Scott’s
work as a director has been seen in Chicago, England, Central Oregon, and Los
Angeles. With The Next Arena, Scott
directed No Exit, We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay!, The Angry Guy
in the Pink Hat and the critically acclaimed Von Bach. Also with TNA, he
adapted and performed Vladimir Nabokov’s Invitation
to a Beheading for the stage. Scott
is the Artistic Director and a founding member of The Next Arena, and is a
graduate of Northwestern University’s Performance Studies Department.
Written by Steve Peterson
How and when did you first become interested in
Performance Art?
I studied at Northwestern University in
their Performance Studies department.
Early on I adapted an excerpt from TS Eliot's The Wasteland and was instantly hooked on interpretive forms of
performance. There were so many
directions one could go with this style of performance that I became fascinated
with finding new ways to tell live stories that went beyond what I had been
taught about traditional theatre.
It’s a lot of work starting a theatre company. What was the reason or purpose of starting
The Next Arena? How did you go about
finding members interested in joining a new company with an eclectic mission?
Mostly it was friends that were actors
and writers that I knew from college that wanted to start the company. Like most young artists in LA, we were all
looking for creative work to do while we were waiting for the phone to
ring. By doing plays, we were able to
choose our own material and do the work exactly how we wanted. The level of control with theatre is great as
it's relatively inexpensive and it's a wonderful collaborative effort. We started creating our own material early on
and that became our main goal as we got better at producing shows. This way we could develop a production all
the way from top to bottom.
What was it about Kurt Vonnegut’s writing or short
stories that caught your attention?
I think it’s Vonneguts’s narrative voice that attracted me most of
all. His themes and characters are
wonderful and capture a great picture of humanity, but the way he tells the
story has always been my favorite part.
He commentates. He jumps around
in time. Sometimes he even shows up in the stories himself. I always feel like this tall, lanky fella decided
to sit down and personally tell me stories.
It's a very intimate experience to read his stories.
How did you go about developing the piece?
Once I found the 5 stories I wanted to
use in the piece, I set about putting them together in various ways over the
course of a number of drafts. I would
have readings with our company members where they would give me notes and suggestions. We also had an informal stage reading of one
of the more recent drafts where audience members weighed in on the piece. These stages of development were integral to
helping me figure out how to tell the stories in a cohesive and streamlined
way.
What was the biggest challenge bringing this project
to fruition?
There were many challenges in trying to
connect 5 different stories into one continuous piece of theatre, but the
biggest challenge for me as the adaptor was to live up to Kurt's visions and
words. I had to write some original
dialog and sequences to connect the worlds of the stories and I tried to
emulate his style as best I could. It's
a big, unique voice to live up to and I always hoped he would be happy with the
final result.
What do you want the audience 'take away’ to be?
I hope that those who haven't read much,
if any, Vonnegut will be motivated to go out and read more of his work. His messages and themes are so timeless and
wise and so beautifully human. This play
in particular highlights stories of progress, both industrial and social. The 1950s and early 60s were a time of great
change in America. I hope audience
members come away with an appreciation for the ups and downs of that time, and
how it affected humans at a very basic level.
These themes still resonate today.
VONNEGUT,
USA runs October 14 – November 20 at Atwater Village Theatre. For tickets and
information www.thenextarena.com/index.html or call 323-805-9355
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