Isaac Byrne, Jennifer Slack-Eaton, Jared Culverhouse
Men Eat Mars Bars While Touching Their Penis
A nytheatre voices cyber-interview
Isaac Byrne and Jared Culverhouse are co-founders of Working Man's Clothes. Isaac is artistic director and has acted professionally since the age of 13. Jared is executive director of the company and has acted in numerous productions and recently has turned his hand to directing. Jennifer is a playwright who has worked on and off as a waitress in strip clubs. This is her first play
Men Eat Mars Bars While Touching Their Penis is a somewhat provocative title. What is the play like and what can audiences expect from the experience?
Culverhouse: I think the most important thing that audiences can expect is a good time. The show is set basically in a strip club so there will be scantily clad women, lots of fun attitude, some great laughs, and some moments of real honesty. It will certainly be a great way to start a Friday or Saturday night.
Slack-Eaton: The usual reaction to the title is laughter, an emotional response. An audience can expect to at least giggle during the show although I expect the range of emotions to be larger than that. When people ask about Mars Bars, they want to know, "Is it a comedy?" Well, yes it is funny. The experiences of Ginger are funny and heartbreaking at the same time. We see her survival techniques as well as her innocence, and even though she is exposed to more darkness than the "average girl", her experiences are a kind that most women can relate to. The audience can expect to be shocked and entertained. Not in a Fear Factor way, this is not a reality TV show. The world of the play is one which shifts and changes as Ginger's story is told. The stage is set like the inside of a gentleman's club, but she takes the audience on more adventures than what exists within those walls. From Times Square to Sheepshead Bay and back to the club again an audience can expect a story that will make them blush but they will still want to talk about it. Writers note: As far as the title goes, my mother keeps asking when I will change it, and I keep telling her to do that I will have to rewrite the whole show!
Byrne: It's difficult to categorize, that's for sure. Watching the show you feel a bit self-conscious because there's these beautiful girls in these sexy outfits and there's this very theatrical presentation of this story, and the show never lets you forget either thing is happening. One minute they're dancing for you and seducing you or they're re-enacting some ridiculous story-like a lingerie sketch comedy show, then it will suddenly switch to a very intimate, emotional scene. Some scenes are very abstract, others are presentational, others feel like you're watching something so personal it's hard to watch. It's incredibly engaging, but as soon as it draws you in, it reminds you that this is all a show. A show you paid to see. It creates that mix of intimacy and distance that a strip club has.
How did the three of you come together and decide to put on this play?
Byrne: Jared told me about the show, how it was based on all these women's real life experiences and how he wanted to do a sort of cabaret/play/environmental theatre production of it. We took the proposal to the rest of the company and we all agreed it needed to be done.
Culverhouse: Well the script came to me through my girlfriend who had been working on it with the playwright, then I read and lived it and encouraged Jen to submit to our company with the development series submissions, everyone else felt that the script was quality and it deserved a shot so we did it. Since Isaac and I are the artistic and executive directors of the company we always work very closely on all Working Man's clothes projects.
Slack-Eaton: From the angle of the writer, I was happy to have Working Mans Clothes take on this project. I know that they are dedicated to producing new works. They are hard working and put an edge into what they do, I believe in the company. I see a lot of potential in them and their work. I started this piece three years ago, and it has grown, shifted and changed in so many ways. Darcie (Ginger) helped workshop the play before we went into rehearsal. She has been an incredible part of the process. I also am extremely jazzed about the male/female angle of the production. Having a male director of an extremely female driven piece creates a balance that evens Mars Bars out. With a guy behind the plate calling the shots, it does not become one of those "I hate men plays", that is not what it was written to be, but it is more of a commentary on male and female relationships and interactions.
The play is based on Jennifer's work as a cocktail waitress for 6 years. Since neither Isaac nor Jared shared, I believe, this vocation, how did you gentlemen reconcile your ideas of what this was like with Jennifer's and was this really important?
Culverhouse: Good presumption I tried to strip once but then I remembered that I was not cute and male. True we never have been strippers, although for the show we had to go to strip clubs and get in free and watch the girls, it was tough but I think I will live. All jokes aside there is a human element that is important in every script. No matter the time period, or the setting, or even the content. It is that moment when you see people nodding because the writing is just honest. I think this script is full of those gems especially in the comedy. Also everything she wrote was important but in the changeover from the written page we tried to make the script leaner and really get to the heart of it.
