The Aging Enfant Terrible

The vibe here isn't one that screams for an aging artistic terrorist.

"Did I ever tell you about..."

Thus began the almost two hours of telling stories of days gone by, of bizarre, bold, sometimes stupid achievements of my time in Chicago's theater scene. I had most certainly told him about every single instance (as I had heard all of his examples of envelope pushing, artistic edge-lordship) but we indulged each other in that old men reliving the glory days category of dialogue.

"... when we decided to put up teaser posters of Metaluna and the Amazing Science of the Mind Revuethat landed me in court? We didn't have a marketing budget and the practice of putting up posters with tape in storefront windows was a crowded space designed for others to cover your posters with theirs. I decided to have Pat Carton create a tabloid-sized teaser with nothing but Metaluna and the poster image of Sigmund Freud in a dress and we'd get up at 3:00am with a bucket of 50% water and 50% Elmer's glue and we'd go out and glue these posters up on every available public surface—light poles, el train platforms, construction sites, sidewalks, everywhere. All told, I think we put up a thousand of them.

"A local theater reviewer called me during this and asked if I knew anything about this Metaluna thing. People around the theater corridor were trying to figure out what the hell it was. It was awesome! Two weeks before we opened the show, we put up the real posters with all the info and I almost immediately received a summons to report to court. Joe Bill from the Annoyance had to come with me because that was the place we were staging the show.

"He and I sat through several judgments on parking tickets. When it was our turn, the judge explained that they had evidence of nearly 100 of these teaser posters and that we could be fined $10,000 per incident. 'Your honor, first we put up, like, a thousand of them and second, if we could pay the fine for even one of them we wouldn't have had to resort to guerrilla marketing in the first place.'

"She laughed and proceeded to fine us ten bucks."

We talked about the strange series of DADA Soireé's I produced and, in a few cases, directed. The never-ending show we decided to do to see if we could exhaust the audience until they left. The controversy over the baby Jesus cakes we planned to feed the audience during the city-financed DADA Christmas show. The instance in New York when I pranked the New York Times reviewers to come see our production of Let There Be Light!

At Sketchfest one year, Joe Janes and I showed the viral video Two Girls, One Cup and filmed the audience reaction at the close of the show. We entitled our final installment at Sketchfest Don Hall and Joe Janes Are Using This Show to Try to Get Laid where we orchestrated a first date with Joe and a member of the audience onstage. We did a sketch wearing afro wigs called "Why White People Can't Mock Black People."

"You could never do that sort of stuff in Chicago today."

The statement floated there, practically daring me to rebut. He was right, though. Except that the very reason I started a theater company in the first place was that no one else in early nineties Chicago was producing shows I had any interest in participating in. Like it or not (and there are plenty who do not like it) I am a provocateur by nature. Not only cannot I not help it, I love it. The things that make me think the hardest are those works of art that shock me and so, of course, the kind of art I want to create is shocking.

"Oh, I don't know about that. Do you remember what was written above the theater on Halsted?"

"Yeah. 'Nothing is sacred. Not even you.'"

"That hasn't changed. It's been dimmed a bit by time and age and circumstance but that absolute joy I get skewering the sacred cows is hardwired in me. If I were to be in Chicago, I would do that sort of stuff with a passion."

"Why aren't doing it in Wichita?"

It's a good question. I think the answer is that I have a different purpose here. Here, in the heartland, my purpose is less selfish, less self-serving. Here, I am to be a good son, a good brother, a wise-ish uncle. I'm here to rebuild—my finances, my sense of who I am in the world, my optimism for my future. Also, the vibe here isn't one that screams for an aging enfant terrible.

Enfant terrible is a French expression, traditionally referring to a child who is terrifyingly candid by saying embarrassing things to parents or others. However, the expression has drawn multiple usage in careers of art, fashion, music, and other creative arts. In these careers, it implies a successful, and often young, "genius" who is very unorthodox, striking, and in some cases, offensive, or rebellious.

I'm no genius on almost any level but I'm without reservation unorthodox, offensive and rebellious. Even at my advancing age. Those qualities are not welcome in Kansas right now so I'll hold on to them, soften the edges as much as possible. The joke at my job here is that I am frequently unfiltered and for these folks, I am. They have no idea how filtered I am for them.

Artistically, to challenge the paradigm, to crush the orthodoxy in place, there needs to be one to begin with and while there is art here (surprisingly quite a lot) it is kinder sort of series of creations. The people in Wichita are a kinder sort of people than those one finds in an urban environment. They are nicer because they don't have to fight for space I think. I'm sure there are some who lament the lack of parking but they have no idea how much room there is here.

"It's not as much fun to bring an artistic sledgehammer to a party filled with really nice people."

"So, are you coming back to Chicago?"

"Yup. When life provides that opportunity, I'll head back. I think the artistic scene needs a kick in the ass. For now, I'll play nice because no one in Wichita wants or needs my brand of nonsense."