The Purple Rose Theatre’s next production, Corktown, opens on Thursday, January 20 and runs through March 5. In late November, two weeks before rehearsals began for the play, I talked with playwright, Michael Brian Ogden, who will also act one of the lead roles, and with Guy Sanville, the Purple Rose’s Artistic Director and Corktown’s director.
TCP: Tell us about the play.
Ogden: When I originally wrote it I was very enamored with The Departed, this Irish mob, South Boston kind of thing, which has been very hot in the last five or ten years. And so in the fi rst draft it was called Quiet
City, Boston. And then, when we were workshopping it here [at the Purple Rose] Guy said, ‘Could we make this in Detroit?’ And at fi rst I was very resistant, but the more I thought about it, the more I was, like, ‘But wait… then this could work… and this could work.’ It takes place in Detroit, (Corktown is Detroit’s old Irish section) present day, and a hit man is having a sort of crisis of conscience. He’s not sure he wants to do it any more and his partner and best friend is trying to get him to think about it and be careful how he proceeds. Then it turns out that a person that they were supposed to have killed is not actually dead and the hit man, Joey is his name, is stuck in an apartment with this woman who is still alive, and trying to figure out what to do with her, because he just can’t bring himself to kill her, or anybody else.
TCP: At the age of 25, the work seems to make Ogden a rising area playwright.
Sanville: I was a bit of a bigot, age wise. [When it came to young playwrights, I thought] How could somebody 25 years old… I mean your problems, who cares? I got kids and mortgages…but I totally did a 180 reading his work. We’ve undergone kind of a youthquake here. He writes great romance, he writes great humor. It’s not about jokes, it’s about humor. It’s how people deal with problems. He writes something that
appeals to a smart 26 year old, and also to a 55 year old. We’re really glad that at this time we’re his creative home.
TCP: What was Jeff’s [Daniels] reaction tothe play?
Sanville: Jeff [Daniels— the Purple Rose’s founder and executive director] read the play a while ago when he was working in New York and he emailed me, ‘Just read Corktown. Holy shit!’ (Laughter) So I said, ‘I guess that means we get to do it, right?’ He goes, ‘Yeah!’ It’s going to be really great. We’re having a lot of fun just trying to figure out how to do it. We started rehearsals on the 14th of December, but these guys have been working on fi ghts for a couple of months now. We’re buying all kinds of guns, testing blood, and just doing all kinds of fun stuff. It’s exciting because it’s not quite like anything we’ve ever done before. I can’t wait to see where we end up.
