Fun, Free Drama At the Red Dot

A trilogy of shorts by Fly Steffens serves as a pleasant suture between Summer and Autumn this year. Three shorts assert themselves in the cozy east side back patio of the Red Dot on 2498 Bartlett Avenue. Inspired by work of Charles Bukowski and James Joyce, the program goes by the title Love Is A Horse With A Broken Leg Trying To Stand While 45,000 People Watch.

The first short features tall, thin Tim Palacek as an impoverished and unemployed writer who can't pay the rent. He has brought a girl named Goldie (Dayna Schmidt) back to his disheveled place so that they can drink. It's an awkward moment between two acquaintances that has its own kind of messed-up grace about it. The interaction ambles in and  out of exploring concepts of identity and security as the two make some kind of connection while the world outside periodically pounds on the door. 

This one was kind of a strange experience for me with respect to the venue. It feels very much like I might have had conversations like this years ago on similar block of the east side. For me the atmosphere and location of the show amplified and echoed Steffens' exploration of identity as it raised a mirror at who I might have been in a sense quite a long time ago. In a sense, the characters are blank enough as archetypes that it would seem almost anyone could relate to them on that kind of level.

The second short is an intersection between three characters. Ian Tanudjaja plays a poet who only ever wrote one good poem--and that one was by Bukowski. He's been lost trying to progress and grow but the only progress he's ever made has been on just the one piece that always reads the same. In a way, this could be kind of a metaphor for Bukowski himself, but the production is not going for a one-to-one correlation between the poet of the play and Bukowski. Tanudjaja doesn't carry a wariness about him in the role, choosing instead to play up the restless frustration of the character. This makes a lot of sense actually . . . Tanudjaja is a very young actor. The kind of world-weary frustration of a poet who never quite got beyond a single poem wouldn't fit his stage presence all that well. He's got a charisma that's looking to break out of the script that's been written for him on many, many levels. It's a conflict of potential. 

Alex Van Abel sits at a booth on the Red Dot's patio that serves as a booth in a diner called "Robert's Place." Like the poet, Alex Van Abel's novelist is frustrated creatively--incapable of getting any interest on his completed novel from any publisher. He's stuck in that booth trying to figure out a menu that has changed only slightly from when he understood it. There's more of an intert frustration in him than there is with the poet. 

Liz Leighton plays a photographer who sometimes regards the world through a telescope. She captures moments. She talks to the poet. She talks to the novelist. There really isn't any interaction between novelist and poet. She's the artist connecting the two who has an interesting creative dynamic to relate to the both of them with.

It's a short about the nature of art and human expression. In places it's remarkably sharp. 

After intermission and some pleasant late summer ambience in the back patio of the Red Dot, the show returns with the third and final short. It's my favorite of the three. Director Emily Rindt did an impressive job with a script that plays games with time, space and location. Glenn Widdicombe plays James--a guy who doesn't seem to have the odds on his side in women or horse racing. Widdicombe appears to be quietly unassuming as the central nice guy in the story. Stacey Gerard plays Joyce--a woman who may be a waitress or a lover or a stripper or something. (Identity is a fusion in this one.) James wants to help out Joyce, but things are complicated. 

Brianna Borouchoff plays James' date--a woman with an indeterminate name and uncertain level of intimacy with James. Borouchoff is a bit of a mad hatter in the role, but not in a way that feels at all grating or unpleasant. Like the rest of the world, she's out of synch with James and so she can come across as being a little caustic at times. It's a fun performance, though. Tall, thin Tim Palacek plays a jerk. He "owns" Joyce because she owes him a debt. Palacek seems just a bit more natural in this role than he does in the first short. The guy looks kind of like the cover of GQ, so he seems all the more powerful in a role of authority that seems twisted and sinister. The disheveled poet doesn't fit him quite as well. 

Dayna Schmidt and Liz Leighton round out the cast as a couple of waitresses. They're clearly playing different characters than they did earlier in the program, but it was kind of fun for me to think of this waitressing job as the day job for Goldie from the first short and the photographer from the second. The fun aspect about the diner setting is that it mixes with the rest of the location disorientation that plays out over the course of the story. There really isn't any stage, so this play that happens at a race track and a strip club and a diner is being staged on the back patio of a fun Cafe/Cocktail place/pizza place on the east side. Everything gets pleasantly blurry, bringing the problems of a very sympathetic Widdicombe into the foreground in a really enjoyable way. 

Love Is A Horse With A Broken Leg Trying To Stand While 45,000 People Watch continues September 4th, 10th and 11th (Tuesdays and Wednesdays only) at the Red Dot on 2498 Bartlett. All shows start at 7:30 pm. For more information, visit Love Is A Horse online.