Theaters are under no journalistic obligation to tell both sides of a story.
But in an upcoming production, Curious Theatre artistic director Chip Walton is trying to be as evenhanded as possible in presenting both sides of one of the more polarizing and personal economic issues of our times: The proliferation of superstores like Wal-Mart. Taking sides is not only less interesting, he said, “It’s irresponsible.”
The world’s biggest retailer may also be the most admired and reviled company on the planet. It has 6,700 stores, squashing thousands of small businesses since 1962. But it generates $345 billion in revenues and employs 1.8 million.
Founder Sam Walton’s story is, in many ways, the epitome of the American Dream.
“Mall*Mart, the Musical!” is a landmark production for Curious: It’s an original, commissioned piece; it’s the company’s first musical; and it is being presented in full collaboration with the University of Colorado’s Department of Theatre and Dance, where Walton earned his Ph.D.
The case against Wal-Mart is familiar, long and damning. The discount version of the allegations: It engages in illegal pricing schemes, it’s moved thousands of manufacturing jobs out of the U.S., it mistreats employees, it sells counterfeit merchandise made in sweatshops, and it has been devastating to the environment.
Wal-Mart plays municipalities against one another, winning massive tax breaks to get new stores built while closing viable nearby stores, leaving concrete scars all across America. And while small towns are leveraging themselves to build their own Wal-Marts, the behemoth’s projected profit for 2007 is $12.2 billion.
But Wal-Mart also generates millions in tax revenues that its towns turn back into roads and schools. And it provides jobs: When a store opened in Chicago last year, more than 25,000 applied for 325 openings. Bottom line? Wal-Mart sells for less – 176 million shop there every week. And it gives $300 million a year to charities, making it America’s largest corporate contributor ($4 million in Colorado).
“It’s easy to attack a corporation like Wal-Mart, but that’s not particularly illuminating,” said Walton. “I am deeply admiring of some aspects of their success. Wal-Mart has fundamentally changed the way the world does business. And it has changed the way we shop.”
“Mall*Mart,” two years in the making, has evolved into a two-for-one musical: Act I tells the thinly veiled tale of the rise of Walt Sampson – “the names have been changed to protect the lawsuits,” actor Marcus Waterman joked. Act II is about the ramifications.
“It really mirrors the Littleton situation,” said Walton, referring to a proposed Wal-Mart that would abut a nature preserve there.
“Act II is the struggle within one community that economically needs a store,” said Walton, “but at what cost are they willing to sacrifice a piece of land that a lot people have an emotional attachment to?”
That question is not yet answered. It speaks to the high- wire nature of the creation process that in the final days before Saturday’s opening, Walton can calmly say, “We’re still trying to lock in exactly what happens at the end.”
Walton knew from the start the size and scale of this project was more than he could responsibly bite off alone. Enter CU. His creative team now exceeds 50, including six CU students and seven professional actors. It’s written by Joan Holden (“Paris on the Platte”), with music by Bruce Barthol and choreography by CU department chair Bud Coleman.
The process, including two weeks of public preview performances at CU’s main-stage theater, has afforded students a real-world education they couldn’t get in any classroom.
“It’s been really neat from a student perspective, because normally in college you only get two weekends to perform a show, and it’s over,” said Hallie Weiss, a senior journalism major from Colorado Academy. “The awesome thing here is that we are getting to do it for two months, and we are learning so much from everyone.”
Waterman, a veteran whose credits range from the Denver Center Theatre Company to the Country Dinner Playhouse, said the infusion of youth has been mutually beneficial.
“If you are fortunate to work a lot in this industry, there can be some taking for granted of what we do,” he said, “so to experience the freshness and vitality and energy of these extremely talented kids – sorry, Hallie – is really great. They are dedicated and prepared, and their little minds soak up things so quickly – and that can can be a little intimidating.”
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
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“Mall*Mart: The Musical!”
