WATCH OUT, MAMA, HYPERDRAMA'S GONNA
MESS WITH YOUR PITTOCK MANSION!
by Charles Deemer
(originally published in Oregon Magazine)
The moment I remember most, when theater became so real that an unsuspecting
family called the cops to shut down the play, happened on a summer evening in
1986.
In the play's story, drug dealers have crashed the
Brodey family party in the Pittock Mansion, which is
the Brodey home. The dealers aim to collect overdue
cash from the addict Brodey son, Jack. Undercover
narcs have gotten wind of this rare trip off the
mountain by these top dealers and have infiltrated the
party to wait for them. When they inevitably clash, a
gun fight results, with the dealers racing off into
the woods as the narcs shoot at them from a balcony.
Not your usual tea party at the Pittock Mansion.
On the evening in question, while my play CHATEAU DE
MORT was unraveling its life-like network of
simultaneous scenes, spreading through the huge
Mansion in an expanding tale of sex, drugs and
rock-n-roll (so that in the moment of the play's
greatest density, eight scenes were occurring on three
floors all at the same time), a Portland family was
enjoying a picnic at the end of a sweep of lawn that
descended from the Mansion. The view of snow-capped
mountains -- St. Helen's, Adams, Hood -- and downtown
Portland was spectacular on this warm, clear night in
1986. What a great spot for a peaceful, family picnic.
Then gunshots rang out. From its perspective, the
family must have been startled to see men running into
the woods as other men fired at them from a balcony.
What did they think was going on? Something serious
enough to call the police about.
We were near the end of the play. In the Mansion, a
dead body was awaiting the ambulance that would race
up the hill, sirens screaming, as part of the scripted action.
On this night, however, the ambulance was followed by
several police cars. Only the quick intercession of
the director, explaining that a play was going on
here, a new kind of environmental theater called
hyperdrama (though at the time this form of theater
was so new that no one knew what to call it), kept the
police from arresting the actors. Of course, the
non-sedentary audience, who followed actors and tried
to keep up with the various branches of the
multi-layered story, assumed the police were in the cast.
Which remains me of another moment that, more than
theoretical explanation, captures the essence of this
new theater form, hyperdrama. On opening night a
well-known Portland doctor and his beautiful wife were
in the audience. The blonde wife was dressed like a
toreador: tight black outfit, high boots, hat tipped
just right; she even carried a little whip.
I was a nervous wreck, not only because it was opening
night but because this new kind of play had not but
tried out on an audience yet, and no one knew what was
going to happen. A good deal of improvisation happens
in hyperdrama because the scene transitions never time
out right (more about this later), and this added
another layer of uncertainty beyond the traditional
opening-night jitters.
Anxiously wandering the Mansion, I joined a small
crowd watching a scene on the second-floor hallway.
The doctor's wife stood in the back of the crowd,
watching the scene as well. And watching her were
three elderly ladies, none watching the scene in the
play but instead turned to stare at the doctor's wife.
I moved to stand behind the ladies, curious about what
they were doing. I had to admit, the doctor's wife
might be more interesting to look at than what I had
written. Finally one lady turned to a companion and
said, "Well, maybe she doesn't have any lines."
This is hyperdrama, a form of theater in which the
audience can mistake one of their own for an actor, a
development of action that can appear to be so real
that an unsuspecting witness may respond in surprising
and intrusive ways. Hyperdrama, more than any other
kind of dramatic storytelling, mirrors "real life."
Imagine your last family Thanksgiving dinner. Imagine
that all of the people there are actors, speaking
lines written by a playwright (mostly). The play,
then, spreads throughout the house (which is the
"theater") with scenes happening in the kitchen as the
meal is prepared, in the den as guys watch football,
in a bedroom as a private family squabble develops --
all these scenes and others happen at once. This is
hyperdrama. And the audience? Drop them into the house
like invisible voyeurs, able to wander around and
through the action at will.
This is hyperdrama, and it's not like any other kind
of theater you've ever seen. But it's not for
everyone.
My introduction to the form was with a commission to
write "this new kind of play taking L.A. by storm" for
the Pittock Mansion as a fund-raiser for the Musical
Company. The play in question was called TAMARA, and
it had a long waiting list for tickets at $100 a pop.
Fortunately, several Portlanders had gone down to see
the play, and I was able to interview them to learn
how this kind of play worked.
I was amazed by what they told me. The play took place
"in a real space" that was occupied by the actors and
audience together. The action spread out into
different rooms and areas so that different scenes
were taking place simultaneously. In other words, an
individual audience member could see only a small part
of the action at any one viewing. In fact, in L.A. a
major reason for TAMARA's astonishing popularity was
that audience members were returning again and again
to see action they had missed on previous viewings.
As a writer, this project was especially challenging
because a number of tenets of traditional dramatic
storytelling were being bent and sometimes even
broken. For example, in this kind of play, where "a
real space" becomes the theater and action moves
throughout the wide confines of this space, actors
never "exit the stage." An exit from part of the
space, one scene, is merely an entrance to another
part of the space, the next scene.
