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| Timothy Mooney |
Tim Mooney writes and performs a whole stable of one-man shows. He presents his work at educational institutions and fringe festivals alike. He has written seventeen iambic pentameter verse adaptations of Moliere plays, published through PlayScripts and more recently Stage Rights. These adaptations have been produced both here in the States and internationally. They have, at this point, been produced over 150 times. He is also the author of an acting text titled Acting At the Speed of Life: Conquering Theatrical Style, on which he also offers workshops to students.
He has toured with his own solo plays since 2002, covering an estimated 720,000 miles, performed nearly 1000 times for hundreds of thousands of students and enthusiastic festival audiences in nearly every one of the lower 48 states, and some of Canada. Tim has produced ten different one-person plays, self-publishing the scripts of many of them. Since the early 2000s he has also meticulously recorded his adventures and sent out a newsletter called "The View From Here" to nearly 2000 followers.
Though his not-for-profit theatre company, the Timothy Mooney Repertory Theatre, he has managed to make creating, performing and touring not just his livelihood, but his financial living as well.
In this two part interview, The Solo Performer gets some insight at how Tim got started, how he grew and evolved his operations and what keeps the solo performance veteran of the road at it.
Here is Part One...
The Solo Performer: First, let’s sketch in
some background info about you, Tim. What
got you interested in the theatre to begin with?
Tim Mooney: I
grew up starved for attention, and found that I could get it on the stage. I
made half-hearted feints at other things, but seemed to do a little more on
stage every year through that critical Junior-in-High-School through
Sophomore-in-College period. After that there was no looking back.
TSP: Sketch out a sort of timeline for us. Where’d
you go to undergrad? Did you study theatre there? When and where was grad
school? Then you interned a few places? Is that right?
TM:
Sure, a rough timeline would look kind of like this…
- · Undergrad (late 70s/early 80s): Southern Illinois University (BA in Acting/Directing)
- · Acting Internship (1981): Alabama Shakespeare Festival
- · Grad School (1982-85): U-Nebraska (MFA in Directing)
- · Directing Internship (1984-85): Milwaukee Repertory Theatre
- · Teaching (Acting/Stage Movement) (1985-87): Northern Illinois University
- · Directing/Literary Management Internship (1987-88): Seattle Repertory Theatre
- · Teaching (Acting/Stage Movement) (1989-90): U-Nebraska
- · Founded and ran The Script Review (1988-1995)
- · Free Lancing (1990-1993)
- · Artistic Director of Stage Two Theatre Company (Waukegan, IL) 1993-1997
- · Writing Moliere Scripts: Mostly 1997-2001
- · Touring around to schools, venues and fringes and presenting my shows: 2002-now
TSP: You ended up as Artistic Director
of Stage Two Theatre in Waukegan, IL. What kind of work did that theater do?
How do you think being AD prepared you for being the prime mover of your own
operation later on?
TM: I think
the fact that this was a starving theatre, just barely scraping by, prepared me
for doing every damn thing that might need to be done to get the thing on. I
expect that many of us one-person shows are iconoclastic visionaries who
ultimately fall into the pattern of depending on the one person we know cares
enough about the show to have some follow-through and make sure the thing is
pulled off. Or maybe we’re just cranky sons-of-bitches
TSP: You also founded something called The
Script Review. What was that? What did you do?
TM: On my Milwaukee and Seattle Rep assignments, I had
been the main “reader” of the slush pile of scripts that came in “over the
transom,” and found myself frustrated by the fact that when I finally DID find
a script that deserved production, the odds were still TOTALLY stacked against
the playwright getting a hearing/reading/workshop/production for their play. In almost every instance, the Artistic Director
had a relationship with a particular set of playwrights, and those playwrights
would gobble up all of the new-play premiere slots in the calendar.
I decided to create a newsletter that would
network my manuscript reports to an audience of directors and literary
managers, so that the playwright might have a better chance of reaching someone
who would see their script and respond. I reviewed about 700 plays over the
course of seven years and about 34 issues.
TSP: So, according to the Are You Famous, Yet?
podcast interview you did (episode 82), you took about four years off after leaving Stage Two in order
to focus on writing? Why the redirect? Was this to work on adaptations of
Moliere?
TM:
After half a decade with Stage Two, I had produced about 50 plays, the great
majority of which were original works. I was essentially making no money doing
it, at least in part because original works without name recognition are hard to market and don’t
bring in masses of audience. We hit upon the idea of doing Moliere’s
“Tartuffe,” and I, having been doing a LOT of experimental writing at that time
(including a ton of poetry), suggested that I’d like to try my hand at writing
a new version of “Tartuffe” in rhymed iambic pentameter.
