The Dead and the Quick

David Ives’s evening of six one-act comedies collectively titled “All in the Timing” opens on June 3 at the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood. The show, which portrays subjects like three chimpanzees attempting to write “Hamlet” and Philip Glass buying a loaf of bread, ran for more than 600 performances off-Broadway, has been seen abroad in many cities, and in the 1995-96 season was the most-produced play in America after Shakespeare productions. Ives, 47, rarely gives interviews anymore--”I’d rather choke on a clamshell,” he says--but recently he agreed to talk for the record with Anton Chekhov [1860-1904], the deceased Russian playwright and author of “The Seagull.”

Anton Chekhov: Well, David, let me say first of all that I’m a huge fan of your work. As the Czar said to me at the premiere of “The Cherry Orchard”: “Very zany.”

David Ives: Thank you, Anton. That means a lot coming from you, a) because you’re one of the greatest playwrights who’s ever lived and b) because you’ve been dead for 94 years, which gives your opinion a certain weight. Just out of morbid curiosity, what’s it like?

Chekhov: Being dead? You have to remember that I’m immortal, which does make a difference. As a former medical doctor I’m glad not to have to monitor my bodily functions, since I don’t have any. Overall, though, I’d say being dead is more fun than med school and a hell of a lot better than previewing “Uncle Vanya” in Odessa.

Ives: Do you miss playwriting?

Chekhov: I sure miss flirting with live actresses. I don’t miss people hitting me up for free tickets. Anyway, these days I mostly do spec scripts for Hollywood. I pitch, I meet-and-greet, I look for rewrite jobs . . .

Ives: No more plays?

Chekhov: This is 1998, babe. Who gives a Fokine about the theater, especially in this town?

Ives: It’s true, I guess.

Chekhov: Not that Paramount is screaming for story ideas on Russian themes. But enough about me, you’ve got a show coming in. So you live in New York, you’re married . . .

Ives: Just over a year now.

Chekhov: Mazeltov. You grew up in . . . ?

Ives: Chicago.

Chekhov: Good theater town. Great pizza, too. And you’re how old, now?

Ives: Thirteen, mentally, going on 8.

Chekhov: Just like all playwrights--except Shaw, who was always 93 and who in the afterlife is still a pain in the butt. I see you went to Yale Drama School, so here’s the Hollywood Question: Who’s famous who was there with you?

Ives: Sort of a crass question.

Chekhov: Do you wanna plug your show or not?

Ives: Let me see. There was John Turturro, Angie Bassett, Fran McDormand . . .

Chekhov: I loved “Fargo.”

Ives: You sound like Entertainment Weekly.

Chekhov: I love Entertainment Weekly.

Ives: You’re a very good emcee, Anton. You should get a talk show.

Chekhov: My friends call me “Doc.” And I never missed a single “Carson Show,” so I was trained by a master.

Ives: There’s TV in the afterlife?

Chekhov: TV is the afterlife. I run into people all the time in the underworld who watched a lot of TV in this world. They still don’t know they’re dead.

Ives: Ouch.

Chekhov: Yeah. It’s tough breaking the news that they’re not in Cincinnati watching “Oprah” anymore. On the other hand, TV makes the transition to being dead much easier. There’s not a lot to do when you’re dead, you don’t have much interest in reality, your energy’s low--TV is perfect. Do you like L.A., by the way?

Ives: You mean “Gomorrah”?

Chekhov: So I gather you’ve worked here. The usual pile of bought-but-unproduced scripts?

Ives: Actually, I’ve got a project at Disney.

Chekhov (mutters resentfully): I’ve been trying to break into Disney for decades.

Ives: One has to work for Hollywood, since the theater pays less than Taco Bell on an hourly basis.

Chekhov: I did all right by the theater. I got my dacha. If we’d known about merchandising back then I could’ve cleaned up. Stuffed sea gulls in the lobby, Masha and Irina dolls, T-shirts that say “TO MOSCOW” . . .

Ives: I have to say, my heart remains in the theater. A couple of my other organs remain in Hollywood.

Chekhov: But why? What’s so great about the theater that makes people starve themselves to work in it?

Ives: What makes the theater so great is that there is no money in it. You have to be an idiot to work in the theater.

Chekhov: Dostoevsky told me the same thing.

Ives: Hollywood’s got so much gold floating around loose that it’s a magnet for con men, robber barons, and thieves. Theater weeds out people who don’t belong in it because you can’t work in the theater for ulterior motives, or for gain. There isn’t any. You can only work in the theater for love and that makes for a community of passionate commitment.

Chekhov: And small bank accounts.

Ives: Remember, I’m not talking about Broadway, the parking lot for bad British plays, the outpost of Las Vegas.

Chekhov: The suburb of Anaheim.

Ives: The theater is a group of strangers getting together under adverse conditions, putting aside their differences and spending four weeks locked in a room, talking and thinking out loud and planning--not for gold, but to get something right. To make something good. And isn’t that somehow the essence of democracy?

Chekhov: Funny how democracy and Western theater both started in Athens in the fifth century B.C.

Ives: So maybe there’s a connection between the two. Say what you will about the National Endowment . . .

Chekhov: I call it communism.

Ives: Isn’t it in this country’s interests to foster an art form whose process teaches people how to work together? To promote that art form in our schools?

