The Playwright's Pad: The Origin of Barbicide

I’ve been told that I’m dark. Frequently, actually. Most recently by my ten-year old daughter, over breakfast. And, in a great many of my plays, that darkness pervades, but it is often accompanied by some degree of violence. Stop, don’t ask why. I myself don’t know. It just does. In fact, I’ve even been passed over at certain festivals (the names of which I won’t disclose) for being too violent. So, you can imagine my excitement when I awoke with a start on my daily train ride with an idea for a way to adapt into a play, of all things, a well known, and beloved, musical. You know, orchestra, dancing, kicking, singing—in short, everything I despise about theatre. Well, not everything, but most everything. 

How great would it be to expose my work to a whole new set of theatergoers who might normally look the other way when a play of mine was being staged. Immediately, fearing the loss of cell signal that an approaching tunnel would bring, I texted Christian Amato, artistic director of The Theatre Project and detailed my idea. Christian was at the time knee deep in not only a reading series of a collection of my work (titled Universal Monsters), but a full blown, balls-to-the-walls staging of my play Bitch.

Over the months of development, Christian had become somewhat of the ideal collaborator for a playwright. He’d always listen to even half-baked ideas, listen some more, provide perspective, and then step back. Never one to stifle a good concept, however unpopular, Christian knows just what to say to find a way to steer something to the stage—even if that something might be a little too dark for mass audience consumption (read: taking on a play about dog fighting). Later that day we discussed the piece I dreamt up on the train while an actor read a rather lengthy monologue I had originally staged at Manhattan Repertory Theatre the previous Spring. After the piece was read, Christian leaned in and asked if I’d ever considered writing a full-length monologue. 

Now, the monologue is something that, for good or for bad, has made frequent appearances in my plays over the years, but it is normally the kind of conceit that actors shrink from and directors scratch their heads over.  It is often difficult to perform (particularly with my language) and even more daunting a task to stage in any compelling way. So, needless to say, the question took me aback. I had, however, always yearned to write a full-length monologue, but with multiple voices—a stereologue, if you will. The one I’d been toying with incorporated direct audience address, but also included such diverse elements as beat poetry, terse, hard boiled language and tenses that shifted from past to present. What’s more, I wanted all attention to be directed to the language itself—in fact, in order to focus on the words, in this piece, I’d ask that a small handful of actors impersonate scores of other characters. For me, this would be an experiment in pure storytelling. 

So, upon Christian’s question concerning the monologue, a light bulb went off. Why not apply this unique form of storytelling to this musical adaptation that sparked my imagination on the train. This was how Barbicide was born—my meditation on coincidence and fate. Or, if you’d prefer, my very loose, potty-mouthed, deconstructed adaptation, or parody, of the musical Sweeney Todd.  

At last, a lighter, more accessible play for the masses… a story about, among many of things, a serial killer barber and cannibalism.

-Sean