Your background is primarily in comedy and improv. How, then, did you end up writing an adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein?
Most of my “success” thus far has been in comedy, but there’s always a call towards doing more serious work. I enjoy working in drama, particularly in something strong enough to cause a visceral reaction in the audience. If one was to really analyze them, most of my plays are actually structured as tragedies, despite the fact that they’re generally comedic.
Shelley's novel is one of the two or three most famous original sources—if not the most famous—out of all the plays in Playing With Canons. How did you go about adapting something that is so well-known?
The perception that we all know this story is actually what drew me to working on it. Most of the Frankenstein images, plot elements and themes that are in our common vocabulary come from the 1931 film, and have very little to do with the original Shelley novel. A byline of Amnesia Wars is that we may all “Forget what we thought we know!” It’s in that spirit that I attacked Frankenstein.
After college, you went on to Chicago's Second City for what you called your "grad school." Have you always been interested in comedy?
Absolutely! My heroes as a child were Bugs Bunny, Abbott and Costello, and The Marx Brothers. My analytical side had always been trying to break down exactly what made something funny. That generally had the same effect on the comedy as it did when I tried to break down exactly what made my mother’s blender function. I’ve worked hard to better balance that urge. While I give great credit to Second City (I'm now a member of the faculty of the New York Training Center) I'd hate to leave out The Improv Olympic (home, at the time, of Del Close) and The Annoyance Theater, which were also huge parts of that "grad school" period.
I think you may be the first person we've ever interviewed who studied with both Anne Bogart and famed improv teacher Del Close. What were both of those experiences like?
They were both wonderful. Anne has the reputation for being generous, thoughtful and interested. Del never had that reputation, but the truth is that he embodied those qualities as well. What you got out of a Del Close class was never what you thought you were going to get out of it. Oftentimes a lesson would actually HIT you while you were bored on the train three days later. I look forward to training again with Anne Bogart and the SITI Company. They are each and all wonderful teachers and people, and have taught me a great deal about how to communicate from a stage.
You're the Artistic Director of your own company, Amnesia Wars Productions. Tell us about why you started the company, and how you came up with the name.
In 1997 I’d just moved to New York from Chicago. While in the Windy City, I had performed and taught at a wonderful improv festival in Kansas City, MO. Trish Berrong is the talented and excellent person who ran that festival at the time; she invited me to bring down my company. When I responded that I didn’t have a company, she simply and bluntly informed me that I had a couple of months to put one together. I put an audition ad in Backstage that afternoon.
The birth of the name Amnesia Wars is lost in a fog of myth and legend. Though I have heard rumor that there was some inspiration in the title and theme of a Jonathan Letham novel.
What's up next for you?
Right now we’re producing a comedy showcase called Reese’s Pieces (don’t know where that title came from either). We’re hoping to attract some producers, investors, etc. with this showcase, so the next thing we actually do may be greatly influenced by the response to this show.
But since you asked, a few of the things we’re working on putting up over the next year or two include:
Ephemeral Man: A Tad Granite Theatrical Extravaganza. We’ve been podcasting this “radio” serial, and are working on a grand theatrical version.
The Small Content Video Projects. The scenes we’re performing in Reese’s Pieces are just a fraction of the material we’re ready to shoot for DVD release, internet distribution, and drive-in theaters.
The Harry Potter Project: The REAL 7th Book. The 07/07/07 release of the final 7th book of the Harry Potter series is hotly anticipated and shrouded in secrecy. Too bad for Scholastic Books that we’ve gotten our hands on a copy! On 05/06/07 Amnesia Wars will perform a dramatic enactment of the 7th Harry Potter book.
Single Camera Longform. Everybody knows it’s insanely difficult to capture the magic of a Longform Improvisation on permanent media. We’re going to pull it off.
Git Some. We’ve been running this variety show at The Parkside Lounge on and off for about a year. We’ve got plenty else to do, but, well, we like doing Git Some. The audiences are cool, the bar is cool, and the special guests we get to meet and play with are cool.
And of course, no discussion of my future projects would be complete without me mentioning Kissinger: The Musical!
Interview with Rob Reese was conducted by Michael Criscuolo October 2006.