Interview: Malinda Beckham & Curtis Barber of BUG at DIRT DOGS

Bug is a play by celebrated actor and author Tracy Letts, who has written other works, such as August Osage County, which won him a Pulitzer Prize. Dirt Dogs Theatre Company is taking on this show, and, boy, is it a good bit different than August Osage County, which they did as well previously. This production of Bug will run May 16th through the 31st at the MATCH. Broadway World writer Brett Cullum got a chance to talk about the challenge of bringing Bug to life with Malinda Beckham and Curtis Barber, who are co-directing. Curtis is also playing Dr. Sweet in the production. 

Brett Cullum: I'm so excited to talk about this. This is one of the shows I've been waiting for all year since you announced it as part of your season. Just to bring anyone unfamiliar with Dirt Dogs up to speed, Malinda has directed a lot for the company, and she helps run it as one of the artistic directors. Tell me some of your favorite shows that you have created at the MATCH with your company.  

Malinda Beckham: The earliest show that I directed that's still very close to my heart is A Steady Rain. It was a two-hander about two Chicago cops. Also, The Exonerated, which was about convicted convicts who did not get their fair day in court, who get a second chance, perhaps, and also The Pillowman, which also has a dark humor vein about it, which I seem to be drawn to. So those are three that really stand out.

Brett Cullum: And Curtis, you were an actor in The Pillow Man. But you are also an accomplished director. So tell me a little bit about your highlights here.

Curtis Barber: One of the ones that is a shining diamond that I got a chance to work with Malinda and Dirt Dogs on is Misery, which we produced a couple of years ago, and then also headed up and directed The Birds and The Revolutionists, as well.

Brett Cullum:  Oh! Just three of the most challenging shows I could think of! 

Curtis Barber: No big deal. We really like creative problem solving.

Brett Cullum: Okay, so, Bug, it's a wild ride. I wanted to ask you to give me a summary of Bug, because I'm scared to even try it, so I'll let you both do it. I am leaving this to the professionals! 

Malinda Beckham: Well, you know there are a lot of different ways that you can summarize Bug, so I'll give you my summary, and then perhaps Curtis can add to it. He can tell you what his summary of the show is, which may or may not be the exact same. So I think, first and foremost, Bug, believe it or not, is a love story. Without loneliness and without loss and without vulnerability, we don't get to the place that we need to be, where this crater of ache exists inside Agnes, which opens her up to Peter. Which really is the beginning of the infestation. So I would say it's a love story.

Brett Cullum: Okay. Infectious love story between a lonely, aching waitress and a paranoid veteran! Curtis. What say you? 

Curtis Barber: I'd echo those. I think there's there's a lot of themes in Bug, and we've really played with the idea of what is real and what is not real and how. How do the shifting perceptions of each character inform what's happening in the scene?

Brett Cullum: I just want to ask you both, what made you want to go here? The play itself had some really short runs in most of the cities when it debuted in the mid-nineties. And then Bug had this great one-year run off Broadway. It's really a daring show, and to me, Bug and Killer Joe are like the two Tracy Letts plays that I feel have the toughest dares in them for staging scenes. They have violence, nudity, and a lot of really rough and tough sequences. So what made you want to do Bug?

Malinda Beckham: Well, partly just for that reason, Brett, we do love a good challenge, and we do love a good, dark love story that forces us into these thought-provoking moments that we don't go to in our daily lives. We don't sit and think about the depth of loneliness in this degree, and we don't think about the contagiousness of mental illness when you are isolated with someone else who may be experiencing mental health issues. These aren't things that we sit with and think about every day, and they're not things that are explored in the theater as regularly as plays that make us feel good. So, [for Dirt Dogs] this was a season of really exploring the deep trauma of the psyche of the heart, of the soul, of the being. So that's what interested me.

Curtis Barber: If you talk about the theatrical canon, Brett. It's a play that most serious actors know of, have studied, maybe have done a scene work from. In that respect, I felt like it was both on Malinda's and my radar as a sort of bucket list show that we wanted to tackle. And it fits so nicely in with this season. To echo her point, it's a dark love story. It's about ache. But it's also about the infectiousness of paranoia, which is so interesting and interestingly prescient.

Brett Cullum: We're probably gonna revisit that in a little while. But one thing that you said, Curtis, really piqued my interest. Tracy Letts is an actor, as are both of you. You both are actors. He had a very storied career on the stage at the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago, and he's won a Tony for his performance in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? On Broadway. As a playwright, I think he writes for actors, but he's not easy on them. So what were you looking for in a cast? What did you want this troupe to bring to your vision of this dark, lonely love story?

Malinda Beckham: We happen to think it is perfectly cast, and what I wanted to bring is actors who are willing and able to go to the depths that you need to go to in order to perform this show and to perform it authentically. That doesn't fit every actor. Some actors might be opposed to some of the text, the context of the play, but we needed people who were all in who could fit into the skin of the humanness of these people. 

Curtis Barber: Yeah, I think to do a Tracy Letts play is something like emotional Olympics, and this one, as much as August Osage County is, that is a requirement. So we looked for a cast that was able to, and willing to to go to that length.

