Heads of Skate

Bonus interviews with the creators of Oedpus at FDR.

by A.D. Amorosi

There was so much more to the story behind Oedipus at FDR, I asked City Paper to run the rest of my interviews online. Not only do I think it better informs audiences as to the crew and cast's choices and decisions, it gives me a place to share such fantastic leftover skate stories.

• Emmanuelle Delpech-Ramey, director
• Suli Holum, writer
• Pearce Bunting, actor
• Josh Nims, skating choreographer
• James Sugg, sound designer

Emmanuelle Delpech-Ramey: Thanks for gathering everybody's thoughts and words. This project has been an incredible collaboration. Information is coming from all over and it is rich and intense.

City Paper: That's fine. So tell me, why did you and your husband take off for Paris before the show — was it a calm-before-the-storm sort of thing?

EDR: Going to France is actually never the most relaxing trip. There are a lot of people to see there! And family affairs. ... It does bring me back to this other reality, though. I go back to something I deeply understand and recognize, which is not always the case here. And that is restful, yes.

CP: When did you first encounter Oedipus in Colonus and what was so entrancing to you about the tale to begin with — or at least this section in particular? The death? The absolution? The heroism? The blind leading the blind?

EDR: When I read it a long time ago, I was definitely amazed by the messenger speech, the description of the death, so mysterious and beautiful. To think about death that way was a new option. Today I think the play's strength is about the fact that Oedipus becomes a blessing to others, despite the fact that he sends his sons to death and that he keeps his anger intact. He is not a wise man. The notions of good and bad and judgment are different in the play. The gods decided it all, the curse and the blessing. It is a world with gods. Not a single good god, but rather many moody ones.

For the minds that are always ready to decide what is right or wrong, this play is a fresh wind that makes a mess in our convictions. That uncertain space is very healthy to me.

CP: Critics and Oedipal experts always make mention of the fact that Oedipus in Colonus is more philosophical, less action-filled. Was that in any way an entrée for you to make some action vis-a-vis skateboarding?

EDR: No. Skating brings sensations for sure, but the skaters go from a point of the skate park to the other. It had rhythm, and brings tremendous energy, but doesn't change the action of the play. That's the trick — skating could be boring, too. ... It is definitely a thrill at first, then you get used to it. The play is about entrances and exits. Characters appear, disappear and leave Oedipus alone. The action is happening within the man.

CP: Oedipus at Colonus is the only one of the three stories to address moral responsibility explicitly. Oedipus denies responsibility for actions he was fated to commit. Why did that notion loom so large for you now? Large enough to make you want to do this show? What bigger — or personal — issues were you looking at?

EDR: The fact that Oedipus is aware of the curse might make him responsible for his actions. He cannot escape. He will commit the infamies told by the oracle and not by choice. But, by knowing about it, doesn't it make him half responsible? Or just by being a human? The contradiction is very important. Can we own the irrational, helpless side of our existence? Assume it? Look at it and accept it? Even if the gods decide for me, if my fate is in the hands of creatures that are neither good nor bad and do not respect any moral codes, am I not still responsible for what I will do with it and how I will respond to it? Am I not owned and own myself all at once? I want to learn to respond to what life offers more than to create willful actions. As a person and an artist.

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HALF OFF DEPOT

Why live life at full price?

I also think that it is important to relate to myths that way. They allow us to get out of the psychological labyrinth that we all love. They allow us to not be righteous and accept a complete confusion about the rules. Anyone who offers a pre-made response about what life is about is either a fool or a thief.

CP: Under what circumstances did Oedipus at FDR become an idea for you?

EDR: On a Sunday afternoon, on a walk with Joshua at FDR. He took me there and I loved the space. The first thing I saw was an amazing amphitheater. A place for a show. A place for performance. I remembered the play vaguely, read it again and when I read it, I knew this was the space for it. There are amazing similarities

CP: So this skate park came before the idea of a skate park or doing the play.

