Check out our exclusive Q&A with the cast and crew of Small Engine Repair!
After watching the wonderfully produced version of John Pollono’s Small Engine Repair directed by Bailey Nassetta, I was able to get some thoughts from the cast and crew of the play. George Carpenter plays Frank: a single father and the owner of the small engine repairs shop; Julio Saenz plays Packie: an energetic, unemployed, social media savant; Ryan Perez plays Swaino: a boastful womanizer and warehouse worker; and Andy Ottenweller plays Chad: the college basketball star whose father is a big-shot lawyer. Here is some insight into their performance.
The Knockturnal: This play was filled with very intense moments; what was the most challenging part of your performance?
Ryan Perez: Finding the nuances of the lightness and darkness to Pollono’s text and always balancing it. Moreover, finding the correct stamina of each of the characters — because they are all so different from us.
George Carpenter: I would say the most challenging part was staying focused on the love that I have for the other characters and that while there is a lot of anger and guilt there everything isn’t cut and dry.
Julio Saenz: I felt the most challenging moment was being the aggressor in a violent act to justify another horrific act. On top of that, there is the element of being drunk and high so having those layers present to build the narrative was a bit tricky.
Andy Ott: Most challenging was not judging my character and bringing a full character onto stage rather than a caricature.
The Knockturnal: This play has a lot to do with friendship and trying to maintain that relationship. Were there any lessons that you learned from performing the play that you were able to incorporate into your own life?
Ryan Perez: 1000%. Similar to the play, there are 3 people bonded by growing up together. Every single person in this production went NYU — so we did grow up together in college (just not at as young of an age as these characters). Doing the play and rehearsing has allowed us to challenge each other as artists and as people. And also made us realize it’s okay to lose your mind at times!
George Carpenter: Real friendship is very rare and I think this play has emphasized to me the value of keeping the people in your life that were there at the beginning.
Julio Saenz: I learned that in friendship, it takes a lot of patience and being present to preserve that relationship. A true friendship cannot be reliant on past memories and the good old times. It has to be based on trust and vulnerability.
Andy Ott: A lesson I learned was to not give up on people. A friend of mine who I lost touch with came and saw the show yesterday and it meant the world to me. Don’t give up on old friends.
The Knockturnal: In the playbill, you two mentioned in your notes that you both had very strong feelings about the play. How did your personal experiences and feeling about the play affect your approach to making this rendition unique?
Bailey Nassetta: When I first read Small Engine Repair, I hated it. As a woman, I found the script to be very triggering. However, it was an incredibly interesting revelation to discover that it wasn’t actually the material I hated, it was the reality that this story (and many others like it) exists in real life. The material exists because the story exists. In this way, John Pollono has opened up a door to a realm of important questions and conversations that we need to be dissecting and discussing right now. With all of that being said, it was really important to me, to tell this story as openly and honestly as I could. I think the easiest thing to do, would have been to let these characters exist at a very surface level but I knew immediately, that was not something I was interested in doing. I wanted to get to the core of these characters. I wanted them raw- warts and all. Through delving into each characters’ vulnerabilities and weaknesses I believe that we were able to achieve a very intimate look into these characters wants, needs and inner drives. The uglier we could make them, the more beautiful they became. To me, this process was never about answering any one large question but was about asking, “what is the larger question?” That’s how we worked and that’s how we want the audience to feel when they leave the play- like they have more questions now then they did when they first sat down.
Ryan Perez: I discovered this play during its Lortel run at one of the darkest times in my life (heartbreak). I’m not exaggerating when I say as an audience member and a human this play changed my life cause it made me laugh and find hope in a darkness I had never experienced before. While having such great admiration for the original production and John Pollono’s text, it was tricky for me on both a conscious and subconscious level to accept that this would be a different production with alternative aesthetic and character choices. I had such respect for the production I saw it was hard for me to, honestly, not want to replicate it. This led to some clashing at times, but thanks to the team, I couldn’t be more proud of the work and the voices we have brought to this version. It is very different in the best sense of the term.
Tickets are on sale now at: https://www.artful.ly/small–
