[Clearance Lvl: Zero Echo]
[Subject: Rosanne DellAversano – Bootless Stageworks Artistic Director]
[Interview]
Going off the title of the piece, how were you originally bitten by BUG?
I like short title that give only the slightly inclination of the story. I’m more likely to read scripts with short titles that leave something to the imagination than a title that tells it all. I found BUG before Tracy Letts’ name became widely known with August: Osage County. That’s another one of my “things,” presenting lesser known works of playwrights that have become mainstream for another work. I’ll tackle this strange affinity with oddball plays with Durang’s Titanic. No, not the musical or movie. Something all entirely different but with the same name.
What do you think is the most challenging part of this piece for you and how have you overcome it? On the flipside, what parts are you connecting with the most?
As with most theater, BUG has many challenges; the hardest of which is making sure that the characters are relatable and not over-exaggerated. What happens to Agnes and Peter is real. It can, or has, happened to people, in various degrees, for many years. I want the audience to take the journey with Agnes and Peter, see it through their eyes. You may agree with Peter, you may feel sympathetic toward Agnes, or, you may just feel a little freaked out by what just happened. My concern isn’t whether the audience likes or dislikes the characters, I simply want them to feel something about the experience.
[At the point subject becomes terse]
[Threatened with 13 hour long compilation video of Andrew Lloyd Webber]
[Interview continues]
Do you find the play timely and an important piece to be performed? Now more so than in other times?
I believe Bug can withstand the test of time. You can replace the names Tim McVey and Ted Kaczynski with McCarthy and Snowden and it would still work. Aliens, terrorists, climate change; it’s all the same – there are those who believe, and those who don’t. However, inside Bug is the story of how one person can pass along his own personal paranoia to another person, under the right conditions. It makes you question your own emotional strength to forgo blindly following what may, at times, sound logical when, in fact, it is truly illogical. I think there’s a lot of that kind of thinking going on in the world right now.
If the government was secretly implanting conspiracy theories into your brain, what seems the most plausible?
My brain is already full of crazy stuff that I put in there so, I’m not sure if the government can find room for its stuff. If they could, the conspiracy theory would have ties to art funding being intercepted and diverted to teach monkeys to memorize Shakespeare in the hope of bringing down Actors Equity Association.
[Restraints broken post interview]
[Guards B5638 and H088 detained]
[Subject at large]
[HIGHLY DANGEROUS]