Orson's Shadow

This is a long story, so please bear with me. In December of 2009, looking for a project to follow up my staging of Hedda Gabler at The Player's Ring in Portsmouth, NH, I decided that I should try directing something from the Absurdist movement. Ianesco, Beckett, Genet - really challenging dramatists. Since most of these plays exist in various translations, I just began hunting for information about notable productions, figuring that I'd find some comment about the translation that way. It's a scattershot method, I'll admit, but that's how I found Judith Thompson's adaptation of Hedda.

As I scanned the internet, I came upon a reference to a production of Ianesco's Rhinoceros directed by Orson Welles and starring Laurence Olivier staged in 1960. I believe I uttered the words, "No shit!", ignored my main goal, and tried to dig up any information I could find on that particular production. Within minutes, I learned that there was, of all things, a play written about this show by, of all people, Austin Pendleton. Well, hell, I figured, I have got to read this!

By the time I had finished my first reading of the play, Orson's Shadow, I had laughed until I hurt, and gulped back about a pint of tears. At once hilarious and heart-clenchingly sorrowful, I felt that Pendleton had written the play specifically for me. I understood it as if I had written it myself. It was about people whom I had regarded as godlike in my youth, and it was filled with rich insight about my two greatest passions - theater and film. I was born to stage this show!

So, I pitched it to at the annual Producer's meeting at The Player's Ring, with all the commited drive that I could muster. No luck. It was rejected.

Now, ordinarily, that would be the end of it. I considered proposing it to other theater groups closer to home, but if anybody was going to stage it, it was likely to be The Ring. Luckily, Bruce Allen was at The Player's Ring the night I pitched it. He offered to bring a staged reading of it to the Kittery Library, if I was interested. Well, hell - better than nothing, right?

I assembled a cast, took one of the roles for myself, and we staged it roughly a year after I had first read the play. There was a nice crowd in attendance, and they really seemed to love it. And so did the cast! I just knew that we had something here, and I loved the show more than ever. So, I spit in the wind like a stubborn old fool and pitched the show again at the Producer's meeting in 2011. I guarantee you that I was going to shop the show around until I found it a home, but the Ring has been my theatrical home for a decade, and I wanted it to be staged there.

We go up at The Player's Ring for three weekends, beginning September 23. I have a remarkable cast and stage manager. Barbara Newton is costuming the show, and my niece is choreographing a brief scene. In the weeks to follow, I'll post some thoughts about the production and the play itself. For now, it is enough to say that the show that I was born to direct is coming to life.

Absurd!