of all human ethics.

We are the storytelling monkeys. That's what we are. And theater is the most immediate and powerful form of storytelling, at least for me, because it involves both language, the greatest human invention, and actual flesh and blood, the physical thing we are. Theater is imagination transformed like communion bread and wine to flesh and blood. When it's done well, or even sometimes if it's not done very well, there is an eerie kind of communion that happens there, an intimacy of soul and flesh, a kind of holy sharing that is difficult to describe, but impossible to mistake when you feel it.

It's for me the most profound and powerful investigation into truth human beings have created. That it's generally seen in America as either at best a trivial way to waste time and at worst a demonic device to corrupt our children is a measure of our ignorance, an ugly, stupid residue of the genocidal pioneer spirit and the hypocritical Puritanism which are the worst strains of American heritage.

But theater, fragile as it seems, always just at the edge of being ridiculous or pretentious, is actually remarkably resilient. It survives neglect, ignorance, prejudice, bad writing, bad acting, dumb audiences, poverty, persecution, incredible malice—the impulse to create, to investigate and share, is at least as strong in us as the impulse to destroy.

Theater is life, and light, and joy, and the single most characteristic human creation. It's the most important thing I could possibly be doing. This is the way I investigate the world and try to make sense out of it. And it's the way I share what's in my head and try to imagine what's in other people's. I make it because I choose to, despite everything, and because it is a source of tremendous joy, despite all the insults and rejections it also brings. This is Shakespeare's profession, and it's mine, and in that oddly sacred space all times and places that ever were and ever will be exist simultaneously to be shared. When human beings stop doing this, our souls will be dead and beyond redemption.

BP: I don't know why I'm even bothering to reply to this, Don has said everything I feel, and said it more eloquently than I ever could. The simple answer is, I do theater to tell stories.

Humans are storytelling creatures; it's a fundamental part of us. We feel a basic drive, born from necessity, to speak to one another, and each time we do we engage in a conscious effort to communicate an idea, to educate, to entertain. Theater concentrates speech and situations into an elevated reality where actions and consequences play out before our eyes—that creative process is the craft. Like the first homo sapiens whose imagination could contain itself no longer and so created a new vocabulary to explain the magic of a dream, artists strive to illuminate all the mysterious corners of human experience, so they become part of human understanding. Like scientists who probe the smallest particles of matter and life in order to construct a larger picture of existence, theater artists begin with the enormous canvas of existence and attempt to isolate and understand the intimate components of human interaction.

I agree with Don, theater is the most immediate and powerful artistic endeavor of this kind because it deals directly with flesh and blood and the spoken word—once again that basic human function. Thomas Wolfe said, "Theater is church. Theater is people sitting in the dark, watching people stand in the light, talking about what it means to be human." In creating and sharing stories, we use theater to preserve, challenge, and illuminate ourselves, our history, and our future, and have done so for thousands of years. It is a heritage to be proud of, to follow the tradition of Sophocles and Shakespeare.

Yes, theater is resilient, like every honest theater artist must be. Every day your physical stamina, emotional strength, and the depth of your imaginative, intellectual, and analytical skills are tested to the point of exhaustion. I create theater because I need the challenge, and I embrace the tradition. Despite the ignorance, neglect, and plain stupidity that often threaten it, theater is a noble and timeless profession.

And the reward—when those on stage and those in the audience have shared a moment of true revelation from which neither will walk away the same—that's what I live for.

From: Adrienne Martini Subject: Last question

Same idea, just in the reverse order, which means that we'll go BP to DN to BP to me.
Hey, I made a rhyme.
Anyway, the question is: What do you wish that I had asked and why?

From: Brian Prather Subject: Aspidistras

BP: I can't think of any question I would have liked for you to ask me, but I do have one for Don. Of all things, why does Mary Margaret have to own an aspidistra? They may grow in abundance up in the wilds of Ohio, but they're in short supply down here. Why not a nice potted kudzu?

Actually, one question might have been a follow up to your "Why do theater?" (i.e. "What's the meaning of life") question. One thing I hear a lot is, in this day of 270 cable channels and multiplex cinemas on every corner, why is theater still a relevant storytelling vehicle? Why come see Laestrygonians when you can go to a movie?

The answer goes back to the immediacy of theater. It's too easy to distance yourself from something on a screen, a projected image made months or years earlier. There are no stunt men in theater, no digital enhancements, no cutaways, no pause button. What you see is happening right there, right then, with flesh-and-blood actors out alone on stage with no safety net but their own talent and wits and endurance. Now if I could just get theaters to serve popcorn...

DN: Answer to aspidistra question: when I was about 12, my favorite writer in the world was a Scottish author of ghostly and weird tales named John Heir Cross, a paperback collection of whose tales (The Other Passenger) I read over and over many times.

On the blurb in the front of the book, it said Cross created "an old fashioned world, if you will, in which terror lurks among the aspidistras, poison is served in delicate bone-china teacups, and the antimacassars form a lacy veil concealing bloody horror."

The result, these many years later, is that now and then aspidistras and antimacassars pop up in my work, along with probably hundreds of other images and literary and artistic references to other works of art this obscure little book led me to. What a person reads in the first 16 or 20 years of their life is wonderfully dangerous. It lingers in the mind like very little that's read afterwards. And poor Brian has to pay the price.

What question do I wish Adrienne had asked?

What is the capital of Uzbekistan? Answer: Tashkent. I think it's Tashkent.

BP: Yeah I guess that covers everything.