Theater In Dialogue

bad, clown, bad Jeffrey M. Jones and his nasty circus

MAR 2005
By and
Photograph of A Man’s Best Friend by Katherine Owens. Left, Bruce DuBose as Andy Warhol, right, Tom Lenaghen as Sluggo the clown.

Playwrights Sheila Callaghan and Jason Grote recently saw the Undermain Theater’s production of Jeffrey M. Jones’s play A Man’s Best Friend, and they discussed the play in Sheila’s Brooklyn kitchen. Let it suffice to say, the play hinges on the plight of Sluggo, the prototypical Bad Clown.

Jason Grote: There are these playwrights that I always associate in my head—Jeff Jones, Len Jenkin, Eric Overmeyer, Mac Wellman. They take old-fashioned detritus of popular American culture—like the snake-oil salesman, the traveling circus, vaudeville—and they deconstruct it, or they all have their own individual takes on it, but they love this vernacular.

Sheila Callaghan: It feels like they grew up in the circus. Though none of them did. I don’t know any of their backgrounds, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t grow up in the circus. [Laughs.]

Grote: I think actually, uh, Neil LaBute grew up in the circus. [Laughs.]

Callaghan: That makes sense. [Laughs.]

Grote: It was the Mormon circus. [Laughs.]

Callaghan: So did these characters love the squid-baby?

Grote: I think Jane did.

Callaghan: No one acknowledged that it was a squid except Sluggo.

Grote: Exactly. Everyone else thought it was a baby. The really horrifying thing about the play, about the climax, is that the clown cartoon violence becomes very real. And in a really problematic way. It’s not like the violence of a Hollywood movie, where you feel like the people getting the violence directed at them somehow deserve it. This was the opposite of that, where the person doing the violence was more or less totally unsympathetic, and the people that were the victims of the violence…it was totally undeserved.

Callaghan: Like the Steve character?

Grote: Yeah, but I’m talking about that moment at the end, where Sluggo kills everybody on stage. He kills his wife, he kills the baby.

Callaghan: But I didn’t really buy that as violence. Because they all turn into zombies anyway [laughs].

Grote: Well, it keeps veering back and forth between the cartoon violence that you feel comfortable laughing at, and the violence that makes you squirm in your seat. Theater of Cruelty violence.


A Man’s Best Friend by Jeffrey M. Jones, directed by Katherine Owens, runs from February 25 – March 19, Wednesday – Saturday @ 7:30 p.m. The Walker Space, 46 Walker Street, NYC. Tickets: $15. Theatermania at 212- 352-2101 or www.theatermania.com.


IN DIALOGUE is a column written by playwrights about playwrights, with a focus on showcasing new texts. If you are a playwright, and would like to write a column, please contact Emily DeVoti at: editorial@brooklynrail.org.

Contributors

Jason Grote

Jason Grote is the author of 1001, Maria/Stuart, and Hamilton Township. He is writing the screenplay for What We Got: DJ Spooky's Quest For The Commons, and co-hosting the Acousmatic Theater Hour on WFMU.

Sheila Callaghan

Sheila Callaghan is a playwright living in Brooklyn. Several of her short pieces will be seen as part of UNCLE SAM'S SATIRIC SPECTACULAR at this year's Humana Festival, and DEAD CITY, her loose adaptation of Joyce's ULYSSES, will be read on April 4 as part of the Public's New Works Now series. Visit her at sheilacallaghan.com

RECOMMENDED ARTICLES


Jeffrey Cheung

By John Cappetta

APR 2019 | ArtSeen

Jeffrey Cheung's drawings of many-sexed and ambiguously gendered characters in various states of sexual play deliver an answer to cis people's apparent confusion about how post-gendered fucking works. Cheung's first solo-show at Muddguts is hung salon style—crowded, nearly floor to ceiling, with little to no space between the works.

JEFFREY PERKINS:
George

By Mark Bloch

APR 2018 | ArtSeen

Jeffrey Perkins’s George is an important new addition to the twin canons of art and anti-art.

Saeed Jones: How We Fight for Our Lives

By Deena ElGenaidi

OCT 2019 | Books

Jones takes us through his childhood and adolescence, through feelings of shame and sadness, through incidents in which he learns he would never belong or find peace within certain groups and social circles. The story draws you in as he talks about his relationship with his evangelical grandmother and how her beliefs contrast with the Buddhist beliefs of his mother. Jones’s story becomes particularly heartbreaking in the ways he discusses his mother, her struggle to understand his sexuality, and the sacrifices she makes for him as a single mother.

Tayari Jones’s An American Marriage

By Deena ElGenaidi

APR 2018 | Books

Tayari Jones’s novel An American Marriage details the story of Roy and Celestial, a couple living in Georgia. The narrative is a familiar one: a man goes to prison for a crime he did not commit, while his wife continues to live her life in the outside world.

ADVERTISEMENTS
close

MAR 2005

All Issues