Faigen: 'Snow' business like show business, awk!

Port playwright Joshua Faigen, back at the Big Show.

Josh Faigen is on the phone. We’re supposed to be talking about his new play, and maybe we are. Who the hell knows? The only sound clearly audible is this horrendous, god-awful squawking, apparently some kind of bird, a parrot maybe. Name's Mary or Barry or something. Harry? Yeah, Harry. Named after his grandfather? "Don't ask," he says. Faigen, that is, not the bird. He squawks about ten minutes a day, then settles down. The bird, not Faigen. Except when he's talking on the phone. Faigen, not the bird. He doesn't like that. The bird, not Faigen. And expresses his irritation with unscheduled squawking. Usually lasts about ten minutes, then everybody can calm down. Faigen's been dealing with Harry's telephone envy for about 17 years, since  Pittsburgh, where Harry, Faigen and his wife, Penny Lazarus, lived before moving to the Port about a decade ago. Apparently, these creatures can irritate people for up to four decades, which is also interesting, but, at this point, I know more about the bird than "A Book of Snow," the new Faigen production, which will anchor this year's New Works Festival. So, now that Harry's finally calmed down, let's get busy.

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Serving up the Agawam ... and more

The Agawam Diner is something of an institution around here, in this remote corner ... you know, you’re almost tempted to finish that sentence by writing “’round these parts,” because the Rowley diner, known for its stainless steel exteriors and art deco appearance, just has that kind of feel, all nostalgic and all New England, the kind of place where you can get food that will put meat on your bones, as folks used to say about, um, wholesome meals, and get plenty on your plate without much distress to your back pocket — served up by staffers who call you “Hun” without irony and don’t get all weird on you when you order pie for breakfast. The Agawam has the same sort of emotional feel as Cheers: The diner, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places — no, really — is like a community, an extended family, almost. It’s the kind of place where you figure everybody knows your name — and your stories. And many of your foibles. They didn’t really know Joshua Faigen’s name at first, after the Newburyport resident had been showing up there and hanging out for more than an hour every week while his son Adlai was getting tutoring up the street a little bit. No, it wasn’t the famed New England reserve: They knew him by role, not name: He was Max’s father — not, well, Norm or Cliffie. They didn’t actually know his proper name until last year, after Faigen had finished his play about the diner.

Actually, a couple of clarifications from the playwright at this point: First, the diner isn’t a community exactly, or, rather, not a single community. “It’s a bunch of communities,” says Faigen, “communities come together and fall apart in the course of 10 minutes as people come and go.” Second, despite its name and setting, the play, which begins a three-week run at the Actors Studio on April 8, is not actually about the diner any more than Elvis Costello’s video for “45,” which was filmed at the Rowley landmark, which is also featured on the cover of the US edition of Cruel Smile. Actually, Faigen isn’t even sure what the play is about. “I’m never exactly sure what I’ve written until someone tells me,” he says. Which is fair enough, seeing how his work is rarely, if ever, narrative or plot driven. The work often has a leisurely focus on mood, language, situations. For example, his last play, ironically named “A Very Simple Play,” was built around Robert Schumann’s “Davidsbundlertanzes,” a glorious piece by a fabulously insane composer, a piece that was written to defend the new music against revanchist forces, the classical thugs Schumann imagined lurking in the wings.

It’s not a culinary roman a clef, based on his weekly temptation with blueberry pie, and regulars will not recognize any of the characters — except for the old guy playing his beat-up old tuba to pay for his meal. Tubaman was one of the first intriguing people Faigen encountered at the diner. The rest, well, not so much: Jesus, the real-world night cook; Sully, the vagabond Willy Loman-type philosopher; the nameless Old Man with his Girlfriend-for-a-Day — one kind of tight, the other, er, a little loose; the mysterious Man of God. They all drop by for a bite and some chit-chat with Rita and Elaine. “It’s a kind of magical night, a winter night,” says producer Marc Clopton, “a night that is full of longing and fulfilling, that looks at how we cope with our lives and what we do with our imaginations.” Everyone’s biding his time, wondering when the snow will arrive and what life might have been like had they made different choices, says the playwright. They drink coffee, they eat pie. A miracle happens, maybe two. Then everyone’s life shifts a few degrees in a better direction. Or maybe not.

