What do you do when you reach a certain age and the ‘family’ you’ve always thought you had in your job is now walking away from you? To go to Mars? And all you asked from them is a jazillion dollars? A semi-non-direct quote from No Place To Go, a new musical conceived by Ethan Lipton, now on stage in Signature Theatre’s Ark stage, starring Bobby Smith. A one-man musical with three musicians live on-stage in addition to Smith, the production presents a unique and visceral look at what happens when you reach that “not-quite retirement age” but for one reason or another it’s time to move on.

TheatreBloom has taken a few moments to have a chat with Bobby Smith about the experience and just what make it so unique.

Hi Bobby! Thank you so much for giving us some of your time, it’s really a pleasure to get to talk to you, I’m really excited!

Bobby Smith: I’m excited to talk to you! I’m outside enjoying this weather; I think we’re lucky with this weather.

I think you’re right. We’re getting some wonderful weather right now. Tell me a little bit about this show you’re doing— this one-performer and three-musician show you’re in?

Bobby: No Place To Go is almost unlike anything you’ve ever seen in the way that the writer and the music tell this story in this stream-of-conscious kind of way. It talks about corporate America, art, and people. And maybe a little about the government, gently nudging us to remember how good things were for four years… a long time ago in the 1940’s.

It talks about human beings and how we are in this place right now in our country that is really about stockholders. I think one of lines— I should know this since I have to say it tonight— but the line goes, “We are all on this planet accountable to the stockholders because we created that system and it has spread all over the world. And there is nothing we can do about it.”

It’s human. It’s just business. It isn’t personal. And it has nothing to do with people.

So how does that resonate with your world as a performer or actor or artist?

Bobby: During rehearsal, I kept approaching it like an actor or an artist being out of work. Or not even being out of work but having a supplemental job. It’s interesting because the character, George, is a composer and a playwright. And that would be Ethan Lipton who originated the piece and wrote it. So it’s a little different because we as actors seem to get paid a little more often, but he wanted to have the ability to have the time to write. So he took on this job. He wrote what he knew when he was becoming a writer. The information is very vague in the play so that as it washes over you and as you absorb the experience, you can apply it to almost anything. There isn’t a specificity to it.

He says “we’re going to Mars. The company is relocating to Mars.” And that makes it sound like a high-comedy. But it’s the idea that ‘Mars’ isn’t ‘Mars’ it could be upstate New York. Or Northern California. It could be any place that isn’t where he currently is. And he goes on to talk about how “all I’ve asked for is a jazillion dollars.” But it’s not really a jazillion dollars. It could be 100 dollars. It’s all very vague in this interesting way that winds its way through the experience. Here he’s applied for these grants, all these wonderful fellowships, it takes years to apply for them, and then they give you $1.50. There’s this wonderful story in there that the character talks about, how there’s this poet there as his competition. And he says, “I don’t want to have to eat a man for a dollar fifty. That’s why I have this job. That’s why I got this other job. So I don’t have to eat a man for a dollar fifty.”

And he’s an aging artist too. “I’m 50 years old, what am I going to do? I have been living on this thread of magical thinking.” I mean we all have. We all go into this thinking that our job will always be there, that we’ll be the one to walk away from it, and living the paycheck to paycheck, and all that. The play makes comments on the country and the lack of funding available for people like us. People like us, like me. There’s even a song about the WPA. (“Did You Hear What The Did at the WPA?”)

I didn’t know very much about the WPA (Works Progress Administration; 1935-1943.) I did not realize that it had a whole artist’s division. I live in Ellicott City. There’s a post-office here in Ellicott City that has a mural that was commissioned by the WPA in the 1940’s. There’s a place in Silver Spring and at The National Zoo that has pieces of art that were commissioned by the WPA. It didn’t last very long. And the lyric in the song is “Even artists need to eat.”

It sounds like you’re really relating to this show on a personal level. I take that you’re enjoying it?

Bobby: The whole show is just a symphony. I call it this incredible symphony that lets the audience make the judgements about their lives. People have been really moved by it and I think that’s kind of wonderful. Sometimes you do a new work and you don’t know how the audience is going to respond. Matthew Gardiner (Director of No Place To Go) found this work, he called me, and I watched it. I was just so riveted by it because it’s so different and unique. It’s a theatre piece, it’s a piece of art, it’s a cabaret, there’s a through-line, it’s really marvelous. The character that I play is a catalyst for everyone in the audience. And the emotions come out of the songs because the songs are like fantasies. He sings a love song to the loss of his job as if it were a partner. It’s just so interesting.

