Fools don't fear to tread
on bad screenplays
Troupe cobbles together worst scenes
in an evening of humor where English
might not even be the native tongue.

REST assured, says "Magnum Opus" director Joe Jordan, "no puppy dogs were hurt in the making of this show."

Like everything in "Magnum Opus," that's meant to be taken literally.

"Opus" began as part of the Sacred Fools Theater Company's "Serial Killers" -- a long-running late-night show where serialized short plays competed with each other for audience favor and the right to return the next week for another installment. "Opus" presented itself as a mock "Masterpiece Theater" -- complete with theater-snob host Thurston Eberhard Hillsboro-Smythe (portrayed by actor Brandon Clark) -- and featured scrupulously faithful renditions of terribly written (hello, slush pile) screenplays, including live "dissolves," real-time montages and a handful of canine peepers (as in, "gives puppy dog eyes").

Something about the sincerely performed drivel struck a chord and "Opus" became "Serial Killers' " most popular act, racking up an unprecedented 36 episodes before finally succumbing to audiences' fickle tastes.

But now "Opus" is back, if only for a weekend. The special engagement centers on two works -- the romantic "comedy" with dead people, "Starcrossed Love," and "Alison's Decision," which the Fools will only describe as "Sex and the City" plus weirdness.

"The comedy comes from taking these works and putting them in a theatrical context, out of translating them from screenplay to stage," Jordan says. "And that some of this stuff is so terrible, it's hilarious to hear it spoken out loud." Should one wonder how all this sounds to the authors of these works themselves, one will just have to continue wondering. "We're taking the tack that we're adapting it for the stage," Jordan explains. "It's not a strict interpretation. We haven't been in contact with the writers."

"I'm not sure they live in this country. Or speak English," Clark deadpans.

Although this lack of facility with the mother tongue can boost the humor (not even spelling errors have been corrected; "We just go with whatever the word turns into," Jordan says), people shouldn't look at "Magnum Opus" as a mere trifle, say the Fools.

"If it were just a joke, the audience would get over it," Clark says. "It's theater of the absurd, and it takes highly skilled actors. We're performing it as if it's Chekhov. The language of the production that Jordan has created is so specific and concise, it's almost a new style of acting. It could be taught, though I'm not sure who'd want to learn it."

There's also been the occasion when the Fools have forged a connection with these characters, momentarily elevating their stories.

"There's a show in there among all the silliness," Jordan says, before clarifying: "But it's mostly silliness."

-- Mindy Farabee
(c) 2007, L.A. Times
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GO  The fury of reading through piles of crappy screenplays for exploitive wages has to be what motivated this vicious comedy series. As playwright Jon Robin Baitz once said, L.A. theater offers a response to the "toxicity of living in a company town," and Magnum Opus Theatre is a very strong response to just that. In director Joe Jordan's crisp as toast style, a company of nine performs this excruciating screenplay with unfettered mockery, with Your Host Thurston Eberhard Hillsboro-Smythe, a.k.a. "Thursty" (Brandon Clark, in red dinner jacket and the droll pomposity of Alistaire Cooke in Masterpiece Theatre) reading all the stage directions, including misspellings. This is the story of a chubby girl named Amber (Franci Montgomery, who is not chubby at all, which is part of the joke), abused like Cinderella by her beer-swilling aunt (CJ Merriman), who curses her, slaps her and calls her a pig -- a Punch and Judy show by any other name. Amber has a fantasy lover, the ghost of a Hollywood actor (Michael Lanahan) accidentally slain during the filming of a gangster gun battle. Through plot convolutions to tedious to enumerate, Amber winds up in Hollywood, in a movie about her travails, for which she receives an Academy Award. As the plot slid into its final trajectory, the crowd shouted out "noooooh", as it became cognizant of where this was heading. Any play can be ridiculed simply by employing theatrical devices used here: Whenever "Thursty" reads: "Jeff gives her a passionate kiss," Lanahan uses his fingers to withdraw a sloppy kiss from his mouth, which he then palms off to Montgomery's hand, who then slips the "kiss" into her blouse. But even this wildly presentation brand of theatrical ridicule can't disguise the artlessness of the dialogue and stage directions. What emerges through the event's cruelty, besides the mercifully unnamed screenwriter's ineptitude, is a portrait of the writer, for whom Amber is an obvious standin. As the lampoon wears itself out, we're left with something underneath that's gone beyond parody to the pathetic - the reasons that somebody would have written such a story in the first place, and the hollow, generic fantasies that serve as balm for her feelings of isolation. Watching this show is like watching well trained runners pushing somebody out of a wheelchair. That's a comic bit from old sketch TV shows, but 90 minutes of it leaves you feeling that the company's comic fury is so strong, and its skills so sharp, the joke has been propelled beyond its target to a very dark place that's fascinating in its own right.

