Palmer’s vision was a problem for Viglione as well. “It was melancholy, dour, very dense,” he says, sitting with Palmer at Zero Arrow the next day. (Stern and McKittrick will join the interview later.) “Amanda sounds doubtful, saying this is going to be a crock of shit. Don’t buy it.”
“Brian was never emotionally invested in the outcome,” Palmer retorts.
“I don’t think that’s a fair thing to say. I’m slightly offended,” replies Viglione. “It’s hard having no script and dueling for creative control and direction when there was no one singular vision. It’s ‘Let’s workshop some material and see if we get a story out of it.’ We’re working with amazing, talented people, and part of the collaborative process is to allow people to do their job. I was skeptical of Marcus at first, but I don’t know a fucking thing about directing. Now I see him in action and I say, ‘Ah, he really knows what he’s doing.’ ”
He adds, “How does it feel to present a not-feel-good production? Well, it feels not good. When the piece had a really dark tone to it, I didn’t think it was remotely what I was looking for. . . . The amount of dark material, it was a very heavy feeling to carry out through the production. This will be easier on the cast and easier on the audience.”
“And ‘easy’ is the key word,” Palmer says. “It’s a risk-free show.”
“Now you’re shit-talking your own fucking play after months of hard work,” Viglione responds. “It bums me out. Do you know what I’m saying? Because you have an emotional attachment as a writer, you have a skewed point of view.” (Both assure me that exchanges like this in no way endanger the band. It’s just how they work.)
Stern joins the conversation. “I tend to look at the work we’re doing now, and I would define it as a compilation of everybody’s work over the last 11 months. I don’t feel it’s an individual’s vision. I don’t feel like it’s my vision; I feel like it’s our collective vision, of the cast, all of us — Brian, Ryan [set designer/writer] Christine [Jones]. It’s been about trying to let the material tell us what in this moment makes the most viable, theatrical event.”
“At the heart of our struggle,” says McKittrick, is the idea of where the club is set. “It’s been in flux. Is it a club where people go to cut onions and cry, a place where people come to tell personal stories? Now we’re working with the idea that it’s a club that is maybe in the imagination of this older character [played by Jeremy Geidt]. He comes into this space and he doesn’t know exactly where he is and all these things unfold in a Fellini-esque way in front of him.”
Stern, who has directed a number of plays for the ART (including Woyzeck and Nocturne), says, “I think there is a sense of uplift. It’s a mysterious club with a benevolent heart. It’s there to mystify and confuse and ultimately help, but in a subtle way. . . . It’s both a dark and a light journey.”
