Troubled love story, confessions from the audience

By JAMES D. WATTS JR. World Scene Writer on Jul 25, 2013, at 2:31 AM Updated on 7/25/13 at 4:43 AM

For several years, Joseph Gomez had no idea he was writing a play.

“I’d written a few full-length plays several years ago, but for about the last few years, the only thing I’d been writing were these songs,” Gomez said. “The thing is, every time I played these songs for people, I’d get asked if they were from a show.

“To me, they were individual songs, but some people pointed out that they seemed to have these recurring characters,” he said. “That made me start looking at these songs a little differently, and I saw how maybe they could be arranged to make up a story.”

That story is “The Method and the Madness,” which will have its premiere Friday at the Nightingale Theater.

Gomez describes the piece as being “at its heart a love story,” about the relationship between two performers, Paco and Bessie (played by Gomez and Cassie Hollis, respectively).

It’s a troubled relationship from the start – for one thing, it is revealed early on that Paco has committed suicide. The story of Paco and Bessie unfolds once two other characters start recalling what happened, as one rose to success and the other succumbed to despair.

And yet, Gomez said, the tone of the show is largely comic – the better to deal with some of the more serious issues and ideas contained within the story.

“I had the cast attend a performance of ‘The Drunkard’ to help them get the feel for the kind of melodramatic tone I wanted,” said Gomez, who also directs the show. “A lot of the scenes are very absurdist, and the humor can get pretty bawdy. Still, there are moments when the tone shifts to something a bit more serious, but for the most part, I wanted to keep things pretty light.”

One of the threads making up the fabric of “The Madness and the Method” is mental illness – specifically, bipolar disorder, a condition that affects Gomez.

“I was diagnosed about 10 years ago, when I had what I call a nervous breakdown,” Gomez said. “That’s the term I prefer to use, because there’s this mechanical implication – something was broken, but it can be fixed. ‘Bipolar episode’ makes it sound like something that’s going to keep continuing, like a bad TV show.

“That was something of an impetus for doing this show,” he said. “And it’s also why I took the approach I did, going for something comic, even cartoonish at times. It was a way for me to put some distance between me and that experience, to look at it in new ways and maybe understand it a little better.

“It’s like I have one of the characters say – ‘We live in a lovely world, even if it is only a dying dream in the mind of a suicide,’ ” he said.

Following Saturday’s performance will be the latest incarnation of another Gomez creation, “Old Crow Confessions.”

The Nightingale Theater has been offering this opportunity for audience-participation storytelling for about nine years. Tables and chairs are set on the theater’s stage area, a bottle of the titular spirit is opened, and anyone wanting to unburden themselves can do so.

“It grew out of what we would do after a show,” said Gomez, who has been a part of the Nightingale family since returning to Tulsa after studying in St. Louis and performing in New York City.

“We’d sit around with a bottle of Old Crow, which was the best cheap whiskey we could find, and start telling stories and secrets,” he said. “We enjoyed it so much we decided to see if we could make a show out of it.”

Gomez said he was at first uncertain if audience members would participate, but he discovered quickly that “people like to talk about themselves.”

“It’s not like some monologue shows, like ‘The Moth,’ which are more like storytelling,” he said. “We’re wanting confessions. And it can vary widely. We’ve had some rambunctious, rowdy evenings, with lots of confessions that involved sex and bodily functions, and other nights where things were more somber and subdued.

“And even if the confession being made isn’t all that revealing,” Gomez said, “something always ends up being revealed, through the words they use, their body language.”

Gomez laughed, then said, “I guess I’ve become a connoisseur of confessions because of this show.”

‘THE METHOD AND THE MADNESS’
When: 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday and Aug. 1-3, 2 p.m. Sunday and Aug. 4
Where: Nightingale Theater, 1416 E. Fourth St.
Tickets: $10 at the door.

‘OLD CROW CONFESSIONS’
When: 10 p.m. Saturday
Where: Nightingale Theater, 1416 E. Fourth St.