by Amanda Knox

Mathew Wright meets me at Arts West Theater in the Alaska Junction, in the small lounge overlooking the stage. It is under construction for the upcoming production, Dogfight, Mathew’s debut as director since earning his position as Artistic Director. Mat appears young and casual, sipping a tall energy drink which no doubt has something to do with his busy hands. He is also focused and purposeful—as soon as he starts talking you can tell he knows what he’s doing. He shared an hour of his time with me to discuss the play’s production.

First of all, how's it going?

It's going well. It's been a crazy couple of months. I'm new here.

Is Dogfight your first production?

This is the first production I'm directing as Artistic Director here. My first production as Artistic Director was The Mountain Top, which we just closed a few weeks ago. We're producing six shows this season, so it's an around-the-clock operation. At the time I came in we were in The Mountain Top and as soon as The Mountain Top opened we were in Dogfight. And now as soon as Dogfight opens next week we're going to be in Judy's Scary Little Christmas. It's going to be that way for the rest of the season. Rolling, rolling, rolling.

So why Dogfight? Why now?

First of all, Dogfight oddly fits into the past two shows that we've done. We ended last season with Hair, which is about the late sixties and the summer of love. Then The Mountain Top was about Martin Luther King's final evening before his assassination. Dogfight takes place between 1963 and 1967, so this is the third show in a row where we've been looking at the sixties.

Was that purposeful?

No, because Dogfight was an addition to our season. It began as a coproduction with what was then Balagan theater, a theater company in Seattle that recently closed its doors. One of the things that we're starting to do here at Arts West is invite collaboration between theater companies and theater artists from all across the city.

Why?

Because I personally think theater is founded on collaboration. I have always been of 'the more the merrier' mindset. I began working on theater because of the opportunity to work with lots of other artists all the time.

So was Dogfight going to be the one collaborative piece you were going to do this season?

Yes. This was our test run. The coproduction model is becoming very popular, especially in smaller and mid-sized theaters, because they are finding that you can get twice the show by pooling your resources.

Were you pushing that personally or was there a consensus?

It became the right thing to do at the right time. Balagan approached us to coproduce, so we starting talking to them about what shows they were interested in, and the third or fourth title they proposed was Dogfight. I knew of the show and I immediately thought it was perfect.

How did you know it?

I knew it because Peter Duchan wrote the book for a show called Stu for Silverton at the Intiman festival last year. I worked on that musical in its initial workshop and was the replacement piano conductor, so I was familiar with Peter. Then Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who wrote the music and lyrics, are very well known in musical theater across the country as an incredibly talented, young, up-and-coming composer and lyricist duo. They premiered their musicals A Christmas Story at Fifth Ave Theater and James and the Giant Peach at Seattle Children's Theater. And, in the original New York production of Dogfight at Second Stage, my best friend Adam was in the cast. I remember talking to him when they were working on it and him saying, "It's so good. It's the best thing that anyone has ever seen."

Is it?

Well, Adam's given to hyperbole, but I remember that everyone who was working on it thought it was something really special.

What are its merits?

The score is really fresh, as far as contemporary musical theater goes. Benj and Justin are sort of post-Sondheim writers. I don't know if they, or anyone, would call them that except for me, but Stephen Sondheim introduced a way of writing music and lyrics for musical theater that was a departure from what had come before, and I think Benj and Justin are a great example of two young guys who have taken up that baton and are continuing the sort of work that Sondheim was discovering. The score serves to further the plot and story. The music is very tied to character. Since it takes place in the sixties, they've also found ways of throwing in musical references to that time period. There's a scene in a club where there's a lounge singer singing music that they wrote but which sounds like it came from that period. Also, the main character, Rose, is a folk singer and guitarist and the material that they've written for her feels like something that you could imagine having been written and sung in the sixties by a young female folk artist.

Then, the story is really unique. It's a love story, but the situation in which they fall in love is infinitely more complex than the typical boy-meets-girl story. I think falling in love is often a bizarre, complex situation, and this is a story that really captures the idiosyncrasies of two people discovering each other and realizing that they love each other. The Dogfight is a dance that's organized by these Marines for the last night before they're shipped off to Vietnam, and the goal of the evening is for each Marine to find the ugliest girl to bring to the dance, and whoever brings the ugliest date wins the pot. The story finds Eddie Birdlace at a diner with very little time left to find a girl when he meets Rose, who's very shy and sheltered and working with her mother in the diner and spends most of her time writing songs and doesn't have many friends so she's very naive and awkward. Eddie winds up bringing her to this awful party and she discovers the truth about it. The rest of the show develops how and what they learn from each other and the way that they that they find love in each other and end up needing each other.

How does that fit within the season?

All of the shows in this season have characters that meet each other and change each other in specific ways. They explore that same dynamic in different ways, in different time periods, in different circumstances. The Mountain Top was about Martin Luther King meeting a maid at the hotel he's staying at on his last night on Earth who turns out to be an angel. She is able to re-contextualize the way he's thinking about his work and the movement. In Dogfight, Eddie's in a specific world and mindset and through his encounter with Rose, she is able to re-contextualize some things for him, and vise versa. Judy's Scary Little Christmas has Judy Garland thinking about her life and the world in a particular way and then she meets someone who re-contextualizes that for her. 4000 Miles is about a grandmother whose grandson bikes 4000 miles to come stay with her and they learn from each other. Chinglish is about an American who goes over to China ostensibly to correct the bad English translations on their signage. He goes from, "Oh, how cute and charming that the Chinese can't get their English straight" to learning that English is not the ruler of all the languages and he is opened up to the possibility that he doesn't have a complete picture of how the world works. The closing show, Angry Housewives, is about a bunch of housewives who are frustrated with their lives and come together to form a punk rock band. So all of the shows in the season have to do with people who have narrow or limited world views who are operating under a set of assumptions that is limited in its scope and these characters meet people who offer different perspectives and all the characters wind up changing each other for the better.

