Cheap Seats Forward Theater’s A Thousand Words blends fact and fiction

Welcome to Cheap Seats, where every Thursday we’ll talk to folks behind the scenes of the stage events opening around town in order to give you a flavor of the productions that won’t be found in any of the promo materials.

A Thousand Words, Promenade Hall In Overture Center, Jan. 19-Feb. 5

Promo pull quote: “In A Thousand Words, photographer Walker Evans accepts a government job documenting the lives of dustbowl farmers in 1930s Kansas. At the same time, he also accepts a partner: a reluctant writer named Shirley Hughes who will supply the narrative to accompany his images. Eighty years later, some of Evans's photos are discovered in the personal effects of another writer: Ernest Hemingway.”

What it’s really about: Forward Theater’s A Thousand Words is a historical fiction play that asks important questions about art in the story of Walker Evans, a real black-and-white photography pioneer (see his work here), as he takes photos of farmers in the 1930s, intertwined with the (fake) story of Metropolitan Museum of Art representatives trying to purchase the rights to a cache of Evans’ photos in present day. The play presents many questions—Who “owns” art? Are photography subjects being exploited? Are “folk” artists being exploited? Does controversy sometimes outshine the actual art?—but the principle theme is the collision of words and pictures. “It’s a story that’ll make you think about how words and pictures work together, and how you can be manipulated by what you see,” says playwright Gwendolyn Rice, who is also Forward’s director of communications. “Particularly, going into the election season, it’ll make you think about how words and pictures are used to communicate a specific message.”

Fun fact: Rice based the play on the very real discovery of a selection of Evans’ photos that were found in the belongings of Ernest Hemingway a few years ago. Evans and Hemingway were apparently chums, and Hemingway kept a bunch of Evans’ photos. So while Rice blurred some of the facts of Evans’ life, he and Hemingway had a relationship that inspired them both in their later work. Apparently, there’s even a photo of Evans’ that was the inspiration for the opening of For Whom The Bell Tolls.

“I read the newspaper story about [Evans’ photos], and I thought it was very interesting that Walker Evans, this amazing photographer, and Ernest Hemingway had been friends, and had spent a couples weeks in Cuba together, and evidently Hemingway was really taken with Evans, who was at the beginning of his career at the time. They wrote in their diaries about each other,” Rice says. “But basically all anybody can say for sure is that they spent several weeks drinking together. It’s debatable about who influenced who, but whenever artists get together there is going to be an exchange of ideas, because artists steal. Artists are influenced by everything.”

Why you should try it: You should see it because after this initial Forward Theater première run, the production moves to Milwaukee in February, but mostly because the plot unwinds like a thriller. We’ve read the script, and it’s like a great mix between an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent and an artist profile documentary on PBS.