Category Archives: Off-Off-Broadway

Decky Does a Bronco Speaks to Our Moment of Pain

Douglas Maxwell’s Decky Does a Bronco first appeared in the playwright’s native Scotland in the year 2000. It is a not uncommon tale of a childhood loss of innocence, in this case taking place in a council estate outside of Glasgow. There are some parallels with the Stephen King short story “Stand by Me” and it Rob Reiner’s subsequent film adaptation. Works of art sometimes need to find their own time and place when they are most resonant and relevant. Decky Does a Bronco has found its in the United States of 2019 for its premiere in this country.

[Be warned that spoilers lie ahead. It is near impossible to review Decky without revealing some critical details about the play. Knowing them, however, will not substantially alter your viewing experience.]

Pre-teen Decky (Misha Osherovich, A Clockwork Orange at New Work Stage) dies horribly, pointlessly, and randomly. It remains for the four remaining remaining friends – O’Neil (Graham Baker), Barry (Kennedy Kanagawa, Lolita My Love at the York Theatre), Chrissy (David Gow, Waverly Gallery at Shakespeare & Co.), and narrator David (Cody Robinson) – to live with the consequences of that horrible end. In an interview with The Modernist Beat, Gow – who also produces for Starting Five Productions – explained that it has been usual for past productions for these four roles to be played by two actors: one juvenile and one adult. Here, adult actors take on both. it creates some interesting challenges in communicating the shifts to the audience, but director Ethan Nieuaber nimbly navigates his actors from one age to another – sometimes the shifts move quickly – and the results are more complicated and nuanced character portraits.

As narrator, Robinson has to carry the emotional burden of the piece. The construction of the story – of the play – of the life and loss of Decky evolves into David’s process for trying to grapple with the events of the past. He is a survivor, and he finds himself overwhelmed with survivor’s guilt. He searches for ways in which he was responsible. He suffers from PTSD, and it is through the process of sharing the story that he can find healing. Robinson dives into that pain twisted with guilt and conveys that that process of healing was a hard won thing and still tenuous at best. The other survivors are not so lucky, particularly Chrissy who disappears into himself psychologically.

And it is in David’s journey, in his authoring his pain, that should speak with a roar to the 2019 American audience….because we lose so many Deckys every day. From Sandy Hook to Parkland, from the recent shootings in El Paso to Odessa (which have seen babies and high schoolers shot and killed), the number of those who must survive and continue after the loss of a friend, family member, school mate grows exponentially. We are become a nation of shell-shocked survivors, particularly our children. How will we carry these terrible burdens into adulthood? In this dark times, it is a play like a Decky Does a Bronco that will offer a map to escape the worst of their nightmares. There are certain parallels between the play’s David and activist David Hogg.

Osherovich brims with life, energy, and joie de vivre, so of course, the dimming of that light only enhances the sense of loss. Indeed, much of Nieuaber’s strategy in the first half of the play is to keep the proceedings uproarious and brisk, so that our descent will be that much greater. Baker finds the swagger and bluster in perennially cool kid O’Neil. He also the first to intuit what has befallen Decky. Gow seamlessly moves between the two ages of Chrissy in a frenetic performance that turns dark and grim as the boy becomes the second victim of the central event of the play. Kanagawa is the production’s secret weapon. He always surprises from the sheer comic lunacy of rushing to his auntie’s for tea on a bicycle to a more dramatic turn when he realizes he is the oldest of the boys and must accept responsibility for his cousin David. As always, Starting Five Productions always does incredible design work for an off-off-Broadway company. A special shout-out to scenic designer Diggle for the construction of a complete swing set on stage.

As gun violence will seemingly continue without end, it is plays like Decky Does a Bronco that will guide us in the aftermath. Starting Five could not have found a better time to premiere the work here and speak to our dark national moment.

