Interview: Kevin P. Hale

Kevin P. Hale has agreed to be my guinea pig in my first interview addressing how playwrights approach adaptations.

Kevin is a graduate of Wright State University’s defunct directing program and currently works in the professional rights department at Dramatists Play Service, Inc. in New York.

He is the artistic director of Playlab NYC, a theater company dedicated to “unleashing the imaginations of artists and audiences by engaging them in the spirit of play.”

In the interest of full disclosure, Kevin and I have been friends since we met on the third floor of Hamilton Hall (WSU’s freshman dorm). He and his wife used to host an annual Christmas party based on my own “It’s a Rocky Horror Christmas, Charlie Brown!” He acted in my adaptation of “Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children” in college, and he generously attempted to create a platform for my own ideas of theater with “©” at Playlab NYC.

Our interview was conducted over the course of this last week via email and instant message. The topic of discussion was his musical The Circus of Dr. Lao, based on the 1935 novel of the same name by Charles G. Finney. Kevin provided the book with music and lyrics by Chicago’s own Jon Steinhagen. I caught a developmental concert reading of the piece at Theatre Building Chicago’s “Monday Night Musical” series back in January of 2006.

A brief synopsis of the novel from Fantastic Fiction:

The Circus of Dr. Lao is set in the fictional town of Abalone, Arizona, a sleepy southwestern town whose chief concerns are boredom and surviving the Great Depression. That is, until the circus of Dr. Lao arrives and immensely and irrevocably changes the lives of everyone drawn to its tents. Expecting a sideshow spectacle, the citizens of Abalone instead confront and learn profound lessons from the mythical made real - a chimera, a Medusa, a talking sphinx, a sea serpent, the Hound of the Hedges, a werewolf, a mermaid, and the elusive, ever-changing Dr. Lao.

HG: What was the original impulse to adapt The Circus of Dr. Lao?

KPH: There was a 1963 film adaptation starring Tony Randall that I saw on late night television in college. It was called the 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, and it was very much structured like The Music Man. I immediately thought I would like a shot at adapting the film.

While working at North Shore Music Theatre, I had the opportunity to meet Jon Steinhagen. Jon had come to the theater for a workshop of a musical on which he had collaborated. At dinner one evening the director of the workshop asked me what material I thought would make a good musical. I said without hesitation, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao. Jon smiled and said, “I have three songs for it sitting in a trunk.”

A few years later, he approached me with the novel and asked if I really wanted to collaborate on the show with him. Once I read the book, it became clear that it was a much more interesting jumping off point than the movie.

HG: How do you begin work on the adaptation?

KPH: I began with a detailed outline of the book, and then started looking to see what characters could be combined, what were the most theatrical of the sideshow acts. I honed the outline down over several drafts, bouncing them off of my collaborator.

Once we had the basic shape I cobbled the novel into a rough book that would grow and change as Jon began providing me with songs.

HG: How familiar should a writer be with the original text?

KPH: They should know it backwards and forwards. I am always making little connections, like “Oh you know when Frank Tull makes that comment about the circus, it would totally work coming during that moment when…”

The book begins to cross-pollinate other scenes and characters, and if you are not familiar with the original work those little “ah-ha” moments get lost.

HG: How faithful should the adaptation be to the original text?

KPH: The correct answer, the textbook answer is that the writer has no obligation to be faithful to the original material at all. I can agree with that on an intellectual level I suppose, but what is the point. If you are going to throw it all away then why adapt it at all?

I guess what it boils down to, is what do you love about the original work that makes you want to adapt it? Whatever that impulse is, that is the thing to which you need to be faithful. I need to be very clear on it and write it down. When I loose my way, I can go back and see what why I wanted to adapt it in the fist place.

HG: How faithful do you think your adaptation is?

KPH: It’s been a couple of years since I have read it, but I believed it to be very faithful. It was very important to me to capture Finney’s sensibility.

However the writing of the novel is much more fractured than our show. It almost points the way to the cut up techniques popularized by William Burroughs. I had hoped to capture that by creating more isolation of the individual towns people and the side show attraction they visit, but as the town began to get a story arc the show began to get more cohesive. It was the organic direction that the script wanted to go into, and it wasn’t for me to fight it.

HG: As writers we are always told that we can’t be too in love with the material. What got cut from the story that you were attached to?

KPH: Honestly? The hedgehogs. At the end of the novel Lao presents the spectacle of a Witches Sabbath, and one of the many creatures present at the rites are hedgehogs. One of the things Finney writes about the hedgehogs is that they are “quiet little pincushions that hate the rain and are unimpressed by the revolutions among the men whose countrysides they adorn.” I wanted very much to find away for the hedgehogs to have a song about their perceptions into human beings.

HG: What is the current status of the musical.

KPH: It’s dead. Theatre Building Chicago had the reading in the beginning of 2006. John Sparks, the artistic director, seemed to think it had a lot of promise and spoke with Jon Steinhagen and I about including the a skeletal production of the show in their annual new musical festival “Stages.”

Jon and I were working on the rewrites when at the end of February we were contacted by Charles G. Finney’s estate. In March of ’06 we got a cease and desist email from Buddy Thomas at ICM, and that was the end of that.

HG: Meaning?

KPH: The novel was not in the public domain as Jon and I had believed. We had done a very cursory Library of Congress search back in 2003, and didn’t find any rights holder so we proceeded to work on the show. Once we realized the stage rights weren’t going to be available to us that was the end of it.

It breaks my heart. I would have an easier time letting the show go, but I really thought it was a good piece. I’m the first one to tell a person that my writing isn’t stage worthy, but I did think our adaptation had merit.

HG: Did you consider trying to secure the rights once you were made aware of the estate and the agent?

KPH: Jon and I didn’t get the impression that the rights would be made available to us. There was a lot of talk about interest from George C. Wolfe and Stephen Sondheim. I don’t know how old any of that interest was, but it became clear that the aspirations were for a Broadway production with big bucks and known talent behind it.

All I can do is hope that one day Steinhagen wins a Tony Award and is able to secure the rights. And hope that Jon is still returning my calls at that point.

HG: What advice do you have for writers working on adaptations?

KPH: Double check, triple check, and quadruple check that you have secured the correct rights to write the adaptation. And don’t take the Library of Congress’ word for it.