In the final dramatic scene of The Hypocrites’ Frankenstein, the Daemon asks Victor Frankenstein, his maker, “why did you create me?”
It echoes the question many audience members had during the performance: “what was that?” Whether they were confused about the play’s plot, straining to hear dialogue, or just confused as to why The Hypocrites chose to adopt Mary Shelley’s novel, neither the Daemon’s or the audience’s questions are answered. (more…)
Filed under: art, Chicago, theatre, writing | Tags: art; neo-futurists; interview; theatre
Self-described as “a weirdo from a weird family [who] keeps weirder friends [and] is forever indebted to these weirdos”, Megan Mercier can pee on cue. During a recent summer run of “Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind” (TMLMTBGB), Mercier had a chance to practice her unusual skill. Male cast members had locked her and another female out of the tech booth.
“One guy holds this target and they’re like “alright you can come in if you can piss at this target…so we [peed on it], [we were] like for real peeing on it…some nights you saw a little bit more than you wanted to”
Mercier wrote the play, appropriately titled “pissing contest”, out of frustration over the gender balance of the cast and its effect on material and performance. It was a way to connect to her audience quickly in the play’s two minute span because they recognized what Mercier was trying to say while at the same time curious over whether or not she was really peeing.
The Neo-Futurists, the ensemble cast with whom Mercier performs TMLMTBGB, do not have much time to grab an audience’s attention. Thirty plays in one hour. It’s a mold that requires creativity, speed, and swift delivery. There is no overture, no elaborate costuming and the props generally consist of inconsequential items such as peanut butter and shaving cream. For Mercier, it’s all about raw emotion and her comedy is written true to life and in an off-the-cuff approach to events around her. She focuses mainly on social commentary and writes mostly monologues stylized as cynical, loud, and aggressive rants. She only criticizes things if she is simultaneously criticizing herself—her only rule. She writes about yuppy kids, Chris Jones blogging, and racial tension from the prospective of a middle class white girl.
The philosophy of the Neo-Futurists centers on embracing the unreached Chicago audience which, more often than not, is the sort of crowd that hates traditional theatre. Mercier studied theatre at Columbia College Chicago, an environment she credits with allowing her to be creative with her own style, but feels isolated by big name theatre houses. She believes that theatre, especially her high-energy theatre, may be more engaging than visual art because it builds relationships among people. The production, displaying and documentation of visual art make it elitist. The weird disconnect comes from visual art being an element you can’t discuss with the gallery guard and since you can’t be loud, you cannot fully express how awesome something is. To be fair, Mercier concludes the same problem lies with traditional theatre, an industry that selects its audience by class and price value. The Neo-Futurists handle that differently. Every ticket price starts at $9 then each audience member rolls a dice and that number is added to the $9. It’s an interactive and economical way of approaching performance art.
For her, the Neo-Futurists’ lifestyle is comforting and expressive at the same time. A completely non-collaborative writing process, Mercier has complete control over what she writes each week, how it’s preformed and generally how long it stays in the show’s rotation. The comedy she performs and is exposed to with the Neo-Futurists is completely different than the comedy at Second City, where she studied during a comedy class at Columbia. “Its emphasis [was] on making things funny in a way that’s not always [idea-driven]. It’s like when you watch SNL and sometimes it’s so funny and then other times it’s the worst thing in the world and you’re like, how are people watching this?”
Mercier believes she is prone to self-defensive thinking and in one recent play about Facebook friends, where cast members had to go through the list of online friends, she kept thinking about the audience of potential friends she had to categorize. She had to explain to the audience who each friend was, how she knew them and whether she loved them, hated them, or didn’t know why she was a Facebook friend with them. “I could see myself lying if I had to pull someone’s name and I knew they were in the audience and I really hated them. I like to think I would have been honest but I think I would have said as little as possible”
She defines personal success by whether or not someone can describe themselves and what they do in a paragraph. She says her description is still pages long.
“I think what’s so great about Chicago right now is that you can pretty much do whatever you want and that’s really, really exciting.”
