NAME GAME PART 3: ASK JASON

Hey, Jason here. I love the Name Game. It’s always capable of getting a “Huh, “ out of people. But I noticed a few “ask Jason” in Jay’s tour de force of blogging, so I thought I’d answer a few and add to my own.

JOEL WHITE and AIDEN: Sadly, not as interesting as one would hope. Joel and Aiden come from the TLC show “Jon and Kate Plus 8”. It’s the name of two of the three boy sextuplets. There is a third, Colin that I was going to try and work in so that all the Gosslin boys were represented, but alas, we didn’t need another name.

PRUDENCE NOELLE: The “Noelle” in her name, I stole from real life. My mother’s maiden name is Noell. And when my sister was born, she named her “Noel” (never asked why she dropped the extra “L”.) Oddly enough we spelled it in the show, the same way Noelle Schmitt spells her name, but the dye was cast on Prudence’s last name long before Noelle was. (bit of slightly related trivia, I misspelled Noelle's last name originally on the Reunion poster)

FOO-FOO: Here is where things really get embarrassing. All the porn names aside from 18th Street, come from my childhood. Nipsey and Vera were family dogs. Daisy was a family cat. And Foo-Foo was unfortunately a pet rabbit. Little life lesson here, if you are on the fence about whether or not to buy a rabbit, NEVER ask the advice of a four year old child. Their answer will always be “Yes”. And I lived on Hermitage Drive, and Memphis Circle in Pensacola Florida, and on Burgess House Lane in Richmond Virginia. I guess I am the original “Daisy Memphis”.

Lastly but one more name. “DR. RINALDI” is mentioned. He was a teacher of mine in college, Dr. Nicholas Rinaldi. He didn’t teach philosophy or inspire anyone to live together and not get married. He did however teach Stage Management and Theater Analysis at UCF. Before that, Dr. Nick worked almost exclusively in the 1970’s as a Stage Manager for Hal Prince. He was the stage manager for the original Broadway run of “Cabaret”, “It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman”, and had many a story of working on shows with Tommy Tune and Christopher Walker when they were merely Broadway Dancers.

I got not idea where “Rainey’s” came from. Perhaps Gerald McRainey TV’s “Major Dad”?

More to come
Jason

Meet The Girls...

With REUNION about to open in less than a month, we are beginning to ramp up our press for the show. As sort of an opening bit, I thought it'd be cool to show you guys some shots of our cast.



And here we go...








Kate Cohen is "Pam"


















Noelle Schmitt is "Gibbs"

Kate Lambert is "Karen"

Marla Depew is "Lexy"

and Monique Jazmine Thomas as "Prudence"









Stay Tuned for more....

It's Happening...

The papers have been signed, money has exchanged hands,and REUNION will be hitting the stage Monday September 8, at the Stage Left Theater located at 3408 N. Sheffield Ave. (Roughly Sheffield, Clark and Roscoe) for a 2 night a week three week run.

Jay and I are super excited about this, and of course we will keep updating the site throughout the casting, rehearsal and production process.

So stay tuned, cause this thing now is gonna happen.

THEY LIKE TO USE “THAT” WORD

I love audiences. Not just because they pay money to see the shows, although that goes a long way towards working their way into my heart. No the reason I love audiences, is I love to hear their reactions to the show. Some times they pull you aside after and tell you how much they like it, other times they make comments during the show.

One comment we got during the show was “Oh… they like to use THAT word.” This was relayed to me by my girlfriend as she was watching Award. Now it’s no secret Jay and I love to use profanity, not just on stage but just in our real lives. We curse like sailors and thus so do our characters. I am especially bad about it; I do it in church, which is why I don’t go a lot. But what I loved about “Oh … they like to use THAT word” was that when the story was relayed back to me, there was no judgment involved. Apparently the woman said it to her friend very matter of factly. So in spite of mine and Jay’s penchant for profanity, she seemed to be on board with it.

Thing is, once you get a crowd that talks out loud they don’t stop. In some cases it’s a good thing. During Award, after Josh said his line about it being true bad movies get nominated for awards; there was an audible “Ooooh” from the audience. Kind of like they practiced it. They were talkers. While setting up for Funeral, Jay and I both heard one woman yell out as we were setting up the furniture, “Wait… is this a kids show?”

By far the biggest reaction we got was from something that wasn’t supposed to happen, and cosmically I think it was my fault. As Award was finishing up on Wednesday, I made a comment like “Wow, we haven’t had any problems with the bed tonight.” And it was true. No shaking, no loud noises. But not two seconds after I said it, WHAM! The legs facing the audience gave way and the bed fell to the floor with Josh and Mal on top of it. Luckily neither of them were hurt, and Josh covered with “You know they are going to charge us for that.” Nice ad lib, saved the scene.

