I had a weird experience with Black Swan.

I sat through at least half that movie thinking it was one of the most clichéd, pretentious, inaccurate portrayals of the performing arts that I’d ever seen. I kept thinking of other films about artists made crazy by their dedication to craft, about dancers driven mad by passion, and rolled my eyes at what unfolded before me.

And then, suddenly, I realized. Wait. She’s really crazy. Actually! She’s a complete nutter!

It turned out that Black Swan was not a dance film at all, but a horror flick. If I’d known that going in, I would have missed being surprised. But I also might have viewed the first half differently, and enjoyed it much more.

So I am glad I had some idea of what to expect from Lesser America’s Squealer, written by Jonathan Blitstein and directed by Daniel Talbott. Cause I had a blast.

If I’d gone to see Squealer  looking for a profound commentary on the sociopolitical climate of recession-era America, I might have been disappointed. The play doesn’t really carry a significant social message. I mean, you could make a case for one: small town America is choking on disposable culture, with disastrous results. Like, thangs is gettin’ real bad out there.

And it does explore some of the cultural and economic desperation in our heartland, particularly with regard to the challenges (still) faced by women. It also touches on the damage that agribusiness has done to our once-thriving farm communities, and the devastating impact of big boxes on small towns: WalMartyrdom.

But, ultimately, Squealer is a horrorshow.

And a beautifully executed one, at that. From my first glimpse of Eugenia Furneaux-Arend’s incredible set, I had a feeling of being overwhelmed by junk. This is a world where the landfill is spilling over, as if Blitstein’s characters have constructed a society in the same way dung beetles build their homes. Lawn chairs, farm tools, half a car…it’s amazing they even got all this crap into the space. And the artful way in which Furneaux-Arends has assembled this installation is extraordinary.

For scene changes, actors drag pieces from the debris to assemble a diner, a living room, a parking lot, a bar. They do it very quickly, athletically, to classic rock and drunken country tunes – sound designer Janie Bullard expertly layers radio tunes and sonic trash in a hot mesh of cultural noise in a way that  amps up the sex and violence onstage.

And then there are the remarkable performances by an awesome cast of six whose work is hardly rubbish. The characters they play are brash, abrasive even. Loud and sloppy. They are what would commonly be called trashy. (Okay, more commonly, white trashy.) Sarah Lemp screeches. Nick Lawson talks with his mouth full. And both of them are effing brilliant. I want them to be in my plays.

The passion of the entire cast is tremendous. Every one of them seems quite willing to get ugly, dirty, bloody - both emotionally and in some cases very literally. These are balls-out performances – Squealer is not really about subtlety. And yet, under Daniel Talbott’s direction this company provides rich inner lives for characters that might have seemed stock if penned by a lesser writer, or if acted with less guts.

The last thing I saw of Talbott’s was the stark, elegant, and very sweet The Umbrella Plays. Squealer could not be more different. His staging is aggressive like a mean drunk, lurching, staggering, slamming doors. But it is anything but haphazard. It takes great precision to create something that looks this wild. It takes a ton of rehearsal, and I happen to know that this show had tech for days.

Full disclosure: Daniel Talbott and at least half of Squealer’s design team will be working on a production of my play Eightythree Down this summer. So I’m a little biased. In fact, I wanted to cheer every light change. (Wow, Brad Peterson. You rock.) When a detail of Tristan Raines’ costume design became instrumental in a delightfully surprising and totally integral part of Squealer’s plot, I actually got a little hot. It was great moment beautifully executed by Laura Ramadei. I love it when elements come together like that. It rushes my blood.

Anyway, I have heard it said that Lesser America’s Squealer breaks no new ground. That its characters are small-town archetypes we’ve seen a hundred times before. No shit. But maybe this is what is revolutionary about ‘pop theatre’: it is meant not for aesthetes and elitists, but for people who really loved Scream 4. Here’s a radical notion – what if as many people came to see plays as downloaded Kesha songs? What if they had a really kick-ass time? What if you didn’t have to take a damn college prep course to know what the hell you were looking at?

