Review Fix chats with Anthony J. Piccione who discusses ‘4 $tages’ and what’s like to be a part of the 10th anniversary season of Planet Connections Theatre Festivity at the Theaters at the Clemente.
About the Production:
4 $tages is an avant-garde drama in one-act striking at the core of some of the biggest issues facing American society in the 21st century. This multi-layered tome of greed, corruption, and revolution explores the fundamental issues plaguing the American political and economic systems – from wealth inequality and corporate greed to runaway imperialism. Come and learn what the 4 stages of how we made America “great†actually are…along with the possibility of where this journey will take us.
Review Fix: What was the inspiration for this project?
Anthony Piccione: Over the past year or two, I think I was like a lot of people, in that after watching the mess that was the 2016 election gradually play out, I started writing more and more about the issues that I was seeing fuel our current social and political discourse. As it is, my writing is often a reflection of whatever topics I’m most interested in, at the time of the writing itself, and that was what I’ve been spending a lot of my time thinking about, lately. As people familiar with my work might know, I’m not one to shy away from various themes and issues that I care greatly about, but that period in time was when I was really starting to think about exploring other issues, namely issues which concern the political and economic systems in this country, and might have had a direct impact on recent events in society. Don’t get me wrong: I’ve cared about the issues confronted in this play going back to as long as I’ve been a playwright. One of the first plays I ever wrote, back when I was in college, actually dealt with similar issues of wealth inequality and political corruption. Yet in the nearly two years I’ve been here in New York, this is the first time I’ve veered this directly into political theatre, and I wanted to do it in a way that’s very different from any sort of naturalistic theatre that audiences might be accustomed to, and perhaps gets people to question not just their own political values and their view of their own country, but also how they look at art and storytelling, in general. I love not just writing plays and telling stories, but also exploring the medium and seeing what is and isn’t possible, in terms of pushing its storytelling limits, and I’d like to think that’s exactly what I’ve done with this piece.
Review Fix: What makes this different or special?
Piccione: Besides what I just said, this is probably the most non-conventional play that I’ve done, in terms of my writing that’s already been produced. It’s not the first time I’ve dabbled with this style of theatre, though. One of my first plays in New York was a short play called The Personality Play, produced at Manhattan Rep in early 2017, and that was similar in that it was very absurdist in nature, even though it focused more on dialogue, as opposed to this play, which emphasizes the importance of movement. Before that, while I was a student at ECSU in Connecticut, I remember taking several theatre history classes, including an Experimental Theatre class which led to me being the dramaturge for two avant-garde theatre productions in one semester. That class was highly influential, in particular, in terms of the way I write plays, and generally, in terms of how I look at art. But that might not have always been obvious to people who had seen some of my other one-acts, in recent years. Here, though, I think they’ll see clearly how those influences might come into play.
Review Fix: What did you learn about yourself through this process?
Piccione: I think this show was much more about me taking topics that I’d been concerned about, and had been learning more and more about for a while now, and finally doing what I can to raise awareness for them through theatre. Again, something I’ve been thinking about for awhile now, recently, is how to tell stories as a playwright in different ways and through different methods of performance, so I guess you can say I’ve learned a bit more about that, simply by exploring how to tell a story and get a message across without doing it through the conventional back and forth you often see in theatre. Although, without going into much detail, this wasn’t the only script like this that I’ve written during the time frame in which I finished it. This just happened to be the script I decided to produce for the festivity this year, after writing a few of them, although it might not necessarily be the last one to get produced.
Review Fix: What are your ultimate goals for this production and for the future?
Piccione: When theatergoers come to see this show, regardless of what their political views may be, I hope they’ll start to think more about issues of class and imperialism in this country, in a way that maybe they previously weren’t. As much as I think that there are many great artists out there who are doing a lot to raise awareness for important social and political causes, I honestly think these particular issues aren’t getting as much attention as they deserve from independent theatre, much less from commercial theatre. I genuinely worry that if we don’t do something quick, our society might never be able to solve its problems of either social or economic inequality, which I think are more linked than certain people seem to realize. Perhaps after they see this show, they’ll be inspired to go out there, and do something about it, themselves. We’ll see.
Review Fix: What’s next?
Piccione: Hopefully, I should be able to make a big announcement on my next steps as a playwright within the next few weeks or so… and that’s assuming that I haven’t announced it yet, by the time this interview gets published! Sorry for being so vague, as nothing’s a done deal yet, but if readers are curious to know what that is, they can keep following me on my website at www.anthonyjpiccione.com, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/AnthonyJPiccione. OfficialPage, Twitter at @A_J_Piccione, and Instagram at anthonyjpiccione.
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