For the Love of the "Art"

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Damn near everybody I know who saw it called it: “Disturbing.” It was staged in a lovely little theater on the second floor of a church. This was a late night show. (It had to be.) One of my pals played an Eastern European* pimp who dabbled in bestiality. Another one of my pals was cast as one of two hermaphroditic apes. He wore a head-to-toe ape costume. So did the other guy. Said hermaphroditic apes were, as part of the plot, forced into sex slavery. But that’s not all. Said sex enslaved hermaphroditic apes were not of this world. That’s right, they were space aliens. The patrons were drunk and rowdy. (They had to be.) More than a few of them pulled out their cell phones to film the eastern European pimp and the enslaved alien apes as they danced to George Michael’s “I Want Your Sex.” This ninety minute show ran about forty-five minutes too long. At one point, near the end, my friend in the ape suit whips out a twenty-two inch dildo† and uses it to strangle two of the villains. I had a third friend in the show, but she only played an Eastern European slut. Everybody’s accents were too thick and muddy and probably way, way off the mark. But nobody came for the dialogue. Following the performance, I asked my friend—freshly freed from his ape suit—if his wife had seen the show. She had not, and would not, he assured me. Having done what he did (for the love of the art), I told him he absolutely had to become famous now—what with the story of this gratuitously crude stage play to share with Leno and/or Letterman and/or O'Brien. I also asked him if he’d ever imagined himself doing what he’d just done onstage. (Nope.) But most depressing of all: He wasn’t even having fun—neither was my other friend (who played the slut). She told me that the writer/director wanted to add three scenes to tonight’s performance—never mind that tonight’s performance was the second to last in the run of the show. Is it possible to make schlock entertaining? Absolutely. I’ve firsthand knowledge. Even so, it’s amazing what actors are willing to do to get onstage. 
10 February 2007 

*[Why “Eastern European,” specifically? For the life of me, I couldn’t tell you. But that’s what I wrote. Perhaps I should’ve changed it to Eastern Naboonese Gungan. Maybe next time.] 

†[Not that I’d asked for the exact length.]

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