Regular readers know that I adore The Civilians. Sharp, smart and wildly creative, this young downtown theater company mixes politics with cultural cabaret to make a memorable impact with every performance. Now, "The Civilians has announced its Winter/Spring 2006 tour dates, including a 3 week Off-Broadway run of a new version of Nobody's Lunch at the beautiful 59E59 Theaters in Manhattan. We’ve rewritten the show with support of the Sundance Theatre Lab, adding new updated interviews." Very exciting. I was fortunate to snag an interview with Artistic Director Steven Cosson as he ran around town on the eve of the new show, which opens this week.
Lauren Cerand: I saw an earlier version of this production at PS 122. How has it been revised and re-worked since then? What new elements are you most excited about in the new Nobody's Lunch?
Steve Cosson: All of the characters' text in the show come from interviews, and as the show is about "how you know what you know" in the present political climate... I felt we needed to catch up with the shifts in the landscape over the past two years. As an example, in the early version (and this bit is in the new show as well) an Egyptian grad student cuts his phone interview short fearing that all Arabs' phones are tapped. In 2004 that seemed like a valid although perhaps excessive worry. Now that we know the government is secretly wiretapping "terrorists" like the Quakers it seems like a perfectly normal assumption. We did a slew of new interviews over this past summer and fall, mostly asking people what they know and think about subjects that are particularly epistemologically problematic now - like whether the US is engaged in torture - what is "war" now that we have a stateless, seemingly permanent enemy. We also had some new ideas we wanted to try out, like asking kids how they know what's real. A difficult question for a 6 year old. And me too. Ultimately, the new material was really more of an impetus for a major rewrite of the show. I think it took all of us involved some time and distance to really fully digest the subject of this show - and with this new version I think we were able to take it to a whole new level. So there isn't one particular part I'm more excited about - I'm actually excited that all the parts are coming together to reveal something about the present in a way that's theatrical, musical, goofy, upsetting and very... "Civilians."
LC: What's the best part about being an artistic director for a politically and creatively adventurous theater company? And, conversely, what's the biggest challenge facing The Civilians today?
SC: The best part is getting to pursue ideas that I'm passionate about with a group of collaborators and colleagues that I respect and enjoy working with. And even though we are a small and independent company here in New York, I feel like our work is having a broader impact thanks to touring. We're also looking into doing more in terms of audio recordings, ancillary film projects, publications. So I'm hoping our work will reach even more people. Not that it's all about numbers - I'm just excited that now after 5 years we've proven that it's possible to do something different and that there is an audience that responds to this kind of work. So the best part is really that it's possible - and the hardest part is that we're always riding the edge between possible and impossible. I'm excited by the fact that our work is different, that we combine entertainment with big ideas and politics, that we tackle sometimes volatile subjects. At the same time these aspects of our work sometimes make it difficult to fit into the extant niches in the cultural field. And the cultural field especially in theater can be very conservative. Not conservative in the Pat Robertson way, but conservative in that it's not a mindset that doesn't really assimilate change very easily. But in the end I'm mostly hopeful - and happy that our work continues to garner interest from people who don't otherwise go to theater. And if I have a big cultural goal it's that really. I worry that so much of new theater is conceived for a specific audience of like-minded peers... and I'm going to continue to believe that it's possible to be ambitious, experimental and speak to a broad public.
LC: Finally, Lux Lotus readers enjoy a good meal -- what's your favorite spot for lunch in New York?
SC: Hmm... well I'm going to give a plug to a spot in my hood - Maggie Brown's on Myrtle Ave. in Clinton Hill Brooklyn. The corned beef hash is great after a night out. And the interior is done up like a classy Western whorehouse, so you can feel special and dirty at the same time.
Nobody's Lunch opens Thursday, and tickets are available here. Spoil your sweetheart, invite your crush, surprise your B.F.F...just be sure to go already! It's definitely a Lux Lotus pick. And do invite that crush.
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