The inaugural Hollywood
Fringe
Festival runs June 17-27 at venues throughout Hollywood. To
celebrate, this week is devoted to other people's shows via The Five
Questions.
I saw That Great & Dreadful Day…Tall Tales from the American Swamp at the Stella Adler a couple of weeks ago. It's *phenomenal* and that's all I'm gonna say so we can get right to writer D. Miner. During Fringe there are 10 performances at three venues, tickets $16. You need to know that the shows at Fringe Central will be highlight reel, while the shows at ComedySportzLA and the Stella Adler will be the full length version.
There's another part to this from show director Jack Curenton. I'll post that week after next sometime.
How did the story for your show come about, and how did you assemble its phenomenal band ?
If you were to change the order of this two part question around, (A),the band being first, and (B),the story being 2nd, then we'd be in the right chronological order. About 10 years ago,myself, and a few other well seasoned musicians came together and formed a roots Rock'n'Roll band and called it "The Black Tongued Bells". Inspired by Roots rock'n'roll, Blues, and Gospel, we started writing songs in that vain, and eventually, came up with our own signature sound. After playing together for a few years, like all bands in the process of discovering themselves, we started digging deeper into the the different historic movements and styles of American roots music, and decided to put our electric instruments down for a while, and started indulging the
music in it's purest and most basic form, all acoustic. So there's a little glimpse into how
some of the musicians first came together.
Now you did ask how the "story" of the show came about, and I hope you have more than a minute, because it's quite an involved story. It was not approached the way a real playwrite would write a play, it came to me in the form of many different ideas over a peroid of about a year, and after pooling a bunch of these ideas together, it eventually turned into a play.
Let me pick it back up here with the band. At this point, we started performing acoustic shows at a little black box theatre in Silver Lake, we did our first few shows straight up acoustic, then we decided to do something that would put distance and distinction between us, and the other acoustic acts playing around town. I emptied out my living room and hauled it down to the theatre, recreated my living room onstage, and the idea (or theme), was to give the audience the impression they were "evesdropping" on one of our rehearsals, to give them an intimate look at us in the process of creating and arranging songs, sort of a live "behind the scenes" look at the band. It went over extremely well, and this is where I started to realize how jaded and bored audiences had become with music on a local level, and to get them out of their comfy chairs at home, you had to give them a little more bang for their buck. So for our next show, we got much more elaborate, I got the crazy idea of building an authentic looking Louisana swamp for the band to perform in onstage, and by the time we finished dressing it, and lighting it, it looked visually haunting, and very surreal, and when the curtain openned, you could literally hear the audience gasp, they weren't expecting to see something this extravagant, they were in awe. This was the first "hint" of something much bigger that was yet to come. At this point, we lost our original bassist and guitar player due to differences of opinion as to the direction the band was heading. Ray and I continued on, we replaced them, and this is when Anthony came onboard as bassist, and a guitarist by the name of Julian Goldwhite, who only stayed for a couple of years. Also, at this time, Mary Stuart and Louis Cox came onboard as backup singers for the electric side of the band, which we picked back up, and continue to do, to this day. So between the two distinctly different sides of the band, the acoustic and the electric, we now wore two different hats. All musicians who are in the show are now onboard, Ray Herron, Anthony Cook, Mary Stuart, Louis Cox, and myself. Chuck Mathews just came onboard for the play in April.
Oh, one thing I forgot to mention earlier that's essential to the story, back when we still had the original members, Ray came up with the idea of us doing a photo shoot sitting on the porch of a shack playing our instruments, like something you might see in the backwoods of Louisiana. We did the shoot, and down the road, I would run with that theme and aply it as the visual foundation, and central theme of the play.
