Laura Jacqmin

How many times have you been in a show and at some point during tech week a random photographer shows up, stands you under a spot light and clicks away with no concept of what the show is about? If a publicity still appears with a review, it looks like a still from a 1950's claymation film. I don't want to do that kind of photography. So, I asked to sit in on a run of each of the shows I'm doing publicity shots for at The Side Project.

Now don't get me wrong: I'm a dyed-in-the-wool theater geek. I can watch rehearsals for just about anything endlessly, but there are two concepts that even the pastiest of theater denizens approach with caution: "original script" and "first run through." Combine the two into one rehearsal and enter the theater at your own risk.

In my theater career, I've had my fair share of experiences with original scripts. Of course the most memorable was the reading I did where I was handed the script, sight-unseen, and asked to read the lead character -- an innocent from the Great Plains who gets off a bus to L.A. and in a page-long monologue (single-spaced, no less and in 8-point font) describes in detail his newly discovered love of being raped in the mouth until he bleeds. That experience, coupled with the afore-mentioned role as Satan/Hollywood agent, pretty much predisposes me to think that all postmodern, Judy-Garland, Mickey-Rooney, I'm-gonna-be-a-star scripts are poison. (And yes, I can play Satan and Virgin. It's called dramatic RANGE!)

Last night I went to the first run thru of Butt Nekkid, written by Laura Jacqmin. This was the first run without book, and the first time the playwright would hear her play since a reading seven months ago. In addition, there was a lighting designer and me. Actors are bound to be nervous. There was no set, lots of stops and starts while furniture was moved, actors calling for lines.

The play was a revelation. Above is a quick shot I snapped of Laura Jacqumin. She's a writer with Chicago Dramatist's Workshop, just received a commission from Victory Gardens, and is about to be recognized as possibly one of Chicago's most important theatrical voices in a decade. Butt Nekkid is set in the hip-hop music industry. It plays with the concepts of racial tensions, but it's not a MESSAGE play. At heart it's a stark love story for the twenty-first century. It's dark and raw. The characters are not just mouthpieces for ideologies, but fully drawn people with pure motivations, selfish motivations, conflicting motivations, who wrestle with moral ambiguities and are heroic one minute and despicable the next. Jacqmin is not only a smart, complex writer, she's practical. Her scripts are written with intimate spaces in mind, but not just for modest production values. Her dialogue is taylored for an intimate stage so that you feel like you're peeping into a private moment. That's not to say the dialogue is without style, but it's a silky flow of ideas instead of a mash of words. The characters have original, complex emotions that shimmer on a tiny stage. You know the people on the stage.

And thank the baby Jesus there is finally a playwright who can write a female character who isn't just "the girlfriend" or a male character with breasts. Jacqmin's Sarah is an apocolyptic ingenue. She's without any discernable power, yet she's not simply the reason for the events of the play, she's the driver of them. The men are her foils, her pawns.

The run thru was electric.

Keep an eye open for Laura Jacqumin and her work. Her production of Ten Virgins will be going up at Chicago Dramatist's later this season. And check the Archetype website later this month for the publicity stills for this production and Smart, running in rep with Butt Nekkid at The Side Project.