TSP: Iambic pentameter? Wasn’t Moliere originally written in
Alexandrine couplets?
TM:
Yes, he was. There has been great precedent for translating Moliere into iambic
pentameter, and I kind of took the translator’s word for the suggestion that
English doesn’t work in the Alexandrine Hexameter that Moliere sometimes uses as
well as it works in iambic pentameter. More importantly, though, I believe the
classically-trained modern American actor should have an instinctive
understanding of how iambic pentameter ought to be delivered, much in the same
way that a musician should immediately see how something in 4/4 time is to be
performed. As for myself, it comes so naturally to me that after a night of
rehearsing one of my plays, it is hard for me to BREAK OUT of speaking in
iambic pentameter.
While
I’m at it, one other way in which I violate Moliere’s original is that I put
ALL of his plays into rhyme, even when they were originally in prose. It feels
more “like Moliere” to me. (I assume that most of Moliere’s prose plays were
written on a deadline, and that if he’d had a bit more time, they might have
come out in verse). The audience listens to verse in a slightly different way,
sitting up, waiting to hear just how that last syllable will magically pay off
the minor joke that has been set up with the first line.
TSP: Makes
sense. So, you were writing all these Moliere adaptations…
TM:
It was one of those really exciting experiences when I found myself writing way
“over my head,” pulling rhymes and double entendres out of thin air somehow.
The play got really good reviews, and I
realized that my potential for making an impact on the theatrical universe
(and/or making a living) was much better in chasing this new adventure of
reworking the catalogue of the plays of Moliere. I wrote a dozen new versions
of Moliere plays in those four years, and am now up to about 17 of them (as
well as a new version of Goldoni’s “The Servant of Two Masters”). A bunch of
them have been published, and they’ve been produced over 150 times at last
count.
TSP: Now, let’s talk a little about solo work and touring. What drew you to solo performance work?
TM:
I didn’t start thinking that I was going into “solo work.” I was doing the
luncheon circuit, speaking at the Elks, the Rotary, the Eagles Clubs, mostly
promoting upcoming productions of my Moliere plays that were being produced at
my old theatre, Stage Two. They had produced five of them in my first four
years, and I had performed four of the roles that Moliere himself had actually
played.
Somehow the several directors who took
on this project each seemed to see me in the most challenging comic role, which
was what Moliere had written with himself in mind. (Side note: I’ve spent much
of the last 20 years living a parallel existence with Moliere.)
One luncheon gig was to be with the
“Canadian Women’s Guild,” but they didn’t want a lecture, they wanted a
performance and were willing to pay me $100 for the event. This was substantial at the time. I
thought, “A free meal AND a hundred dollars. Awesome!”
So, I found myself thinking, “Well, why would Moliere be
performing without his usual troupe?”
“Well… maybe they got sick… and Moliere
couldn’t afford to refund the box office money…”
“And… maybe Moliere (like me) still had
some of his good monologues memorized, just in case the king demanded one of
his favorites from the theatre’s repertory…”
“And maybe Moliere didn’t get sick
because he at the chicken, while the rest of the cast ate the fish!”
So… suddenly I found myself to be a solo
performer.
TSP: So, your first show was Moliere
Than Thou. Were you always a super-fan of Moliere?
TM: Moliere grew on me over the years. I’ve always
enjoyed the fact that he was sexy/bawdy/playful/impish… Somehow he had gotten
categorized with Shakespeare as one of those dusty old writers from history and
a lot of people found him really dull. Over the years, I’ve discovered that
your attitude towards Shakespeare or Moliere is highly influenced by your very
first exposure to a play of either of them, and if the performance is dull,
austere or (as is often the case) incomprehensible, then you will tend to blame
the playwright rather than the producer or the director or the actors.
I’ve always
felt that I had the “secret decoder” in my ability to see through the complex
language and verse to see the raging, passionate, hilarious, sexy, and really
exciting action underneath.
(In fact, I
think the first rumor that I heard of a Moliere play featured a boob-grabbing
scene in “Tartuffe” and my teenage self was astonished that such a thing was
possible.)
TSP: Why’d you keep with solo work after
that first show?
TM: I don’t know when it became as inevitable as it
ultimately did, but the longer you work as a solo performer, and the more solo
performances you book, the more that you find yourself alone, on the road,
heading off to yet another performance, or series of performances, and the less
available you are to some company who might actually want to hire you to
perform in their full-cast shows.
