The Method to Noa Gardner’s Mystery

Noa Gardner brought a lot to the process of getting The Staircase up on its feet. He conceived the idea, wrote the script, did the rewrites, workshopped it and did more rewrites. And he also brought something else. 

A twist on method acting. Call it method setting.

“We actually held some of the auditions in my (Hawaii) apartment. Seeing a potential Mom and Son at a table in a living room. This was the thing I was writing. This is as simple as the play is,” he said.

That’s where well-respected Hawaiian actors Wil Kahele and Ehulani Hope Kane secured their roles as Son and Mother in Gardner’s mysterious tale about holding on, letting go and the curious force that pulls us back home. The Staircase runs April 27-May 18 on the Julianne Argyros Stage as part of the 27^th Pacific Playwrights Festival.

Gardner’s Hawaiian home not only served as an impromptu final-callback location for the actors in his first professional production, but as his own curious force. It’s where he returned after earning his MFA in Dramatic Writing at USC. It’s his home, his sanctuary and the place where he feels most comfortable telling the stories he wants to tell.

“When I came out here as an undergrad (at Loyola Marymount University), it was a culture shock for me. I felt like a stranger in a strange land,” he said. “I want to write and live authentically and have people see something authentic. For me, Hawaii is hard to write about and capture. I’ve never been able to see a movie, TV show or play where I got to sit and watch Hawaii presented in a way that felt truthful to me.

“I want to crack audiences open and make them feel the thing I feel. When people come to see the show, I hope they feel the way I feel about Hawaii; that they’ll be able to speak to us and treat us with the level of respect we deserve. That’s what theatre does. That’s what all media does. It teaches you and conditions you on how to look at the world and how to interact with the world and other humans. This is my contribution to that.”

The “contribution” became The Staircase, which was showcased to audiences two years ago as a featured reading at the Pacific Playwrights Festival. Before that—and in short order—it caught the practiced eye of Jerry Patch, SCR’s resident dramaturg.

“I was reading that and got about 20 pages into it and said, ‘Is this as good as I think it is?’ I got excited about it,” Patch said. “It’s a terrific play, written by a former student of Luis Alfaro’s at USC and I’m really excited about it. If he can write like this, that’s one hell of a first play.”

Since then, Gardner took the notes he received from Andy Knight, the director of The Lab@SCR, and Kim Martin Cotten, SCR’s associate artistic director who co-directs PPF with Knight, and worked on revisions. He took the advice of Gaye Taylor Upchurch, who directed that reading and directs this production, to structure the play differently.

Then, he dived into a deep well of what he called, “catharsis.” One line at the end of the play that he said not only explains the reason he wrote The Staircase as his thesis play at USC, but what kind of reaction he’s looking for from audiences at the end.

“The biggest rewrites came for the ending, with the Son and Father. I wanted to stick the landing and I think people go with you when you get to the end of a play. They want to see the dismount and they want to see that it remains in the same tone and tenor and weight as the first 80 pages,” he said. “You hate to go to a play where you’re all-in for the first 80 pages and they let you down for the last 10. Then, people start rewriting it in their heads on their way home. …

“I’m excited to see how people react to the new draft. … Now that it is in a strong place, I’m ready to have that conversation with people. Here it is, let’s talk about it.”

And Gardner is ready to talk to everyone about The Staircase and how that two years of revisions and the workshop process brought him back “to the strange land.” He’s focused on what brought him here.

“Writing is my focus. I don’t feel like I’m a theatre person. I feel like I’m a writer and this process has created the strongest script,” he said. “I don’t think I could write this any better. Did I leave anything on the table? I’d say ‘No.’ I’m happy just for that.”