On Making Off: Misadventures Off-Off Broadway (25 page)

“
That’s the part I don’t understand. What’s a stopping-the-world moment?” Beverly asked.

We’d been entrenched in the subject all week, and formulating the concepts into a few sentences still proved very difficult. I needed Andrea’s precision smarts.

“
We want to investigate…” That was the wrong direction. “What we’re exploring are those profound moments when your world stops, you know? When you’re forced to ‘see’ differently. A paradigm shift.”

I was getting closer.

“
And we’re looking at it from two perspectives—the personal level, like the death or a birth of a loved one, and the universal level, when we collectively experience a paradigm shift, like the dropping of the atomic bomb or say…an alien invasion.”

“
That sounds very dramatic.”

“
Exactly! They’re the most dramatic moments in our lives. Once a ‘stopping-the-world moment’ happens to you, the way you perceive the world is changed forever. Going back to your old way of thinking is an almost impossible task.”

“
Well, if you do as good a job as you did with
Do It!,
I’m sure it will be great.” She stood to continue her hostess duties, and I put my feet up and watched the game.

We had a lot to celebrate. The final Atlanta performance of
Do It!
was a magical experience for performers and viewers alike. We transformed one of the gallery rooms into an intimate venue, where the audience sat all around us on couches and beanbags. It’s best described as living-room theater. One of the best things about live performance is that it can happen anywhere—and often improves outside the confines of a traditional theater. This downtown gallery den was one of those special places, in direct contrast to where we’d been only a month earlier.

Upon my return from Italy and in preparation for our Atlanta presentation, Dickey found us free rehearsal and performance space in Long Island City, Queens. This entire second floor of a large warehouse building, not far from the Queensborough Bridge, was simply called The Space. The woman responsible for running The Space worked for a local politician whose campaign office was on the first floor. The exact nature of their relationship was suspicious, but getting embroiled in a political scandal seemed a small price to pay for a free place to work.

With its maze-like floor plan, giant industrial windows, bare walls, and cement floors, The Space was “Soho chic” in Queens. Several of the rooms already operated as art studios, and one room, right in the middle, was established as the theater.

After three solid days of work, we had cleared out and created the performance space. This huge room had an elevated stage that measured 50 feet across and 30 feet deep. Since we had no official ties to The Space, we weren’t going to spend any money on the renovations, so we had to rely on the resources immediately available, which limited the possibilities.

Then, we discovered the Magic Room, buried deep at the far end of the floor. This large storage room contained piles and piles of junk the visual artists would disappear into when they were looking for materials. As we cleared out our room, we’d make ridiculous requests of the universe and then send someone into the Magic Room to see if we were heard.

“
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could have nice movie-theater seats for the audience?” Dickey pondered, as he swept up five inches of dust.

Harrison and Lolly entered the Magic Room and came back pulling the first few of 30 movie-theater seats behind them.

“
The room is too big. I really wish we had giant black curtains to cut the space in half,” Harrison entreated, as he fixed a loose corner of the stage deck. Thirty minutes later, a team appeared dragging giant asbestos-soaked black curtains behind them.

We continued to make such magical discoveries all week. We found clip lights, rope, red curtains, Masonite, everything you needed to make a theater. Yes, we’re a sharp bunch, but for some reason, it took us the whole week to realize this space actually
was
a former theater that had been taken apart piece-by-piece and put into the storage room. We simply put it back together.

“
We just re-created the wheel!” I exclaimed.

Only Lolly laughed. We got so caught up in the act of re-creating the wheel, we didn’t even know we were doing it. Somewhere, Andrea was laughing at us.

After we had reconstructed the theater, we began reconstructing
Do It!
Harrison and I swapped roles—with me as the less physical 1980s Jerry and him playing the hyperphysical 1960s Jerry—and Lolly started stripping the script down to its bones. Tre Fleuve put together a new band, complete with electric guitar and bass.

Our group hotly debated the merits of reconstructing, as opposed to re-creating, the show. Even today, I’m not sure where I stand on the topic. To adapt the show to this new space, some changes were necessary; but our full-scale demolition put the baby on its ass in the gutter.

That was only the beginning of our troubles. Rooms have energy, as any architect or interior designer will tell you, and this room—in fact, the entire building—brimmed with anger. And it wasn’t just the post-war design or the bland concrete coffin-esque shape of the rooms.

Whatever happened there in the past 50 years was not good. I don’t know if this building housed an illegal drug operation or an illegal sweatshop, but right when we started rehearsals, fights broke out. We weren’t agreeing on
anythin
g, and no one was being nice about it. The space was Yoko Ono-ing us. Our Yippie revolution turned into cast-mate revulsion. Everything sucked. The band was too loud, the script was too mangled, and the performances were too forced. We had consumed every last bit of Yippie fun and shat it all over the stage.

By the third time we presented this lousy, angry production to equally lousy, angry audiences, everyone was ready to push each other off the Queensborough Bridge. The Space had possessed us and was sucking our artistry right out of our bones. Perhaps the politician and his questionable employee lured artists into The Space to suck out their creativity and collect it in Mason jars for future campaign speeches.

We’d never know because, by the time we started conjuring conspiracy theories, it was too late. We had this mangled shred of an angry show to pack into our suitcases and bring down to the fine folks of Atlanta.

As excited as we were for our adventure, I was panicked about the state of our affairs. We had mapped out almost every minute of every day, but we still had a lot of unknowns—chiefly, the space. An oversized art gallery in Queens had just eaten us alive, and now we were heading down to Atlanta to spend an entire week in yet another art gallery.

