I Hate This Blog

Letters from Professor D.'s Class

Jyana at CPT put me in touch with a professor and freelance journalist in NYC who wanted to get her students in touch with Fringe performers. I snapped at the opportunity.

Here is one letter - I thought they were very good questions.

Mr. Hansen,

I am a student in Jill D.'s Critical Writing class and I have a few questions I would like to ask you about "I HATE THIS" for the article we are writing in class.

1. Why did you decide to make it a solo performance?
2. How did you prepare to play a dozen or more characters? Did you have any difficulties, and also what are the pluses to a solo performance?
3. How does it make you feel to be performing a show about an uneasy topic like this at an International Festival?

Thank you so much for your time, I really appreciate it. The article isn't due until the 22nd of June so you don't have to respond immediately if you are busy. Thanks again.

Michelle L.

Michelle,

In 2001 my wife Toni had a play in the New York Fringe. It was a play she had written and had produced the previous year, before our son Calvin died, and returning to it, and returning to New York City (where she spent her late teens and early twenties) was its own part of our healing experience. I was running sound for the thing, and so did not have as much emotional or physical investment in the show itself, and spent a lot of time catching as many other Fringe shows as I could.

On our drive home I had a lot of time to just roll everything I had seen around in my head. And it was on the trip home that I got the first idea of writing this play. I think I even surprised myself, thinking something like "Oh God, you’re going to write a play about this, aren’t you?" Like I was ashamed, at first, to even think about turning what was, at that point in time, a very traumatic experience, and a fresh wound. But that’s what writers do, and all the time.

I had seen a number of solo shows at the ’01 Fringe, and some were very, very good. I had experience directing someone else in their solo perf. A few years earlier. Someone said to me at that time – David, you should write a one-man show for yourself. And my response was, what the hell do I have to say for an hour, about anything? Finally, I guess, I did.

But why a solo performance as opposed to a traditional play – the show is much like my journal, performed. That sounds terrible, doesn’t it? But I did write more personal stuff in that year than I ever had, and using it as the basis for the story, I am able to communicate the immediate feelings that come with this kind of shock, and this kind of grief. And as I am simply recounting what I went through, a direct-address, solo performance made sense.

Preparing for the different characters was easy. I don’t think they are astounding changes in character, it’s not like that guy in "I Am My Own Wife" I do not inhabit these other characters as much as … well, it’s like when some people tell stories, they like to impersonate the people they are talking about? It’s like that, taken to an extreme. The most challenging bit is when I have an extended conversation between myself and my own brother. But they tell me it works quite well. Because most of these characters are people who are so close to me, performing them comes more naturally then I would have thought before attempting it.

One major difficulty I had was with the one non-white character in the play. There is a nurse in this story, based, with no exaggeration, on an actual nurse we had while we were in the hospital. She was a terrible nurse. And my performance, in the early stages, was what I would call accurate, and not some cartoon. But it was apparent that she was of a different race, and that made people uncomfortable, and I didn’t blame them when they told me. So I changed her, the way she said things, the way her voice sounds – I didn’t want anyone to misunderstand what I was trying to say. And though I do not have a problem with altering certain aspects of the story to make them fit into a coherent tale, that bothers me. Because it doesn’t sound like her.

One of the pluses of a solo performance, especially this one, is that it is not at a "remove." I think it would feel stranger to watch people tell this story, with me standing outside of it. The audience knows it’s me, and I believe that makes it easier to watch, and not harder.

As for your last question, it was strange performing it last year in Minnesota. I was used to having a large number of people who knew me or knew who I was when performing it in Cleveland. In Minneapolis this was not the case at all, and when their reactions were muted (a lot of the show is humorous – but no one laughed) I was distressed … until a local pointed out the whole polite Minnesotan thing. You know, they don’t laugh at anyone else’s misfortune. I don’t know how accurate that is, but it put me at ease a little.

The fact is, in spite of its subject matter, I am always delighted to perform this show. And bringing it to New York, and not only because of its origins, is particularly special to me. Toni has such a connection to this city. When we began dating she still lived there, and we return often. And the city played an important part in our journey out of grief. The scene I mentioned where I have a conversation with my brother takes place at the Cloisters.

It will be a hard sell, it always is. Who wants to see a show about stillbirth? But I have always received such a strong, positive response from my audience – my company and I just need to hit the street early and talk folks into our show like everyone else.

I hope my answers are helpful to you, and I would be happy to read your article if that is all right. And feel free to ask any other questions if you need to.

Best wishes,
David