BWW Interviews: Drake Simpson, Kevin Jones, and Logan Vaden Talk Horse Head Theater Company's production of THE ALIENS

Last week, I had the opportunity to drop in on the cast of Horse Head Theater Productions upcoming presentation of Annie Baker's THE ALIENS. Drake Simpson empathically said that the group is excited to present the Houston premiere of the play. Annie Baker is an up and coming and award winning playwright, who had her Houston premiere with Stark Naked Theatre Company's production of her first full length play BODY AWARENESS. Her second play CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION shared the 2010 Obie Award for Best New American Play with her third play THE ALIENS. Annie Baker's THE ALIENS was also a finalist for the 2010 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. In March 2013, Annie Baker was awarded the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize at Houston's Alley Theatre for her fifth play THE FLICK. Needless to say, the enthusiasm surrounding this Houston premiere is high, and the cast was thrilled to chat about Horse Head Theater Company's upcoming production of THE ALIENS.

BWW: Houston has just started to fall in love with playwright Annie Baker. Stark Naked Theatre's successful production of BODY AWARENESS at Studio 101 has put her on our radar. As Horse Head Theater Company explored her other works, what made THE ALIENS stand out?

Drake Simpson: Have we explored her other works? I was in BODY AWARENESS, and then I read CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION. We knew that had already been done and part of our mission is not to produce anything that has been produced here before. Actually, I knew I was going to like this play before we read it because I knew the situation, where it took place. [To Me] I read probably what you read about it. Then, I knew, having worked on her dialogue before, how great of a writer she is. So, before we even read it, I was excited about it. We got it, sat down and read it one time, and we were like "Yup. Okay!" I knew it was going to be good! Sometimes you just get a gut feeling, you know, like "This is gonna be good! I know this is gonna be good!" That's the extent that we've explored her other works.

BWW: Ok.

Kevin Jones: Yeah. I was aware of her - she's a rising, new playwright - but I had not looked at all of her stuff to find a script to do. So, it was new to me when Drake [Simpson] brought it to us.

Logan Vaden: My background is more musical theatre, so she wasn't on my radar, really. But, I read the script and loved it. It's so interesting - the characters, the way they all mesh together. It's definitely something that afterwards, after I read the script, I got more into her and explored her stuff. She's amazing.

BWW: Many of the reviews of THE ALIENS point out the classical sensibilities that Annie Baker has worked into the play. What is it like preparing a modern piece that utilizes notions like the Aristotelian unities?

Kevin Jones: So, Jacey Little, who is working with us on the show, she had mentioned that too - that a lot of people had compared it to Aristotelian structure. At first glance, I didn't see that. So, I looked at it again to see what comparisons I could draw.

Drake Simpson: One place.

Kevin Jones: There is one place. It does take place in a compressed period of time. I mean, it's not dawn to dusk like a Greek play usually is, but the span of time is collapsed. The number of characters is collapsed. I think what people are referring to with that usually is that things take place off stage that are very important but that aren't necessarily staged. I think that's what people are reacting to with that. But we don't wanna say too much. (Laughs) There's a central theme. There are definitely comparisons to Greek unities.

In the modern sense, she's taking pretty human concerns - very basic human concerns - like the Greeks did, but applying this modern, or even post-modern, sensibility. She's being very subtle about it where a Greek play will come right out and tell you, "This is how we feel about this. The gods feel this way, and we feel this way." It's just so much subtler. Everything isn't stated flat out in that way, which I think might be a difference.

Drake Simpson: Was your question, how does this notion of having some Aristotelian qualities affect how we prepare it?

BWW: Yeah.

Drake Simpson: Not at all.

Kevin Jones: Not at all.

Drake Simpson: When we're working I don't think anybody thinks about dramaturgy. So much. (Laughs)

Logan Vaden: Not at all.

Drake Simpson: I mean, we read the play, understand our character's arcs, but, for me, it doesn't affect it all.

Kevin Jones: And I don't think it went into any of the thoughts about the design, staging, or things like that.

Drake Simpson: Those ideas, though, are so ingrained in us by this time - those Aristotelian ideas - because we've all studied it forever.

Kevin Jones: And I don't know that Annie Baker was even consciously trying to do that. She might have been. She's smart enough to where she might've been trying to take that approach to a play and tweak it or trouble it a little.

BWW: Reviewers have noted that Annie Baker veers away from the speedy dialogue that audiences are used to in entertainment. They say she favors the more realistic loping pace of daily conversations. Do you find this aspect of her writing to be challenging as an actor?

