404 Strand summons faustUS to Pittsburgh
A group of 30 people is led through a chain-link gate into a back alley in East Liberty at exactly 8 p.m. Thursday. They ascend a metal staircase into a darkened room where a heavy curtain is pulled shut to serve as one wall. The members of the group are seated in chairs surrounding an open wooden box, eight feet high, their toes nearly touching the box. A scarlet curtain visible through large gaps around the length of the box is pulled away one section at a time to reveal a barefoot man, dressed in black, sitting in a chair. The group appears nervous as they sit in silence for nearly a minute. Then the man begins to speak.
“Ah, Faustus. Now hast thou but one bare hour to live.”
So begins faustUS, the first production by 404 Strand at the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater. 404 Strand is a Pittsburgh-based theater company that works with actors as far-flung as Los Angeles and Paris.
John Jay, of Toronto, is one member of the company and is the man who opens faustUS by speaking the words penned by Christopher Marlowe in 1604 for the play's titular protagonist.
Marlowe's play, “The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus,” follows the scholar John Faustus, who entreats a demon to serve him for 24 years in exchange for possession of his soul. The play, based on a German folk legend, serves as the script for 404 Strand's faustUS, though the latter version covers only those portions of the play directly dealing with Faustus and Mephistopheles, the demon who is charged as Faustus' servant.
Jay, as Faustus, is mournful, straining as he speaks. Jay gains momentum as his monologue progresses, eventually rising from his chair and bounding around the box as he shrieks in a mixture of English and Latin. Eventually, Mephistopheles appears, portrayed by Kristin Slaysman, of Los Angeles. As Slaysman enters the box, another member of 404 Strand walks from a chair against the wall to sit at the end of one row of audience members, donning a huge, furry mask as he does so.
The dialogue between Faustus and Mephistopheles is slow and deliberate, filled with odd pauses. It sounds unnatural; the audience remains conscious that they are watching actors. The show's director, Dan Jemmett, says that the dialogue is structured to produce just that effect.
“I wanted to get out of the classical notion of the text, to shake the actors out of easy ways of acting. It wouldn't do to use every day speech to summon a demon.”
Off-kilter dialogue is not the only trick used to jolt viewers, and actors, out of the normal theater experience. In the middle of the conversation between Faustus and Mephistopheles, the actors, with little warning, switch roles. Slaysman, now as Faustus, sits down as Jay leaves the box. As Slaysman speaks, she turns to stare into the eyes of audience members, some of whom grow visibly uncomfortable at having the play spill over into their seats.
“By having actors switch roles and address the audience, it reinforces the everyman quality of the play,” said Jemmett before the play's final show Saturday. “I like dabbling with this notion that, even though theater is dramatic, performers are first and foremost like the audience, they're human beings.”
When Mephistopheles makes his next appearance, he is portrayed by London native Rick Kemp. Where Slaysman's Mephistopheles was glaring and malicious, Kemp's is regal and intimidating.
Kemp, a professional actor for 30 years, says he is drawn to experimental projects, but that this production posed unique challenges.
“You have to find a way of being emotionally true while using archaic language,” Kemp said.
Another challenge posed by faustUS was the staging. Kemp said that performing the play so close to the audience made every action more significant.
“There is nothing to hide behind when the audience is on stage with you,” he said.
The notion of being honest with the audience goes beyond the physical. Both Kemp and Jemmett spoke adamantly against what they called the post-modern obsession with irony in art.
“The problem with irony is that it lets you off the hook,” Jemmett said. “If you want to say something but don't have the courage, you play it as a joke so you don't have to take responsibility for it.”
Audience members looking at each other through the box during the show saw could see what Kemp meant when he said that “sincerity provokes embarrassment, and theater is sincere.”
Though such sincerity may be off-putting for some, the members of 404 Strand said that they strive to make their shows accessible.
“This may sound at odds with the idea of experimentation, but I think that you can be innovative and clear simultaneously,” Kemp said.
Kemp stressed that, while a play should be honest and clear, it should not attempt to tell the audience what to think. Both he and Jemmett want the audience to be free to embrace a “multiplicity of meanings.”
For Jemmett, this is yet another way to draw the audience into a show, something that he finds lacking from contemporary theater.
“Usually you go to the theater and if you can stay awake you're just given this voyeuristic experience. You might as well be in a cinema,” Jemmett said. “Neither the audience nor the performers have a notion of shared experience.”
Andrew Hachey, of Toronto, said that he tried to bring members into the play through improv, only to find that sometimes the audience is not willing to participate. At several points in the play, the actors take swigs from a bottle of alcohol sitting on stage.
