Just The FAQs: Slop-Culture

(NOTE: Many years ago I was a playwright. Improbably a few of my short plays ended up getting published. This is the third and final installment of a three-part series of posts intended to provide a bit of background and answer some potential questions you may have regarding these plays should you be from one of the handful of the college, high school or community theater troupes from across the country who stage these plays each year.)

(To those who are reading these posts without having read the plays, my apologies. These posts will make little sense. Please feel free to ignore them with my compliments.)

SLOP-CULTURE


What Was The Inspiration?

Here's the short and slightly less boring version of where this play came from:

In 1999 the Actors Theater of Louisville held their annual 10-minute play contest, and that year they had decided they wanted to stage a handful of 10-minute pieces organized around a central theme at the festival. That theme was "Life Under 30." They wanted plays by writers, directors and actors all under 30 years old. And while they'd liked the play I'd originally submitted for the contest, (Guys), they called and asked if I had any other 10-minute pieces that might fit their theme a little more snugly.

"Why of course I do," I told them enthusiastically. "Why, I've got the perfect play for that! I shall send it to you forthwith!"

And then I hung up the phone and started writing it.

Seriously? Same Day?

I know. It sounds glib, but it's 100% true.

It was written and in the mail the same day. (We sent things through the mail back then. "Mail" was a kind of text message that people printed out and hand delivered to each other.) Start to finish, including rewrites, probably three hours of work all in. And you can kind of tell, if I'm being honest.

Fortunately, I had already been noodling over the idea of my own cultural identity and what it meant to be part of Generation X. (Yes, I'm aware that I am, in fact, old.) I'd been considering maybe doing something full-length, but hadn't zeroed in on any kind of story, structure or characters yet. The call was exactly the kind of kick in the pants I needed to pull the trigger.

So, What's It About?

What had been nagging at me, what I was itching to explore, was the fact that I didn't really have much of a cultural identity of my own to speak of. At least not how I understood the term. I didn't have any strong family or ethnic traditions. When it came to music or art or religion or food or ... well, anything really ... there just wasn't much there that tied me to any "tribe."

So a lot of the history and point of view I give Danielle came straight out of me. I, too, was half Italian, but had no connection to Italy beyond knowing how to microwave a bowl of Beefaroni. I was raised on pop culture. Nothing but bad TV and fast food.

At first this was a pretty depressing thought, but as I worked through the play I realized that everybody has a cultural identity. You just might have to widen your gaze enough to actually recognize all of the components of it. It's not just about ethnicity or religion or family. It's all the specific influences -- the books, movies, TV, pop music, whatever -- that make you specifically and particularly you.

And nobody gets to pick theirs. That alchemy is quite beyond our control. The forces and influences that make us who we are just kind of happen.

And that, it seemed to me, was the real choice. Once you recognize the forces that make you who you are ... do you embrace them?

It's a little corny, but that was kind of a big personal realization for me.

A couple hours later I had a cultural identity and the play was in the mail.

What Does The Title Mean?

It's a play on "pop culture," of course. When you have an entire generation raised on bad TV, that bubbling stew of references and touchstones can get pretty muddled and, well, sloppy.

Today, in the age of social media and the Internet, none of this seems like an especially big deal, since we are now all composed of roiling pastiches of memes, dog videos and snapshots of celebrities' food. But back then things weren't nearly as decentralized and fragmented. Deciphering your own identity and finding your tribe was a lot harder.

The Characters, What Are Their Deals?

As I said earlier, much of the existential crisis that Danielle is going through was straight from my own point of view at the time. There was a longing there, a feeling that I was lost. I was missing this deep connection to something larger. I didn't know what it was, but I knew I didn't have it. It wasn't until I eventually I realized that I was already part of something that I felt the pieces click together. I just needed to embrace it. Yes, Danielle is a product of pop culture, and once she accepts that, her place in the world starts to make sense to her.

Cindy is essentially Danielle on the other side of that realization. She's already made peace with that question and is stronger for it. She's got her shit together.

As for Brian and Dylan ... every group of friends has the equivalent of those guys. The lovable dumbasses who seem to float through through life without getting any of it on their shoes. These guys never had the crisis that Danielle having because they've always accepted who they are and where they fit since day one. They don't just accept their slop culture roots, they revel in them.

Hang On, Isn't All This Blather WAY Too Ponderous And Navel-Gazy For What Is Essentially A Fluffy Little Sit-Com?

Yes. Yes, it is.


Do You Have Any Performance Advice?

Okay, nobody ever asks me this, but I'm going to answer it anyway.

Over lo these many years I have found that the "louder, faster, wackier" school of comedy tends not to work at all with my material. I find if you underplay the material, it tends to work better. Mugging and shouting and falling down won't add energy to your show, it just adds frenzy, which isn't the same thing and isn't funny. (To me, anyway.) When in doubt, deadpan. I have found that just tightening up the dialogue pacing and then playing the pauses is a much surer map to laughs.

Just my two cents.

(FYI: Just as a reminder, if you're interested in performing any of these plays, please check the Samuel French/Concord Theatricals website. I've helpfully linked to them in most of the places the play titles appear on this blog. Otherwise, start here:
https://www.concordtheatricals.com/a/5552/robb-badlam)



Till next we meet ...