A month is hardly enough time to invent and build an airplane, but bringing its invention to the stage is a whole other story.
“Hammer Down Reprise,” an original piece written and directed by Adam Macy, artistic and managing director of The Improv Space, is the story of Dale and his transformation from a sofa maker to an aerospace innovator.
Dale, with his young apprentice Jasper, builds sofas of such great quality that he is looked at with reverence by the town, much to the envy of the mayor, Otto. As Otto fights for his re-election, he plans to destroy Dale’s legacy and replace him as the town’s leading figure.
The play was originally showcased in 2010 as “Hammer Down,” with Macy taking on the role of Dale at Under St. Marks Theater in New York. After graduating from Columbia University, Macy moved to Los Angeles, where he took UCLA Extension classes. It was during this time, Macy said, that he decided to revisit and revise his play.
“It felt right, I wanted to go back and change some aspects of the story; I rewrote scenes, made it more streamlined, changed the characters’ names and added entirely new pieces of dialogue,” Macy said. “It still follows the same basic story, but is different enough that I added ‘Reprise’ to the title.”
The cast of this production features an ensemble of regular stand-up and improv actors of The Improv Space, including fifth-year English student Tim Limbrick. Limbrick plays the mayor’s henchman Aron and said that despite his frequent performances at the stand-up comedy nights, this is his first play since the fifth grade.
“It’s really cool here, we all know each other and we’re all improvisers so we had a lot of fun putting this play together,” Limbrick said. “Macy let us improvise some parts of the dialogue, and I think that really gives the performance a more personalized feel.”
Although Macy allowed for some improvisation, he said the actors were keen to keep everything else on stage simple and direct. From the music to the stage props, everything was assembled and built by the actors themselves to allow scene changes to move fluidly and quickly.
“For props all we used were various pieces of wood, chairs and small pieces of anything that matches the feel of the scene,” Macy said. “We like to keep things minimal so as to not detract from the actors’ performance on our stage.”
Auditions and rehearsals were conducted quickly, Limbrick said. Actors auditioned for a few weeks and then rolled right into rehearsing their lines and different scenes.
“The actress for Belle dropped out early,” Limbrick said. “Our new actress, Jacqueline Jimenez, learned all of her lines perfectly within a week, it was really impressive.”
Veteran actor Andrew Paslay, who plays Jasper the apprentice, said he looks back fondly at the play, which was organized and produced within a month.
“It’s amazing how fast this all came together, it wasn’t too difficult and I feel like we all brought our own styles to our characters that really gives the play breadth and provides a realistic performance,” Paslay said.
As this is his original play, Macy said he wanted to bring in ideas from what he had witnessed, learned and read throughout his life. In making the play distinctly American, he was able to bring in everything he saw as troubling in today’s society, he said.
Overcoming your own limitations, being humble and viewing the world outside of oneself are the core values of “Hammer Down Reprise,” Macy said. Seeing oneself not as the most important person in the entire world but instead as a character in the story of life is something Macy said he really wanted to communicate through the story.
“It’s the same way as looking at the Earth revolving around the sun; some people are consumed with their own story rather than finding themselves as individuals (of a bigger story),” Macy said. “It’s something I try to keep in mind everyday.”