Review Fix Exclusive: Stephen Spurling Talks ‘Death of a Shoe Salesman’


Review Fix chats with playwright Stephen Spurling about his newest production “Death of a Shoe Salesman,” currently running at this year’s Midtown International Theatre Festival in New York City. Spurling also discusses his creative process and what he hopes people get out of the production.

Review Fix: What was the inspiration for this production?

Stephen Spurling: I created the play for my high school friends who were very funny and loved comedy as much I did. I pitched them an idea that was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s ROPE and Frank Capra’s ARSENIC AND OLD LACE. We tried to develop it through improv, but it went so poorly that I sat down and wrote a script for them. They loved it and we ended up performing it three different times over the next year to enthusiastic audiences. I wasn’t trying to make a statement. All I cared about was getting laughs, and I got them. Two other groups (independent of me) did the play in the 1990s, and over 25 years later, a third group wants to do it again.

Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?

Spurling: It can be torturous. I have a history of writing fresh first drafts that, in subsequent drafts, I kill through over-thinking. Then I have to find fresh inspiration to make the work funny again. Lately, though, the process has become easier—probably as an indirect result of my meditation practices. I’m more likely to work through intuition rather than analysis. Now I sit at my computer, and if something comes to me, I type it. If it doesn’t, I listen to my breath and relax, and then something usually comes. I’m seeking enlightenment, but if all I get are some good jokes, I can live with it.

Review Fix: What makes you different from other playwrights?

Spurling: I’m not trying to say anything. I don’t have a message any more than a chair-maker or a jazz musician has one. I make things (plays) to be enjoyed for their own sake.

One of my biggest influences as a kid was film historian Leonard Maltin’s now-out-of-print book, THE GREAT MOVIE COMEDIANS. Maltin has such an infectious love of funny that I wanted to make someone like him laugh. In that book, he writes about gags, jokes, plots, characterizations, stunts, physical grace, talent, genius, personal charm, etc.; but says nothing about messages. I grew up not thinking they were important. Certainly, the cartoons and old comedies I loved weren’t about sending messages. The most sublime thing I’ve ever seen is Laurel and Hardy’s soft-shoe dance in their 1937 film, WAY OUT WEST.

In the years since I wrote this play, my tastes have expanded and matured. For instance, I barely knew Shakespeare before I wrote it, and now I can’t get enough of him. But I’ll probably always love the things I loved then: Chaplin, Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, Robert Benchley, Bugs Bunny, Abbott and Costello, Jack Benny, Lucille Ball, Jackie Gleason, etc.

These were all before my time, so I was a very weird kid. I enjoy the comedy from my generation, too, as well as a lot of new stuff. David Letterman and THE SIMPSONS are huge influences on me. But my heart belongs to the wacky world of black-and-white.

Review Fix: Is this what you always wanted to do?

Spurling: More or less. Comedy is my thing, and the medium—whether it’s the stage, screen or page—is less important.

Another thing I wanted to do was make movies like Alfred Hitchcock, but I’ve never pursued film-making; nor do I have the eye for visual detail that would make me a likely successor to the great director. My years of watching old movies and old TV shows, listening to old radio plays, and reading old humorists, gave me an ear for dialogue and a good joke, and that’s about it.

Review Fix: What makes this production special?

Spurling: It’s a production of a play that I wrote in high school 25 years ago; and I wasn’t even the one who wanted to revive it. That’s amazing to me. I won’t be able to visit New York to see this production, but I’ll be watching the video with great interest. I hope to see funny, weird, surprising things in the material I hadn’t seen before and weren’t explored with the original cast.

Review Fix: How is your cast unique?

Spurling: The production is far away from me and out of my hands. I’ve seen the faces of the cast, and they’re lovely; but I haven’t even heard their voices or seen them in motion. They’re doing my play, though, so I love them unconditionally.

In 1988, I wrote the play specifically for the actors who ended up performing it. In fact, it was their enthusiasm and encouragement for the earliest drafts that kept me writing until I had the final product. So much of my play is theirs, too. I wrote it specifically for their talents, specifically for their sense of humor as much as for my own; and the play is filled with their ideas and improvised lines.

What makes the new cast unique to ME is that they’ll be finding their own way into material that was written for my friends. In the early 1990s, two different casts (one of which included Christopher Noffke, the current director of this production) from two different productions have already done this play. But now it’s 2015, and from the looks of the head shots, few if any of these new actors were even born when the original was done. Who knows what they’ll make of it?

Review Fix: What did you learn about yourself through this process?

Spurling: I learned, when the play was first produced, that the thoughts in my head can make others laugh. That was a huge encouragement for me, and led me to become part of Chicago’s improv comedy scene in the 1990s. And I’ve recently rediscovered my love of writing comedy with my new project, which is a radio serial that parodies soap operas.

The play also encouraged me to be myself. People liked it, and in my mind, that meant they liked me and that I could be as weird and quirky as I naturally was. Life has tried, and nearly succeeded, in beating that revelation out of me since; but I’ve never quite forgotten it, and I’m grateful for it.

Review Fix: How does it feel to be a part of this festival?

Spurling: It is strange and exciting—like being in a time machine. I couldn’t have imagined the play I was writing in 1988 in Indianapolis would be performed in 2015 in New York.

I’m looking at the descriptions of the other plays, and I’m delighted by the wide variety of ideas and points of view. It will be interesting to see how this production fits in among them.

Review Fix: What are your goals for the production?

Spurling: I want people to laugh in the theater, and then think about it at home and laugh again. And since the production is out of my hands, I expect and hope for some delightful surprises. It will be especially interesting to see what comes of the $500 budget. That’s not much money, of course, but to us kids who originally produced it, it would have seemed like a million dollars. With one exception, we got all our costumes, props and set pieces from the school’s theater department. We sprung for one thing: a box of Trix cereal (one of the key props in the show).

Review Fix: Who do you think will enjoy it the most?

Spurling: The neurotic, the sarcastic and perhaps a few murderers. Would-be poisoners will hate it, though, since I cheat shamelessly on what can actually poison someone. Anyone hoping to kill off shoe salesmen with silica gel after seeing the play will curse the whole show.

Perhaps someday, the play will go big, and everyone in the world who wigs out over spaghetti sauce, serves dry Trix cereal at parties, pretends to be haunted by memories of siblings baked in ovens or exploits psychological weaknesses to sell cheap shoes, will see the play and think, “Maybe I can quietly crawl down the aisle and escape through the emergency exit.”

Review Fix: What’s next?

Spurling: I’m currently making stupid jokes on Twitter under the pseudonym Stephen Drangula, aka @Drangula. And I’m creating a podcast—a serial radio melodrama that makes fun of soap operas. It’s called “The Rich and the Filthy” and will soon be available on an iTunes near you!

The phenomenon of podcasting has exploded recently, but even though a lot of podcasts are devoted to re-running shows from the Golden Age of Radio, very few are creating new radio theater. If “The Rich and the Filthy” does well, I may continue to make other series. Another fairly recent phenomenon is the great popularity of meditation in the West: it encourages active listening, and that could only be a good thing for what many call The Theater of the Mind.