EDR: Yes. The space came before the idea. I knew I liked the play but kind of forgot about it. The space dictated the rules of the style, of the writing, of the sound, lights, etc.

CP: Can you skate? Can all of your cast skate? Did they try? Did Pearce try?

EDR: I don't skate. I didn't even try. I have no balance. Pearce slides on his back. Brian Osborne can skate a little. Hinako Arao is learning. And Mikaal Sulaiman can ride bikes.

CP: Was there a certain amount of "fitting in" to be done — making the Oedipus story fit your setting? And why choose to do an original text with Suli Holum? What was so riveting about her work at Pig Iron and with Gentlemen Volunteers that you chose her?

EDR: The fitting has been about setting the play in the actual space. So yes, we have been looking for a correlation between the world of skating and Oedipus' tale. This play, like its name says, happens at FDR, not at Colonus. We use and acknowledge the real space. Suli has made what she calls a free-wheel adaptation. The story is the same but the set-up is not. Oedipus enters a holy ground in both plays. We are keeping the Greek references but allowing them to exist in our modern minds and this setting.

I worked with Suli a lot in the past. Her text was complete. She can handle a story from beginning to end. She has a sense of the whole piece. She knows how to pursue thoughts. She understands what she wants to convey but doesn't over-explain it. That is rare. As a collaborator, she was able to really listen, to absorb all the information that I gave her and to transform them into the actual play. When you find a writer to work with that says yes first, that is able to be completely submerged by someone else's ideas and beliefs and is able to make it her own, it is a great gift. You want to work with that person all the time

CP: So, what happens — it's three hours long?

EDR: There's a bus-tour ride, ice cream and pizza on-site, tarot readings, the show — which is around one hour-plus — and a funeral dance party.

CP: What was hardest, most difficult about staging this?

EDR: The space is tiring. We work with and around skaters that are not part of the show. We have to convince them that what we do is important, too. ... We try to say yes to what's going on at the time. We have to be flexible. This is not our space. It does belong to the skaters. ... If there is no school that day, well, we will have to do our showing around a bunch of kids that are here to skate and will not necessarily care about Oedipus and theater. The scenes that include text for both characters and skaters are the hardest to stage. It is hard to communicate there — we are all on mics and headphones in this huge space. It's a mess. And I have to see and concentrate on everything. We just have to work on one small section each time.

CP: Why are you choosing to not perform? What does directing offer that performance cannot?

EDR: This is the first time I am directing. There are seven characters, five skaters and a huge space that is not empty. I wanted to be Antigone at first, but when I came back to reality, I realized I probably had enough to do as a director. Directing and performing are just different. I love to perform and miss it while I am directing. But for this project, I had no choice. I can't do it all. I might create a character that hangs out with the audience during the run. Not sure what yet, though

CP: How and why did you hook up with Josh Nims?

EDR: Well, I went on a journey. I had to find the person in charge of the skate park to learn about the rules, to see if we could collaborate on this. So I went on a search. It took me a while. I talked to a bunch of people about it, got numbers and e-mails but one night at a party I met a skater who told me about Josh and gave me his cell phone. I called him and he was kind of into it. We met, he agreed to do the show, was very excited, signed letters for grants and here we were. Since then we have been working and we are both so happy about this collaboration. ... Without him, the show would not have happened. He and Dave Hunt have been there since the beginning and they are the keys to FDR skate park for us. You don't do a show at FDR without one of them. Josh also understands skating and theater really well. We have the same instinct about many moments in the choreography of the skaters

CP: What does directing say about you at this point in your career?

EDR: I'm 35. I think to be the director of a project allows me to work within a theater style and human values that I respect deeply. I can choose the people I work with, I can create a team that I trust and respect. It is very important to me to have an ethic about the way I work and the work I do. Never perform or make a show I would not like to see.

CP: Now what?

