Today’s post will be written in two parts. So check back late tonight for my thoughts on dark play or stories for boys.
Also, THIS is now where you go for the list of every Humana play ever in order.
We just saw The Unseen, which I really liked. Y’know, I think this is the best year since 2003 (Omnium/Faculty Room). It’s definitely better than the last two. I can already say that, and we’ve got one play (rumored to be the best of the fest) to go today, and Batch later on. Sweet. I’m having fun.

Okay. The Unseen by Craig Wright. Despite all the BS I heard about from the talk-back, I really enjoyed it. It remains to be seen if it sticks with me, but I believe it will. It’s gotta be Wright’s best play. It had a very strong sense of itself, a palpable world. The actors were great and the characters well-drawn. I’m not sure if it was meant to be an allegory, but it definitely had leanings in that direction.
I was really drawn in by Wallace. Great actor, and I really liked trying to figure out what he was doing. The reveal of his nature was good and I loved it when it turned out to be true. It was probably a bit of a stretch, but at least it was unexpected.
The entrance of Smash into the world of the play was bizarre. I felt pretty well grounded, but then Smash entered, scary, and then acted goofy. It was very bizarre at first. Some of the stuff that Smash said, about the ordinary circumstances of his life, first had me thinking allegorically. Odd moments with him. I’m sure I would not have pushed it that way, but I dug what they did with it. Of course, Smash’s violent descriptions at the end really went for the guts, and the play really needed it then.
It was pretty clear where the first 30 pages (which Wright finished first) ended. The rest of the play was unfocused, and not as interesting. The acting suffered a bit too. Anyway …
Here’s the allegory as I was putting it together. Wright didn’t even hint at this in the program notes (and I did like he had to say there), but this is where the play took me. It’s not complete, but it’s something.
Wallace and Valdez are the populace of the USA. The unseen prisoner who dies represents the countries and people who suffer and die (in Africa, East Europe, Asia) for our freedom. Smash’s fooling of Valdez with was like the media lulling half the population away from thinking about the problems of the world just for the fuck of it. Wallace is the other half of the citizenry, the half that either goes crazy trying to figure out the world or gives up in despair. The torture is life in America, the way our rights, our income, and our ambitions a torn apart by those in power. The prison itself is an extension of the droning, suffering, beehive lives most people lead. Smash, supposedly someone with power, is just another unenlightened individual who can’t find his way out of the system. Kind of like they say that enslaved peoples suffer more (duh), but the masters are also trapped by the system.
Granted, it gets pretty weak after the first couple details, but I do think Wright was at least alluding to some of these issues.
So, I liked it. I liked most everything about it. It’s the kind of play I hope to see at Humana. Interesting, reaching for something, and well-acted and such.
LATER …
Great thing about a laptop, you can write in the car on the way home.
Great thing about this trip home, there are no tornadoes nearby. (We had some last year.)
So … dark play for dark boys or whatever it’s called, by some guy whose name I don’t remember right now.
Did I like it? Yes. For the first hour, it totally had me. I was loving every single moment. The direction was fantastic and the acting was really entertaining. It was perfectly cast. I was relaxing in the knowledge that I was in good hands. Awesome.
Then it kept going. I made the mistake of not checking the sign outside, and hadn’t put myself in a 100 minutes/no intermission mindstate. Mistake. About 75 minutes or so into it, I started to drift a bit. A little after that, they did the CSI thing and the momentum actually slowed down. Then the ending “You’re always full of shit.” Ha ha ha. Kind of a let down, really. Couldn’t they come up with something that would make as much of an impression as the rest of the play? Couldn’t they have pushed the excitement all the way up to the last moment? What she discovers is not the journey. The play was over as soon as Nick got stabbed, maybe even before.
So, a near miss? Almost a massive hit? I wonder why they didn’t take an intermission. Was it conceived that way? They didn’t seem that concerned with preserving momentum. And they didn’t rush towards the end, they took time for the CSI joke when they could have kicked in the overdrive.
Anyway, great play. I see why everyone says it will be produced a lot. Small cast, young characters, funny and fun and modern and hip, lots of simulated felatio. Good times. My second favorite play of the weekend. Only time can tell, but right now I dig Strike-Slip the most.
Hmmm, I guess I was wrong. The Unseen is fading pretty quickly from my consciousness.
Here’s an updated Top Ten list of my favorite Humana plays (not including SITi shows).
1. Touch
2. The Faculty Room
3. Omnium-Gatherum
4. Big Love
5. Finer Noble Gases
6. Tape
7. Sovereignty
8. The Ruby Sunrise
9. Strike-Slip
10. After Ashley
And it’s official. This was the best year at Humana since 2003, and it was better than 2002 as well. Only 2000 and 2003 have been better, in my humble opinion.
Let’s end with this from Adam Bock.
“Imagine a great big building stuffed full of people all working together to make new plays.”
Oh my God. What an amazing thought. Could anything possibly be better?

