Failure is funny. If a comic character falls, we laugh. If the same character gets up, and falls again, we laugh louder and longer. That principle is behind Chicago writer Joe Janes’ latest comedy, a four-person play titled “Meet the Author.”
“The play is about a guy who dreams of being a best-selling author.” James tells me, adding that this guy, Casey Stumpner, is kind of a loser – he has written a lot of online novels, all of them bad, none of them published.
His latest is a lousy spy thriller in which Stumpner attempts to be the next “Ian Fleming, John le Carré, Tom Clancy.” The book is called “Pig in a Blanket of Danger” and, like all of the previous novels, it is not very good.
Still, Stumpner decides to take “all the money he has in the world and gets his latest book printed up.” He puts together a book tour, and, after a long search, he finds “this independent bookstore in the middle of nowhere where they said, “Yes, come here, do your book launch.””
Janes’ play is about the book signing, and all the things that go wrong during it.
“He’s living the dream — and failing miserably,” Janes quips.
Not a bad premise for a comedy. But Janes goes one step further.
“The best set that I could possibly have for this play would look like a bookstore,” Janes said. So why not stage it in an actual bookstore?
He and his collaborator, director Andrea Dymond, are doing just that. The show premiered May 16 at Tangible Books in Chicago. It is being performed May 22 in Oak Park at The Looking Glass at 823 S. Oak Park Ave.
Inner Casey Stumpner
Writing has always been a thing for Janes.
“Even as a kid, I would do a lot of writing. I think it was, oh, in the fourth grade I did a sketch review for my class,” he recalled. “I stole from Hee-haw and Stan Freeberg. And then in fifth grade, I had a teacher, Mrs. Kendall, who, God bless her, always assigned us to write short stories. Like we were always writing short stories. And she would always ask me to read mine to the class. So, in school I got known as the guy like, ‘hey, we gotta do a presentation, let’s get Joe to write it, you know?’”
Janes also knows the world of self-publishing. He has self-published three collections of plays, “365 Sketches,” “50 Plays,” and “Seven Deadly Plays” which can be found on Lulu.com And, like all writers, Janes knows what it’s like to create a work and wonder how it will be received, hoping for the best, expecting the worst. Every writer has his or her own inner Casey Stumpner.
Unlike Stumpner, his unlucky alter ego, Janes has earned his place as a writer and performer in the Chicago’s comedy scene, and has been since the late 80s, when he moved here from Ohio to pursue a career in comedy. The move turned out to be a good one; Janes found his niche in Chicago comedy. He has directed for Second City, where he still teaches comedy writing and improv. He has written for SNL’s “Weekend Update,” and for Jellyvision’s “You Don’t Know Jack.” He has also produced a host of plays produced at the small theater he helped create, WNEP.
More recently Janes and Dymond have turned their sites on the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland. Starting in 2016, they have occasionally taken one of Janes’ plays to the Festival. Last summer, for example, they took Janes’ parody of the Scottish Play, “Macbeth by the Sea.”
The reception was positive enough that Janes and Dymond plan to return to the fest in 2025 with a sequel, “Macbeth in Space.” It was while Janes was writing “Macbeth in Space” that he came up with the idea for “Meet the Author.”
“I had a little downtime after finishing the first draft of [”Macbeth in Space”] and I just started writing this one,” he said.
The play was an elaboration of an idea Janes had explored in one of the pieces in Janes’ 2011 collection of short plays, “365 Sketches.”
“[That sketch] was about somebody who works at a Borders bookstore,” he said. “And on a day that they think their manager is not there they go ahead and do an unofficial book signing [of their own self-published book] because they want desperately to be a famous author and then the sketch is about them getting busted.”
Andrea Dymond said cannot remember exactly when Janes first mentioned the idea of staging his latest play in a book. Or when he showed her the first draft.
“He usually just says, ‘hey I’m writing this thing’ and then when he has a draft, he asks if I want to take a look and have a chat about it.”
Dymond is clear, though, that whenever he first starts talking about the project, she is all in. She always enjoys working with Janes. And this particular project, in which Janes plays the failed writer he ridicules, has been a particular treat.
“It’s great fun,” she said. “We laugh a lot. Joe is very open as both a writer and an actor to notes and clarification of his intentions. He doesn’t hold much as precious and we’ve developed a good give and take. We have a lot in common, I think. In addition to truly loving peaty scotch, we have a similar approach, which may be generational, to just getting the work done, whatever that may take.”
“‘Go before you’re ready.’ I can’t remember where that comes from, but we do it and it’s a thrill-ride.”
If you can fit
Steve Kirshenbaum, owner of The Looking Glass, said he knows exactly when he first heard about Janes’ project.
“Janes sent out an email to a lot of bookstores in the Chicago area,” Kirshenbaum said.
He added that he liked Janes’s query, and responded that Janes should come in and see if his hole-in-the-wall bookstore fit his needs.
“I told him I only have seven chairs,” he said.
Still, Kirshenbaum said that regularly hosts book signings and readings. Among the authors Kirchenbaum has hosted in the past: mystery writer Thomas J. Thorson and educator and author David Schaafsma.
“It’s a way to get new and different people into the store,” he said.
When Janes visited The Looking Glass, he said he was not daunted by how cozy the space is.
“Steve was so enthusiastic that I was like, oh, I can’t turn this guy down. He said we could use the table, or I have a folding table that we’re always going to bring and we’ll do whatever makes sense. The way, we’ll set it up is in the back of the room with a little curtain for characters entering and exiting; it’ll be small. He said it could seat about seven. And anybody else who can stand is welcome to. But you know, it’s a short show. It’s 40 minutes. I think it’ll be fun.”
Where to see “Meet the Author”:
5/22/24 - The Looking Glass Books (Oak Park)
5/23/24 – Unchartered Books (Andersonville)
5/29/24 - Women and Children First (Andersonville)
5/30/24 - Book Cellar Inc. (Lincoln Square)
6/06/24 - Mad Street Books (West Loop)
6/12/24 – Kibbitz Nest (Lincoln Park)
6/14/24 - Tangible Books (Bridgeport)