Chekhov: But it’s an ephemeral art form. The work is here and gone.

Ives: Not more ephemeral than politicians. In A.D. 2220 people won’t be quoting Pete Wilson but somebody somewhere will still be doing “Sweeney Todd.”

Chekhov: Loved it. How is Steve?

Ives: In a just world, politicians would be begging artists for funding to keep doing whatever obscene things politicians do.

Chekhov: No. In a just world, critics would all be shot.

Ives: Oh, come on . . .

Chekhov: Guns don’t kill people. Critics kill people. (He starts to weep.) I’m sorry. It’s that “Three Sisters” review in Minsk . . .

Ives (handing Chekhov a handkerchief): My point is, theater is the ultimate democratic art form.

Chekhov: Democratic? At these prices?

Ives: It’s true. Ticket prices could kill the theater.

Chekhov: More hairballs like “Jekyll and Hyde” could kill the theater.

Ives: At least it brings people in. It’s the audience for serious theater I bite my nails about.

Chekhov: “Serious theater?” This from a writer of quirky, zany comedies like you?

Ives: “Serious” and “zany” aren’t opposites to me. They’re colleagues.

Chekhov: Could you amplify?

Ives (louder): Here’s what I mean.

Chekhov: I mean could you clarify.

Ives: I went to an all-boys’ Catholic high school. One day a priest was trying to teach us about Emily Dickinson’s poetry but we were all nodding out. So the priest put his book down, got up on his desk, and stood on his head. When we were all staring at him, he got down and picked up his book and said, “Let’s all turn to page 88.” Now that’s theater.

Chekhov: That’s one hell of a high school.

Ives: And one hell of an education in how the zany and the serious cooperate. When I go into a theater I want to see something unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. I don’t want to see anything that’s like the movies or TV. I don’t want to see a recognizable, realistic room. For me, realism isn’t only the bane of the theater--it’s the bane of reality.

Chekhov: Speaking as a dead white male realist, thanks a lot, Dave.

Ives: I want to go to the theater and see something that catches your attention like a priest standing on his head, but that has the same serious intent as an Emily Dickinson poem.

Chekhov: Emily’s pretty zany herself. I speak from experience.

Ives: She’s a loon?

Chekhov: Certified. And she cheats at canasta.

Ives: Anyway, why pay $70 for realism when you can go to the movies for $10, or turn on CBS for free?

Chekhov: If CBS is realism, I’ve been dead longer than I thought.

Ives: I always find it odd that the movies do realism brilliantly but in a two-dimensional medium, while the theater is a pretend world but it happens with real people in a real place.

Chekhov: You should’ve been a metaphysician.

Ives: I tried. I couldn’t pass the meta-physical.

Chekhov: Cute.

Ives: There are TV “critics” who think it’s wonderful and democratic that 20 million people all over the country watch a “Seinfeld” episode. Well, 20 million people eat at Burger King every day, but that doesn’t mean it’s good--or good for you. To me, a television is a hypnotic box in your living room that sells you cant and corn flakes, and taking pleasure from it is like sleeping with an inflatable sex doll that’s already slept with 20 million other people.

Chekhov: Eeuw.

Ives: Not that I’ve ever slept with an inflatable sex doll.

Chekhov: Sure, sure. That’s what Solzhenitsyn said.

Ives: It’s not surprising that TVs are shaped like tombstones, since they’re monuments to lost time. What I love about sitting in a theater is that I’m one of only several hundred people in the whole world getting to watch this event. And if I come back tomorrow the event will be different. It doesn’t matter if you walk out of a movie or talk to your TV screen, but a play is a living organism. It’s affected by your presence. It responds to you as the actors pick up your rhythms and reactions. It tries to make you laugh and to move you--and I mean you personally, the person in the fourth row. It learns and grows and changes over time. To me, theater is not only the most democratic art form, it’s the most humane.

Chekhov: So I gather you watch endless TV.

Ives: I figure I can spend my time reading Rilke or I can watch “Suddenly Susan.”

Chekhov: Who’s Rilke?

Ives: Never mind.

Chekhov: What’s next? You just had another long-running smorgasbord of one-acts off-Broadway called “Mere Mortals.”

Ives: I’ve got another batch that’ll start out of town next season in Philadelphia--which is an old English word for “Odessa.”

Chekhov: You know, you’re right. I’m going back, I’m tossing out the spec scripts and getting back to that one-act I’ve been working on since 1912.

Ives: Terrific.

Chekhov: Would you look at it?

Ives: Send it to me, I’ll get some coverage.

Chekhov: Smartass. I understand you gave up giving interviews. Why is that?

Ives: Because I got tired of being asked, “Why do you write short plays?”

Chekhov: Why do you write short plays?

Ives: Because I can.

Chekhov: Now the important question. Can you get me a free ticket to your show?

Ives: Could you check out a funny pain I get in my abdomen?

Chekhov: Are you covered?

Ives: OK, OK, if I can’t get you a comp I’ll sneak you in.

Chekhov: It’s been great talking to you, David.

Ives: My pleasure, Doc.*

*

* “All in the Timing,” Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood. Opens June 3, 7:30 p.m. Regular schedule: Tuesdays-Thursdays, 7:30 p.m.; Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 4 and 8:30 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. Ends June 28. $27.50-$37.50. (310) 208-5454, (800) 678-5440.