This weekend, the coal-black stage of the McComas Hall theatre transforms into a canvas painted with the blue of the blues, the green of jealousy and the raging red of love.The Mississippi State University theatre department is producing the first-ever performance of “The Classics Professor” by John Pielmeier. The script has not yet been published, but it is already being brought to life by a cast of six actors, each a veteran of at least two shows.
“My students heard about it at (American College Theater Festival) in Hattiesburg,” director Jo Durst said. “I contacted his (Pielmeier’s) publicist and asked for a script. When I read it, I knew it was a play I wanted to direct.”
“The Classics Professor” is but the latest of Pielmeier’s long list of accolades, which includes “Agnes of God,” “Voices In The Dark,” “The Boys of Winter” and “Flowers for Algeron.” Pielmeier studied at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. and earned his master’s degree in play writing at Penn State University.
He later moved to New York to become an actor, a venture that took him to Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Louisville, Ky. He later found his groove as a writer, and his career took off.
For the last week, Pielmeier has frequented McComas Hall.
On Wednesday, The Reflector sat down with the 52-year-old playwright as he concluded a few monologue readings with students. Here is what he had to say.
The Reflector: How rewarding is it for you to see this show come to life for the first time?
Pielmeier: It’s very rewarding. It’s the next step in the development. I’ve seen my script read before in workshops, but never fully developed like this.
The Reflector: Is the cast parallel to how you envisioned your characters to be?
Pielmeier: I can’t say for sure because I haven’t seen the show yet, but so far, I’d have to say that they are a very talented bunch of young actors.
The Reflector: What was your inspiration for writing “The Classics Professor?”
Pielmeier: The idea came from an experience I had in college. In the course of the semester, this professor was having a nervous breakdown, so he didn’t teach us anything in class. He was demoted to a desk job the next semester. It was an extremely surreal situation.
The Reflector: What is the underlying theme of “The Classics Professor”?
Pielmeier: It’s a play that explores the relationship between love and passion and what we might define as beautiful. The professor falls in love with the person he least expects to fall in love with. It essentially follows an ancient belief that love was a curse, a disease that drove men mad for as long as they were fixated on that one object. But it is also a disease that makes him (the professor) happier in the end for what he has gone through.
The Reflector: If you got the idea for “The Classics Professor” back in college and you’ve written about ten plays in the last 20 years, was “The Classics Professor” just something you wrote on the side when you weren’t working on something that was more demanding?
Pielmeier: It was finished recently, but it was started about 20 years ago. I would come back to it every few years while I was writing other projects.
The Reflector: Your first play was “Agnes of God.” How did you go about getting it performed on Broadway and when did this happen?
Pielmeier: “Agnes” was first performed professionally in March of 1980 after the script was picked up by six regional theaters around the country. One of the productions was in Baltimore and it was there that some major producers caught wind of it and wanted to take it to Broadway. It was first performed there in March of 1982.
The Reflector: After “Agnes” took off, did you feel any controversy from the Catholic Church?
Pielmeier: I got very few objections. I knew a number of priests and nuns who were fine with it. The main character was very anti-Catholic, but the play in itself was not anti-Catholic. Most of the ones offended by it didn’t even see the show or read the script.
The Reflector: What sparked your transition from acting to writing?
Pielmeier: First of all, I was not enjoying acting at the time. Plus, my writing was beginning to take off so I chose to follow that path. It’s something I can really enjoy putting my energy into.
The Reflector: Do you feel that you have a stronger talent for writing than you do for acting?
Pielmeier: Not really. In fact, some of the people I’ve worked with say that I was better at acting than I was at writing, but I have developed a passion for writing that I never had with acting.
The Reflector: There is an old saying that 90 percent of writing is rewriting. Do you find yourself hating a lot of what you write the first time?
Pielmeier: I’m always rewriting because that is just part of the process. Throughout history, there have been very few pieces of art that were perfect on their first go-round. But thankfully, rewriting is a lot easier on computers than it used to be.
The Reflector: Do you ever get writer’s block?
Pielmeier: No, I don’t have time to get writer’s block because I have so many deadlines to meet, but when I do need a little kick, caffeine is a great motivator (smiles).
The Reflector: Lately, you have ventured into miniseries and made-for-television movies. How did you get started on that and what have you done lately?
Pielmeier: My first TV movie was “Choices of the Heart” in 1983. It starred Melissa Gilbert from “Little House On the Prairie,” and it was her first adult role. I recently wrote “Sins of the Father,” which will be on the FX network early next year and a miniseries for CBS that is untitled at the moment with Ted Danson and Mary Steenburger.
The Reflector: I understand you are also working on a project with Arnold Schwarzenegger. What’s up with that?
Pielmeier: It’s a TV movie tentatively titled “Strong Man,” which Arnold will be directing. It’s based on the life of Eugen Sandov, who was a turn-of-the-century fellow who could be considered the father of bodybuilding. Back then, the ideal man was either 300 pounds or he was very skinny because he was not eating right and he wasn’t getting enough exercise. Sweat was a dirty word in those days, and exercise was something only the common laborers did. Sandov helped to change that. He promoted the relationship between health and fitness and founded a number of gymnasiums and new exercises. He is pretty much forgotten today, but at the time, he was as big as Arnold is today.
The Reflector: Why do you think they got Arnold to direct?
Pielmeier: Sandov was an idol of his, so he always wanted to be the one to tell his story.
The Reflector: How does writing for screen compare to writing for stage?
Pielmeier: Well, I get paid a lot more for it, but in exchange. I have to give up my creative rights. They buy the copyright from me, and if I don’t agree with the director or the actors, I can’t do anything about it. Sometimes, I’m very pleased with the finished product and other times, I’m not. In television, you have a much more visual medium. You can jump back and forth from one naturalistic scene to another. In theatre, I use a lot of bare stages to focus on the actors and let the audience use their imaginations. Television also has more time constraints and it’s sometimes a real challenge to fill 90 minutes, but it’s pretty easy to tell how long the movie is going to be because the scripts usually equal a minute per page.The Reflector: When is writing most rewarding for you?
Pielmeier: I guess it’s those moments when I felt that what I wrote reached people in an important way. Either somebody will walk up to me and tell me that it touched him, or I’ll get it from the watching the audience react.