Green Room

The specific origin of the term ‘Green Room’ is lost to history. One story is that London’s Blackfriars theatre (1599) included a room behind the scenes, which happened to be painted green; here the actors waited to go on stage. When I worked at Twin Cities Public Television, our green room was where guests would wait before appearing live on television or in one of my video productions.

My own green room has now been emptied. The show will begin shortly. A new play of mine is about to be performed for the first time. So, once again, I’m back at the Steeple Center theater watching my imagined characters come to life; their words transferred from my script to the stage. It’s much the same and yet so very different from last summer’s creation of ‘Riot at Sage Corner.’

I thought an appropriate sub-title for this next new play ought to be:

‘Romance, mischief, good music and a doobie or two

After fifty years, what else would you expect?’

That seems to encapsulate the drama, trauma, and energy I hoped to create with this new storyline of a group of alumni finally gathering together once again after an absence of fifty years. So much had changed. So much had stayed the same. Last January, I visited this subject matter of my next play, in another blog entitled Taking Home Room Attendance.

Now all that effort last winter of telling a story about a fifty-year class reunion was coming to fruition and a play was being created by a very talented cast of actors. The performance dates have been set, the auditions held and rehearsals are in full swing. A very talented singer-songwriter has created two original songs for the show and the sets look marvelous. The actors have been ‘off book’ for some time now. It’s all coming back to me again.

After last summer’s sold out performances of ‘Riot at Sage Corner,’ I asked myself how I was going to follow up on that success with yet another play. There is always a tendency to play it safe and create something that is assured continued satisfaction. Some folks suggested a sequel of the story of Sage and Margaret Maple from ‘Riot.’ Hollywood has been doing that for years with their franchise series. But I wasn’t interested in repeating what I had already done.

In much the same manner that I’ve never been able to focus on just one genre at a time, say more of my successful westerns, I was never interested in just repeating myself. So, I retreated into the half dozen play treatments I’d already created and went searching for some inspiration. Each play treatment had a storyline that interested me to some degree. Finally, after a lot of pondering and toying with the characters, one seemed to stand out. A class reunion of a bunch of odd-ball characters who hadn’t seem one another for fifty years but still carried baggage from that period in their lives.

My own fifty-year class reunion several years earlier turned out to be the ignition point for this new storyline. It was fifty years of change, history, lost feelings, and old feelings resurfacing again. It was one big ‘what if’ and ‘what ever happened to’ that inevitably led to ‘can you believe’ and ‘I’m not surprised.’

My theory is that people don’t really change over time. We grow, we mature and we become more worldly but our core being remains pretty much the same. It’s only when drama or trauma sweeps into our lives that change can sometimes be forced upon us. And even then, it can be a reluctant change at best.

So that theory further begs the question; can a person reconnect on some new level given the past level of commitment, pain of breakup or reluctance to return to the past even at some surface level? Are the old status symbols of class ranking, social standing or financial strength still a part of that old equation? Or is there something of shared value that transcends all those old barriers to reconnect people at some emotional level? Can our respective pasts be bypassed for a new future together?

So, for all my characters in this new play, I had to ask myself if there could be a reconnection, reconciliation, or acceptance of the past all the while bravely facing the future. That turned out to be the genesis for ‘Club 210.’

I had to create representative characters that were interesting. Some could be stereo-types while others had to stand out as being different. Some turned out to be fictional but with a dose of reality to prop them up. Others were made up but interesting to me.

There were two intimidate settings, a home room and a dive bar once frequented by the group. Both places were cauldrons of memories, some good, some bitter-sweet, some forgettable. There would be plenty of conflict and a lot of humor. Both emotions would tie and pull my characters apart.

During the months that ‘Club 210’ came into focus and finally form, I found my voice with the characters. Now it would be up to them to tell their respective stories as best they can. They all have interesting stories I think my audience is going to enjoy. The Green Room is empty, the actors are in place. All I must do is listen and learn.

Who knows, there just might be yet another story in what they have to say.

Denver Brownies

I didn’t see her, as much as I imagined what she was like when she first ambled into the room. That vapid image slowly morphed into a mind-picture right after the phrase ‘Riot at Sage Corner’ was ghost-whispered into my ear by forces still unknown. Somehow I understood that Sage was an older woman and although wrinkled and slowing down a bit she still carried a force of beauty and brain about her.

