Ralph is joined in a bar by three construction workers who have been toiling at a nearby job site. Beau is the friendliest, willing to chat up a lonely fellow at the bar and smooth over any misunderstandings that might arise, though he has a mischievous side as well . Cicero is hungry for almost anything, restless, macho. Mulligan is older, darker, argumentative, the most brutal of the lot.They are all family men, but together in the bar with Ralph, they are simply trouble, casually dangerous. They drink, scrap, calm down, become bored and start the cycle all over again. Maybe they would have been content simply to cuff Ralph around a bit, drink themselves home. But then Molly shows up.
Rick Mullins was awarded Portland’s Drammy Award for Best Actor, 1999, for his performance in the role of Mulligan.
Reviews
“PORNOGRAPHIC PANORAMA is a pitch-black comedy that dares to pry back the rock and shine light on our empty, artificial culture, which has been reduced to distraction and the simulacra of real experiences. This is surreal satire as potent as Albee’s ‘The American Dream’ and just as much a picture of our time.” –Steffen Silvis, Willamette Weekly, Portland, Oregon, May 12, 1999.
“The audience stumbles off this roller-coaster dizzy with horror over what it’s seen but also having some dark chuckles along the way. This is the kind of show that should help Stark Raving Theatre re-establish itself with its hard-core experimental-loving audience.” –Barry Johnson, The Oregonian, May 12, 1999, Portland, Oregon.
Productions
The World Premiere of Pornographic Panorama was performed at Stark Raving Theatre in Portland, Oregon, May 15, 1999.
RALPH Steve Boss
BARTENDER Jim Whilhite
MULLIGAN Rick Mullins
CICERO David Seitz
BEAU Jim Hartley
MOLLY Adrienne Flagg
MRS. MULLIGAN Nancy Wilson
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Myra Donnelley
DIRECTED BY David Demke
SET DESIGN Jeffrey D. Woods
LIGHTING DESIGN Angela Meyer
SOUND DESIGN Mel Fletcher
COSTUME DESIGN Uta Krepulat
PROPS MISTRESS Torrey Cornwell
STAGE MANAGER Jennifer L. Hartman
Playwright notes
During the eighties, I worked as a laborer, renovating lofts in Manhattan, laying pipe in basements of Manhattan loft buildings. In this setting I wrote ‘Pornographic Panorama’, a play that describes different characters I encountered at the job when I was penniless, fortyish and very much in limbo. Working-class men surrounded me on the job and were the source of many of the play’s character ideas, particularly with regard to ‘Mulligan,’ although heightened as my imagination saw fit to describe the decayed spirits of a man with no ethical standards. At the time I lived in the Lower East Side of Manhattan where life was cheap, indulgences were abundant and values were reversed from those of the middle-class suburb where I had been raised. Human beings in this play relate to each other as if they are replaceable. Similarly, in some countries, such as Rwanda and Yugoslavia “ethnic cleansing” has been part of their past. Although the play appears not to be political, it is a microcosm of how groups often are willing to dehumanize individuals to serve an expedient purpose.