November 11 – December 14, 2008
INTERVIEW WITH TIM CLUE
By Christopher Trela
Chicago native Tim Clue’s first writing gig was – and still is – stand-up comedy. He plies that craft as a corporate entertainer and also as a guest on XM comedy channels and WGN radio, among others. He switched gears in 1991 when he helped establish Short Story Theater, a multimedia theatrical company that combined short fiction adaptations with documentary footage. In 1999, Tim teamed with his friend Spike Manton to form Chicago Sitcom as a means to develop their ideas for film, stage and television. They wrote and directed a Chicago-based television sitcom pilot called “Tiny Pig” that made into the ‘can’, but not on TV. They had better success with their next project, Leaving Iowa, which debuted at the Purple Rose Theatre Company in 2004 and has its West Coast Premiere at The Laguna Playhouse. Tim lives in Chicago with his wife, one cat, no kids, and no station wagon.
Q: You make your living as a stand-up comedian and corporate entertainer. What made you want to do that?
A: I come from a mixed background. I have an MFA in Directing and Acting, but hated every production I was in and people hated me too, so I immediately jumped out of acting. I quickly stumbled into stand-up, which I learned is writing for yourself, and self-directing. There are never-ending challenges in trying to figure out how to make it work. Unless you are an absolute comedy savant, even the great ones like Seinfeld look back on their early years and how ill-formed they were.
Q: Was the transition from stand-up comedy to playwriting an easy one?
A: I did some adaptations of short stories that resulted in three critically-acclaimed productions in Chicago, and Spike and I were working on a TV pilot, but finally I said to him let’s do something full throttle that we can work with and mold and reshape and is totally ours. The short story theater works were very dramatic, but after doing three of them I was asked by another new theater if I’d like to do a comedy. After reviewing a lot of comedies, the ones I loved were overdone to death. I’m stubborn enough to say let’s just write one.
Q: Was it challenging writing something original as opposed to adaptations?
A: We were not worried because we hate everything we write, so when we wrote Leaving Iowa we hated it right off the bat and rewrote it 100 times. That’s where our writing chops are. We’re good writers but great rewriters. But first, we had to figure out something to write in order to rewrite.
Q: Once you finished writing Leaving Iowa, it had a development run and got picked up by Jeff Daniels’ Purple Rose Theater. How did that happen?
A: We got lucky. We rewrote what we had and Jeff liked it, so we went to the Purple Rose in Chelsea, Michigan, where the play became a real work. The Purple Rose Theater produces and develops new works—it’s a development and creative experience for Midwestern works. We worked with a very comfortable director who was not terrified when I said that an entire scene has to go but I’ll write you a new one with my partner and bring it in tomorrow. It was our comic sitcom ability to know what we’d like it to be so let’s work on it until it gets there, and the Purple Rose Company is so adept at ripping pages out and putting pages in and saying let’s put it on its feet and get it right.
Q: Leaving Iowa deals in part with a family vacation. Was this inspired by your own experiences?
A: Even though Spike grew up in upstate New York and I grew up west of Chicago, we had a shared experience of the vacation being about the journey as much as it was the destination itself. You don’t remember the destination as much as the journey. My vacations included meeting people even my dad didn’t really like, but there was a weird loyalty that if there was someone in the family, you had to go see them.
Q: You shifted gears with Leaving Iowa, leaving dramatic theater for comedy, which seems better suited to your background. And yet, Leaving Iowa is not an all-out comedy.
A: It bills itself as a sentimental comedy. In fact, it’s the actors and their take on it that makes it a touching comedy. People read our script and the initial reaction is “what a lovely story, why do you call it a comedy?” We wanted the comedy to come from truth, but exaggerated truth. The story has to be specific enough that it’s not cliché. One reviewer wrote, “I was manipulated, told where to laugh and cry, and I loved every minute of it.” I think that’s a very honest assessment of the play. I think people see it as a work of both good comedy and good art. It has a film feel to it.
Q: Leaving Iowa has a generous dose of humor, but it’s also very real and even poignant at times. That balance seems perfectly suited to the mood of the piece.
A: Comedy is a familiar companion, and so are memories. Who hasn’t been in their car, heard a song on the radio, and is suddenly transported back to a specific time and place. That’s what I want this play to do. It’s a time capsule that needs to be captured both humorously and sincerely at the same time. Where the movie Vegas Vacation made mockery of vacations, I hope Leaving Iowa is more of a sentimental journey.