Byrne: Hey, I tried, you know? They told me I wasn't the "type." I think a lot of men and women alike have this sort of dirty/glamorous fantasy about what it's like to be a stripper. Reading the play, I felt like the guy that makes an off-color joke with a friend about a girl expecting them to laugh and join in and instead they say "That's my sister." Would it have been okay if it was just some random girl? Jared and I agreed that we wanted to use our own perceptions and preconceived notions about exotic dancers to create this world where you walk in and feel you can enjoy and laugh at this racy, but acceptable exploitation—and as you go deeper and deeper into the world you're not sure whether to laugh or cry. The first time I walked into a strip club I didn't know what to feel. I was giddy, embarrassed, and horrified, which was a correct response to a lot of different things that were all happening at the same time in that club. People should walk in to the show feeling like they're entering this sexy, edgy, cool world, but leave with a lot of conflicting feelings about what they just saw.
Slack-Eaton: I used the angle of a stripper in a gentleman's club, because this type of job is extremely sexualized and not an average job for a young woman, but for a young person, like me, especially a struggling young theatre person, waitressing is a very common job. As a waitress, not only inside a gentleman's club, but also in city nightclubs, or even in small restaurants in Maine, I have found that the female experience in service can at times be degrading and demeaning, as much as the role of a stripper can be. I spoke with dancers, massage girls and house moms about the differences of attitudes from outsiders on what they do for work. I think that it is really interesting that strippers have such a stigma around them. It is so often that the words 'slut', 'whore' and 'prostitute' come up in relation to that profession. On a whole a stripper is judged before she is known. When, for the most part strippers are a lot like waitresses, secretaries or any other job that a young woman may take on and I say this meaning as far as their lives are outside of work. Ginger's story could also be Jared's or Isaac's or mine, it's only a matter of circumstance. All people fall in love, get embarrassed and have secrets they are afraid to tell. That is part of the human experience. Now Ginger is telling hers.
Jennifer is playwright, Jared, director and Isaac, producer. What do each of you feel each contributes most to the finished production and is there much overlap among this?
Slack-Eaton: Theatre is about collaboration. Every part is important; we have to work together as well as on our own to create this finished product, which will be presented in the Under St. Marks theatre starting next week. With out each of us, there would be no play. For me the writer, seeing the shift and transformation of the play in rehearsals has been very exciting. I have functioned as a director and producer in other productions and I know what type of works goes in to those positions. Being playwright is the most exciting role for me to date. I am an aspiring director, and that is where my passion has been, but in the past two years that has shifted to writer as well. There is something exciting about hearing my own words, and seeing them before me, imbibed with the passion of the other collaborators involved, it is almost unreal. And at the same time it is scary and embarrassing. Right now it feels like a roller coaster that gets the rider splashed with water at the end!
Byrne: In Working Man's Clothes, we strive to give each other the freedom and support to accomplish what each us want to with particular projects. We help the directors try to tell the playwright's story in the most effective way possible, in an exciting but simple manner. Writers can spend years working on a play intermittently, the directors give up months of their life to be consumed with it, but the producing company gives both the means to make it happen. They're equally essential.
Culverhouse: At this level it is all overlap, everyone does what is required to get the job done and the best product possible. This is the type of theatre that can be really satisfying to work on, because you sit backstage opening night and hear the audience coming in and you know that they are entering a house that you built. Very Special. Couldn't do it without every company member we have and the support of all our friends.
There are other plays around that deal with the life and thoughts of exotic dancers. What makes this one different?
Culverhouse: The real life experience, the honesty, the harshness. It is well written and the kind of work that comes from someplace real and that demands a certain respect. The script will hopefully give the audience a chance to reevaluate some of their own pre conceived notions about women who work in this industry, or maybe just people in general.
Byrne: This comes from a real, personal place—the first hand observation Jennifer had from being a waitress in this highly charged environment and the stories and experiences of the dancers she worked with—BUT it's, hopefully, being presented in a very theatrical way that throughout the show both embraces and defies categorization. Just like the women the show came from.
Slack-Eaton: There are plenty of stories out there about the "exotic world" but not all of them are the same, yes a lot of the themes are universal, and the experiences could be the same for many. This play is not just about an exotic dancer, but about a girl named Ginger and her experiences of life and love in New York City. It was originally a one-woman show, and now is supported by four chorus members as well. It is honest and raw. There is a sort of energy to the production that says here it is! Like it! Love it! It is here anyway. Plus the burlesque finish makes the show very now! I think it is a piece that audiences will be excited about watching.
June 22, 2006
