Arts Alive! podcast: Jobsite’s Pillowmaniacs

There’s nothing soft and fluffy about The Pillowman, onstage through April 6 in a production by Tampa’s Jobsite Theater.

British-Irish playwright Martin McDonagh’s tale, while it’s essentially just people in a room, talking, is a potentially unnerving experience for theater-goers.

Which was most like the playwright’s point.

On today’s Arts Alive! podcast, cast members Georgia Mallory Guy and Troy Brooks discuss not only their theories about McDonaugh and The Pillowman, but their personal takes on the process that brought it to the Jobsite stage with such chilling precision.

Here’s the setup: In an unnamed totalitarian state, two detectives are interrogating a writer named Katurian (Guy), whose gruesome short stories have sinister similarities to a series of recent child murders.

There are violent outbursts, and frequent threats of immediate execution (in this world, there’s apparently no due process).

There’s another character in the mix: Katurian’s brother Michel (Brooks), whose developmental difficulties can be traced directly to unthinkable abuse he suffered as a child – at the hands of his own parents.

The Pillowman is a comedy, by the way.

It’s a horrifying comedy, and dark, to be sure, as dark as a black hole in some outré universe. But Martin McDonaugh is known – and famous – for blending the shock, the awe and other emotions less tangible.

Click on the arrow to listen to the interview.