It’s the classic ice breaker question we’ve all heard a thousand times: What would you do if you won the lottery?
In “Windfall,” the latest production to come to the Arkansas Repertory Theatre stage, we see that exact question come to life in the case of five normal people in dead-end jobs under a crummy boss. And when we say “comes to life,” we really mean “rears its ugly and hilarious head.”
Playwright, composer/songwriter and TV producer Scooter Pietsch is the brains behind this dark comedy. In the director’s chair is Jason Alexander, bringing with him a laundry list of theatrical accomplishments and, of course, his award-winning stent as George Costanza on “Seinfeld.”
Rounding out The Rep’s 40th anniversary season, the group chose to host the world premiere of “Windfall” right here in Little Rock, and we got the chance to talk to the cast and creative team ahead of opening night on Friday, June 10.
This interview is broken up into three parts: cast, director and playwright. So grab a cup of coffee and settle in. It’s about to get heavy and hilarious.
The Cast:
I’ve read the overviews, but tell me more about your characters and what parts of them you identify with the most.
Kayla Wikes: I think I somewhat relate to Jackie because I am kind of the newbie here. I came in a little nervous and intimidated by this process, and so does Jackie. She walks into this office wondering what she’s doing there because she’s been hired to freak the employees out, and is apparently supposed to take one of their jobs.
But then Jackie has this darker side we get to explore. She looks put-together and like she comes from a somewhat rich family, but it turns out she’s not. These people don’t know a lot about her, and she kind of bears her soul from this dark situation. She’s got colors. I like her, she’s a tough cookie. And you wouldn’t expect that from her when she first walks in — you should see the wig and the dress and the heels. She starts a bit ridiculous, but I’m liking her colors.
Lisa Ann Goldsmith: Kate is a woman of a certain age. She is alone and likes to party and sleep with younger men. I think her biggest fear is getting older and being alone, but she’s very much a mother in this group. Probably the least crap happens to her in the show. The thing that I identify with most is that I’m often a mother figure to students and to friends and stuff like that.
And you know, I’m at a point in life where I understand that feeling of panic thinking about getting older and how it’s going to change the roles I play… I have enough friends in my life, both men and women, who are also of a similar age and I see what they go through. I think that that’s really what focuses her decision to make this leap of faith. And because she does that, that’s why I think she gets so rabid about making sure that it happens.
Nikki Coble: Well, there are slivers of your own life that you draw from. It’s often an event that you can relate to and attach feeling to or a meaning. For Hannah, I’m an impulsive person, she’s an impulsive person, but her extreme is way further down the road than mine is. When she goes there, I’m like, you know, that seems like a bit much. But it’s justified in her world, so you can kind of ratchet up your own circumstances to have that make sense. I’ve also been a person who stayed in situations too long, in jobs where you’re no longer happy or friendships where it’s not serving you anymore and you just haven’t done anything about it. I can identify with that, so I can empathize with her plight and understand what would motivate her to go so far.
Alvin Keith: With Galvan, it’s very interesting because I don’t know how much I identify with him in a lot of respects because he takes a lot of abuse in this play that I would not take. But there are two places where I identify with him: One is that he’s the only person of color in the office. I know what that feels like, I’m often the only person of color even in our profession. He does seem, though, to get along with the people in his office, and I identify with that because I love people.
And two, I was raised very, very religious. I come from a very prominent Southern methodist black family for generations and generations. Galvan spouts a lot of biblical verses and seems to be driven by parables and stories, and more importantly, just by things he may have heard in church. I can identify with that, not in that I spout those things in my everyday life, but I definitely know them, I’ve heard them, I’ve been in very elevated pentecostal (even though I’m not pentecostal) occurrences, and I think we maybe go to some of those places in the play, so that’s kind of fun for me. Galvan is also an overachiever. I used to be an overachiever, but I’m too old for that now. It’s too much wasted energy.
Cyrus Alexander: So Chris, in how I identify with him on a value-based level is in his need and want to have people smile and laugh and enjoy their lives instead of look at their lives. That’s his approach, he doesn’t pry or get too far into things. His base way of getting around is making someone smile or having someone feel something if they need it. He’s not the sharpest tack in certain ways, like we all are, his are specific and brought out in this play, but his emotional ability to see what someone needs in a moment and help someone fulfill it, whether or not it is moral, is his strength. That’s how he goes about his life.
