House Lights: Richard Maxwell's Early Plays

Richard Maxwell, Plays: 1996–2000. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2004.

Reading the texts bare, unmarked by Maxwell's distinctive direc-tion, is to experience a kind of essential Maxwell. Before the ironic stylings of heavy-metal or pop tunes, fast food uniforms, or anything else, there are the titles, names, and words. There are the kids, parents, workers, bar-flies, and low-life entrepreneurs. There are the ramblings, ellipses, and supposed accusations of people stumbling though life, presented as if we in turn have stumbled upon them. As Maxwell, quoted in too many articles to cite, would like us to remember, "the reality is that we're watching a play."

Yet, in this case, the reality is that we're reading his plays, though without the benefit of an introduction or any stage directions. How to stage Richard Maxwell in your mind without knowing his specific approach to acting (stripping it away) and staging (static) or music (hand-held tape players)? We are to understand that these are, simply, Richard Maxwell's plays.

Giving over to the reality of reading yields the rare opportunity to trace the development of one of today's most influential writers. What makes Maxwell unique among young companies and artists is that he writes, directs, and composes his own work. As a triple-threat he's descended from auteurs like Richard Foreman. But as a writer, Maxwell is on a quest all his own in search of a new kind of realism on stage.

Maxwell possesses an endless wonder at the fact of live performance paired with frustration with the American theatrical inheritance. His early artistic decisions were about rejecting old chestnuts in favor of anything that felt more vital. Family and education have played a part in these discoveries. At home, he faced a charged relationship with a much older father, who worked as a judge and moonlighted as an amateur actor. It was his father's copy of Sam Shepard's plays that first sparked his interest in theatre. Later traditional actor training in college and at Steppenwolf in Chicago challenged the young artist with a predetermined determined notion of the art form. M105axwell quickly noticed an urge to get beyond all that.

With a group of Chicago friends, he started the Cook County Theatre Department, opening with nothing less than Rogers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma. Or rather, Oklahoma with all new songs they themselves wrote. The group chose the golden-age musical precisely because its language felt so strange in their mouths. No doubt the contrast of naïve farm-speak coming out of cool city kids in an industrial loft must have been a kick. With Maxwell thrust into the director's chair, a new series of investigations began. What is theatre, Maxwell began to wonder, but a system of overwrought habits? And why, after all that money was put into it, didn't it speak to him at all? Something new was needed, or rather, much, much less.

The early plays up for review here show how Maxwell's writing progresses through short plays that exercise the moving parts of drama. It is evident that the writer is turning over the notion of character, then crisis, then action, and so on. His efforts begin to encompass multiple dramatic components at once, yielding longer plays of greater depth. Of twelve collected plays, eight are short and four are full evenings. The contents appear in order of production, regardless of length. The volume does well to include even those dehydrated beginnings; it is extremely rare to have the opportunity to wholly consider the output of such a lauded young writer. Maxwell's most widely-known shows House, Showy Lady Slipper , Caveman, and Boxing 2000, which have had critically acclaimed productions and toured Europe, are quickly illuminated by a look at the early short plays.

The nostalgic magician in Champions of Magic, the worn-out movers...