Actor Issac McGinley, from left, director John Paul Green, actors Jacob Stewart and Gus Deardoff comprise the cast of “Aliens,” playing at Margo Jones Theater this weekend at the Owens Fine Arts Center. There will be three shows this, one on Friday at 5 (MICHAEL DANSER/The Daily Campus)
“It’s like wet socks,” John Paul Green said, trying to describe “Aliens,” the play he is directing in the Margo Jones Theater this weekend.
“You know,” he said, elaborating on his simile, “You could live your whole life with wet socks, it just wouldn’t be very comfortable.”
This is a surprisingly apt description of Annie Baker’s new play about two slackers, or ‘townies’ as modern lingo designates, who hang around the backyard of a local coffeehouse playing music and eating shrooms.
Green picked up this play in American Theatre Magazine while searching for a monologue. He said that the pacing of the play combined with the exposition of characters with such perfunctory dialogue and a good amount of uncomfortable silence is what drew him to “Aliens.”
“It’s the closet thing to the kind of theater I enjoy going to see,” Green said. “It’s not a happy go lucky musical, it addresses something that everybody understands.”
The title of the play is the name of the band that two of the characters, KJ (Gus Deardoff) and Jasper (Jacob Stewart), are in, which seems to be the one thing that keeps them going –not that they’re actually going anywhere.
Jasper spends most of the play a mixture of ambivalent and angry because he has just broken up with his girlfriend and KJ spends a great deal of the play trying to work up a sneeze. Evan (Isaac McGinley) is a new employee at the coffee shop, who tries to shoo these idlers away, but instead finds himself adopted into the company of Jasper and KJ.
“Everybody knows somebody who stayed around after high school,” Green said. “They’re the guys who talked about saving the world, but didn’t get out there and actually do anything.”
No one could put Green in that category, because he’s been working hard to get this show up by Friday, creating a set with all the appropriate trappings (garbage dumpster, picnic table etc), working with the fire marshall to allow the actors to smoke cigarettes and set off sparklers. With such a small cast, making sure that everything else goes smoothly has been the biggest job.
“There have been a lot of hoops to jump through and phone calls to make,” Green said. “But I have three great actors working their asses off and that has made the process so much more fulfilling.”
The play is in the Margo Jones Theatre this weekend only, with shows Friday, at 5:30 p.m. and Saturday at noon and 5 p.m. Green promises that coming to one of the shows will be worth your while.
“It’s probably something that the audience won’t have seen before,” Green said. “Theater should be accessible for everyone, it doesn’t have to be stuffy. I think everyone who comes for the two hours will be surprised by how much they enjoy it.”