MUSICAL | Presented by Curious Theatre and University of Colorado at Boulder|Written by Joan Holden and Bruce Barthol|Directed by Chip Walton|Starring ensemble includes C. Kelly Leo, Michael Morgan, John Jurcheck, Megan Van De Hey and Marcus Waterman| THROUGH JUNE 13|At Acoma Center, 1080 Acoma St.|8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays starting May 6 (2-for-1 Thursdays)|$24-$28 |303-623-0524 or visit curioustheatre.org
More on “Mall*Mart, the Musical!”: John Moore’s interview outtakes
Further comments on the origins of this musical:
Chip Walton: Joan was working on the play on a commission with another theater in California and for various reasons it was never completed, so we put together what is called a finishing commission so that Joan and Bruce could finish it.
On Curious working with CU Deptartment of Theater and Dance:
Chip Walton: I could sense early on that a project of this scale wasn’t going to happen without some collaborative support. I liked the idea that the students and the professionals would interface. You should note that all the students are being paid a stipend for their work.
On how professional actor Marcus Waterman first heard about it:
Chip mentioned to me well over a year ago that they were going to foray into the musical realm. I was immediately intrigued with the concept and the project.
On how CU student actor Hallie Weiss first heard about it:
It was at the beginning of this year, and I just thought it was really exciting. Curious has such a great reputation in town, so I was really excited to get to work with such a professional group of people. I think a lot of us students just put our faith in it and went along for the ride. It’s been interesting to see how a new work comes about, and we’ve just been able to run with it.
On the evolution of the script:
Chip Walton: Well we inherited a working script, and the first thing we decided was that what was then Act I and II combined needed to be just Act 1. So then we had to create a new Act II, which we are still struggling with to this minute and beyond. We’ve been working on this for a year and a half, and in that time there have been two readings, one public workshop performance, plus two weekends of preview performances in Boulder. But for Joan and Bruce, the creative process is different than it is for most people. They come from a background with the San Francisco Mime Troupe, where there is a real honoring of collaborative contribution. A lot of playwrights go away and shut the door – Joan requires hours of daily conversation with a lot of different people, even when we are deep into rehearsals and rewrites. And that’s all great. We have tried to pull together a variety of artistic perspectives and amalgamate that into the direction we should go with this play together.
On the rehearsal process:
Hallie Weiss: It was really cool. The first week was just (Curious’) Dee Covington working with CU students on movement and the period when the first act takes place. I learned so much from her. And then we were joined by the professional actors from Curious, and they came in with great energy.
On the greatest benefit of bringing these disparate theater groups together:
Chip Walton: At a base level, this project could not have happened without the support of a collaborative partner. So there has been a great generosity of collaboration inside this project all along. We all committed to it with only half a script intact and not knowing what the future would hold. We all just rolled up our sleeves and moved forward. Bud Coleman is that kind of a person anyway, and his faith in us to lead it forward has been great. It’s been a nice marriage: We’re used to doing new works — but we don’t do musicals. They do musicals all the time – but they don’t do that many new works. So there has been a complementary strength in the collaboration.
There might be a presumption that this will be a political propaganda piece in which artists go after Wal-Mart.
Marcus Waterman: The effort is being made to be somewhat even-handed or exploratory of Wal-Mart economically, and the impact it has had both in its communities and globally. I think some people will leave having an opinion that it is some sort of a cautionary tale or an indictment, and I think there are others who will think that it’s more evenhanded.
Chip Walton: I’ve been adamant all along in saying that I’m not interested in simplicity, because simplicity is inaccurate. Trying to simplify the global retail phenomenon that has happened in the past 25 years is irresponsible. The way the world does business has changed because of large behemoth corporations, and not just Wal-Mart. I read “The Wal-Mart Effect” by Charles Fishman – and it’s incredibly interesting. This was a dream and a vision that one man had, he was committed to it, they are still an incredibly efficient business, and they are incredibly committed to their core values. There is a reason when you walk into their corporate offices you walk into a barebones folding chair. It’s a real kwanzit-hut environment. They don’t spend the millions of dollars on a lot of the things that other corporations spend millions of dollars on. They want to sell more, cheaper than anybody else. And, I think they have shown of late a certain willingness to adapt and change some of the ways they have done things. Their stores are becoming more environmentally friendly, and they are bettering their communities. It’s also import to recognize that there are a lot of things that large corporations like Wal-Mart could do, and they still don’t do.