But afterwards, we had all of these people come up and ask if it was planned. UGH, if they only knew we consider it a good show if it doesn’t fall. One woman asked me if it was planned, and when I told her it wasn’t she said “Well in my experience in theater… if something works, you should keep it.” Apparently it was Elaine Stritch. Another friend of Jay’s swore it was planned. He even went so far as to claim he could see the lynch pin that was pulled out off stage. HUH? We don’t even know what a lynch pin is. But yes you totally saw one. It was attached to Wonder Woman’s magic lasso and pulled off stage by the ghost of Charles Nelson Reilly.

Well that was last week’s adventure with the audience. Again I love them, and I love how they make the show their own. We are going to have some nice crowds this week and God only know what they will see.

This is why I love live theater.

OPENING NIGHT

Well it is opening night, the culmination of over a years work. Now we get to see if after all the blood, sweat, and tears, if the shows are any good. (Crossing my fingers)

I used to get really nervous on opening and I probably will right before we open, but right now I am feeling pretty confident about the shows. Not that we haven't had a bumpy ride.

We spent the weekend in tech, and if you don't know already, Tech sucks. For those that don't, Tech is the time when you add all the elements together: acting, props, lights, set, sound, costumes, the kitchen sink. Its a lot like baking a cake, once the cake is done its awesome, but when you first add all the ingredients together, it looks kinda gross.

We had some interesting moments, well no one ran over a homeless guy, but still interesting. During one run of Award, Malorie kicked one of the glasses and broke it. Punted it actually. She could be in the NFL. It was one of those moments where, if she had tried to kick it, she couldn't have. But on accident... she nailed it. So if you watch the show and wonder why there is only one glass in a Four Seasons hotel room, that is why. They also terrorized a script during the show, ripped it to shreds. Again they had never been done this before, yet during one run, this poor prop met it's demise.

Not that Funeral didn't have it's moments too. I am still not sure where, Anne's "Children's husband" came from or Bryce summarizing his monologue to "everything". We also had to ask Tim to wear socks. It seemed like his bare ankles during one run had a special spot light on them.

On the plus side, the Boys in Funeral are happy to finally have a wall. Our rehearsal space most of the time made using the walls for the fight scenes a little hard. For weeks, Ben, Bryce and Tim have been mime-ing walls. So it felt good for them to finally have some walls, so that could start REALLY throwing each other around.

Well just wanted to do a short one before we started letting people in the door. After tonight, in a strange way, the shows no longer belong to Jay and I, but they belong to the cast and the audience. Sometimes it gets hard to let go, but its necessary.

A real quick thanks Aaron Johnson at the Live Bait, Don Johnson and the rest of the cast and crew of "A Murder of Crows" for the fabulous job they did getting the set ready for us. They have no idea how great they are. And to such a great cast. We could not have done it without them.

I hope you all enjoy the shows.

"YOU RAN HIM OVER?!"

We are in the home stretch now, not too much longer till we open. The plan had been to keep the blog updated with the goings on of rehearsals. Unfortunately we are rehearsing two shows. So out of seven days a week, Award may only rehearse two days, but Funeral is rehearsing three. The two left over days you need to get props, do posters, postcards, press releases, coordinate schedule changes, oh and work your full time job, and have some semblance of a life. Give you an example, during the summer my girlfriend and I saw a movie about every weekend. Since we started rehearsals, I haven’t seen a movie since Superbad’s opening weekend. Wouldn’t trade it for anything, but it just leaves little time to blog.

Not that the rehearsals haven’t been eventful. Our first was probably the most. We've been rehearsing in garage of Jay’s sister, Catherine, and brother in law, Jason. They have gone above and beyond, they are also expecting, so our gratitude to them is in the quadruple digits.

Anyway it was one of our first rehearsals for Award; we were in the garage with the doors open, and Jay noticed a homeless man sleeping in the alley against one of the garage doors. Not thinking too much of it, we started rehearsing. Eight pages in, Mal and Josh are going gang busters, but down the alley we hear this thud, and then an “Oh My God.” We walk out into the alley and the see the garage door where the homeless man was sleeping is now opened and a car is half way out of the garage. Yes, you guessed, they ran over the sleeping homeless guy.

Not to long after the cops and the paramedics were on the scene. It was crazy. The paramedics showed up and asked what happened. “We ran over him.” The woman from the car said. “YOU RAN OVER HIM?” was the paramedic’s response. Needless to say the people were freaked and the cop on the scene didn’t make it any better. She kept badgering them about why they didn’t check the door before they pulled out. Like any one would. I wouldn’t have. We found out later, that the homeless in this area do this a lot, so I guess it’s not the worst idea in the world. But still, I’d have never thought to do it. Oh and this cop, who was so concerned about the safety of the people in the alley, tore out of there at like 80 MPH narrowly missing hitting Jay as she stepped back to watch the rehearsal. Chicago’s finest.

The homeless guy ended up being OK. He got up and walked to the ambulance himself. He was limping so luckily they must have run over his leg and not his head or torso. They took him away in the ambulance, so hopefully he got a good night’s sleep someplace not up against a garage door. Jay seemed worried about his shopping cart of stuff. She seemed to think it was full of memories like the last picture he had of his estranged daughter or something. I was pretty sure it was full of cans, and that being homeless, one of his skill sets would be to easily procure a new shopping cart and collection of cans. The homeless can be industrious when they want to be.