Kevin Jones: Yes. [Pauses]

Drake Simpson: It's harder to do a bad script than it is to do a good script, even when a good script is incredibly nuanced. When I lived in LA, casting directors would say, "Make a choice! Make a hot choice!" That was probably valuable in material that was crappy. You had to make this happen somehow. But, in good writing, like this, it's about discovering the choices that are already there. In one sense, it is more difficult. But, in another sense, because it is so good, if you are willing to dig, the stuff is there.

Kevin Jones: Yeah. People say, "It sounds so natural. People talk like this." They say that about [David] Mamet. That is not how people talk. I mean, it is a highly theatricalized dialogue that he's crafted. She might be working in the same way, where it appears to be like, "Oh, these guys just sit around and chit chat." But every line, every word, is a metaphor, it's a referral back to something she already mentioned, and it's highly crafted. That makes it challenging, in that sense. But, I agree with Drake [Simpson], let the words work for you.

Drake Simpson: It's there for you; you just have to dig for it. And, there's a lot of pauses. There's a lot of silence in the show. In fact, in the fore notes she says as much as a quarter to a third of the show is silence. The challenge for the three actors is to make those moments, when we aren't talking, be just as alive as those moments that are driven by dialogue.

Logan Vaden: That's the extremely challenging part because, in those pauses, she doesn't say what we're doing. We have to figure out, as actors, what exactly we're doing in those pauses - what we're feeling.

Drake Simpson: She tells us. Just not explicitly. [Kevin Jones Laughs]

Logan Vaden: Yeah. Right, right.

BWW: How do you feel that this believably human approach to dialogue will challenge audiences?

Kevin Jones: I don't know if it will be challenging for them. I think if they just take it in and they're present with it, they're not going to have to work too hard to get affected by it.

Drake Simpson: I think like any good art, it challenges them when they walk away. I think while you watch it, it's easy. As actors, it feels good to say these things. I don't necessarily mean like it feels good to call someone an asshole or something, but from an instrument standpoint it's nuanced and it's really well crafted. So, this is the stuff I would say. For an audience member, I don't think it's going to be tough, like "Oh God, we've gotta get through another song and dance number." It's going to be easy and fun to watch. The challenge will be when they drive home and go, "How am I like these people? How am I not like these people? Am I taking action? Am I not taking action? What am I doing to resolve my own issues?" Like any god art, I think that's where the challenge will come from.

Logan Vaden: That's exactly how I felt when I read it. I read it, and I was like, "Okay." It made me think afterwards for an entire day.

Kevin Jones: Will they be lulled into listening? I don't think so. I think the way she's structured it, there's enough, as an audience member, to keep you interested and engaged in the little things that are happening to the characters.

Drake Simpson: Provided of course that we do our jobs. In that sense, this play is tough. If we don't do our jobs and those silences aren't as alive as the dialogue driven stuff, this play could be boring as shit.

Kevin Jones: Yeah.

Drake Simpson: And it's not a boring play.

Kevin Jones: No.

Drake Simpson: That would be us failing. So that's the challenge. The sexiest reason for me to do anything is I don't really know how to do this. I think that's a great reason to do something. That doesn't mean that I don't have the tools to figure it out, but when I read a play and go, "Uh...t-t-this is hard," that's the best reason to ever do something.

Logan Vaden: And it can be interpreted in so many different ways. I know from day one, when I was doing my character work, it is 100% changed. I mean, we can do a scene with one emotion and then change it to a totally different emotion and it changes the whole show.

Drake Simpson: Yeah, and his character has the biggest arc in this play. He grows the most.

BWW: In your own opinion, what is THE ALIENS about?

Drake Simpson: (All Three Laugh) My dad asked me this question. It's not one of those kinds of plays. [To Kevin Jones] What is it about? Go ahead.

Kevin Jones: When people ask, "Well, what is this play about?," because that's a common way to talk about plays, I think what they're asking about - or what it makes me think of - is what's the central theme. So, like, what's DEATH OF A SALESMAN about? Oh, it's about failure. Oh, ok.

Drake Simpson: Or, it could be about survival.

Kevin Jones: Exactly.

Drake Simpson: [Interjecting] It's one of those pieces of art...

Kevin Jones: [Continuing His Thought] I was thinking of one word. It's about this. It's about regret. It's about growth, death, or whatever.

