Trey Tatum and Paul Strickland grew up just 45 miles apart — Tatum in southern Alabama and Strickland in Florida’s Panhandle. But they didn’t meet until their paths crossed in Cincinnati during the Fringe Festival in June 2014. Playwright Tatum and his wife, director Bridget Leak, were staging his script, Slut Shaming. Strickland was back for his second solo Fringe production, a further round of tall tales from the Big Fib Cul-de-Sac Trailer Park, Papa Squat’s Store of Sorts. (In 2013 he offered Ain’t True and Uncle False.) Seeing one another’s endeavors, they discovered common ground — both in terms of their roots and their creativity.
When Know Theatre announced Thunderdome, the second round of its 10-week Serials program, inviting local theater artists to create and stage shows in five 15-minute segments, Strickland and Tatum decided to join forces.
Neither had previously worked on a collaborative project like this, but they had chemistry. “This was the most fun I’ve ever had making a script,” Strickland says.
They populated their show, Andy’s House of [blank], with versions of themselves. As they did during Serials, they’ll perform with two other actors, in what might be called a “semi-autobiographical mystery musical.” Andy’s House of [blank] was the most popular work among the Thunderdome offerings early in 2015, and now it’s back as a full-fledged show, the third production of Know’s 18th season.
“When we saw Andy’s unfold during Serials last winter, we knew it was something special,” says Know artistic director Andrew Hungerford. “It’s incredibly gratifying to be able to provide a playground for artists like this team and to work with them to develop their show beyond an episodic experiment into a fully realized production.”
Here’s the set-up and the story: Paul and Trey recount the summer they (supposedly) met as teenagers working at a store that was “part Emporium of Oddities and part Museum of Unmailed Love Letters.” They musically — Strickland has added five more songs, for a total of 20 — and dramatically recall a tale of unrequited love on the part of Andy (played by Christopher Michael Richardson), the store’s proprietor. When Sadie (Erika Kate MacDonald), a young woman Andy had a crush on in school years earlier, comes back for her dad’s funeral, she drops by his shop with a mysterious machine. Its activation creates a kind of time warp, so her visit keeps happening — over and over.
Tatum says writing with Strickland was almost easier than writing on his own. “The pile of good ideas is bigger,” he says. “My weak points just happen to be Paul’s strong points. Thematically, ideas about obsession and the lengths we go to to be desirable to others came out slowly over time.”
At one point the pair had sketched out the first three episodes but didn’t know where the story was headed. They stepped out of Strickland’s apartment in the dead of winter and went on a long walk through Covington. “We refused to go back home until we figured out the ending,” Tatum says. “That was when we really settled on obsessions as a guiding force in the story.”
Their co-conspirator in this endeavor has been Leak, who directed the Serials rendition and is staging the full-length version. Andy’s began in her and Tatum’s kitchen over dinner and drinks. “This fully realized production is an opportunity to really play with the theatricality of the environment — a curiosity shop with dead animals mounted on the walls — and to really take the time and care to develop the love story between Andy and Sadie,” she says. Strickland says he and Tatum tend to be “weird and abstract,” so it was up to Leak to keep their narrative straightforward.
She has worked with scenic designer Sarah Beth Hall, who’s converted the Underground Bar, Know’s usual pre- and post-show hangout, into Andy’s store. It’s an immersive environment that should make this funky story all the more entertaining. “We wanted to keep it fun,” Leak says. “If this process doesn’t feel like us hanging out in the kitchen playing — with booze — there’s no point in doing it!”
Strickland, Tatum and Leak are hoping you’ll hang out with them sometime during the next two weeks. Andy’s House of [blank] opens on Friday and continues through Nov. 14; it’s about 90 minutes, including an intermission.
CONTACT RICK PENDER: rpender@citybeat.com
This article appears in Oct 28 – Nov 3, 2015.
