NICKY: Listen, to be frank, I’m tired of sitting through directors telling me what my play’s about.—So why don’t I tell you what it’s about? Then you tell me if you agree.
DAVID (Suspicious): Fine.
NICKY: Well, obviously, it’s about denial. Denial’s just dandy if it gets you through the day, but we’re living at a time when, because of AIDS, it carries a terrible price. We have this epidemic because we didn’t want to deal with it. Because as a culture we viewed the people who were dying as expendable. And, of course, it’s a comedy, employing theatrical genre as a shield, or defense, that these characters use to survive.
DAVID: All right, sure.
NICKY: Great! Now . . . what have you directed?
DAVID: You’re not familiar with my work?
NICKY: Well, no.
DAVID: Well, then, do you mind if I ask how you happened to call me?
NICKY: Doug faxed me stuff but I lost it.
DAVID: I see. Well. . . . I directed Gus and Al, at the Public, Bill Finn’s Romance in Hard Times, Mi Vida Loca and The Stick Wife at Manhattan Theatre Club, Pal Joey—
NICKY (Shrieking): Oh you’re MUCH too big a deal to direct my little play! You’d NEVER take me seriously!
. . .
But he did. And we started a working relationship that I hope goes on until we are both very old and very crabby. David and I have worked together seven times now and it’s still a complete pleasure. I learn about everything working with David. And I like to think he learns about something working with me.
In any event, the production turned out beautifully. What a wonderful and dedicated cast! They all believed in the project, which was surprising as no one had ever heard of me. We had neither a great deal of money (the sofa was borrowed from Manhattan Theatre Club and I’m convinced it gave Scott Cunningham lice or chiggers or something). We had no big movie star in the lead. But this, my first play to be covered by the New York Times, was taken quite seriously. We were treated as something important. Both critics, Ben Brantley in the daily review and David Richards in the Sunday edition, had their complaints. But they both had high praise as well. And, after ten years of putting on plays attended only by my friends, there were audiences! Night after night the theatre was full. And they laughed. And they cried. And we extended. We sold out and life was good. What a victory for the underdogs!
I was speaking at a class recently when a student asked me if Pterodactyls is an AIDS play. Well, it is about AIDS. But clearly it’s also about family, death, marriage, parents, children, fear, love, class, economics, the end of our species and, of course, denial. Why is there this desire to place plays in narrow little categories? It seems to me that’s a job for press agents. But it’s not my job. And very few plays are about one thing. I was also asked if I was bitter that Pterodactyls didn’t transfer to a commercial production. How could I be?
THE FOOD CHAIN
After Pterodactyls, I started work on Raised in Captivity. I was just beginning really, when I put it aside. I needed to take a break from the somewhat painful issues I was exploring. After all, let’s face it, funny or not, there’s a lot of death and dying in Pterodactyls. And Raised in Captivity explores equally painful turf (alienation, punishment, redemption). I needed to cleanse my palate, as it were. And so, having no lime sherbet on hand, I wrote The Food Chain.
I learned a valuable lesson working on the premiere production. I gave the play to the Woolly Mammoth, feeling they certainly deserved it, having produced me when no one else would. I felt very close to that theatre and very protected. I’d had a wonderful time working on Free Will the previous year and I was happy to be back. I briefly toyed with the idea of playing Otto, but chickened out and opted instead to direct.
What a miserable experience! It wasn’t the cast. They were sweet and very talented. I loved the designers, particularly the set designer, James Kronzer. But for reasons that were none of my business there was a big “shakedown” among the staff at Woolly . . . a WEEK BEFORE WE OPENED! It may or may not have been good for the theatre. I wouldn’t know. I only know it was terrible for me. A day before the first preview everything was falling apart. The set wasn’t finished. The lights weren’t hung. The props weren’t even assembled! I’m sure I was very difficult as I stormed about the theatre alternately weeping and shouting. (I paint a very high-strung picture of myself. In reality I possess a calm bordering on the serene and am often mistaken for a religious figure.) On the night of the first preview, I asked the cast if they wanted to cancel. They’d NEVER worked on the set in its completed state! They said no, that they were dying for an audience. And they got one. There was a full house. I made a curtain speech wherein I warned the audience that the set may careen off the stage and kill someone. Then the play began and the audience had, I think, a great time. Audiences, as a rule, love a technical disaster. They love being there the night a light falls down or a turntable breaks. It’s an event. If the disaster is huge enough it takes on a mythic quality: “I was at Sunset the night the set collapsed, killing sixty and injuring twelve.” (I actually was there the night Barbara Cook got caught in the set of Carrie! I was in London and the damn thing nearly decapitated her! But that’s another story.) The lesson: It’s nice if it’s always fun, but ultimately something
