Loud Fridge Theatre Group Makes Debut With ‘Straight’
Speaker 1: 00:00 There's a new theater company in town and it's springing the San Diego premiere of the place, straight to 10th Avenue Arts Centers, forum stage KPBS Arts reporter Beth OCHA Mando speaks with John Wells, the third about founding loud fridge theater group. John, you have just started up a theater company called loud fridge theater. So you guys are brand new on the scene here. Give us a little background on who you are and how this group came together. Speaker 2: 00:31 I am an actor or local actor here in San Diego. I came here about three years ago. Um, I was Johnny in a production of the mystery of love and sex at diversionary theater and I fell in love with the theater community out here. So I moved out here and I have been here ever since and I've made a couple of friends out here and I've loved it. The funny thing about loud fridge is that we did not intend to start a theater. We're a collection of actors and all of us are working actors in this city. A lot of us are pretty established in the city and it just happened loud fridge just happened. I met the playwright of a straight one of two of straight and through talking and having conversation, he told me, you know what? I think you would be really great for, um, the show and I think that you should really read it. Speaker 2: 01:28 So he sent me the script and I loved the script and I said, wow, when are you bringing Mr San Diego? And he looked at me, he's like, well, what are you going to do to make that happen? So a year went by and I was still waiting and he's like, so did you find anybody to do this out here? He says, no, I haven't found anybody. And I was like, fine, you know what, I'll do it. So I started doing the process of getting everything together. And I ran into a few snags. One of the snacks was with the, with the, uh, the publishing house. They actually said, well, in order to give you the rights I, you have to have a company name. I said, okay. So I gave them a company name, just a random company named loud fridge theater group, which has a meeting, but I gave him that name and that was the start of it. Speaker 2: 02:21 A, I had already pulled together two of my acting friends, Andrea Gusto and Kate Rose Reynolds. So the three of us actually are the founding members of loud fridge. And we talked about what we wanted and how we wanted it to be viewed and pretty much we wanted to tell meaningful stories that speak to humanity and the human condition. And uh, that's kind of where loud fridge came from. And you said the name has a meaning, what is that? Yes. So, um, what I'd like to tell people is, you know, loud fridge came sitting in a group, uh, and with a group of friends and we were thinking about a name for a different theater company and someone looked at a fridge, we were in a kitchen and someone looked over at the fridge that kept on buzzing the entire time we were there. He says, loud fridge, theater group. Speaker 2: 03:15 And everyone laughed and we all got a kick out of it. That was about three years before I actually put loud fridge into a theater and I decided to keep a loud fridge because one, because I thought it was a catchy name. It's funny, it's ironic, but also because I want to be a constant noise in the community and you know there seems to always seems to be that fridge when it's an allowed fridge, it's in the background all the time and you know, sometimes it seems to like bleed into your subconscious like what is that noise? And I want to be that. I want to be that person where it's like, what is that noise? I'm obviously not quite as annoying, Speaker 1: 03:51 but the play you were doing is called straight. Give us a little summary of what it's about. Speaker 2: 03:59 Straight is about, is it about a journey of the main character Ben, who is struggling between his longterm relationship with his girlfriend, Emily and his attraction to a 20 year old male college student, Chris. And it really dives into these ideas of labels and boxes and personal identity and not only seeking acceptance from people around you, but learning how to accept yourself. Speaker 1: 04:29 And you have a scene in the play you play Ben, and you have a scene in the play that you feel kind of sums up what this plays about. If you don't mind, if you could perform a little piece of this for us. Speaker 2: 04:39 Yes I can. All right. [inaudible] we're obsessed with drawing neat little lines around things that columnizing people don't like ambiguity, Amanda Straight by default. If it does something with another guy, he just goes over to gay. That's it. Everything attached or I mean, yeah. Say Your Bi see you believes you. Okay. Speaker 1: 05:00 Labels. People love to put labels on things. You described the play in the press release as being for this quote unquote post equality environment we're in. What does that mean to you? Yes. Actually Speaker 2: 05:14 something that is in the, uh, synopsis of the play that the playwrights wrote. Uh, and I love it because they put quotations around post equality. And I think what it means a I s it's funny cause I actually just spoke with the cast about this the other day, is that we live in a a world in a society that prides themselves on being so accepting and so progressive. But beneath that, I don't think we've come as far as we like to believe we have this post equality. We're still fighting for equality in so many areas outside of even just sexual orientation between orientation and rent and gender and race. We're still fighting for this equality and yeah, we're making strides, but I think that we still have these things of, of trying to put people in that perspective. Boxes you go here, this person goes here instead of just accepting who we are at the core. Yeah. Speaker 1: 06:17 And what is it like to try and get a small theater company off the ground and to find a venue? Is this something that you found extremely challenging or was San Diego kind of inviting to something like this? Speaker 2: 06:31 I would say it's equivalent to trying to pedal biker airplane. It has been, uh, a huge struggle. It's extremely, it's extremely difficult. I mean, what is loud fridge? What kind of plays do they do? What is straight? It's a new play. Do I want to spend my money to go and see that? Uh, I've been so grateful and fortunate to have such a strong community of theater artists who know people who support, who, uh, I'm even the theater, other theater companies around who have supported, uh, in different ways. Diversionary theater, signet theater, lambs players, theater. They've all supported in their own individual way. And um, I think because of that, that's what's so great about San Diego. It's not like this everywhere, uh, in San Diego. People are so invested in each other and we, we, we look out for each other and we support each other in the theater community. And that's one of the things that I'm very grateful for. Speaker 1: 07:33 Now that you were forced into creating this theater company to do the play, do you have plans to keep it going? Speaker 2: 07:39 We'll see where it goes. By no means am I saying this is the end of loud fridge theater, but I'd like to see what, what happens next. Speaker 1: 07:48 All right, well, I want to thank you very much for talking with me. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. That was after John Wells, the third speaking with Beth Haka. Mondo straight begins performances tonight at the forum stage of 10th Avenue Arts Center and runs for two weekends.