From the moment we arrived, we attacked the schedule with military precision. Workshops began promptly at 9 a.m. Breaks occurred regularly at an allotted time, and everyone remained focused on the task at hand. We were running a theatrical boot camp, which worked well…for a day and a half.

“
Goddamn it! I fucking quit!” Dickey slammed his fist on a Styrofoam container, sending a mix of mashed potatoes and coleslaw flying in every direction.

Lolly, not holding back, laughed in his face. It’s a particular kind of viciousness I’m convinced she can’t control.

“
Calm down, Dickey,” I said. “Nobody is quitting.”

Our midday lunch meeting at a fast-food chicken joint had gone south when Lolly started antagonizing Dickey about the way he represented the company.

“
He can quit if he wants to,” Lolly said. “If he’s going to keep goofing off during workshops, I think he should quit.”

Dickey’s face and cleanly shaved head were as red as a radish. His ability to change colors amazed me.

“
I was having fun, Lolly!” Dickey shouted. “What’s wrong with having a little fun? And yes, Randy, I quit. I’ll stay for the rest of the trip, but when we get back, I’m done. I’m not working with this bitch anymore.”

He got up and walked out the door, leaving his mashed-potato mess behind.

“
Can you believe him?” Lolly asked, laughing a little. “Am I wrong?”

We sat in silence. She was wrong. She shouldn’t have antagonized him that way. But Dickey knew Lolly was provocative. He never should have let her get to him like that. Once Lolly gets to someone, she doesn’t hold back. But boy was she behaving badly.

“
Lolly,” I said. “You have to stop pissing people off!”

“
What are you talking about? They’re pissing
me
off!”

“
Maybe he’s right. Maybe we need to relax a little.”

“
We can relax, Randy, but he was being downright childish. I expect more from a company member.”

I think she was exaggerating about Dickey. He and Fannie giggled a lot during the movement workshop, but I think that was largely because Fannie moves so well and Dickey does…not.

“
Well, then, you’re going to have to figure out a better way to get it,” I said.

Lolly just huffed.

“
Look,” I said, as I mopped up Dickey’s mashed-potato mess. “This isn’t working. We have to find a better way to, I don’t know, get everyone engaged.”

“
They’d
be
engaged if they didn’t see a core company member fucking around. He’s not trying, Randy.”

I bent over to wipe up some coleslaw and simultaneously hide the rolling of my eyes.

“
Now, why do I feel like I’ve heard that before?” I asked.

“
Probably because you have. I don’t want to work with people who aren’t giving 100 percent to this company.”

I’d run out of napkins and needed to make a trip to the condiment station.

“
We’re the only people who are going to give 100 percent, 100 percent of the time, Lolly. That’s kind of how it’s always been. We can get people to give 100 percent, but we have to decide when we want them to do that, and then give them some downtime.”

I had only just figured that out as I was saying it. And it made so much sense. We sat in silence for a moment, processing.

“
Will you please go make things right with Dickey?” I asked, walking toward the counter.

“
Fine,” she said as she walked out, leaving me the mess and another real-life-as-metaphor moment.

Our intense drive to make things happen was hindering the act of actually making things happen. And in fighting so hard to not repeat the angry Queens production, we had lost track of how to create the kind of production we actually wanted. We desperately needed a shot of creativity.

Enter the Prudenians.

That evening, after we all ate dinner, we lined up outside a broom closet to open the portal. The idea was to enter the closet as an earthling, sit for a minute, and then emerge as a Prudenian. I watched the first few people walk in as if they were casting themselves into a volcano. Then, they came out as a Prudenian, introduced themselves to everyone, and behaved more childlike than alien-like. This did nothing to ease the skepticism I had during the
Portal Opening
in New York, but this time I couldn’t hide in the tech booth. The company was starting to fracture again, and Prudenia was the new Fire-Food. So, I stepped into the closet, and a Moon Monk closed the door behind me.

I sat there in the darkness, thinking about the week, the production, the budget, Scott…but not about my Prudenian. Finally, after what felt like eternity, someone opened the door.

“
Hello!” Blue said. “Who are you?”

It was as if I were sitting on the toilet with everyone looking at me. I was completely caught off guard.

“
Hello everyone,” I started. “I’m Knick-owww.”

It wasn’t a name, really. It was a click of the tongue followed by an
owww
.

“
Hello, Knick-owww,” Blue said without missing a beat. “Welcome to Earth. Everyone, this is Knick-owww.” His pronunciation of my made up name was astounding.

He led me into a group of people I already knew but seemed unfamiliar—Fierce Grape, Sapphire, King Telemachus. The names were all out of this world and much easier to pronounce than my own. But now that I was one of them, I released my judgment and began behaving more freely. And everyone else did, too. Lolly and Dickey’s differences vaporized. Judgment died, and creativity soared. We lunged straight into rehearsals for
Odd-Eye-See
and built a more structured but still freeform musical interpretation of Homer’s epic poem.

We closed the portal several hours later by individually entering the broom closet, sitting there for a moment, and returning as ourselves. But we never fully came back. Sure, we called each other by our given names and maybe didn’t act quite so goofy, but we maintained that childlike freedom I’d been mocking earlier. That creative freedom, woven into our overly structured week, generated an artistic force you’ll often find in an art camp.

We reconfigured our performing space, re-adapted the
Do It!
script, and rehearsed into the morning’s wee hours. Tre Fleuve’s band and the actors fell into perfect sync. When we presented our production for 30 people in that red-walled gallery, the energy rang out like a tuning fork—smooth, consistent, and with perfect pitch. The color, flavor, and texture of the show were perfect. We all felt it. This was The Beggars Group’s ripest moment.