An Ode For The End Of An Era

SPOILER ALERT!

If you haven’t been to Pint-Sized and are intending to go tonight, you shouldn’t read any further. You should also get there super early because we are going to be packed. If you’re not going to Pint Sized or have already been, then go right ahead. There won’t be anything too surprising.

Well, we’ve reached our final performance at the Cafe Royale at last. I was going to do a big sum up of the last three and a half years, but honestly, we already have a website that does an amazing job of that, and will continue to do so. Browse our Past Projects page. It’s an impressive list, as is the one of our many collaborators who have joined us over the years. As for this current blog entry, I’ve decided to published the Llamalogue that ends this year’s festival, since I think it pretty much says everything that has to be said. I hope you enjoy it, and thank you, as always, to Elana McKelahan, who created the Llama character, and Rob Ready, who has defined it since the beginning, deeper and deeper every year.

Speaking of thanks… Thank you to everyone who has been a part of this first era of Theater Pub. Audience and artist alike, we could not have done it without you, and we’re so grateful we did, and had you be a part of it.

See you soon.

Llamalogue

by Stuart Bousel

The Llama enters.

LLAMA:
Bet you thought that bear was coming back this year, huh?

Fuck that bear. There is no bear. There is only Llama.

He walks over to the Bar, calling to the Bartender:

Beer me.

He gets a beer from the Bartender after some improved banter, then goes back to talking to the audience.

Funny story about that Bear. Right after we started hanging out, you know, like right after I saved that Bear’s life, everything was pretty chill, for a while. Everything was pretty awesome, actually. And then along comes this baron whose name is like Sir Owns-A-Start-Up-He-Runs-Out-Of-His-Castle-He-Bought-With-All-The-Money-He-Made-At-Facebook-The Third and guess what? Within a week we’re having the old, “It’s not you, it’s me,” conversation and yes, in fact, it was all about that Bear because that Bear sucks.

Beat.

But I’m sure it was kind of about me too.

A moment. He drinks.

Christopher Durang once wrote- What? Don’t look at me like that, I go to the Theater, okay? I know it might be hard to accept, but I’m just your typical, every-day, hyper-articulate, overly-intoxicated, theater-admiring llama, okay? God…

He spits.

Anyway, Christopher Durang once wrote, “Don’t depend on people!” He has a character say this to another character, right before she strangles her. Actually, t’s a pretty amazing moment, because the Now-Dead-Girl was looking for someone to solve her problems and the Kills-Her-Woman basically does that for her, but, likw… forever, you know? Which was probably not the solution the Dead Girl was looking for… but you can’t say it didn’t work.

Every time I think about that Bear, I think about that play.

And how I probably should have strangled that Bear.

But I guess I’m glad I didn’t.

Beat. To an audience member, confidentially:

Don’t depend on dancing bears. They are not reliable.

He drinks. He once again address the whole audience.

There’s another side to it all, of course. And maybe I’m making it more than it is. I mean, the sun always rises again, blah blah blah. Like, if that Bear can find another Baron, something that was, statistically speaking, pretty fucking unlikely, then I can probably find another Bear. If I want to.

I’m just not sure that I want to.

You see, I never really wanted a Bear, until I had one, and then I didn’t have one. So sometimes I think I want to get the Bear back… but sometimes I think I just want to get back to what I was before I ever knew there was a Bear to have in the first place.

Beat.

Because I am a Llama.

And frankly, that’s already too much jelly for anybody to handle.

He drinks.

I don’t know. Some nights I stay up cashing in my bad luck and some nights I call it a draw, you know? Like… some nights I wish that my lips could build a castle… but then, like… that Bear would probably want to move in. And fuck that.

He goes back to drinking. A moment, and then he sings softly:

But I still wake up, I still see your ghost
Oh, Lord, I’m still not sure what I stand for oh
Whoa oh oh (What do I stand for?)
Whoa oh oh (What do I stand for?)
Most nights I don’t know anymore…

And suddenly the CHORUS enter, joining in as needed.

CHORUS:
Oh, whoa, oh, whoa, oh, whoa, oh, oh,
Oh, whoa, oh, whoa, oh, whoa, oh, oh

LLAMA:
This is it, boys, this is war – what are we waiting for?
Why don’t we break the rules already?
I was never one to believe the hype
Save that for the black and white
I try twice as hard and I’m half as liked,
But here they come again to jack my style

That’s alright
I found a martyr in my bed tonight
She stops my bones from wondering just who I am, who I am, who I am
Oh, who am I? Mmm… Mmm…

Well, some nights I wish that this all would end
‘Cause I could use some friends for a change.
And some nights I’m scared you’ll forget me again
Some nights I always win, I always win…

But I still wake up, I still see your ghost
Oh, Lord, I’m still not sure what I stand for, oh
What do I stand for?
What do I stand for?
Most nights I don’t know, anymore!

