Revisiting the role
Founding Ensemble member Thom Cox returns to Nelson Algren: For Keeps and a Single DayFrom The Nelson Algren: For Keeps and a Single Day Issue of ArtAntica  How has this rehearsal process compared with the first time through?  It’s actually not all that different because when we did the workshops, we didn’t have rehearsals. They were their own rehearsals. So, it was very much the same kind of process of doing a run through as a rehearsal. John [Musial] doesn’t like to take notes on internal monologue or actor process or anything like that. He likes to say, “Do this now,” or “Hey this works when you do this.” But for my process, it’s the same opportunity that the workshops were, which is we’re going to go from beginning to end and I’m not going to stop. And how do I draw an arc that lasts from beginning of “Hustlers” all the way through the end of “For Keeps and a Single Day”? So with John not giving you detailed “actor notes” and without any other actors in the show, how do you go about filling all that text alone? By me being the only actor, it sort of makes it clear that we are all equal collaborators, I just happen to be the person who’s speaking the text. John is the person who’s responsible for the film and the over all look of the piece and the overall feel and rhythm of the piece. Dave Pavkovic who’s the score composer and Kevin [O’Donnell] and Bob [Lovecchio] are responsible for the sound as it is now from the music. So we’re all sort of equal collaborators, and rather than not having anyone to help me fill in those gaps as far as the actor process is concerned, I bring that stuff to the table, but it’s an open dialogue about “This works here and this is why” and I have my point of view and they have their point of view, and we kind of meet somewhere in between.The whole idea for the entire life of the piece has always been to make it a conversation between film, music, and text in the same way that different instrumental voices speak to each other, have a conversation in a jazz combo. With that idea of you not necessarily playing the historical Nelson Algren but portraying his writer’s voice, how much did you then allow biographical details about him to inform the character play? The biographical details have to come in to a certain degree because that informs the arc of the piece. He really did live and grow up largely on the south side for the very, very early part of his life. He moved to the north side with his family when he was relatively young. He spent his early career sort of downstate, then he moved back to Chicago and became a chronicler of the neighborhood that we call Wicker Park.. And then he became very successful as a writer, and then he sort of didn’t grow, he didn’t evolve as a writer, beyond when the sort of conventions of writing changed; he sort of got left behind, and then at that point he felt of betrayed by the city and by the publishing community in Chicago. He then moved to New Jersey and ended up living the rest of his life there. And despite his difficulty with the city that eventually caused him to leave, or was part of his decision to leave, he still loves the city despite its flaws and in some ways because of its flaw. And that’s why it’s this love poem, this bittersweet love poem, to the city, that will never give you back what you give to it and will never love you as much as you love it. So those biographical details are vitally important to what the show is. And we costume this writer to look like Algren, but I do not do any vocal idiosyncrasies, I do not do any gesture idiosyncrasies, I don’t try to impersonate Algren the writer. I try to bring to life his emotional journey through this writer’s voice, through the words that he used.  Well, I mean we had this very hilarious moment that was less of a rich moment when we originally did it. There’s a reference in the piece, “Divided Heart” where it mentions the near north side centering around the comical old humpty dumpty Water Tower. There’s a lot more baggage perhaps attached to that particular image. But the idea of the films and the idea of the piece generally that- that any given building or street corner or neighborhood or whatever carries this large amount of association for anybody who’s spent time there as it does with the city. All cities require a relationship to them of the people who live there. But there is something about the relationship that it’s demanded of Chicago of its citizens that is so very specific and so familiar to me having lived here for 20 years. And in a way it was familiar to me within the first year that I moved into the city from Evanston. There was a clear delineation between the difference of living in Evanston and going to school at Northwestern and living on the far north side at Winthrop and Granville that it was a completely different experience, and I was immediately a citizen of Chicago, and I spent a lot of time walking around the city streets of Rogers Park Loyola Edgewater late at night, just walking around the city and looking at people and looking at the el. And interestingly enough when I first moved into the city I worked in Andersonville and I said to myself I would love to live in Andersonville someday. And now I live in Andersonville in a little house right on Ravenswood. So, the way the city circles you around yourself and you sort of get pocketed into these places in the city, these neighborhoods in the city, that’s very Chicago. I feel that the city that we know as Chicago that evolves will always be the city that we know of as Chicago because it evolves. We will always have the dichotomy that Algren uses as the thesis for his book Chicago: City on the Make, of the hustlers and the squares, and that both sides of that coin are inextricably tied to the growth of the city. |
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