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W.M. Akers

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​Wouldn't you like to watch low-budget theater here?

Morning Thoughts on The Amphitheater Of My Dreams

​Wouldn't you like to watch low-budget theater here?

Often, the dreams I remember best are the ordinary ones. Entirely too often, my unconscious entertains my sleeping self with images of commuting, so that when I wake in the morning, I feel like I just got off an eight hour subway ride. (That's where Bronx Bound​ came from, I think.) Sometimes this is stressful, sometimes its fun. Last night it was a blast, as I dreamt I was riding the subway all over town to meet a buddy of mine, and kept bumping into fun people from high school. The transit details were  accurate in a way they usually aren't—no dragons in the conductor's booth here—right down to a dramatic moment as we rode the F train around the bend at the Smith Ave/9th Street stop.

I looked out the window and saw an amphitheater in Gowanus—a slightly run down, wood-and-steel bandshell, with seats for maybe eighty people and a stage appropriate for theater and film. It was a grey night, and the crowd was mostly empty—that the place was located underneath the train tracks probably didn't help—but I defended the theater to my friends. "Go there on a hot summer night," I said, "and it's the best place to watch theater in New York."​

I woke up sorry it wasn't real. There are a few excellent performance spaces in the area around the Gowanus canal, but because the neighborhood was until quite recently a fetid stinkpot, there are few places to be entertained outdoors. (Gowanus Grove is a notable exception. I've thought about going a few times, but have never seen the point of paying a $10 cover to stand around outside. You can do that for free in parks.) And aside from the beleaguered Brooklyn Lyceum, there are no grand stages anywhere in the neighborhood. This imaginary amphitheater solves all those problems.

Programming would be confined to summer months. If we had heat lamps, maybe we could stretch it into the fall. In a typical week, we'd have one or two plays running in rep, with film screenings on weekend nights and matinees during the day. We could have concerts, late night dance parties—anything and everything to piss off the neighbors and draw tourists from North Brooklyn. There would be a bar in the front, obviously, and enough artisan lightbulbs and distressed iron to earn us two or three Times​ style section gushes—"Hipster Theater, Under The Summer Sky"—in the first month of programming. It wouldn't take long for this to become a warm-weather institution, where people come for the party, stay for the theater, and never even notice that they're enjoying a marginal art form.

​All I need to make this work is a lot of money and a decade or two experience running a performing arts space. Until the Brooklyn gods smile down on this project, I'll have to content myself by hoping to return to my amphitheater in my dreams. Tonight I hope I visit it on a rainy night, when the canvas tarp has been run out, and the audience is huddled together, intent on the performance, rain in the background and the Gowanus Canal oozing along just a few blocks away.

Posted in Theater and tagged with Transit, Dreams, Outdoor Theater, Summer, Gowanus, Brooklyn, Park Slope, Imaginary Spaces.

April 22, 2013 by W.M. Akers.
  • April 22, 2013
  • W.M. Akers
  • Transit
  • Dreams
  • Outdoor Theater
  • Summer
  • Gowanus
  • Brooklyn
  • Park Slope
  • Imaginary Spaces
  • Theater
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R62A_SMS_Interior_2406_1_Train.jpg

My Dullest Play Yet, Brought To You By The MTA

R62A_SMS_Interior_2406_1_Train.jpg

Did you know that if you suffer delays on the New York City subway, and your boss/teacher/girlfriend doesn't believe you, the MTA will help you prove it? By inputting incredibly specific information about when you entered the system, when you transferred, and when you were stopped, they will present you with what I can only assume is a gold-leaf certificate reading I Am Not A Liar, You Petty Bastard.

I imagine this unasked-for service is intended for schoolchildren who need proof of absence, or midtown's most-enslaved wage slaves, but the thought of anyone having to use it makes me bluer than the A train. "The trains were all screwed up," is supposed to be a golden excuse—impossible to disprove, impossible to deny. Taking away our standard excuse for lateness will force the rest of us to get more creative.

It wasn't a stubborn L train that made me late, but a tiger in my bedroom. No, the 3 train was running fine, but I was hit by a comet on the way up the steps and suffered a Class 5 concussion. The trains were no slower than usual this morning—I was late because I am a ghost, and had business in the netherworld.

Reading about the MTA's peculiar new service—actually, I'm not even sure if it is new—reminded me of a dream I had a few nights ago, where I had a brilliant idea for a new play. When I woke up the next day, I strained to remember it. There is no worse feeling than knowing that your unconscious gave you a creative gift, and you were not able to hang on to it. Searching the trash heap that is my brain, I found the little nugget of inspiration. It would have been better forgotten.

The pitch: a perfectly realistic simulation of the experience of riding on the New York City subway. And not an interesting ride on the train. Not even a crowded one. Nope, just an ordinary, nearly-empty subway car, chugging along on a hot summer morning.

It's the worst idea I've ever had. It's so bad, that I just had to go ahead and write it. It's only two pages long, but I think that, performed faithfully, it would run at least a half hour. It's called Bronx Bound, and it begins:

Bronx Bound
                                   The grubby interior of a New York City
                                   R62A subway car, riding north on the
                                   IRT Broadway-Seventh Avenue Line. It is
                                   the middle of summer, the air
                                   conditioning is broken, and the car is
                                   empty save for a homeless man in the
                                   corner, bundled up in hundred degree
                                   heat and immobile.

                                   CONDUCTOR
            This is a Bronx bound one train making all local stops. Next
            stop Fourteenth Street. Stand clear of the closing doors.

                                   Doors close. 

                                   The train sways slightly for a minute
                                   or two. It stops. 

                                   The doors open.

                                   CONDUCTOR
            Fourteenth Street, transfer here to the F, M, L, two and
            three trains. Bronx bound one train making local stops.
            Eighteenth Street next. Stand clear.

It's the most realistic play I've ever written! Download the full version here. It's even duller than you expect.

Rather than try conning a producer into spending $75,000 on a detailed recreation of an R62A, I'm going to let the MTA do it for me. Consider this—one day this summer, the air conditioning will be broken on a northbound 1, and the conductor will know my script by heart. I may not know when it happens, but the city of New York is producing one of my plays this summer—and every summer after that. 

I've hit the big time, baby!

Posted in Theater and tagged with Clips, Transit, Bronx Bound, The MTA, Marla Kilby Solves A Murder, Dreams.

January 10, 2013 by W.M. Akers.
  • January 10, 2013
  • W.M. Akers
  • Clips
  • Transit
  • Bronx Bound
  • The MTA
  • Marla Kilby Solves A Murder
  • Dreams
  • Theater
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W.M. Akers

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Front page art courtesy Brendan Leach.