E-Mail This Article to a Friend No exit Wellfleet preaches Gizmo Love BY SALLY CRAGIN

When you think of the hundreds of people involved in the production of a film, it’s easy to forget that most movies start with a writer in a room. Up-and-coming playwright John Kolvenbach (his On an Average Day, starring Woody Harrelson and Kyle MacLachlan, played London in 2002) examines the process of creation in his new comedy/drama Gizmo Love, which gets its world premiere at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater next Thursday.

Kolvenbach’s central character, Ralph, isn’t just a young writer in Hollywood. He’s an innocent adrift who can’t be without his "gizmo box." The playwright describes Ralph as being devoted to this prop. "When he was a child, he got this box, and the same way children play with imaginary friends, he makes little sculptures and writes bits of poetry and does fantasy-based artwork."

"Ralph’s basically pitched the movie with this ‘gizmo box,’ " explains director Sam Weisman (he’s also a film director whose celluloid credits include George of the Jungle and Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star). "Living artifacts and emotions are in the box." Even with the box, Ralph still needs help, so the studio sends an older, more experienced "script doctor" into the room to help him. Weisman continues, "It’s really about the dreams and thoughts that people go through when they go through a creative collaboration."

But there’s a surrealistic touch as well. Just as Ralph’s inner life is locked in the gizmo box, so too are Ralph and the script doctor locked in the office. Props are minimal: a phone without a dial, a disposable coffee cup, and the box. The office has a drabness Sartre would recognize, though Weisman likens Kolvenbach’s writing style to that of Mamet, Beckett, and Pinter. "The office represents one of those offices you’re put in — unless you’re Tom Cruise, you get in these offices that are complete crap. The office door is literally and figuratively locked so the two creative guys can’t leave. They’re captured in there."

The stakes increase when a couple of hit men arrive. They’re packing heat, but they also crave stardom. Weisman, who lived in LA for nearly 20 years, finds these characters particularly apt. "It’s very difficult to tell the truth in Hollywood, because you’re constantly getting surrounded by dangerous people. Not dangerous in that they’ll kill you but dangerous to your soul. John has taken that one step further by saying that they’re really dangerous — actual hit men, but in this play hit men desperate to become creative people." Like everyone else in Hollywood, "they want to be actors."

For Weisman, directing Gizmo Love has been exhilarating. "Having to articulate to the actors how real this is has me running the movie of my life." Laughs Kolvenbach, "He’s the perfect director for this play. His life experience fits into this crazy play."

Although Kolvenbach has never lived in Los Angeles, Weisman maintains that the writer has captured the spirit of the place: paranoia, anxiety, and ambition. "The original spark was Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon," Kolvenbach points out. "There’s a little section on a writer who’s blocked who’s writing a screenplay. And he goes and talks to a Hollywood producer who spells out to him how you can write a scene. And I thought it was outrageous that Fitzgerald, that someone of his stature, would portray himself as someone who needed the advice of a producer."

Even given the surreal aspects of Gizmo Love, Kolvenbach declares that "everything that happens in the play is true. Short of someone actually being shot. I’m sure all that stuff happens. I do know that when you’re working on a creative project, the stakes get absurdly high and you come home from a life-and-death argument realizing it’s really meaningless, but you got caught up in winning this little battle."

Gizmo Love is at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater, Commercial Street in Wellfleet, July 29 through September 4. Tickets are $23 to $25; call (508) 349-6835, or visit www.what.org