THEATER 69
-winter 2003
Following JCS, the Red Curtain Players began work on LENNY, about the life of censored comic Lenny Bruce. I played Lenny, and beach resident Mark List played several characters beautifully. I coaxed Shane out of retirement to play the hipster musician. We went through several actresses as Lenny’s stripper wife. Our first, Shanendoah, had a wonderful spirit and great talent, but drinking had control over her life. I made the tough, sad decision – the first time i’d ever cut an actor. Our final Honey was Samantha Bortnick, a gentle, laughing soul who’d been a percussionist in Rhythm Culture. Dave “Big Wave Dave” Lazerson did some nice work as a cop. But the show died in utero. I’d written for performance rights, and didn’t expect any difficulty; the show was twenty-five years old and controlled by the playwright. But i finally got a letter from Julian Barry, saying that the Bruce estate was suing him. He made reference to a litigious woman, whom i surmised to be either Bruce’s child or widow. It was a bit crushing, as our potential had already been blooming. One original touch i’d come up with was having Lenny prance across the stage wearing only a flight helmet, with an inflatable Hindenburg over his groin. For Halloween, we did a mini-performance of THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, in conjunction with the township’s screening of the movie. We acted out “Time Warp” and “Sweet Transvestite” in front of the screen. Shane played Rocky, his girlfriend Angelina played Janet, Paul played Brad, Tony Turiano from BURIED CHILD played Riff, i played Frank, and another ex-student of mine, Athena Collins, played Magenta. Athena and i knew the show best(and she knew more than i). The costumes were a hoot, and the event fantastic. With my lingerie, fishnets, and high heels, a number of guys told me they “didn’t”, but if they did, they’d be calling me. We then began work on THE ROAD TO NIRVANA, by Arthur Kopit. When i found out it had been written in response to SPEED-THE-PLOW (which we had done at the Orpheus), i had to read it. Suffice to say that Kopit out-mamets Mamet. I cast Paul and i as the two Hollywood producers. The play is searingly funny, and Paul was going to be fantastic. But it was not to be, for we kept on going through actress after actress trying to find the right two. Every time we got set, one or the other would drop out. Heartbroken, i turned to another Eric Bogosian one-man show. I tinkered with the lineup of monologues, dropping two and adding one from another show. Another reason for a one-man show was instability in the gallery. Paul’s landlord was a man of suspect integrity. Paul, on the other hand, was not always prompt with payments. I knew that Jorge could force an eviction, and i was still a bit haunted by the instability my actors had endured in JCS. So one actor made sense. The piece was beautiful - the first Bogosian play in which one of the characters is his own persona. The gallery had just been painted red, with a beautiful new bar, new lights, and huge new stage (built with help from Gary Clause, Caitlin’s father). The show opens with “America”, in which a Limbaugh-type DJ chain-smokes and spews hate. I altered one of the lines into a nightmare vision of Britney Spears having sex with Madonna…months later, life imitated art when they french-kissed on TV. “Molecules” has a homeless person on a subway haranguing the audience. In “Intro”, Bogosian’s persona lashes out at the audience and his own celebrity. In “Inner Baby”, a southern self-help guru exhorts a crowd into indulging every selfish whim. In “The Glass”, vulture-like specters of starving africans intrude on middle-class comfort. In “Art”, a dead-on-the-inside porn director runs his actors through their paces (“You need anything there, Chuck-o…some hay, a sugar cube?”). In “Rash”, a poolside millionaire grilling steak laments to a buddy about social problems and home security. In “The Recovering Male”, a man in group therapy shares his feelings of penile shame. “The Stud” has a back-lit man speaking to the audience about how women, upon being penetrated by his large and perfect penis, will cry with happiness. In the final piece, “Blow Me”, Bogosian’s persona lashes out at our stupidity and indifference. The show drew small, enthusiastic crowds. Chris Capp, a gallery regular and publisher of The Really Free Press, was so touched that he special-ordered a cap for himself with “Blow Me!” emblazoned across it. The show turned out to be the Red Curtain swan song, for at the end of the run we found out that Paul’s mother was dying, and that he would need to move back to PA. I helped him dismantle the gallery, and pack his life into a truck. After Paul was gone, i did one final encore performance at the Orpheus, at Tony’s request…
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