Saturday, July 3, 2010
Performance Arts / Written & Spoken Word Arthur Miller and the ones who look like angels
Posted by Chi Sherman on Sat, Jul 3, 2010 at 11:00 PM
Wednesday night at the Irving Theatre (5505 E Washington Street) brought a transformative experience on church pews that almost glowed under hexagonal lamps whose shades were made of newspaper. A small crowd had gathered to witness the return of the Indy Underground Reading Series, sponsored by the Writers' Center of Indiana (812 East 67th Street). The stage was set with grey carpet and charcoal curtains that reflected purple light from overhead. Shortly after 8:00 p.m., Andrew Scott took the stage.
Primarily a fiction writer, Scott shared a five-minute screenplay called "Arthur Miller Walks Into a Bar," which finds the playwright discussing Marilyn Monroe and the afterlife with Joe DiMaggio while seated alongside famous dead including Mother Teresa and Genghis Khan. The line that I like best, the line that I keep mentioning to friends, is when Miller asks DiMaggio, "Where is she?" The answer: "She's not here," soon followed by the revelation that neither former husband is in Monroe's version of heaven. I like when a line, a thought stays with me for days on end, especially when it comes from such a short piece of writing. Scott also shared work published by Esquire, which you can view here. He let the audience know that the lipstick print came from his wife, Victoria.
After a short break — a beer break, Scott called it — Donald Ray Pollock stepped up and said, "Good lord, *I'm* the main event?" Despite the self-deprecation, his writing was impressive. A short story called "Bactine" found ne'er-do-wells huffing the spray and hoping a friend could score Seccanol suppositories for a continued high. Pollack's scenes were vivid: the ennui was thick and the visual of a tired waitress working the graveyard shift at a diner so powerful I could feel her exhaustion. I wanted to hear more of his work even though he asserted that "...in most of my stories, nothing really happens." He read from a forthcoming novel about a married couple who pick up and then murder hitchhikers. The line that lingers is the wife's admission that she can "never resist the ones who look like angels."
The evening wrapped up with music by singer/songwriter Ryan Harkrider who had been playing next door at Lazy Daze Coffeehouse (10 Johnson Avenue). After Pollack's story, it was a bit unnerving to hear a young man with a cherubic face talking about his cross-country tour, but the music made the heebies go away. He sang about five songs, despite needing to hit the road for a gig the next day... in New York City. Check out the video below for Harkrider's opening song, "Never All the Time." Stick close to the Writers' Center website for information about the next Underground reading.
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