A lot of the people who have come to see this that I know, have said they find it so unique and interesting and lovely. And it’s little. It’s a small, intimate piece that I am just so lucky to be able to do.

You’ve done one-person shows but not necessarily a one-person musical before?

Bobby: I actually haven’t done a one-person show. But in doing this, now I get why stand-up comedians are so neurotic. Don’t get me wrong, there are three musicians on stage with me. And they are excellent. They’ve got a quip here and there, but basically the arrows are all flying at me. People hold you responsible. I think it’s similar to film in that way. There’s even a line in the show about celebrities, “I think this person is a really good guy because of their good taste in movie projects.” Some of us don’t get to have that say. Some of us just have to take the job! I’m absolutely old enough and brave enough to do that, but I am very lucky that I don’t have to take too many of those arrows because this piece is so good.

What would you say has been your biggest challenge with this project, other than taking all the arrows coming at you?

Bobby: I should clarify that I don’t mind the ‘arrows’ and I meant that in a quippy way. As far as challenges go, the book, the script, and the lyrics come together and the result is an hour and a half of me talking. There was a period of time that I was seriously questioning whether or not I would be able to do this, would I be able to memorize all of it.

The memorization was intense for me. Not just because it’s 90 minutes of all me but because I’m speaking in a style that is different from my everyday life. The person who wrote this piece wrote this for themselves and it’s their way of thinking, their way of speaking, their stream of conscious. And that is a type of character but you have to build the world yourself. You have to think about why you’re saying this and who you are while you’re saying it. And the whole 90 minutes is me figuring that out, by myself, with three incredible musicians on stage creating music for that.

And you find Ethan Lipton’s style of ‘being’ fascinating or challenging? Or both?

Bobby: I think Ethan Lipton came to town and said he’s not a ‘Yes, and…” person. He’s a “No, but…” person. I think I have that quote right, he said that once, I’m pretty sure. His thinking is so interesting. He’s written this up in such a way that the character, who is essentially himself— Ethan Lipton— he’s written it so that he never blames anybody. Through the whole piece, this is happening and that is happening but he never blames anybody. And that is just so interesting and also very refreshing. He’s just accepting it for the way it is. “This is just happening, this is just how it is, there’s no crime here.”

And then you get this beautiful tribute-song to this friend he knows at work. It’s called “The Mighty Mench.” To a degree, I think it’s a little bit of the character that I’m playing, singing about himself, and wishing that he could be like that. It’s so interesting! It’s not a sad evening. Everything in the play becomes a part of him. The final sandwich in the conference room becomes a part of him. I think it speaks to a lot of people who are in corporate America too. It doesn’t just have to be about art. It’s hard to describe. From an actor’s point of view, it’s hard to describe. You can’t really explain it until you see it.

Ethan Lipton writes these beautiful monologues in these stream-of-conscious scenes that are just so specific. Even when I was reading it, I found myself asking, “why is it so specific?” But then you realize it’s the specificity that makes it special. The specificity of it— “the first friend I made at work playing magnetic darts”— it resonates with people.

I find that intriguing because you started off telling me that the show is very vague but now it’s also very specific. But I think I get what you mean when you say it resonates despite or perhaps because of the specificity in this case. I think as human beings we all have those moments of minutia that reside in our brains, connecting us to very specific emotions and emotional times in our lives. When those moments of specificity that you’re talking about from the show happen, the audience is able to connect to those because while the moment itself is different, it triggers that feeling of universal relatability. We all have those moments. They may look and feel and sound different, but they’re there, and seeing them in this musical makes it weirdly accessible and relatable to a universal audience. And because it is vague— ‘Mars’ and a ‘jazillion dollars’ the audience can plug in their own experiences into the vagueness and relate that way too. Right?

Bobby: Absolutely.

What is making this show so special for you, in addition to everything we’ve discussed so far?

Bobby: There is this idea that it’s mine and nobody else’s— it’s this little piece of myself, it’s my own little intimate social life to a degree, that nobody else can have but me… that’s what the character is going through with his job… and then to lose something like that— at the age just before retirement, it damages people. And you see that with this character. I think there is something deeply unifying about what happens to him that everyone can relate to.

What would you say has been your biggest personal takeaway from this experience with No Place To Go?

