The Naked Interview

The American Repertory Theater will present Paul Rudnick’s new play, The Naked Eye, directed by Christopher Ashley, beginning May 10, 1996. This latest collaboration between Rudnick and his favorite director will mix farce with serious political and social issues, examine social stereotypes and, above all, be funny.

The Naked Eye is Paul Rudnick’s fifth comedy for the stage, and we have in residence here in Cambridge a playwright who has always had the impulse to be in the theater.

“At the age of five, I remember writing a little essay in which I declared myself a playwright. I had never seen a play and scarcely knew what the art of playmaking entailed.”

Rudnick, who was born and raised in Piscataway, New Jersey, adds that there is probably no one else from Piscataway who would admit to growing up in the tiny suburban community. But Paul’s successful theatrical career has freed him to acknowledge his roots without shame.

“People from Piscataway claim they are from Princeton (which is only forty-five minutes away) because they are ashamed that they are from nowhere. Everything in Piscataway has Indian names and it didn’t take me long to realize why the Indians never wanted New Jersey back. They must have looked forward to much nicer real estate. I agree that even I would rather have a nice chunk of Wyoming or Montana.”

Paul’s first essay was eventually supplemented by an undergraduate education at Yale, and the opportunity to hover around the Graduate School of Drama during the days when Robert Brustein was Dean of the Drama School, and Artistic Director of the Yale Repertory Theatre. After graduating from Yale, Rudnick was eager to polish his skills as a writer in New York. He was confident that with a sufficiently rigorous apprenticeship, he would eventually create successful plays.

“My advantage and part of my success was being around the Yale School of Drama. I may have been writing badly, but it was a way to learn something. I would make these enormous mistakes but I learned how not to make the same mistake twice. I was anxious to get out into the world because I believe that comedic technique can be learned; you just have to practice it.”

It was the apprenticeship of writing for small theatres off-off-Broadway that led to Rudnick’s successes, including I Hate Hamlet, Poor Little Lambs, the screenplay for The Addams Family, and Jeffrey (recently released as a film.)

Rudnick hit a gold mine when he was introduced to Chris Ashley by Helen Merrill, who is agent for both of them. Ashley, who graduated from Yale in 1986 with a B.A. in theatre, has his own list of accomplishments. His most recent projects include directing Nine Armenians at the Intiman Theatre, The Naked Truth at WPA, Anna Deveare Smith’s Fires in the Mirror at the New York Shakespeare Festival, and the production (and later the film) of Jeffrey in San Francisco, L.A., and New York.

As a collaboration between Rudnick and Ashley, The Naked Eye is only their second project together. The two had never crossed paths until the meeting arranged by their common agent, though they both attended Yale University.

“I didn’t know a thing about Paul when I was at Yale,” Chris said in our recent conversation. “Paul graduated some time before me. It’s amazing that after some years we finally came together.”

The two Yale alumni are surprised at how comfortable they feel working together.

“Chris is like having an ideal parent. He is someone that I trust absolutely and I feel completely secure with him, not only when he is directing one of my plays, but when he’s giving me writing notes as well. It was an enormous relief to find someone who understands all of my references and can make them understood by an audience. He is honest with my plays and is ruthless about his criticism in a way that I know is not personal.”

For a writer like Paul Rudnick, comedy is bliss and being ruthless is crucial.

“Comedy is my personal God.”

Rudnick’s knack for observing real life situations is what he pours into The Naked Eye. The play tackles issues such as censorship, homosexuality, AIDS, and various political platforms in which all of the characters have a stake, whether they wish to or not. The original inspiration for the play came from a gala held at a Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition. The playwright felt it would be the perfect satirical situation in which to present the social behavior in the room, which mixed an array of characters with wildly different social backgrounds.

“I wanted to see if I could write a comedy that was no holds barred. I didn’t want any character or special interest group to be sacred because I think political correctness is actually an enemy of comedy. I believe if there is a political platform that can be destroyed by humor, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with. I’m interested in celebrating absurdity.”

Chris Ashley shares Paul’s feeling about how to celebrate absurdity on stage. What attracts Chris to Paul’s writing is his knack for putting people with the most ridiculous behavioral patterns on stage.

“Paul is fearless when he writes about serious subjects. He reserves affection for characters and creates stereotypes pushed to the point of absurdity. My job as the director is to gauge how light or dark the characters should be played. I am fascinated and appalled by what happens in his work. That is my attraction to collaborating with him.”

“Thematically The Naked Eye is all about risk. I don’t want to censor any of the impulses in the script. When the knee-jerk liberal in me says I can’t go that far, I am tickled to challenge myself and search for the line that I won’t comfortably cross.” An earlier draft of the play was titled The Naked Truth, and Paul’s feelings about the truths he presents in The Naked Eye is that they are not solely political truths, but emotional and personal truths as well.

“At the center of the play is a character who is a romantic. Everyone else has worldly ambitions, but this woman (Nan Bemiss) wants to be loved at the most passionate level. That makes her a candidate for the worst possible despair. If the play is to come down on any one side it should be on the side of love, because wanting to fall in love is one of the truly non-political issues in the world. Everything else is a bit more artificial.”

Whether it is absurdity, satire, or just plain lunacy the two artists finally put on the stage, The Naked Eye is a play with serious implications–in its political themes, in the social relations it spoofs, the hypocrisy it exposes, and in the universal longings it reveals. What seems to be most important for both writer and director in their ongoing collaboration is examining how people can face their deepest fears and worries while laughing at the same time.

Shawn René Graham is a second-year dramaturgy student at the A.R.T./MXAT Institute for Advanced Theater Training.