Let’s say he wins the lottery; everyone wants something epic, but his isn’t. He’s fine, he just wants a nice car to go with it, to take everyone to the bar and show them a good time. There’s nothing about his life he would change, and that’s because he doesn’t want to look at it. He’s a socialite who goes from person to person, night to night. He can’t be left alone with his thoughts.
Ray Wills: I mean, you’ll see the character Glenn and decide what you think of him. It’s like she said, we all put parts of ourselves into the characters that we play. This guy is well-read, well-educated, a professional who owns a business, wants to make money, wants it to run right. I can relate to those things, we all want to be professional and expect that of others. Then it takes a left turn because the character is very, very ill…
Also, these people that he has hired, who he knows full well are flawed, he knows all of their weaknesses so he can control them, just like a lot of bosses do. But when they’re not performing up to their potential, he’s decided at this point to deal with that. He also thinks the lottery is a scam, and they all think they’re going to win it and leave. Whether he’s crazy or not would be up to the audience to decide.
Jason Alexander, Director:
First off, tell me a little bit about what made you want to work with Scooter on this project, and what it was about his play that really pulled you in and held on to you.
Scooter happens to be the icing on the cake. I didn’t do it or not do it because of Scooter, he just happens to be a ton of fun to work with. He’s just a party to be around, and he’s having a ball because this is his first produced play. He’s really enjoying the whole process, and that is fun to be with for somebody.
The play, in a nutshell, I think it’s a really interesting, strong play. It’s very theatrical. You want it on a stage, you don’t want to do it in another arena… It throws down a lot of gauntlets and puzzles that have to be unraveled. As a piece of theater, to create the blueprint the first time, to work out some of the bugs, it’s just full of great challenges. That’s what you want. You don’t want anything easy. You want to go, “Hmm, how are we gonna do that?” And then you figure it out and you collaborate.
It’s why I’ve started to really love directing more than acting. You do all that as an actor, too, but you can only affect one little thing, and that’s your role. When you’re doing it as a director, I’m talking to designers and I’m talking to the writer and I’m talking to the actors. It’s not a hubristic thing, but there’s something about being the puzzle master where you get every department going, “Ok, if you do that and I do this, then I think this will all come together.”
That is much more engaging than just going, “I’ll be a good soldier and say these lines.” The only downside is that then you don’t get to say those lines. There’s a joy to performing and getting that reaction from the audience that the director doesn’t get to have, but I find that the rewards of this far outweigh that loss.
So what’s been unique to having that role in this play?
Oh, all kinds of things. In every way, this play is challenging. It’s a comedy that’s based on really, really dark, desperate situations. At any given moment, you can lean into the darkness, or you can use the darkness to create comedy. But you never know, since it’s never been done before, which one should we do? If I lean toward the comedy, does the character ring false? Am I trivializing that character?… But if you lean into the darkness too much, is it no longer funny? And then if it’s no longer funny, then what are we doing up here? This situation is extreme and absurd, and the language is extreme and absurd. There’s enough ugliness on the stage that, if you really play it as ugly, who wants to spend two hours there?…
It’s all balancing, it’s all orchestrating this orchestra that has never played together before. You can’t let the brass outshine the woodwinds or the percussion outshine the brass. It’s constantly adjusting. And because there’s no blueprint, all I can do is take a breath, step back, look at it and say “I think so. I think this is right.” I’m using my instincts, my 40 years of experience. It’s just totally engaging.
Producers sometimes like to get into the directing role. They’ll give you notes and say to do this, do that. Generally, if you’re directing with some degree of intelligence, you’re building a house of cards. Somebody outside that house doesn’t realize that if you flick that card away, the whole thing crumbles. They just think ah, you don’t need that card, you’ve got 51 others. That’s not how this works. I always say that yeah, directing is sexy until it doesn’t go very well, and then you’re the schmo. You’re the guy that has to shoulder all the blame. So, we’ll see. We’ll see if I have to get out of town fast.
From what I can tell, the way these characters have been written, they’re all very relatable. You feel like you’ve met these people before.
Yes, you should recognize these people. The most extreme in some ways is Ray’s character, the boss, and only because the level of his abuse is astronomical. In my case, I’ve seen directors who are as aggressively abusive as this guy, but it’s rare. His language is so interesting that he may seem more theatrical than the other characters, but ideally, the other ones should be people that you go, “Yeah, I bet I’m living in a neighborhood with some of these people.”
Is there one that you relate to the best?
