my river phoenix fugue playwright's note
we open at The Tank on my birthday so you have to come
This is a program note I wrote to support the upcoming production of my play, river phoenix fugue. It runs at The Tank on September 14, 16, 18, 19, 20, and 21, produced by Firebird and double-billed with the brilliant Rae Bell, Sophie Falvey, and Zoe Senese-Grossberg’s if i live until i be a man. Both plays are about the messy emotional consequences of boyhood and the uncomfortable space between being a child and being an adult. Get tickets here!
We premiered river phoenix fugue this past weekend at Wig-Wag Live!, an event I co-produced with Wig-Wag’s Brad Efford and my old army buddy1 Josh Brown. It was a beautiful evening, and I was so proud to have my play featured alongside readings from great essays by Emily Costa, Meggie Gates, Taylor Hunsberger, Miya Singer, and J.P. Viernes, plus musical interludes by Jack McManus2. I felt a really profound sense of artistic community that night, and I was so excited to talk to everybody afterwards about their work. Check out our 5th anniversary issue of Wig-Wag here — river phoenix fugue is in the print version.
The Wig-Wag Live! reading of river phoenix fugue was directed by Reuven Glezer and starred Rachel Brudner, Romeo Torres, and Mackenzie Kwok. The Tank production is directed by Max Keane, assistant directed by Jack McManus, and stars Julia Baker, Rachel Brudner, Katrina Coffman, Christiane Swenson, and Romeo Torres on various days. I’d love to see you there!
river phoenix fugue - program note
River Phoenix found me in a devastated heap sometime in 2022, and, in a moment when I needed hope, He showed Himself to me. This Christian son of a Jewish mother, born outside and reared in others’ homes, experienced trial after tribulation, all angles and eyes and rights and wrongs. And then He died for my sins.
It’s so easy to talk about River Phoenix like he was the Christ child because he fulfills a similar prophecy — literally, in the sense that his birth was a religiously euphoric occasion to his parents and their community. They told River throughout his childhood that he was a divine creature sent to earth to change the world with his gifts, and that making change was his personal and individual responsibility.
River and his siblings (including Joaquin) were born into the Children of God, a sexually abusive religious cult. He once told a magazine that he was “celibate” between the ages of 9 and 14. He was also the primary breadwinner for the Phoenix family by the time he was 7 years old — the oldest of five, River led the family band in busking to provide for the family. He died a horrible, preventable death in front of Johnny Depp’s nightclub on Halloween in 1993.
I want you to know that, because River’s gentleness and openness I describe in this play is a function of the way he grew up. It seems to me that he picked many of his acting roles with some degree of psychological awareness of his own life’s narrative — he always plays older brothers, protectors, and people doing their best to be a good person up against extenuating personal circumstances. So much of what makes River Phoenix captivating onscreen is owed to the ways River Phoenix was mistreated by people who were supposed to take care of him.
I’m glad we have the one River Phoenix! He is my favorite actor, and I dedicate this play to him with all of the love, respect, and admiration in my heart. But I hope there is never another. River deserved infinitely more years to unpack his first 23.
If you’re here, you should watch: Running on Empty (1988, dir. Sidney Lumet), Dogfight (1991, dir. Nancy Savoca), My Own Private Idaho (1991, dir. Gus Van Sant), Stand By Me (1986, dir. Rob Reiner), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989, dir. Steven Spielberg), The Thing Called Love (1993, dir. Peter Bogdanovich), and Sneakers (1992, dir. Phil Alden Robinson and co-starring folks like Sidney Poitier, Robert Redford, and James Earl Jones), at minimum. You’ll see why all those names wanted to work with River, and why I wanted to write about him.
PLEASE COME SEE THIS PLAY AT THE TANK IT’S GONNA BE GREAT!
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we did the actors theatre of louisville apprenticeship together between july of 2019 and march of 2020 and then i don’t know if you heard but something happened???
i legally have to tell you i am in love with this person. i, as always, stan “Royal Blue” from All At Once [40th Anniversary Remaster], but i was equally excited to hear “Marcia’s in the Back Room,” written about Marcia Lucus editing Star Wars, at this movie nerd event