… With success comes responsibility, and with responsibility come inherent choices, and each of those choices have real-life consequences. Whether that becomes the elected mayor of this small town having to make a choice whether to support leveling the marsh and building a megastore or saying no to the tax revenue that a store would create Or the CEO of Wal-Mart saying, whether he’s willing to give universal health care to all of his employees those are choices with real-life consequences. In the same way, whether somebody who’s living below the poverty line and doesn’t have a car decides to walk right over and buy stuff at Wal-Mart for his family that they really need to live on, or he finds a ride 30 miles away to the next place, that’s a choice. There are real-life consequences inside of this complex question. That’s what we’re trying to get at in the second act.
What are your personal feelings about Wal-Mart?
Hallie Weiss: It’s definitely mixed among college kids. All of us shop at Target, which is basically the same corporate structure as Wal-Mart. It’s just so exciting to shop there, and you just can’t deny that. What this musical made me realize are the problems from a consumer point of view. When you go in, there is so much to choose from that you always end up buying way more than you should or need. I think that’s a Catch-22. But yeah, everyone I know shops at Wal-Mart. They all know about the bad things, but what are you going to do?
On the impact the musical will have on audiences:
Chip Walton: I think hopefully people are going to be markedly divided over the two acts. I think the people who really like Act I are going to be the same people who might have issues with Act 2, and vice versa. And what I hope that does is really make them ask, ‘Well, why did I like this act more than that act? It’s going to really ask people to have some hard conversations with themselves about their core beliefs.
… If I could wave my magic wand, I would say I hope it really personalizes an issue that normally gets so politicized in so many different directions so that it allows us to engage in it on a different level than people are used to.
Marcus Waterman: This process, as an actor, has been a wonderful opportunity. It’s been difficult for a lot of people, but for my money, the question mark of how it is going to be received is all about art to me. You toss it up in the air and you don’t know how it is going to come down, and I think that’s thrilling and I’m thrilled to be part of it because it doesn’t happen all that often.
Al Norman’s book, “The Case Against Wal-Mart” posits that Wal-Mart:
* Forces its own workers to labor “off the clock” without pay
* Uses overseas sweatshop labor to manufacture its corporate brand clothing
* Sells knock-off and counterfeit merchandise that misleads and confuses its customers
* Destroys acres of environmentally sensitive lands to build new Wal-Marts, close to existing Wal-Marts that will be closed
* Has eliminated all competition in many towns across the U.S. by illegally lowering prices below wholesale
* Has forced the movement of thousands of manufacturing jobs out of the U.S.
* Calls “full-time” 28 hours per week and pays wages so low that many of its employees qualify – and accept – welfare payments
* Demands millions of dollars in tax breaks to locate in communities all over the U.S., while it earns billions of dollars in profits.
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3more
“DOG SEES GOD: CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE BLOCKHEAD” What happens when the Peanuts gang grows up? That’s what Bert V. Royal’s semi-serious comedy explores. “CB’s” dog is dead, his sister has gone goth, and his ex-girlfriend has been institutionalized for setting a little redheaded girl’s hair on fire. Directed by Nick Sugar for The Avenue Theater. 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, through June 16, at 417 E. 17th Ave. $15-$22 (303-321-5925 or avenuetheater.com).
“FREAK TRAIN” Performance artists doing their freaky thing. This time, seven of the 12 slots have been reserved for various regulars to perform this week’s “365 Days/365 Plays,” part of the largest ongoing festival in theater history. 8 p.m. Monday at The Bug Theatre, 3654 Navajo St. (303-477-9984, bugtheatre.org).
“SQUALL” Modern Muse presents this “comic psychological thriller” about a celebrated TV journalist who’s visited by a young woman with disturbing memories of her recently deceased mother. 7 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 1:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, through May 27, at the Arvada Center’s Black Box Theatre, 6901 Wadsworth Blvd. $15-$20 (303-780-7836 or modernmusetheatre.com).
–John Moore
ONLINE EXCLUSIVE
RUNNING LINES WITH … ELIZABETH HEMMERDINGER:
Denver Post theater critic John Moore talks with the playwright of Modern Muse’s “Squall.” listen at denverpost.com/theater
