Takoma Park Couple Reprise Musical for Fall Fringe

When I walked into the building with the graffiti plastered awning on New York Avenue, the room ahead looked like a caricature of a college coffee shop lit under illuminated spotlights of red, yellow and purple. The furniture was mismatched and the floor was tiled like a New Jersey diner.

Walking past the ticker taker/bartender, through a dimly lit lounge and up a small set of stairs, I dropped onto a pavement roof that also serves as a parking lot. Up another small set of stairs, I entered a small black box theatre with room for about fifty seats. The whole setup was decidedly Fringe. The musical that was being performed on the small, but prominent Washington, D.C. stage was decidedly not.

The genesis of the musical, "The Poet Warriors," took place in a house on Old Carroll Avenue in Takoma Park, where playwright George Tilson and producer Jose Luis Diaz live. It was a success, selling out most showings at the Fringe Festival and was then one of a handful of plays brought back for the Fall Fringe Festival. But before that, it was a two-person play that got way too personal for Tilson.

Tilson's mother, Sally, sat down one day and told him the story of she and Tilson's father, George, met. Sally was in college and went up to West Point with a friend of hers. The friend set up Sally with one of the cadets.  The only problem was that Tilson's mother was fiercely anti-military. So she left the date to wander around town until she found a man named George P. Tilson sitting under a tree reading poetry. Sally spent the rest of the evening with him only to later find out that he also was a West Point Cadet. She ended up marrying him.

And that is how "The Poet Warriors," a musical about three couples dealing with their significant others going to war, was born. For Tilson it was initially just a playwriting exercise. Then he envisioned it as a small play, but the material became too personal. So over the years he adapted it into a musical with an ensemble cast of six. Tilson wrote the script, the lyrics and music. The original musical ran four hours and there were ten more songs than what made the cut.

"We did readings and I whittled it down," Tilson said. "It was like taking a block of stone and shaping it."

As this was happening, Tilson decided the Fringe Festival was the best place for his work.

"It was a good way to have control," he said.

Tilson got director Patricia Woolsey on board to help tighten everything up. Then came the actors who also played a part in shaping the show.  This is where Tilson took a step back and let his musical live with the creative team that was staging it. Tilson was not allowed at rehearsals until just before the first performances.

"By the time we got Patricia Woolsey on board, I'd worked on the sucker for so long," Tilson said. "It was a relieve not to be at the early rehearsals."

This gave the actors and director time to work with the material and play around with it, without Tilson's personal connection getting in the way.

And as much as Tilson wanted to know how things were going, Diaz, his partner, would not divulge information.

"I wanted to share the process, but we needed an impartial look at the musical," Diaz said. "We live together, but he needed to keep a distance from it. Needless to say it made for a very interesting summer."

Diaz served many roles in the musical. He produced it, helped cast it, cooked for the cast and served as chauffer from the Takoma Metro to his house for rehearsals. The actors said they have never worked with a playwright and producer who have devoted so much to a work.

"When I met them there was an instant connection," Arielle Goodman, who played the part of Miriam, who mirrors Tilson's mother, in the fall version of the musical. "The awkward part never happened."

Goodman and the rest of the cast, four of which had been in the summer version, had only a month to get everything together for the Fall Fringe.

"George always gave input and asked the actors what we thought," said Jase Parker, who reprised his original role of Eddie for the Fall Fringe.

Alan Naylor, who did double duty as music director and played the part of Ray, based on Tilson's father, echoed Parker's sentiment.

"It was a very easy process in terms of working with the script," he said. "George was very open."

Jose and George did everything from calling people about rehearsal to making copies and figuring out schedules.

"No one can ever complain about being lazy when doing a show with them," Naylor said.

The Nov. 11 show was packed and several people came out crying from how emotional the play is in its treatment of war. As I came back down the steps, and onto the roof, and then back down the other set of steps and into the makeship lounge, Tilson, Diaz and the cast held a Q&A with The Community School, a mentoring program in Baltimore that Tilson invited to see the play. The teenagers, many of whom had never seen a musical before, didn't retreat back into their awkward teenage shells. They riddled Tilson with questions. And he answered them with aplomb.