There's a film version of Dogfight from 1991 with River Phoenix and Lili Taylor as Eddie and Rose. Should one or shouldn't one be familiar with it before coming to see the play?

You could. I didn't start by watching the film because I wanted to get into the musical form of this story, which is necessarily a little bit different than the film.

Can you explain how?

Well, the characters sing, for one thing... I wanted to make sure that I had become familiar with this as a piece of musical theater before I looked at the film. And then, when I felt I knew what this was as a musical, I wanted to see the film to take a look at what the source material was. It was actually quite illuminating. The film was made in 1991, a time period when the pacing of films was slower and the reality is grittier and real-er. Nowadays we have films that are so ridden with underscore all the time and they move very quickly and it's about post-MTV jump cuts and assaults on the senses. Films from around 1991 were not like that at all. They were slower and freer and closer to a gritty reality. In some ways, that is the antithesis of a musical. A musical takes a slice of life and concentrates it down and adds music and theatricality and other poetic devices. But, watching the film and being reminded of the circumstances between these characters encouraged me to reinvestigate these circumstances and make sure that, whether the characters are singing or not, the focus is on the reality of what happens between the characters. There needs to be a strong reality to it, because you need to believe in the reasons that these people fall in love in the real world independent of forms. For audiences, if you see the film before you see the musical, that's great. If you don't see the film, the musical stands on its own.

How have you personalized Dogfight to Arts West?

We have a very intimate space with only 149 seats and our stage is also three-quarter thrust, which means that there's audience on three sides. When they did it in New York they did it in Second Stage, which is proscenium, meaning that the audience is in front of the action and it takes place in a sort of picture frame. For us, the audience is much closer to the action and we're able to create focus much easier. In bigger venues, you have to make sure that even the audience back in row ZZ can understand what is happening in the story, so you often have to bend and contort reality to be able make the play read. Here, every seat in the house has ready access. We're able to preserve the moment-to-moment reality that's taking place between characters.

Our set has also been designed to represent many locations, sort of like a blank canvas, instead of being illustrative in a photorealistic way. We create a kind of jungle gym, a playground where many locations can happen. Our set has been designed to feel like an extension of the space that the audience is in. There are times that we use the whole space, which feels like a wide shot in a movie. And then there are times where we have very intimate scenes between two people happening right here and that feels like a close-up. My hope is that it feels somewhat cinematic in that way.

Is it coming out as you envisioned it?

Yes.

How so?

The simple answer to that is we have an amazing team of designers. Ahren Buhmann, who's building the set as we speak. Bobby Aguilar, who's doing lights. Chelsea Cook is doing costumes. All of the designers are great artists in their own right. They begin from a place of reading the script and talking with me and with each other about the world that we're trying to create. The whole design process begins with meetings where we sit around this table and discuss what colors are in this world, what is the shape of this world, what is the feel of this space, what kind of period specificity are we looking for. And because these guys are all total pros, they're able to bring these ideas to fruition, when push comes to shove.

Can you tell me about those decisions? Is it warm or cold? Energetic or still?

It's all of those. There are moments when it's warm. There are moments when it feels cold. There are moments when it gets quite hot. There are moments where there is stillness. There are moments with tremendous energy. There's moments where Eddie and Rose are on the Golden Gate Bridge and are looking out at the landscape, which is quite still and beautiful. And the music echoes that. And then there are moments where it's a bunch of rowdy, drunken Marines just being locker room bros jumping up on furniture and singing.

How has it been working with the actors?

It's been great. We've found an fantastic cast. It's actually one of the strongest ensembles that I've worked with in my three years in Seattle, because we have people in the ensemble who maybe don't get that much stage time, but every single one of them is as strong as the others. We have Kirsten and Tori in the female ensemble playing different roles with these little, featured moments, and they are strong, capable performers, so we're in the unique position that when these supporting characters come out and open their mouths to sing their featured bit, you’re like, "Oh, my God." Here it's an ensemble of twelve equally strong individuals. And it's a tricky show. The score is very demanding on your aptitude as a musician. The harmonies and rhythms and meters are really complex. You have to be able to execute all the technicalities of the music and choreography, and you have to do it in such a way that it becomes internalized so you can abandon thinking about them and focus on playing your character.

It sounds like an ideal show for you.

It matches all of my tastes. Being a musician myself, music resonates with me very immediately and deeply, and I can be very critical about how music is used in musical theater, so the fact that the music and lyrics work so well is a plus for me. Also, I need to work on plays where those elements are used to further the story, because, when push comes to shove, being a musician or not, my main concern is that the story is told clearly and compellingly. In this show, all of the elements conspire to make that be the case. More than I even expected, it's exactly the kind of show that I want to be working on always.

Dogfight runs from October 23rd to November 22nd at Arts West Theater in the Alaska Junction. Tickets cost $17-$36.50 and may be purchased here [http://www.artswest.org/theatre-plays/dogfight/].

Amanda Knox is a freelance writer and a West Seattle resident.