Final Week (this week)

[Luigi Sottile and Elena Bossler in WHISKY NEAT]

I sat in a room tonight where seventy people sang together. All is not lost, dear reader. Thieves broke in and stole the amplifiers – in this building that I go to on Sunday nights. The musicians stood at the front, cried out as best they could, and eventually we joined them with our untrained voices to amplify the music. In a sort of selfish way, I suppose, I could not help but think of WHISKY NEAT, and its temporary home on 7th and Spring Garden Street.


As a younger man, I had a notion that I would feel a greater sense of wholeness at this moment, as my work is being presented with this level of professionalism and visibility. I did not, however, anticipate the pain in being so exposed – to have one’s heart lay in state before a gathering of curious onlookers six nights a week. But as I sit here now, it is my feeling that this heartache reveals a deeper reason to share the work with you, dear reader.

It is not easy for any of us to reveal ourselves -- to cry out as best we can, and in so doing further disclose our imperfections and weaknesses. Especially when there are brutal forces and people everywhere – yes, even in this, my beloved city of Philadelphia. We live in tough neighborhoods, all of us, even those of you that don’t. You put your hood up on the walk back from the el, look straight ahead and reveal no emotion, no weakness. Or you keep your little notebook hidden, as I do, from your workmates. Or maybe you keep secret that movie that made you cry, knowing that others will think less of you. Or maybe you simply mention it in a way that lets others know you are above it.


There is a part of me that doesn’t want you to come to this play in this final week – that wants to lock the doors, and keep my little vision to myself, perfect and untouched. But I am not choosing that tonight. I know you know these characters as well as I do. Who better to share it with? I know, like me, you have been on both sides of brutality. And because of brutality, like me, you feel a painful separation at times from those around you.

In this very imperfect play there are five very imperfect characters. They live in a heightened brutality, yes, but unfortunately it is not entirely alien to any of us. Each of them are victims and perpetrators in their own ways. As we all are. And yet, incredibly, they each hold out hope for a genuine intimacy – to one day look into the eyes of another without being above or below. That is my prayer for us too, dear reader. That prayer may seem almost completely drowned out by the staggering power of brutality, but we can amplify it. I have heard us sing together.

FINAL PERFORMANCES:
Wednesday, Apr. 22, 8 p.m.
Thursday, Apr. 23, 8 p.m.
Friday, Apr. 24, 8 p.m.
Saturday, Apr. 25, 2 p.m.

The Run

Luigi Sottile (left) and Nathon Emmons in the opening scene of WHISKY NEAT.


I have been instructed by late night public television to write five things I am grateful for each day.

FIVE SMALL DETAILS THAT DELIGHT ME ABOUT THE RUN OF WHISKY NEAT

1. The way Luigi (as Handsome) and Elena (as Alex) share a laugh after Alex says, "You're full of shit."

2. That moment when the lights go down just before the show. For a moment a loose myself in a wonderful way: what will the lights come up on? "Guys and Dolls?" "Endgame?" What will be revealed by the coming light?

3. Being anonymous: Audiences who don't know I'm associated with the play in any way.

4. The conversation about the play and writing that I had after a visit to a lecture class at Temple U. The student had seen the play and related. It made her feel like more of who she was.

5. People who order whisky after the show (or whiskey).

Tech and Final Rehearsal

THINGS I WROTE INTO THE SCRIPT THAT APPARENTLY MAKE LIFE DIFFICULT FOR DESIGNERS

1. Tuxedo
2. Kicking shit out of guy
3. Spitting on floor
4. Ceiling
5. Sex
6. Stabbing guy
7. Weird stuff
8. Red wine
9. Cowboy hat
10. Stabbing guy second time


Nearly completed installation set for WHISKY NEAT at the Latvian Society. Design by Simon Harding. Mar. 29, 2009

Left to right: Terry Smith (production manager), Paul Moffit (Lighting Designer) and Mikaal Sulaiman (Sound Design) at a technical rehearsal for WHISKY NEAT at the Latvian Society.

You know shit is getting intense when actors start stretching like this before runs. Actor Brian Cowden stretching before a rehearsal run of WHISKY NEAT at the Latvian Society.

Rehearsal # 11 & 12

Goodbye to the 1812 rehearsal space! Later suckas. We're moving into the Latvian Society! And they do traditional Latvian dances and serve us rich coffee while they build our set. Pete: I'm sorry I locked the bathroom key in the bathroom. Okay? Happy now?

It's strange the lines that actors enjoy. They're never the ones you expect.

BEST LINES IN WHISKY NEAT ACCORDING TO CAST AND CREW:

Brian Cowden: "Smell it."
Elena Bossler: "I think Tommy and Terry might be machines."
Luigi Sottile: "Smell it."
Bruce Walsh: (A beat.)
Kevin Glaccum: "Dave."
Keith Conallen: "Smell it."
Nathan Emmons: "Chicken ass."
Lindsay Galbraith: undecided


Keith Conallen at a rehearsal on March 21. He drinks his coffee with a spoon to make the scene better. Love that guy.

Rehearsals # 8, 9 & 10

I'm becoming less and less useful. My idea to use actual whisky fell on deaf ears. Bean counters. But I did get to change a few lines because they can't actually smoke in this "Latvian Society." And then I made a few script changes in which I just put "quotes" around a few "phrases" just to keep busy. When I gave the the pages to the actors, I said, say it like "this." They just stared at me blankly.

