One show that we left off of our holiday list this year, is Bedlam’s The Turducken. And we don’t really know why. The show sounds like a ton of fun. To make up for our little flub, we were lucky enough to grab some time with the author of the play, Josef Evans, for this week’s FringeFamous Five. Enjoy!

What is turducken, what is The Turducken, and does any of this have to do with John Madden?

JOSEF EVANS: Turducken (the food) is a duck inside a chicken inside a turkey. The Turducken (the play) is a musical sendup of holiday shows, dinner theater, and Chekhov’s The Seagull. Each is revolting in its own special way. Just like John Madden.

The premise of the show is a fictional dinner theater (known as “American Suppertime”) putting on their version of The Seagull as the annual holiday musical. Instead of putting on a play (as in the opening of The Seagull), these characters are putting on a Christmas-themed renaissance festival, which goes horribly awry and forces them to disband and get real jobs. After that, there are christmas wizards, Samuel Clemens impersonators, Santa standup, bad performance art, and a lot of ridiculous musical numbers. With actual dinner theater and a choice of three delicious entrees.

This play seems to be on its own little island in a sea of Twin Cities Christmas Carols and Nutcrackers. What made you stray from the traditional, no-brainer, slam-dunk holiday themes?

JE: Well, nobody needs another Christmas Carol or Nutcracker in any form. For that matter, nobody needs another Christmas show of any sort. So the challenge with this was always to create something apart from the usual. And, if nothing else, I am certain we have achieved that.

A couple of years ago (co-artistic director) John Bueche asked me if I would come up with some sort of holiday spoof that might work for Bedlam. I am always interested in characters who are experiencing failure in some way, and started working on a show about artists having to perform in all the usual Christmas junk, mostly as a vehicle to satirize everything else that’s out there. Then I saw a production of The Seagull, which I hadn’t thought about in years, and it seemed a perfect framework for the characters I was already working with. As the script evolved, it became a way to do a show that is more than just simple parody. There are genuine moments of humanity amongst all the ridiculous humor, and that is what ultimately makes The Turducken work and sets it apart from other shows at this time of year.

The Turducken sounds weird/quirky/awesome. Love in a Time of Rinderpest (Fringe 2005) was weird/quirky/awesome. Is this a result of the way Bedlam works, or are you just weird/quirky/awesome?

JE: I think it is a symbiotic situation. I get a lot of blank stares with this kind of material in traditional play reading groups. At Bedlam, I get laughs. They understand how to make the illogical logical — and funny. One of the best reviews I’ve ever come across for our work together described “laughing uncontrollably — not because the moment was funny (though it certainly was), but because they finally broke my brain.”

I actually first started writing plays after seeing a Bedlam production (Freewheeling in the Attic of Whim) back in 1999. It was crazy in all these ways I’d never seen before, and a redefinition for me of what theater could be. Since then, I’ve written a number of plays as commissions that (by necessity or request) follow standard rules of dramatic structure, with very straightforward dialogue and action. Writing for Bedlam is a perfect release from that, and a place where I can develop an artistic voice that’s closer to my own.

What do you find to be the advantages/disadvantages of directing your own play as opposed to not?

JE: I don’t like directing my own plays, so I only do it as an option of last resort. I think as a playwright, one is by nature focused on the text, to the detriment of everything else that’s necessary to offer good direction. When I write a show, I care above all about how it sounds, and not enough about how it looks. That said, it’s often a challenge to find a director who can work with the kind of stuff I write, just because it is so weird. Sam Johns (director of The Turducken) and Maren Ward are two of the best.

If you could change one thing about the current Twin Cities theatre scene, what would you change?

JE: Less holiday shows. More new plays.

Josef Evans is a Twin Cities-based playwright, musician, and theater artist. His work has been produced in Seattle, Denver, Detroit, San Diego, St Louis, and Newark, among others. Notable recent plays include Love in a Time of Rinderpest, a Minnesota Fringe Encore selection in 2006, and The Only Americans Welcome, a commission for the Sargent Shriver Peace Institute (Washington DC). He is an associate artist with Bedlam Theatre and resident playwright with the Zamya Theater Project, an annual collaboration between homeless and housed artists. He holds a B.A. in English and Theater from the University of Notre Dame, and is a graduate of the University of Washington (Seattle) playwriting program. Josef is a member of the Playwrights’ Center and the Dramatists’ Guild of America, Inc., and performs regularly around town as part of the Dreamland Faces band.