Indy Theatre Habit

Tonight (Sunday night) I went to a staged reading of a new re-write of a play by Lou Harry called “The Pied Piper of Hoboken.”  Afterwards I made a little video with the playwright, which you can see above.  In the video, Lou talks about the path the play took before it reached this point in the development process.

Tonight was the first time ever for me to hear the play.  It is a short (around an hour, I think, even with a brief intermission), goofy piece that incorporates many layers of language and cultural play. There are references to Shakespeare, folklore, tongue twisters, and cheese. There are puns that make you laugh in delight and puns that make you groan.  There are also two or three places that yank audience members physically into the action as well.  There was a boy sitting next to me, a teenaged girl sitting behind me, and adults all around.  All of them laughed more than once, but they also all laughed at different places in the script, which I found fascinating.

Indy Fringe director Pauline Moffat was in the audience, too.  She said afterwards that this would make a great Fringe show.  I agree.

Five professional actors basically donated their time – there was a donation cup to collect traveling money for them – to read the parts aloud from scripts set on a row of music stands.  All five actors were brilliant.  I loved getting the chance to experience them all at work without the distractions/enhancements of costumes, set pieces, etc.  I mean, I love theatrical razzle-dazzle as much as anyone – I wouldn’t be writing this blog if I didn’t – but what I love most is people bringing a story to life “just” with the tools they’ve got in them. I.e. – their voices, their bodies, their imaginations, their training, their experience, and their ability to relate to each other in the moment.

Claire Wilcher played The Actor, a role that is actually a mind-boggling amalgamation of more than 20 supporting roles.  Claire managed to delineate each one just with her voice and body (oh, and one teeny puppet.)  She was a HOOT.

The story itself is a sort of meshing of the folktale “The Pied Piper of Hamlin” with the Shakespearean story of “Hamlet.”  John Patrick Coan played Peter Hamlet, a handsome young man who was virtuously good with his pipe (by which I mean his musical instrument, of course) but also busy trying to figure out what had happened to his mysteriously dead father.  Meanwhile his newly-odd girlfriend, Ophelia (Karen Irwin) seemed able to speak only in heart-felt 1970s song lyrics.  It was fun recognizing each one as she spun them out.

Diane Kondrat played Peter’s elegant widowed mother, Gertrude, who delicately cupped her crotch whenever she mentioned her new love and soon-to-be-new-king, Claudius.  Scot Greenwell gave Claudius hilarious, skin-crawling, rat-like qualities even before we realized that he was, in fact, a rat in human disguise.

The playwright’s daughter, Katie Harry, who is also an actor (and theatre reviewer, yay!), read aloud the stage directions in a good, clear, calm voice. This was very helpful.

I enjoyed the staged reading of the play and hope I get a chance to see a fully staged version of it some day for comparison. 

It was also fun to hear what else each of the actors is working on.  Katie Harry is performing in “Guys and Dolls” at Pike High School.  Diane Kondrat is rehearsing “The Heavens Are Hung in Black,” by James Still, at the Indiana Repertory Theatre.  Claire Wilcher writes and performs sketch comedy with Three Dollar Bill Comedy Company and competitive improv comedy at ComedySportz.  John Patrick Coan also is on the improv team at ComedySportz.  Scot Greenwell and Karen Irwin are currently in “The Most Damaging Wound,” by Blair Singer, which has its final performances at the Phoenix Theatre next Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.  Scot Greenwell is also rehearsing “Joseph” at Beef and Boards Dinner Theatre.

Karen Irwin is also preparing to turn the intimate space we were in tonight into a fulltime professional theatre membership space (I think that’s what she called it), modeled after a place in Chicago that leases space to professional theatre groups who need a place to host their productions.  The groups all pay a membership fee and then take turns using the space on nights and weekends.  Most of the utility costs, however, are paid by the groups that use the space during the day, such as yoga and other exercise classes.

The space we were in is called the “SAM Building.”  It is a small, one-story, one-room building in the Broad Ripple area of Indianapolis, tucked in sort of behind the MCL Restaurant that is just west of Keystone Avenue.  It used to be a construction shop.  Karen told us she wants to make the building into a clean and open “white box” space that can also be turned into a “black box” theatre.

The project is still very much in the formative stage, however.  The staged reading of Lou’s play was the very first arts event to be held there.

When I asked Karen more about the space after the reading, she said, “I inherited the building from my dead boyfriend.”

Wouldn’t that make a great first line of a story?!

I hope that both the stories of Karen’s theatre space and Lou’s script live happily ever after.

Hope Baugh – www.IndyTheatreHabit.com

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