Working Title: The Move, The Packing, The Thrush and The Woodpecker

This week Will Leschber barely makes it out of his moving truck to speak to Custom Made Theatre about The Thrush & The Woodpecker.

Hello there dear readers! You all are a dedicated bunch. I gotta give you props. Not only are you here now reading away, but we even tried to trick you all by saying that the last Working Title blog entry was a goodbye blog! Well, as you may know, it was a farewell Bay Area blog but it is not the last Working Title blog, no siree bob blog… we can’t trick you! Tricks are for kids. Let’s keep this party going from across the country!

So I can’t tear myself away. Even after the 3500-mile journey from San Francisco to Phoenix to Austin then Kansas and on to Connecticut in a 26’ box truck towing a car, even after unloading a ridiculous amount of moving boxes, even after getting my bearings and loosing sleep and battling landlords and praising new daycare workers and thanking in-laws and parents…even after all that, I can’t tear myself away from San Francisco indie theater. You guys deserve the best. So I have a few more suggestions to help wet your whistles and prep your brains as you dive into the new offerings from Bay Area theater.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Brian Katz, Artistic Director at Custom Made Theater about The Thrush & the Woodpecker, a new play by Steve Yockey that has its rolling world premiere beginning in a few short weeks. If you think that driving cross-country with a dog and a dad sounds dramatic and surprising, that has nothing on this revenge play. Starring local legend Stacy Ross, Shotgun Players Company Member Fontana Butterfield, and hot up-and-coming actor Adam Magill (Berkeley Rep’s Macbeth, SF Playhouse’s Stupid Fucking Bird), The Thrush and the Woodpecker tells the engaging story of a mysterious stranger who arrives to turn the world upside down for Brenda Hendricks and her son Noah, who’s recently returned from college unexpectedly. What avian secrets lie in wait?! We’ll see…

I asked Brian Katz the best film to pair with the new and unusual Thrush/Woodpecker and like a good Artistic Director, he offered up the question to his wonderful production team to get a myriad of opinions. Here’s a sampling of recommendations:

Kitty Torres (costumer) suggests: Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca. Since the play and the film definitely share the same levels of obsession and deceit.

Liz Ryder (sound) concisely recommends: The Birds!

Leah Abrams (Custom Made Theater Company’s Executive Director) offers up: The 2006 thriller Notes on a Scandal because its two female characters strike me in a similar way, a mix of perfectly normal/really off-kilter in their own way. AND Hitchcock’s The Birds. I think it’s the film that terrifies me most – there’s the obvious havoc wreaked by said birds, and also just that sense of the supernatural invading seemingly normal people in the real world.

With the uncanny, supernatural, deceitful, unnerving recommendations Thrush/Woodpecker sounds to be quite an intriguing experience. The play opens August 4th and runs until August 20th. More info can be found at www.custommade.org.

Working Title: Loquacious Lucania, How Many Degrees Is He Away From You?

This week Will Leschber speaks to Carl Lucania about all Six Degrees of Separation…

As you all know, dear readers, usually we crack this blog open with a fun diatribe about a current event or some personal goings-on, then loosely shoestring-link it to a current SF play and top that sucker off with a perfect film pairing to whet your insatiable appetites. Who doesn’t like structure! It’s fun, right?! Well, blog fans, let’s just forget the formalities this week and jump neck-deep into Custom Made Theatre’s production of Six Degrees of Separation, directed by Stuart Bousel.

I reached out to Bay Area actor and all-around stellar human being Carl Lucania about a film suggestion, as I’m wont to do. Instead of sending a single, well-crafted sentence and being done with it, Carl had the grace and good humor to send over a comprehensive five paragraphs and eloquently over-achieve. Carl, you are my hero! Since he can turn a phrase better than this little blogger, let’s just let him do the heavy lifting. The loquacious, learned Lucania not only provides a perfect intro to John Guare’s play, but also throws in film pairings AND a few cross-disciplinary recommendations spanning literature to fine art. Whew! Sit down and listen up; class is session! …You best just read on, folks.

Take it away Carl!!!

Happy to help…

Six Degrees of Separation covers a lot of ground. At the face of it, it’s a story of a middle-aged, upper-middle class white couple in early 1990s Manhattan whose world gets turned around when a young black man, pretending to be Sidney Poitier’s son, insinuates himself into their lives. Within that framework there’s a a lot of commentary on class, race, art, and both personal and world politics. And it manages to do all of this in a very succinct, smart, and entertaining 90 minutes.

