Scott Caan's "A Night of Scenes"

On August 24, 2013, Scott Caan and Val Lauren in association with Playhouse West put on “A Night of Scenes,” a collection of excerpts from eight plays Caan wrote between 1999/2000 and 2013. According to Lauren, back when they were both students at Playhouse West, Caan began writing plays out of a deep frustration at a lack of material for he and his friends to perform and produce. The productions that came out of Caan’s foray into writing they called “Scene Night,” and “A Night of Scenes” was conceived as a resurrection of that original idea.

Thus, “A Night of Scenes” is not one cohesive play, but is rather, as Lauren explains, a collection of  “excerpts from various plays written by Scott. They have been cut down for time and are out of context from the plays [from] which they have been derived.” Audience members were “encourage[d] to enjoy them as they are – glimpses into [Caan’s] works and the characters that live in them.”

If there’s one thing you can be sure of it’s that Scott Caan’s work always comes down to characters and the tensions between them as they try, sometimes succeeding, oftentimes failing, to understand each other.  Caan’s characters yell and talk and ramble and order each other to speak, to communicate. They are seeking connections, struggling to understand themselves, their relation to other people, and their place in the world. They are intensely human. They are imperfect and neurotic. They can be selfish and obtuse. And despite all that, or perhaps because of it, they are utterly endearing.

In “No Way Around But Through” Holly (Laura Azevedo) says of her on again off again boyfriend Jacob, “he makes me forget I hate people,” and goes on to add of her best friend Rachel (Eva Lauren) “that’s partially why I love you too.”

And in “Two Wrongs,” Shelly (Jennifer Cadena) hysterically recounts in horror the physical vulgarity of two of her former dates to her therapist Julian (Jim Nieb):

            Shelly: He did not just burp. He blew. Burped and blew. Sideways he blew. It was the
            motion of his body. It was the way he shifted in his seat as the air left his face. Unacceptable.
            In a restaurant no less. It was disgusting and I will never look at him the same.

            Julian: … It sounds mysteriously similar to the salad dressing guy…

            Shelly: Oh God. The ranch dressing. He was an animal.

            Julian: He had a little salad dressing in the corners of his mouth.

            Shelly: Did I use the word little? I never said little. And it wasn't just dressing. It was ranch.
            Ranch is thick, white and has texture...A large portion of thick, white, and textured salad
            dressing, cascading down from the corner of his job.

Both of these scenes, as is much of Caan’s work, are driven by a wickedly sharp sense of humor that reveals a simple truth: people are hard to love. And this, for me, is the larger appeal of Caan’s writing. His characters feel real and they are hilariously unsure about the worthiness of the rest of the human race. But underneath it all, they are fragile, often in emotional pain and facing a difficult choice: embrace that pain and work through it (and by doing so develop meaningful relationships with other people) or run away and numb themselves to life and any joy other people might bring them.

I want to give a little more attention to “9/11.” I’d known of this play from a short scene featuring Val Lauren that has made its way around the Internet. It’s even more powerful live on the stage and all three actors, Danny Barclay, Gabriel Grier, and Anton Narinskiy were absolutely compelling.

There really is no way to watch the scene of the two brothers and their friend arguing in a coffee shop about prejudice, discrimination and violence without calling back memories of the days following 9/11/2001. The nationalistic fervor.  The militaristic jingoism. The racism. The us versus them, you’re with us or against us philosophy that was the hallmark of the Dubyah Bush years and still infuses so much of American culture.

It’s an ugly scene. One friend has pulled another friend off of a Muslim man he’s beating the crap out of, who he would have happily pounded to death had he not been stopped.  A man whose dress and language has become cultural code for danger and threat, the identity of Muslim synonymous with the identity of terrorist.

What follows is a discourse on difference and ignorance as that friend explains to the two brothers that he’s been hiding his own Iranian heritage to avoid hatred and fear. But through listening to him speak, by hearing him relate his experience, the brothers have their eyes opened beyond the stereotypes the media is so quick to feed its audiences. And its audiences are so quick to devour.

What I love about this scene is its absolute imperative of the necessity and importance of representation.  Of the necessity and importance of not just listening to the experiences of others, but of truly hearing it. Of opening yourself up to the words of others and allowing them to shift the tectonic plates of your own identity. 

To me, this is the craft, and perhaps even the mandate, of art: to poke at and reveal the seams of identity, to show that what is woven by culture can be unraveled and re-sewn.

Identity, and the search for it, is the cornerstone of Caan’s writing, and one of the reasons I believe Caan is doing interesting and significant work.  I hope one day I’ll have the chance to see all the scenes performed that night in their entirety and look forward to Caan’s next writing project.

Full Play List (in order of appearance):

“Two Wrongs” (published through Dramatist Play Service)

“They Meet”

“Word Faithful”

“9/11”

“No Way Around but Through” (published through Dramatis Play Service)

“Performance of Heartbreak”

“The End”

“100 Days of Yesterday”