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Writing for CurtainUp
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A CurtainUp Interview
laywright Warren Leight
By Elyse Sommer
Links to reviews (including re-review of Side Man after its move
to Broadway) and other interviews
March 2, 1999 Mini-Interview
The always interesting La MaMa
E.T.C. has turned over its club space for a limited run of a new show Night
of 1,000 Heels by Cassandra Danz, Mary Fulham and Warren Leight -- this last co-credit by a group known as
The High Heeled Women and Warren Leight. This prompted this mini exchange (Not at Blimpie's but via e-mail).
We asked Warren to fill us in on his involvement with Night Of 1,000 Heels and he
told us that his collaboration with the original High Heeled Women, Cassandra Danz and
Mary Fulham, was his very first theatrical writing job. "They paid me ten
dollars an hour to write sketches--usually a collaborative effort with Mary and Cassandra. We'd
sit in a Blimpies on Sixth Avenue (it was air-conditioned and
our walk-ups were not) and we'd grind out a new hour show every four months."
How did it feel to see his early work given new life?
"I enjoyed the show. It was strange to see
material I
had seen performed a thousand times performed by all new performers. But the
jokes survived and the lyrics and shtick did too. Truth is, the new cast out
sings the old cast by a few miles. Out dances them too."
How was the marriage of the old and new material effected?
"Mary (ed note: Fulham who's now the director as well as co-author) cobbled together some of
our best sketches using another old rubric of ours --the
"Benefit Night." Cassandra and I sat down with her a few weeks ago (at French
Roast, former home of Blimpies). We helped her tighten (if that's really the
word) the show and added even more shtick."
|
--The first interview. . .
Editor's Notes: One of the greatest pleasures for a theater critic is to go to an unknown play by
an unknown
playwright and to hear the ring of that little alarm bell that alerts you that you've lucked into a
good play. The fact that this special alarm usually rings at an Off-Broadway or
Off-Off-Broadway house sweetens its sound since this enables you not only to share your
discovery with
your readers but to alert them to the opportunity to see the play at a bargain ticket price not
usually associated with theater going.
The best illustration of such a pleasurable experience this season is Warren Leight's
wonderfully moving and authentic memory play, Side Man. It's a jazzy riff
about a group of backup musicians, (the side men of the title),
whose passion for their music persisted even when their job
opportunities became a casualty of the post-World War II era.
Much of its authenticity is due to the fact that it's forged from the
author's own life as the son of a musician to whose world he was
drawn heart and soul despite the economic and emotional
difficulties experienced by the families of displaced but
desperate to survive musicians.
And the especially good news is that the play will have a life beyond its all too brief run at its
Off-Broadway location, Classic Stage on thirteenth street. The day before the 4/21/98 closing,
the Roundabout
Theater company rolled out its pumpkin coach with an offer to give it a production at its Stage
Right. With a well-known director ( Michael Mayer), on board even before the CSC
production (at a West
Bank basement workshop and a couple of summers ago at Vassar) this may not be quite the
Cinderella story it would appear to be. After all, the tinsel of Mayer's growing reputation did
help
to attract critics to see the little known playwright's work. Perhaps the comparison to David and
Goliath would be more appropriate for a play that's about musicians but not a musical and that
calls for seven actors in a theatrical economy that often can't
support a cast of four.
Warren's Leight's writing career has in many ways followed the pattern
of the side man or backup musician, doing a lot of what he
calls "self-effacing" writing -- patter for stand-up
comedians, ghost writing screen plays over which he had little
final control. Anything except this play which, now that it's
written and produced, has made him determined to focus on
pursuing his own voice and with fewer detours down the avenues
creative people often must travel in order to pay the
rent.
We met Warren twice, a couple of weeks before rehearsals for Side
Man in its new home were about to begin -- once (5/14/98) for a
"live" chat at Theatre Three where a compilation of nine
monologues, most written years before Side Man, were being
given a brief production; and a few days later by way of a long
telephone conversation. Despite the no-nonsense beard and
steel-rimmed glasses, he looks much younger than his forty-one
years. I found him, like his alter ego in the play a
delightful mix of seriousness, openness and geniality.
Our interview follows the format of others in this series. The letters CU
precede CurtainUp's
questions The letters WL precede Warren Leight's responses. --e.s.
CU: To by-pass the obvious about whether you're pleased and excited during a season in which
Side
Man will have opened off and on Broadway, tell us a little bit about your personal
connection to the
play. How autobiographical is it?
WL: Since my father was a musician I grew up with a lot of musicians like the ones in the play.
CU: And the family story is autobiographical too?
WL: Enough. It's because it is personal that I avoided writing it, except in bits and pieces,
for fifteen years.
CU: Having seen Side Man at CSC and now these monologues you call Stray
Cats, I see a
link between the last monologue and Side Man. Is this what you mean about
bits and pieces. (ed note: The monologue mentioned is about a teenager, his emotionally
fragile
mother and a street musician whose saxophone permeates the piece).