She was envisioned as an aging hippie on the backside of her life and stuck in a senior complex. I knew she bristled at the rigid rules and stifled attitude of many of her fellow residents. There was another protagonist in the story too; really an antagonist of Sage. It was Miss Margaret Maple, the self-imposed disciplinarian at the complex, and a nemesis to Sage and her disruptive antics.

What I wasn’t able to decipher right then was why Sage acted out the way she did? One thing I was sure of…that this lava lamp of images swirling around in my head might make for a very interesting and entertaining story...and maybe even a play.

So as a spec project I wrote a play entitled ‘Riot at Sage Corner’ and presented it to the Senior Theater Group at RAAC (Rosemount Area Arts Council.) It was an unproven treatment meant for a group of well-intentioned yet inexperienced seniors by an unproven playwright.To my delight and good fortune RAAC gave it a read-through and agreed to produce my play in the near future...near and future being relative.

Triangle Bar

Sage was probably lurking in the back of my mind for a long time. I just didn’t know it. My interest in and fascination with hippies goes back to my old Triangle Bar days on the West Bank of Minneapolis. Turns out, Sage was a compilation of a number of women I knew or met along the way to matrimony and kids and a new way of life.

I envisioned Sage first coming into the room carrying her Denver brownies in the second scene of the play. Those medicinal goodies added humor to the sketch and expanded upon the on-going conflict between Sage and Margaret Maple. The two women were like Sulphur and gasoline toward one another and just as volatile.They came to life almost immediately and their antagonism toward one another was palatable.

Then to mix up this cauldron of conflicting objectives even more I added a mysterious figure nicknamed ‘The General.’ His background proved the perfect mixture of patriotism verses individualism and sad memories verses cold reality. These and some other assorted characters were a delight to work with and helped move the storyline toward a startling conclusion and (I hope) enjoyable experience for my audience.

‘Riot at Sage Corner’ was my first attempt (aside from a few blogs) to examine the aging process from the perspective of individuals who were living it right now. I wanted to address their fears and concerns, hopes and aspirations while not ignoring the pending life-changing circumstances surrounding them. ‘Riot at Sage Corner’ was also an attempt to help the senior theater group find a play that fit their criteria and could be easily produced by a group of amateurs. RAAC seemed to agree.

Link to the Rosemount Area Arts Council

The Rosemount Area Arts Council was started in 2007 by four area residents who had been serving as advisors to the city about possible future use for a church that was closing in town. Their final recommendation was that the church be re-dedicated as a community arts center.

As the group was making its final recommendations they decided that the arts in Rosemount were about more than just a building in town. They felt there was need for an arts council that could spearhead activities and programming to bring the arts, all kinds of arts, to the people.

Now they have a new project called the Senior Theater.

Photo Courtesy of Keith Reed

Photo Courtesy of Keith Reed

This latest project of RAAC’s follows on the heels of a growing trend in this country of theater groups for seniors. It’s a trend that continues to grow by leaps and bounds. In 1977, there were 79 such groups, now there are more than 800 spread out across the country.

Part of the inspiration for this trend came from the work of the late psychiatrist Dr. Gene Cohen who headed centers on aging at the National Institute of Mental Health and at George Washington University. Dr. Cohen’s research concluded that involvement in the arts provides seniors with numerous benefits for mind and body.

Photo Courtesy of Keith Reed

Photo Courtesy of Keith Reed

Stuart Kandell who founded Stagebridge in Oakland, California in 1978, the oldest senior theater company in the U.S., has stated: “We all have a need for challenges in our lives. We have a need to keep learning. We have a need to feel like we’re giving back to other generations. We have a need for a social environment. Theater does all of that and more.” Then he adds: “The social element is huge, gigantic. The (theatrical) company for many people is like their extended family.”

Even at their initial meeting I could sense that the newly organized members of the senior theater felt this immediate theatrical comradeship too. Those lifelong road warriors seemed more than willing to embrace their future no matter how challenging or terrifying the theater might seem to them right now.

It’s been a while since I was involved in Community Theater. It’ll be good to get back to live story-telling again. Perhaps my play can help these seniors and others in this mutual journey of self-discovery. Hopefully we’ll all have a ‘riot’ of a time along the way.