Drake Simpson: It's difficult to say that. It's like when people interview songwriters. What's this song about? Well, I don't wanna really say because its ambiguous enough that if I say what it's about to me, then you, as an audience member, watch the play and it connects with you on a different level. I don't want to take the meaning away that you bring to the show. You know, there are two things for theatre: something designed that is happening and somebody watching it. That relationship is totally necessary, and to take away what the person watching it brings to it by saying what it's about is short selling the play and your experience. It's about ghosts. (All Three Laugh) I'm kidding! I'm kidding! It's not about ghosts.

Kevin Jones: Even if you're just asking, "What's the plot..."

Drake Simpson: That's tough! It's even tough to talk about plot.

Kevin Jones: Uh, well, these guys meet each other. They talk to each other? You know.

BWW: That's probably one reason it was hard to research it and find anything to help me prepare questions.

Drake Simpson: I'd love to see a plot synopsis. You know how people look at Spark Notes, and it says, "Plot Notes." I'd love to read the plot for this.

Logan Vaden: Well, it's either like a 30 second description that says it's a couple of guys sitting around or it's a 30 minute involved discussion.

Kevin Jones: Things do happen. There is a plot. Events take place. There's no car chases or stuff like that.

BWW: Yeah. What I found was, (Paraphrasing From Memory) "Two guys, behind a coffee shop, talk about art in general, while some kid who works for the coffee shop tries to throw away the store's trash. He's afraid to run them off, but knows that he probably should. The two men had a band that they never successfully named, and The Aliens is probably the most popular name for the band." Even with that description I thought, "So, it's kind of Jay and Silent Bob meets art house conversation." (Kevin Jones Laughs)

Drake Simpson: (Laughs) All of that happens. That's true. (Laughs)

Kevin Jones: That's kind of what happens.

Logan Vaden: That's pretty surface level.

Drake Simpson: Although, The Aliens is the least popular name.

BWW: Ok!

Drake Simpson: It's the name that my character comes up with. It's based on a [Charles] Bukowski poem, and his character (Pointing To Kevin Jones) hates it because it's boring.

Kevin Jones: It's boring.

Drake Simpson: Because the band names he wants to use are like The Nefarious Hookers.

Logan Vaden: The Jolly Kangaroos.

Drake Simpson: Something Limp Handshakes. (Kevin Jones Laughs) And my character is like, (Sighs) "Oh, Jesus, God."

BWW: What do you hope audiences take away with them after they experience THE ALIENS?

Drake Simpson: I hope they get in their cars and talk. I hope they don't get in their car and go, "Who wants pie?" I think if this is worth doing, it's worth challenging them. I hope they take away discussion and thought. I hope they are affected. I don't necessarily know how. There again, it's going to affect you differently than it does them. I just hope it affects them.

Kevin Jones: Yeah. It's tough to come up with a prescription. That is a goal you have when you're designing a play. "What should someone have when they're walking away from this?" I mean, I feel like they should just hug somebody. Plays deal with human concerns. A big human concern is connection, so feeling connected is a good goal, in a very intentionally vague, broad way.

Drake Simpson: Part of our mission is feeling energized. That doesn't mean, "Let's go ride rollercoasters!" It means, "Let's have a discussion! (Pauses) Let's write a song!"

Logan Vaden: I hope they take away the realization that relationships can happen amongst the most unlikely of people. I think that's a very important theme of the show as well.

BWW: I love that you're talking about connection in relation to human experience because another thing I saw was comparisons to [Anton] Chekov and his themes of the inability to communicate.

Kevin Jones: I saw that too. I saw some Chekov references. I think they're doing that because of the non-sequiturs or the silences, but her stuff is very purposeful. I mean, Chekov is purposeful too. I don't know. (Laughs)

Drake Simpson: I think that Logan [Vaden]'s character, certainly at the start of the play, has a lot of difficulty connecting. Annie Baker says that he is in a constant of humiliation. Not awkwardness, humiliation, which is...

Kevin Jones: ...the perfect way to describe teenagers. When I was a teenager, that's how I felt. (Laughs)

Drake Simpson: And he has these problems where he doesn't know what to say. There's these pauses, and when we were actually auditioning, I kept telling Logan, "It's not that he doesn't have anything to say, it's that he has 30,000 things to say. He doesn't know which one is right, which one is the right one for this situation, for these people, and to best serve what he wants because he doesn't know what he wants."

Kevin Jones: I'm glad people weren't drawing comparisons to [WAITING FOR] GODOT. It could easily be these guys talk and sit, talk and sit. It's not like that. It doesn't have that sort of theme and message that [Samuel] Beckett had for that. I'm glad I haven't seen that. I hope people don't think of it like a modern GODOT or something. It's not like that at all. It is very much, in my opinion, about meaning and connection, not a lack of those things. Those things are present.

