Sometimes, as a director, you run into those scripts that you know you just have to do.
For Michael Sladek, that script was Richard Dresser’s Below the Belt, an absurdist take on life and work in the corporate environment — and “absurdist,” in this case, means pretty dead-on, as both Michael and I attest to in this interview.
Listen in as Michael & I discuss putting up a show in the former boiler room of Bell Laboratories, avoiding curse words in verbal battles, wrangling in the corporate workplace, and finding the funny in the dark material.
“…it’s the whole world over, we are all apparently corporate beings now…it’s so funny how often we’re fighting for jobs that, once we have the jobs, we hate them…it’s a lot about that sort of wrangling to get up that ladder, even though you hate the ladder, but you do it anyway, because it’s what you do to survive, and it’s what you do to avoid the harder things in life…”
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Black Lodge Theater presents
Below the Belt
by Richard Dresser
directed by Michael Sladek
thru May 17, 2014
Thursday–Saturday, 7:30PM
Saturday, 3:00pm
Westbeth Center for the Arts
55 Bethune St, Old Boiler Room
Manhattan
tickets: $15, available via BrownPaperTickets
photos by Alex Siladi
photo by Michael Sladek