Well, that is it guys, that is all – five minutes in and I’m bored again
Ten years of this, I’m not sure if anybody understands
This one is not for the folks at home;
Sorry to leave, mom, I had to go
Who the fuck wants to die alone all dried up in the desert sun?

My heart is breaking for my sister and the con that she call “love”
When I look into my nephew’s eyes…
Man, you wouldn’t believe the most amazing things that can come from…
Some terrible nights…

Oh, whoa, oh, whoa, oh, whoa, oh, oh,
Oh, whoa, oh, whoa, oh, whoa, oh, oh

The other night you wouldn’t believe the dream I just had about you and me
I called you up but we’d both agree

It’s for the best you didn’t listen
It’s for the best we get our distance…
It’s for the best you didn’t listen
It’s for the best we get our distance…

Silence. The CHORUS slinks off. The LLAMA finishes his beer.

He straightens his back.

He leaves.

An empty place, for a moment, and then the lights go out.

Theater Around The Bay: Llamalogue

Stuart Bousel will not be changing names to protect the innocent.

Last night at Theater Pub, the fourth installment of The Pint Sized Plays opened and you should make it a point not to miss this production because it will be our last show at the Cafe Royale.

Also, it’s a very enjoyable evening. After a magical prelude by the Blue Diamond Bellydancers you will be induced to much laughter by volley after volley of razor wit interspersed with life lessons and dramatic moments. At the end of the 80 minutes of drinking themed shorts we bring out the Llama, the un-official (who are we kidding- he’s official- we made t-shirts) mascot of the San Francisco Theater Pub, originally created for the Pub by Elana McKelahan, played for the fourth year in a row by Rob Ready and written, for the second year in a row, by me.

I have often said the Llama is the spirit of the Pub and this year he delivers a bittersweet speech. It’s part ode to Megan Cohen’s dancing bear (played, last year, by Allison Page) and part rumination on the nature of loss, milked as much for laughs as possible but with perhaps a bit more sting than in the past. He concludes the speech (and the evening) valiantly trying to bolster himself (and the audience) with some pop music, before wandering off into the night and the lights go out on the silent, empty space. It’s funny and sad and a fitting end to our time at the Cafe Royale, if perhaps a bit melancholy.

“My bear would never betray the Llama like he does in your play,” Megan Cohen said to me.

“This isn’t about your bear,” I replied, with a wink, “it’s about the idea the llama has attached to the bear.”

Here is my goal in life as a writer and as an artist: to make fun of shit, and to get you to think about and appreciate yourself and the world around you. For years I have been trying to create a new breed of romantic satire where I validate the meaning of it all, even as I validate the likelihood that everything is meaningless. On an individual basis, I want you to laugh, and then I want to rip your heart out and hand it back to you with tears in my eyes and a kiss on my lips, leaving you intact and healing but with a lot to think about. I love you painfully and I want you to know that. Also, I absolutely believe theater is a transformative art (otherwise, why bother), and I want to transform you, if not in the theater than sometime later when you’re sitting by yourself and suddenly it hits you what this was really all about. I have faith that this happens because I have seen it happen, I have had it reported back to me by people it’s happened to, and I have experienced it myself. And I genuinely feel sorry for anyone who hasn’t gone through this at least once in their life. It’s the same sadness I feel for people who tell me they don’t believe in Love. I always think “how gray the world must be for you,” and then I think, “but it will happen some day- and how exciting that will be for you too.” That’s me, putting the romance back into romantic satire. I want you to have your big moment even when you adamantly refuse to accept such a thing could occur. It almost matters more when it happens to people like you.

Speaking of big moments, today is the 16th anniversary of my older brother, Edwin, dying. This is not, generally speaking, something I advertise, but it’s never been something I hide either. I just find that it tends to make people uncomfortable, so I don’t bring it up unless I need to, and it happened so long ago now that many people who currently occupy my life don’t know I ever had a brother named Edwin, let alone that he died, tragically, at the age of 23. When I get asked by new friends, or even older friends who have never asked before, “Do you have any brothers and sisters?” I tend to reply that I do, indeed, have siblings, and leave it at that. Only if asked where they live, or what they do, do I ever mention that one is dead. At which point most people get very crestfallen, tell me how sorry they are, and then suddenly it’s my job to comfort them and let them know that it’s okay: it was a long time ago, and I dealt with it (therapy, an HIV scare, some really colorful drug experimentation) and there is nothing else they need to say or do. He’s gone and it’s sad because I was only 18 and never really got to know him, but it’s also life. Everything ends, including other people. Including you. Including me.

