THE STRANGERER

Hey y'all... Come see my new play. Here's the advance story from The Chronicle.

Sorry about the double post with the Hangout, but it seemed like it belonged in both forums. And I'd really love for you guys to see this. I'm super proud of it and it is freaking hilarious.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/features/6058295.html

Catastrophic Theatre presents two Maher plays
By EVERETT EVANS Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Oct. 14, 2008, 5:12PM


A 2004 presidential debate between George W. Bush and John Kerry takes a surreal turn as it falls under the influence of existentialist author Albert Camus.

Twelve financially strapped superheroes turn to telemarketing to finance their production of Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Welcome to the mind of Mickle Maher.

The Catastrophic Theatre is introducing Houston audiences to the phenom of Chicago's alternative theater scene with area premieres of the two plays whose distinctive premises are cited above.

Catastrophic artistic director Jason Nodler is directing both The Strangerer, opening Friday at DiverseWorks, and Spirits to Enforce, opening Dec. 3 at Bar- nevelder Movement/Arts Complex.

"Maher has this incredible ability," Nodler says, "to collide various familiar elements in fresh ways, in service of a broadly accessible theme."

"A lot of my work has involved adaptation," Maher says, noting that his use of literary or historical elements often is more like "reimagining or mutation."

Nodler notes that one needn't know anything about Camus or politics to get The Strangerer, nor about Shakespeare or superheroes to enjoy Spirits to Enforce.

Spirits premiered in 2003 and Strangerer in 2007 at Chicago's Theater Oobleck, the company Maher co-founded in 1988 and where most of his plays originated. You've got to love a theater named for the green gunk that falls from the sky and threatens to drown the kingdom in Dr. Seuss' Bartholomew and the Oobleck.

Nodler was unaware of Maher's work until earlier this year. After attending Stages' Mr. Marmalade, starring Mikelle Johnson (Nodler's significant other), they went to dinner with Alex Harvey, that production's director. Harvey said he knew of a play that would be ideal for Nodler and Catastrophic.

"He pitched The Strangerer to me, and I thought it just sounded cute," Nodler recalls. "Alex said, 'Just read it' and gave me the script. I knew immediately that, not only did I want to do this play, I wanted to do all of his (Maher's) stuff."

Hence, Catastrophic's back-to-back scheduling of The Strangerer and Spirits.
Nodler originally planned to do the two plays in repertory, until Hurricane Ike and its aftermath upset rehearsals. Even though the shows now will play consecutive runs, Nodler is rehearsing both casts simultaneously — "a wonderful extended discovery process" of Maher's creativity.

The Strangerer was sparked by a news tidbit that some found amusing, ironic or just unlikely: The Stranger, Camus' 1942 classic, was on Bush's 2006 summer reading list. This led Maher to view Bush and recent politics through the prism of Camus' writings — not only The Stranger, in which a detached antihero commits a senseless murder, but The Myth of Sisyphus, The Plague and other Camus works.

The play begins as a re-creation of the first of Bush and Kerry's three debates, with moderator Jim Lehrer introducing the participants. But the action quickly veers into the absurdist realm. For one thing, Bush keeps trying to kill Lehrer.

"The play offers incisive parodies of all three men," Nodler says, "yet it's remarkably free of partisanship. Maher imagines Bush not only as a person capable of understanding the philosophy contained in Camus' writings, but as someone who embodies it. He is the existential hero of the piece."

"The play doesn't work unless he (Bush) is sympathetic," Maher says. "Even with Macbeth or Iago, vile as their pro- jects or goals in the world may be, you root for them on some basic level."

Maher's Bush is also a theater lover. "I think all politicians like theater because that's what politics is," Maher says. "Bush's 'mission accomplished' appearance on that troop ship was a great theatrical moment that had to be scripted and directed like any play. They (politicians) have to be good at that kind of thing. In the play, Bush's attempts to kill Lehrer are his effort to produce a good theater moment that his audience will remember. So why is he having such a hard time?"

Nodler finds the play's comment about theater its most surprising element.
"It's the smartest and most poignant philosophy of theater I've encountered," Nodler says. "There's a statement about theater's power to make accessible broad truths about the human experience."

• When: Previews Thursday, opens Friday. 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays through Nov. 8
• Where: Catastrophic Theatre, at DiverseWorks, 1117 East Freeway
• Tickets: $15; 713-880-5216