Can I Refill Your Coffee? You Might Be Here a While

The usual stylistic considerations of theatre—lighting, set, sound, blocking—were absent from the staged reading of John Baxa's “Dead Hours,” one of many exemplary instances of student playwriting to emerge from Kalamazoo's recently concluded Student Playwriting Festival. Lacking the usual trappings of the stage that define a performance, the actors that stepped on stage in tandem to sit on stools before sheet music stands—each one bearing a script—carried the entire weight of portraying the dead hours of a lonely Michigan diner with just one oddly prophetic customer. In turn, they relied more heavily on the script to guide them, truly putting Baxa's script writing talent to the test. He passes.

 While the double feature of Alex Clothier's “Just Kidding” and Ben Harpe's “Glass Closet” likely stole the show for diligent attendees of the Student Playwriting Festival, the mildly exotic nature of a staged reading versus a traditional performance warrants attention—for it alters the nature and mood of the performance. The structure of a staged reading can complement some plays, while the nuances of others may get lost in the simplicity. “Dead Hours” is of the former.

 Creepy Steve, played by Dwight Trice, is the reason “Dead Hours” works as a staged reading. An acutely prophetic homeless man that works like clockwork—never speaking, except for this one night—has but a brief appearance and even briefer lines near the end of the play. But he is present on stage for the entire reading—for he would not be in a regular performance—lending his character an omnipresence that give his words even more weight. Trice's acting talent finds symbiosis with this important role.

 The diner itself—lacking a set to imply its presence—is built by the gossamer imaginings of the audience, the actors' static, nigh-mocking gestures of mopping the floor from their stool or eating cake serving as mortar for the illusion. There is a sense that this diner exists in eternity, and the audience just happens to have stumbled in to watch on this momentous night when Creepy Steve wanders in and eats some cake as usual, then hands out a few tokens of absolute truth that would otherwise go unsaid.

 It is business as usual for the small Michigan diner—coping with disillusionment with illusion. It is also evermore the status quo for this neglected state, where seemingly the only response left to factory closings, underfunded and ignored inner cities, and a crushing recession on top of an already floundering state is to by some red hair dye and spend a week mopping floors at at a diner, floating in the midst of the morass, looking for answers.