Riding The Bull

August Schulenburg's Riding The Bull is a deeply filthy play.

(Mark gets his thesaurus, blows off the dust.)

It's a completely obscene, indecent, dirty, smutty, rude, improper, coarse, bawdy, vulgar, lewd, raw, off-color, ribald, risqué, explicit, blue play.

Oh ... and it's utterly sacrilegious, blasphemous, profane, and heretical, as well.

I think that about covers it.

It's also one of the most sublime works I've read about the religious experience and "Coming to God". It certainly makes for a tricky balance: the audience that can tolerate this raunchy story of a rodeo clown and his overweight paramour is likely resistant to the message, and the audience that would appreciate a sincere story about the redemptive power of belief would surely never make it past the first description of .... well, they wouldn't make it very far. They wouldn't make it past the opening monologue, in fact. It's sure a marketing challenge, but that's exactly what makes it a play worth doing. It's too rare that I'm surprised, and too rare that we don't preach to the choir.

The characters perform a crossing action, as GL's faith is corrupted and killed while Lyza moves in counterpoint from apostate to seeker. She eventually arrives at a pure and true faith far past GL's starting point of spiritual struggle. It's a completely surprising read: I thought I knew we were safely in the land of mocking and then tipping sacred cows, then the play turned underneath me. It's all so honest and heartfelt: all of it. From the filth to the faith, Schulenburg inhabits each moment fully and lets the characters and action speak for themselves.

For all my wonder at the content, it's pretty flawed as a play. There's a tremendous amount of narration, as we get great huge of action that exist only in direct address monologue. There's a great story there, but too much of it gets told, not shown. Riding the Bull may be a great story that never quite translates into a theater piece.

(On a personal note, I still get a thrill when I open up a published script, and see someone I know, or worked with. Rod Gnapp and I worked together when the world was young, and it made me smile to see he was the original GL in the workshop at the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. (Of course, it makes me smile more when it's my name. Like this and this. (Self-pimping mode off now ....)))

Next Week: Shining City by Conor McPherson