If you’re going to use the word “America” in the title of your play, you’ve got to have some stones, and playwright Dan Dietz has got ’em. So has his new play, both literally (placed in the eviscerated belly of a man to help sink his dead body) and figuratively. “The more I study American history, the more I begin to wonder if we aren’t in some way addicted to revolution – that is, to using sudden, massive, and sometimes violent change as a means of dealing with problems, rather than building on our successes and learning from our failures,” says Dietz.
That’s what is commonly known as a “big idea,” and beginning on Oct. 28, you’ll be inundated with them courtesy of Dietz’s Americamisfit, receiving its world premiere from Salvage Vanguard Theater. The play tells the story of the Harpe brothers, Big and Little, a pair of 18th-century mass murderers who, in Dietz’s rendering, attempt to bring about a counter-revolution to the American Revolution. While the story is rooted in the period, Dietz lets history skip around, allowing other revolutionary figures from America’s past – including George Washington, Robert E. Lee, Henry Ford, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Ronald Reagan – to hold forth on their revolting ideas.
While it’s certainly easy to classify the play as revolutionary, it’s much more than that as well. The action is framed by a character named Rockabilly Boy, who plays – you guessed it – a lot of rockabilly, the distinctive brand of revolutionary music created at Sun Studios in the Fifties and popularized by Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis. In fact, the play is jam-packed with music and dance. “Two vintage 1950s dance party films – Rock, Rock, Rock and Rock, Baby, Rock It – were really helpful for me in visualizing what a vintage 1950s sock hop would look like,” says SVT’s artistic director Jason Neulander. “The actors had eight hours of swing dance lessons with some of the Austin Swing Syndicate crew. Our cast can really swing now, which is totally cool.” So, is it a drama? A comedy? A musical? Does it matter?
“I want people to have fun, to enjoy themselves, the characters, the music,” says Dietz. “But beyond that, my hope is that people will reconsider certain widely held ideas about this country, particularly that there was ever a period when America wasn’t deeply divided in some way. Above all, I want them to question the way Americans romanticize sudden, violent change. Is revolution an answer or an affliction?”
You say you want a revolution? Now you know where to find it.
Americamisfit runs Oct. 28-Nov. 19, Thursday-Saturday, 8pm, at the Off Center, 2211-A Hidalgo. For more information, call 474-SVT6 or visit www.salvagevanguard.org.
This article appears in Barbara Bush.