More than 1,700 miles away, events inspired by a comedian’s quick visit to International Falls are making hundreds of people laugh each week in Portland, Ore.
Minneapolis native Thomas Ward, who previously worked as standup comic from 2002-2004, said he performed two nights at the Holiday Inn, now the AmericInn, in International Falls during the hotel’s Comedy Club event.
“I’m a comedy fan, and it’s a world I’m very interested in, although I don’t perform standup anymore,” Ward told The Journal. “I’ve always wanted to write about it somehow...I remembered my stop in International Falls, and something about the town’s name and location just works perfectly for the story of the play.”
The play, “International Falls,” said Ward features Tim, a burned-out, stand-up comic, frustrated and depressed with his career and his life; and Dee, who grew up in a small town and has aspirations to be a comedian herself.
Both characters are at a crucial and pivotal crossroad in their lives, and the play focuses on the one night their paths cross.
“The play goes back and forth between Tim’s act and his rendezvous with Dee after the show in his hotel room,” Ward said. “Throughout the course of the night, we learn the most about Dee, who has recently learned of her husband’s affair. Their conversation runs the gamut of marriage, religion and comedy.”
The sequence of events to get Ward’s play onto a stage appeared to work to the playwright’s favor. Ward said until last year, he worked as a professor in the theater department at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and contacted a former student about the possibility of getting “International Falls” in front of an audience.
“One of my students, Brandon Woolley, ended up in Portland after he graduated,” Ward said. “He works as the company manager with Portland Center Stage, a big regional theater. Brandon is also a director and I sent him a couple of my scripts. He loved this play and wanted to make it his professional directing debut, so he put together the pitch for CoHo (Productions).”
“International Falls” is one of four plays Ward has had produced professionally. He said he believes this production is a must-see because audiences seem to enjoy the combination of humor and drama.
“I’m not sure if the play is technically a comedy or a tragedy, and I think it successfully navigates both,” he said. “The play pulls off a neat trick of starting out hilarious and gradually moving into serious dramatic tension, while still maintaining the need to laugh for both the characters and the audience.”
And is there any truth to the events shared by the characters behind the closed doors of a hotel room?
“I so wish I had some dirt to dish, but I don’t,” Ward said. “I was happily married at the time and still am to the same perfect woman. The hook-up is really a means to an end in the story, delving deeper into the characters’ lives.”
Ward said he would love to bring his play to a stage in the community that started it all, but is unable to do it without help.
“Right now, I am researching the expenses and possibilities of mounting the play in the Twin Cities, hopefully within the next year or two,” he said. “Beyond that, I’ll send the script to anyone who is interested in producing it. I don’t have an agent, so I’m the one peddling my wares. My website is thomaswardonline.com, and my email is wardtho@gmail.com... Anyone can contact me for more information.”
