From Alexander’s Facebook page. Edited a touch for effect:
Alexander Strain: Just created a new promenade theatre piece. It’s called ‘Sleep So Much’. My new theatre company Realdrunk has taken over an abandoned Mattress Discounters, so you walk into a room with lots of beds, pick one, and sleep for as long as you want. It’s vaguely based on ‘War and Peace’. Tickets will be $217.
Gwydion Suilebhan: I did a similar project: Peep No More. I went to every Giant, Safeway, CVS, and Target in the area, bought every package of Peeps I could find, hauled them all to a warehouse, constructed a very large Heap of Peeps, and doused them with lighter fluid. For $837 you get to toss a match onto the conflagration. It’s a parody of Fahrenheit 451.
Alexander Strain: You must have been inspired by our show ‘Keep No More’ where the Realdrunk company stole things from house warming parties. It was an examination of kleptomania in America based loosely on the writings of Anne Rice. Tickets were free, but the value of what was stolen varied.
Gwydion Suilebhan: I was. I’m hard at work now on “Cheap? No, Poor.” It’s an investigation into the impoverishment of the American soul. Audience members empty their wallets into a black box, then reveal their innermost secrets to earn the right to take somebody else’s money back out of it. Everyone wears sackcloth. I think Realdrunk should produce it.
Alexander Strain: We will, after we’re finished with ‘Reap. Sow. Store.’ our new production where we hire the audience out as migrant workers to local farms. We then pelt them with sand while they work. It’s based on ‘The Grapes of Wrath’. You get to keep your scythe and hobo companion. The show lasts for 23 years.
Ryan S. Taylor: Strain, you’ll be hearing from my lawyers. This is all far too similar to my groundbreaking 1997 production of “Tape No More”, an ennui-laden exploration of consumer culture disguised as a five-hour lecture on how to transfer your cassette collection to compact disc.
Gwydion Suilebhan: That reminds me of my thesis project, “Bo Peep, Whore.” I appropriated a sheep farm in Grasmere and for $500 an hour a former sex worker turned shepherd would let you hold her crook. Think “Pretty Woman” meets “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” We transformed the entire economy of the Lake District. I think we should re-mount it on K Street, don’t you?
Clay Steakley: I adore this entire conversation, although Gwydion’s Bo Peep project sounds far too similar to the one man “Bleat, You Bore” project by my company “Fleeced!”, in which each audience member was required to wear a sheep costume and follow me (dressed as a Little Bo Peep) on a tour of Home Depot while I insulted them for coming to the show. It lasted 7 hours and then I sheared them. It was an adaptation of Woyzeck.
Nicely done, gentlemen.
Thank you, my friend!
This all reminds me of an experience I had a few night ago when I went to see a show in NYC called “Sleep… (something, something)…” (Sorry, I forgot the exact title.) I entitled this experience “Weep. No, MORE!”
Future installments of “Weep. No, MORE!” will feature common folk like you and/or me strapped to their seats and forced to “experience” pretentious, bloated, meaningless (yet occasionally pretty) plop. They’ll be occasionally let loose, but exits will be disguised as goats having an orgy, and masks will further limit their vision.
It’s loosely based “A Clockwork Orange,” except with “Sleep (something, something)…” replacing Beethoven’s 5th.
Still working on the Kleenex endorsement…
Someone get this man a commission.