Ignacio Serricchio and Curt Bonnem
According to an old cliche, you get only one opportunity to make a first impression. That impression, however, can often assume folkloric dimensions or an iconic status when recounted numerous times until either a universal recognition arises about the initial encounters of certain individuals or a humorous legend is born.
Some examples: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” — or this reported initial exchange between Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy:
“I’m afraid I’m a little tall for you, Mr. Tracy.”
“Don’t worry, Miss Hepburn. I’ll cut you down to my size.”
In 1947 a one-hit wonder playwright, Tennessee Williams, auditioned a virtually unknown actor, Marlon Brando, for his new production scheduled to open soon on Broadway, A Streetcar Named Desire. How did these budding immortals hail each other? We don’t know. Not definitively.
But local playwright Gregg Ostrin and director/producer Rick Shaw have undertaken to answer that question for us in the premiere of Kowalski at Shaw’s Two Roads Theatre in Studio City.
Although he grew up in the arbor of the entertainment capital, Ostrin laments that he never basked in the arms of the showbiz world. “To my eternal regret none of my family worked in the business. That’s too bad because I would’ve shamelessly exploited any connections I had. I wanted to be an actor from a young age. At 13 Shari Shaw, who became Rick’s wife, and I studied in a class taught by Estelle Harman for the Universal Studios talent development. She taught stars like Rock Hudson, Bill Bixby, Alex Rocco and Liberace. Later at USC I studied with John Houseman and George Furth. Then it was on to New York where at age 30 I discovered I enjoyed writing more than performing.”
Shaw, meanwhile, grew up in New York, where he says, “I started doing impressions when I was five. I learned to be funny so I wouldn’t get beat up by Italian and Irish guys. I later went to college in Ithaca, studying film and TV and creative writing.”
Gregg Ostrin
Ostrin sharpened his writing quills with LA’s Scrap Theater, remembering, “We were actors writing our own stuff—you’d call them sketches or performance art pieces—that we’d put on in hotel lobbies or coffee houses or alleys. Then I abandoned plays to concentrate on film and TV scripts. I found in writing a screen comedy, for example, I needed at least three big funny scenes that you’re gonna remember. If a movie scene is longer than three pages, it’s probably too long. A play on the other hand is all about language. You don’t have to worry about keeping it short and punchy as long as you’re still dealing with a worthwhile idea in a profound way.”
Shaw simultaneously was notching his own writing credits: “I won an ACE Award [for An Evening at the Improv] and then wrote for Hollywood Squares.”
What? All those snappy one-liners weren’t ad-libbed? Shaw laughs. “All the jokes were written. I worked the show in the Joan Rivers/John Davidson era. The questions too were specially prepared. We wouldn’t toss Joan a question about boxing but something about boob jobs with an apt response. The stars were free to use the answers we provided or not.”
Ostrin confesses, “The way some guys are consumed with sports, I am with histories of show business. Because I read so many of them, I don’t specifically recall if it was [Elia] Kazan’s autobiography or one of the bios on Brando, but I learned how Brando hitchhiked to Williams’ summer house in Provincetown to audition for [the role of] Stanley Kowalski. That stuck with me, so I later wrote a two-character piece about it, using pseudonyms for both men. Then I put it aside while I worked on screenplays and pilots, but it stayed with me. Finally I took it out to work on it some more and became fascinated with how Brando showed up three days late with some quote-unquote ‘chick’ with him. I decided to put her in it too because with the three characters I could mirror the Stanley/Stella/Blanche dynamic from Streetcar. The only other people there that weekend were Pancho Rodriquez and Margo Jones so I thought I might as well include them too.
“Now as to what actually happened, the only certainty we have is that Brando showed up and won the part. One account tells how Marlon shared a bunk with Margo. Another says he slept on the floor. Which really happened? Which is apocryphal? We don’t know. Enter creativity in the form of artistic license.”
Shaw picks up the story, “Shari and I have been producing at Two Roads for six years. My business card reads owner/producer/impresario. That impresario is my self-inflated title. In fact I thought it was spelled with two esses at first. I don’t have director on it because I’m fairly new to the discipline. I directed a few short pieces and then It’s Just Sex which ran for two years and is now headed to an Off-Broadway run this summer.
