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Little League comedy for adults
Take me out to the Black Box
Friday, Sept. 5, 2008
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It’s about oddballs — total mismatches who lead a dreamy batch of wannabe-Major Leaguers to the thrilling championship game.
This play is not for Little Leaguers; it is for ex-Little Leaguers, maybe, or perhaps for the parents of Little Leaguers.
Bruce Dresser’s ‘‘Rounding Third” is both hilarious and dark. Early on it will become evident that the drama in both these characters’ lives extends well beyond the diamond.
On Aug. 18, Kevin Jiggetts and Brian Donohue, who will perform a minimalist production of ‘‘Rounding Third” at Black Box Theatre, were reading aloud from scripts during a preview at a Starbucks in Accokeek. The director and founder of Accokeek Creek Theater Co., Bob Bartlett, was beside them, narrating, and occasionally unleashing belly laughs.
While both actors had read and approved of the script given to them by Bartlett, neither was yet very familiar with the nuances of acting it out. It was clear, however, that Bartlett had chosen a great pair for the coaches, Don and Michael: The chemistry (or maybe anti-chemistry) between these two was palpable, and it was not hard to envision the leap from music stand to stage when all that had to be added, in a sense, was motion and sound effects.
Jiggetts, from Waldorf, an accomplished stage actor, has had guest roles on the television shows ‘‘Law and Order SVU,” ‘‘Homicide” and ‘‘The Wire.” Donohue, who has had numerous stage roles around Southern Maryland, recently appeared, ironically, in Accokeek’s Black Box production of ‘‘The Odd Couple.”
Don paints houses. Michael works for a company with government contracts.
Don remembers his own Little League games with clarity, as if they happened yesterday. Michael, who grew up in Canada, has fading yet fond memories of curling competitions.
In their first meeting, Don, a fourth-year coach, tries to explain to Michael, a new assistant who is about the fill the shoes of the former yet apparently brilliant Tony, exactly what he expects, which is mainly to be on time (or have a good excuse) and never to contradict him.
Michael’s only excuses for his tardiness, however, will be heavy traffic (Tony, a cop, was once 10 minutes late after he got shot in the groin). And when Don says the key to success is to ‘‘draft well” and that the path to happiness is winning, always winning, Michael can never stop himself from countering: Kids need to have fun. Kids need to explore. Kids need to be ‘‘the captains of their own little ships.”
‘‘It’s going to be a great season,” Michael says with ‘‘Beaver” Cleaver optimism. ‘‘God willing,” Don says, ‘‘and if we get the pitching.”
The first rehearsal
A few days later, Jiggetts and Donohue were on the stage at the Black Box Theatre. It was the first practice, and Bartlett, who teaches theater at Bowie State University, watched and commented from a desk.
It’s a busy time for Bartlett.
Last spring Accokeek put out a call for short plays set in an American diner. Eleven were selected and read during the Kennedy Center’s Page-to-Stage Festival on Labor Day. Bartlett’s original script ‘‘Hunter Rising” was read during the festival on Aug. 31. In July and August, he directed a production at Quotidian Theatre Company in Bethesda.
The only things on the Black Box stage, meanwhile, were a brown bench and a baseball bat. Jiggetts and Donohue both wore T-shirts and jeans, and Donohue’s T-shirt bore the company logo of Dunder Mifflin, from the television show ‘‘The Office.”
I had never met either actor prior to the rehearsal, and they were so natural in their roles that it was hard to separate the characters from the actors. And as Jiggetts squatted at the edge of the stage to face a new crop of invisible Little Leaguers on the first day of practice and boldly declared that the key to having fun and being successful is ‘‘WINNNING!,” I found myself in meditation, rolling back through every coach in every youth sport I ever had — the yellers, the quiet ones, the great ones, the clueless ones.
Dresser, when he hears Don’s exhortations, has written that he goes through the same sort of meditation. The script for ‘‘Rounding Third” was inspired by his son Sam describing after a Little League practice how the coaches had designed a playoff strategy whereby slow players, when possible, would slide into base and fake an injury so they could be replaced by faster runners.
Dresser was horrified, but he came to understand a bit more about this psychology when he later became a coach. He wrote, ‘‘... I discovered that I wanted to win. I really wanted to win. That voice I heard bellowing across the diamond was my own. Perhaps to rationalize the extent of these feelings, I concluded that since we live in such a highly competitive society, don’t we have an obligation to teach our children how to succeed?”
There are no former Little Leaguers involved in this production of ‘‘Rounding Third,” the first in the Washington, D.C. region.
Jiggetts explained how he had recently watched baseball and did not really understand it. ‘‘It was the Little League World Championships,” he said. ‘‘There were highlights of it on the news, and I was glued to it.”
Jiggetts, in some respects, must approach his role through his experience in the Marines. ‘‘No such thing as an ex,” he said, ‘‘just former.”
Donohue, meanwhile, who identifies with a combination of both characters, relates to ‘‘Rounding Third” as a parent whose sons play Little League.
‘‘I remember the first game my older son played,” he said. ‘‘All of a sudden it’s a real game, and you just look at the faces of every father whose kid goes up to bat. That first time their kid gets a hit, there is just this wash of relief that comes over their face.”
Bartlett’s expression was slightly incredulous, and Donohue raised his voice.
‘‘Every father has it,” he continued. ‘‘It’s not that I am living through my kid; it’s not that at all. It’s I want my kid to do well. I want him to be happy.”
‘‘That,” Bartlett said, ‘‘is so pathetic.”
‘‘I guess if you don’t have kids,” Donohue said, ‘‘you don’t understand.”
