Remembering how to play

Artistic Director David Catlin keeps things in perspective

From The Lookingglass Alice 2007 Issue of ArtAntica
Mentioned in this entry: David Catlin, David Schwimmer, Joy Gregory, Larry DiStasi, Andy White, Philip R Smith, Laura Eason, David Kersnar, Christine Mary Dunford, J Nicole Brooks, Lauren Hirte, Daniel Ostling and Mary Zimmerman

Twenty summers ago, we went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with a production of Alice in Wonderland. David Schwimmer used his Bar Mitzvah money to fund the student production at NU. Joy Gregory was our Alice, and five other actors (including Larry DiStasi, Andy White and myself) played dozens of other characters. Larry was the Dormouse, a bawdy duck, and the caterpillar (the costume he designed had tubes of milk running through it that turned to cheese by the time we got to Scotland.) Andy White played the White Knight and an extremely funny Frog Footman. I was part of the Singing Mushroom and if you’ve heard me sing — and I hope you haven’t — you’ll appreciate the irony.
The dean of the School of Speech, David Zarefsky, said he would help fund our trip provided we raised half the cost ourselves. We got help from Richard E.T. White at Wisdom Bridge, Joyce Sloan at Second City, John J. Louis, Hope Ableson and our families. Schwimmer and Larry worked as roller-skating waiters at Ed Debevic’s to save up for the trip.

To compete for festival audiences, we’d perform in the streets at the foot of Edinburgh Castle. We’d do scenes from the play or stand frozen as Schwimmer would "sculpt" us into statues. Kid stuff. Crowds would gather and stare in amazement at the college kids playing. Some even would take flyers. One night while walking home along the castle’s massive stonewalls, we decided to start a theatre company. We wanted to keep playing together in a collaborative, inventive, and transformational process, working on the world’s great stories-- stories that needed to be told.

There was a tremendous sense of "play" in that production of Alice. I remember being exhilarated, exhausted and filled with joy by the tale of Alice, the celebration of madness and the almost-acrobatic staging. I believe that Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) was using these stories to celebrate what it is to be a kid — the ability to believe in the impossible … to play.

Sometimes we get so bogged down in the emails we have to answer, the meetings we have to prepare for and sit through, the bills, the dentist appointments, the files to update, checking the Blackberry, synching the Palm Pilot, running here and there, etc., that we forget how to play. It takes the first three days of vacation to remember how to relax and how to have fun. I am so grateful that I’ve got two young daughters to remind me how. I’m terrified that suddenly they’ll be grown up and there’ll be no one to remind me how to play.
But then I remember that I’ve got Larry and Schwimmer and Phil and Laura and Kersnar and Christine and Nicky and Lauren and Dan and Mary — I’ve got all of Lookingglass to help remind me.

Twenty summers later, in a castle on Michigan Avenue, we are still playing.