The show had originally been slated to run in November, but casting problems canceled that order. Not a problem this time out. The current production features an all-star cast: Kathleen Anderson, Missy Chabot, Damon Singletary, Jack Rushton, Kayt Tommasino, John Sheedy and Teddy Speck. Stephen Haley directs. Which, at first blush, seems odd — an unconventional play for a director best known for his intense productions of Beckett and his near-fanatical pursuit of textural clarity, but his comfort zone is actually much broader. Haley closed last season with productions of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” and “A Christmas Carol,” and people with especially long memories may recall him as dramaturge for Harbor Theater Festival’s production of “Jesus Christ Superstar.” “The work he’s done for this show is absolutely remarkable,” says Faigen. “It’s kind of thrilling to have him on board.”

JUST THE FACTS, MAN: Joshua Faigen’s “The Agawam” runs April 8 to 25 at the Actors Studio, The Tannery, 50 Water Street, Mill #1. Showtimes are 8 p.m. Thursday to Saturday, 5 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $15, $13 for students and seniors. Space is limited. Reservations are encouraged. To make a reservation, log onto the Actors Studio web or telephone 978.465.1229. Rehearsal photo of Kathleen Anderson by Max Faigen.

Faigen back with a 'Simple' play. Sort of.

Don’t get tripped up by the irony: Joshua Faigen’s new play, called “A Very Simple Play” is anything but simple. Even the playwright isn’t exactly sure what’s he’s got, as far as form goes. It is not, strictly speaking, a play and it’s not a recital. It’s a performance, he says, in which the music is spoken as words and the words are played as music. It alternates between music and dialogue, with one informing the other, but it’s not musical theater — not by any stretch of the imagination. It’s built around Robert Schumann’s “Davidsbundlertanzes,” a glorious piece by a fabulously insane Romantic composer, written for a group, a society, called the League of David, whose purpose was to defend the cause of Romantic music against the revanchist forces, the classical creeps lurking in the wing — a group whose personnel included, at one point, a guy named Brahms as well as two people (Florestan and Eusebius) who didn’t actually exist, but who had the good sense to manifest the different sides of the composer’s personality. Yeah, it’s always something with this guy.

The Merrimac Street playwright is certainly capable of writing nice, straight-ahead plays, like “Gail Can See for Three Days,” in which a woman facing execution tells her story in an exploration of passion, loneliness and broken taboos. But Faigen seems just as happy sticking his finger in the eye of the conventions of the form, like conventional, linear plots, or even in terms of content. Like his psychologically complex “Docent’s Son,” which tells the story of a museum volunteer trying to come to terms with the death of her son, through the language of an abstract painting. Or ”Home/Office,” in which 14 unorthodox scenes convey the complexity of marriage and work. Or the almost novelistic approach he takes in “Porch/Dusk,” a short about a Marine bereavement specialist whose job it is to deliver terrible, terrible news — a piece that ended up as an old-timey radio play. Or “Sikyatki,” a play about Hopi mythology, of all things — a collaboration with Tim Rubel and Rhode Island Theatre Expansion that ended up being as much a dance piece as play.

In “A Very Simple Play,” Schumann’s ”Davidsbundlertanzes,” which is, at turns, brooding and joyous, simple but beautiful, is performed in its entirety. The music is interwoven with the story of two people whose lives revolve around music, the piano. They talk about the melancholy of the past and the sadness of love, they talk about their lives, but, as in many Faigen plays, a lot of the heavy lifting, the specifics about who they are and what their story is, will be done by the audience. The two characters are connected in a deep and long-term way, although not necessarily happily. They have an intimate knowledge of each other. They may or may not be married. They look and sound like a married couple, with issues — perhaps trust issues. They mention a son. Faigen sees them as middle aged, but “the audience can make up its mind about that, too,” he says. “God forbid I be specific about anything.”

The production will feature Missy Chabot and Sandy Farrier as Man and Woman. Barbara Flocco will be at the keyboard. Sarah Chrestensen will be the page-turner. The pianist and page-turner are not named as characters, have no spoken lines and are not directly addressed by the actors, but their presence, the playwright says, is important to setting the tone of the play. Sherry Bonder directs.