Bobby: I will tell you this, and I don’t know how popular this is going to sound, but I don’t mean it in a harsh way. There are so many people, who after you are at a job for a period of time, talk about ‘family.’ They talk about that group of people at that job as family. But it can’t be. We are hypnotized into that as workers, especially when you have longevity in a place. But it’s never that. I don’t mean to take away an emotional, depressed feeling, but it does say to me that you have to maintain your life— your ‘family’ away from that job. That job, your job cannot be everything. And you see that so much in this show. You’ve either gotta go to Mars and leave your family. Or you have to fend for yourself on your own.

Especially as an artist, when that support gets knocked out from under you— it’s scary. And all of us know that. Even when I teach these days, I want to say to those students, “Babies, I love that you love it. I really do love that you love it because I love it. And it’s fun. But there has to be more to it than that.” You know, sometimes when you’re in your 20’s it’s fun to eat rice cakes and peanut butter and it’s fun being an artist. But then there’s 40, 45, and 50 and what do you come home to at the end of the day? I’m not telling you to do anything else, I’m telling you to be prepared for it.

And the lack of the government funding— that government funding that is supposed to be there to help us, the grants and even unemployment, and so forth— somewhere along the line the mentality becomes “there’s always this; there’s always that.” But there really isn’t. And so many of us are not prepared for that.

Why do you think this piece is relevant to audience right now?

Bobby: This piece resonates in a visceral way sometimes with people. There’s a line in the play that talks about, “I’m standing on this thread and I have been and I’m the one that’s holding my ball up in the air. I’m holding my whole world up in the air, I’m the only one that’s doing it. And if I fall, I’m hoping there’s a puffy white cushion.” And he says, “you know, that big puffy white cushion that catches everybody in this country when things go south so that their family will still be okay?” And he’s saying that in this very facetious way. But you don’t know that at the top of the show. And at the end you just hope for the best, you hope for that puffy white cushion and go from there. But it’s what we all do, isn’t it? We can make fun of it but we still hope for it. And whether it’s there or not…we’ll see.

And it seems like now, especially now, everything that I talk about with people all comes back to this play. If one theatre says to you, they can’t put you into this show because of your conflicts, immediately you think, “But you understand that I’m an artist, right? You’re not going to let me have three conflicts so that I can feed my family?” So who’s in the wrong? Them? You? It’s not their fault. There’s no crime there. They are running a business and they need something specific that you can’t provide but you still have the conflicts and you still need to feed your family.

We’re stuck in this place of zero-sum gain. Regional theatre, theatre art in our community…you can sit here and demand this or insist on that or say you’re going to burn it all down. And there’s all kinds of rhetoric being splashed around on the social media but the bottom line is— it’s regional theatre. They don’t have the money. Zero-sum gain. Don’t burn it to the ground if you want to work. You’re not going to get rich, especially not burning it to the ground. I mean you might, you might be Edward Norton, but you really have to want to do the art. It’s just crazy.

Is there anything else you want to say about why people should come experience this very universal, highly-specific, very visceral, one-man, three-band show?

Bobby: The band. The band!!! They are so good. They are just so good. It’s Ethan Lipton and his orchestra. Everything he performs and does is ‘Ethan Lipton and his orchestra.’ Which are three guys. It’s a bass player, a guitar player, and a sax player. They play other instruments too but its just three guys. And we have the original bassist from Ethan Lipton’s orchestra, Ian M. Riggs, who is our music director. And they’ve hired two local gentlemen (Tom Lagana and Grant Langford), who are amazing. They are fantastic.

I also think the formula for this show is so different that it’s enthralling. Even if it doesn’t resonate with you personally, though I can’t imagine how it wouldn’t, you’ll have an interesting evening at the evening. You know some stuff hits and some stuff doesn’t but it’s hard to mentor something or accompany something through its beginning stages as it’s making its debut out into the world. Regional theatre tries and sometimes a first incarnation of something in regional theatre hits and sometimes it misses, but I think this one hits. Whether it will ever be a huge success or not remains to be seen. But I certainly would recommend other theatres doing it with a one-person cast. It’s an incredible experience.

If this show turns into a big success and migrates up to Off-Broadway, are you going to go on the road with it?

Bobby: I can’t, I’ve got Mabel! (Bobby’s amazing and adorable heart-stealing dog.) That’s the one good thing about me, I don’t really want anything. Just like with this show— I just want to put food in my mouth and have a little time to do my art. That’s all. And I get to do that with this show.

No Place To Go plays through October 16, 2022 in the Ark at at Signature Theatre— 4200 Campbell Avenue in Shirlington, VA. For tickets call the box office at (703) 820-9771 or purchase them online.

To read the TheatreBloom review written by Charles Boyington, click here.