THOMAS BRADSHAW

In his universe, being earnest is of the utmost importance

by Eliza Bent

At left, Thomas Bradshaw (photo by David Paul-Morris/CUNY). Right, Southern Promises, directed by Jose Zayas at P.S. 122 in New York City (photo by Ryan Jenson)

"My work can look like Pinter," warns Thomas Bradshaw, the preppily dressed 30-year-old playwright, "but it's definitely not." Observe the author's note that graces the beginnings of Bradshaw plays.

Author's note: All characters should be played with the utmost honesty and sincerity. The irony in the play should be underplayed rather than overplayed at all times. The characters in this play feel that all their actions are completely necessary and unavoidable. The play should be directed in a straightforward and realistic manner.

This is essential information about how best to proceed. When two young neo-Nazis meet up in Bradshaw's The Ashes, commissioned by London's Soho Theatre, we see the banality of evil shine through with cheerful frankness:

CHRISTIAN: Heil Hitler!
MICHAEL: (Salutes.) Heil Hitler!
CHRISTIAN: Did you see the game on Saturday?
MICHAEL: Oh, I missed it.
CHRISTIAN: Germany won!
MICHAEL: Of course Germany won!

Mark Wahlberg would be a great actor for a Thomas Bradshaw play. Consider what he told Time Out New York when a critic praised his deadpan in the Will Ferrell comedy The Other Guys: "Like everything I do, I try to play it as real and straight as possible and hope that the humor will come from the absurdity of the circumstances."

Not that Thomas Bradshaw quite writes "absurdist" comedies or pens particularly "deadpan" humor. Some have described Bradshaw plays as "twisted." Others refer to the humor in them as "dark" or "blue." The New York Times once dubbed Bradshaw the "prince of the perverse," a title he doesn't much care for. "Provocateur" is another adjective that seems to follow him around. "I'd prefer 'genius' Thomas Bradshaw," the Guggenheim Award-winner quips. "'Provocateur' sounds like there's a lack of substance behind what I do and that I'm sitting in my room going, 'How can I shock people?' Plus, it's a French word. I'm American. I speak English!"

But many would argue that Bradshaw plays, which often feature moments of extreme violence and racism, aren't funny at all. More than one critic has called Bradshaw's pieces "horror shows." After all, pedophilia, incest, rape (vaginal and anal), overt racism and infanticide aren't really topics that make one titter as one encounters them on the page or on the stage.

Bradshaw is the first to admit the conundrum: "If you describe the plots of my plays, they sound very unfunny." This is true. But the kind of laughs a Bradshaw play provokes are not the jokey or witty kind. More like a "he-didn't-just-go-there" huff, or an "I-can't-believe-this-is-happening" cluck, or a "Really?!?! No!!" chortle. It's a cringe/shock guffaw that gets caught in your throat and leaves you gasping for air. Laughter, after all, is the sound of surprise. Jenny Seastone Stern, a frequent actor in Bradshaw-land, describes it thus: "The reason Thomas's work is so brilliant is because it's... not funny. Or rather, it's funny, but then you realize what you're laughing at—which isn't funny at all—and then you're stuck in this place where you're laughing, but horrified at the same time by what you're laughing at."

Take the example of Mary, a Goodman Theatre of Chicago commission that will open Feb. 14, 2011. ("A great first-date play," notes the author with a waggish grin.) Mary is set in 1983, and the title character is a black servant who works for a white family in southern Maryland. (It is unclear if Mary is paid.) The parents of the family affectionately call their servant "nigger Mary," much to the dismay of their son David's boyfriend Jonathan.

JONATHAN: So, do your parents refer to Elroy as nigger Elroy? And did they refer to Mary's mother as nigger Jane or whatever her name was?
DAVID: No. There's an 87-year-old woman named Mary who lives on the adjoining estate, and our families have been close for years. They call her nigger Mary simply to differentiate her from the Mary next door.
JONATHAN: They couldn't have called her by her middle name?
DAVID: I don't think she has a middle name.

David, who believes he is safely in the closet, introduces Jonathan as a friend who's come home to visit for the holidays. But Dolores and James, David's parents, know better.

