at the edge of a lonesome highway: notes from a first-time director in the throes of the creative process
âNo self-respecting playwright should set about adapting anything which he did not respect as a work of art and that which he did not feel to be in line with his own aesthetic. The work must belong between the curtains as much as it did between the pages.â  - Edward Albee, excerpt from Stretching My Mind
When we first decided to close our premier season with Hitcher, I knew this production would be an ambitious one. Constructing such an intricate, multi-layered project proved almost immediately to be more challenging than I could have ever imagined. Between the normal juggling of ever changing schedules, coordinating meetings with out-of-reach designers, preparing for callbacks and arranging music with a composer in Milwaukee, I have been switching between director, producer, writer, deviser, and performer. Each step forward is faced with the same confusion and determination as the last in the hopes that no one will catch that I am making this up as I go along. And as with any third act worth its salt, the final leviathans have yet to appear at the bottleneck of this rising labyrinth.
Let me take you back to the beginning, when Hitcher only existed in a book and I had no idea what the hell I was getting into. About two years ago, I was attending San Francisco State University in my second year of their MFA program. This particular day I was helping tech a lunchtime student theatre production. Alone in the booth at the helm of a half broken light board, the rehearsal had taken a momentary hiatus due to creative differences between director and designer. As the artistic pissing contest played on, my attention turned to at book at my feet that I found wedged between the table and the wall. It was a collection of poems by rock legend Jim Morrison. The book also contained a screenplay treatment for a film entitled The Hitchhiker: An American Pastoral. Morrison had written it shortly before his death, and even filmed promotional material to help gain backers for the project, but it was never completed. After reading the seven-page treatment several times I knew that there was something there worth investigating, something worth exploring on the stage.
Over the next month I went about trying to adapt the piece for the stage, drowning in a sea of questions without even an oar to guide me. Among all the unknowns there were a few things I knew, were there ever to be a production, it would require. First there was the aspect of multimedia. Originally being meant for the big screen and having a plethora of tech savvy mind theatre folk to draw from, the use of projection was inevitable. Next it only felt right to bring in live music. Morrison the rockstar and Morrison the writer were two of the same beast and already in his treatment did he begin to blend his artistic selves, so it only seemed natural to want to bring in a band and a composer to score the piece. Lastly it was in adding the final layer of practical devised work that the whole concept of production became complete â this has proven to be the greatest challenge of the piece yet. Devised work is a complete collaboration between all aspects of the design, production and performance process brought about through research, discussion and practical experimentation in the rehearsal process. It is personal, intimate, dynamic, sometimes dangerous, always investigative, and my personal favorite way of creating theatre.
From the original text to complete adaptation there were still so many unanswered questions about the story Morrison had created. His depiction of this barren, sexual and violent world spanned the conscious and unconscious of the characters; the guttural and the spectacle of human existence. It was in these gaps of the text that I found, as Mr. Albee puts it, the reason for adaptation. The text itself was not art, but all that lie in between, all that which was not given to us, there in lay the truth I sought after. The point, as it were, was to tell this story honestly and in a manner which kept to my own aesthetics and needs for theatre.
Thus began my journey with this lonesome traveler down this mysterious and vast highway.
- Alex Peri
Writer/Director of HITCHER
This is the first of many blogs we'll be posting about the process of developing HITCHER. Along the way we'll bring you pictures, video, music, and more, so keep an eye out.
Also, please be sure to take a look at our Kickstarter campaign to fund HITCHER, and consider pledging or spreading the word. As an added incentive, those who pledge get special Backer-Only updates with even MORE inside sneak peeks at HITCHER, 99 Stock, and generally awesome stuff (in addition to the already amazing swag we've got to offer.)
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