"Smartphones: A pocket-size farce" A new comedy by Emilio Williams opening July 19th, 2012 at Trap Door Theatre (Chicago)

Monday, June 18, 2012

Rubbing shoulders with Anger/Fly


I'm pinching myself... I'm rehearsing at Trap Door Theatre, my favorite theater in Chicago!

Is this really happening to me?

We're rehearsing off hours around the set of Anger/Fly that miracle play directed by Kate Hendrickson and written by my generous and talented colleague Ruth Margraff. I've seen that show 4 times and I'm coming over for one more this weekend, before it closes June 30th.  The play is surprising, twisted, challenging and/but so much fun to watch. Everytime I see it, I discover a dozen new details that I had missed before. And I laugh my ass off every single time.

I'm hoping some of their talent will transfer to our play by rubbing against the white sets designed for Anger/Fly by wonderboy Mike Mroch.  (Mike did the sets for some of my favorite shows last year including Progress at Trap Door and Brand at Red Tape)

In the meantime, we're trying to make sense of our play at hand, the silly "Smartphones", but not too much sense, I hope. I always worry that over-analyzing intentions during this part of the process may take away from the magic of absurdism. I'm increasingly haunted by the notion that there is nothing less real, and more fake and boring, than naturalistic approaches to theater.

At the end of the day, we human beings don't have clear objectives, agendas, every time we open our mouths. We, I believe, are random and inconsistent more times that we dare to admit. And the only way for me to be "real" is to be truthful to our profound falseness as human beings.

Emilio Williams


Photo from Anger/Fly at Trap Door Theatre

No comments:

Post a Comment