EDR: After this show, in one or two years, I'm going to do a French play about an Indian American married to a French woman coming back to America: L'exchange from Paul Claudel. A four-person play about a love affair, exile, a diva and a rich American. Very poetic, very dark. I will perform the French woman, and co-direct with Suli Holum. I am trying both this time. Then, my next project, a festival of Philadelphia based work in Paris. And vice and versa. I think it is time for me to use the fact that I am from both places now. And I would love Parisians to see the work that people do here. And I would love Philadelphians to see the work that people do in Paris.

So this is a big project, but we shall see. May the gods allow it.

City Paper: You wrote for Emmanuelle Delpech-Ramey before — Gentlemen Volunteers. What was so pleasurable about that experience that you'd want to do and write more — under her direction, yet? What are her talents? What makes her so formidable?

Suli Holum: My history with Manu spans 10 years of collaborative work, mostly under the auspices of Pig Iron. I first worked with her as a performer in The Tragedy of Joan of Arc when she had just arrived in the states and she barely spoke English and she totally blew me away. She is one of the bravest and most passionate theater-makers I've ever met. Formidable is a great word for her — she's got really high standards but at the same time, she is very encouraging. I've come to understand that she believes that theater is about community, but not in an insular way. She believes that theater can and should explode the barriers between people, communities, cultures, languages, sexes both in the process of creating it and the performance. High standards, and super-inspiring.

CP: What makes you so formidable, then?

SH: I've always loved to write, though over the years I have tended to focus more on performing. I think that my experience as a performer has made me a writer who writes text that tastes good to actors. I think I'm a good match for Manu because I think of text as an element that is working in tandem with the physicality of the performers and the rhythm of the space and the soundscape, rather than as a blueprint for performance. I happen to have a long history with Oedipus — it was my thesis project in college and I staged Ted Hughes' amazing adaptation of Seneca's Oedipus in collaboration with composer Coleman Lindsley. Manu and I have been chewing on the challenge of chorus in performance since we worked on Joan of Arc — the Pig Iron Production included a tragic chorus, so that conversation is continuing here. Both of those productions involved stylized speech and choreography for the chorus. Manu's concept of a skater chorus takes us in a totally new direction. The power of this chorus is that it bridges reality and theatre — these guys really belong to the space and the space belongs to them — so I have been working with them to understand the power of the park, and the text is a blend of adaptation, invention and skater interviews.

CP: What did she tell you her immediate goal and desire was for this Oedipus? What was she looking to express?

SH: A couple challenges. ... I knew immediately that Manu was right, the park is the perfect place to stage this play. She came to me with some things to solve — how to make this play relevant, not induce an intellectual response, or an appreciation. We needed to tap into something that was more than the play — like Mabou Mines did with their genius Gospel at Colonus — and more than the park.

CP: Since you're writing text onto the original, what did you want to express?

SH: My grandfather on his deathbed was huge and tiny, powerful and helpless, thunderous and terrified and completely human. The rest of us were just trying to keep up. And Manu challenged me to write about faith and fate in a way that transcended organized religion, so I've tried using physics and the way that skaters talk about skating and the way that the park is sacred for them.

CP: How was the sound — the loud environment? How did it figure into what you wrote?

SH: At one point we were thinking about no spoken words at all, just maybe projections and physicality, and then James Sugg came up with a way to broadcast the performance via radio which opened up so much nuance to me. James and I are working very closely — the style is like a spoken-word/techno opera, the sound design is really sweeping and creates a rhythm and a texture. It helps you hear the words. And Manu and the actors and the other designers are creating a performance style that fills the space. The effect is a little like the way listening to your iPod while waiting on the subway platform makes everything around you cinematic — or maybe that's just me. Without it you can just feel engulfed — it gives you perspective.

CP: Well ... how did you do?