DOLORES: (Pause.) Why did you have to go and make them feel uncomfortable by grilling them about whether they had girlfriends?
JAMES: 'Cause the dang homo hides his homosexuality from us!
DOLORES: James!
JAMES: What!? Isn't that what the gays are doing these days!? "Coming Out!?" Why won't he come out to us!? Besides, I didn't like the fact that y'all were making fun of my fear of flying!
DOLORES: That's no excuse for mocking them like that!
JAMES: I wasn't mocking them!
DOLORES: Look. I wish that our son felt that he could be honest with us. I mean, I'm not thrilled that our son is ........ But it doesn't make me love him any less.
JAMES: Me either. But I don't understand who he thinks he's kidding. I mean, c'mon, having a guy fly to your house over Christmas break. It's insulting!

Later in the script, Mary, who can quote the Bible but cannot read, convinces her husband Elroy to shoot David's boyfriend in the groin with a BB gun in order to dissuade the pair from homosexual acts. "In a normal play, Mary would just be this innocent character without a lot of agency," says Bradshaw between sips of a red eye, an American coffee with a shot of espresso. "But in my play she's a super homophobe. And the parents are more accepting of their gay son than one might think, considering what they call Mary. No one is all good or bad—everyone is on some spectrum of gray."

Indeed, in a "normal" play, characters might consider their actions with Aristotelian gravitas. "Psychological realism has people behaving in a way I find to be absolute artifice," declares Bradshaw, who aims at creating hyperrealistic worlds that quickly reveal hypocrisy. To achieve this, Bradshaw's characters speak without subtext and act on impulse.

Take A Boy's Dream, commissioned by Germany's State Theater of Bielefeld, which is scheduled to have a reading at New York Theatre Workshop Dec. 20. In it, Chris, a precocious aspiring 14-year-old actor winds up orphaned in New York City at the home of an older playwright, Donald.

CHRIS: I love you Donald.
DONALD: I love you too.
They start to make out and Donald starts to take off Chris's pants.
CHRIS: What are you doing?
DONALD: I've changed my mind. I'm going to fuck you now.
CHRIS: Thank you.
Chris takes off his pants and underwear and bends over.

Says Bradshaw, "I'm not saying I hate psychological realism, but we can think a little creatively here. You can tell a linear, entertaining story that doesn't have to conform to the strict rules of psychological realism." He admits to making "well-made plays," albeit ones that dwell in the realm of hyperrealism and which "subvert the logic of psychological realism while following the form. It's a tricky dance," he sighs. "Which is why people are confused." Or, for that matter, outraged.

In Purity, which premiered at New York City's P.S. 122 in 2007, two Columbia professors travel to Ecuador and wind up raping a nine-year-old girl. "I think the thing that made people the angriest is that these characters never get caught and never feel a shred of remorse for their behavior," Bradshaw allows. The fact that there is no authorial comment on these actions was seen by some critics and audiences as tantamount to promoting such base behavior. "People need me to tell them that raping children is wrong?" asks Bradshaw with wide-eyed sincerity. "I mean...really?" He adds, "If I wanted to present my opinions, I would just present a lecture. What do we need theatre for?"

Perhaps what can be so loveable—or so irksome—about Bradshaw characters is that they have the absolute best of intentions as they happily march toward doom. May Adrales, who directed The Bereaved at the Wild Project in New York City last year and who will helm Mary at the Goodman, says, "I think deep down Thomas is a real moralist. He believes his characters are basically good but live in a society that has led them astray. A character might act in an outlandish way, but it's always driven by something that is ultimately wrong with society." (During our conversation Bradshaw lamented the rise of reality TV and the devolving nature of society while maintaining both optimism and empathy for individuals in the social order.) Adrales contends that, in order to draw the humor out of Bradshaw plays, it is best to leave the commenting to the spectators and let the actors perform as honestly and truthfully as they can in light of the seriously messed-up situations they're contending with. "You have to paint the circumstances in such a way that the characters are redeemable—then you can't discount one of them because he or she is a 'bad seed.' You have to wrangle with something much bigger: that they are part of a system that we are all complicit in."

Bradshaw is by no means naïve—he's well aware that his work is funny, but insists that humor is not his ultimate goal. "The point of the work is not to make people laugh. It's to present the audience with ideas in a way that really makes them think," he says. "It's all about provoking thought and fostering a dialogue about the issues that the plays raise." (When pressed, he confesses he prefers "provoker-of-thought" to "provocateur.") "Not all audiences laugh—some don't." Bradshaw goes on to say, "Each audience experiences the play differently. That being said, most audiences do laugh—a lot. But that's not all we're after, and it's fine if they don't."

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