Displaying items by tag: The Actors Gang

If you are familiar with the Marx Brother 1933 film “Duck Soup,” it is probably from clips of some of the timeless schtik delivered by the erudite punster Groucho, the womanizing “Italian” Chico, the mute Harpo and the straight man in the bunch, handsome brother Zeppo.

So when I first heard The Conspirators was going to adapt this seemingly light-hearted confection to its stage at Stars & Garters (formerly Otherworld Theater), it didn’t sound like a fit—not based on their more hard-hitting satires of the past. Were they retreating from a world grown too contentious? But having read up on it, then viewed the film recently—which as a whole remains laughworthy—I learned that “Duck Soup” delivers serious social commentary, a send-up of fascism and authoritarianism—so topical in its day, and today for that matter. And so it does indeed fit right into The Conspirators’ sweet spot.

The Clark Street troupe’s stock in trade is theater that perceptive audiences willing to scratch through the surface will find speaks bitingly of the times. The pill is made easier to swallow because it’s delivered in a unique farcical performance mode, known as The Style (more on that later). It has you laughing at its silliness even as the baleful messages hit home. That makes “Duck Soup” perfect grist for the script mill of Sid Feldman, founder of The Conspirators with director Wm. Bullion. Both are in the final phases of casting and adapting the film for an October 30 opening.

Past productions are a good indicator of where The Conspirators take aim. Shows are often hung loosely on the bones of works by 20th century modernist playwrights. Dario Fo’s “Accidental Death of an Anarchist” became the 2019 “Accidental Death of a Black Motorist.” Brecht’s “The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui” (1941) is hinted at by the similarly named “The Resistible Rise of Herr Helmut Drumpf” (2016). Its follow up, “The Deckchairs,” finds an iceberg denier elected captain of an already sinking ship (subtitle: “Make the Titanic Great Again.”) And then there was the latest production, adapting Macbeth from William Shakespeare to Chicago vernacular for “Chicago Cop Macbeth.” 

A circle of hell in “Commedia Divina: It’s Worse Than That”

Other works include “Commedia Divina: It’s Worse Than That,” a riff on "Dante’s Divine Comedy," or the 19th century “The Epidemic,” an obscure political farce by French writer Octave Mirbeau, adapted as a Covid19 parallel in “The Ineptidemic.” The Conspirators’ shows are hilarious satires, laughworthy regardless of one’s political orientation. But they also point up some heavy-duty dramaturgy at play. Bullion and Feldman are deeply knowledgeable theatrical professionals at work on serious artistic expression.

If there is a challenge for audiences watching The Conspirators productions, it lies in adapting ourselves to their performance method, known as The Style. They are the only company in Chicago using it (it originated with actor Tim Robbins at The Actors Gang in Los Angeles; Robbins was a schoolmate of Bullion’s), and it can take some moments to get used to it. For one thing, actors are heavily made up, in thick white greasepaint with dark exaggerated brows, lines and mouth drawn in.

"The Deckchairs, or Make the Titanic Great Again"

The lighting is starkly bright. Delivery is exaggerated, in quick bursts. A stage-side drummer punctuates the lines. And sets are minimalist. There is no dramatic naturalism to be found, quite a departure from Steppenwolf or Goodman or any of Chicago’s storefront stages.

Most arresting is the acting method. No individualized background story is developed in the minds of the actors to inform their expression of character. Instead, just four emotions are allowed, usually delivered full throttle: happiness, sadness, anger and fear. All these elements are the foundation of the version of The Style employed by The Conspirators, introduced to Chicago by a player from LA’s The Actors Gang, Chicago’s John Cusack, for the now defunct New Crime Theater.

The Evanston Connection
“Sid and I both come from Evanston, which is kind of important,” says Bullion. “The high school theater program was really advanced - right next to Northwestern.” Bullion went on to study theater at UCLA, in the same program as actor Tim Robbins who, along with Cynthia Ettinger, originated The Style 40 years ago. Robbins founded The Actors Gang, which describes The Style as rooted in “Théâtre du Soleil, Grotowski, Viewpoints, punk rock and popular culture.” It is still used and taught at Robbins’ Culver City stage near Los Angeles, currently presenting “Topsy Turvy” through September 27, written and directed by Robbins.

The history of The Style corresponds to Bullion’s and Feldman’s backgrounds. Feldman went to school in Evanston with Cusack. After his time with The Actors Gang, Cusack started Chicago’s New Crime Theater in the 1990s as a local platform for productions in The Style.

Feldman ended up connecting with Cusack at New Crime. “I was always a business guy,” Feldman says. When a producer at New Crime melted down during a production of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” its co-directors Cusack and Steve Pink then tapped Feldman to step in at the Chopin Theater, in 1991. (Jeremy Piven was in the cast.)

“It was just a monster of a show to produce,” Feldman says. “And Steve told me I had to come over, and I found the producer in a fetal position, rocking in a corner, it was just too big of a show, she just couldn’t handle it. So I got in through that end, and as I was watching their workshops in The Style, I realized what storefront theater was missing.” Feldman felt drawn to change it.

“Billy [Bullion] and I did a few plays together in the late 90s,” says Feldman. “That’s when we got together. Then we broke up, I started writing screenplays and I went to LA.” Feldman spent the winter months each year on the West Coast during this period. “I had some minor success and I did some rewrites for people who needed help.”

