Uncomfortable Silences

Mia Wallace: Don't you hate that?
Vincent Vega: What?
Mia Wallace: Uncomfortable silences. Why do we feel it's necessary to yak about bullshit in order to be comfortable?
Vincent Vega: I don't know. That's a good question.
– Quentin Tarantino “Pulp Fiction”

Playwright Edward Albee and the latest incarnation of Martha from his play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – Kathleen Turner – were at the Westport Country Playhouse last Monday night. The night was billed as an evening of conversation. “Be a fly on the wall” was the enticement on the flyer. I’ve used the same phrase in the Bumpspark* publicity.

The evening was pleasant enough. The venue is state of the art and yet constructed like an airy summer camp, rough-hewn and relaxed. I’ve been to public “conversations” before at many venues and the attempt to capture the extemporaneous usually slides into one of two other formats – the interview or the Q&A. In this case it was the latter.

Albee could bumpspark, if given the opportunity. I could tell that immediately. He was perfectly relaxed sitting in a plush leather chair in front of an audience of 300. That’s how it was set up, two living room chairs and an end table, all raised up like an alter. I wanted to run on stage and turn the two chairs around, away from the audience, in the hopes that the two occupants would forget us and really start talking.

Both Turner and Albee alluded a few times to their car ride on the way to the venue, to a dialogue behind the wheel that “they didn’t want to bore us with.” This was the real exchange that we would never hear.

Kathleen Turner might be able to bumpspark, but not in this kind of format. She was anxious from the moment they came out on stage. The uncomfortable silences killed her. Albee relaxed in the silences. He was only bothered by her discomfort. Turner is a brilliant actress. She trembles with energy and intellect in person, but she has been in the Hollywood system too long. Her internal editor, her PR man, looms over her every word. She's too afraid of what she might say to be involved in this kind of experiment.

Albee was ready to ponder, leaning back and thinking and grabbing questions from the air. Less than fifteen minutes into the event, Turner couldn’t take it anymore. “Let’s get questions from the audience.” And the opportunity was gone.

If the two of them were counterparts on a Bumpspark* episode, in an empty Broadway theater, or at one of their homes, and we had their trust, and they trusted the cinematographers, then maybe, with enough time, we could get to a real conversation.

The best moment of the evening was, of course, the most uncomfortable. Most of the questions from the audience were softballs. “Do you have any advice for young actors?” “What is your favorite of your plays?” Then an older woman stood up and declared that she was an elitist, that she “got” Albee’s plays, and that she was frustrated by fellow audience members who did not get them, i.e. the dumb people.

The audience did not like her immediately. I was more amazed by her lack of self-awareness and humor. But what a catalyst! Connecticut Post reporter Charles Walsh was apparently in the audience and mentioned this incident in his column. He was proud of the audience who booed her back into her seat. I wanted her to moderate the discussion. Forget political correctness - some of the most interesting responses came out of this momentary heat. Albee was appalled at the idea of one correct response to his plays.

“No audience member sees the same play,” he declared.

Turner found another good tangent during those initial, too few moments of contemplation. She brought up the collective organism that is the audience – how people go through a shared emotional experience in a theater that they rarely get anywhere else these days.

I found it ironic that while Albee and Turner were talking about the energy of a play, how anything can happen during a night’s performance, they were avoiding that evening’s goal – to find a similar energy in improvised banter.

In the end, Albee and Turner were pressed for time. They had to be concise. They had to be polite. They had no time to reflect. And thus we never really got to any worthy destinations.

I was very saddened by the loss of George Carlin this past week. I’m positive that he would have been a great counterpart for an episode. I’m anxious to finish the fundraising and get to the shooting.

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