Hi-Ho The Glamorous Life: Someone Had to Throw a Bomb

Marissa Skudlarek unpacks the luggage, la-la-la…

On Monday April 15^th, around lunchtime here on the West Coast, the bombs went off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. I saw the headlines, kept the breaking news feed open in my internet browser. I watched the shaky footage of the explosions, with the Boston cop saying “This is fucked up ovah heah.”

And then I recalled that I was producing a show that night at Theater Pub, and quickly reviewed the script of Orphée in my head, wondering if the day’s events would lend any moments in the play an unintended resonance. I realized, with a jolt, that in the first scene of the play, Orphée says “Someone had to throw a bomb.” He’s speaking metaphorically, of course – he’s expressing his belief that the artist’s duty is to “throw a bomb, create a scandal, [provide] one of those storms that refresh the air.” Nonetheless, I wondered if it was appropriate to include that line in performance, on a day when real bombs (not metaphorical ones) had been thrown. Would it upset the audience? Would it prejudice them against the character of Orphée?

I emailed the director, Katja Rivera, and the actor playing Orphée, Andrew Chung, to say I was thinking of cutting the line. Both of them responded that they’d prefer if I left it in, and, upon reflection, I decided that they were right. If we left the script as is, we’d make a statement that art cannot be constrained or cowed by terrorism. And if our audience was mildly scandalized, so be it – one of the messages of Orphée is that true poets do not fear scandal and death. If we cut the line, I realized, we’d betray the spirit of Jean Cocteau. And the terrorists would win.

And really, why should I be afraid to leave the “Someone had to throw a bomb” line in the play when, all around me, people were doing far braver and bolder and more provocative things with their art? For the 2012 Olympians Festival, Stuart Bousel wrote a play (Twins) based on the myth of Artemis and Apollo killing Niobe’s twelve children – and then the Sandy Hook school shooting occurred the day before Stuart’s staged reading. Stuart didn’t cancel the reading, though he did warn the audience that the play dealt with a difficult and sensitive subject. Perhaps some people stayed home rather than see a play about the murder of children; perhaps a few people were offended. But many of the people who did go see the reading found it incredibly cathartic and moving. No Olympians Festival show has ever made people weep the way they did at the reading of Twins that night. Art needs to tell difficult truths; otherwise, it’s just pabulum.

I attended some of the 2012 Olympians Festival readings with the man who is now my boyfriend. The festival must’ve made quite an impression on him, because a few weeks later, he wrote me an email telling me about a dream he’d had:

I dreamed that we were at the Olympians Festival and the city was in panic because  the gods were coming to punish us for blaspheming them. “But we didn’t blaspheme them,” I protested. “Oh, but we did,” you said, turning to Stuart, “in so-and-so’s play and in what’s-his-name’s play too, really.” You turned back to me and nodded slightly. You seemed not the least bit concerned and Stuart had his usual air of interest and mild amusement. Your body language suggested that this was part of the writer’s life: sometimes you win trophies, sometimes you inspire blogs, and sometimes ancient gods come to punish the city, and that’s just how it is.

I was flattered that he was dreaming about me, of course, but even more flattered by the way that I appeared in his dream. I liked how the dream-Marissa had the artistic and moral courage to say “An artist must be permitted to write whatever he wants, even if he blasphemes the gods and attracts divine retribution.” These sentiments also seemed to tie in nicely with Stuart’s Theater Pub blog post about artistic courage (otherwise known as “the post with all of the Lord of the Rings in-jokes”), which appeared the same week my boyfriend had this dream.

In real life, I may not yet have the courage of Eowyn the Shield-Maiden, or of Orphée the poet who faces an angry mob, or of the coolly nonchalant figure in my boyfriend’s dream. But I’m trying to be braver and more honest in my work this year. I’m trying to live up to that ideal.

Marissa Skudlarek is a San Francisco-based playwright and arts writer. Find her online at marissabidilla.blogspot.com or on Twitter @MarissaSkud.

Hi-Ho The Glamorous Life: Why “Songs of Hestia” Should Be on Your Summer-Reading List

Marissa Skudlarek, en route to her own vacation, imparts some advice for summer reading.

Songs of Hestia, the first book of plays from the San Francisco Olympians Festival, has just been released! Our friends at the EXIT Theater (whose publishing arm, EXIT Press, produced the book) threw us a lovely book-release party on Thursday night, where we drank champagne cocktails in honor of the five playwrights whose work is featured in the book. Find it on Amazon.com or at local bookstores.

