Q&A with Buffalo Heights' Jake Lipman

Buffalo Heights is TIC's first world premiere production, a comedy about a new teacher who moves to Buffalo to teach French, only to find herself embroiled in scandal when she crosses the wrong student.  The production was devised, or company-created, over the course of six months, and the resulting script, crafted by playwright Adam Harrell, is as goofy as it is heartfelt.

The show runs for 8 performances, May 7-10 and 14-17 at 8 PM at The Bridge Theatre.  Purchase $18 tickets online or by phone at 212-868-4444.

Producing artistic director Jake Lipman talks a bit about this new work and how it came to be TIC's 27th production.

How did you first meet everyone involved on Buffalo Heights?

Jake Lipman has been to Buffalo 7 times.

A few years ago, we gave the NY premiere to a play by Bill Downs called Books on Tape, and a playwright who knew Bill had asked to meet me after the show -- this turned out to be Adam Harrell. I liked him instantly -- we had a beer, we talked plays and after that met up a few times and he started coming to see my shows.  That was really great, because he got to see the overarching style of TIC's pieces and see me perform and direct.

Four of the other actors had been in previous TIC productions: Shelley Little (How I Learned to Drive, The Mistakes Madeline Made, Our Town, The Drunken City), Nina Leese (Our Town), Joe Mullen (The Mistakes Madeline Made) and Allison Lemel (How to Behave, plus assistant direction on more than a dozen shows).  They were all people who are as talented as they are nice and funny and collaborative.  Adam had worked a lot with our final cast member, Matt Whitfield, and brought him on board, and he fit in right away.

Shelby Arnold, our wonderful assistant director, came into the picture through a referral from my friend Miranda Jonte, a fellow actress/producer.

Once we all got in the room to work on the piece months ago, we hit it off.  We quickly made choices about our characters, and then did all kinds of funny exercises and scenarios that led to the plot of the play.

I just got home from a great rehearsal and everyone was cheering each other on in different scenes.  That was a result of all our time together -- we're a bunch of goofy weirdoes together and the play means a lot to us all.

Why is this piece set in Buffalo?  Are you from there?
No, but my husband, Philip Rothman (also our sound designer) is.  We have gone there many times together to see his family and it's this great city with a lot of pride and history and also there's this feeling that it has fallen on hard times.

I have to give credit to a friend for the inspiration to set our piece there: I was talking about the play Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco and how I wanted to try to Americanize and con temporize it, and she joked, "Set it in Buffalo.  Get it?  A buffalo is like a rhinoceros, sorta..."

Here's the thing: I knew I wanted to do a piece about a school and scandal in a small town.  Buffalo, NY gives the piece some dimension.  It's a place people know about, even if they haven't been there, with its hometown pride, spicy wings, snowy winters and proximity to Canada.  It has texture and humor built in.

What about The Children's Hour?  Weren't you inspired by that piece somehow?
When I was 10, I booked my first professional role in a Boston production at the Triangle Theatre Company of The Children's Hour.  I played one of the girls in a boarding school where a strong-willed student lies about her teachers being lesbians, ruining their lives.  The play, by Lillian Hellman, was nominated for a Pulitzer for drama, and doing the show with a theater company that put on stories pertaining to gay rights awoke an interest and activism in me for LBGT equality ever since.

So, Children's Hour and Rhinoceros were plays I knew and loved and wanted to somehow work on, but in a new way.

We read the two plays as a cast and then went in a new direction with some of the plot points and personas, and came up with a story that tips its hat to the inspiration plays.

I can't believe after 6 months of working on it, we're going to premiere the finished play in about 2 weeks.  I'm so happy and proud and grateful to Adam, Allison, Nina, Shelley, Joe, Matt and Shelby for making it all come together.  Come see it!  I'm really excited to show people our work.