ViaStage Chicago
ViaStage Chicago
TAKE ME (thru June 22 at Strawdog Theatre) with director Anderson Lawfer
Visit ViaStage.com for showtimes... Inspired by true events, TAKE ME is the story of Shelly, a woman trapped by the trauma of a husband in a coma and the chaos that followed. Looking for solace, she finds herself pulled in to the realm of wild alien conspiracy theories. Voices from the sky tell her the answer to all her problems is to build an alien themed amusement park in Roswell, New Mexico.
ViaStage interviews artists producing the most thought-provoking work on stage. Today we're on the phone with Andy Lawfer who directed the play TAKE ME, which is performing at Strawdog Theatre in Chicago through June 22nd. Inspired by true events, TAKE ME is the story of Shelly, a woman trapped by the trauma of a husband in a coma and the chaos that followed. Looking for solace, she finds herself pulled into the realm of wild alien conspiracy theories. Voices from the sky tell her the answer to all her problems is to build an alien themed Amusement Park in Roswell, New Mexico. What else can we expect from the play TAKE ME? Let's ask director Andy Lawfer. Tell me a little bit about TAKE ME over at Strawdog Theatre. I understand that it's inspired by true events. Is that right?
Lawfer:Yeah yeah. It is right, it is right. So, I did a play with Mark Barino and John Langford, the guys who wrote TAKE ME about 10 years ago for The House Theater called All the Fame of Lofty Deeds, it was kinda like punk country musical thing about this old cowboy country singer kind of guy. And I don't know, we just kinda hit it off. And so Mark came to me about three years ago when I was one of the artistic directors of Strawdog with this idea for a play about a friend of a friend of his who, um, was abducted by aliens and the aliens told him to build an alien themed amusement park in Roswell, New Mexico. So he went to Roswell and then he got, he went to the city council, he got them to give him hundreds of thousands of dollars for plans to build this amusement park. And, uh, then the, the market collapsed in 2007, 2008. And they ended up taking all their money away. And, uh, so the dream kind of died. But, uh, now this guy is a big, like, uh, he's a big draw on the like abduction circuit, you know, shit about being abducted. And, um, so anyway, we thought that was a cool story. So we changed it from a man to a woman. We added a bunch of other elements to, you know, kind of make it more dramatic. And, um, and uh, so that's Kinda how we came up with this thing. But it's, uh, it's been a trip working on it.
ViaStage:You know, for some odd reason I feel like I've heard of this story. I might've read about it at some point.
Lawfer:Yeah. Maybe so. Maybe so. I think it was at the time, I think it was, uh, about 10 years ago, it was kind of a big thing, it was going on.
ViaStage:So as a, as someone that collaborate on this, did you get to meet this person in real life?
Lawfer:No, no we've had dialogue with him. But we have not, we haven't like had a face to face meeting. He was in a different state and um, so probably actually come down and see the show. He's super psyched about it happening, you know? But um, yeah, no face to face meeting. I wouldn't know what to ask him, you know? Like that alien abduction stuff, it's wild man. You know?
ViaStage:Now in this play, like you said, you've changed this person into a woman and the play features her husband who is apparently in a coma?
Speaker 3:That's right. That's right. So we've added some, one of the things, we've added some PTSD for her to get through, which this guy, the real guy really went through some kind of PTSD, some, some family. Um, yeah, drama on some, you know, some, some trauma in his life. So we've, we've, we've created, um, the situation with, uh, with, um, the main characters. Shelly, um, her husband was the last survivor of plane crash that he was the pilot of and, and he survived. But he's, he's basically in length vegetable state. Yeah. And a that creates this kind of PTSD where she starts her brain, you know, just creates this defensive mechanism where she starts blocking out parts of reality to protect herself. And that is where in, um, just from doing some research on abductees, it seems like a pretty common thing that these people go through some trauma. So, uh, the, uh, the trauma. Yeah. Yeah. So we, so we focused on that, that trauma to kind of build the world of why she is, um, putting, you know, so much gravity in the, the alien abduction, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:Okay. Maybe, I'm not sure if I should laugh, but I guess this is described as also as a, as a comic fantasia. And when I, when I think of that term, comic fantasia conjures up images of like really colorful costumes, like over the top costumes and dreamy music. Is it, is it that type of a musical?
Speaker 3:Um, it is in Carson is, it's really, um, you know, we, we say comic Fantasia and that what we're seeing is this woman's memory of the time. And so there's a lot of things that are kind of jumping back and forth. It is not a very linear story. Um, so, so, you know, when she goes to the city council, the city council is full of Russian space dogs instead of people. Um, you know, she, she conjures these, um, other voices in our head become reality. So she has a space, cowboy personality. She has a, a, a blue dog stuffed animal that is one of our personalities. So there's a lot of different, wild, crazy, you know, personalities happening onstage at the same time. Um, so in that way, yeah, it is. But we also see Shelly the main character as just a kind of a broken person through a lot of the shell, you know?
Speaker 2:No. Okay. So you've created this character, Shelly, is this a character that's a regular audience? Members can somehow relate to it and at some level?
