| Theater
Playwright Neville Turns on the Lamps
By Mario Raspanti
The world today challenges writers, actors and artists of all disciplines
to create something new and refreshing. Local actor Mike Neville tells
his students that sometimes this calls for the creator or author to lie
in order to make something more interesting.
Neville honed his ability to perceive truth, lies and genuine craft
as a journalist, which ultimately led him to make a career change in favor
of acting and writing. He received a degree in journalism from Marquette
University in 1968, before moving to New York to study playwriting at Long
Island University.
Fiction is not bound by the rules of journalism, Neville pointed out.
It needs to fly far away to find a fictional, emotional or comic truth.
That early career change has proved to be a fruitful one for Neville, since
he has written, acted in or produced numerous plays, both on and off Broadway.
He felt that his play, Ballymurphy, which opened Dec. 2, 1976,
at the Manhattan Theatre Club and went on to other national venues, was
one of his best. Neville’s creative and playful attitude also landed him
on Hotel Milwaukee, a radio variety show that was taped in front
of live audiences and broadcast for eight years on Wisconsin Public Radio.
Portraying numerous oddball characters peopling a fictitious hotel, Neville
was with the program from 2001 to 2004.
"That was a ton of fun, I miss that show. I was their utility guy. Whenever
they needed a voice, I would fill in. No memory work. I'd get a script,
and ....this week you're an admiral, and this week you're a French chef.
Oh, OK. I miss that a lot," he lamented.
Many of the voices that he utilized for Hotel Milwaukee did not
vanish, but instead lingered. Eventually, they became part of his humorous,
yet poignant semi-autobiographical, Lamps for My Family. His personal
cast of voices included an old grandmother, a blathering Scot and an Irishman.
The play is about an Irish family, telling of 19 people spanning the
years of 1948 to 1978 in Milwaukee. Neville is the lone figure on stage,
surrounded by lamps representing each of these personalities. The story
delves deeply into each character's life and every time someone dies, a
lamp goes out. The experiences of a three-legged dog are also included
in the show.
"I have an excellent stage manager and an excellent electrician. And
we work together intensely. There are a lot of off stage cues and the lamps
end up taking on a life of their own," Neville said.
He performed the play this past February at Milwaukee’s Irish Cultural
and Heritage Center (ICHC), directed by John Gleeson of the Celtic Studies
Department at UW-Milwaukee. The show was held in the Hallamor, a 1,000-seat
auditorium in the former church. The raised area in front of the 4,000-pipe
organ served as the stage.
"I wanted to tell a ghost story. And I wanted to be able to deliver
one laugh every two minutes for 90 minutes," Neville confessed. "There
were well over 100 people there and they all came down front. I was afraid
it would be arena-like but it was actually very cozy."
Neville was a Sam S. Shubert Graduate Fellow in Playwriting at Long
Island University. The school gave him $2,500 in 1971 and only one year
to get his master’s degree. However, he departed with six credits short,
so he finished at his "neighborhood" school, Columbia. Neville then lived
for 15 years in New York City.
Lamps strangely came about as he was visiting New York on a getaway
trip for R&R. While on a two-week jaunt there, he found himself thinking
about his home town, Milwaukee. Returning to Wisconsin, Neville finished
the play in just over two weeks.
Neville himself had also presented Lamps at the Alley Theater
in Houston, in award-winning playwright Edward Albee's master's class.
The program was essentially a workshop for professional theater personnel,
giving him a chance to work and take notes with some of the best in the
business, including Oliver Stone's pyrotechnics expert and a Los Angeles
Times writer.
Performing in front a predominantly Texas crowd proved to be the ice-breaker
for Lamps for My Family. For Neville, since the longhorn crowd laughed
hysterically, he figured others would have to like it. He was correct.
Neville will perform "Lamps for My Family" at Milwaukee's Irish Fest
this coming summer. He has also discussed doing the play elsewhere but
nothing has materialized yet. This coming May, The Festival of Ten Minute
Plays, which he produced for eight seasons, will be back by popular request
at Milwaukee’s Brumder Mansion theater, he added.
This coming Christmas at the Brumder, Neville will also premiere his
play, "Art Kumbalek and the Ghost of Christmas Past," starring himself
and Kumbalek. The latter, actually noted Milwaukee sax player Rip Tenor,
authors "Art for Art's Sake in The Shepherd Express weekly newspaper.
The play will be a reunion of sorts, since the two worked together on Hotel
Milwaukee.
Neville has occasionally taught classes in dialects, journaling, comedy
and playwriting at UW-Milwaukee since 1995. These days, in addition to
preparing for The Festival of Ten Minute Plays, he is playing the bad guy
in Mark Borchardt's new movie, Scare Me.
 
|