Brett Cullum: You know, there's this famous story about Amanda Plummer, who resigned from the off-Broadway run of this show twenty-four hours before it debuted on February 21st in 2004.

Malinda Beckham: Just walked off the stage and kept going!

Brett Cullum: Yeah. Didn't look back! And there were all these warnings outside the theater saying, in the box office, the show contained nudity. It's violent. It's got cigarette smoking. So you have to have a pretty game cast, a group that is fearless. I noticed that as Agnes, you have cast Callina Anderson, whom I adore, and she's an amazing actress. But what made her right for Agnes in this production, because when I think of Callina, I think of the strong, fierce women like Medea or an assassin. And here is Agnes. It is a 180-degree swing from anything that she's played before. 

Curtis Barber: And what a great challenge for her and for us! 

Malinda Beckham: And she has such emotional depth. And you know Agnes is not just a weak woman. She's got some grit and some bite to her. She actually goes toe to toe with her ex-husband and tries hard not to back down from him, so she's not completely weak as a character. She has a lot of strength. You have to have a lot of strength to be Agnes, actually. But there's also a ton of vulnerability just based on her life experience, and how she has come to be in this hotel to begin with. So, for me, I would say that it is Callina’s depth of emotion that she is able to access, and to not only access it, but share it with the audience to the point that they feel it. They come with her to this place that she is in. So for me, that was a very big part of it.

Brett Cullum: Well, I feel like the thing that I'm going to be most interested to see from Callina is what you touched on, the vulnerability, because a lot of times she has shown on stage this like impenetrable wall in a lot of her roles before. She has not been as vulnerable as I picture Agnes in my mind’s eye, and I definitely don’t think of Agnes as weak. I just see a vulnerability in Agnes because she lets Peter in. I mean, this woman goes down the rabbit hole with this guy! 

Curtis Barber: The other aspect of it, Brett, is that with that strength that Callina has brought to a lot of other roles is vulnerability is the other side of it. What happens when you let someone in? Her ability to show that emotional depth hasn't been so much of a challenge for us in the show as more as a shift in perception. To me, it seems like two sides of the same coin.

Malinda Beckham: Yes, and a lot of times, you know, when you come across the perception of strength and being strong, that's armor for the vulnerability underneath, and how we protect ourselves. So I think there's an element of that in there as well.

Brett Cullum: Well, you guys mentioned Peter. Of course, we've mentioned him a couple of times, and he's a big part of Bug, and you have Kyle Clark. And again, you have somebody challenged to play this guy that is different than what Kyle has done before. How is Kyle taking this on? 

Malinda Beckham: I just saw it right away. In my mind's eye, in my vision, I just saw it right away, because I've also seen a side of Kyle's acting that is vulnerable, that is masked. It allows him to share openly things that he's never been able to speak with someone else about. So there's this vulnerability to Peter that he has to open himself up as well. And I think that Kyle not only has great performance technique, but he also has a great ability to then embody what it is he is creating.

Curtis Barber: We talk a lot about Dirt Dogs when Melinda and I discuss future seasons and programming. It's not just plays that we want to do. It's about the timing, and if we know a cast is aligning with it. So we really felt that Bug was on our radar for a couple of years. But now was the time.

Malinda Beckham: Ten years! Since before Dirt Dogs was even formalized! Yeah.

Brett Cullum: Well, we've been talking a lot about Bug, and about what you perceive of it. But bringing it back in 2025! What do you want this version of Bug to say to audiences? If I'm gonna walk out of the theater afterwards, what do you want me thinking about and connecting to? What does 2025 need?

Malinda Beckham: Hmm, well, I think really, at the forefront is better mental health care. I think that is really a primary element or thread that's in this play is untreated mental health. For Agnes, because she didn't receive any help for the loss of her child, which led her down a different road, a different path. And the frequency of self-medicating when you're in pain, you have these mental health issues, and you don't get them treated. You tend to start treating them yourself. That's a great element of the play that it kind of explores. We always say at Dirt Dogs Theater Company, “We don't send messages. We tell stories.” So this story sheds light on mental health issues.

Curtis Barber: Yeah, absolutely. I think the other part of it is something Melinda really brought to the table-read was the idea of the madness of two. How can two people become so codependent and wrapped up in each other that they're led down a path that maybe neither of them would have walked alone? And so that's been a really interesting lens to look at the story through.

Brett Cullum: Oh, my gosh! I just admire Dirt Dogs so much for always doing things that are never easy. You all always pick these scripts that I'm just like, “Wow! This is gonna be a challenge!” Bug is certainly that! 

Malinda Beckham: It just takes everybody charging in, everybody, putting their heads together, everybody being in problem-solving mode. I love to solve problems. I love to be creative. I love to be inventive. 

Curtis Barber: Having been on both sides of the table for Dirt Dogs, and having come in the third season to be part of the company. It's really refreshing to be a part of a theater group that strives to open it up, and to give you that artistic freedom, to not only honor the playwright, but honor the actors that are on stage, and give them full license to explore as deeply as they want to explore. 

Brett Cullum: Well, it's definitely something that is an emotional dare, and Bug runs May 16th through the 31st at the Match. It's kind of a quick run, and I would love to see it go on for weeks and weeks so that I can see it multiple times. It's definitely one that nobody wants to miss!