All right, full disclosure: I copy-edited Songs of Hestia and also wrote the introduction. So if you pick up a copy, you’ll see an essay in which I attempt to say various erudite and analytical things about the plays in the book. But, I realized, my introduction may not fully convey just how fun these plays are. So consider this blog post a less formal introduction to Songs of Hestia. Even if you don’t normally read plays, you’re likely to find that this book has something for you. If you fit into any of the following categories, Songs of Hestia should definitely go on your summer-reading list.

Do you love reality TV and Hollywood gossip? Does “beach reading,” to you, mean a sexy Hollywood novel or the latest Us Weekly? Did you start watching reality television when Survivor aired twelve years ago, and never looked back? Are you (perhaps guiltily) fascinated with the lives of the men and women who appear on reality shows? If so, you’ll love Nirmala Nataraj’s Aphrodite: A Romance in Infomercials. This play tells the story of Psyche Pendleton, former reality-TV sweetheart and current infomercial star. There’s quippy dialogue and a “Dr. McDreamy” love interest, but also a thoughtful exploration of Psyche’s, well, psyche. This far into the reality-TV era, we’re wised-up enough to know that what we’re watching isn’t really “real” – it’s been manipulated and massaged by producers. So how does that affect the stars of these shows? Psyche may be a fictional character. But there’s truth – there’s reality – behind her story.

Are you a current-events maven? Maybe you’re the kind of person who prefers to read nonfiction dealing with current events, especially foreign affairs, business, or finance. You always have a copy of The Economist stuffed in your briefcase or purse. But it may be harder to get you to read fiction or drama, because you find the real world so fascinating and complex that you don’t want to spend time reading a made-up story. Well, I urge you to make an exception in the case of Bennett Fisher’s Hermes. While all of the characters in the play are fictitious – and the cast list includes the gods Hermes and Hestia – this play is tied to current events in a way that theater rarely is. It’s based on the origins of the Greek debt crisis in early 2010, and, as Fisher notes, “any similarity to real persons or events is entirely intentional.” Oh, and there’s also “bro” humor in the play. Lots of it. Somehow I don’t think you’ll find that in The Economist.

Are you eagerly awaiting Series 3 of Downton Abbey? Are you an Anglophile who loves fiction by the likes of Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot and Thomas Hardy? Do you adore Downton Abbey for its upstairs-downstairs plotlines and its willingness to mention what the Victorians never did, like secret homosexual liaisons? If so, you will love Hera, or Juno en Victoria, by Stuart Eugene Bousel. The Hera of this play, like Countess Cora, is a loving mother to a marriageable young daughter. She also has a tart-tongued spinster sister, Hestia, who could give Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess a run for her money when it comes to acidly quotable lines. Add in two handsome young men – one rich, one poor – and a housemaid as capable and intelligent as Downton Abbey’s Anna, and you have the perfect recipe for Victorian country-house intrigue, with a modern twist. (Would Charlotte Bronte ever have dared write, “It’s all right, Hebe. I know what sex is. And your aunt has read about it”?)

Do you love female-centric historical fiction? These days, women are buying and reading more literary fiction than men are, so it’s no surprise that books that look at different historical eras from a woman’s point of view often become bestsellers. Maybe you are one of the readers responsible for the popularity of novels like Kathryn Stockett’s The Help or Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl. Shift your focus to the late 1940s with Claire Rice’s Demeter’s Daughter, set in Greece after their bloody civil war. Its all-female cast includes Louisa, a young widow who seeks solace and compassion, and the three goddesses she encounters: Hera, Hestia, and Demeter. The play explores many facets of womanhood: what it means to be a wife, a mother, a survivor left behind after men die in battle. It is a deeply moving story; certain lines brought tears to my eyes as I copy-edited the play. That doesn’t usually happen to editors.

Are you a science-fiction buff? It’s cool these days to be a nerd or a geek, and if you are, you have lots of sci-fi movies and books to choose from. You also know that science fiction isn’t just an escapist fantasy – instead, it uses speculative tropes to explore meaningful themes. So why aren’t there more sci-fi plays? Well, Evelyn Jean Pine is attempting to remedy that. In Hephaestus and the Three Golden Robots (see? Robots!), Hephaestus has created three beautiful androids to help him with his work in the gods’ smithy. Meanwhile, the titan Prometheus has discovered the secret to making artificial life – and created the human race in the process. Thus the stage is set for an exploration of what it means to be human, as opposed to an immortal or a robot. And hey, my sources tell me that a little movie came out last weekend that has an android in it and speculates about the origins of human life. What’s it called, again? Oh yeah – Prometheus.

