Blogs Rabble Rouser RABBLE ROUSER: At Play With PTA | RABBLE ROUSER: At Play With PTA |
|
|
|
| Written by Kent Victor Schuelke | |
| Wednesday, 06 August 2008 | |
|
PHOTO: Paul Thomas Anderson and his partner, actor Maya Rudolph, at the 2008 Academy Awards
Paul Thomas Anderson co-wrote and directed a stage performance by actors Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen that Tuesday opened a two-night engagement at the Largo at the Cornet theater in Los Angeles, and the sold-out audience enthusiastically embraced the show which was a clever, touching, humorous and well-acted meditation on communication between man and woman. The novelty of one of America's finest film directors helming a stage play raised expectations for the show, but Saturday Night Live veterans Rudolph and Armisen are such talented actors that they could read out loud train time tables and do it in such a way as to draw a crowd. Not surprisingly, talented show biz folks turned out to support Rudolph, Armisen and Anderson - actors Paul Dano, Jack Black, Sarah Silverman, Ricky Jay and director Clark Gregg (Choke) - were in attendance. The show resembled a staged reading, as Rudolph and Armisen spent most of the show sitting on stools center-stage and glancing at scripts that sat in front of them on music stands. Don't read this as any slight or theatrical laziness, as the one-hour show was heavy with dialogue and the actors appeared to be mostly off book, and on a few occasions left the stools and made use of more of the stage. The show consisted of about a dozen vignettes, that each lasted about two to five minutes. Two vignettes involved the same characters - otherwise each vignette required Rudolph and Armisen to transform into a different persona. The vignettes each focused on a man and a woman bantering, as men and women do and have done for millenniums, with the intention, albeit sometimes veiled beneath the superficial chit-chat that dominates everyday life, of trying to understand one another. In one vignette, Rudolph played a woman who leads Armisen's character through a Q&A personality test (think Scientology) and Armisen's fellow is more interested in scoring with the woman than scoring high on the test. In another vignette, Armisen's character attempts to teach Rudolph's character how to play the Theremin. Yes, the conversations in the untitled play visit the absurd. And that's the perfect territory for the writer/director of Punch-Drunk Love. The writing in the show is always witty and smart, a few times hilarious. Most notable are moments in which the writing and performances offer insight into how man and woman relate to one another. Rudolph and Armisen were terrific. Both actors developed characters that differed greatly from vignette to vignette. Their uncanny use of accents and dialects generated big laughs. Even though the vignettes were each short in length, Rudolph and Armisen communicated rich and nuanced characters, instead of superficial characterizations. Share It!                |
The Rabble Rouser
Kent Victor Schuelke is The Rabble Rouser. He is an actor and filmmaker, and the editor of www.independentfilmsdirect.com. He has acted in several independent films and on-stage in Los Angeles, and he plans to direct from his own script (but not act in) a digital feature in 2008. He has a long history in film and television production (check him out on IMDb), and also worked in the video game biz. He got his start in journalism as a college freshman in 1981. In 1986, he interviewed movie legend Cary Grant for his little college paper and when the actor died a couple months later Schuelke sold his Grant talk to Andy Warhol's Interview magazine. He is a product of Hollywood's last Golden Era (1967-1980). As a child, Schuelke remembers seeing Bonnie and Clyde on the big screen at about age six. Schuelke watched American Graffiti about 30 times on the big screen at the little single screen movie house in the tiny Iowa farming village where he was reared. He has been almost singularly obsessed by movies since age four. His favorite films are the ultra realistic ones — Dog Day Afternoon is among his favorites and the purest description of the type of filmmaking he holds in highest regard. Schuelke lives in Los Angeles, and loves it. His current professional life is focused on acting, making films and writing about movies, and he is so happy with his life path that he might even consider dropping his therapist. But the Rouser will not go off his medication — his co-workers at IFD will see to that, for everybody's sakes. 
