Insurgo is a Latin term meaning expansion and constant evolution, and that certainly fits the ambitions of the Insurgo Theatre troupe. As I arrive at their temporary venue, the Onyx Theatre, on a recent Friday night, they’re about to partake in Insurgo’s latest attempt to evolve—a 24-hour theater project. A small band of writers and actors will be in lockdown mode, incorporating themes suggested by the public into five one-act plays that will be written, rehearsed, designed, lighted, propped, costumed and performed in the next 24 hours. (It’s not unlike the 48-hour film project that’s proven so popular with hungry filmmakers.)
“I’m really excited about this,” John Beane, Insurgo’s founder and chief architect of the 24-hour project, had told me earlier. “There’s a loose, kinetic feel, and we’re ready to take it on.” But will Vegas respond? “I think so; it might seem like a radical idea, but I know there’s an audience for it here in town.”
Now, we’re a skeptical bunch, and I know radical is a relative term, but perhaps Insurgo deserves some credit for trying this project in a city where stage productions are defined by overpriced magic acts, celebrity impersonations and canned Broadway fare—not avant material. This means the group just might fail spectacularly; but without that chance, risk-taking is no risk at all.
Onyx Theatre is a small, 96-seat room housed behind the alternative clothing (i.e. leather and fetish) store The Rack in the Commercial Center, that sprawling, exhilarating hybrid of wig shops, karaoke bars, Thai restaurants, a swingers club, comic-book stores and abandoned shopping carts off Maryland Parkway and Sahara Avenue. The kinkiness of The Rack makes for a nice fit.
I arrive 20 minutes before the experiment kicks off at 8 p.m. To ensure I won’t flee if boredom sets in, I lend my car to a friend visiting from New York. “Thanks for the ride,” Del tells me as he pulls away. “This beats your bus system!”
As I walk through the main corridor, with mirrored letters fixed to the walls, I run into Beane. With his tall, angular frame, roguish beard, ’do-rag and dark clothing, he is the perfect embodiment of theatrical rebellion. “The ensemble has gathered in the theater,” he says. Many of the performers are already antsy with anticipation, and it’s not even 8, when the troupe will draw four elements from a hat: one line of dialogue and three background ideas. Insurgo will have to incorporate the line into each play, and all will have to draw on one of the three ideas for some inspiration.
There’s an almost hushed reverence to the proceeding when the drawing does occur. Michael Morse, the jovial owner of The Rack, pulls the dialogue, and thus the central theme for the night, and hands it to Beane:
“Piece by precious piece, we’re stripped of our civil rights; not that I care, I’ve been a fascist all my life.”
The depth of the suggestion prompts a collective “wow” from the cast. Now the three ideas are pulled from the hat: “A Night in Las Vegas,” “I Just Don’t Give a Damn” and “The Ages of Man.”
Like a dutiful leader, Beane wastes no time. “Okay people, deadline for the plays is 6 a.m., so let’s get started!”
The people on hand for the initial push are: Erica Griffin (actress and writer); Ben Watts (actor and “idea” guy); Theresa Bern (actress and lasagna-maker); Erik Amblad (actor); Sean Critchfield (actor, writer, singer); Samuel Francis Crane III (actor); and Dustin (technician and director). There’s also a another writer, Greg, in California, with whom Beane communicates by phone. A few more performers will be by later. (Ultimately, five writers, five directors, 10 actors and a couple of musicians will be involved.)
As the creative process gets underway, a looseness comes over the cast, like kids in school when the substitute teacher leaves the room; they rap and mug shamelessly, particularly when Beane takes their photos for posterity. Still, Beane continues to motivate: “We’ll get to the prop and costume needs later. Writers, I want to encourage you to talk to other people, start brainstorming, take risks, listen to suggestions—let’s do it!” To which a cast member wryly replies: “How is this different from any other Insurgo project?”
Soon, the cast begins to get its artistic bearings, adding a healthy dash of ideological thrust to the mayhem. The line “Piece by precious piece, we’re stripped of our civil rights; not that I care, I’ve been a fascist all my life” has a naive, self-deprecating charm to it, and there’s a buoyant, absurdist quality to the way the cast is going about writing the plays. True to the spirit of left-leaning theatrical groups of the ’20s and ’30s, Insurgo’s members are hitting all the proper (some may say predictable) notes: current privacy acts; fascism as defined before World War II; “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer”; conformity and consumerism—what do they say about us?