“The first night I poured a shot and set it in front of this woman in the first row. She just kind of shook her head. I left it there for a while and went I finally went to take it away, the guy she was sitting with, her husband or boyfriend, grabs it and does one of these," Hachey said, flicking his wrist to mime the man aggressively drinking the shot.
Hachey tried the same trick, slightly modified a few nights later.
“Well, this time, I handed the bottle to a girl sitting in the back row. I thought it would work better, but as soon as I did it, I realized that I just gave a bottle of booze to a girl who was probably 19. Luckily, she handed it back without drinking any of it.”
Still, the members of 404 Strand said that most audience members enjoy seeing something outside of their normal expectations of theater.
“People say the most interesting things after the show,” Jemmett said. “One woman came up to me and said how interesting it was that when John [Jay] ate the cake during the seven deadly sins scene, all that was left at the end was a bunch of crumbs, like what's left of his life.”
Jemmett is referring to an orgiastic scene near the end of the play, where Jay runs through a visceral representation of the seven deadly sins, culminating with him covered in spray tan, lying in a pile of cake crumbs and sniffing a pair of panty hose while music by the punk band Suicide blares in the background.
The members of 404 Strand have ample time to talk to audience members at a reception held after each show.
Here Molly Simpson, of Philadelphia, is approached by an audience member who tells her that she made the frightening Mephistopheles of the show, calling her portrayal “predatory.” Simpson, who first appears on stage as a sinister Mephistopheles with a merciless stare, is the youngest member of 404 Strand, at 23, and the only member who has not worked with the group previously. Simpson was introduced to the group by Kemp, who teaches theater at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where Simpson attended school.
“When I told Rick [Kemp] that I was finishing school and going to Philadelphia he said, 'Good, now I can ask you to come work with me.'”
Like the other members of 404 Strand, Simpson will return home when faustUS has finished its one-week run at the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater, and like the other members, she hopes to work with the group again soon.
“It's just refreshing to work on things like this. It's like taking a break from doing work that you have to do in order to do work that you want to do.”
FaustUS may make its return to Pittsburgh in the spring, according to Jemmett. He said he considers the current performance merely one phase of an ongoing project.
“We started in a shop next to the theater and performed for a very small audience. In fact, I even toyed with the idea of calling it 'Shopfront Faustus.'”
But in some sense, Jemmett has spent much longer working on the play. He said that the first time he was involved with “Faustus” was when he appeared in a production above a pub in Camden Town, London when he was 18.
“I'm quite keen on taking the show elsewhere,” Jemmett said. “And there is a chance that we'll be back to Pittsburgh in spring. Lots can happen in the gaps between shows.”
“Ah, Faustus. Now hast thou but one bare hour to live.”
So begins faustUS, the first production by 404 Strand at the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater. 404 Strand is a Pittsburgh-based theater company that works with actors as far-flung as Los Angeles and Paris.
John Jay, of Toronto, is one member of the company and is the man who opens faustUS by speaking the words penned by Christopher Marlowe in 1604 for the play's titular protagonist.
Marlowe's play, “The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus,” follows the scholar John Faustus, who entreats a demon to serve him for 24 years in exchange for possession of his soul. The play, based on a German folk legend, serves as the script for 404 Strand's faustUS, though the latter version covers only those portions of the play directly dealing with Faustus and Mephistopheles, the demon who is charged as Faustus' servant.
Jay, as Faustus, is mournful, straining as he speaks. Jay gains momentum as his monologue progresses, eventually rising from his chair and bounding around the box as he shrieks in a mixture of English and Latin. Eventually, Mephistopheles appears, portrayed by Kristin Slaysman, of Los Angeles. As Slaysman enters the box, another member of 404 Strand walks from a chair against the wall to sit at the end of one row of audience members, donning a huge, furry mask as he does so.
The dialogue between Faustus and Mephistopheles is slow and deliberate, filled with odd pauses. It sounds unnatural; the audience remains conscious that they are watching actors. The show's director, Dan Jemmett, says that the dialogue is structured to produce just that effect.
“I wanted to get out of the classical notion of the text, to shake the actors out of easy ways of acting. It wouldn't do to use every day speech to summon a demon.”
Off-kilter dialogue is not the only trick used to jolt viewers, and actors, out of the normal theater experience. In the middle of the conversation between Faustus and Mephistopheles, the actors, with little warning, switch roles. Slaysman, now as Faustus, sits down as Jay leaves the box. As Slaysman speaks, she turns to stare into the eyes of audience members, some of whom grow visibly uncomfortable at having the play spill over into their seats.