I recently told the cast of my new play, Age of Beauty, that I worship the idea of Light and I do, but it’s partly because I need something to balance a dark world view and aesthetic. And I don’t mean that kind of recent college graduate, post-modern, “I-totally-threw-in-a-rape-scene-following-a-baby-eating-scene-to-shock-you” type of dark. I’m dark like the Bronte Sisters, Arthurian legends and the Shakespeare comedies are all really dark and if you’re intrepid and open to it you can see it, but I also employ lots of little tricks to mitigate my darkness because I’m fundamentally a gentleman and I don’t enjoy awkward silences with people who would rather just glide on the surface. Humor, particularly self-depricating humor, is very present in my work and daily conversation as a way for me to say, “don’t take this too seriously” for fear of you doing so and we all suddenly end up on Intervention together (which I would just find amazingly tasteless). Symbolism is also a very big thing for me: I often say things very openly in my shows but in ways that make sense to virtually nobody else (in the form of, say, a character who constantly cuts black paper into strips, or a certain song that plays behind a monologue spoken by a character who can turn the lights on and off at will) so that the choice can be dismissed as weird instead of the quiet revelation of my inner turmoil that you’re actually seeing. I love the idea of “hidden in plain sight” emotions because I feel that most pain is like that: constantly surrounding us, but we’re blind to it, sometimes accidentally, but often willfully, often because it would just take too much work to understand it, so we’re better off just pretending it’s not there or not significant. Sometimes I revel in being misunderstood as much as I revel in being perceived clearly. Both states have their advantages.

It is no secret that I love the work of J.R.R. Tolkien and there are a number of reasons why but if I had to pick one thing, above all others, that I love, it would have to be his dark aesthetic of loss. The right people know what I’m talking about, how he threads through his encylopedic histories and silly hobbit antics a miasma of sorrow over the slow disintegration of a world that can never be gotten back, only glimpsed from a distance or heard in echoes. The great irony of the War of the Ring, which in Middle Earth marks the end of The Age of The Elves just as the Trojan War marked the end of The Age of Heroes in Greek mythology, is that it will be won by people who will come out of the dust only to find that they have lost the world they fought to preserve. This is because it either no longer exists, or because they have become different people in the course of the war, and even once restored to where they began they no longer fit in with the larger puzzle they were knocked out of. The Lord of the Rings is not so much a fantasy novel as it is an epitaph for Middle Earth and all that Middle Earth stood for in Tolkein’s mind. It is an epic rumination on the excruciating pain of moving from one era of your life into the next, the “painful progress” that Harper, in her final scene in Tony Kushner’s Angels In America, would so eloquently embrace as the only way for her to move on from her disaster marriage. For all it’s adventure and romance and humor and joy, Lord of the Rings remains one of the saddest books I know and yet also one of the most life affirmative because in the end of one age does lie the birth of another and at some point, like Samwise “I’m Back” Gamgee (or Harper Pitt if you prefer), if you’re lucky enough to survive the shit that happens to you there comes a moment you suck it up, shake off the remnants of shadow, say goodbye to the past and embrace where you are now because your only other choice is to lay down and die and that’s not really an option.

Though it is a temptation.

If the Llama is the spirit of the Pub then I think the reason this year’s speech is so bittersweet is because the Llama, like the Pub, has grown from a brash and confident celebrant staking his territory into a tired and battle-worn survivor of a long war who isn’t sure if he either lost or won, only that he has survived to see the end of an age. An age that was, for San Francisco Theater Pub, The First Age, and thus will always be truly significant, no matter what happens next. If my words, through the Llama, seem bittersweet it’s because the process of ending this age is both bitter and sweet, as almost any necessary process is. We have so much to be proud of, and so much to look forward to, and so much to mourn, all at the same time. I tried to capture that with the Llama, couching it in much symbolism and self-deprecating humor to make the pill easier to swallow, but yes, I also hope it sits uneasy in your stomach for some time after. We had something real, a home that was often times as much a curse as it was a gift but always an integral part of what we were doing, and for a while there will be a hole where it used to be, the same kind of hole left by an ended love affair or a lost object. Or a dead person.