The project “kind of chose me,” says Faigen, after he caught Anton Kuerti at the 2007 Rockport Chamber Music Festival and picked up a 1990 recording of “Davidsbundlertanzes” on the product table. The music “took me over,” he says. “It’s very magnetic. It attracts you, it sucks you in.” And the storyline? That’s not so easy to pin down. “I don’t know where this came from,” he says. He acknowledges that the production will be something of a risk. “In my head, it works perfectly,” he says. “We’ll see how it goes on stage.”

JUST THE FACTS, MAN: North Shore Readers Theatre Collaborative will stage Newburyport playwright Joshua Faigen’s “A Very Simple Play” at 10 a.m. Feb. 13 at the home on Stephen and Deidre Faria. The show features performances by Missy Chabot and Sandy Farrier. Sherry Bonder directs. Barbara Flocco is the pianist and Sarah Chrestensen is the page-turner. The show is free, reservations are recommended. For more information, check out the Actors Studios web or call 978.462.1229.

Surprise! Faigen's "Porch/Dusk" live, online

Port playwright Joshua Faigen's "Porch/Dusk" didn't start out as a radio play. It morphed into the form after Jack Welch, the former chief editor of Baker’s Plays, got his hands on the script. Thinking it was lacking that always-difficult-to-define "something," Welch, who directed the play at the 2008 New Works Festival, coaxed a new character, a narrator, from the elaborate, almost novelistic stage directions for the 10-minute piece about a Marine bereavement specialist whose job is to deliver the worst news possible — telling families that their mothers, fathers and children made the ultimate sacrifice. This, says Faigen, turned out to be an elegant way of clarifying issues, building mental images and setting atmosphere in the play, crucial in a work like this, in which a small physical space and timeframe is flooded with emotion, unresolved anger, grief and confusion. And, while it wasn't exactly a radio play, seeing how it was playing live, in front of people, on the Firehouse stage, "Porch/Dusk" had the feel and emotional texture of an on-air drama.

The form, of course, is fairly Wobegon, if not quite moribund. No one does radio plays anymore. There's not a whole lot of people even listening to what the cool kids call terrestrial radio, aside from, on opposite sides of the political spectrum, talk radio and NPR junkies. So, last year’s production was a theatrical dead-end for the piece, right?

Well, no. It turns out that there's at least one group still doing radio plays — the Shoestring Radio Theatre in San Francisco.

Faigen, who built two typography companies (talk about old-school) before turning his attention to the stage, sent off the script earlier this year. Shoestring looked at it, liked it and accepted it for production. And the Merrimac Street playwright promptly put it out of his mind, moving on to other projects — like "A Very Simple Play," a new piece that falls somewhere between theater and recital ("I'm not sure what it is, exactly," says the playwright.) and looks at the life, loves and music of Robert Schumann, using the composer's 18-part "Davidsbundlertanze" as a roadmap.

Then, last week, Faigen thought, whatever happened with Shoestring's production, have they even scheduled it? He’e logged onto the company's homepage and, surprise, there it was: A full-fledged old-timey radio-drama production, up and ready to go, complete with sound effects and melodramatic atmospherics. It was a bit of a surprise: Nobody told him, not even an email.

How did they do?

"I thought they did a great job," says the playwright.

Coolest thing about it?

The Foley artists. "You just can't argue with the sound effects," says Faigen. And the ease of "attending" a production. "Sometimes it’s nice to be able to go to the theater without actually moving from your chair, isn’t it?" says Faigen.

And problems?

Only philosophical: "I'm not certain you can call a radio play 'radio' if it's on the internet, but .... whatever," he says — a question better left for another day.

"Porch/Dusk" is paired with Linda Ann Loschiavo's "A Worthie Woman All Hir Live," which looks at the aftermath of a break-in at a woman's house. Both are directed by Russ Hickman. But if you want to hear the show, you better move quickly because it's only up for one week.

JUST THE FACTS, MAN: You can listen to the Shoestring Radio Theatre production of Joshua Faigen's "Porch/Dusk" here. Look for the second bullet point (“Shoestring Radio Theatre”) click on “Listen Now." Faigen's "A Very Simple Play" will be staged in February at the North Shore Readers Theater Collaborative and whose comedy "The Agawam," in which eight characters in search of faith (and a decent meatloaf), will be presented at the Actors Studio in April.