True, William Shakespeare says that all the world's a stage.
But for crying out loud, who takes him literally?
Charles Deemer, that's who.
Not only is the Portland playwright busily expanding the
possibilities of space in the theater, he's playing hob with
conventional concepts about time.
Tuesday evening, he launches his latest simultaneous-action
drama -- ``Bateau de Mort, or, Revenge on the River,'' which takes
place not in a theater but smack in the middle of the Willamette
River, aboard the stern-wheeler Columbia Gorge.
``There's something to be said,'' Deemer commented in a rare
moment of understatement, ``for being in a real space rather than on
a set.''
``Bateau,'' like its popular predecessor, the Pittock Mansion
mystery ``Chateau de Mort,'' spins several scenes at once in
different locations. Audiences are invited to wander around, picking
and choosing what they wish to see as if they were wandering down
the aisles of a theatrical supermarket.
This is not the work of a madman. Deemer is certainly an
unrelenting individualist and perhaps even a character, but not a
crackpot.
A big, restless, rambling fellow who sprawls untidily across
the corners of conformity like a sheep dog flopped down on the daily
wash, Deemer sees stages where other people see architecture. He has
to. How else could he find room for all the things he stuffs into
his plays?
Deemer isn't the first person to latch onto what he calls
simultaneous-action theater. As near as anyone can tell it was born
in Los Angeles, where a murky mystery titled ``Tamara'' has been
playing the past four years in an old American Legion Hall remodeled
as a splendid Italian villa. But he's rapidly becoming one of the
new form's busiest exponents.
His first four shots have been melodramatic comedies, but he
figures the sky -- or the classics -- is the limit.
``I'm sold on this form of drama,'' said Deemer, whose long
list of traditional plays includes the popular ``Christmas at the
Juniper Tavern'' (which features a Rajneeshee-style mystic Eastern
cult called the Kree) and ``Ramblin','' based on the songs and
writings of Woody Guthrie.
``I would like to figure out how to found a theater company
to do nothing but simultaneous action. I'd like to explore -- I'd
like to do the classics. I want to do Chekhov. I'm looking at
`Seagulls' or `The Three Sisters.' ''
``Bateau de Mort'' is distinguished not only by its oddball
location but by its new-dimension structure, which sets as many as
five scenes going at once in separate parts of the boat. Audience
members are encouraged to wander from one scene to another as the
mood strikes, though they can't actually enter the action: This
isn't participatory theater, like the you-solve-it murder mysteries
that pop up now and again.
The result is a play of staggering possibilities. In the
average nightly audience of 180, 180 individually devised plots may
be seen -- and, omnipresence not being part of the human repertoire,
no one can see the entire play.
Such are the attractions -- and frustrations -- of
simultaneous action.
``Let's take a typical play, like `Who's Afraid of Virginia
Woolf?','' said Deemer. ``What'd happen if you played that in an
actual house, and when the characters go upstairs you follow them up
there and watch what's happening `offstage'?''
For the author, director and actors, this kind of drama can
mean a massive headache. Scenes must be intricately structured so
they connect at the seams. An actress walking out of one scene in a
huff, for instance, must make sure she arrives on cue at another
scene in another part of the boat, ready to flirt or plot with an
actor who himself may just have arrived from yet another scene.
``I can't imagine not doing this with a computer. Anybody'd
be crazy to try to do this without a computer,'' Deemer said.
``I find myself writing longer scenes in this type of play.
Almost always you cut when you re-write. At least I do.
``But in this genre you've got to leave it the same length,
so you don't throw off the balance with the other scenes that're
going at the same time. If you re-do a five-minute scene, it's still
got to be five minutes.''
The many plots of ``Bateau de Mort'' whirl around a cult
wedding aboard the stern-wheeler. The action takes place on the
boat's main and upper decks.
``Basically we've got eight playing areas -- fore and aft,
starboard and port. And it's all indoors. It's warm in there,'' said
Deemer.
While actors and audience are rolling down the river, the
bride is being delivered from a 27-foot motor boat. ``How you time
that is going to be quite a trick,'' Deemer said.
Complicating matters, the Coast Guard requires the
sternwheeler to come to a dead stop while the transfer takes place;
bride and delivery vehicle will be bathed in bright spotlights from
the larger boat.
Like his earlier efforts in the genre, ``Bateau'' is a
broadly styled, almost soap-operatic comedy-mystery. Sex, drugs and
greed are still integral parts of the plot, and religion has been
added as a major factor: Deemer's invented a cult he calls the
Universal Church of Primitive Balance.
The new play includes many of the characters from the Pittock
Mansion's ``Chateau de Mort,'' plus a double: B. Joe Medley, who
starred in ``Chateau'' as a no-goodnick West Hills doctor who was
murdered at the end (his wife and the family maid did it) returns as
Dr. Brodey's identical twin, a lawyer trying to straighten out the
will.
In ``Bateau,'' the maid, Maxine (Karen Boettcher-Tate), has
turned state's evidence against Mrs. Brodey (Gaynor Sterchi).
``After the trial, Maxine disappears,'' Deemer said. ``Trudy,
the daughter, got wind that Maxine had joined this Church of
Primitive Balance in order to become a surrogate mother. That's the
church's big way of making money.''
Soon Trudy, too, is caught up in the church, which indulges
in practices unknown to the average Sunday school. Vital to the
faith is an artificial insemination ceremony -- ``but it's really
very benign,'' Deemer commented. ``It's a PG-rated ceremony.''
Like ``Chateau,'' ``Bateau'' is a benefit for The Musical
Company (which still is selling tickets) and will run only six
nights. ``It is, I must confess, frustrating to spend six months
writing a play and then have it play just a week,'' Deemer said.
The short run also necessitates a high price -- $37.50 a pop,
which the author finds unfortunate: ``I do have a hard time with
that. Nobody I know can afford to buy a ticket to it.''
His dream is to put up a show that can run indefinitely,
enabling him to lower the ticket prices.
Deemer has written two other simultaneous-action shows --
``Turkeys,'' which was canceled at the last minute because of a
zoning flap at the bed-and-breakfast inn where it was to have run;
and ``Rancho,'' which was a sellout hit in a bank in Rancho, Calif.
He's also been approached to do shows in Atlanta and New
Orleans.
Earlier this year in Los Angeles, he finally took a look at
``Tamara,'' the play that started it all.
``I was doing my Woody Guthrie show down there and I took the
plunge,'' he said.
``Tamara,'' he found, offers far less audience choice than
his own shows.
But he was delighted to find that a non-comedy -- ``it's a
very obscure story about this Italian poet who Mussolini puts in
exile in this villa'' -- can work in the new genre.
Deemer hasn't abandoned traditional theater. He's still
struggling with ``Hiroshima Maiden,'' an oft-rewritten script that's
become an obsession and a bane.
And he's writing a TV script for Oregon Public Broadcasting
about the late Sen. Wayne Morse -- ``to show on the tube next fall.
I'm real excited about it. It'll be taking up a lot of my time.''
But simultaneous action has him in its grip. ``There's such a
density of texture and drama,'' he said with passion. ``It's a new
form.''
PREVIEW Bateau de Mort Author:
Charles Deemer
Director: Ghita Hager Where: aboard the Columbia Gorge sternwheeler,
departing from Waterfront Park at S.W. Front and Stark When:
departure 7:30 p.m. Tue.-Sun.; boarding 6:30 p.m. Tue., 7 p.m.
Wed.-Sun. Tickets: $90 Tue.; $37.50 or $70/couple Wed.-Sun.
(280-6592 or 235-4551)
Playwright Charles Deemer forsakes conventional
staging to set
his new play on a boat.