Performing Arts Spotlight: Clickshare

I am tired of the empty, easy-come-easy-go gratification of most of the things I watch these days. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes all I want is two hours of slack-jawed vegetation, but recently I have been thirsting for more.

Middlebury’s event listing describes Clickshare as a play about “a group of employees at a popular news website who live and die by the viral content of their pieces. But when they break a story that’s bigger than anything they’ve ever seen before, their lives hang in the balance.” I am here to promise you that it is so much less melodramatic and so much more gratifying than such a description would suggest. Rather than hiding out in your room this weekend and putting on a unfulfilling movie that you will forget as you shuffle back from your post-credits bathroom visit, come down to the MCA and immerse yourself in a play that will leave you both stimulated and satisfied.

The playwright, Lucas Kavner ’06.5, is a Brooklyn-based writer, performer and comedian from Plano, Texas who possesses an incredible gift for what New York Magazine describes as “artfully underwritten, unaffectedly colloquial and often uproarious dialogue.” Since graduating from Middlebury, Kavner has been filling newspapers, televisions, stages and websites with his evocative and critically acclaimed works.

Like the best of Kavner’s writing, both his major 2011 play, Fish Eye (a critic’s pick in Time Out and a featured work in New York Magazine’s Best Theatre of the Year list) and his 2013 play, Carnival Kids (a critic’s pick of The New York Times), approach intimately pertinent topics with brilliant ingenuity and humor.

According to one critic, Fish Eye “explodes the traditional chronology of romance and offers a modern take on the impossible exhilaration of love — when nothing means everything and everything means nothing — and the entire world shrinks down to a single moment.” Meanwhile, Carnival Kids was hailed by The New Yorker as “a hilariously funny ode to slightly immoral and irresponsible losers.”
When asked what motivates his writing, Kavner stated that he likes “writing that doesn’t feel like it’s trying to be smarter than everyone else in the world” and loves “when even the most serious of plays with the most serious of topics manage to be hilariously funny.”

Most people would agree with Kavner’s sentiment that he wants “more messy plays that don’t wrap up in a nice little package and you forget about five seconds later.” Clickshare is certainly one such play.

Onscreen, he has acted in or written for projects with Comedy Central, ESPN, VH1, ABC, Netflix and Dreamworks. His comedy videos have garnered millions of views online, and have been featured on the BBC, MSNBC, NPR and online in The New York Times, Huffpost, Time, Gawker, Vanity Fair and The Atlantic, among other places.

When not writing for the stage and screen or acting, Kavner composes essays for The Washington Post, The Believer, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, Slate, Dallas Morning News, The Billfold, Flavorwire and McSweeney’s. Along the way, he also spent three years as a staff reporter and videographer at The Huffington Post.

Scrolling through his hundreds of articles and projects, I was most captured by The Days of Yore, a website Kavner co-founded in 2013 to host interviews with some of the most celebrated artists and writers in the country about their pre-fame years.

When asked what kind of theater he finds most inspiring, Kavner responded, “I love plays that don’t go where you think they will. I hate things that are too clean or overwritten or plot-heavy. Any time I see the writer’s writing onstage, when a character is too consciously well spoken, I immediately tune out. Early on, I tried really hard to always write to the left of what the characters really wanted to say, so when they say exactly what they’re thinking, it becomes startling, rather than some over-eloquent norm. I also tend to love things I’d never think of writing myself … I like seeing plays about underdogs, about people whose stories aren’t getting told anywhere else.”

Although Kavner has not said where the vision for this particular work originated, Clickshare was first developed at the Middlebury Summer Play Labs. Taking place in August, the labs offer students the opportunity to flourish creatively in a non-academic setting. Current students are paired with experienced alumni to develop ideas, generate art pieces and learn valuable career skills related to the theatre and film industries.

Kavner absolutely loves what he does, but if he could change one thing about theatre, it would be the cost of attendance.

“We all say it,” he said, “but affordability is just the biggest thing. If the people who actually love theater, who are active members of the community, can’t afford to see it, that’s such a profound problem. The affordability thing ends up playing into so many other things, too. Because when only old, rich, white people can afford to see new plays, then the plays have to cater to the old, rich, white people. And that often leads to very boring plays.”

Luckily, the College has adressed the affordability problem. Tickets to Clickshare are only $6 for students, so show your support by walking down to the MCA this Thursday, Friday or Saturday (Dec. 3-5) at 7:30 p.m. or Saturday at 2:00 p.m. Friday’s performance will also feature a talk with Kavner, Theatre Professor and Director Alexander Draper and the cast. You will not want to miss this hilarious and evocative play as it offers a dark satire of Internet culture in the age of viruses, both real and imagined. It was written by a Midd kid and directed by a Midd kid – it is only right for it to be attended by Midd kids. Visit go/boxoffice or stop by either of the box offices in McCullough or the MCA for tickets.