You're No Fun

After a flamboyantly successful run at the Bedlam Theatre earlier this spring, You’re No Fun has been whittled down for a Fringe staging. The play centers around a present-day hobo who comes back to town, and finds that his ex-girlfriend has written a musical about his life. It is a tale of star-crossed lovers that, like any worthwhile addition to the tragic genre, features dancing dinosaurs. The Rake caught up with Samantha Johns – director of both versions- and Savannah Reich -the original writer – to talk a bit about the incarnation and reincarnation of the show.

The Rake: Are there any differences between the Fringe version of the show and its original Bedlam staging?

Samantha: Yes, we had to cut about 20 minutes off it to make it fit the Fringe standard. We cut a beautiful (and complex) barbershop quartet, a few hunks of dialogue are missing, and then I just lit a fire under the actors’ asses and got them moving and talking faster.

Savannah: I haven’t been involved in the Fringe staging process – although I was pretty involved the first time around (until Sam kicked me out of rehearsal for continually trying to do rewrites).

The Rake: You’ve stated that this is a show that asks, ‘Why do we do theater?’ Would you riff on that a bit?

Sam: I honestly couldn’t tell you, and I don’t think there is one single reason; I couldn’t imagine a life without it.

Sav: I tend to struggle with justifying to myself the idea of doing theatre- especially the kind of theatre I like to do, which is the totally ridiculous kind. That is the hope, anyways. Last fall I was going back to school to finish my degree in theatre arts at the U of M, and I was having this whole internal crisis about what I was doing with my life. I had all these friends who were going on houseboats down the Missisippi, or hopping trains, or moving to India, and it all sounded so much more exciting than staying at home and writing a three to five page paper about Brechtian technique or whatever I was doing. I just wasn’t convinced that art school was the best way to be an artist. I always wondered if I was the only one who still thought it was funny the way everyone is able to take themselves so seriously while wearing yoga pants and practicing different ways of falling down the stairs. On the other hand, I had all my other friends who were going to punk shows and traveling and working in collectives, just as much in their own little bubble as the theatre folks were in theirs. I ended up thinking a lot about how much these two worlds were alike, or at least presented the same problem to me, which is, "Am I wrong to want to spend my adult life in a very serious pursuit of fun?"

I remember coming home from school one day, where I had practiced trapeze and juggling and then painted plywood to look like pink marble, and talking to this traveling guy that was hanging out on my porch playing harmonica. I lived in a big punk house at the time and we always had some random guy sitting on the porch and playing harmonica. So I was chatting with this guy about how I was worried that I was wasting my life in art school, and he gave me this big lecture about how I should drop out of school and go hop trains. And I said, "Well, I never said I didn’t think you were wasting your life, too."

The Rake: How did the idea for the show germinate?

Sav: So the play is about a relationship between this intense experimental theatre type and this anti-civilization hobo guy, and they both take themselves really seriously and each one sort of looks down on the other. They are both trying really hard to find meaning in their lives and their relationship, and meanwhile they are in this really goofy, ridiculous play, with all these corny musical numbers and dumb jokes and dinosaur costumes. So that’s my take on life on earth, apparently.

The Rake: Given that there are dancing dinosaurs involved, it seems your notion of theater, no matter how serious it may be, is at least to have a little bit of fun, too, no?

Sam: If we’re not having fun, there is no point. If it becomes painful, and is not helping the show, we stop, take a break, and come back at it a different way.

Sav: We all have an invisible kickline of dinosaurs behind us and we might as well just stop trying to look cool.

The Rake: Does it change from performance to performance?

Sam: Yes, it’s live. Things wobble here and there, but in general, the feel of it always the same. The actors know what they have to hit and where, but in between, there is always room for movement. Beautiful things can happen in those moments, you have to allow the actors to play.

The Rake: Have Fringe festivals in the past helped you with your larger theater life in Minnesota at all?

Sam: This is my first Fringe, and before this year I would maybe see one or two Fringe shows a year, so I’m not sure. Seeing any piece of theatre is always helpful in the big scheme of things.

See the Minnesota Fringe Festival website for remaining showtimes.

To read John Ervin’s Inside the Fringe: Instamment One, click here.

To read Jill Yablonski’s Inside the Fringe: Instamment Two, click here.

To read Andrew Newman’s Inside the Fringe: Instamment Three, click here.

To read Brandon Root’s Inside the Fringe: Instamment Four, click here.

To read Max Ross’ Inside the Fringe: Instamment Five, click here.