This wasn’t the last incident in the garage. During the fight choreography for Funeral, one of Catherine and Jason’s neighbors was concerned about the shouting of the word “Fag” and then the sounds of fighting. Apparently he thought we were gay bashing in the garage, and came over to check. Luckily we convinced him it was only a play. We should have given him a postcard.

We have some time left in the garage. God only knows what will happen next.

THE NAME GAME

One of the things that irritates me about writing is naming characters. It’s important I know, but if I had my druthers, all my characters would have names like “A” or “That Guy” or “Some Random Chick”. It’s too much pressure, like naming a child or something. This is name they are stuck with forever.

There are lots of names in Award and Funeral. Not just main characters, but characters that are mentioned in passing or briefly discussed. You need them to sort of fill out your universe. So to do that you have to sort of grab names from anywhere, either out of your past or out of the ether or wherever. The names of the main characters for Funeral happened this way:

When Jay and I sat down to write Funeral, we agreed the first night that the names of characters would be “Butch”, “Claire”, “Brian” and “Scott”. “Brian” and “Scott” were to be the names of the brothers, who at that time had no last names. So when Jay and I came back in a week and showed each other what we had written, we had a problem. I had made “Brian” the older brother and “Scott” the younger, where as she had “Scott” as the older brother, and “Brian” as the younger brother. After trying to talk about the story for 10 seconds we realized the first thing we needed to do was change the names. She’d say “Scott” and meant the older brother and I thought she meant the younger. So the older brother became “Greg” and the younger brother became “Jake”.

About two days later I decided I hated the name “Jake”. To me, “Jake” sounded like a character John Stamos should play, it sounded like someone cool (I guess this means I think John Stamos is cool). The younger brother wasn’t cool. So “Jake” became “Eric” most likely and subconsciously a throw back to the sarcastic, skinny, uncool character named Eric on That 70’s Show.

We’d like to think the names were sort of picked at random, but that’s not usually not the case. “Claire”, I think, was subconsciously named after Lauren Ambrose’s character from Six Feet Under. I was re-watching the series at the time, and I think it was swimming around my subconscious. “Greg” is the name of my boss at work, but the character wasn't named or based on him. You just say “Greg” and go with that. It’s only in the middle of draft 3 you realize, “Oh yeah, my boss is named Greg”. We also have a friend named Butch, but again that isn’t who we named “Butch” after. Our friend Butch is a woman anyway. This is where the names end up coming from… anywhere, everywhere. So I thought I’d run down some of the other names in the shows and give you some insight as to where they came from.

AWARD
Adam and Reilly - These first names came from my childhood friend and next door neighbor, Adam Reilly. Jay and I felt "Reilly" had a Reese Witherspoon vibe, so we wanted to give her a name that sounded like it could be someone’s last name. Adam was just left over, and it seemed like a good fit for "Adam". So my friend Adam Reilly from Pensacola FL gets a shout out.

Grady Tripp - The script Adam says he is reading is based on “Grady Tripp’s book, The Arsonist’s Daughter”. For those that don’t remember, “Grady Tripp” was Michael Douglas’ character from Wonderboys, and the title of Grady’s book in the movie was The Arsonist’s Daughter.

Marty - An allusion to Martin Scorsese.

Joanne Streams - Our version of Joan Rivers.

Sheila Kelly - Someone I went to college with.

Alexandra Kincaid - First name is a friend of Jay’s.

Lexy Valentine – I am not sure where the name came from. I did work with a guy who’s last name was Valentine, but I am pretty sure Jay made up the name. She may have to blog about it herself.

FUNERAL

Brian Scott - A homage to the original names of “Greg” and “Eric”. Before the names were changed, he was David Stillwagon, someone I went to elementary school with.

Betty – The much talked about mother of “Charles", "Greg" and "Eric” is named after my girlfriend’s mother.

Aunt Helen – Aunt Helen was Jay’s beloved Aunt who passed away. Although the story Greg tells about her, is not one of Aunt Helen’s stories (Aunt Helen had much better stories). Actually the story is from my great grandmother. In an early draft we had two aunts. One that was being honored, “Aunt Helen” and then “Aunt Ester” who was the woman who kept finding the perfume. Jay thought it would be too confusing to have two aunts, so both aunts were combined into Aunt Helen. For the record Aunt Ester was the name of my great grandmother’s sister.

Donnie Wayland – The kid “Greg” beat up as a child is the name of someone I knew in third grade. He was a twin, and his brother's name was Danny.

St. Michaels - The name of the church where Funeral is set comes from a church in Jay’s hometown in Champaign, Illinois.

Charles Wright - The unseen star of Funeral. His name comes from the name of the show Jay and I first wrote together “Charlie”.