WL: Yes. I wrote the first draft of that monologue twenty-two years ago. I showed it to a few
people, put it in a drawer. When I went back to look at it after having written Side
Man I thought to myself 'oh, my God, this is Side Man twenty-two years earlier.'
CU: Did any of the Side Man guys slide as far down the ladder as that musician in
Stray Cats?
WL: I've often run into musicians
I knew when I was a kid playing in a subway quintet. I saw my father and other great trumpet
players hired by
Yankee Stadium to stand outside playing Dixieland music. They enjoyed blowing but they were
people who had no place to work when the era in which they were stars ended.
CU: Since you were born after these musicians' heyday it seems Side Man is really a
history play
in the
sense that it's not about your own era.
WL: I was never completely part of my generation. I felt
pulled in by the sense
of happiness of my father's world. Also, I always loved old New York
and in the sixties I would go with my dad to Roseland which was where the musicians union
lineup
took place every Wednesday afternoon.
It was a life that was never really accurately portrayed in movies like The Gene Krupa
Story.
CU: I gather then that the son of the play's focal musician is your stand-in and you too are an
only child.
WL: Yes, Cliff is me, but no, I do have a sister. She was a little more independent from
the
things that pulled at me, so I thought from a personal and dramatic perspective the play would
work
best without her as a character -- which I did discussed with her when I began working on it.
CU: Besides, you already have seven characters which is a lot for a straight play in today's
theatrical economy?
WL: (laughing) That was one of 85 reasons that seemed to make the play unproducable -- but I
felt
I needed all 5 musicians. I also felt I needed another woman as sort of an ally for the mother (ed
note: This other woman is Patsy the waitress who at one time or another has slept with each of
the musicians).
CU: What were some of the other things you say made the play initially unproducable?
WL: There's some bias against a very personal story and I didn't have an established
reputation as
a playwright. Also, people associate jazz stories with African-Americans and these are all white
guys. Yet
the fact is that they did exist which actually made them twice ignored-- by the changing jazz
world
and on top of that being white in that world worked against you.
CU: What about the device of having your stand-in character serve as a narrator? Was that a
means
for personal catharthis as much as a device for moving your story forward without even more
characters?
WL: I suppose. Some people people find there's a curse on narration so it's tricky but it
seems that
a lot of writers end up doing it anyway, some more successfully than others. How I
Learned to
Drive does it very well.
I felt I needed the narrator because my secondary characters didn't seem to have enough
perspective
on their very specific 1952 jazz guy world. For example, in the scene where the musicians are in
a
booth at the Melody Lounge after they've all collected their unemployment checks, the kid is
literally
an interpreter translating their vernacular. I also needed Clifford as a mediator between the
husband
and wife of the story.
CU: So, once you were able to deal with this subject you'd been avoiding for fifteen years and
wrote
the play, what happened next?
WL: (chuckling) First I didn't write it and once I did I became very protective of it. I had a first
reading three years ago but I didn't jump to have it workshopped but waited until Michael Mayer
was
available to direct it.
CU Was he a friend, someone, you knew?
WL: He directed a Craig Lucas play at the Atlantic Theater about three years ago and I was
impressed
with his work and introduced myself and said I might send him something. He then came aboard
as
the director about half a year later and has been very loyal to it.
CU: Where was the workshop production he first directed held and what was the next step in
the
play's journey?
WL: The first workshop was in the basement theater at the West Bank Cafe. In fact, that brings
to
mind another piece of the play I did before I wrote it. At one stage of my life I performed
stand-up
there and one of my routines was what became the unemployment scene in Side Man (ed
note: and
one of its comic highlights!).
CU: You say first workshop-- was there another?
WL: There was a production with the same actors at Vassar in Poughkeepsie. It still needed
some refinements but it played well -- until the night some important and big money people came
up
and, either by coincidence or because of the pressure of the expectations, everything went wrong.
Zoe Caldwell made a remark 'I hear this is Gene O'Neill meets Neil Simon' I thought 'oh, no,
we're
finished.'
CU: Fortunately you weren't finished and the production did make it
to New York and the CSC. Were there any additional refinements made during that limited
run?
WL: The rehearsal period gave me a chance to improve
the
play, eight lines one day, 10 lines the next, 3 words the next day. The longer I stayed with it the
stronger the structure became and the more specific the characters.
CU: What besides the critical praises and the final invitation from the Roundabout
was most rewarding for you about that limited run?
WL: Having worked as a hired hand on screen plays, I treasured not having guys in suits telling
me
how to write -- Side Man it was a collaborative process with people like Michael (Mayer)
and
the cast working with you to make it better. It was collaborative in a healthy way.
CU: Has being such prolific, for hire writing made the process of writing generally easier for
you
-- easier than the blocked writer in one of the Stray Cats monologues?
WL:. Oh, no. That kid in Stray Cats is very much me. I torture myself and 99% of my
life is spent
eating myself up about why I'm not writing. I hate the ratio, and while I've been able to make a
lot
of changes about priorities the thing that has resisted me the most is procrastination.