SH: I am still doing — the text is still developing in response to the final weeks of rehearsal — but I'm pretty proud of it, and I hope it lives up to what I think is one of the dopest theatrical concepts ever.

City Paper: So how did you wind up in a skate park in South Philly?

Pearce Bunting: After she saw Killer Joe with me as Ansel, [Emmanuelle Delpech-Ramey] called and said she wanted to stage Oedipus at Colonus in a skate park under I-95 with the chorus played by local skateboarders and she wanted me to play Oedipus. Well, clowns really are the best actors for tragedy.

So that was it. I said yes. I would need to work out some logistics, but yes. We would make it happen. She knows my work, she knows I can be big and that I'll run with it, but left to my own devices, I am very limited and I need people who know how to push me past what I think I can do. That's where it's the scariest and the most fun for me. Also, I've known Manu for a few years but aside from a simpatico we share, it's mostly been admiration from afar. That's been the case with James Sugg and a lot of the other artists involved, too, so I feel like I was asked to be a member of the badass club for a little while.

CP: What did you base your old man Oedipus on?

PB: My take on Oedipus was pretty stiff — mostly based on Freud, Edith Hamilton's Greek Mythology books, and a production I did years ago at People's Light that involved reliving childhood memories and telling the Oedipus story. Then I saw Lee Breuer's Gospel at Colonus and my head exploded. I also attended a lecture by Leon Katz at Yale Drama School where he described Oedipus' suffering and ascension into the heavens as if he was actually there when it happened, and this wasn't some ordinary, snoring talk. He was famous for this lecture. By the end, there were tears running down his face. You could've heard a pin drop. That's when it all became very, very human to me. I never actually thought I'd be playing him, though. So now we've been working on it for over a year, discovering and embracing writing/movement/performance styles that aren't easy but are based on what each of us bring to the collaboration and our human connection with each other. I'm getting into this body-mind approach with Manu, where you are desire and misery and cursed and blind and old and noble, etc., with your gestures — crazy, difficult shit for me because I want to make it all psychological but that won't read in this giant, surreal space that we're performing in. When it works, though, it really works and anything can be born — chaos, laughter, danger, sadness, DRAMA! This production is a lot about Oedipus' connection with Theseus at this sacred spot he arrives at and how that helps him let go. But he is a bitter, twisted, nasty, domineering, bombastic, passionate, loving, cursed, frail, tender and strong old man who is driven by a prophecy and a promise of finding a way out. He does his time on this Earth feeling like he's not to blame, trying to make sense of it all and then moves on. But he doesn't make sense of it all, he's too self-involved. It ends up making sense of him.

CP: Are you the world's first skating Oedipus? Do mythical characters belong on skateboard? Is this the beginning of a trend?

PB: I don't skate in this show; I'm a blind old man! People skate around me and I stand still and gesture a lot. And sometimes fall down. Actually, I have a bad history of personal injury in public places — I think it might be my own family curse and like Oedipus; I'm just doing my best to avoid the inevitable. You definitely don't want to see me skateboard. I did skateboard once in drama school in The Dragon by Yvgeny Shvartz. I was the Dragon and I played one of his three heads as a nun who rode a skateboard in knickers with red crosses painted on them, singing "Dominica-Nica-Nica." As far as mythic roles and skateboards, Mephistopheles could definitely ride a board and transcend the laws of nature and look good doing it. Also, maybe the Battle of Agincourt in a skate park or the Trojan War.

City Paper: What was Emmanuelle Delpech-Ramey's pitch to you on her brand of Oedipus?

Josh Nims: She said she had a vision for using FDR as a truly urban stage for a production of Oedipus. Any time I can push skateboarding as something other than a vehicle for property destruction and rebellious teenagers in tight pants, I'm into it. The idea of the skaters as the chorus was a perfect fit with the role of the chorus in classic tragedy as the local folks reacting to the action as it unfolds before them.

CP: How had you known her/known of her before your meeting?

