CALLBOARD: Bricklaying, Or A Life in the Theater

Brian Dykstra, Playwright of Not Nobody

I haven’t written an autobiographical play since the 1990s. And this isn't one either. But I'm fascinated by just how many events that happen to the main character in Not Nobody and how many moments he recalls from his past mirror events from my own life. This is not how I usually write plays which is precisely why it feels worth examining.

I wonder how many of us have been stopped by police for confusing reasons. I wonder how many of us have been told something that doesn’t make sense. I wonder how many of us shrug off our experiences as abnormal, or "our imagination," or out-of-character rather than thinking this is the way the system is designed to work. And I wonder just how many of those instances transpire before someone starts to lose faith in the system — one that consistently reiterates it only exists for our protection. A system that expects us to participate in ways that serve that system even when it may only serve us when it serves itself to do so. 

While prepping Not Nobody we had conversations with artists who talked about how this system makes them feel. One said, "The system just gets bigger while making me feel smaller and smaller." How many of us are starting to feel this way? And how many will be pissed that we even ask the question? I've come to believe that, perhaps, we are all "Not Nobody."

In the middle of these reflections , I was asked to write something for a dear friend and producer who passed away recently, Jack W. Batman. I began thinking about what it means to be a "producer" and how decisions get made, how hard it must be to decide to produce plays that challenge or ignite our emotions or spark difficult conversations. I love those kinds of plays. I think we always need them, but often audiences long to escape from the constant drumbeat of news and world events.

Let's go back. I received a call from Sidney, Jack's husband. 
Would I write a poem for Jack?
"Political?" I ask. "Nope." "Personal?" "Yup!"
So. Of course.
I started to write the "not political" poem, but it occurred to me the first thing Jack produced of mine was filled with the political. The first thing he saw me do included the lines:

"…with carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide and oxide and cyanide and chloride, and flesh-eating pesticide that glue-sticks to apples and dapples livers like slivers in scrapple, sending rivers of shivers straight down quivering spines that ends in a pine box, it's Toxic! You Motherfuckers! Stop finding loopholes in language, stop spending & spending to hasten our ending, STOP!"

So, what does a producer do?
They do what we all do.
They make stuff.
Take their mud and clay and sticks
Use that to bake bricks
A musical, a play, a one-person cabaret. Jack produced GayFest, in a time when that was political, a time when certain voices were underrepresented, and "not enough folks will pay to see that play, but we're producing that play anyway" – and sorry that’s political. 
Still.
Not too long ago, I ran into Jack on the street, and he asked what I’m working on.

"Well, it's a metatheatrical political poetical play about living under an American autocracy where I get the audience to shout 'Get the fuck out!' at Jared & Ivanka, kicking them out of the actual theater where the play is taking place, because there has to be some consequences they face while the main characters repeatedly get shot in the head but come back from the dead to fill the modern day brownshirts with existential dread because they start to realize they’re following an overfed lowbred bonehead who will take them all out to the woodshed."

Jack says, "Oh, my god, that sounds fantastic, send me that play." 

And I say, "Jack, you are not going to produce something like that." 
So he responds, with a kind of childlike glee, "No, of course not, but I can't wait to read it!"

This is not that play, by the way. I am not sure anyone will produce that play. But I start thinking about Jack in this context and it makes me think about what people build – with their particular bricks:

Porticos – Or Prisons
Juke Joints – Or Jails
Town Squares – or Treblinka
Border Fences — Or Broader Foundations
Theaters – Or, well, yeah.
And the problem with something like prisons, is that once you build it – You gotta use it.
So it is with Theaters, you gotta put something inside. 
And those somethings are called Theater.

A Life in the Theater.
 
You might get some argument, but I'd push back, that’s a life well lived. Jack. Who inspires me to examine in myself and then ask:

"What am I, and, well, hell, tell me, the rest of us all planning to do with our bricks?"

Jack wanted to make a play and then go back and make another one.
To build.
A Life.
In the theater.
We can tell a lot about anyone just by what they choose to use their bricks to do.
I want to make a play. And then, go back, and, you know, stack another one. 
To live a Life.
In the Theater.
Like Jack.
How about you, brick masons?

What tricks are you planning to do with your bricks?
Because we can tell how slick you are
Or how quick you are
Or how thick you are
Or just how sick you are or how hick you are
By seeing when and where you stick and what you choose to do with the bricks you make, with the bricks you bake,
with the bricks you take and just what you plan to make with your particular bricks.

Not Nobody runs from February 5 - March 1, 2026. Buy tickets here.

Header image: Brian Dykstra at the Celebration of Life For Jack W. Batman. Photo by Genevieve Rafter-Keddy.