A Walk on the Wild Side

There are easy playwrights. David Ives isn’t one of them. In an age of dumbing down, he approaches the English language like a naughty kid with a box of firecrackers. He’s a master of the short, sharp shock of the one-act comic play. Along with staging post-modern pie fights, Ives turns the classics of Moliere and Corneille inside out — and actually makes them better.

With “Venus in Fur,” Ives tackles the uneasy realm of S&M in an audition that goes very, very wrong — before taking a hard left turn to the surreal. Edgy stuff, but Venice Theatre doesn’t flinch from staging it. We spoke with director Kelly Woodland about her collaborative directing style and her approach to undertaking Ives’ walk on the wild side. 

What’s your approach to “Venus in Fur?”

I approach it like a midnight play. It’s the realest of the real, in acting terms. Which is to say it has multiple layers, so you have to approach the inside layer first — the realism of a believable scenario involving two real people and a real script in the real world.

I happen to have a copy of the script, so I know it veers into magical-realist territory.

Yeah, it’s a complicated little number. That’s why we have to stay grounded. We crawl inside the literal meaning of the text and slowly build from there in a very organic way. I make jokes about 100% organic theater, but that really is the neatest way to go about it.

So, stepping out of the Twilight Zone, what’s the rock-bottom reality from which we start?

It’s an audition. Thomas, a New York City playwright, has written a play based on Sacher-Masoch’s “Venus in Furs.” It’s a two-person play: one man, one woman. He’s been auditioning only women all day for the female role. This takes place in New York City. He’s rented out one of those god-awful audition rooms for a couple of days. It’s the end of a long day, and he’s done and ready to go home — surprise! Vanda appears — a New York City actress. She claims she had an appointment. He can’t find it in the book, but she convinces him to let her read. So she does. And then she convinces him to read with her, which is not the way an audition normally works. Things develop from there and very quickly go to strange places over the course of this very short play. 

But the audition is basically “what happens.”

Yeah, it’s the situation — what’s “really” going on. The actors plant their feet on that reality and play the give-and-take of the audition as realistically as possible. That believability becomes very important.

Why?

Because, the deeper you get into the play, the stranger it becomes. You start to realize there’s a heck of a lot going on that’s just plain wrong. The director slowly catches on.

Something is happening, and he doesn’t know what it is.

No, he doesn’t. He made a very big mistake. At the very last moment, it dawns on him that he’s put himself in a very bad situation. Like alone, after dark with a mystery actress who appears out of nowhere — and seems just too damn good for the part. If you’ve ever spent any time in New York, you know that’s a super bad idea, man.

How would you describe the playwright? Meaning Thomas — the one in the play.

He’s a very David Ives character: very hip, and super into contemporary artistic flavors.

The actress?

Well, she’s adorable and quirky.

It all seems hunky-dory at first. How does Ives take us to Crazytown?

Well, everything revolves around the script and the audition. The two actors go back and forth between the real scenario and being the characters in the play. The play-in-a-play is 1870, a heightened reality with heightened language, which flips in a second back to contemporary speech. So, Vanda bounces back and forth from a New York accent to sounding like Galadriel. Thomas morphs into a whiny young aristocrat, who wants to be punished.

Who are the two actors?

Vera Samuels and Steve O’Dea. They work great together. They’re very experienced, very accomplished and super comfortable with each other. We all did “Rocky Horror” together. It’s a great deal of fun seeing them take this play and run with it. They’re two brilliant actors.

How would you describe the play?

Twisted comedy—and a lot of fun. I personally think David Ives is a great playwright. His works just get better and better and better. He’s a genius — and “Venus in Fur” is a great ride.

IF YOU GO:

“Venus in Fur” runs March 31 through April 17, at Venice Theatre, 140 W. Tampa Ave., Venice. Call 488-1115 or visit venicestage.com for more information.