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Christian Scheider stretches his arms out wide before folding his hands behind his head of thick sandy hair. He turns expectantly to his friend seated adjacent, Tucker Marder, who cocks an eyebrow.
“Let’s talk about us first. This is a funny story,” Mr. Scheider resolves. “Do you know what Anthrocon is?”
“That’s my joke!” Mr. Marder interjects. “I made that joke earlier and then you told me not to make it. And now you’re making it. See what he’s doing?”
Without missing a beat, Mr. Scheider continues, “Anthrocon is a furry convention. Do you know what furries are?”
Mr. Marder throws his hands in the air, feigning exasperation, as his friend pauses and chuckles. “Fine, no, we didn’t meet at Anthrocon. But you might think so, seeing this show.”
While neither Mr. Marder or Mr. Scheider show a particular interest in furries—people who dress up as animals that exhibit human traits—their newest production, “Galápagos,” might suggest otherwise.
Based on Kurt Vonnegut’s 1985 epic tale of the same name, the 90-minute adaptation will explore the author’s thoughts on humanity’s place in evolutionary time, the directors explain, beginning Monday, July 21, as the first fully staged theatrical production at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill.
“This play is impossible and there’s this huge opportunity for failure, which we love,” Mr. Tucker says. “Just to get a human in front of other humans in an animal suit in a room, attempting to be an animal, and the failures involved with that is valuable. Knowing full well that a person can never give a convincing marine iguana or blue-footed booby.”
“But sometimes it takes the human form or the human word to be able to empathize with something that is non-human,” Mr. Scheider argues, before asking, “There are how many species on the planet?”
“I think it’s 9 million species, and the idea is there’s 9 million ways to be.”
“That idea is easy, on paper or a Wikipedia article, to write it off,” Mr. Scheider says. “But when you see a human do it and represent it, something clicks in our big, horrible brains and we can see it differently. And art has the power to do that.”
Vonnegut’s 11th novel follows beloved high school teacher Mary Hepburn—acted by Chloe Dirksen—and her voyage aboard the “Nature Cruise of the Century,” departing from Ecuador against the backdrop of both a global financial and military crisis, as well as a disease that renders all humans infertile. This cross-section of individuals becomes marooned among the flora and fauna of the Galápagos archipelago and, over the next million years, evolve away from their “tiresome, deadly brains,” Mr. Scheider, and, more happily, toward seals.
The action unfolds in one and a half acts—complete with a birth, two deaths, a wedding, an erotic asphyxiation, an insemination, a suicide, 10 animal interludes, a lobster ballet and interspecies co-stars.
“Yeah, there’s a lot going on in this play,” Mr. Scheider says. “And there are only two weeks of rehearsal. We’re under the gun, but it’s the way art sometimes should happen. Hopefully not forever, but for now, yes.”
It was almost a year ago when Mr. Scheider was perusing the “local authors” section in his favorite East Hampton thrift shop and stumbled across a beautiful, untouched, hardcover edition of “Galápagos”—a book he had never heard of, despite his lifelong admiration for Vonnegut, who lived and worked in Sagaponack in the 1960s and ’70s, before his death in 2007.
After devouring it, Mr. Scheider—whose father is the late actor Roy Scheider—could only think of one person who would love it as much as he did: Tucker Marder, whose artistic work is largely involved with animals. Mr. Scheider shipped it off to his friend and fellow Ross School alum, who was attending graduate school at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and drove up to visit him soon after.
For one weekend last winter, they locked themselves inside Mr. Marder’s home and broke down the 300-page novel sentence by sentence. Eight months later, they had themselves a play.
The duo—whose theatrical debut, an adaption of Ray Bradbury’s “The Murderer,” sold out last summer at Sag Harbor’s Old Whalers’ Church—enlisted 26 local actors, among them Academy Award-nominated Bob Balaban, and a crew of 14 to bring the “Nature Cruise of the Century” to life. The writers kept the play as true to Vonnegut’s novel as possible, they report, conscious that the late author would, mid-production, leave adaptations he didn’t like—the majority of them.
“I’d like to think he wouldn’t walk out of this one,” Mr. Tucker says.
“Which would be a compliment enough,” Mr. Scheider adds. “He doesn’t have to like it. Just don’t walk out. I know that he would appreciate the fact that 40 people had gotten together to manifest his novel, whether he liked it or not.”
Last Thursday, on day four of rehearsal, Mr. Marder closes the garage door to the Silas Marder Gallery space in Brigehampton and brings the group of seven actors to order. They jump headfirst into a scene aboard the cruise ship—actor Madeline Wise perching atop the three-story scaffolding, leaning precariously over the railing.
“It feels a little more wiggly ...” she hesitates. “I don’t feel unsafe, I just noticed it as I was climbing up.”
Carefully, the actors wheel the contraption back and forth, evoking ocean waves, until they have to recite a line together.
“The beauty of the tortoise ...,” they start, before dissolving into garbled German accents as Mr. Marder laughs and eyes Mr. Scheider warily.
“Perfect!” the director says. “Rehearsal over!”
“Again,” Mr. Scheider commands, more seriously. “In unison. As one voice.”
The second time, they nail it.
“Galápagos,” an adaptation by Tucker Marder and Christian Scheider based on Kurt Vonnegut’s 1985 epic, will make its world premiere on Monday, July 21, at 6 p.m. at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill. Additional performances will stage on Wednesday, July 23, and Thursday, July 24, at 6 p.m., and Friday, July 25, at 4 p.m. Tickets are $20, or $10 for members and students. Seating is limited. For more information, call 283-2118 or visit kickstarter.com/profile/1206385481.
on Jul 15, 2014