A Human Construct (Cont'd)

Okay, that’s the back story. The problem with a play with this sort of scope, with a large cast, eleven in total, is that it is very hard to get produced. So, the play languished on the shelf after that initial run. That is until an American producer, who had happened to be in Toronto at the time of the festival and had come to see the show, contacted me some months later and said that he would like to produce it in Los Angeles at the Stella Adler theatre.

Of course, I jumped at that and agreed to terms with him for the run. This in turn led to me flying down to LA to help out with the casting. Now, it must be said, as briming with talent as that city undoubtedly is, the comedic pool is far less developed. Especially with comedians that can act, so it was a dicey group that was eventually assembled. They managed to do a decent job though in the end, although not nearly on the scale as that achieved by my Toronto group.

That run happened and I don’t think my producer friend lost too much money. Then, a year later, I got a letter from the theatre teacher at the St. Monica Catholic High School in California. He had been to see the play at the Adler and wanted to have his theatre students perform it at the school.

I agreed to this, and they performed the play soon afterwards. I didn’t go down to see it and didn’t hear anything from them really except for one letter asking if they could change some of the racier names from the script. Baron Von Gott-Fokker, for instance. (“Thank you for getting my name right. It can be very embarrassing if you get it wrong,” as the character says at one point in the play.) I didn’t mind this, not being a particularly precious writer in that regard. Interestingly, they changed that character’s name from Von Gott-Fokker to Von Shtupgarter and made him a her. I didn’t mind that but couldn’t really see much difference from a raciness point of view.

The only other communication I had with them came in the form of a DVD the students had put together of the performance, complete with a behind-the-scenes video, on two DVDs in a nicely designed case. After I received it, I put the DVD on a shelf and promptly forgot about it.

Cut to last week, when I was going through my old collection and came across said video and realizing that I had never viewed it, put it into the machine.

I watched the behind-the-scenes unfold and marvelled at watching my material, parts of which I had entirely forgotten about, being rehearsed by this crew of smiling, teen-aged Catholic students. They began every rehearsal with a prayer circle. Ironic, given the nature of the dark, sometimes lurid, material they were going to perform. Then I watched the show and, as you can imagine, it was ham-handed, full of awkward, exuberant teenagers trying their best to bring these crazy adult characters to life. I don’t mean to sell them short really.  In some cases, they did a very reasonable job, particularly the female actors who, at that age, were just beginning to find themselves and the confidence they would need later on.

But here’s the thing. The school produced that play in 1998. Each of those smiling, innocent young faces and their friends, were about 16 or 17 at the time. In the spring of their lives. Now, some 27 years later they would be in their 40’s and definitely nearing the late summer of their days. They have children of their own, probably, and they would be in various states of being.  Some would be happy in general even if caught up in the bizarre pulp world that is the U.S. today. Some would have achieved fame; some would be living in a tent in downtown Santa Monica.  Some might even have passed away.

I couldn’t help but wonder, no matter what state they find themselves now, if they ever think back to their time at St. Monica and the year they produced Tale of The Scorpion. There is a magic in theatre that I experience all the time. You never forget the plays you were in. Each had its own life and memories and relationships that form a large part of your recollections as an artist, later in life.

I wonder if the parts they played and the thoughts they conveyed influenced their lives and careers later on. Especially I think of the young fellow who, playing one of the hero parts, as he is exiting points at the stars and cries out in a loud voice, breaking at times with the effects of puberty, “I am Tomorrow!”