Tom
How did you run across Green Bird?

Nic
It’s hilarious – after being out there for a year I was thinking “Well, I planned on being out here for about a year, all of a sudden I’m here and there’s no signs of me leaving any time soon.”  So, I started thinking more about scripts.  I also happened to have pirated cable at the time so I was able to watch a lot of television very clearly which makes it more enjoyable thus you watch more of it.

I watched a lot of PBS and they have a show called “Egg: the Arts Show” I don’t know if you’re familiar with it – they do it in installments, each week they have a different topic and they happened to have a week about theatre – and they were talking about this show that Julie Taymor was working on called The Green Bird, this very classic storyline.  I saw all the weird shit that she was doing in her rehearsal, they had some rockumentary footage of it, and I thought “well, that looks like a pretty interesting show” and so I was sitting at my computer at the time so I typed “Green Bird” into a search engine and it showed me it had been produced by Berkley Rep, which is the company where I did my internship and where one of my really good friends is the resident sound designer.

This really good friend happened to be flying into Phoenix – this was on a Wednesday night, he happened to be flying in to Phoenix Friday, so I bribed him with a six-pack.  “I’ll give you a six pack if you bring me this script,” and he did bring me the script and I did give him the six-pack.

The weekend after that I was coming to Chicago, and there was a play reading at Strawdog scheduled for when I was in town.  I had two different plays that I really wasn’t excited about and all of sudden I found this thing and I read it and I really had a lot of fun with it and I decided that that was the one that I wanted to read with the company.  The company read it and it was just a really fun, joyous occasion.  At least I think so, that’s how I remember it, I don’t know.  It was just shit loads of fun to read and at that time I was pretty much assured that it was something the company would want to do, if indeed the company at that stage was interested in having me back after I left so abruptly.

Julie
Is it something that you wanted to come back and do specifically at Strawdog or did you start putting feelers out to work at other companies in order to get it here?  How much of it was Strawdog, how much of it was the script, how much of it was wanting to come back and be creative again.

Nic
It was really an equal combination of all of those things and I was hungry to do something again when I was sitting in Phoenix but I have a tendency to wait to make a decision until I feel I have enough information – all of those different ideas.  When I came back I had no idea what my reception would be like inside the community as a director having been gone for a couple years.  That was one of the things that it was dependent on: the idea of me wanting to stay here in Chicago.  Because I love Strawdog and, like I said, Strawdog is home, people are great, blah, blah, blah – but I was kind of stuck at Strawdog almost exclusively when I was in Chicago before and I wanted to make sure that that didn’t happen again, if only for the fact that I wanted different… As I’m getting older I want more people to see what I’m doing, I think the stuff that I do is relatively interesting and I want more people to have a chance to check it out.

He eats cheese stick.

Tom
The adaptation of the script that you’re using was done by Stephen Epp with Theatre de la Jeune Lune in Minneapolis, was that the same script they used at Berkley?

Nic
Well, yes, it’s different than the Julie Taymor script – Julie Taymor did a different adaptation after the guys at Jeune Lune did their first adaptation.  Her adaptation was, from what I hear, relatively similar to the adaptation that the guys at Jeune Lune had already done.

Tom
It was an independent adaptation.

Nic
The one that Julie Taymor did?

Tom
Yeah.

Nic
Yes, but I think there was some kind of innuendo that it was reflected of or inspired by the kind of adaptation that Jeune Lune did – although I don’t know if they did any of the anachronistic stuff which is what I imagine is most of the stuff Jeune Lune was playing with.

Tom
At any rate, the script that you’re using: there’s been rewrites.

Nic
There’s been a million of them – and when I spoke to Steve Epp at Jeune Lune I asked him if he was at all interested in coming out and playing with us and playing with the script a while and he basically said no, you can do whatever the fuck you want to it.  Actually he said, no, I’m not interested – I said, well, I’m going to be needing to do some work and that’s kind of why I invited you to come out and he said you can do whatever you want.

Julie
I was under the impression that the way the rights work you need to be careful with certain authors and what you do.

Nic
Yeah, and for better or for worse I just don’t care.  It’s one of those situations where I learned the hard way at Strawdog through Waltz Invention that the director’s main job is not always to serve the play, sometimes the play is not exactly right, the director’s main job is to serve the production, whatever that director need sot do to make sure they can get some sort of clear point across, make sure people know what the hell they’re talking about, like I think that’s a director’s obligation.  Now, if you find yourself in the middle of dealing with a script that you have to really change a lot of in order to say something cohesive then you’ve picked the wrong script for yourself and you should probably just bail on it.  But, in this case I’m adjusting gags, recognizing the original intentions and figuring out a way to sharpen them up a bit in our context.  I can’t not do it.  That’s exactly how we approached Measure.  We cut everything out of it that we didn’t want.

Tom
Yeah, and that was Shakespeare.

Nic
Yeah, like I’m telling you, if I’m going to fucking knock Shakespeare around I got no problem with taking Steve Epp down.  No disrespect Steve, seriously, you’re my soul brother.

Eats cheese stick.

Seriously, let’s get another shot.

[At this point another round of shots is purchased and consumed]