Joshua Morrison
It’s a dangerous thing to ask someone to write about the process of his directorial debut—in my case, Steven Dietz’s Fiction, running at the Underground Theatre until July 31—the week after it opened. As anyone who’s ever worked in theater (or for that matter, any type of goal-oriented entertainment) can attest, the capacity for everything to go wrong is nowhere stronger than at the last minute. The reason for this has nothing to do with Murphy’s law, but pure anxiety. When you’re afraid things will fuck up, they tend to.
Which reminds me…of the naked suits.
About three months ago—a timetable so quick, I’m embarrassed by it—I had expressed interest in directing to Jacob Smith, the artistic director of Theatre Unleashed, thinking he’d allow me to direct some sort of late-night, one-act series, something that would drill another notch into my mainly notch-less director’s belt. However, the same quality about Jacob that makes him a wonderful director in his own right—trust—is what must have propelled him to send me Fiction, one of our four mainstage plays of the season.
Looking back, I realize that had he merely thrown me a “delectable collection of monologues and sketches,” as I so presumed, I might not have poured myself into it as I have for Fiction. I suppose, in a way, anxiety—of screwing it all up, of destroying Jacob’s trust—has fueled this project from the start.
Darren Mangler as Michael Waterman
All the more so after I read the play. Here was a piece of writing that, despite the many gorgeous passages throughout, didn’t give you much. Both literally and figuratively, it is designed to leave a lot to the imagination. In Dietz’s world, there are no easy interpretations or open and shut meanings to be had. It is contemporary theater at its frustratingly best.
Given that much freedom, my imagination immediately went wild. And not unlike the college girls in those videos, the word “wild” really meant “naked.” Naked suits, to be exact. You see, my earliest anxieties about the play were expressing themselves, as they often do, in the form of pretension. I got it in my head that if the cast were to wear these skin-tight, skin-toned leotards, it would boldly demonstrate the “illusion of nakedness”—my phrase—I was so sure Dietz was getting at.
This was literally the first design idea I had for the show, and fortunately, the first one I threw out. Because when I saw a fully-clothed actor actually speak the lines in auditions, I realized naked suits would only take away (and outright demean) the talents and performance of a hard-working actor.
Darren Mangler and Caroyln Curtis
And as obvious as it seems to be now, this rejection of the naked suits was an important discovery for me at the time. I realized I couldn’t enter into any part of the play—whether it be casting, interpreting, blocking, rehearsing, design, or mid-run blogging—with such stringent preconceptions. I had to, instead, just listen closely as the Play made its own decisions, and be confident that what I was hearing was true.
My hope now, with one week in and three weeks to go, is that the experience of seeing Fiction in some way mirrors this process; that it challenges you, questions you, maybe elicits some anxiety, but never fails to lose your interest (even for a moment), and in the end, leaves you with more of a memory than a meaning—even without the naked suits.
Photo Credit: Gregory Crafts
Video Credit: Joshua Morrison
Fiction by Steven Dietz is produced by Theatre Unleashed. Fri.-Sat. 8 pm; Sun. 7 pm. Through July 31. Tickets: $12; special discounts available. Underground Theatre, 1314 N. Wilton Place, LA. (323) 467-0036 or www.theatreunleashed.com
Joshua Morrison is a first-time director, but a second-year Theatre Unleashed member, and a third-year and counting LA resident. He majored in film and writing at Emerson College in Boston for four years. He worked on the fifth season of HBO’s acclaimed series The Wire. Six would be the number of short plays or one-acts he has written that have been performed on stage; seven the number of TU productions he’s acted in; eight…eight…he forgets what eight was for; but nine is his lucky number; and 10 would be MORE than the number of performances left on schedule for Steven Dietz’s Fiction. He urges you to see it before it gets down to zero!