I get really caught up with any one of them. If I focus on any one of them, I find them fascinating. They all are incredibly disappointed, and I find that interesting. Whatever is going on in our country or in the world right now, I think it is people not understanding how they got to where they are in the world. It was supposed to be different. Many people think it’s supposed to be better, but I think most people think it’s supposed to be different. It’s supposed to feel better than it does, it’s supposed to look better than it does. We can blame our politicians, we can blame our economy, we can do whatever we want to try and bandage the fact that we didn’t get what we thought we were going to get, that we’re not getting our due.
That’s what these five people are up against. They’ve gotten to this point in life where they go, “I’m working hard, I’m a good person, I’m doing all the right things, but I can’t seem to get ahead, I can’t improve my circumstance and when I put my head down at night, I don’t feel like tomorrow is going to be better than today.” That, to me, is so relatable. There are specifics of why they all feel that way, and I can get behind any one of them, even the ones that seem advantaged.
What’s it been like working at The Rep?
I’m always surprised because I’m a New York snob. I grew up in New Jersey. My fantasy of a career was New York theater. All the television and film stuff was a happy accident, I just wanted to work in the theater. I never did a lot of stock, I never did a lot of repertory companies, my career was really New York and LA. You make assumptions about how anywhere else is never going to be up to the standards.
But this place — everything from the physical facility, the stage, the costume shop, the set shop — there is no difference between the finest Broadway houses I’ve played and the experience of working here. It is a beautiful stage, fully equipped to do anything anyone would ever want it to do.
And the people that work behind the scenes here are impressive as hell. Mike Nichols, the resident set designer, this was a really daunting thing to throw at a set designer, to need a place that no one wants to be in and yet an audience will look at for a couple of hours, and that has enough nooks and crannies and spaces to be able to stage something on and find behaviors and actions that are aided by the things in this space. It’s very, very tricky and he did a gorgeous job.
Marianne Custer, who’s doing our costume work, I’ll give her some basic notions about what these people’s live are like and what might be reflective in their clothing, even some subliminal thing about how the first act’s cold and the second act’s hot, whatever that means to you, and then she comes back with these designs. I thought they were just going to go out to the local Walmart and just try to find things that fit, but she’s building and designing. It’s just spectacular.
Bob Hupp and the administration, everybody wants to make this a class-A experience for everybody involved. They’re wonderful hosts and they’re wonderful collaborators…
But is also goes to answer your question about coming to Little Rock to do this. It’s so interesting that Arkansans, the first question that they ask is “Why Little Rock?” and I keep going, “Do you know something I don’t know? Why not Little Rock?” It’s like some alien being lives here that these stories don’t affect or that don’t enjoy having a theatrical experience.
We have found the community at large to be really welcoming, really warm, really curious. This place has been here 40 years, that couldn’t happen unless there was a real theater audience here that is interested in what goes on in the theater. It has been surprisingly professional, surprisingly positive, no issues, no problems, nobody saying we can’t, we don’t have the budget, we don’t do that here — none of those things that you’d expect to hear. In every way, it has been a surprise and a joy.
Scooter Pietsch, Playwright:
What’s this whole process been like for you, with this being your first big, produced play?
It’s going great. What for sure has made it such an enjoyable experience is that the creative team and the staff here at the theater are so well organized. I’ve had other functions and worked on theatrical productions, and it has been difficult at certain times because the people in some of those jobs were not up to par, but everybody here’s been fantastic. So that’s something Jason and I don’t have to worry about… That taken off the table, production of putting it on the stage not being an issue, basically all I’m focusing on is the script and making sure the story is working, and that we’re getting what Jason and I have talked the past two years about.
Now we’re in a rehearsal space where we’ve got the whole set mocked up and the actors are working in that space and getting used to the size of it. Over the next weeks, as the actors settle even more into their roles, we’re going to be looking for more comedy to pull out of them, and that’s really fun. The script is a blueprint for what we have happen, and once they start doing it, you start looking for funnier things. I suggested a couple the other day, Jason thought they were hilarious and next week on stage we’ll start giving those little bits to them. The lines are very funny, but we want some of the actions to be funny as well. And that second act is insane.
Everyone keeps saying that. Tell me more about how it ramps up in the second act — no spoilers, though.