JN: I knew nothing about Manu when I first met her. That said, we hit it off right away talking about skateboarding and movement — there's a lot of style and grace in skateboarding that translates well into her world of physical theater. Once we worked together in the studio, I found her to be a great coach for movement and timing. My respect for her and the rest of the Pig Iron crew has only grown since we started working together on this over a year ago. Manu moved mountains to develop this vision into a final product worth showing to three days of crowds

CP: What was the hardest part of translating her ideas/the theatrical notion of Oedipus itself to a skate thing?

JN: FDR is a literally rough place that requires really skilled skaters to use it with style and speed. It wasn't easy to recruit a cast that could ride the place well enough to do something creative. There are a lot of great riders at FDR, but most are not interested in theater — certainly not Greek tragedy. It took a while to find the open minds wiling to make the time commitment, but we came out with a fantastic cast for the chorus. My great friend and FDR local Dave Hunt has been the co-choreographer, we could not have gotten this far without his help and creativity. I have not been as much of an FDR local in the past year due to the birth of my daughter, and his involvement really helped.

CP: What challenges did FDR offer the production?

JN: There's no water, no electricity, and you're underneath I-95. Skaters who ride there regularly want to come out and skate, not sit around while the theater people work out scenes — so we've been really careful about scheduling rehearsals at low traffic times, etc. That has been another part of my task — with a lot of help from Dave — being a liaison with the FDR community to keep them informed about what we're up to and having knowledge about who's at the park when. Some dudes aren't going to be friendly ever and it's best to let them get their session in instead of trying to educate them about Greek tragedy, etc. That said, everyone has been really cool about it and I have been surprised at the number of skaters who have told me that they are really into it and sincerely wished me luck.

CP: Did you have to teach non-skaters the art form?

JN: One cast member rides away on a skateboard at the end of a scene. But other than that, no. She caught on fast. Dave is a great teacher for beginner skaters. He works at a skate camp in the summers. Did I mention that we could not have done it without Dave?

CP: How did it turn out for you and the skaters? Is this something you're anxious to repeat; turning classical drama into a Skatescapade?

JN: We'll see after opening night. I like to think that good art should not be too repeatable. It has been rewarding to work with such talented professionals like Manu, James, Mark, Suli, to name a few — they definitely raised my game in terms of tying together skateboarding and live art in new ways that have not been attempted many times before — if at all

James Sugg, sound designer

City Paper: Let's quickly define what three shows you're working on during Live Arts/Fringe 2008.

James Sugg: Wandering Alice is a dance installation with live music composed by Mike Kiley and myself. We will be performing in that one. Sea of Birds has an original score by me, and one live musician will be performing it each night. And Oedipus, for which I'm doing sound design and performing.

CP: What was the immediate goal for you in terms of creating sound for Oedipus at FDR, and how did that then become something sonorous rather than something to just block out interstate noise?

JS: Most immediately, I want to know how the music is going to enhance the play. I never begin with technical thoughts, but musical and theatrical thoughts. In this case we quickly came to the sound of trip-hop and dirty beats and samples as our palette. Quickly on the heels of this, however, lingered the challenge of how to deliver this sound to an audience placed directly under the interstate. During workshops last year, I actually set up a loudspeaker system and tried to overpower the white noise. I was absolutely impossible to create intimacy, though, and i realized that it was a road of aural exhaustion. That's when Conrad Bender brought up the headphones concept

CP: Did you have an idea of what O@FDR should sound like before you started?

JS: I didn't. I figured we had to do something urban and hip to reflect the skaters, etc. But eventually you get the actors and the play in front of you and the story reigns supreme; you know, when the music fits and lifts everyone up.

CP: Were you able — did you desire — to include the "natural" environmental sound?

JS: The design has a few references to the crossroads of airport, shipyard, train tracks. But. Truthfully, there is going to be so much environmental sound, I won't need to bring much. It is so loud out there.

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)