Fishtown Local
Last night, I had a really bad dream.
It was as bizarre as it gets, but I guess it was my own fault — I've been seeing too many "serious" plays lately.
In the dream, I was at this play in some Gloucester theater, I couldn't tell which one. The characters were talking in these Scottish ... no, Irish accents, I think, and talking and talking and talking. They were telling stories — endless stories — about themselves. They went on and on and on and on.
One story was about some friend from Dublin — a guy or a gal, I couldn't discern which — who betrayed his friend and was proud of it. The next was some drivel about someone being buried in a grave with his victim when he died. Whew!
Why do people write plays about this stuff, I thought, as I sat in the theater. But the walls began melting, as they do in dreams when everything you thought you understood begins to turn upside down. Soon people were coming into the dream — but they were just telling more and more stories about how alone and hopeless their drink-sodden unsuccessful lives were.
It was creepy. But in the dream, the actors were even creepier and began to change into bleeding, laughing, drinking, melting puddles — like candle wax. But in the end, nothing was resolved, no one had been vindicated. There was no reason for the endless stories.
I left before it was through, but, out on the street, I was almost hit by a car, with someone deliberately trying to run me down. I awoke in a cold sweat.
What the heck had I been dreaming, I wondered? I realized it had been influenced by one of the plays I had just seen. I couldn't get back to sleep. I was so freaked, I stayed awake until dawn.
I've seen some really bad plays lately, so I wonder if that's what made this dream so real. They weren't all Irish plays, but it's been an unlucky run for me as an audience member.
It reminded me that too many plays are staged for self-indulgent reasons by producers. I guess it goes with the territory.
What makes some people do that? Thinking that just because they love the idea, that they have a manifest destiny to put it in front of other people? Then when it doesn't sell, they blame the audience, the newspaper for not enough coverage, or the weather for poor attendance.
One play I saw was about a drunk and why he drank — ho hum. Then I saw a musical that never seemed to come to any point and had terrible songs but someone had talked someone with money into producing it.
I don't know why I went — I fell asleep — but I am a student of the theater, so I wanted to see what was new in this world. There are businesses like that, magazines like that and musicians like that too. People push ideas they love — just because they are in love with them — but never relate to whether the market is interested in buying the product.
The magazine business was full of them in the old days when paper was cheap — on subjects so arcane, you knew it was just because of self-indulgent owners. Then when people don't buy the product, they cry "poor me."
Anyway, I promise to stop seeing bad plays and having creepy dreams about them. Weird plays and movies create weird dreams, don't they?
I think I've been going through withdrawal since North Shore Music Theatre closed. But, hurrah, now that it's slated for reopening soon, I can finally get some sleep.
Gloucester resident Gordon Baird is co-founder of Billboard's Musician Magazine and the West End Theater, and is producer of the "Gloucester Chicken Shack" TV show.