Imagine if you were convinced that you were going to have hundreds of millions of dollars tomorrow, and it doesn’t happen, and you think someone is to blame for that. You would get quite upset, you might get violent, your language might become saltier than you normally speak. This one, the language works for me because the situation is so outrageous and the actions of the characters are so despicable. I buy that they would go to that extreme. If you’re going to get involved with violence with office equipment, I think perhaps a salty noun or verb may work its way into your vocabulary.
With all that action that’s happening in the second act, the one thing is that — and Jason’s very good because he’s a trained fight coordinator — the rehearsals have to be very slow, very specific to make sure nobody gets hurt. Like I said, it’s outrageous. And it’s very fun.
You may sit there with your mouth open like, “Oh my god, I can’t believe this is happening on stage,” but hopefully you’re going to be laughing because it’s pretty absurd as well. So we have to be very, very careful that none of the actors get hurt. It’s timed to the millisecond. It’s definitely fun.
You’ve cooked up all these characters as people that we recognize from our everyday lives. Was that the mindset?
Obviously, any writer wants to have diversity in their characters in terms of personality and looks and attitudes and intelligence levels and that kind of thing. You want people that are unique so that everyone in the audience can identify them very quickly. For me, I write a lot of more autobiographical plays. This one is not…
What I look for when I create characters is what kind of stories — and I don’t go as in-depth as actors do in their research to come up with a character — but I usually write 10 iconic things that happened in their life to get them to this play tonight. It’s not even an element in the play, but I’ll go back and think about their first date or how they lost their virginity or how they did in math in elementary school and if they were ridiculed for it or the star of math class. I look for certain things that I think are applicable to that character so I feel I know them a little better. Your math skills are never mentioned, but that’s something in my head that means something to me for that character.
For Glenn, the evil boss in the play, very little backstory is given about him — as a matter of fact almost none, everything you see is what he is on the stage. But I had to go back: Is he married, is he divorced, how many times is he divorced, how did he get into this business, how did he end up the despicable person that he is? How did he get to this point? That’s really entertaining for me to create that world with all those people.
Sometimes those little elements, like if I come up with a first date scenario, it might be based on my first date or someone else who has told me a story like that, and I’ll use it as kind of my mental research on that character. There are always those elements. Everything that I see, I try and notate in my brain and remember it later for a character…
As a playwright, you’re watching what’s been in your brain come to life over the past few weeks. Have there been any moments so far that have really surprised you, that you didn’t expect to come out that way?
I don’t write jokes, I write situations that are funny. When I go into those setups of a humorous situation, you run them in your head and you run them in your head and you decide, yes, if he says this word right here and she says this and he says that, this is going to be hilarious. But you’re never really quite sure until the actors are doing it and you’re watching the timing. Then when they start rehearsal, everything’s really slow. They haven’t memorized their lines, it hasn’t been blocked out. They’re doing the bit and you’re kind of like oh, that’s not very funny.
The thing for me is to not prejudge it. Let them learn it, let Jason get it all blocked out, let them get really fast at delivering their lines, so that they’re inside of them. And when they engage in physical activity, they can spit out the lines without even thinking. That just takes days and days of rehearsal.
So finally yesterday we were getting it up to speed and I kept thinking, ah, it’s funny. It’s hilarious. There are those things where you’re nervous and thinking oh, it’s not as good as I thought it was going to be, or it’s different than I thought. And then it starts coming together, and hopefully that will just start getting better and better. It’s a very fast play. The dialogue is spit out like machine gun fire.
And are you just biting your tongue the whole time they’re learning it?
Oh yeah. So I just keep telling myself to wait, wait. Because you want to rewrite from like the first sentence. That has nothing to do with anything other than the fact that I’ve been reading and working on the script for a couple years, but now that rejuvenation is happening because they’re taking it in new directions and doing different things with it so it’s very exciting and very fun.
(Then we couldn’t help ourselves and asked what restaurants they’ve been enjoying in Little Rock so far.)
Cyrus: Andina’s. I loved that place.
Alvin: Flying Fish.
Jason: Oh, we’ve catered several times with Whole Hog, so that’s been good. I generally know the ones in this little area that we’ve been running out to. Southern Gourmasian was a lovely surprise. Power — they have a great fried chicken over at Power. Copper Grill was very good.
Scooter: Well, I have been hanging at SO… Our first week was entirely social events, so I’ve really only eaten at three restaurants: SO, with Bob and Clea at Cache and then Whole Hog.
“Windfall” will be at The Rep June 10-26. For tickets and more information, click here.