Related posts:

1. Humana 07 Pt. 2
2. 3.17.07 Humana (Big Bad Theatre Weekend)
3. Humana

Long day.
I got up at 8:30am. It’s 1:40am now. We’re getting up in the morning at meeting at 9am at Cracker Barrel. Awesome.
So … let’s see I’ll talk about what I liked first.
I just re-read Sovereignty by Rolin Jones, his ten-minute from last year. It’s 6.5 pages and he accomplishes more in that space than a lot of plays spend 120 pages to not accomplish.
Anyway …

Split-Strike by Naomi Izuka was tonight. I really dug it a lot. After re-examining it later, I think the production may have more merit than the play, but I definitely enjoyed watching it. There were several moments when I said “sweet” to myself and I was talking about the playwright’s choices of structure and plot. Which is kind of odd, considering how many holes we found in it later.
We’ve been talking some this weekend about what we look for in plays. Some people want solid characterization, some are interested in the dramatic action, some the plot, some the production elements. Myself, I like stuff that’s new in some way, and stuff that rocks. Strike-slip rocked in a lot of ways. I loved their use of the space, which I won’t give away here. I loved a lot of the directorial choices. The sound design was mostly great. I also enjoyed most of the acting. I liked the way the play came together and I liked some the choices Izuka made about what not to address.
As I said, later on, we picked a lot of wholes in the script, but that didn’t really diminish how much enjoyed watching the production.
On to the other one we saw today, When Something Wonderful Ends by Sherry Kramer. Hmmmm … This was a really odd beast. It really seemed like two plays to me, that she’s not quite meshed as of yet. One was about oil and the U.S.’s foreign policy regarding the Middle East. The other was about Barbie and the death of the playwright’s mother.
Now, full disclosure, and I’m not sure how these things affected my experience of the play. 1) The playwright was in the room. 2) She’s a teacher of our friends from Iowa.
Beyond the split-personality thing, the play was burdened by a lot of bad choices. Bad casting and a really bad director. The set made little sense, there was a major technical element that didn’t fit. Also, there was NO sound design.
Though, in the end, I enjoyed watching a lot of it, I definitely thought it was very poorly done. As many times as I laughed or smiled, I said to myself “what the fuck?” or something similar. Basically, I liked all the stuff about oil and Iran and some of the stuff about making the world better, but not much of the other half of it. And talking afterwards, especially with Sean, it seemed that a lot of the problems had fairly obvious solutions.
Alas.
We also got to see about an hour of a rehearsal for Batch today, and that made me really want to see it. So, I’m gonna work on that.
Also, I keep forgetting to mention. I’m working on a Theatre Blog Aggregator. I call it Theatreforte. It’ll be awesome, if I ever finish, and if I can find more good blogs. There aren’t that many, unfortunately. At least, not as many as I thought there’d be. Alas.

Related posts:

1. 3.17.07 Humana (Big Bad Theatre Weekend)
2. Humana

If you’re just joining us, you can go here for complete coverage of last year’s Humana, as well as a great intro to the whole phenomena and my experience with it over the last decade.

