TALLBOY WALKIN'

A Playwright's Journey - My Fifth Full-Length Play

I wish I could tell you where the inspiration for this play came from… but I truly don’t know. This is the fifth full-length play I’d written, titled TALLBOY WALKIN’, link on the title there. Here’s the blurb for the play:

Five different men, of different ages and ethnic backgrounds, find themselves stranded at a bus stop late at night in a dangerous urban city. A confrontation between two men of color holds the other three as their unwilling captive audience, trapped by circumstances, a late bus and the presence of a loaded firearm. A high-wire meditation on race, religion and the comedy of life, Tallboy Walkin’ asks the question all of us at some point have to answer in our lives.

Some of the origin of the play is obvious… Sean, the Irish character, is the easiest to spot. At the time I’d written this play, I was living in a boarding house with seven Irishmen… yes, seven. Sean is a compilation of three of my closest Irish friends, Gerry, Steve, and Andy, especially. The stories I could tell you of my time there are legion and vast, but this is not the time nor place. They also all came to see this show.

But the rest of it, particularly Paul, the lead, is a mystery to me. I was no doubt influenced by my friend DB Woodside, who I’d known and had been close to during graduate school, but he’d moved to Hollywood years previous and we had not been in touch. So… I’m not really certain. Probably it was more likely the influence of living in Queens at that time in America, and working where I worked and who I worked with.

I wrote this play while on vacation from one of the most horrible jobs I’d have, working for two of the most horrid, racist men I’d ever met. And that’s saying something, as I’ve known more than a few ripe racists in my day. These two win the crown, however, they dripped with distain at anyone less than white, and were not shy about their opinions. They also employed a large number of non-white workers.

Both men also identified as strongly Jewish. Make of what what you will. I can only tell you what I bore witness to. They were terrible to everyone who worked for them. The workers all discussed it at length, trust me. Most concluded that their toxicity had little to do with their cultural background, it’s simply that they were both awful men and would always be awful men, in the end. That was interesting, to me, in hindsight. In fact, the father of one of the partners worked there, too, and they treated him like shit as much as they did anyone. They were simply terrible human beings.

The company I worked for no longer exists. I am not sure what happened to either man, likely they opened another, but I hope I never bump into them today.

I had two weeks vacation saved up, and I finally took it (and they complained about that, trust me) with the intent to write a screenplay that I could hopefully sell and get out of that miserable, toxic day job. I had a great concept, outline, I was gonna bust it out of the park in the two weeks I had off.

Instead, I was haunted. Haunted by the voice of one particular character, who I named Paul, after Paul Robeson. I kept hearing him speak, and finally wrote down what I heard. And once I did, other voices chimed in.

That became TALLBOY WALKIN’.

After my vacation was up, I found out I’d landed another, different job, jumped at it, and never went back to work for the two awful bigots… they never paid me the rest of my pay, but I was simply glad to be gone.

TALLBOY WALKIN’, however, seemed to grab people right away. I sent it to a few actor friends, and they leaped at it. A buddy, Keith, took it to Van Dirk Fisher at The Riant Theatre in Soho, and got a reading set up fast. And a production that fall.

It was that production that would introduce me to one of my best friends, Ato Essandoh. We met and chemistry was instantaneous.

The production, directed by my friend Vantony Jenkins, went extremely well. Well enough that an actor who produced my play THE MEN’S ROOM, Jim McCauley, jumped on it and would produce it with Lou Carbonneou and Ato Essandoh in 2001.

The production was directed by Nick Corley and starred Lou Carbonneou, Ato Essandoh, Garrison Phillips, Jim McCauley and Sharif Rashad.

Our production reviews were met with standing ovations, and we looked forward to our official opening night, set for Tuesday, September 11, 2001.

Obviously, that day was a terrible, awful day for other reasons.

After a week off, we resumed production, and people loved the play, but New York City was going to mourn signficant losses beyond a play for a long, long time after that. We still are, in my opinion.

The play would go on to have numerous readings everywhere (including a big one in Stamford, CT) but it became clear that directors and producers often misunderstood the play, and never seemed comfortable with it. At least, that’s what I often heard.

Which I found confusing, because it wasn’t a play one was supposed to be comfortable with, that was the intent. But so it goes, this play introduced me to another level of theatre, some fantastic friends I would have never met if not for it, and I am forever grateful to whatever muse delivered it to me.

As to where that muse came from, I can’t really tell you. DB would point out that I’d been writing in similar flavors since he and I wrote sketches for No Shame Theatre at the University of Iowa, and this was true. Tallboy, however, I simply view as a gift. Sometimes we hear people, writers do, and it’s people who have been in our lives, and sometimes it’s people we will have in our lives. I think this was the latter.

At the time, I had no idea I’d be a father, either. So perhaps it was that, wishing for a father figure like Paul in my own life. Or something. I dunno.

It’s magic, really, writing, it’s often magic. And it’s best to be grateful and not overthink why or how, just honor the magic.

If you know the play, or have read the play, do me the favor of leaving a review to let folks know. Or buy the play and give it to a friend.

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More links to my previous play posts below, and I thank you.

Other full-length plays by Joshua Todd James

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