In that
instance, when I find myself on the road, by myself, with a vision for
something that needs to be expressed in front of an audience and the
universe-at-large, I mostly look at the tools that I have available to me and think
of how I can make sense of it for a modern American audience with the one actor
who seems to show up at every rehearsal that I call.
If the only
tool that you have is a hammer, everything around you looks like a
one-man-show.
TSP: You didn’t start with touring doing it the way
you do now. You used to do what you call “run out” performances. Can you
describe what those were?
TM: There was a period, from the premiere of “Moliere
than Thou” in March, 2000 to Summer, 2002 when I was still making money at a
corporate job (working for a corporation that was the equivalent of Satan in my
mind), when I wasn’t able to take long periods away from my desk. I could,
however, get away from my desk for a couple of days to drive down to Tennessee
for a show, and then back to Chicago, or up to Wisconsin and back to Chicago. I
may have done a half-dozen of these shows, making maybe $500 per show (or
less). With the travel expenses and time involved, there was no financial
up-side to it. I loved the performance, but could not count on these shows to
keep me fed.
It wasn’t
until after I’d quit my job in 2001 that I lined up a gig that was MORE than a
single-day’s drive from Chicago. A friend had convinced me to do the 2002
Seattle Fringe Festival, which forced me to lay out a “tour” that would carry
me from Illinois to Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas, Montana, Idaho and Washington
State. Since, for all I knew, I might not make more than a couple hundred bucks
at the Seattle Fringe (I was right), the only way I could afford the trip was
to find bookings along the way, and since I was telling people that I was
passing through their state on, say, September 7, when I would be available to
perform at a SPECIAL DISCOUNT RATE (the same rate as my one-off performances),
suddenly they were NOW checking their calendar to see if their space, or their
students were available then.
That was when
I discovered that my access to actually making a living was to get in motion
and to stay in motion. I proceeded to draw up tours that would take me
(potentially) to all 48 contiguous states twice a year.
TSP: You did FringeNYC early on, just a
few years after it started. Fringe festivals in larger cities have a different
flavor than their smaller, more intimate counterparts in smaller cities. What
show did you present at FringeNYC and how’d it go?
TM: I did FringeNYC in 2003. I performed Moliere than
Thou. It was miserable.
I warn people
away from what I call “urban fringes.” If the fringe you are going to will
likely fill up its roster just from the fact that they are in the city in which
you want to make a big splash (NYC, Chicago, LA…), then the administration of
that Fringe has very little incentive to make you happy. They will very likely
provide you with crappy venues and milquetoast publicity. And then make some
screamingly outrageous demand that you sign over rights to X% of your royalties
over future years of performance.
Also, keep in
mind, that the big cities have plenty of theatre that they can go and see any
day of the week. YOU being in THEIR town is no big event. But it is those
mid-sized cities: Orlando, Minneapolis, Winnipeg, Edmonton… that will make a
BIG DEAL over you.
For what it’s
worth, I had five performances at the 2003 FringeNYC stretched out over 23
days! And my first two performances that looked like they would actually end up
selling a few tickets were cancelled because of the Great Blackout of 2003.
And yet, as
cynical as I am about this, I did get one of my best reviews from
nytheatre.com, which probably looks good in my portfolio.
TSP:
Nowadays, you seem to alternate between the educational gigs at schools and
such with appearances at fringe festivals. When did you start heading off to
perform at fringes as a steady thing? What do you get from the festival
experiences that you don’t with shows at educational institutions?
TM: I
dove in to the fringes fairly fully in the summer of 2003. I seem to alternate
years of “fringing” a LOT with years of just, say, three fringes. (Mostly
because the fringes don’t pay as well as the bookings and I need to devote more
time in the summer to getting bookings.)
At the
educational institutions, I usually don’t get reviewed, because I’m just in
town for a single day and then racing off. There’s no reason to write a review
for an audience that has missed the show already. If they do write a
review, it’s usually from a student writer whose skills are of limited scope,
for a paper whose name doesn’t strike a bell. But with the fringes, I’m in town
for (usually) 10-12 days, performing 5-7 times, and cities that are serious
about the performing arts will send out reviewers to cover the shows early in
the run. Of course, that helps ticket sales, but it also gives me a portfolio
of legit media that I can use to stimulate more bookings.
But
also, I have to note, that fringes are like family to me: the people I see at
fringes are people I hang out with at the beer tent, we see each other’s shows,
commiserate about bad audiences or reviews, and then call it a night.