On to now … I’m at Day’s Espresso Shop, and the coffee is reeeeaaallllllllly fucking good. So smoothe. I’ve got a little booth to myself, the WIFI is strong, I’ve got my iPod Shuffle, and there are outlets seemingly everywhere. So, I’m very, very happy. It’s 9:33am. The perfect time to let out all my thoughts about last night.

Wow, they’re playing my favorite Peter, Paul, and Mary album here. That totally fuckin rules.

We’re only seeing 5 shows this weekend, which is a bit of a letdown, really. I’m trying not to be discouraged just by that. But it’s Humana, so I’m still very excited. I got all pumped-up just seeing the Louisville skyline yesterday evening, as Ian and I drove in together. It’s that kind of thing now.

I’m here this year with a group of five from Iowa City (and Iowa University), including good friends Sean Lewis, Jenn Fawcett, and Austin Bunn. Brant and Emily join us today, as well as Acacia, and Ian Short traveled down with me.

Our first show (for Ian and I) was The As-If Body Loop by Ken Weitzman. It’s strange to say, but Ken’s picture led me to believe I would really like his play. And, someday, I might. Right now, though, it needs some work.

It seems to me that it was an almost quintessential Humana experience last night. The play had opened the night before, the actors were clearly still learning some of their lines. Very likely the play had been re-written and rehearsed during the day after the first performance. As a result, there was a whole lot of explanation shoved into the last 4 minutes, since the playwright hasn’t figured out where else to put it yet. I guess I think the play probably wasn’t quite ready for production. And yet, they got a good group of actors together, including a very recognizable film actor, and obviously spent a crap-load of money on one of Paul Owens impressively expressive and creative problem-solving sets. (There’s an attic. For real.)

All of which is not to say I didn’t enjoy it. Sometimes I really enjoyed the play. I laughed, and a lot of the audience stood. (Of course, as usual, I’m reminded that most of them paid $52 a seat, so they have more invested in their enjoyment.) And I really enjoyed the experience of seeing the play. It’s a given that a some of the plays won’t be quite ready. I’ll be very curious to hear what others think when they see it two weeks from now.

The Iowa group saw The Unseen by Craig Wright last night. I didn’t realize it before, but Craig Wright wrote The Pavilion, one of my least favorite plays of all time. They were split. Some liked it it, some really didn’t Also, there was a talkback, in which it was revealed that Marc Masterson accepted the play, despite the fact that he’d only read 30 pages of it (because Wright had only written 30 pages). WHY? Well, because Marc wanted to work with Craig Wright, whose Pavilion he had admired so much when City Theatre did it in Pittsburgh.

GRRRRRRRRR. The more I hear about Marc Masterson, the less I like him. I wonder how many finished, totally worthy plays were submitted to Humana that he ignored. I know of at least two (by Sean and Jenn) that are definitely good plays already and could have really benefited from the Humana development process. That’s frustrating too, because Craig Wright, famous TV writer, only showed up at ATL for 4 days(!) during which he finished the play. And that was a week-and-a-half ago. So, he didn’t even bother to make use of the opportunity that Masterson had provided for him. What a couple of jerks. They deserve each other.

Well, that’s decided, I’m gonna hate The Unseen.

Anyway. LATE dinner at Karma Cafe, where we were plagued by a crazy young woman named Blair who I can’t find on MySpace. You’ll have to ask me if you want to get that story.

That’s all for now. I’ll be updating this post as the day goes on, or adding more posts.

Related posts:

1. Humana
2. A Weekend in the City

Now bloggin Louisville here.

Related posts:

1. humanananananana!

Every year I anxiously await one event more than any other.

HUMANA FESTIVAL!!!

I leave tomorrow for Louisville. I imagine this will probably result in a blog, which, since everyone who reads my blogs will be there, probably no one will read.

Hmmm … Maybe we can have a battle of the blogs!

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