Popination Crystallization
a series of unhinged personal essays disguised as pub reviews. Today: Brooks Place Tavern.
Also, StageDoor Theatre.
What on God’s frozen earth brought me out in negative degree weather to the not-quite-remote kinda-mountain town of Conifer last week, in the dead of dark evening?
Shenanigans, that’s what.
There’s a process of how to do fight choreography and incorporate it into the production you’ve been hired for. How it normally works is this: I get a plea from a director, that they have something violence- or intimacy-related (or just some kind of physical business that’s dangerous) in their play, and would I be available to set it up for them? I agree, and read the full script, then usually meet or chat with the director to see what concept they’re already working on, and then I sit down with my process of: how many fights are here, who’s doing them and why, and all the parameters re: type of weapon, legality, number of bystanders, and the whole shebang. I go into this process in some more detail when I run down my Genrification classifications, and the theory of movement as storytelling in The Fight is the Story. Read those for more about that.
Then what happens is, I write notes longhand in the script pages or a notebook, which is all the choreography I’ve composed in my head. Then I’ll go to a rehearsal (the earlier the better), and teach the choreography to the actors, who will then incorporate it into the blocking they hopefully already have, and I’ll choose a Fight Captain who will be in charge of maintaining the fights in rehearsal when I’m not there. Usually this person is the actor who has the most stage combat experience, or if nobody really does, then it goes to the stage manager. Then I’ll type up the final version of the choreography and share it with them so they can use it for subsequent rehearsals.
I’ll let a week or two go by, depending on how much rehearsal time they have set for them, and I’ll come back for a run-through rehearsal, where I’ll watch the whole enchilada and take notes on how the fights are looking now that they’re embedded within the whole. And that right there is why I shivered into an uber in the nostril-stiffening -5 degrees: to watch a runthru of StageDoor theatre’s production of The Cottage.
But StageDoor is not a pub!
There’s a pub very nearby though: Brooks Place Tavern (oo, another actual tavern!) is a 7 minute walk from the theatre. I did not walk that night, though, for obvious reasons. But I’m always excited to find a new-to-me Popination, and this night when I already had to be out was a perfect opportunity.
Now normally, I would describe the outside of the place before I go into its interior, but I must admit that since it was so cold outside, I hightailed it from the car to the warmth of the bar seating. In that brief flash of a glimpse, I remember it looking like a pretty standard almost full-sized strip mall, with Brooks Place taking up most of a corner.
Inside, it was half nice dive and half sprawling sports bar, and was warm, welcoming, and with a good selection of beer on draft. I had a favorite IPA and a dish of soft pretzel bites, and was glad I had gotten up here a bit early, but regretted not having gotten up there early enough to be able to chill out, er, warm up a little longer before show time. But I highly recommend it for a pregame for any StageDoor show, for sure.
Beer before theatre?
Sure. I’ve talked about the proper balance of drinking and performing before, in my discussion of beloved brewery Well80. If I can loosen up without getting sloppy, that’s the best balance. Live theatre takes a heck of a lot of energy, and it’s easy to get a little too high strung if one isn’t careful.
Hey, I’m not the first excellent writer to work whilst imbibing. And I’m certainly not the first excellent actor to “think while I drink.” [2] It’s all in the balance, though—too little and I’m too tightly wound, my voice shallow, my breath not up to the snuff of one of Shakespeare’s greatest Fools. Too much, and the opposite happens: I’m too sloppy in the brain to conquer the complex language, and my singing voice goes flat. But, as you’ve read about here before, I come from a rich tradition of acting and drinking, and it has normally been, when done mindfully and correctly, good medicine.
But beer and stage combat go hand in hand for me, anyway: have I told you about the Band of Young Men and The Last Tap? This was during my time as a sword bro in arms with a high level troupe at the CO RenFaire, of which experience I detail in Chapter 5 of my memoir, ‘One of the Guys.’ That first summer I performed with them, we would be required to be on site and in costume pretty much constantly the whole day, even during those times when we weren’t performing. And as we were the only performers who walked around mingling onsite who had drawable swords, we were the only performers who were forbidden from touching alcohol until after we were out of costume. Thing is, we were required to be in costume until the Faire closed. So this, as you can see, was rather a conundrum.
But we were clever actors and swordsmen, and we weren’t going to let a little thing like a strict safety rule get in our way. And as our collective charisma was off the charts, we had made an ally in the barmaid population of the Faire. And so. We would execute our elaborate and climactic final fight of the day right before closing time: our last fight would end something around 10 minutes, I think? before the cannon would fire over the front gates, signifying the site was closed. From last sword stroke till cannon, then, that meant we had 10 minutes to change out of our costumes and into our civvies, and sprint across the entire dirt and wood chip field of the whole Faire, to a single pub at the way far other end, who made sure they were ‘closing up too slowly’ to have all their taps put away by the time we huffed up against the bar, gasping our orders before anyone in charge realized we were partying after hours. I remember that usually the only tap left open for us was Woodpecker Cider, and so, as much as I find that drink too sweet for my normal taste, I do have a fond memory of how that cider tasted, going down my exhausted and dusty gullet at 6pm after a long day.
But anyway. That night, I was going to the theatre to watch the runthru, not teach or execute bits or perform otherwise myself anyway, so. All good. Which it would have been anyway.
The Cottage doesn’t have what you’d call actual fight scenes* in it, but as it’s a farce, it has a lot of what’s called comedic business and slapstick. Some of these bits are dangerous enough that the director, quite rightly, hired me on to choreograph. Things like: lots of drunken falling to the floor, a fall down a short flight of stairs, a passed-out person being lifted and deposited to the couch and then from there to the coffee table, and some shenanigans with a gun waving around in the air, and going off by accident. Not fights, just enough shenanigans that they needed one more expert to come in and make sure nobody was getting hurt.
*Actually, that’s not strictly true: there’s one moment where a jilted lady throws herself on top of her ex-husband and chokes him with the gun. So. That’s a fight scene.
And they already had more than one Jenn on their crew, so I became, not Jenn, but Jennanigans, which fills me with glee. But suffice to say: the play was already hilarious even in that rough runthru, so I have every faith that it’ll be fantastic by opening night. And hey, now I know there’s a good tavern close by. Brooks Place and then StageDoor would be a good date night.
