With ‘Matt & Ben,’ ThinkTank and freeFall go Hollywood

When actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck won the Academy Award for their Good Will Hunting screenplay in 1998, they went from relative unknowns to the toast of Hollywood.

Suddenly, they were everywhere. It seemed as if they had simply dropped out of the sky.

Playwrights Mandy Kaling and Brenda Withers ran with that notion and created a one-act comedy in which the two thespians, and aspiring screenwriters, struggle to put Good Will Hunting together.

In their play Matt & Ben, the script literally drops from above, into their laps.

As part of its ongoing partnership with St. Pete’s freeFall Theatre, Tampa-based ThinkTank is producing Matt & Ben this weekend, for four performances only, on the freeFall mainstage.

“I was in grad school, I think, when I heard about Matt & Ben,” said ThinkTank artistic director Georgia Mallory Guy. “I heard a lot about it when they moved it from the New York Fringe Festival to Off Broadway. It’s an indie one-act that I’ve always sort of known about.”

In the production, directed by Matthew McGee, Guy plays Ben Affleck. Julia Rifino stars as Matt Damon.

“Kaling and Withers wrote it for themselves to perform,” Guy explained. “So it’s a satirical look at two women portraying a friendship – but what if it’s got like a dude/bro vibe to it? And what happens if you have two women playing male friendship, while acting as males … but still just being women?”

Quoth the New York Times: “Matt & Ben succeeds because both as writers and actors Ms. Kaling and Ms. Withers have a fine, deadpan sense of the absurd and the vicious. They also have full confidence in their audience’s familiarity with the gossipy details of the pop celebrity culture.”

Yes, it’s a comedy. About a pair of talented knuckleheads. “There’s an urban legend that they didn’t write it,” director McGee observes. “The thought behind that is that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were created by the studios as this great story. They’re both good actors, and they had been acting in small films – but the idea that they could write this screenplay, and win an Academy Award for it? It all seems too magical.”

As for the gender setup, “I think if it were two men, it wouldn’t be funny,” he said.

The 70-minute show takes place inside Damon’s college-boy apartment, with movie posters on the wall and pizza boxes strewn about.

The ultra-competitive dudes are hard at work on a film adaptation of JD Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. It’s not going so well.

Once Good Will Hunting drops into their laps, they switch gears and begin to fine-tune it.

Members of ThinkTank’s Young Adult company appear in flashbacks, as the young Matt and Ben. “It gives them a unique opportunity to be part of the process,” said McGee. “And I think it’s helpful, too, because it gives Georgia and Julia a break.”

Both actors said they enjoy watching their “younger selves” from the wings.

Guy’s next project is The Pillowman with Jobsite Theater, while Rifino will appear in the next freeFall production, Road Show.

All concerned are hoping that Matt & Ben will live on, for them, sometime down the road.

“It’s interesting exploring the friendship, portraying men but capturing the nuances and the dynamics of friendship,” said Rifino. “And the competitive nature when you have two actors, specifically as friends.

“It flips it around, and makes you think about friendship – across all genders.”

Find showtimes and tickets at this link.