So if all actors are on stage at all times, what does
it mean to distinguish between a major role and a
minor role? I decided it meant nothing. I decided that
this play would have 14 main characters (the size of
the cast) and that each of these characters must have
a story that is as interesting as the others.
Unfortunately, the people publicizing CHATEAU DE MORT
didn't understand this distinction and publicity for
the play focused on a few branches of the sprawling
story that involved a murder. The play was publicized
as "a murder mystery," and everyone wanted to know
"who done it." The other stories embedded in the
massive whole -- a love story, a political story,
several satires -- were ignored.
This form of theater presents unique challenges to the
actors as well as to the writer. When an actor moves
from one scene to the next, always on stage, there are
three possibilities: s/he will arrive to the next
scene precisely when the script indicates, or s/he
will be early or late. The former, theater being
theater, almost never happens. If s/he is late, then
the actors waiting for the entrance must improvise to
fill the time. If s/he is early, s/he must either
interrupt the scene (which made me realize important
information should never be near a scene's end, where
it can be cropped) or realize s/he is early and bide
time herself until it is time to enter.
Actors in a hyperdrama, in other words, must have the
unusual ability to go on and off book at will, always
in character. More than one actor dropped out of
rehearsal, unable to cope with this stressful demand
on their craft.
Because improvisation is inevitable in hyperdrama,
amusing things can happen. I, the writer, can even get
credit for things I didn't write. In one of Jonathan
Nicholas' columns praising CHATEAU DE MORT,
he singled out the fine writing of a scene that, in fact, was
improvisational!
Many audience members don't respond to hyperdrama.
They like their stories complete and wrapped up
without stray ends. Watching hyperdrama, it's very
easy to get lost -- and lost quickly. Without a
coherent "watching strategy," such as following a
single actor throughout the performance, one gets
exposed to different story strands that can become
confusing. The most successful hyperdramas, such as
TONY AND TINA'S WEDDING (which relies more
heavily on improvisation than any I have written), have the
appeal of what used to be called "happenings." One
goes there for a chaotic good time.
My interest in hyperdrama has been more ambitious,
treating it as a new dramaturgy in which serious
dramatic expression can be explored, but all of my
attempts to write serious hyperdrama have been
commercial failures. People who like serious plays
still prefer to sit in the dark to watch them. Sounds
like a metaphor to me.
Still, my experience with CHATEAU DE MORT was
extraordinary. The play, which has been revived on two
different occasions and which also had a sequel, has
been very popular whenever it's been done. But a small
controversy surrounds the play as well. Some
considered (and no doubt still consider) a story of
sex, drugs and rock-n-roll to be inappropriate for the
Pittock Mansion, a match in the worst taste. Where are
the historic costumes? Where are the good manners and
good taste of bygone eras?
On the other hand, there are audience members who will
tell you that when watching CHATEAU DE MORT, they got
to see the Mansion as never before -- because during
the play, unlike during a Mansion tour, they were
allowed to enter the rooms!
I've written seven hyperdramas -- CHATEAU DE MORT,
BATEAU DE MORT, TURKEYS, RANCHO!, COCKTAIL SUITE, THE BRIDE OF EDGEFIELD, THE
LAST SONG OF VIOLETA PARRA -- and have the most ambitious of all in progress, a
hyperdramatic expansion of Chekhov's THE SEAGULL. I have ideas for others but I
don't know if I will have
the energy to write them. If I get a battery charge and do, it will be because
of a moment I remember in CHATEAU DE MORT.
This moment, too, is near the end of the play. Two
scenes are happening at once in the living room, one
at each end of the room. I liked to watch these two
scenes by standing exactly between them, where I could
hear both at once. One night the timing of these two
scenes was such that the lines from one seemed to play
in perfect counterpoint to the lines of the other. The
moment was musical, poetic, and very moving. I only
experienced this on a single night; when the timing
was different, it didn't work with the same poetic
grandeur. It was a fleeting moment but probably the
single most moving experience I've ever had hearing my
own words on stage. Hyperdrama, at its best, is
musical, the different branches of the story
intertwining like different instruments in a symphony.
There was literal music in CHATEAU DE MORT, which
brings to mind still another story. The real hero of
the production was director Gita Hager, who somehow
managed to direct a sprawling play she could never see
all at once. Her solution to some story moments when
the timing was critical was brilliant. Since the
setting was an upper-crust party, she engaged
classical musicians to play throughout the evening.
She also engaged some operatic singers, who became
cues. In other words, when the fat lady sings, you
know the gun fight starts in one minute.
At the end of the play one night, an elderly man in
the audience asked to meet the author. He was in his
nineties and had spent the evening sitting in a chair
near the piano, able to see only those scenes that
happened nearby, but close to the music.
When he shook my hand, I was surprised at how firm his
grip was. He smiled and told me, "Thank you for a
lovely concert."