Now we're coming to the very first inspirations as to how this play became a written piece of work. Many months had gone by while we were breaking in the new players, then We were offered to do another acoustic performance at the theatre, and by now, our audience had come to expect anything but the "norm" from us, and we didn't have enough time to come up with a fresh idea, and then possibly have to build stage scenery for the performance as well. So Ray came up with the idea of asking the owner of the theatre who was an actor, and very knowledgeable in old school Louisiana roots music, if he would like to spin some unscripted "off the Cuff"/ "folklore-ish" type stories between some of our songs, and he basically said thanks, but no thanks. So trying to stay with that theme, I approached a friend of mine who was an aspiring actor to see if he'd be willing to give it a shot, he accepted, but he wasn't an "unscripted" type of actor, so I started writng down some ideas (themes), as guidelines for him to work off from, but he wasn't able to deliver it with the Louisiana dialect I wanted, or a character to my liking, so we ran out of time and ended up having to scrap the idea and do the show
as a straight up acoustic performance. But I wasn't about to admit defeat to this just because we couldn't pull it off this time around, I liked the idea of tales being spun, and weaving them in and out of the music, so I continued to write these little "narrative themes", with the hopes of keeping the idea alive. This is how the the whole idea of the "narrative" concept got it's birth, I just transferred it to the play. Now this is where it all starts becoming a little fuzzy to me, because for the next two weeks, I stayed in my room writing, ashtrays were overflowing, coffee stains were everywhere, I was getting very little sleep, and taking very little time to eat, if any. There were times where I became so delerious from sleep deprivation, lack of food, and too much coffee, that I felt I had stumbled into the realm of "automatic writing", it truely seemed like the information that was coming to me, and the force that was driving it, was coming from elsewhere, that's how weird it got. Now after having said that, in hindsight, it also seems that many of the ideas for the story came over a long period of time, little by little, piece by piece, until it was ripe for the picking. That's when I gathered it all together, picked up the pen, and turned it into a colorful tale, or what we now call our "Swamp Opera".
The only thing I can honestly tell you about the inspiration for this story is, that it came from the Bayou of someone's imagination.
Share any thoughts you might have about the intrinsic relationship between roots/blues/gospel and the fundamental character of America.
Well... let me start by
saying there’s a lot of “truth” and knowledge embedded in roots music, the
music is like a vault, filled with a wealth of information about the lifestyles
and beliefs of specific sects of the American people. The politics of America
from day one, right up until the mid 1960’s was tightly knit, and very “White”,
they were able keep many of the countries dirty little secrets tucked away in
the dark corners of the American history.
Back in the days of slavery, the slaves would be out in the fields
working, and they would make up songs on the spot, and the songs had to do with
their suffering and anguish, and these songs would give them the strength to
make it through another day of torment, it helped them physically, spiritually,
and emotionally, to endure the abuse of their captivity. Also, a lot of times
they had to disguise what they were singing about, for fear of being whipped
and beaten, or worse. So a lot of
the field songs were sung in a sort of code, saying one thing, and meaning
another.
The distinction between race,
color, and the different classes of society, were very hard lined back then,
the whites read from the same gospel as the blacks, but somehow couldn’t even
share the same God. Who was kidding who here, because when you look at the
mentality and behavior of let’s say... the “KKK”, who by the way, were often
times people seated in the local politics of the community, it doesn’t take too
much thought to realize who the bad guys were. The women’s Suffrage movement was in full swing as well, the
American government (99.9% male), was under serious attack from a lot of
different directions, and all of the major issues had one word in common...
“Rights”. That one word said it all, and yet, aren’t we still addressing this
issue on various fronts even today ? So a lot of the music back then spoke
about life’s hardships, and spirituality, or Gospel, which served as a sort of
equalizer for all the wrongs that were being done to the black population, and
the lowly whites, back in that time period.
The only platform or voice
roots music was given in those days, was the music halls and church, mainstream
radio was forbidden to play this music, so given that scenario, you can easily
see how blues and Gospel music wove in and out of each other, and often times
merged. In the writing of the Swamp Opera, I didn’t want to focus too much
attention on the political sins of the country, I don’t want the audience to
feel as if they’re sitting in history class. All in all, much of the sinful behavior of American politics
throughout history, has inspired the American people to do good things, and
many artists have taken the dark side of life and turned it into an
enlightening, or at least entertaining piece of work. Often times, certain
aspects of history get swept under the political carpet like dirt, but it
always seems there’s an artists in waiting, to uncover it. Hmmm... now I’m not
even sure if I answered your question. What was it again?
What do you most want audiences to come away with
after seeing the show?
Aside from the obvious, that they were entertained and
got their money’s worth, the only other thing I can think of to say is this...
we always hope for the audience to feel as though they’ve just shared in
something very special, beause every time we do the performance, we believe
that we have. It’s always new, each performance is unique unto itself, every
show is like a new birth. We want
the audience to feel a part of this, because if they can let go, and submerge
themselves into it as we do, then they’ll get the full experience. Some people have called it a
“spiritual” experience, we don’t expect everyone to claim that same feeling or
“experience” after seeing the show, but the one common thread that everyone
who’s seen the show does seem to share is this, they’ve never seen a theatrical
performance of this nature before, and are extremely glad they had the
opportunity to see this show. Even if you’re not a fan of root’s music, or
aren’t particularly interested in this part of American history, it doesn’t
seem to matter, there seems to be a magic in the writing, and the way the
characters are portrayed, that always captivates the audience. And just to set the record straight,
we’ve never had to refund anyone their money as of yet.
