Playwright Rolin Jones was “a pizza delivery dude,” he says, “for far too long.”
“I actually knocked on the door of the former math god at our high school and she and I were both looking at each other going, ‘What the hell happened to us? What are we doing here? God!”‘
But the breaking point of Jones’ pizza career was also the impetus for the creation of his Pulitzer-finalist comedy “The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow,” opening today in its regional premiere by Next Stage.
“It was one of those moments where you go to yourself, ‘Hey Jones: Get going man, because this is getting embarrassing.”‘
Jones went to the Yale School of Drama, though he says, “Please also put down that I went to Cal State Northridge. I’m just a completely idiotic state college kid.”
The kid is 33, loves Jethro Tull and all sports except football, “because football celebrates all that is wrong with our country – the aggressive pursuit of land and specialization … I mean, place-kickers? C’mon.”
Jones talks in the same rapid-fire speed as the action in his breakneck plays, which have been compared to the absurd fantastic comedies of David Lindsay-Abaire (“Fuddy Meers”). And talk about a guy in a hurry. It’s a good thing he wrote “Jenny Chow” first thing after he got to Yale. Now he figures he’s too old for the job.
“It’s a ridiculously youthful play,” he said. “I think it’s the best thing I could do at 29, but now at 33, I wouldn’t trust myself to touch a word of it because I already feel like an old person staring at it. The strategy of this play is that here is this 22-year-old girl, sort of bratty, sort of punky, telling her story, so you gotta get young.
“You’ve got a much better chance to enjoy the play if you are under 30. … Although you never know, because old people tend to dig it – if they can get past my beautiful devotion to the ‘f word.”‘
“Jenny Chow” is a kind of sci-fi fantasia that in Denver will be accompanied by a live underscore of “excitable music” by Martha Yordy. Jones’ protagonist is Jennifer, not to be confused with Jenny.
Jennifer is a genius agoraphobic Internet addict with OCD. She was born in China but was adopted and raised as an all-American Southern California girl. Now she wants to know her birth mother, but she can’t set foot outside her room. Jenny is the flying robot she makes out of obsolete Army missiles to send off in search of Mommy. What happens next, well, defies description.
“It’s a piece of theater that is constantly transforming itself,” said Jones, also a writer for the acclaimed Showtime series “Weeds.” “It moves. It has a lot of velocity. And really that’s just the play desperately saying, ‘Please don’t get bored.”‘
Jones’ nonliteral style takes great imagination and confidence, which draws a hackle from a self-deprecating guy who makes Woody Allen seem smug. “The truth is, I’m just not good enough yet to have two guys sitting in a room talking,” he said. “I’m not Stoppard. I’m just trying to fake everybody out. It’s kind of deceiving. One day when I’m 50 and I really have something to say and I’ve got some life experience behind me, maybe I will write a play like that. But God knows that would be completely insufferable. So enjoy this one.”
This one is a wild ride with eccentric characters including a wild-eyed Russian scientist, a Mormon genealogy researcher with whom Jennifer has text sex – and, yes, a stoner pizza-
delivery dude.
The challenge for the actress playing Jennifer is enormous, not only because the play opens with 10 minutes of frantic exposition. “This is a titanic role for a particular type of actress that doesn’t get this kind of role often,” Jones said.
His advice to Denver actress An Nguyen, who only assumed the role Saturday after a casting change:
“Give yourself a break. When the lights come up, don’t worry just because you have to drive the whole thing and you have more lines than King Lear. Just relax. It’s all good. Get past the first 10 minutes and the play is yours. And if you like your body now, you are going to be 10 pounds lighter by the end of the run, so enjoy that, too.”
Jones pokes fun at our loss of human contact, science and cyberspace gone mad, cultural identity, Asian stereotypes, the military and more. But in the end, he said, it’s just “a cuddly robot play.”
“Only in this case, the robot is sort of the manifest id of the best parts of herself.”
Manifest id? Sounds like a Yale guy, not a Northridge guy.
“Hey, if that sounds awesome,” Jones said, “please run with that then.”
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
“The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow”
COMEDY|Presented by Next Stage|Written by Rolin Jones|Directed by Bernie Cardell|Starring An Nguyen, Gene Kato and Jason Maxwell|At Phoenix Theatre, 1124 Sante Fe Drive|THROUGH SEPT. 23|7:30 Thursdays-Saturdays, 6:30 p.m. Sundays (also 7:30 p.m. Sept. 11)|$13-$18|720-209-4105
