Out of the Mold and Into the Event pg. 3
by Heather Donahoe LaForge
Like the characters, the play slowly reveals itself as being more than just a wacky comedy about violence in the media. Yockey says of the audience’s experience watching the play: You sit down and watch the show and as it begins to move forward; the initial feel is that the play is about the mainstreaming of violence as entertainment. And that commentary is intentionally very didactic. Because the real dig of the show is that there are all of these other things clawing beneath the surface that the play speaks to and violence is just the vehicle. Questions of authority, social responsibility, and the ability of humanity to destroy loving relationships for selfish gain are the ideas that claw their way to the surface of the production. This last idea, the complexity of relationships, is presented through the medium of violence in the relationship between the anime school girl characters. Yumi and Akane are particularly striking because of their intense junior high-like ability to be the best of friends one moment and turn on each other the next. Indeed violence ends the relationship when Yumi chokes Akane over their mutual crush on Rockstar. Just after this the character Yumi says to her dead friend while, “Wiping the blood and hair from her face, You’re my best friend” (40). Although this moment, like others in the play, is extreme in its outcome and somewhat unrealistic, it speaks to a deeper, darker truth about people’s ability to turn on one another without visualizing the cost of that betrayal. It is in these moments that CARTOON shines. It is here that the cartoon world, the extreme violence, and crazed emotions best serve the underlying ideas represented in the play.
The Creation
CARTOON began as an idea in the mind of playwright Yockey, and when he pitched it at a company meeting it was immediately accepted by the artistic directors. Yockey had worked with Out of Hand before as playwright for HELP!, but the writing process for that play had been a much different experience. HELP! was, as Yockey articulates, “an entirely collaborative” process, one that included the four actors in the writing process; “I only wrote it in that I sat down and put it all together. It was truly written by all five of us.” In contrast, CARTOON was a more playwright driven production. Fristoe, the director of CARTOON, says of this first pitch meeting: When Steve came in with the pitch for CARTOON he had a really structured outline, but he also had these incredible images. Not only do I think he’s a really great playwright, and a fascinating wordsmith, but he thinks in really powerful images. Writing CARTOON for Out of Hand gave Steve the opportunity to write a more imagistic script, packed with visual metaphor, which is difficult to do in a theatre climate that wants plays for readings, bare-bones productions, and workshops. At the original pitch, Fristoe told Yockey which actors he thought would be interested and available for the project, and Yockey began writing with those actors in mind for specific parts.
The Out of Hand rehearsal process is unique in that it begins with a signature Boot Camp physical theater workshop. Boot Camp was a full weekend at the start of the rehearsal process; Yockey came armed with information about each character and was ready to learn from the actors. He was to add the actors’ ideas and personalities into the characters he had dreamed up. Each actor was given a brief description and a sample character monologue (except for the Japanese school girls who function as one character in the play and were given a scene). Then I went away and wrote the first draft of the play after seeing what the actors had brought to these roles. The script was absolutely informed by the company and the actors. (Yockey) The rehearsal process was focused on the physical style that Out of Hand has become known for, and it is through this physicality that various aspects of character and play are revealed. Fristoe writes on a blog he kept during the rehearsal process: For all of Out of Hand's big, physical style, we are aiming to truly move the audience, not just impress them. CARTOON really works on the quick juxtaposition of tenderness to violence, high energy to silence, belly laugh to gut wrenching tears. The physical style that Friscoe discusses is evident throughout the play. Whether it is Winston Puppet dangling precariously from his strings, or the sea of characters leaping into the air as Esther pounds the floor with the giant hammer, one gets the sense that these actors are not only in superb physical condition, but that the company has worked on these moments so that physical energy is not wasted, but instead focused on enhancing the story. As the rehearsal process continued, it informed the production in various ways. Originally the characters’ names were archetypal, but at the suggestion of the actors and director character names were added. A more dramatic, later addition to the script was the opening theme song which haunts the character Trouble throughout the play. Fristoe says of the change and how it helped shape the production: The introduction song was not in the first, or fifth, or tenth draft. It instantly set the mood of a Saturday morning cartoon, with the crazy energy or a theme song. This is the Out of Hand company experience. We woo you in with exciting, harmless fun; with high energy and physical feats. Then we turn the world upside down when you are no longer on guard. The theme song is one of the moments in the play that enhances the Event of CARTOON. The theme song serves to cast the audience in their role in this Event; the song entices the audience to act as children on a Saturday morning, wooed by the excitement of the song to perform their role in this production.