Backstage
Filing Away a Wealth of Material
Workaday Woes Fuel 'tempOdyssey'
Wednesday, November 29, 2006; Page C05
Playwright Dan Dietz, whose intimate, apocalyptic tragicomedy, "tempOdyssey," will run Dec. 6-31 at Studio Theatre 2ndstage, believes the world of temporary employment offers a seductive kind of nothingness that may numb pain, but can also drain humanity.
"I know a lot of people who temp so they can basically disappear all day," says Dietz. "I see a parallel between that and the kind of people who would rather go on a virtual tour than [see] the actual country. . . . When you deny yourself and those around you a sort of basic level of humanity and interaction, it's a lot easier to think of doing awful things to people."
  Evan Casey, left, Marybeth Fritzky and Cameron McNary rehearse for Dan Dietz's "tempOdyssey" at Studio 2ndstage. (Studio Theatre) |
Genny, the protagonist in "tempOdyssey," recalls in an extended flashback her trajectory from a hardscrabble childhood in rural Georgia to the basement of a nameless Seattle corporate high-rise (where bosses refer to all temps generically as "Jim" or "Jane") with a dead body in a filing cabinet and the explosive power at her fingertips to level the building. She has major unresolved issues, clearly.
"I met a lot of unhappy people when I was temping," Dietz says. They "just had to make their lives a lot grander" than they were or else be forced to "confront the relative insignificance of just being human."
Dietz began writing "tempOdyssey" in the spring of 2001. That August, he says, he took stock: "Okay, I've got a girl in the basement of an office building with a bomb. . . . If it was about anything, it was about Timothy McVeigh," the Oklahoma City bomber.
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Dietz's inspiration fizzled. "I felt that I didn't know how to write the play," he says. He eventually came back to it and "tempOdyssey" received a 2003 workshop production in Austin that led to fruitful rewrites. Now, he says, "if there's any link to terrorism, it's in the sort of self-mythologizing -- setting yourself up on a level that's more than human" -- that the temps indulge in.
Dietz says he did his share of temping in Austin during grad school. "A lot of the details and anecdotes about temping in the play are true," he says, including a gruesome discovery made by a temp in a hospital. "The thing that nobody else wants to do, it's easy to say, 'Let's have the temp do it,' " he says, citing the time he was ordered to search a dumpster for a computer monitor.
It is a truism in the nonprofit theater world that premiering a new play is actually easier than getting a second production of it. But the National New Play Network is underwriting a series of "rolling" premieres of "tempOdyssey" that will, as Dietz says, "leapfrog" him over that barrier. Besides the Studio production (directed by Christopher Gallu, who just staged Catalyst's "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui"), "tempOdyssey" is now playing in Denver, and in February the lights will go up on productions in Indianapolis and New Jersey.
GNP on the Rise
There has been no dearth of doofuses on the political scene this election year -- all fodder for John Simmons and Christine Thompson of Gross National Product. As founder of the comedy troupe, Simmons has been skewering politicos since 1979; Thompson joined in 1991. These days, the troupe has slimmed down to the duo, who are married to each other and to GNP.
Their latest show, "Son of a Bush," is a mix of scripted and improvised scenes, many with audience participation. Recently back from a run in San Diego, it plays on Saturday nights at Warehouse Theater on Seventh Street NW. Simmons says they've discovered "the audience likes to be a part of the process. We can find out where they're leading before the newspapers can, because they're honest."
"Son of a Bush" opens with Thompson taking a musical jab at Congress to the tune of "All That Jazz," titled "All That Graft." Simmons does a cranky, fidgety Dubya (on health care, "two words -- don't get sick"), sharing the stage with Thompson's bewigged, self-absorbed Hillary Clinton ("I've always been for and against the war").
Thompson says she has "real respect" for the senator: "She loves herself and I love her, too. . . . It takes a village, or it takes a Village People." But seriously, folks. Thompson has been spoofing Clinton for a while. During the 1996 presidential campaign, she played her and Simmons played Republican nominee Bob Dole. "How do you wake up with smeared Bob Dole makeup and [smeared] Hillary Clinton makeup and think, 'We're good bedfellows'?" she asks dryly.
While Thompson keeps her political views more or less to herself in an interview, Simmons makes no bones about his take on the Bush administration: "Katrina put the nail in the coffin as far as I'm concerned, showing Homeland Security couldn't protect Americans."
Thompson recognizes that the political emergence of Nancy Pelosi as House speaker-elect and other female leaders means she has her work cut out for her. Back in 1991, she recalls, her roles consisted of Rep. Pat Schroeder, State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler and Nancy Reagan. "I never in my wildest dreams, even though I hoped for this, thought there would be so many women" on the political scene.
Follow Spots
· Singer Jimi Ray Malary returns to MetroStage in "King of Cool: The Life and Music of Nat King Cole" (running Friday through Dec. 23) in a last-minute addition to MetroStage's schedule. Malary recently starred there in "Ellington: The Life and Music of the Duke." William Knowles again will be music director. Call 703-548-9044.
· Forum Theater & Dance will present British playwright Caryl Churchill's "The Skriker" Friday through Dec. 23 at the Warehouse Theater. In the play, a fairy from ancient British mythology turns up in modern London with dark plans. Nanna Ingvarsson will star under Kathleen Akerley's direction. Visit http:/
· "War of the Worlds," originally adapted by Howard Koch from H.G. Wells's 1898 novel as a radio play for Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre, will be presented by Scena Theatre at DCAC, 2438 18th St. NW, Saturday through Jan. 14. Visit http:/
