INTERVIEW: Baltimore Center Stage presents personal, farcical ‘Swindlers’
Photo: Noah Diaz’s new play is called The Swindlers. Photo courtesy of the artist / Provided by Matt Ross PR with permission.
When playwright Noah Diaz decided to put pen to paper and craft a comedy for Baltimore Center Stage, he decided to explore some purported family history. Specifically, he was interested in the relationship between his mother and his grandfather, and what he produced ultimately has become an examination in meta-theatricality, one that is billed as “true-ish.”
The Swindlers: A True-ish Tall Tale continues in Baltimore through Sept. 26. The production is directed by the renowned Will Davis, known for Men on Boats and Bobbie Clearly, among other shows.
“It’s got a little bit of a Warner Brothers cartoon / Marx Brothers kind of vibe to it, a lot of fun slapstick moments,” Davis said in a recent phone interview. “The structure of the farce and the structure of the comedy was really unique, and what’s incredible about this piece is at its heart is this autobiographical material that you’re working with.”
When Diaz talks about the plot of this comedy, it’s almost as if he puts air quotes around the words “autobiographical” and “true.” The story in the play goes something like this: “Marie is plagued by the winter blues. Her boyfriend’s a dud, her bank statements are piling up, and her job at the local dry cleaners feels like a dead end. Oh, and the FBI has just seized her house and assets in their pursuit of her father, a notorious con man on the run for swindling families and businesses out of their money,” according to press notes.
Diaz, who also writes for television shows, said some of this narrative is loosely based on familial history, but other items have been expanded and theatricalized to make the farce work on stage. “The true part of all of this is that my grandfather was a notoriously wanted conman in the Midwest,” Diaz said. “There’s some discrepancy about when he was most at his height, but from our understanding, it was taking place somewhere between the late-’70s to the early-’90s.”
The playwright would be the first person to say he doesn’t quite understand the ins and outs of scheming and fake details, but some of those details are secondary to the larger themes of a daughter (his mother) dealing with her father (his grandfather), and how that relationship evolved through difficult circumstances.
“I set out to document this relationship between my mother, whom I’m very close with, who had a tough relationship with her father, my grandfather,” said Diaz, who has worked with Roundabout Theatre Company, La Jolla Playhouse and Two River Theater, among other companies. “I wanted to try to re-create this history between the two in a family comedy, but I think … I ended up finding that this was an impossible play to write, for a lot of reasons I won’t really bore you with. But I think at the heart of it, insecurities begin to grow around authorship.”
Throughout the writing process, Diaz began to have doubts on whether he was the best author to tell this story, and so he decided to take a right turn on this larger-than-life road trip and instead create what he describes as a “meta-intimate exploration of familial trauma, which sounds not very funny.”
“I think what is most thrilling to me about this play is that it is a play and a production that discovers itself in real time,” the writer said. “That I think is something that I had never quite seen. I’m still figuring it out thanks to Will and this production. It’s a big fun, messy affair.”
For Davis, who is a transgender director and choreographer focused on physically adventurous new work for the stage, there have been many interesting moments of discovery along the way. The play begins as a farcical comedy, but then it becomes something completely different, which was most welcome for Davis and the company.
“As these questions about how and who is telling the story start to come up, the farce nature shifts, and there becomes a very deep and human exploration about not just whose story is it to tell, but I think there’s this other layer of how will I tell it,” said Davis, whose previous credits include everything from Road Show at Encores! Off-Center to India Pale Ale at Manhattan Theatre Club. “It feels really rich on stage. It’s a big play, and what I mean when I say big is that it has a really lovely theatricality. We go a lot of places. We see a lot of things. We meet a lot of people, but all of that is very purposefully situated in a theatrical setting. One of the things that I love about Noah’s writing is that the plays he writes are for the theater, and that might sound kind of obvious, but you might be surprised how many plays I read that don’t necessarily feel like the audience has to be there, or the structure or the content of the play doesn’t necessarily feel like it has to be told. … But Noah’s writing absolutely does. It’s very, very, very personal and very alive. You have to be there in the theater in order to get that full experience, and as a director, that’s a special thing to me.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Swindlers: A True-ish Tall Tale by Noah Diaz and directed by Will Davis plays through Sept. 26 at Baltimore Center Stage. Click here for more information and tickets.
