Even though it sounds like a clip from a recently unearthed Dada poem, the title of Mark Anderson’s “You, Me, Art and Trout” is actually a matter-of-fact description of the 70-minute monologue that opened Theatre Gigante’s 25th-anniversary season Thursday night.
Written by Anderson and directed by Isabelle Kralj, the piece itself is anything but mundane. Anderson has a knack for making “the everyday” interesting—and even pleasantly perplexing. For all the music of his prose, there’s a recurrent theme that is almost mathematical in conceit. “We all know that X is Y,” he might say. Then after a quizzical pause, a thoughtful cock of the head, he’ll wonder aloud: “Or is it?”
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| Mark Anderson |
With Anderson, there’s no mockery or snark in this question; there’s no wink-wink or faux-gravitas in his tone. The question is genuine for him, and because of his “stage presence,”—self-effacing, vulnerable—it’s genuine for us as well.
That is the “You” and “Me” of the title, an idea both simple and rich. A pair of words that signifies the breadth of human relations, but also brings us into a room where one person steps forward and others watch—the basic equation of theater. With Anderson, you might also superimpose the basic equation of the essay—the process of thought revealed through words.
And so, through much of “You, Me, Art and Trout,” we watch Anderson think. We hear him describe the process of creating the monolog, the stops and starts along the way (this is his first monolog in 15 years). We hear him reflect on and reminisce about favorite poems and books, including Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America (there it is!). There are asides and digressions, stories about a road trip to a Grateful Dead concert, his first encounter with Holden Caulfield and Catcher in the Rye, other youthful indiscretions and adventures.
If you catch the drift of nostalgia in these topics, Anderson wouldn’t argue (though he might “wonder” or “question”). When he talks about art, after all, he is talking about decades of a life devoted to it—its questions, joys, challenges and frustrations. And, of course, its rewards.
In the fifteen years since Anderson’s last monolog, a lot has changed. The idea of people standing up and telling stories about themselves is more common. Writing—running the gamut from book-length essays to tweets— has taken a severe turn toward the reflective and autobiographical. But “You, Me, Art and Trout” shows that the turn inward is just so much narcissism unless it is informed by artistry, thought and reflection—the willingness to discover or uncover something new, original and even beautiful. And that reminder is worth the 15-year wait.