Okay, so we have a pretty good idea that Lawson’s pig farmer is going to become violently unhinged as soon as we see him. (The bloody primary-colored Porky Pigs on the show’s poster provide a clue.) And the other characters: ­Jamie Law’s high school cheerleader having an affair with her English teacher, her single mother, played by Sarah Lemp,  Nate Miller’s repugnant chauvinist country boy, Laura Ramadei’s foul-mouthed pregnant diner waitress all hail from pretty familiar territory. (The teacher sleeping with his student, played by Daniel Abeles, is weirdly more complex for seeming simpler. He’s actually a nice guy whose only skeleton is well out of the closet.) Okay, we know the types. Very well.

In fact, at intermission my friend David turned to me and joked. ‘I’m feeling homesick’ to which I replied ‘Me too!’ I come from a small town in East Texas where any and all of Squealer could and likely does happen all the time. (I can’t say more in print, but trust me.)  Is Squealer over the top? Yeah. So is life in Hunt County. Hell, these are my people.

So I appreciate that Blitstein and Talbott don’t judge these characters. There’s no moralizing, just storytelling. It’s refreshing and it feels, in a way, generous. It feels like Squealer was created at least in part to give actors a great gift in allowing them to really ‘go there’. All the way. It’s a joy to watch them do it. They seem to be on a great adventure. It’s so exciting and satisfying to see actors really sink their teeth into roles, and this crew leaves theirs a twisted bloody heap.

By curtain call they all looked drained, even a little devastated. Except for Nick Lawson, who still just looked completely psychotic.

So here’s the thing about Black Swan. Or House Of A Thousand Corpses. Or Motel Hell. They are beautifully executed as exactly what they are – pulpy pop horror, American style. To evaluate Squealer as anything else is to miss its point entirely.

Also it wouldn’t be much fun, neither. Sometimes, theatre can be, like, fun, ya’ll.

I must be mad.

Completely insane. Absolutely certifiable. Starting a theatre company is risky business no matter the economic climate, but in times like these? It’s nothing less than demented. And yet that is exactly what I've done in creating Hard Sparks.

My goals for Hard Sparks are lofty (read: insane) indeed, at least by most local standards. In addition to offering high-quality productions of edgy new plays for an Off-off Broadway audience, I have three primary objectives:

Affordable tickets. I’m interested in interesting the next generation of theatre goers, young people who don’t have a lot of discretionary cash. And, let’s face it, I make art for artists. So whether I am co-producing with a company like Horse Trade as I am on Eightythree Down, or working in a great big fancy place with multiple bathrooms and everything, there will be a way for everyone to enjoy a Hard Sparks show.

Paid personnel. It’s astonishing how little and how infrequently theatre artists are paid for their very difficult work. Very often, the best paying Off-off Broadway gigs work out to less than minimum wage. Money gets poured into venue rental, festival fees, and expensive sets but the whole point of performance - live people sharing meaningful experiences - gets lost. Hard Sparks can’t pay its companies much, but I am absolutely determined that everyone in our shows get something. In addition to respect, admiration, and gratitude, I think artists deserve a bit of dignity and at least one good dinner as well.

Charitable partnerships. Now here’s where it really gets bonkers. As a not-for-profit organization, I want to partner with other not-for-profit organizations for mutual benefit. I’m talking about raising awareness of, and money for, community-based organizations working to improve people’s lives in very direct ways. Whenever possible, Hard Sparks will mount issue-oriented plays and donate a portion of box office receipts to a local CBO working on that issue.

Every time I tell someone of my harebrained scheme, they smirk. Their eyes either narrow (producers) or widen (actors) and they ask me if I have an angel, a DeMedici, a secret backer who’s as much a nutter as I am to contribute to such an obvious debacle. I don't. But this doesn’t concern me. I see miracles happen every time I walk into a rehearsal, and I have absolute certainty that these goals are obtainable and sustainable.

Interesting new works of theatre, created by fairly compensated artists, that make an appreciable difference in the local community?

Yeah, that’s just crazy.

J.Stephen Brantley
Artistic Director, Hard Sparks
www.HardSparks.com