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Part 2
There are two levels. Up four steps is a raised area where speakers like Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn have addressed an intimate crowd of activists. Mamet would shit if he knew his play was being performed on a platform that held the anti–Israeli Chomsky. Or maybe not. I prefer to think he wouldn't give a shit. That he'd say the play speaks for itself.
Below is the main floor of the library. The shelves have been rolled against one wall and in their place is the Junk Shop, some shelves of our own with all manner of Resale Items, collectibles, memorabilia, novelties. Chairs are arranged along three sides. A couch is directly in front of the plate glass window that looks out onto University Avenue. Alongside the couch is the desk of the CMC coordinator. Now it is Don's desk.
My car is parked out front. You can see it, if you're seated on the couch, just by turning your head. Everyone inside can see my car. It's Teach's car now, but they don't know that. It's in plain view. The street is in plain view. The street is the backdrop of the play.
The play begins in the street and ends in the street.
You are in the play. You have come from the street, and the street is where you are going.
At the end of the play, when Bobby has been beaten and bloodied, the three of us get in the car and drive away, presumably to the hospital.
The Reviewer has arrived, a man in his sixties, with two like–aged friends, a man and a woman. The Reviewer is easy to spot. He's sitting with an open copy of American Buffalo on his lap.
Can you believe it?
"ARE YOU FUCKIN KIDDIN ME?" — Mamet, The Postman Always Rings Twice
In the old days, back in the sixties, probably into the seventies, there was a kids show on WGN in Chicago hosted by an affable, albeit goofy actor named Ray Rayner. He wore a jump suit covered with little notes to remind him what he had to do on the show each day. Scot reminds me of Ray Rayner. His desk is cluttered with cue cards and he hesitates to leave it. This is not like Oleanna, where you seemingly talk on the phone for hours on end while your fellow player waits patiently for his cue. This is dialogue. Mametspeak dialogue. Rapid fire.
Will the Reviewer look up from his script long enough to see that Scot is looking down at his? Will he notice that Scot is anchored to the desk, that his head is down, that he is reading his lines? And will this perhaps reflect negatively on his performance and by extension the production? Who gives a flying fuck?
Scot shrugs it off. He has actively dissuaded his fans from attending the opening weekend performances. "By the end of the third week," he's told them, "it should be pretty good."
What the fuck? He's right.
For the first Monday night performance of the play, we encounter the lesbian knitting circle.
Nomenclature, dude,
And they aren't budging. We have to set up the Shop around them. It's 7:37pm. That's twenty–three minutes before the show is supposed to go up. Will it?
There is no Harp at the Shamrock! There are red plastic cups covering the taps. Not just Harp, but Guinness too.
At least we'll get a run–through in. Last week we rehearsed in the company of the lesbian knitting circle, and no harm was done, near as I know.
"That dyke cocksucker."
Tonight when we left and got in the car at the end of the play and drove around the block, the entire audience stayed, and they were waiting for us when we parked out in front again and came back inside the CMC. They applauded us when we walked in.
And then we all sat around and discussed the play.
A college student, who just happened upon the play while looking up some issue at the CMC, was fascinated, sat and watched the play by herself.
"We were all a part of it though — that was so cool."
She would come back again on closing night.
I went over the top — in the discussion, not the play; you can't go over the top in the play because it's as big as America, it's a sprawling epic story of the way the west was won and this great land of ours from sea to shining sea and "the freedom of the individual to embark on any fucking course that he sees fit in order to secure his honest chance to make a profit — the country is founded on this."
Primitive accumulation.
Appropriation.
Liberation. Liberate that fucking nickel. "And what else should we take for our trouble? It's hard to make up rules about this stuff."
As we discovered in Vietnam. As we are discovering in Iraq.
Still fired up after having dropped a good portion of the second act — some of my favorite shit: finding the combination to the safe…
"I was glad," Scot confided afterward. "Made it shorter."
A lot.
So much was lost. It galls me. Guilt. Although the audience was totally oblivious to it. They weren't sitting there with the script like the Reviewer was.
When in doubt… cut to the Gun. I went right to the Gun. What to do to end it? Get your Gun out.
As a last resort, I reached for my gun. Of course, the gun is always a last resort.
And that sent us reeling toward the end of the play.
A siren sounds on the street. Play it.
Play the environment.
I had looked for my hat under the Reviewer's chair.
I told our discussion group that the play only seems to be about petty criminals on the South Side of Chicago, but what it's really about is what capitalism hath wrought, it's about why we're in Iraq.
"I don't know if I'd go that far," said a scholarly gentleman who had watched the play by himself. University town. Professor probably. "This play was written in 1975."
I remember. I was there. Actually, I was next door. I was at Horses, Incorporated. The St. Nicholas Theater was downstairs, next to AmVets, a giant resale shop.
Later he said he'd gone to see Borat the day before and he couldn't understand how such simple crudity could become a box office hit.
Writing is an act of violence.
