CoHo PRODUCTIONS

Talking Theatre with Samuel D. Hunter and Brandon Woolley Part IV

Co-producer Brandon Woolley chatted with The Few playwright Samuel D. Hunter about inspiration, process, interstates and Idaho as rehearsals for CoHo’s upcoming production were just underway.  Read the first and second parts of their conversation here and here and check back for more next week!

Brandon Woolley
Brandon Woolley
Samuel D. Hunter - Photo Credit: John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Samuel D. Hunter – Photo Credit: John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

BRANDON:

I wanted to follow up with one final question. We just had our first “stumble-through” last night, which went really well – and, you know, Val is in the show, she did the workshop here at JAW, she’s playing QZ, and then, a local actor named Mike O’Connell who has worked here at PCS a lot and is a company member at Third Rail – they did A Bright New Boise a few years back here in Portland –  is playing Bryan, and then we have this fantastic actual nineteen year old who is playing Matthew and he came through our Visions and Voices program, Promising Playwrights, which I think was around when you were here as well, the high schoolers who were writing plays and then had them performed before the big weekend plays, so he came through that program a couple of years ago, but is also a fantastic actor and just has some of the most amazing instincts that I’ve seen from someone who’s just come out of high school and hasn’t been to college at all to study acting or anything like that.  It’s been fun to watch these three people work on this play together; we’re having a really good time.  But I was just wondering, based on the other productions, if there’s any advice you would give or anything that you would want to say – to me, to the actors.

SAM:

I feel like the only thing, and you can probably say this about almost every play I’ve ever written, is that there’s this darkness to them, and to the characters. And I think in The Few in particular, there’s a lot of vitriol in the play.  And I think what’s really important to always remember – and this is going to be a very obvious thing to say – is that vitriol is always a cover, it’s always masking vulnerability and empathy.  It’s always like, if it weren’t for the vitriol between Bryan and QZ in the first scene, the play would pretty much be done after that first scene in the play.  But that vitriol and anger is constantly sort of covering up this desperate need for the two characters to connect.  Which finally happens in the penultimate scene in the play.  I think that we what we found in rehearsing was that the anger is fun.  And it’s active, and it’s fun to watch and there’s a lot of conflict in it, but it can also weigh down the play.  Like in The Whale, if the actor playing was just depressed the entire play, then it’s almost like the play isn’t about anything. But the actors who’ve really made that part sing are the actors who are constantly reaching for the light through the pain.  And I think the same with Bryan and QZ.  They have a constant need to reach out to one another.  And the two actors who did it in the New York production had this brilliant ability; they could make it seem as if their eyes were constantly saying “I love you” even though their mouths were saying “Fuck you.”

BRANDON:

That’s something that I’ve been thinking about as we’ve been working through it: there is a lot of weight to it, and I think the tendency would be to just be bogged down in some of that depression sand to just stew in that.  Because that can sometimes be really fun for an actor to do as well.  But in terms of the rhythm and the movement of the play, remembering – not to keep it light – but remembering that there is love and there is a need for connection, and that they had good times and that they had humor.   I think that’s one of the things that I keep coming back to: your play is very funny at times! Particularly, there’s humor in the sadness that has been really fun to explore.  And we’re continuing to do that while staying true to the circumstances – that Bryan does feel quite depressed as well.

SAM:

Interestingly enough, it’s the thing that I think stalled me while I was writing the first draft of the play in 2009 or 2010.  I think I wrote the play through the big blow-up scene where Bryan rips up all the papers, and then I think I stalled after that.  As a writer, I think, I was leaning so hard into the depressive anger stuff that it was really hard to find the forward movement.  But then when I went back and realized that the play was fundamentally about a guy who was trying to say, “I love you,” or “marry me,” or whatever it is, that gave me the scaffolding to write a play that was active.

BRANDON:

Awesome.  Well this has been fantastic, and thank you so much for taking the time and chatting about this play that I’m sure you haven’t thought about it awhile, necessarily, with everything else going on, but we’re having a great time, and I’m super excited that it’s getting to come back to Portland after at least four to five hundred people experiencing it at JAW a few years ago. And I know that a lot of people in the theatre community are really excited, we’re tapping into the trucking community a little bit with some outreach, and just trying to do our best to get not just the theatre community out to this play, because I think it deals with so much more than that.

SAM:

When we did the New York production I actually did an interview on a trucker radio station.  It was really interesting.  Sirius XM radio has some channel for truckers, and I came in and I did their show and it was very cool.  I don’t know if a lot of people were parking their big rigs in the West Village to go see the play . . .  (laughs) but, that community is really vibrant, and alive, and big!

BRANDON:

I just read an article recently about how there are 3.5 million people who are truckers in the United States, and they’re still short on truckers.  They need more people to be doing this.  There was actually, funnily enough, a Buzzfeed article that I read four days ago about a female truck driver.  The interviewer went on a six day trip with this truck driver, a 3,500 mile run, or something like that, just showing how it all actually happens.  The showering, etc.  . . .  and all of that.  It’s fascinating, and I keep seeing things pop up about how truck drivers are the backbone keeping this country alive in terms of getting goods and services to places.  It’s been fascinating to dive into that – to really pay attention to it – because it’s not something that I normally would.

SAM:

Exactly.  Are you in rehearsals right now?

BRANDON:

We just started our third week yesterday.  We open on March 25th and we run through April 16th.  Four week run, four shows a week.

SAM:

I wish I could see it!  I really wish I could.

 

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