Content warning: This story contains a description of drug abuse.
The curtain opened and closed on alumni play “Lobster” this weekend in the Virginia Wadsworth Wirtz Center for the Performing Arts, bringing a high school theatre rehearsal room to life.
The core inspiration behind Northwestern alumni Kallan Dana’s (MFA ’23) “Lobster” was the Hotel Chelsea. Better known as the Chelsea Hotel, it is perhaps more storied than the individuals who have stayed inside it. The notorious New York City hotel has witnessed love affairs, murders, outbursts of creativity, devastating drug overdoses and the infamous murder of Nancy Spungen by Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious.
For artists, the hotel was a place of inspiration. For example, singer-songwriter Patti Smith and playwright Sam Shepard co-wrote the avant-garde play “Cowboy Mouth” there in 1971.
Dana has long been infatuated with Patti Smith and The Chelsea Hotel. She first stumbled upon Smith’s artistic genesis and legendary affair with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe while reading Smith’s 2010 memoir “Just Kids.”
“I was interested in a character who had an intense obsession and idolization of Patti Smith and this idea of the ’70s,” Dana said.
In her second year in the Writing for the Screen and Stage graduate program, Dana penned a first draft of “Lobster.” She said she was captivated by Lobster Man, a character in “Cowboy Mouth” who sacrifices himself to Shepard and Smith for their dinner.
“Lobster” follows the erratic Nora (Communication senior Ella Stevens), who attempts to produce “Cowboy Mouth” at her high school, which she says will take the “presence and determination” that her teenage cast sorely lacks.
“Lobster” showcases Nora’s infatuation with the Chelsea Hotel after she reads “Just Kids” and tethers her soul to lower Manhattan in the 1970s. However, the cast’s inability to appreciate the mammoth nature of Patti Smith and The Chelsea Hotel is the least of Nora’s concerns.
Abandoned by her mother at a young age, Nora is a stoner starving for connection. She channels this desperation into an incessant pursuit of an ex-girlfriend Imogen (Communication senior Lola Bodé), who is rehearsing the lead role in “Beauty and the Beast” in the rehearsal room next door.
For Stevens, Smith’s story resonated deeply. Stevens read “Just Kids” in high school and described it as “formative.”
“(Smith) tells you that the weirder you are or the things that you might think are quirks are actually your special talents,” she said.
A longtime Sam Shepard fan, Chicago-based director Dado said she was excited by the chance to direct Dana’s play.
After reading the script in Spring 2024, Dado was fascinated by its theme of humans’ relationship with memory, she said.
“I understand how a memory is dynamic and fluid and informs different parts of your life,” Dado said. “Somehow (Dana) must be ageless, because she also understands that.”
As Dana cultivates a small “theatre community” in New York and Chicago, “Lobster” has taken off. In late April, “Lobster” will play for three weeks at The Tank, an off-off Broadway theatre company.
“We got to a really good place with the NU production, and I’m excited to keep working on it in New York,” Dana said.
Email: gabehawkins2028@u.northwestern.edu
X : @gabe19violin
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