One of the main themes we talked about when we started working on it was duality: how a story is perceived is entirely up to the person perceiving it — so there isn’t just one reality or story. As Americans, we’re told that we can be anything we want if we’re smart and work hard. And this story turns that ideal on its head. The central character is very smart and works very hard. But is he just a con man? Or is he living the American dream of bettering himself? And it’s the same duality with art: is Duchamp’s Fountain a brilliant work? Or is it just a porcelain urinal in a museum?

One movie that comes to mind is Mike Nichols’ 1988 comedy, Working Girl. For one, it puts you in Manhattan right around the same time period and it also explores a similar theme of someone very clever attempting to jump class by pretending to be something she’s not. And they manage to work quite a bit of social commentary about being a woman in a man’s world into a fairly standard rom-com with Melanie Griffith, Harrison Ford, and Sigourney Weaver. Plus it has Joan Cusack in one of my favorite portrayals of a big-haired, big-mouthed girl from Queens.

If you want to get cross-disciplinary in your preparation: go stare at a Kandinsky or Hockney at SF MOMA, listen to a recording of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats or read Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. They are all referenced quite a bit in the play. And if you haven’t seen Sidney Poitier in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner then you’re missing out, because it’s amazing.

My plug: come see the show. I got on board because I love working with Stuart Bousel and I knew this was his favorite play and I wanted to be a part of that. Our three leads (Genevieve Perdue, Khary L. Moye, Matt Weimer) carry a big load and make it look easy. There’s a large supporting cast, thirteen of us in all, and not a slacker in the bunch. It’s been wonderful to watch this crew get up to speed so quickly and expertly deliver the goods. I think this one will stick with you for a while.

xo, Carl

Six Degrees of Separation runs May 19 – June 18 Wed 7:30pm; Thurs-Fri 8pm; Sat 2pm & 8pm. Additional information and tickets can be found here: http://www.custommade.org/sixdegrees.

Working Title: The Space Between Middletown and Transcendence

This week Will Leschber talks Custom Made Theater’s Middletown and all the things in between…

How often do we find ourselves in the middle? In between two points in our lives; in between birthdays; in between doing what we want to do and what we have to do to pay the bills; in between this step and the next; the first step and the last. It seems you could say that about every boring mundane transitional moment of our lives. Our life is the middle. Our days are the Oreo filling of our lives.

Will Eno’s award winning play Middletown, which recently opened at Custom Made Theater, concerns itself with the stuff in between: the unremarkable; the quiet moments of insignificance that add up to a lifetime; life as it’s unexpectedly cut short; life as it opens anew; life as seen from the distant view of the stars. In all the stories, in all the towns, in all of time, is anyone different or special? Or are we all special just like everyone else?

I wanted to discuss the odd headspace that Middletown exists in with someone who was a bit more familiar with the show. At times the play feels like it moves in the ether between manifest divinity, exuberant mundanity, boring miraculousness and everyday normality. What film or other entertainment entity could possibly get me in this same headspace?!

Everett Collection / Rex Features ( 716635a )
Bruno Ganz in Wings of Desire (Der Himmel Uber Berlin), 1987

I had the pleasure of speaking to Bay Area actress, Jean Forsman, after seeing her perfectly cast performance as the town librarian in Custom Made Theatre’s current production of Middletown. Librarians are the gatekeepers to the bound ages of knowledge. So I figured, I’d pick her brain about the perfect film pairing to prepare you for the mindset of Middletown living. Here’s what she had to say:

“In consideration of your question, I keep coming back to Wim Winders’ Wings of Desire. The angels moving throughout the earth, detached from earth, are able to observe us with clarity and compassion and delight in our humanity (watching someone lower her umbrella to feel the rain on her face). Like the astronaut in Middletown, the Angel appreciates the miracle of existence once he is detached from our atmosphere and chooses to live with us, warts and all.”

A classic of World cinema, the 1987 film makes a perfect match for Middletown.

Living just on the outside, in the middle between one significant place and another, our slanted perspective may just turn the light of mundane life bright enough so we can peek at the wonder floating around us all the time. The point is not to arrive at a place where you only see the awe-inspiring miracles that pervade our lives. Maybe the point is to take a moment every once in awhile to reflect on the touches of transcendence, and when that moment is felt fully and passed, to then continue moving forward down the great current with everyone else. We are the river and you can never step in the same point of a river twice.

See Middletown. Spend some time with yourself and everyone else. It runs until it ends…April 23, unless it extends…life has a way of extending.