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Community Performance Inc.

May 05, 2008

All these years of doing community performance and I didn't till tonight understand that a brush broom, made from the bound branches of cottonwoods, was not just to sweep the yard clear of leaves and refuse, but to rip up every last thatch grass that might try to infest the yard. Back in the day, a perfect yard hadn't a blade of grass in it.

This and other enlightenments provided by eight terrific folks, median age 60, doing tablework on THE LAST HARD TIMES. We were tearing away at pesky grass, removing non-Franklin County verbal constructions, and making a clean sweep of every line.

I got to work with an eleven year-old actor of the first water, Jordan Richey. She is just a child yet she was one of only two actors who could open the heart of a monologue about a young girl and her help of the wartime effort in WWII. The story of a girl writing to lonesome soldiers as her solemn duty begins a suite of stories on duty--the last being a different kind of duty, doodie, doo, doo, or chicken crap. The chicken crap isn't a comment on duty, its a laugh. The boys in passing troop trains toss scraps of papers at pretty girls, even young ones, and inside each is a different boys address and the request "Write to me, i'm lonesome.." We had only two actors land this monologue in the audition. One was this 11 year old child. It was pretty amazing. The other person who read the part stunningly was not right in another way. Sometimes we're asked to respect a storyteller's wish when it comes to who portrays her. So the role, as yet, has no double and marvelous young actors is lonesome for the good part that might have been hers.

At the read through last night 91 year-old Tommy Scoot sat patiently through the whole evening to get to talk to us a bit about his ideas for his work in the show. Look him up on Google, Doc Tommy Scott. There are only a million entries or so. Tommy Scott inherited a medicine show in the forties and still owns and runs it, albeit part time. What's a medicine show? It's a snake oil salesman. It's an entertaining musical romp designed to gather a crowd so that a pitchman could come out and sell lineament for, well, whatever ailed you.

So we thought we'd put this delightful man who has played 29,000 performances as a preshow.to ours. But he had other thoughts. He handed Jules and me a script that was, no bones about it, a re-write of the end of her play. Jules looked it over and saw merit, but dropping a fifteen minute medicine show into a play that is just trying to end itself could be deadly. Make it seem like we stopped telling the story, went to a commercial and never came back.

We were disposed to listen to him, but not likely to let him drop his medicine show into the play's climax. After everybody had cleared out Heather, the composer, Jules and I were standing around talking to Genny and Judy, the project leaders. Heather forcefully reminded us of how amazing and famous Tommy Scott is and said she thought it would be the best thing for the show. We said we'd talk about it the next day and went home tired. Lucky to have made the first rehearsal through all the storms. In fact, Jules learned she'd taken off practically into the teeth of a tornado that devestated something like 200 homes right near her.

Last night we went over to a late dinner at Heather's. Gorgeous food. Low fat chili and high fat fried chicken and a full on salad bar with perfectly ripe avocados and a nice pinot noir. We heaped plates and sat down with Heather's husband Billy and daughter Kitt (our accompanist).

After some lovely chat and a lot of thanks for the stunning food, we opened up the Doc Scott subject. Heather came out clear and direct: If you put Tommy Scott in as a preshow act the people will hate our show. He's fabulous, and he's an act we can't follow.

It took about two seconds to get it. She definitely was not saying that LAST HARD TIMES was no good. Far from it. She knows it will work wonderfully, and underlined that. She was saying that at 91, Tommy Scott is a red hot performer and that he'd raise the temperature in the room so high it would scorch our slow cooker of a play. So two seconds later, Jules and I were nodding her assessment. My second reaction was gratitude. She saved our bacon.

I said, Okay, let's look at the whole spectrum from no Doc Scott in the show at all, to putting his fifteen minute medicine show right where he wants to put it. Let's see what works. We talked through what the end might do. The March in the Rain song brings the night protest march of the black community up to the table of the white leaders. There is a moment of absolute silence and stillness, then a white leader invites a couple of blacks to sit at the power table (this happened). And the shot up piano is reborn [I know you have no idea what I'm talking about here, but I hope you'll keep reading these; you'll get a clearer idea as we go along in these blogs, I promise. And besides, I want you to come see the show.]

And next thing we know, as the piano plays, two kids are walking toward each other on their parents shoulders. Actually on planks held up by the community. A black kid and a white kid. They want to play together. They get right up to each other, step onto the top of the piano that softly underscores to that point, then stops.

From here the plan was for the two kids to go off and play together and for the show to begin its "I remembers" and the final medley. Working hypothesis: kids show us the way. Okay.

We dare not put Doc Scott in the preshow. Intermission is not much better. There is a sense of marginalizing him in either of these positions. His idea was that he did a song, a short ventriloquist act with his 75 year old doll, Luke McLuke, then a couple more songs. Two problems. Long. Not tied to the show.

The three of us knocked our heads together over the middle of the table, dropped our brains into a bowl and scrambled them. Here's the omelet.

The parents and community, black and white are uncomfortable about this friendship. Tension creeps into the crowd that had collectively gasped relief at the end of the march. Something is about to go from not good to bad when Doc Tommy Scott runs in and yells, "Hey! Hey, what's everybody all so serious about here? Remember me? (few more lines) Maybe this'll help." And with that he hits a short version of Medicine Show . People watch, kind of jaw dropped. He sees it isn't working yet, and he grabs Luke McLuke. A quick minute of Doc and Luke (Tommy: How about singing a little song. Luke: What'll you give me? Tommy: I'll give you 30 cents. Luke: You owe me 30 cents now!...) The people are starting to chuckle. Then laugh. Then Luke is done and Doc swings the guitar back around his neck and lights into a final song. And now people are feeling good, and the two kids are good and the play has ventilated itself with a little song and a little story, and now it can go on to its end.

We so often need a story and a laugh, and then it's okay. That's what'll happen here.

Now all we have to do is get Tommy to be okay five minutes not fifteen. And maybe we'll end up at three. But it will work, and we're putting the amazing Doc Tommy Scott where he needs to be to save the show.

The omelet cooked our relationship as well, Heather's with Jules and me. It was a terrific case of listening, problem solving. Co-Production. You'll be hearing that term a lot.

   

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