For the interview with Gow, please follow this link: http://www.themodernistbeat.com/2019/08/13/decky-does-a-bronco-premieres-in-the-usa-an-interview-with-producer-david-gow/

For more information about the show, please follow this link: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4302610

Decky Does a Bronco Premieres in the USA: An Interview with Producer David Gow

The Modernist Beat sat down with actor-producer David Gow to discuss his upcoming production of  Decky Does a Broncoby Scottish playwright Douglas Maxwell. This production is the American premiere of the piece that first toured Scotland in 2000. [NB: There is a character “David” in the play that Gow discusses.]

THE MODERNIST BEAT: David, if I’m not mistaken, you saw a production at the Edinburgh Fringe. What attracted you to Decky Does a Bronco

DAVID GOW: I first fell in love with this play because of the way it handles adolescence and innocence. Maxwell identifies childhood dynamics so accurately in his writing, and he knows exactly what to strip away from the kids when they grow up.

TMB: Why bring this play from Scotland to the United States? Does it translate to the American experience?

DG: I’m particularly excited about American audiences seeing it for two reasons. The first is I’m very proud we get to be the first ones. The second is because I think our culture in the United States doesn’t handle this subject matter as well as other countries do. 

The cast of Decky Does a Bronco. From front to back: David Gow, Kennedy Kanagawa, Misha Osherovich, Cody Robinson, and Graham Baker. Photo from the production.

TMB: What does it illuminate about the “coming-of-age” narrative that perhaps an American work would not?

DG: It can be an ugly, uncomfortable topic of conversation for people, and whenever that’s the case I love when theater throws it up on stage right in people’s faces. 

TMB: Over the course of the work, the characters of the play, five boys, grow into men. The same actors play those characters at both ages. What were the challenges in making that journey? How were rehearsals structured so that the cast could believably inhabit both realities?

DG: That’s been one of the most rewarding parts of this process. We’ve done a great deal of physical improv that has really helped define the relationships within the group, and those changing relationships have dictated a lot of the behavior that shifts as we become adults. In past performances they have different actors split the role, one playing the child one playing the adult. I greatly prefer what we are doing because we get to finish the characters arc and really sit in the changes of the characters. 

TMB: What insights do you think the play offers on childhood trauma (and how that trauma continues to haunt us into adulthood)?  Also, what does it try to convey about guilt and responsibility? 

DG: That’s the big question in this story, one that the narrator David is wrestling with out loud with the audience throughout the play.

TMB: In 1990, Tim O’Brien wrote a volume of interlinked short stories entitled The Things They Carried. It focused on a platoon of young soldiers during the Vietnam War whose every action was something they carried on life (assuming they survived). But the central incident in Deckyhappens when the characters are 9. How do you dramatize “carrying” that incident into adulthood? Is it possible to strip away the judgement and focus on the complexity of it all?

DG: There’s no question that all the boys carry the incident into adulthood and that it has an influencing power as to who they become. But through the help of David the characters are all really trying to focus on the overall picture and not the looming guilt they’ve carried for years. He asks questions that are trying to help him make sense of things – how do they all continue to go on with their lives as if nothing happened, how to they now process watching similar events on the news, ect. And while David is definitely still discovering this for himself as the play goes along, I think it does offer some relief to the characters and the audience. 

TMB: What should audiences be prepared for stepping into your space? What counts as (artistic) success for you?What do you need the audience to carry with it out of the theater?

DG: I hope audiences will experience three things: 

  1. How hilarious the kids’ antics together are. 
  2. How simple and pure Douglas Maxwell’s writing is 
  3. How brilliant and unique this form of storytelling is.

TMB: What about that set?

DG: We are building a swing set ON STAGE ON THE THIRD FLOOR OF A BUILDING AND WE DO STUNTS ON IT. That alone should be reason to see this show.

Decky Does a Broncofrom Starting 5 Productions plays from September 6 – September 21 at Royal Family Productions, 145 West 46thStreet, New York City. Ethan Neinaber directs. The cast includes: Graham Baker, Gow, Kennedy Kanawaga, Misha Osherovich, and Cody Robinson. For more information and tickets, please follow this link: https://www.deckydoesabronco.com