Ten Years of Fresh Ground Pepper

There was a time when the most important thing in my life was Fresh Ground Pepper.

Not the spice itself, though that too is good. Fresh Ground Pepper was, and still is, something else, something I’m not quite sure I can fully explain. It started as a monthly festival to celebrate and make new art and theater — fresh new works, hence the name. When my friends Andrew Neisler and Jaclyn Backhaus started it, it was 2009, and I had just graduated.

It was a bleak time in my life. I spent my first two years out of college, jobless, heartbroken, and miserable. The recession was in full swing, and I had no idea what I was doing with my life. I was too terrified to write, and too depressed to do much of anything else. It got to the point where I’d try to make lists of the very basic, everyday things I had to look forward to, the things that kept me going: on Sundays I’d meet with my writing group. Mondays, I had therapy. Tuesday, a new episode of my favorite podcast came out, and so on. Anything to get through the week.

Then one day, in early 2010, I got a Facebook invite from Andrew and Jaclyn asking “Want to be part of a parade?” It was cold and rainy that say, but I needed to get out of the apartment, so I went, tracking them down somewhere around Tompkins Square Park. People — some of whom I knew, some of whom I didn’t — were blowing whistles and shaking maracas. It was loud enough to be cheerful, but not too loud as to be obnoxious; just enough to cheer up a gray day. We were having fun, and people passing us smiled. I began to wish that I had something to make music with, and rummaged through my backpack. Fortunately, I’m an asthmatic hypochondriac, so I brought out my bottle of Mucinex, and started rattling it on the beat, like it was a shaker. Jaclyn saw me doing it and laughed. “MU-CI-NEX! MU-CIN-EX!” she started to chant, and then so did I, and so did everyone else around us.

I felt light in a way I hadn’t in the past two years. It had been fun, and just ridiculous enough to get me out of my head, and out of the house. After that, I went to every Fresh Ground Pepper event I could.

Stivo Arnoczy performing a monologue I wrote, called “Wild Card,” based on a costume design sketch (and brought to life) by Matt Allamon, at an FGP event in 2011.

It was different every month: sometimes it would be people staging a Be Kind Rewind-style re-staging of a musical like Grease or Les Miserables. Sometimes it was an award show for whoever could find the best YouTube videos. Sometimes it was a festival of full-length plays, or a festival of only comedic plays, or a festival of two-minute plays — I was lucky enough to have my writing featured in all three. Once they did a tribute to Rod Serling, and another time, to the Spice Girls. Performances at FGP events could be part of something longer someone was working on, or something we’d only see once. It brought to mind something a theater school professor, someone I otherwise usually found pretentious, once said: “‘Experimental theater’ used to be an experiment. That was the key component, trying new and different things, seeing what worked, what didn’t, and what we could learn from it. Now ‘experimental theater’ mostly just means ‘weird.’”

Playing an irate Miss Lynch (which I didn’t know I’d be doing until about five minutes prior) during FGP’s offbeat staging of Grease in 2012. That’s Doug Paulson as Danny in the back, photo taken by Avery McCarthy.

Some stuff at FGP was weird, but even then, it was entertaining. One time they had four different canvases set up in four different parts of an apartment, and after half an hour, four artists would switch canvases. A painting I thought was beautiful was painted over, cut apart, assembled into different pieces, made into a sculpture. I felt sad to see the original painting go, but glad I’d gotten to see it in the first place, and pleasantly surprised to see what it had become.

When I look back at photos of myself in my early twenties, the ones where I look my happiest were all taken at FGP events. They helped me develop my plays Thank You Ten and Sheeple, as well as giving me a chance to write and perform many other pieces. But they also taught me something invaluable, something I needed to know: that I was appreciated, that I had something to offer. People smiled whenever I arrived at an event, and were happy to integrate me into their works, or just to have me as an audience member. At one point I started bring home-baked cookies and cupcakes, and would either give them out, or offer to let them be sold them at concessions. I made new friends, and once or twice even dated someone I’d met there. There was none of the exclusivity so many other Brooklyn hipster art collectives were about: people were friendly, and it was pay-what-you-can. FGP was all about welcoming, encouraging, and celebrating new artists — and anyone could be an artist.

Above: actors Roe Hartrampf and Cecilia Kim look over their lines for the staged reading of Sheeple, while I grin like a maniac, at FGP’s Playground festival.

At some point, I stopped being able attend FGP events as religiously. One of my jobs started very early on Saturday mornings, so any events on Friday nights were out (though I did once fall asleep at a friends’ nearby apartment after an event, and had two of them literally carry me into an extra room so I could sleep through the after-party and still wake up early), and by Saturday night, I’d be too tired. On Sundays, I’d usually be in a storytelling show, or be hosting my own. By my last few years in New York, I’d already started to check out of life there, feeling my need to be back in California grow with every trip home. I was trying not to get too attached, because I already knew I’d be leaving soon.

But I never forgot Fresh Ground Pepper, and the sense of community and purpose it gave me. It was a fun place to try something new, to take chances and open yourself up, without any judgment. Is it an exaggeration to say that it changed my life? That it kept me going when I felt like I couldn’t? I don’t think it is. Just thinking back on how much hope and fun it gave me brings tears to my eyes.

Last week, it was FGP’s tenth birthday. Andrew Neisler wrote to ask me if I would submit a video or statement they could use on social media, but still in my post-A-Camp work catch-up haze, I missed the deadline. Once again, I felt myself tear up, because there are few things more important to me than giving credit where it’s due, and being thankful and gracious to those who helped you the most. I will forever be grateful to Jaclyn and Andrew — who have gone on to fantastic theater careers of their own (please read or see Men on Boats, and if you have a theater program with a lot of girls or women please stage it, it is truly wonderful). And I’m grateful to everyone who made FGP what it is, and what it continues to be: a creative hub, a laboratory, a home. May it go on for many more tens of years!

Fake BBC Show of the Week: The Jaffa Cake Tribunal (who stole the biscuits from the biscuit tin?)

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