TSP:
Though Moliere Than Thou was your
first solo piece (which you are still performing), you have added quite a few
more shows to your repertory. Some of them are adaptations of Shakespeare
scripts as one-man shows, others are sci-fi, and still another is a collection
of famous speeches. Your interests seem pretty wide ranging, yet each show
seems to fill a need in some way. Either it has a potential to sell well to
institutions that might book you (Lot o’
Shakespeare, The Greatest Speech of All Time), or it expresses something
you feel is personally important (Criteria,
Man Cave). Can you give us a brief description of a few of these shows and
what prompted you to create them?
TM: Lot o’ Shakespeare came from a fantasy I
had about auditioning for Shakespeare plays, and showing up at each audition
with a monologue ready from any Shakespeare play that they might be producing:
38 monologues and 6 sonnets! Ultimately I added a bingo cage with 44 ping-pong
balls, so I could perform them randomly (“Lotto”) while the audience followed
along with IAGO (instead of BINGO) cards. The idea was to share the most
challenging/exciting and sometimes impenetrable monologues with kids who would
be able to listen past the challenging Shakespearean words to feel the passion
and hilarity that has kept us loving Shakespeare for almost 500 years.
Amid Lot o’, I discovered that some of my
most thrilling reactions were not from the comic monologues (I have always seen
myself as a comic actor first, and a dramatic actor under duress), but those
monologues that stemmed from actual famous historical speeches: Antony’s
“Friends, Romans, Countrymen” from Julius
Caesar and Henry V’s “Saint
Crispin’s Day” speech. That got me thinking about history, and making it “live”
not despite the clunky archaic
rhetoric that infused them, but because
of it. I somehow had some kind of answer key that other people didn’t have: to
lay out the historical situation that was filled with tension and triumph. And
so, I googled “The Greatest Speech of All Time” and picked out favorite
historical speeches from Socrates, Frederick Douglass, Lincoln, Teddy
Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Churchill and Martin Luther King. Presented
together these speeches begin to trace the arc of human history and the stuff
that people would get whipped up into a frenzy about.
At one
point I realized that Shakespeare’s History plays started to make a bit more
sense if I recited those monologues in chronological order, and so I added more
monologues to the ten History monologues I had memorized already, added some
snarky narration and introduced people to all ten History plays in just one
hour, as Shakespeare’s Histories; Ten
Epic Plays at a Breakneck Pace. It was my way of waking up a part of
Shakespeare’s catalogue to folks who might never otherwise hope to grasp just
why those plays were so meaningful.
TSP:
So, adding a fair amount of context into the mix.
TM:
Yes. Having done the Histories, I did similar treatments to single plays that
are major pillars of the canon, with Breakneck
Hamlet and Breakneck Julius Caesar.
With Man Cave, I’ve decided that all of my
ventures into literature are meaningless unless there’s a planet left which is
inhabited with people. As such, I’ve created an end-of-the-world scenario with
only one man left, broadcasting for anybody out there who might be left to
hear. I’m hoping to, in my own way, help counteract any notion that mankind has
“all the time in the world” to adjust its behavior, in order to counter climate
change. The full title is Man Cave, a
One-Man Sci-Fi Climate Change Tragicomedy.
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| Tim Mooney in Man Cave promotional photo |
TSP: Since that original “tour” to Seattle from Chicago in 2002, you have kept at it, travelling around the United States, performing your one-man shows at schools and festivals. And you seem to do this most of the year, leaning on the academic gigs during the fall and spring, then doing fringes in the summers. You seem to have worked out a way to do this more or less smoothly over the years. What I mean is, from an outside perspective, you have an operational foundation in place to accommodate you being on the road through the year. What have you learned about setting up these tours?
TM:
I laugh at your suggestion that I have “an operational foundation in place” to
“smoothly” tour.
The tour that I plot out NEVER ends up
as the tour I eventually do. It would be impossible to start with. I never book
all 48 contiguous states and my goal is to lay out a path where I’m AVAILABLE
to all 48 states, but might well find myself hitting Nebraska, South Dakota or
North Dakota on a particular date, or, more likely, find myself driving on
through one of those for a show in Montana or Utah. (Wyoming is the only
remaining of the 48 contiguous states that has NEVER booked me.)
The ability to make what rare bookings I
might well perform happen lies in my flexibility to draw and redraw and then redraw
again a path that will take me through, sometimes agonizingly odd detours,
crossing hundreds of miles that I just crossed over yesterday because school X
somehow had to have me on a Tuesday, while school Y couldn’t have me until Friday.
My willingness to drive that extra 500
or so miles has often meant that I pick up an extra thousand dollars that
otherwise would have been left untouched.
Read the rest of this interview with the wonderful Tim Mooney in Part Two... HERE
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