The way the story is told primarily through music, but not
as a “Musical”, with the storyteller as anchor guiding us through his past and
future is fascinating, why this choice?
Let me think about this for
a moment...first off, let me explain that I’m not a “Playwright” per say, at
least not a schooled one, I never aspired to be a playwright, the only thing
I’ve ever been at home with is music, I can write music til the cows come home.
Also, in this case, many of the songs existed before the storyline of the play,
so the cart was before the horse here. Usually, a play’s storyline is written
first, and then the score is added afterwards. I’m gonna try and answer this
question the best I can for you, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to finish
telling you how this became a “real” play, then I’ll get back to your question.
As I was telling you back in
the beginning, I was stuck on the whole idea of us finding someone who could do
these little narratives in between our songs during some of our acoustic shows,
and at this point, the idea of a “play” never entered the picture. But the mind
of an inspired artist is a hard thing to stop once it’s in motion, and any
artist will tell you, where an idea starts, and where it ends up, are sometimes
two different places. So by now, after having written lots of little
narratives, mostly throw away stuff, I actually started to try and script this
thing and give it direction, but more like skits, versus a play. For instance; “after this song we’ll
have him say this, and then we’ll have him sit in a rocking chair smoking a
pipe during our next song, and then we’ll have him open up a scrap book,
reminisce through some old photos, and then he’ll say this”.
I started getting very
deliberate as to what we would have this person say and do, and eventually,
right down to the way I wanted him to dress. This is when I realized I was onto
something, not necessarily a play, but I did want to try and script a storyline
for it. So from here, I focused on certain performers I was familiar with to
gather information. I started looking at Hale Lindsey’s portrayal of Mark
Twain, and I consciously used some of his formula for my narratives, I wanted
our narrator to be colorfully seductive in his choice of words and delivery,
and he had to be a charismatic and captivating “storyteller”. And he had to
have one other distinguishable trait, he had to be from the south, do to the
nature of the songs. As I was sifting through my thoughts, I remembered how brilliantly Rod
Stieger executed his character in the movie “The Illustrated Man”. Bingo, that was exactly the type of
Louisiana dialect I was looking for in my character. So as you can see, I
borrowed some key elements from some very powerful performers. But now came the
challenge, creating my character, so I went to the songs to see if I could find
a character there, and who I found there was myself, so I said, if I were an
“old school” blues legend, how would I have presented myself, what would I have
been like, and this allowed me to step outside of myself, and try to imagine
who I might have been back in that time period when the blues was being
birthed. So I created a specific
place and time in which I would have been born, then imagined what my childhood
might have looked like, and this is where I went back and grabbed onto the
shack imagery that Ray came up with for our photo shoot, and now I had a
definitive idea and starting point for
my story. The character needed a name, and since I had based the
character on the “imaginary me”, I took my AKA and my PKA, gave it a little
stir, and this is what poured out; “I was born Laurence Douglas Miner, in the
year nineteen hundred and twenty three, I was raised in a little shack on the
northern outskirts of Baton Rouge Louisiana”. This is where my two week writing spree started, welcome to
the world of a “Playwright”.
Now to the question at hand, I think because of my lack of knowledge as
to how a normal play is written and formatted, is part of the reason why this
story unfolds in a theatrically unique way. And you are right, even though there’s as much focus on the
music as there is the story, it’s “not” a musical. This is where the lack of
knowledge worked in my favor, it seems I was working outside the box without
even realizing it. Since most of my artistry is based on music, rather than
theatre, it was my natural tendency to put as much focus on the music, as I did
the story. So the one thing I was hoping to accomplish at all times as I was writing
this thing was to captivate the audience with the music as well as the story
and it’s characters. I loved the idea of having the main character weave the
audience in and out of time, at one moment he’s in the here and now telling you
his story, then he decides to transport you to a whole different point in his
life, and by doing this, he allows you to see his life, and some of the key
people in his life, at different intervals in time. This is how the character
chooses to unfold his life to the audience. And because the main character
happens to be a musician, not only are you treated to his colorful personage,
but also his signature style of music.
Last word here:
Storytellers and musicians have been entertaining us since the stone
age, it seems we just can’t get enough of a good story and song.