Marissa Skudlarek copy-edited and wrote the introduction to Songs of Hestia. Also a playwright and arts writer, she can be found at marissabidilla.blogspot.com or on Twitter @MarissaSkud.

HI-HO, THE GLAMOROUS LIFE: AN INTRODUCTION

Marissa Skudlarek, one of our favorite gals-about-town in the SF Theater scene, kicks off her regular guest spot on the SF Theater Pub blog. 

If you are raised, as I was, on a steady diet of old-fashioned Broadway musicals and Fred & Ginger movies, you will come to believe that the theater is the most glamorous profession in the world.  Producers lavish money on glittering costumes, huge orchestras, and shiny Art Deco scenery. Both onstage and backstage, charismatic performers speak with wit and behave with flair. And you can go out a chorus girl, but come back a star.

Even after I grew up, learned how hard it is to make a living as an artist, and resigned myself to the reality that no one wears gowns or tuxedos to opening nights, the theater still retained a residual glamor. I remember two years ago, when Theater Pub was just starting and I was making my first tentative forays into the San Francisco theater community. I’d meet people like Theater Pub founders Stuart Bousel and Ben Fisher and marvel at how they seemed to know everyone, be everywhere, and work on a million projects at once.  This was, I thought, a real-world kind of glamor: these men were busy, talked-about, in-demand. I wondered whether I would ever be in the same position.

Well, now it’s two years later and I’ve become one of those perpetually overscheduled theater people. In the last week alone, I’ve done the following:

• Helped organize, and spent an evening at, a fundraiser for the Bay One Acts (BOA) Kickstarter campaign
• Edited and posted several interviews with BOA playwrights on the BOA blog (bayoneacts.org)
• Copy-edited the BOA program
• Copy-edited the final proof of a forthcoming book of plays from the San Francisco Olympians Festival
• Attended an Olympians writers’ meeting and realized I should completely overhaul the play I am working on
• Figured out how to use Twitter
• Got an email from an actor I used to know, asking for my help with French pronunciation for an audition
• Saw three plays at major Bay Area theaters

And that doesn’t include the non-theater stuff I’ve had to deal with this week (hectic times at my day job; finding a roommate; taxes).  Nor does it include writing this column. Which I am doing at midnight, in my pajamas, after seeing a three-hour Tom Stoppard play about Russian intellectuals. Last night I fell asleep with the light on and woke up with pain in my jaw.

In times like these, the song “The Glamorous Life,” from Sondheim’s A Little Night Music, comes to mind. The heroine of the show, Desiree Armfeldt, is a famous actress in turn-of-the-century Sweden.  “Desiree Armfeldt! I just know she’ll wear the most glamorous gowns,” exclaims Anne, a naïve younger character.  Well, Desiree may be soignée, but she’s also a single mother who spends most of her time on tour in the provinces.  In “The Glamorous Life,” Desiree and the chorus wryly comment on the life of a theater professional: “Run for the carriage, la-la-la / Wolf down the sandwich, la-la-la / Which town is this one, la-la-la / Hi-ho, the glamorous life.”

So when Stuart Bousel asked if I would write a twice-monthly column about the San Francisco indie-theater lifestyle for the Theater Pub blog, I knew that I wanted the assignment and that I wanted to title the column “Hi-ho, the Glamorous Life.”

In upcoming columns, I hope to investigate, explain, praise, and critique different aspects of independent theater in the Bay Area.  If you’re a fellow theater artist, I want to find the words to describe our experiences, and if you’re not a theater-maker, I want to acquaint you with my world.

This world can be cash-strapped. It can be competitive. It forces you to spend more time than you’d like in seedy neighborhoods. It requires lots of humdrum behind-the-scenes effort to bring even a small black-box show to life.  But it’s busy and fast-paced and challenging. It values hard work and strong opinions. It has made me happy beyond measure. And yes, it is glamorous. 

Marissa Skudlarek is a San Francisco-based playwright, dramaturg, and arts writer. Find her at marissabidilla.blogspot.com and on Twitter @MarissaSkud.