"Extinction" Opens at Guild Hall on Thursday

By Michelle Trauring

The first time Sawyer Spielberg read “Extinction” out loud, he caught himself looking over his shoulder to see if anyone could hear the words coming out of his mouth.

He was in a coffee shop in Manhattan. And he was terrified.

“It went against all my morals as a person,” he said of the play, “and I knew, once I started reading it aloud, that it would take an all-in attitude to go up on stage and tell this story.”

Last winter, he dug deep, found it and told it—as part of John Drew Theater’s JDTLab series. But now, Gabe McKinley’s poignant, sexy, dark, booze, drug and subtext-filled play about the evolution of friendship will breathe new life in East Hampton as a full-fledged production opening Thursday night under the direction of Josh Gladstone.

His initial encounter with the play was by way of a Mr. Spielberg dressed to the nines in a 1930s ranch hand uniform, holding a shotgun in one hand and the script in the other, backstage at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor.

“The ‘Of Mice and Men’ show we were doing at Bay Street was for students under the age of 17, and sarcastically, I turned to Josh—whose character’s name was Boss—and said, ‘Hey Boss, here’s a play for students!’” Mr. Spielberg said. “Of course, this show is not for students.”

That much became quickly apparent as Mr. Gladstone sat down with the play in a dressing room. As he read, he couldn’t stop laughing.

“I read a fair number of plays, and they don’t usually get me,” he said. “I knew we had to do this.”

The lab—an “under-rehearsed, book-in-hand reading,” Mr. Gladstone said—was enough to raise eyebrows, and he needed to see what a proper staging could do. In what Mr. Spielberg can only describe as a “verbal boxing match between two best friends,” which doesn’t end well for either of them, this play explores the evolution of a friendship between men, a true study in endings and new beginnings.

“It calls into question, what is at the root of male bonding? What’s at the root of men’s ability to express themselves and communicate between friends?” Mr. Gladstone said. “I felt like I knew this play. I felt like I knew this world. I could relate to it with my own friendships and relationships with men from college. It’s a funny, touching play that deals with a subject that doesn’t get dealt with a lot. It’s a dark play, with a real edge and bite to it.”

It is a fight neither Max nor Finn win, according to Mr. Spielberg, who portrays the latter and has been through what the main characters experience.

“I’ve had a few friends in my past who I looked up to, and as time goes by, my morals and values have evolved. I’ve changed, the way I live my life has changed, the way I talk and think has changed, so this caused break-ups in those friendships,” he explained. “There’s nothing special about Finn Buchanan, which makes him a great character to play. He's just a guy trying to make sense of this world like the rest of us. I’m a pretty laid-back guy, or at least I'm good at maintaining my cool until I get triggered by something that sets me off. I would say that Finn is wired up tighter than me and, therefore, when he gets triggered, his set-offs are more extreme.”

He laughed. “That’s been fun to play!”

Acting opposite him is Eric Svendsen, who introduced his friend to “Extinction” a year and a half ago. “I’ve fallen in love with the play over the past year we’ve been dating,” Mr. Spielberg said. “It’s a long-term relationship.”

Mr. Svendsen did not participate in the JDTLab reading, but for the full-blown production, Mr. Spielberg didn’t give the actor a choice, who joins the four-member cast alongside Brian Kraynak and Raye Levine.

“Of course, I wouldn't have the heart to do this play without Eric, so I got him to fly back to New York City for the production,” he said. “We [the cast] all love each other unconditionally, no matter what. We have each other’s backs. There’s no one better than the next. I won’t work with a narcissist.”

The actors — together known as Where Are They Going Theatre Group — are a breath of fresh air for Mr. Gladstone, he said.

“It’s good to work on a play like this with these people because they bring so much energy and enthusiasm,” he said. “And in my personal life right now, it’s like yes, I need this creative project to be working on. It feels good to be working on it and to be in the room. They’re doing everything, it’s so grassroots. It’s the purest form of, ‘Hey, let’s do theater.’ That’s refreshing.”

Staged in a black-box style and almost fully in the round, the audience—of no more than 60 members per night—will be seated up close and personal with the actors, some on couches, some on chairs that are on the carpet of the hotel room.

It will feel orgiastic, Mr. Gladstone said — “and right up in your face.”

“You want to be absorbed in a story, you want to have a visceral experience, you want to feel something,” Mr. Gladstone said. “I want audiences to come and hopefully be entertained and be shaken up a little bit and, perhaps, if we’re effective, be mildly disturbed and question nature.

“If there are people like me in the audience, who have friends from the old days, they’ll have that moment of recognition and twinge of, ‘Oh, I went through that, too,’” he continued. “People will come and, for two hours, will be in a dingy world at the Borgata Hotel in a suite and spend too much time playing craps and drinking too much and they’re going to feel that. They don’t have to drive all the way to Atlantic City to get the same kind of terrible hangover. They can come and get wasted by association. It’ll be intimate and, a little early in the season, a chance for those of us to feel a little something edgy here. To get a little bit rocked by something artsy.”

“Extinction” will open on Thursday, March 30, at 7 p.m. at the John Drew Theater at Guild Hall in East Hampton. Additional performances will be held on Wednesdays through Sundays, through April 16, at 7 p.m., plus matinees on April 8 and April 15 at 2 p.m. This play contains graphic language and mature subject matter. Tickets are $25, or $23 for members, and $15 for students under age 18. For more information, call (631) 324-0806, or visit guildhall.org.