The Savage World of Stephen Fife

In 1976 a college student goes to a  Bob Dylan concert, a fund-raiser for Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, black middleweight boxer convicted on chancy evidence of murdering two men and a woman — all white. The concert raised money for Carter’s defense.  Dylan had written a ballad in defense of Carter. The Byrds performed, Tom Petty and his group…Muhammad Ali was there, and Carter, still in prison, was hooked up by mic and spoke to his supporters.

This student became a reporter  writing for The Village Voice, mostly reviews of art and film, but he was fascinated by Dylan’s song which supported Carter’s innocence. He did a spec story for the New York Times. He was the only reporter to visit Carter in prison after his re-conviction.

Since he was a playwright as well as a reporter, he conceived the idea for a play not centered on the real Carter but the story of a reporter whose whole life is caught up in a Carter-like conviction. Carter became “Savage” James. The play was called Savage World.

The play was workshopped to great acclaim, considered for option by a film company and optioned by a good theater, but this is the world of the arts…options expired, opportunities dwindled, languished, disappeared. But the playwright knew the potential of the play and finally, 32 years after the Dylan concert, Savage World had its premiere performance at the Met, a small theater in Hollywood. Excellent cast — truly excellent. But publicity money had run out, there were no ads announcing the play, few reviewers came, and The Los Angeles Times did not review it. A mortal blow.

The play was recommended to me. I decided to review it for Buzzine. End of first act, I was really excited. Best cast I could imagine for that play. Great dialogue. What a thrill. Second act…hummmm…performance great, but plot needed tightening…yet applause broke out several times during the performance. And such great dialogue.

I returned for a second time, enjoyed the play once more, and met the playwright. The play, I felt, was so damn good in concept, in dialogue, and in the energy of that large, wonderful cast. And what now? I felt that there was a drama behind the drama — the drama of trying to get a good play polished and finished and out to the wider audience.  The frustrations, the disappointments…and I asked the playwright if he would speak to Buzzine to discuss what it takes to survive in order to bring a good piece of serious theater to today’s stage.

That reporter and playwright is Stephen Fife. I met with him at the end of the final performance.

Clare Elfman: Go back to the original concert and your interest in the Carter case.

Stephen Fife: I followed the case, and I was shocked when, after the second trial, he was re-convicted and sent back to prison, not eligible for parole until 2009.

I got involved because I had written an exposé in The Village Voice about a theater school ripping off welfare families, promising and not delivering commercial success. I went undercover as one of the kids and got close to a teacher who became my main informant. By chance, he turned out to be the brother of the main confidant of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter.

This guy didn’t like the way the school was treating the kids. He got in touch with his brother who was literally the only one left from Carter’s crowd still trying to prove his innocence. Carter had been let out and re-convicted.    Rubin Carter had read my welfare story. It was a good story. Reuben said he would love to meet me if I would come out to Trenton State Prison. Scary place. Very brutal — 99% black and Latino prisoners, 90% white prison guards. Very stark in terms of racial divide.

As opposed to “Savage” James in my play, he wore no prison clothes. He had made an arrangement with the warden to wear clothes of his choice. Reuben was 5’8,” 165, muscular, already in transition from a hardcore Black Panther persona. He was intense and extremely manipulative; he liked gauging your reaction. If you  disagreed, he was confrontational. I liked him. He was straight-forward, smart, and interesting — a real survivor.

I began to think about the play in 1988.  I returned to get a degree in playwriting from Columbia. In ’93, I had been accepted by the Shenandoah Playwright’s Retreat in the Blue Ridge mountains. They had assembled 15 actors to perform my play, but it wasn’t yet finished. I had been having personal problems — a marriage breaking up — I had been glad to get away; too hard to write at home. So for those three weeks (aside from getting drunk and partying), I locked myself up and started writing.

The first table-reading with actors was terrific. I created a reporter named Solomon Eisner… Sol — as my protagonist. He and his father were having problems, but his father had brought him to training camp to watch “Savage” box, so the (backbone) of the story was the character Sol coming to terms with his past (against the background of a Carter-like drama).

One draft, a second, two table-readings, and I submitted it to a small theater, Alice’s Fourth Floor. Everyone liked it. It had another reading in 1994 — a very small theater. Every seat was taken by big producers in the theater. The project was hot, sent out to everybody…but the country was suddenly polarized by the O.J. Simpson trial and nobody wanted to hear about another racial situation.

Shuberts, Neiderlanders, HBO, Showtime, New Line — everyone there. In 1992, I had adapted a Yiddish Play called God of Vengeance which had a successful run off-Broadway. Rave reviews. It was now my moment.

There was  another reading at Primary Stages, a big Broadway producer wanted to do it. I had the same agent as Horton Foote, there were meetings, they wanted to do the movie with Laurence Fishburne. The contract was to be signed. The agent made a terrible mistake. She left town before getting  the producer’s signature on the contract. By the time the producer returned,  the money had been committed elsewhere.

I moved to L.A. and got involved with O.Z. Scott, who had directed Colored Girls…... He wanted to make a film of Savage Worlds. He had a deal at Paramount. Didn’t work out. I had the feeling: I can’t catch a break! I’m screwed!

In 1994, I entered the play in the O’Neill Playwright’s Conference in Connecticut. It was first alternate. If chosen, I’d get a reading by Broadway producers.  But nobody dropped out. I fell out.

So years passed. I was here in L.A. Suddenly Obama’s candidacy brought racial issues to the forefront. The producer of The Met Theater was interested. He read it, loved it, but there wasn’t quite enough money to produce. Cost of production would have been $50,000. We had only  $20,000. We had this great cast who played essentially for gas money. The excellent cast came partially from The Actor’s Studio, partially from open auditions.  We had no money for announcements. No publicity. Audiences came in, friends of the cast, word of mouth. But no big reviews. No L.A. Times.

So what does a playwright do? I had a great  contact in New York, a big New York producer. He died this morning. He really liked the play and was trying to get it produced at a regional theater on the east coast.

CE: So where are you now?

SF: Despite all, this had been one of the best professional experiences of my life.  As commercially frustrating, it was so gratifying to see the play on its feet, seeing how the audiences connected on a visceral level. But you can’t pay the rent on that. Yet it justifies the whole journey; it makes me feel that there was a purpose, that the project was not just ego-driven.

And it was so joyful an experience to have the actors feel so passionately about the material.

——

CE: I loved the play. Savage World is not the story of Hurricane Carter but a Carter-like character and situation.  It plays like a mystery, revealing, bit by bit, the cover-up in the case. In real life, Hurricane Carter is still around, giving motivational speeches. You can actually catch him on the net. Savage World, Steve Fife’s exploration of the life of a young reporter and the case he pursued, had so many excellent scenes, such an excellent cast that it needs to come back again.  For my money, an important  play is on its way. It has come this close, and I am hoping to see it, finished and polished, if we’re lucky, with this same flawless cast.

The reporter was played by Erik Passoja; an incredible performance of the uncle Jack Eisner by Tom Badal; Vincent Ward as “Savage” James (performances don’t come much better than this). Other excellent performances by Roger Bridges, Gary Colon, Darin Dahms, John del Regno, Nate Geez, Eileen Grubba, Ernest Harden (this one got mid-scene applause), Caryl Ingersoll, Elain Rinehart, Latarsha Rose, Barry Shay, and Kathryn Taylor.

Beautifully directed by L. Flint Esquerra.