Damage Control through the years

The upcoming reading of Damage Control has brought back a lot of memories of the life of the play, not all of them pleasant. So I thought it was worth a post. I don't remember exactly what set me off on the path of writing this play, but in its infancy it was originally a solo piece. A guy alone in a room with a phone awaiting a call that he could let his victim (a young lady) go,or otherwise. He'd get a call on the hour, which was a signal: one ring everything was ok, two rings the ransom had been paid and he could let her go . . . or three rings . . .which wasn't good. Needless to say with each ring of the phone he got a little crazier. For whatever reason (shame I wasn't blogging at the time)I decided to make it two characters, and then it morphed to three when I added the victim bound to a chair. The two main characters are an inexperienced kidnapper working off a gambling debt, and a more seasoned enforcer who is there to see things through to the end and to clean up any messes that might ensue, or as he says, he is damage control.

The play came to life pretty quickly, as I remember it. Aside from my usual theater influences, this one owes a lot to good ole Sam Peckinpah, whose films, while flawed, held nothing back. (The director of this reading likened it to Tarantino, which I can see as well).

Damage Control was my second full length play, coming on the heels of Last Request.

At any rate, I entered into competitions and eventually sent it to Jerry Davis at Burning Coal Theater in Raleigh, NC. He and I had met while working on The Trip to Bountiful with Ellen Burstyn.

Jerry offered to have a staged reading and flew me down there for the weekend. It was a wonderful experience, complete with interview for the local paper and I got a lot out of it. Most notably I saw the impact that the play could have on an audience.

After that a pause in the action for this one . . . I was writing other plays and sending this one out I suppose, at any rate the next action came in 2002, with a reading as part of the TRU Voices series, this time in NYC. The director was Jules Ochoa, and Jules found the actors. The guy who played the inexperienced kidnapper was amazing. Great energy. A real high tension wire. The young lady who played the girl was funny because she, though she had no lines to speak of, was so into it . . . ah actors!

This reading was in a 99 seat theater that was packed and round two for this play showed yet again the kind of reaction you could achieve . . . everybody was glued to their seats.

Very nice feedback as well.

Then things went to a place . . . well lets just say it's a great example of what working with friends can cost you. The producer of the TRU reading was a very good friend of mine. He wanted to produce the play god-bless-him and we had another reading for the artistic director at the Rattlestick Theater (with the same cast and director as TRU) . . . then things went off the rails . . . my friend started listening to a guy who was involved in film, and what a wonderful film this would make (it would, I had even written a screenplay already and entered into the Project Greenlight competition). To make a long story short: the film guy was a tad duplicitous, my friend and I ended up with a very damaged relationship, and the whole thing culminated in a rare explosion on my part over what the film guy wanted to do with my play.

Not a happy story, but as my friend Angelo Parra said not long after this debacle: better the script is gathering dust on a shelf than you have a film you're not embarrassed by.

Since then I have entered the piece from time to time in various competitions, but not much play until the Monsterpiece Theater Collective opted to present it. So away we go. It'll be interesting to see what they do with it. I've yet to meet anyone involved and am not able to get to rehearsals, so this will be the least engaged I've been with one of my readings, and we'll just see what happens.

The director of this reading, Kate Tenetko, speaks highly of it. It'll be interesting to see how having a woman directing will influence the piece. The inexperienced kidnapper is a bit of a cad, with a very unhealthy view of women. Should make for an interesting perspective.

The least that could happen is that a suspenseful good time will be had by all!

I'm attaching the photo I took for the flyer for the reading. I think it is very evocative. I took it in the basement on a sunny day, the noonday sun blasting through the window above the chair. Nice image and perfect for the piece.