A homeless man wanders into the CMC through the back door. He's come from the alley behind the stores on University Avenue. He doesn't know what he's walked into. A bunch of people are sitting around on chairs. But one guy is not sitting in a chair; he's running his mouth, and he's swearing a blue streak. Some people are laughing. The homeless guy moves through the space, keeps walking, unsure what to do. He tries to ask what's going on, and the next thing he knows the swearing guy is hustling him out the door.
The swearing man is Walter Cole, called Teach, and the world the homeless man has just walked through is titled American Buffalo. The homeless man has entered the world of the play. A quick turn of Teachıs wrist, more laughter from the audience, and when the homeless man tugs on the door he finds that he's been locked out.
The homeless man has been locked out of Don's Resale Shop, but he is still in plain view, standing at the window. So he is still in the play. He is part of the play now. No matter what he does. Even if he leaves. If he leaves, he makes an exit.
It would be interesting, nice, whatever you'd like to call it, to know for a fact that there was going to be a show that night, not to have to wonder whether anybody's going to show up. Anybody.
You can wonder if you want to, it's not going to do any good.
We can't help but wonder.
You can if you're a free man.
Mace gets up, goes to work, he knows the job is going to be there when he gets there.
Just the same, we know we've got a good idea, and Mace knows it too.
Probably steal it.
He wouldn't. He's a good guy. And besides he doesn't want to do theater much anymore anyway. He can't afford to. Pass up this movie or that.
Someone was supposed to let us into the CMC at 6:45. Now it's 7:20 and the place is still locked up.
The fact that nobody shows up sort of pisses me off. Which is good for Teach, for playing Teach that is.
"'You're a pig looking at a watch.' Old military expression about not being able to decipher the real meaning." — Bob Woodward, State of Denial
I started learning the lines for this play over the summer. Scot came late to the fair. He didn'0t know what he was getting into. And Don is a thankless role, so I have to thank Scot. This was our idea — Mike's and mine, not Scot's. And Mamet's lines are maddening. Learning them can drive you to distraction.
Actually it was Mike's idea, and it's a fine one, the site–specific approach. It energizes everything and makes it unique.
You add the line load, its complexities, its simultaneous circumlocutions and dis–connections, and then the strain of trying to entertain all of eight or ten people.
Try four or five.
Sitting separately.
Scot's wife and twelve year–old daughter. Isn't that nice? I wonder should I maybe try to do the cartoon version for her.
The point being, if you're straining to entertain an audience, you're doing the wrong fucking thing.
We wonder now if maybe we're going to do three, maybe four previews — and one or two performances. Or no performances at all. Just six paid rehearsals.
Meaning, we pay&hellip to rehearse.
How stupid is that?
Actually, we make no distinction between rehearsal and performance.
That's a good disciplined approach.
Actually it's just that nobody's here either fucken way.
And then you have to leave Teach behind. His scruffy goatee and shaggy mane, the sideburns. I haven't had a haircut since June and it is nearly December. Lived with Teach all summer.
I started by writing the lines down, beat by beat. The first act was 48 pages of loose-leaf, front and back. The second act was 47 pages. They fold neatly and they're easy to flip. By the end of the run, I get so I use them practically as flip cards. I flip through them so fast, I make a movie of them. I have no idea how many times I've been through them.
And all of this was thrust on Scot. He prepares differently than I do, and it's all good. But this is Mamet, and Mamet is murder.
Scot is the best actor I've ever worked with in this town. That's based on Who Will Let Me Work with Them? And the answer is Scot, and it drops off after that. So we're stuck with each other. And that is fine by me. Scot has timing, empathy, he listens to you, he shows up.
Scot will occasionally make shit up. More than occasionally. But that's Scot, and that's ok.
What is not ok is, well, nothing is not ok, and that's why it's good working with Scot.
In Oleanna there is only one other actor to deal with. The trickiest moments of Buffalo are when the three of us are onstage.
We call it "onstage," but that is not accurate with this production. It is simply to enter the world of the play. To be On.
Scot?
Who's this?
Mike. What's your status?
What's my status on what?
The show.
The show? Oh yeah, the show. The show's tonight, isn't it?
Yes it is, Scot.
Then it's a good thing I've got my costume on and I'm pulling into the parking lot…
Read through the lines again. Like a basketball player in warm–ups. You want to make that last shot. A couple of times through the second act, which contains several trouble spots. Where is Fletch and what is Bob doing here? And after Bob has left, what was Bob doing here?
We need to scout the guy's house. It doesn't matter he's got a safe.
The thing is the first act comes first, so let's not get ahead of ourselves here.
It looks more and more as if we will be doing a vanity performance – closing night. Opening and closing in one night like the best of turkeys on all of Broadway. We share the record in the Guinness Book with any number, untold numbers of others. So be it. Fuck it. We did it. Let the chips fall where they may.
That makes this our last rehearsal.
This is not a rehearsal. There are people here.
That's true.
We've done this show four times. It's been reviewed.
Oh my God. Oh my fucken God.