By: David Rachac
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Taylor Negron and Logan Heftel
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Taylor Negron is one of those character actors who has been in a hundred different things and makes you say “Hey, I’ve seen that guy before!” From the pizza delivery guy in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, to guest appearances on shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm, Friends and Seinfeld, the neurotic intensity Negron brings to his characters tends to stick in your mind. A working actor for nearly 30 years, Negron has seen both the glamour and the debauchery of Hollywood, and it is those experiences that form the basis of Satellites, a spoken-word/musical fusion that was being workshopped at the Bryant Lake Bowl last weekend in anticipation of a November debut in an off-Broadway theatre.
Negron’s musical partner is Logan Heftel, a young singer/songwriter who spent a year in Minneapolis attending McNally-Smith College of Music (read a review here.) and was in the midst of relocating to Los Angeles when he met Negron at a Starbucks. They stayed in contact, and spent the last year collaborating on the show that would eventually become Satellites. Both recently moved to New York with the intention of finding a producer willing to take a chance on the show, and it appears that their hopes are being realized. The show at Bryant Lake Bowl was intended to be one of a series of shows in the Midwest and East, but Heftel said that working on and refining the show took so much time, they weren’t able to get out of town much at all.
A bulk of Satellites has Negron telling specific stories from his past, all that have some undercurrent of personal violence. “Life is a series of molestations,” says Negron with a laugh, but at the center of each story he tells, the truth is shown to be anything but funny. He has the storyteller’s gift for drawing the story out, weaving comic details and asides into the main story to provide a wealth of color, but then stunning you when the ugliness of human existence is revealed. And sometimes there isn’t a happy ending to make the story uplifting, which is just like how life is sometimes.
But Satellites is not purely a spoken-word performance. Heftel sometimes plays soft melodies under Negron’s monologues, matching the mood of the song to the timbre of Negron’s story. He also provides musical interludes of original music between scenes of Negron’s stories, and even provides dialog as a stoned burglar who Negron caught in his house stealing his laptop. So there is this constant shifting of speaking and singing, music and silence, comedy and tragedy—a dissonance that keeps Satellites moving briskly along.
It wouldn’t do for me to reveal the content of the stories Negron told—it is as much his telling of the stories as the stories themselves that made Satellites such an enjoyable experience. If there was any disappointment that I felt, it was that it was a relatively short show. Coming in at 70 minutes, but feeling more like 35, I would have loved another half-hour of hearing Negron tell more stories and allow for more interplay between him and Heftel.
Satellites is slated for a November opening at the Barrow Street Theater in New York City.
Location Info:
Bryant Lake Bowl
Artist Info: Logan Heftel, Taylor Negron
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