BWW: What has been your favorite part of preparing THE ALIENS for Houston audiences?

Kevin Jones: I think finding the location. For us, that's always a challenging part, but it's a fun part because we like to find the best place to do the production. So, that was fun - seeing what would be a good venue. We got very, very lucky with Boheme [Café & Wine Bar]. They've been very supportive. We did an event there last Friday that was very successful. People liked it and came out. That's a fun part of it. And, the songs. Writing the music for the songs. The characters sing, so coming up with an original composition for the words that she wrote has been a lot of fun.

Drake Simpson: It's challenging. The words and these songs.

Logan Vaden: It's very challenging.

Kevin Jones: Because the way that she writes the songs in the script, it's like nonsensical poetry. If you just look at it, the words are all out of order. There is an order, but you don't know what it is. It's not a song order. It's not like, here's a chorus, here's a verse. It's just a list of capitalized words that make sense. They're not total nonsense. But then to say, "Well, how do you turn that into something with a melody, a chorus, and all that," that's the challenging part. And she does that on purpose. That's why she such a good playwright. She says, "Here you go. Take this and do with it."

Drake Simpson: You know, I hadn't even thought about this, but maybe the answer is that you don't make linear, typical progression music out of it.

Logan Vaden: What I've enjoyed most about this experience is that they've all worked together before. I was like the new guy. Coming in, I felt very much like my awkward character and not really knowing how to fit in. This is something so different from anything I've ever done, and I know, as an audience member, if I wasn't in this show, this is something I would enjoy. Something I would go and see with the location and all the cool stuff that we're going to get with audience interaction. I'm just excited for an audience to sit in, see it, and see all these cool things that our creative team is bringing to the table. I think it's just awesome.

Drake Simpson: I don't really have a favorite part yet.

BWW: That's fair.

Drake Simpson: We're kind of in the shit right now. I know that we're going to get there, but we're in that point in the rehearsal process where we're just in the shit. It's just like, "W-w-we gotta get better! We gotta get better!" (Laughs) I know that we will, and that realization drives us to work even harder. We just want to do justice to this piece. So, that's where we are. Ask me next week. (Laughs)

BWW: Why do you think Houston audiences should be excited to see THE ALIENS?

Drake Simpson: I don't think there's one reason. I think she's a great playwright. As Horse Head, this is our 6th show. Kevin Holden, one of our founding members, hasn't directed the last two, and he's back in the seat again. I haven't been in the last two of our shows, so it's fun that the original people who did first two or three shows are all working again together. I think it's just a really beautiful play. It's at a really great location that's going to serve it so well. That's why I think people will love this play. A lot of theatre audiences are crossed audiences, and now that they've seen BODY AWARENESS, I think this will be a fun, different kind of thing. It's part of the trilogy - it's actually a trilogy - the Shirley, Vermont trilogy. Both of these plays plays, along with CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION, all happen in the same town. So, if you've seen any of the other two, then you've got to close out the deal.

Kevin Jones: Houston is always very active, which is awesome, but in the summertime there's less offerings.This will be a kind of different experience from the Shakespeare, the big budget musicals, and stuff. I think that'll be attractive.

Drake Simpson: All of those are good.

Kevin Jones: Yeah. Not saying those are bad.

Drake Simpson: Have you seen the Tamarie [Cooper] show? [I Nod "Yes."] It's pretty fun! I haven't seen the Shakespeare yet.

Kevin Jones: We're just a different flavor.

Drake Simpson: This kind of thing used to be more of a different flavor in the summer. Now with companies like The Back Porch Players are doing something, Obsidian [Art Space], I think, is rehearsing DANGEROUS LIAISONS, so people are doing different stuff in the summer.

Kevin Jones: I just think it's a beautiful play. That's probably the best reason.

Logan Vaden: Yeah. It is really beautiful.

Drake Simpson: And, Kevin Jones is really sexy. (All Three Laugh)

Kevin Jones: I had to grow my hair out.

Before this interview could be published Horse Theater Company experienced a cast change for their upcoming production of THE ALIENS. Matt Lents will now play the character of Evan, who was to be played by Logan Vaden.

THE ALIENS, produced by Horse Head Theater Company, plays in the back lot of Boheme Café and Wine Bar, 307 Fairview Street, Houston, 77006 from August 15-31, 2013. Performances are Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, as well as Monday the 19th at 8:00pm. Tickets are $20 ($10 for students). For tickets and more information please visit http://horseheadtheatre.org or call (713) 364-4482.

Photos courtesy of Horse Head Theater Company.