Curt Bonnem, Sasha Higgins and Ignacio Serricchio
“When Shari and Gregg recently reconnected on Facebook from their childhood acting class together, they shared the information that Two Roads is looking for material and Gregg has written a play. Shari read the first 25 pages and said, ‘You’d better take a look at this.’ I’m basically a comedy guy, but I thought this is terrific. Gregg and I talked over a cup of coffee and here we are.
“I’ve got 25 years’ experience as a writer so I think I understand how to work with playwrights to help shape their material with adjustments, trims and tweaks, but this one was already there on the page. The joy came in getting it on its feet to see what discoveries we could make in the collaborative process.
“As far as casting for two of the most recognizable people in recent entertainment history, I wanted to re-imagine what they would’ve been like in 1947. You had this 23-year-old kid who had played a couple of bit parts in plays. You had this insecure, arrogant Southerner who had written one hit [The Glass Menagerie]. Auditioning is a grueling process because in 10 to 15 seconds I can tell when somebody is so wrong, but I let them go through it. I’m not gonna say, ‘Okay, done, good-bye.’ We saw a lot of bad impressions of both Marlon and Tennessee. For my Brandos 95 percent of them came in brooding and moody. I wanted a young, as yet unaffected Brando with charisma, charm and seductiveness. Out of 60 or 70 actors five could have played him. We cast Curt Bonnem as Tennessee and Ignacio Serricchio as Marlon. Gregg has done an incredible amount of research on Williams, and Curt is also a student of the man’s work and in fact played Tennessee once before. He and Ignacio are keeping it real and grounded to make it work just right.”
Ostrin agrees, “It’s a tall order to play those two guys, but I think Curt and Ignacio are brilliant, and they’re just getting started.”
Although admittedly light in directing credits on his resume, Shaw makes up for it with a total of 96 nods in producing and story editor chores on TV’s The Nanny, plus writing assignments on seven other series and specials. Through the process of osmosis he therefore absorbed excellent directorial techniques that he puts to good use for exemplary results.
Rick Shaw
He responds, “It’s the old idea of a fish stinks from the head down. Whatever happens on a project filters down from the producer and director. I try to stay pleasant and nurturing. This is a play. We’re not curing cancer. But we can exercise our creative bones and not get too uptight. I’m mindful of respect of the time and talent of those in the cast because they’re not making a lot of money in a 99-seat situation.”
Ostrin first called his play Becoming Kowalski for the obvious reason. When the Shaws suggested dropping the participial qualifier, he resisted. “I said absolutely not. But then on reflection I realized that’s tipping the play’s hand. Then I thought how Tennessee kept refining his own titles to relate more to his story. At one point for Streetcar he had called it The Poker Night, an allusion to Stanley’s night at the table with the guys but also a metaphor for his three protagonists: who’s betting, who’s calling, who’s bluffing. I thought then that the simpler Kowalski would keep an incoming audience guessing what they were gonna see.”
As far as guesswork about the future both men have some definite plans. Ostrin says, “For the short term I’m beginning a play about Adam Clayton Powell on his last day in Congress before he’s voted off the hill for abuse of power. I plan a debate between him, Martin Luther King and Stokely Carmichael, enabling me to play with political, spiritual and militant elements within the same framework.
Curt Bonnem and Alexa Hamilton
“Long term I’m gonna enjoy raising my kids—now 10, eight and five—and just see what happens with my career. I have a belief that it’s not who you know; it’s who knows you and knows your work. I couldn’t have told you 15 years ago where I’d be today. I can’t tell you today where I’ll be 15 years from now.”
Shaw declares, “My goals are clear. I want to make a boatload of money and retire. No, seriously Shari and I want to help develop original pieces on our stage that we can take to New York and then option for film. We want to be the launching pad for new works. The idea of doing it in a [small] space for a two-month run and then closing it is not exactly an ultimate goal.”
Ostrin leans toward homegrown development as he challenges, “LA theater is a weird animal because our landscape is so geographically diverse. Of course New York is the mecca for theater, but LA has so many theaters with such great actors it’d be a shame if we didn’t keep investing our energies, efforts and talents into it with as much dedication as possible.”
It sounds as if Shaw and Ostrin have outlined two potential roads for the future of their play at the Two Roads.
Kowalski at Two Roads Theatre, 4348 Tujunga Blvd. in Studio City. Now thru Sunday August 7. Fri-Sat 8 pm, Sun 7:30 pm. Ticket prices: $30 general, $25 student/senior/union. Please visit www.tworoadstheater.com or call 818-762-2282.