Beane paces around them, a conductor trying to distill all the suggestions into a more seamless construct. “Keep focusing, guys—we have still have 23 hours to go!” I’m laboring over my laptop when I hear:
“I bought scotch for the milk!”
Sure enough, a few people have congregated in the dressing room, where the buffet table is. Lasagna, bread, tortilla chips, some alcohol—everything you need for a 24-hour grind. A few hours into the night the writers have broken down their plays into looks at the civil rights of gays, women, minorities and even the deaf. They’ve also learned from Beane that in addition to the plays, they have to create three songs, including one that will lampoon Cirque du Soleil.
At 10:40 another writer, Courtney Sheets, arrives with a sleeping bag in tow. Shit, that reminds me, I didn’t bring any bedding. I grab a bottled water from the refrigerator and head back to the makeshift work area I created on a prop table toward the back of the theater.
The writers, who in most cases are also actors, are sitting around by themselves with their ever-present cups of coffee, pounding away on their laptops. In time comes the first payoff, as I hear someone exclaim, “I just came up with my ending!”
I see that Erika has already changed into her jammies. With her long, curly dark hair and friendly, casual vibe, she’s sitting in a theater seat with her laptop and blanket around her. Time for a photo-op! “By all means!” she says, smiling broadly. She throws me a few fetching poses and her energy level, as we creep closer to midnight, is beguiling. “Are you on a caffeine buzz, or did you take a nap before coming?” I ask.
“Neither. I’m just gassed for this project. Actually, I’m surprising myself with my energy. I just finished coming from the Burning Man Festival; you’d think I’d be tired!”
While most of the actors are busy onstage, jumping around randomly, miming, stomping and sliding in what I’m guessing is an acting exercise of some sort, Beane and I talk at the concession bar in the lobby. He was born in Long Beach, California, but spent some formative years here in Las Vegas, eventually graduating from Eldorado High School in 1993. He wound up at Long Beach State, and soon found himself involved in drama.
“I’ve always had a keen interest in theater,” he says. “My mom was a technician for the Long Beach Civic Light Opera, and my sister and I would be with her until 3 in the morning watching her hang lights. It’s just exposure I’ve had all my life.”
How did Insurgo come about?
“In 2000, we did Shakespeare in the park in Huntington Beach, and something clicked with the ensemble. We launched into a second effort, and we called ourselves Rough Magic because we needed a company name to rent the park. We put on a production of Twelfth Night. We created the sounds out of people. And it was just so physical and organic. I knew we had something. By the following year, there was Insurgo Theatre.”
You’re not going to do your average community playhouse fare with Insurgo, are you?
“You won’t see us do any Neil Simon here. Nothing against him or the people who admire him, but there are community theaters all over the country doing that. I’d like to see an outlet for more up-and-coming playwrights and some more challenging things.”
Do you mean, Shaw, Kafka, Beckett ...?
“Certainly that, because the beautiful thing about such classic plays is that their works can still relate to modern audiences. But I also want to touch on things that get written on what we feel is contemporary, on the leading edge of who we are, whether it’s something political, or how we feel about a relationship right now or how we feel about drama right now.”
So why Vegas?
“It’s just fertile ground, and I knew I’d find a lot of hungry actors who’d be interested in what we’re trying to achieve. I came here with a specific mission to build an ensemble. I just like to build things, and I love the physicality of theater. It’s a living creature. I know we can do something strong here. In the end, the best thing a theater company can do is be an outstanding theater in its own right.
“I don’t know where we’ll be in a few years, but our ambition is to have some original productions and tour world-class. More than anything, I’d love to raise the consciousness of theater in Las Vegas, and to do that I don’t think we can rely on past theatrical convention. How soon can we reach the goal? I can’t gauge that, but we’re going balls-out.”
It’s 1 a.m. now, and he has actors who need attending. Most have made some headway on their projects, and they’re reading their material out loud, analyzing the pieces with Beane, but there’s only so much intellectualizing that can happen at this hour.