CU: Since the CSC is an intimate space, did you receive a lot of audience feedback?
WL:
The audience was wonderful. I don't know where they all came from, but they were a real mix of
young, middle aged and older people.
The most important audience group, the one I worried the most about, were the musicians. It
was
great to see musicians of all colors come and to have them tell me 'you nailed it!' I'd been
worried
they'd be upset by the family stuff but they didn't mind it and they loved a lot of the inside stuff in
the play. Some of them came to me to tell me about their jazz days and wives exclaiming 'that's
my
husband there!' I also received long letters from children of jazz musicians. I take all this very
seriously and that's why I resisted any suggestions to fudge with the musical details.
CU: Side Man's move to the stage where Michael Mayer directed a revival by our
premier elder
statesman of American Playwrights, prompts me to detour to the opportunities, or lack of
them,
for new American playwrights to be seen and nourished and remunerated. This past
year excepted, Miller's own work has in recent years fared better in Great Britain than in America
where British and
Irish playwrights seem more welcome than native sons. How do you as a playwright with a very
American voice feel about this exaltation of British-Irish playwright, which extends even to
younger
American companies like the New Group?
WL: I respect the British and Irish playwrights but some of my American playwright friends like
Richard Greenberg and I joke about statements from theater people to the effect that they have
a
hard time finding American plays.
CU: What do you think differentiates your playwriting from some of the most talked about of
these
imports?
WL: While the people in Side Man are always clobbering each other they're not overtly,
purposely cruel. They're struggling and in over their heads but they don't gratuitously torture
each
other as some of the characters do in the English and Irish plays I've seen this season.
CU: As in Beauty Queen of Leenane, Goose-Pimples?
WL: Yes, and especially so in Shopping and Fucking.
American plays like How I Learned to Drive and Crimes of the Heart are tough
stories but the
characters aren't degraded.
CU: So, the characters you've put on stage and want to put on stage in future are not alienated
to
this point of being cruel?
WL: I never want to make fun of my character, especially since the type of plays that tend to
interest
me are not written from an agenda in which a character is assigned a theme to
represent.
CU: In terms of these type of plays, what other theatrical mountains do you look forward to
climbing -- a musical instead of a play about characters who make music. . . a straight comedy?
WL: I've already written a musical book (Mayor) and have done lyrics which I love so,
yes I'd love to do a musical. When it goes well, nothing's more fun than a musical. As for straight
comedy -- I've done a
lot of hill climbing in that area writing one-liners for comedians. But if I were to write a straight
comedy now, I don't think I'd approach it as 'just comedy' which is awfully hard to pull off.
Besides, I think it meant a lot to write something like Side Man that really moves people.
CU: Are any of the characters we might meet in future plays of yours likely to be once again
from
the world of jazz?
WL: I have a first act of a play called Glimmer Brothers written. It's about two brothers
who were
both jazz players. One got out of the business thirty years ago to become a corporate executive;
the
other remained a musician but was so estranged from the family They meet again through the
corporate guy's daughter who didn't even know she had an uncle or that her father had been a jazz
player.
There's a possibility that this may have a reading up at the Williamstown Theatre Festival this
summer.
CU: Well, I certainly hope so, since I cover that area in the summer so that I'd have a chance to
see it in its early developmental stage -- which brings us back to a final double
question about the move of that play.
Do you foresee any changes in the Roundabout production
and what are your feelings as this big move is about to take placed?
WL: Well we'll have to see if how things look in that space --but Michael knows it (ed
note: from
having directed View from the Bridge there earlier in the season). There's also the cast
change, the
only heartbreak of this move. Edie Falco who, like Frank Wood (her stage husband) has been
with
the play since the first workshop, has a long-standing television contract.
(Ed note: Her replacement, Wendy Makkena distinguished herself in a recent off-Broadway
play, The Water Children
)
My feelings about the move. I've had a sort of monkey on my back about not having written my
serious family play and then when I finally did it I was worried that it would never get
produced and that if it did, it would play for five weeks and then never be seen again. Now, I feel
this tremendous relief that it's going to really have a life.
CU: And may it be a long and successful one, not just at the Roundabout but at lots of other
theaters.
Links to reviews mentioned and other interviews
Interviews:
Interview with director Ethan
McSweeny--Part one. . Part 2
Interview with translator James Magruder
Interview with director Sharon Ott
Interview with playwright Peter Zablotsky
Interview with set designer Derek McLane
Warren Leight Plays Reviewed at CurtainUp:
Side Man at CSC. . .Stray
Cats. . .Les Gutman's Second Thoughts on
Side Man's "second coming" at the Roundabout. . .re-review when the show moved to the Golden . . .Night Of 1,0001
Heels, a collaboration with The High Heeled Women.
Plays Mentioned:
How I Learned to Drive
The Beauty Queen of Leenane
Shopping and Fucking
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