-- Steven Leigh Morris
(c) 2009, L.A. Weekly
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Good day, Wavers. I’ve been trying to find a good spot to chime in here for a while. I never thought my debut in a screenwriting blog would be inspired by theatre.

Last night I joined my friend Julie at the Sacred Fools Theatre to see a performance by the Magnum Opus players: who perform unsolicited screenplays in horrible condition which have been sent to an unnamed mainstream Hollywood film company. Last night’s masterpiece: Abigail’s Choice.

The players stunned us both by being off book, performing about ¾ of the script’s body as a well rehearsed play, with a stately gent in a robe reading the stage directions off to one side and occasionally describing what occurred during portions which were omitted for time.

Within a few lines of the opening, the nature of the script was painfully clear. Mis-formatted, awkwardly worded and full of unnatural-sounding dialogue with tons of spelling and punctuation errors. And every gaffe was performed, as written, by the cast.

If the line was written: “I was hopping you would comeby?”, then that’s how they pronounced and punctuated it. If the writer overused capitalization in dialogue, or introduced a character incorrectly by capping the name in dialogue, then the actor would say those words extra loudly. “You remember that guy JOHN WALLACE, 37?” If the wrong character name was written above a line of dialogue in the script, the wrong character would suddenly appear in the scene. And if the intended emotion of a scene were stunted, paced slowly, repetitive or just plain strange, then that’s how it was delivered.

The show is hilarious. Julie and I have seen some version of every error from Abigail’s Choice in one screenplay or another, but never in such a high concentration as exists in that script. It's like Mystery Science Theatre for Spec Scripts. I’m sure we’ll both go back to see the other movies in the repertoire.

As Julie and I discussed it afterwards, it was clear how it struck us both what an invaluable lesson this performance would provide for newer screenwriters. Every aspiring writer should know that this show provides a very good approximation of how disorienting it is to read a screenplay with errors in it. And while you’re probably there to laugh, if you really think about the story’s meandering structure, there are also great cautionary lessons about how not to craft a compelling narrative.

We’re hopping to see more of our fellow LA-based Wavers at future shows. Or if you’re out of LA, one could always hop that Magnum Opus forms a touring company.

-- Bart Gold
(c) 2008, The Rouge Wave
Read the Original Blog Entry & Commentary
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GO  No writer is credited for Magnum Opus Theatre, and it's for his or her own protection. Every week, the ensemble mines one of L.A'.s richest natural resources - terrible unsolicited screenplays - and gives the unknown author's words a sweet, brief life. And they use every word. When the description calls for "a beat," the cast beat-boxes "oonce-oonce-oonce." As host Thurston Eberhard Hillsboro Smythe (Brandon Clark) vows, "We didn't change a thing." Yes Virginia, someone sincerely wrote Surf Dogs Unite!, a bitchin', brawlin' morality play about a debauched biker (Troy Vincent) and a bible-toting sand dune disciple (Eric C. Johnson), who wrassle for the souls of promiscuous surfer Dan (Michael Lanahan) and friends Swave (Victor Issac) and Little Rad (Colin Willkie). "To surf, or not to surf? Intense question," opines Dan, but Jonas Oppenheim's direction suffers no lack of purpose. Crisp and assured, it's so funny, the proselytizing writer might be tempted to take a bow. But judging by a few loud audience members who hissed whenever Joshua flogged John 3:16, maybe not.

-- Amy Nicholson
(c) 2010, L.A. Weekly
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Magnum Opus gets a mention at 1:44!

-- Marni Landes
(c) 2010, Goldstar Events
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