At 2 I’m watching a couple of kids on Sahara Avenue racing down a sidewalk with shopping carts. Something tells me it’s time to crash. Inside, almost all the actors and writers have found some couch, floor, theater seat or stage that they’ve labeled a bed. I borrow a pillow from one of the actors and grab some random fabric from the lobby. I was going to sleep in a nearby corridor, but there’s a sticky texture to the carpet. In a work room I chance upon some carpet samples and piece them into a sleeping spot. So much for the glamour of theater.
Beane wakes me at 7 a.m. by asking what I’d like from Starbucks. The carpet samples have left imprints on my skin; I feel like I’m covered in rope burns. “The strongest of anything!” I tell him.
The performers move through the morning with assured swiftness. Beane is working with the actors, actively listening to their questions and examining the individual pieces and discussing set pieces and costume suggestions.
“We’ve got about 11 hours to get our shit together, guys!” Beane says and proudly tells me, “The plays are done! And in one of them we even steal from Beckett!” Now that’s theft that I can condone.
The five plays are: RFID Chip Dating Service, a futuristic look at computerized dating; Hercules Bound, a look at sexual/societal role-playing; Revelations, a funny piece involving a couple of musicians and an ex-smoker; Bipartisanship, a sexually laced farce with much abrasive political dialogue; and The Hacienda Must Be Built, a fragmented closer that has Beane facing the audience with existential phrases projected behind him on a screen. The whole thing runs about an hour.
“I’m really happy with what we’ve created so far,” Beane says. “We tried 24-hour theater three years ago, and we relied more on situational skits where we bent the ideas for the fit. Here we’ve concentrated more on organic, collaborative efforts and fresh, original ideas, and it’s really serving us well.”
It’s late morning, and so far the machine looks well-oiled—the parts have been cast, song interludes are being honed, solo monologues are complete, props are being chosen and set pieces are being brought to the stage. It’s fascinating to hear the actors in separate rooms going over their lines; the overlapping dialogue feels like a Robert Altman movie.
Of course, there are going to be a few snags. I catch Beane wandering around looking perturbed.
“Mike, you know anything about PowerPoint? My writer from California ...” he shrugs. “Do you know anything about it?”
“No, I hate that program.”
“You’re not alone. God, what was Greg thinking!” With that he heads out for a nicotine break.
By 1 p.m., the momentum has flagged; the actors are becoming robotic, their deliveries getting monotonal. They’ve been running on fumes for hours. At 2 the crew wisely goes home to shower and change.
“We have just a few hours, people, let’s keep it up!” Beane says.
After the break, their energy level has picked up again. Freshly laundered, and complete with showered looks and new clothes for their respective characters, the cast are going through the runs with gusto.
Some are onstage doing sex simulations in silhouette behind a screen; another is running rambunctiously down the hallway with spears, and still another is looking for proper S&M bondage gear for the actors. At this point, paying attention is the key.
“Wait an existential beat!” screams someone.
“I don’t feel bitchy or sexy in this costume! Can I pull something from next door?” cries another.
“Come on, really come after me!”
And on and on it goes.
“Hot damn, we’re in business!” Beane rejoices—his PowerPoint issue has been resolved.
We’re rapidly approaching showtime, and everything is being sharpened to quick, supple steps. The quality does vary among the one-act plays, and I’d be lying if I told you I loved them all equally (a few pieces strike me as more strained and heavy-handed than others), but it’s a kick to consider what they’ve accomplished in such a short time. How far can Insurgo Theatre go, I wonder as they continue getting ready for the opening curtain. That answer could be as unpredictable as any table game in town, but I did develop a respect for the troupe’s efforts to bust out of the ordinary with some flair and bravado. For you cynics who think Insurgo is too overreaching and pretentious to succeed in Vegas, at least they’re doing something a little edgier than Neil Simon.
Editor’s note: To the question of how this sort of thing will be accepted in Las Vegas: Review-Journal theater critic Anthony Del Valle panned it—frying-panned it, actually—for being heavy-handed, saying it was “apparently a fun exercise for the people who participated. If only audiences could have been let in on the joke.” He warned, “The talented folk at Insurgo are clearly mistaking novelty for quality.” He graded the production an F.
Michael T. Toole writes frequently for the Weekly.