But I do find this "fight call" concept totally fascinating. Like: "let's practice beating the crap out of each other, so we don't actually beat the crap out of each other." I love it! And boy do I hope they're "acting," because if not Brian Cowden is sure getting his ass handed to him every night. And if that were the case, I would feel a new sense of guilt for having scripted a "ball grab."


Throw Down Part I: Brian Cowden gets socked one by Nathan Emmons during fight call... Don't worry. It's make believe. I think.

Throw Down Part II: Cowden begs Emmons to stop. Sometimes I want to scream at them to stop. Then the director reminds me that theater is pretend.

WHISKY NEAT: Interview Part II

My friend Brendan Huffman was nice enough to take my picture in front of the SEPTA add for my play. He told me I had to smile or he would sock me one.

THE SECOND QUESTION FROM A CURIOUS TEMPLE U. STUDENT
(I went back and added some stuff to my answers. I always think of just the thing to say afterwords.)

2. What inspired you to write this play? Did you change DASEIN's
story line at all for WHISKY NEAT?

I'm not sure I know what inspiration is -- at least not as far as writing is concerned. My plays are just these very powerful daydreams. Not sure how to explain... There are times I become aware that I am daydreaming of something very specific: a world that seems as real -- more real even -- than this one. It's more of a choice to further explore that world or try to shut it out. I've never had much success at shutting it out completely. There are some I have the courage or misfortune or obsessiveness or luck or stupidity to follow. And some I don't for some reason. I've never figured out why. These dreams, of course, contain many elements from my everyday life, just as any normal dream tends to have these elements. For instance, I worked as a parking valet at maybe half-a-dozen restaurants around Philly, so that is a central element to the play. For some reason the dream that began as DASEIN never left me. I don't know why. Perhaps because it was pretty much my first experiment with real narrative. My plays before that point -- before I was 24 or so -- were these sort of strange experiments with rhythmic language. Almost every line of WHISKY NEAT is completely different than DASEIN, and it's more than double in length. It's the same characters though. The through line is the same in the sense that the same big dramatic event occurs. (I don't want to give anything away by mentioning what that is.) But DASEIN was closer to a short story in structure. It really just had one dramatic movement: a big bang happens and we watch how the characters deal with that. In a full-length drama there needs to be -- for me at least -- a kind of ricochet effect. There are a chain of events -- an arch rather than a snapshot.


Elena Bossler didn't truly get started with us until March 14, the day this little clip was taken. Notice that on her first day of rehearsal she sort of casually throws the script on the table, and continues word perfect. In this little moment her character, Alex, is talking to Handsome (Luigi Sottile) about her BMW. I was actually attempting to take a still photo, but had the wrong setting on the camera.

INTERVIEW Part I

The other day I got this really cool message from a Temple student. I think she was writing an article for the school paper. She asked me questions about my play, and I had a great time answering them, though now I think I may have freaked her out with my insane theater-nuts passion or something because she never got back to me. Anyway, here's the first question. It took me back to college days, and I wound up digging out some artifacts from 2002!

Hi Mr. Walsh,
Thank you so much for getting back to me. If you could answer these questions by this Thursday or Friday that would be fantastic. You can just send them to this same e-mail.
Thanks again!

1. I see that Whisky Neat originally premiered as Das Ein at the 2002 Philadelphia Fringe Festival. What can you tell me about its reception by the audiences?

Actually, the play was titled "Dasein" -- one of Martin Heidegger's philosophy terms. I have no idea why I titled it that. Azuka spelled it "Das Ein" in their marketing materials. I have no idea why they spelled it that way. It's all very mysterious to me. The Fringe show wasn't much of a premiere. It was a 40-min one-act with 3 performances. At that time, I hadn't figured out how to write anything without the pressure of a physical performance planned for a specific date. I asked my friend from college (Dan Kutner, a Temple guy now in New York) if he would direct a play by me. I told him I was working on it, but I really didn't start until after I asked him. I knew the guys that ran the space from a previous show, so they agreed to deduct their money from the tickets. I think I paid the actors -- also my college friends -- $80 a piece for the whole thing. We had no set. We used the door to the theater as an entrance in the play. It was all very ridiculous actually, because there was supposed to be a television in the play, but we had no way of cueing something like that, so people just sort of mysteriously pointed the remote toward stage right. I guess it went over well enough. Fringe audiences -- God bless em -- tend to put up with a lot. The language and the actors had a certain energy that can be entertaining in a small space. Dan did a great job keeping it moving, so you didn't really have a lot of time to start wondering what the hell was going on. I nearly puked the first night -- the first and last night I actually sat with an audience at one of my plays. It was the first time the actors had done the piece in front of people. The lights didn't work. My dad was there. The toilet broke in the men's room. It was horrific. But by the third one, I think people were genuinely laughing and having a good time with it. But "Dasein," for me, was really just the seed of an idea for "Whisky Neat."


Director Daniel Kutner (seen here living it up as a professional director in New York City) believed in my one-act, even though I hadn't written anything yet. He also didn't read into the fact that I had to take an incomplete in Theater 110 our freshman year. I owe you one, Dan.


All this talk about 2002 got me digging through my filing cabinet. I never did find an explanation as to the play's title. But I did discover the original listing in the Fringe guide.