Speaker 3:I think so. I mean, we've all gone through some trauma in our life. Halloween. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's all, I think we all have a probably a little section of time where we're, you know, there's like a bunch of shame builds up about the way we behaved or the way that we feel like we should have changed things in our lives or the way that we did, the way that we act or that we shouldn't have. You know, there, there's a lot of truth to that character for everyone. Um, just in terms of how we tried to deal with pain, you know?
Speaker 2:Right, right.
Speaker 3:I mean, life is hard and so your brain tries to protect you from all that stuff. And, uh, this is a real extreme example, but I think it's true for everyone that you, that you kind of create, you create a world around you to make you feel better in situations when you, um, it's hard to deal with what actually happened, right? It's a way of coping. Yeah. It's a way of coping. And so that's just, that's kind of the story that we're telling is, is this way that this woman's coping with this terrible thing that happened to her and she just doesn't, that's just the way that her brain has taught her to cope with it for whatever reason. You know, and we kind of get into, in the story, we get into this kind of backstory of like her parents and how, where they came from and the way, you know, the way that they taught her to think. And, um, with all, it's all kind of explained. So it's not out of any, not a nowhere, you know, but it is infinite. It's an extreme example. But, uh, it wouldn't be a musical if it wasn't a little agreement. Eaglets right.
Speaker 2:So, so as a musical, did you guys compose the music yourselves?
Speaker 3:No. John Langford, uh, who's a member of the Waco brothers in the meantime, you know, like that kind of the first wave of British pond, they came to the u s okay. And, um, John Langford wrote all the music. We have a incredible woman and Annabel revamp who, uh, arranged John's music from punk country into orchestrated so that it can be played by a whole band. And, uh, we have this great music director named Chuck Evans who's putting it all together. It's a, we're really lucky to have this team and you know, for everybody to be involved. A lot of times when you get somebody who's kind of a celebrity like John, they, they're real hands off, you know, and uh, John is not that way. So He's been involved from of top to bottom. Cool. Coming in and checking in on everybody and just being really supportive and you know, helping us with the art as well. You know, John Langford is a really accomplished visual artist as well. So He's been, uh, you know, coming in working with the set designer and we were trying to kind of put his mark on, on everything across the board to show is also super projection heavy. Oh Wow. So we have like, I dunno, 12 projectors in this little room and a Tony Churchill who like, one of the best projection designers in Chicago is doing our projections. So we're, we have like just an incredible team working on this show, so really won't be, and a lot of people agreed to do the shell out of designers agreed to do it because it's John Langford music, you know, they wanted to be a part of this kind of like punk rock kind of style show. So worked out for everybody.
Speaker 2:No, that sounds cool to be using. I go theme and the Special Effects Sound pretty fried right now. The Straw dog theatre is, I've been there before. It's not a large stage. Having all that going on and on, uh, in a storefront theater space. How challenging is that?
Speaker 3:It is a very fucking challenging, I don't know, I can't think of another way to tell you that wouldn't make any sense. So, uh, in the fall we did the show called mass, my calm. There was this whole immersive show where we used every room and shot on. Oh Man. And, uh, that was super fun and that was really challenging. So I was like, there's nothing I can do in one room that would be half as challenging as mass McCobb because that took the whole building, you know? Yeah. So, so I told him the news room to be a clean attarian what a planetarium. And they were like, well, we can't do that, but we could, you know, use the walls and the ceiling as you know. And so we kind of came up with this like middle ground where every inch of wall is being projected on in the entire space,
Speaker 2:even like the back wall and the side everywhere, everywhere. So the audience is pretty much immersed in this whole thing.
Speaker 3:Totally emersed. Yeah. So it's, um, it's, it's totally, it's really wild to see these guys like making it and how it's, you know, how everything moves from one thing to another and there's underscoring throughout the whole show. So it's like, it's almost like this giant poem instead of a play, you know, like there's so much happening all the time and it's all real image heavy and, and um, jumps back and forth between reality and fantasy and it's, yeah, it's really, it's, it's crazy man. So,
Speaker 2:oh, it sounds like he's got a lot of energy and would be a lot of fun
Speaker 3:to watch. Yeah. Yeah. I'm really excited. I'm really excited. And how big is your cast? It's loud. People, them fully stand up, nine people and then a four person, Bam man. And that man is John Langford is going to be there on opening night. He'll be there, I think. We'll see. That's fantastic. Well, this sounds like a fantastic show and I'm definitely going to go to the opening. Uh, is there anything else that you want to share with the audience about the, the, your musical take me. I'm just really sad and I think it's going to be super fun. Um, I think it'll be, it's a, it's heavy. Yeah. Not like a trying to light and it's not a life experience, you know? So come for the music, but stay for the tiers kind of thing. All right. It's good. It's going to stretch people from, yeah, one and two. The other emotionally, which is good at scripting, the scripting is fantastical. The music is his conch, contrary and say pure John Langford mostly original. You know, it's like original music. It's awesome. And to be a great time
Speaker 1:to find showtimes for, take me visit[inaudible] dot com where artists and venues can post their own local live shows. This is Cesar Gonzalez podcasting for via stage.