"Accidental Death of a Black Motorist"

Bullion meanwhile was in Chicago, “living the storefront life,” he says. “I had a company called Sliced Bread Productions, and I was doing Brecht, Richard III, two Charles Ludlam plays—farce—wacky, statement making shows.”

Bullion and Feldman had first met up in the subculture music scene in Chicago, but eventually their paths crossed again in theater as well.

Feldman eventually soured on the movie business when one of his scripts, all of them written on spec, finally was made into a movie that he didn’t get paid for.

“That was the turning point,” says Feldman. “The producer never gave me a contract, he stole my possession, he never gave me a dime, I tried suing him for years.” When Feldman returned to Chicago, he and Bullion decided to do some shows together.

“We did Sternheim's "The Underpants" and Friedrich Dürrenmatt's “The Physicists." Bullion had been directing and acting in Chicago. “I was in “Hizzoner Daley the First” for about four years [at Prop Theater] and by the time that was ending we were finding our way back together. During the run-up to the 2016 election Feldman asked Bullion, "Why don’t we put on some workshops and try to put on a show?”

When Bullion, who had also been directing for Babes with Blades in 2014, received a script by Aaron Adair for “L’imbecile” — a gender reversal of “Rigoletto,” he immediately thought of an approach. “There was only one way this play can possibly be done, and that was in The Style,” Bullion says. Soon after The Conspirators was formed.

“So he brought me in and I taught them The Style,” Feldman says.“The plays I had done with New Crime were all in The Style. A lot of our terminology comes from them. Tim Robbins has gone to a more softened version of The Style for major productions at The Actors Gang. At The Conspirators, we have kept it pure, we have actually made it more pure in some ways. It’s a living beast with us; we’re always changing it.”

Because there is no ready cadre of actors schooled in The Style to cast for its shows, The Conspirators have taken to running free workshops, training actors in the technique. From these workshops, it casts its shows.

As Feldman explains, “In college you study to learn who the character is, you study the background and the backstory - and you let that form how you deliver the monologues.
“This is what I teach them,” says Feldman. “I tell them to come in with a one to two minute monologue, with nothing, and in our workshops we only use four emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, and anger - all extremes. There’s no jealousy (“No bemusement” Bullion says.) You come in with a monologue, with nothing prepared - and I just randomly shout out what your next state is, in which you have to deliver the next line or two, in that state. And it always works, no matter what the character is, no matter what the words are. It always works if you commit to it.” This departure from all the character building methods most actors have been trained to can be mind blowing for performers.

“We all say it’s not real, it’s not realistic,” says Bullion, who will direct “Duck Soup.” ”But what makes the style work is the absolute sincerity, and the absolute commitment to real emotion. And that is what gives a harmonic. I don’t want someone ‘acting’ mad. I want the real emotion.”

Feldman notes, “If you pretend to be angry, you can see it immediately. And that exercise is the most important one that gets them to be real actors. This confidence to make choices that other people might not make.”

Outlandish as this approach might sound, it is firmly rooted in deeply established performance traditions, beginning with 16th century commedia dell arte, which used masked archetypal characters and a mix of script and improvisation. This has cropped up on Chicago stages in a variety productions, including Court Theatre’s 2016 “One Man, Two Guvnors” 
In The Conspirator’s adaptation for The Style, heavy make-up along with an abrupt, exaggerated delivery recalls the stylized performance of Japan’s Kabuki. But there is more to it than that.

Promoting the training workshops to actors, The Conspirators describe The Style’s combination of classic commedia dell’arte, kabuki, and sprinkles of Ariane Mnouchkine via actor Tim Robbins’ The Actors’ Gang, “a soupçon of clown” along with the aesthetic of actor John Cusack's New Crime Productions, with influences of “Bugs Bunny and punk rock.”

“One of the things Billy and I talked about before we did “Chicago Cop Macbeth” was not only how people treat Shakespeare too preciously, but also too linearly. As though every single monologue has one point to it. What we see is that people grow during these monologues. People are trying to outwit the other characters to get what they want. Sometimes it’s sarcasm. Our style punches that up. When you compare it to the recent Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, that was a snoozer. By putting it in the style we’re giving people not just entertainment to watch, but I think it breaks the story down better and makes it more understandable.”

Bullion agrees. “It’s accessible. Because you are laughing along with this meta reality we are creating, because you are laughing along with the cast, you are with them.” To attract contemporary audiences, Feldman believes more radical approaches to theater are called for.

“I would argue, and this is going to be controversial, people are not interested in realism in the theater. When you give them reality in the theater they go to sleep. Young playwrights will give me something, and I’ll say, ‘This is boring.’ And they’ll say, ‘Yeh, but it’s real.’ Nobody wants to watch me get ready to go to bed. That’s real too. Give me something outrageous.”

How this will play out in ”Duck Soup” will be known soon enough. We’ll meet Groucho’s character Rufus T. Firefly, just appointed dictator of Freedonia, who in the film lets us know,. “If you think this country's bad off now, just wait till I get through with it!” What can be said is we can expect the unexpected from The Conspirators’ version opening October 30 at Stars & Garters (formerly Otherworld Theater).