“By having actors switch roles and address the audience, it reinforces the everyman quality of the play,” said Jemmett before the play's final show Saturday. “I like dabbling with this notion that, even though theater is dramatic, performers are first and foremost like the audience, they're human beings.”
When Mephistopheles makes his next appearance, he is portrayed by London native Rick Kemp. Where Slaysman's Mephistopheles was glaring and malicious, Kemp's is regal and intimidating.
Kemp, a professional actor for 30 years, says he is drawn to experimental projects, but that this production posed unique challenges.
“You have to find a way of being emotionally true while using archaic language,” Kemp said.
Another challenge posed by faustUS was the staging. Kemp said that performing the play so close to the audience made every action more significant.
“There is nothing to hide behind when the audience is on stage with you,” he said.
The notion of being honest with the audience goes beyond the physical. Both Kemp and Jemmett spoke adamantly against what they called the post-modern obsession with irony in art.
“The problem with irony is that it lets you off the hook,” Jemmett said. “If you want to say something but don't have the courage, you play it as a joke so you don't have to take responsibility for it.”
Audience members looking at each other through the box during the show saw could see what Kemp meant when he said that “sincerity provokes embarrassment, and theater is sincere.”
Though such sincerity may be off-putting for some, the members of 404 Strand said that they strive to make their shows accessible.
“This may sound at odds with the idea of experimentation, but I think that you can be innovative and clear simultaneously,” Kemp said.
Kemp stressed that, while a play should be honest and clear, it should not attempt to tell the audience what to think. Both he and Jemmett want the audience to be free to embrace a “multiplicity of meanings.”
For Jemmett, this is yet another way to draw the audience into a show, something that he finds lacking from contemporary theater.
“Usually you go to the theater and if you can stay awake you're just given this voyeuristic experience. You might as well be in a cinema,” Jemmett said. “Neither the audience nor the performers have a notion of shared experience.”
Andrew Hachey, of Toronto, said that he tried to bring members into the play through improv, only to find that sometimes the audience is not willing to participate. At several points in the play, the actors take swigs from a bottle of alcohol sitting on stage.
“The first night I poured a shot and set it in front of this woman in the first row. She just kind of shook her head. I left it there for a while and went I finally went to take it away, the guy she was sitting with, her husband or boyfriend, grabs it and does one of these," Hachey said, flicking his wrist to mime the man aggressively drinking the shot.
Hachey tried the same trick, slightly modified a few nights later.
“Well, this time, I handed the bottle to a girl sitting in the back row. I thought it would work better, but as soon as I did it, I realized that I just gave a bottle of booze to a girl who was probably 19. Luckily, she handed it back without drinking any of it.”
Still, the members of 404 Strand said that most audience members enjoy seeing something outside of their normal expectations of theater.
“People say the most interesting things after the show,” Jemmett said. “One woman came up to me and said how interesting it was that when John [Jay] ate the cake during the seven deadly sins scene, all that was left at the end was a bunch of crumbs, like what's left of his life.”
Jemmett is referring to an orgiastic scene near the end of the play, where Jay runs through a visceral representation of the seven deadly sins, culminating with him covered in spray tan, lying in a pile of cake crumbs and sniffing a pair of panty hose while music by the punk band Suicide blares in the background.
The members of 404 Strand have ample time to talk to audience members at a reception held after each show.
Here Molly Simpson, of Philadelphia, is approached by an audience member who tells her that she made the frightening Mephistopheles of the show, calling her portrayal “predatory.” Simpson, who first appears on stage as a sinister Mephistopheles with a merciless stare, is the youngest member of 404 Strand, at 23, and the only member who has not worked with the group previously. Simpson was introduced to the group by Kemp, who teaches theater at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where Simpson attended school.
“When I told Rick [Kemp] that I was finishing school and going to Philadelphia he said, 'Good, now I can ask you to come work with me.'”
Like the other members of 404 Strand, Simpson will return home when faustUS has finished its one-week run at the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater, and like the other members, she hopes to work with the group again soon.
“It's just refreshing to work on things like this. It's like taking a break from doing work that you have to do in order to do work that you want to do.”
FaustUS may make its return to Pittsburgh in the spring, according to Jemmett. He said he considers the current performance merely one phase of an ongoing project.
“We started in a shop next to the theater and performed for a very small audience. In fact, I even toyed with the idea of calling it 'Shopfront Faustus.'”
But in some sense, Jemmett has spent much longer working on the play. He said that the first time he was involved with “Faustus” was when he appeared in a production above a pub in Camden Town, London when he was 18.
“I'm quite keen on taking the show elsewhere,” Jemmett said. “And there is a chance that we'll be back to Pittsburgh in spring. Lots can happen in the gaps between shows.”
