Written
by Steve Peterson
When
did you discover that you had an ability and/or desire to write plays?
I was always writing in fits and starts as a kid, trying
to conjure the great American space epic at age ten; the usual
reach-exceeding-grasp business of the young. My first successfully completed
(and subsequently self-mounted) full-length piece was 2005, and the creative
momentum built from there. The immediacy and inherent challenges of the stage
are very unique, and it’s a form I will always return to.
The
Porters of Hellsgate production of your comedy Breaking Bard, which you also
acted in, won awards and was a darling of the 2015 Hollywood Fringe Festival. Your new play, The Armadillo Necktie, is
also billed as a comedy, albeit it a jet black comedy – with the subject matter
and situations taking on a very serious tone with the play set against the
back-drop of war and a sense of loss, both past and present. How did you go about weaving those elements
into a comedy?
As a viewer, it’s always much easier to me if “important”
topics are wrapped in something other than their own weight. This can be
accomplished in any genre (Wes Craven, for example, called THE LAST HOUSE ON
THE LEFT his meditation on Vietnam), but, given the chance, I tend to lean a
bit toward the humor - especially the dark variety - present in this largely
absurd world surrounding us. The hope is that this play will make people laugh (and
gasp and weep and think) but at the very least, I can always fall back on the
original definition of “comedy”: a piece written in the language of the people,
boasting a happy ending. Is the conclusion of ARMADILLO a happy one? I’ll let
you decide.
How
did you come up with the idea for The Armadillo Necktie? What drove you to write about this particular
subject?
It was year five or six of the Iraq war and everyone had
stopped talking about it. That blew my mind. Here we were, a country with
soldiers overseas attempting to accomplish an entirely ill-defined goal, and no
one back at home seemed particularly concerned or even interested anymore. So
what if it was personal? What if, instead of the country, it was one man? The
wheels began to turn.
What
is the meaning behind the title?
There’s the literal meaning (which I’ll leave you to
discover), but also the notion that exacting revenge upon others takes a very
literal toll. It always removes something; something is always lost. That
something is, more often than not, very messy. We’ve glamorized the notion of
revenge, made it sanitary, black and white. An armadillo necktie is anything
but.
Tell
us a bit about the play.
It’s dark, it’s funny, it’s sad, and it’s more than a
little weird. I don’t like to talk influences, but the hope is that if you’re a
fan of Samuel Beckett, or Nicky Silver, or John Patrick Shanley, or Martin
McDonagh, or Tracy Letts, you’ll find something to chew on during those two
hours.
What
would you like the audience take away to be?
Think
more. We’re so often caught up in our belief systems, our stasis, our
day-to-day, we often lose track of whether we’re still on the right path, or
indeed, on any path at all. The character of Madeline says at one point,
“Beliefs supersede facts,” and I think she nailed it.
What
are you up to next, writing and/or acting?
My philosophical feature thriller THE BINDING hits the
shelves August 2nd, 2016. It’s a modern riff on the tale of Abraham
and Isaac, with a liberal dose of thrills and chills and some great
performances. You can follow me on Twitter @MrGusK for additional details and
information. Thanks!
Gus
Krieger’s The Armadillo Necktie runs June 17 through July 31, Friday &
Saturday at 8:00 pm and Sundays at 2:00 pm, at the Lonny Chapman Theatre in
North Hollywood. For tickets and
information please visit www.thegrouprep.com or call 818-763-5990.
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