Preview
PERVERT
Ground Zero Theatre
Starring Christian Goutsis, Jamie Konchak, Ryan Luhning, Cherie McMaster and Grant Reddick
Written by Stephen Massicotte
Directed by Ian Prinsloo
Runs May 19 to 29
Pumphouse Theatres
They always counsel writers to "write what you know." Well, if you spent your hungry years as a struggling playwright working the night shift at a XXX porn video store….
When Stephen Massicotte took a job with a chain of Calgary porn outlets a few years ago, his fortunes were at a low ebb. Back then, the future author of the international hit play Mary’s Wedding was just a promising but underpaid dramatist and a mostly unemployed actor trying to scrape by.
"I needed the money and it was full-time," he recalls. "I told myself I’d work there for two or three months until something better came along. You know how that happens – next thing you know, it’s a year later and you’re still there."
But his year peddling porn wasn’t a waste of time creatively. "Right away I knew I was going to write a play about it for sure," he says.
Now, three years later, with a score of Mary’s Wedding productions on his resumé and the screenplay for a multi-million-dollar movie in the works, the well-paid, well-employed Massicotte is ready to delve back into his seamy, Boogie Nights past. And his new play Pervert, making its debut this month at Ground Zero Theatre, will come as a rude shock to those who know him only from the tender wartime romance of Mary’s Wedding or the innocent nostalgia of The Boy’s Own Jedi Handbook. Those plays never got into things like fake breasts, skyrockets of semen and sodomy with a dildo.
"Last year, I was touring around and I saw nine of 10 Mary’s Wedding productions across the country," says Massicotte. "That’s when I started writing Pervert. I think it was a reaction, being that Mary’s Wedding is very sweet and kind-hearted and poetic. I wanted to write something that was the opposite."
His raunchy comedy concerns Tim (Christian Goutsis), a night clerk in a porn emporium who becomes obsessed with proving that a new customer, realtor Mike (Ryan Luhning), has stolen a hot new video release. As they engage in an ongoing dispute over the alleged theft, Tim’s girlfriend Trish (Cherie McMaster) and Mike’s wife Lisa (Jamie Konchak) both find themselves affected in different ways by porn. Then there’s amiable Kurt (Grant Reddick), the store’s regular customer, who blurs the line between porn addict and connoisseur.
Among other things, the play debunks the typical image of the porn consumer as some sleazy creep in a raincoat. In fact, Massicotte’s store would be packed on Friday and Saturday nights after the bars closed. "Everybody who doesn’t pick someone up comes to the porn shop," he says. "A lot of people, as they were renting, would say, ‘You must get a lot of weirdos in here.’ Or, ‘This must be a really weird job. You must see some really freaky sights.’ And I kept waiting to see these freaky sights and strange weirdos, and I never saw any. It finally dawned on me that everyone thinks that perverts or weirdos is everybody else."
Many renters were ordinary couples like Mike and Lisa, looking to spice up their sex lives. And their tastes were unpredictable. "People would ask me for recommendations," says Massicotte. "I’d look at the couple, and if they looked kind of shy and quiet and clean-cut, I’d give them something relatively soft to start out with. They’d come back and say, ‘This is way too lame!’ They’d want something super-nasty. Then you’d get a biker girl and guy and, just looking at them, I’d give them this real hardcore stuff. They’d come back and be practically offended – ‘Who do you think we are? This is sick!’ After a while I stopped giving any recommendations. I was like, ‘Man, you’ve got to pick your own porn.’"
Then there were the porn mavens like Kurt, who Massicotte found refreshing in their honesty and enthusiasm. "There were these two guys who rented everything, they knew everything," he recalls. "They’d be yelling across the store while other customers were in there being quiet and discreet. They’d be in the back calling, ‘Hey, isn’t this the one where so-and-so pegs so-and-so?’ I always appreciated them. I thought their attitude was much healthier than the people who were sneaky and felt they were doing something wrong."
But Massicotte himself began to wonder if what he was doing was right – if, in working as a clerk, he was actually participating in the porn industry and enabling porn addicts. "At what point are you a pornographer? At what point are you part of the problem? I think the play addresses that," he says. "The two couples (in Pervert) are going through relationship problems at the same time as the two men in the relationships are having this fight over the stolen video. Issues of guilt and perversion and wrongdoing come up and, in the end, the play is about whether or not pornography is the cause."
Massicotte has come a long way from his days as a porn merchant. Lately he’s been living in a flat in London’s funky Notting Hill neighbourhood, writing the screenplay for a supernatural thriller provisionally entitled The Dark, which will star Maria Bello (The Cooler) and Sean Bean (Lord of the Rings). Former Calgarian John Fawcett, creator of the cult horror film Ginger Snaps, is directing it. Fawcett hired Massicotte after the latter wrote the dialogue for the Ginger Snaps prequel – which recently won Massicotte an AMPIA (Alberta Motion Picture Industries Association) award. The Dark begins shooting in late June in London and on location on the Isle of Man.
Massicotte is also spending his time in England doing research on a new play about T.E. Lawrence, a.k.a. Lawrence of Arabia, commissioned by the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. And another play, The Emperor of Atlantis – an historical drama about the creation of the opera of that name – will première this fall at Edmonton Opera.
Meanwhile, Mary’s Wedding continues to be picked up, with more productions scheduled for the U.S., England and Scotland next season. Massicotte knows Pervert won’t have the same widespread appeal, but he feels it’s no less important.
"I’m really proud of Pervert as a step in my writing," he says. "I’m not sure how it’s going to go over. Some people might be shocked. Some might just be titillated. It’s a dark play, there’s no denying that, but overall I think it’s pretty funny." |
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