Everything ends, including other people. Including you. Including me. Including projects we really care about, sanctuaries we’ve found, experiences we’ve cherished. That’s why it’s important to sing and dance while we can, even as we know it won’t be forever, because we know the singing and dancing must end, if only because both are very tiring activities. Only when we embrace the fundamental brevity and meaninglessness of life and all that life encompasses does it become meaningful and we transcend to something eternal: the recognition that nothing ends, it just changes. My brother was only here for a short time, but he made an impact on me I’ll have until I die, and through whatever I leave behind and the people I impact, he continues to influence the world and so in many ways I have never thought of him as gone even though I hardly ever talk about him now. I’m starting to sort of see the Pub’s time at the Cafe Royale the same way: as something slipping into the chronicle of my life, bound to influence me for many years to come, but also relegated to the past. Like my brother. Like the first theater company I ever ran. Like my youth, frankly. Which I really miss sometimes. But fairly certain I wouldn’t go back to, even if I could. But you can’t. Life only moves forward, and not everyone, or everything, is there for the whole ride. Something worth mourning, the value of which I get because I have a dark aesthetic that recognizes life is all about loss. Amongst other things.

“You had a really good, really impressive run of it,” Les Cowan, without whose patronage Theater Pub never would have existed, said to me last night, the two of us talking about Pub’s time at Cafe Royale like we were at a wake.

I couldn’t agree more, but I replied, “I kind of can’t wait to be done,” because that’s true too and that’s the angle I’m starting to focus on these days. Because I’ve reached the point where I kind of just want to sing one last song and then head off into the night looking for the next thing- knowing that there will be a next thing. Because there is always a next thing. Because having a dark aesthetic often means worshiping the Light, and believing very much that the end of one age is the birth of another.

And because I am a Llama, and that’s true wherever I go.

Stuart Bousel is one of the Founding Artistic Directors of the San Francisco Theater Pub and was recently named by the SF Weekly as “Best Ringmaster” of the San Francisco indie theater scene. His short play, Llamalogue, will be performed by Rob Ready four more times at Pint Sized Plays IV, which plays tonight and July 22, 29, and 30 at the Cafe Royale, always at 8 PM. Don’t miss it!

Bear With Me

Esteemed director and long-time Theater Pub collaborator Meg O’Connor talks about collaborating with Allison Page on this year’s best play about a dancing bear.

Allison Page in the now iconic Bear with a Beer photo. (Photo by Erin Maxon.)

I have had the esteem privilege – nay! the HONOR- to direct Megan Cohen’s BEEEEEEEAAR! for this year’s Pint Sized Plays III. I was a little apprehensive to take on this piece – Megan delivers another inspired, hilarious, thoughtful play, and I was worried I couldn’t do it justice. I knew casting was everything, and I wondered at my luck that the talented genius Allison Page agreed to take on the role. I learned a lot about bears, beers, but most importantly, I learned a lot about myself. Mainly, that Allison kicks my ass at bear-puns.

Here are some typical text conversations between the two of us:

Meg: Hey Bear – what time is good for you tmw?
Allison: Oooh…how’s 3PMbears? Where shall we go?
Meg: BEARpm it is. My apartment: I have beeeeeeeeeeeer.
Allison: CoolBEARS!

This bear is always looking for beer. Always. (Photo by Erin Maxon.)

Allison: Ich bin ein Bearliner
Meg: Sorry, don’t know what you’re saying – I only speak Bearlish.
Allison: hahahahahahabearhahahahabear

Play it again, Bear. (Photo by Erin Maxon.)

Meg: Ah bears, I double beared myself tonight.
Allison: Ah bearshit!
Meg: Can we meet on Saturday? Is that bear-k with you?
Allison: That’s bearcceptable. I will find someone to be on bear book for me.
Meg: I’m emBEARassed to have to flake. Hope you can beargive me.
Allison: It’s going to be hard…just…let me get my bearings.
Allison: Bearsome!
Meg: Bear beary bears bears!

I Dreamed A Bear In Time Gone By…. (Photo by Erin Maxon.)

It has been an absolute blast working with Allison on BEEEEEEAAR, and with Rob Ready on the epic return of Llama, the mascot of Pint Sized Plays, written by Stuart Bousel, around characters created by Megan Cohen and Elana McKernan. Whenever you make it out to the show, come say hi. I’ll be the giggling idiot on a bearstool, trying to think of more puns.

Bear For Now! (Photo by Erin Maxon.)

The title of this post donated by Allison Page. Don’t miss her in action, only at this month’s Pint Sized Plays III, playing tonight at The Plough and the Stars and July 23, 30 and 31 at the Cafe Royale!