Part 54, page 144

Transcript

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lock's plays to date it is the way he begins with logical, historical situa- tions and lets those situations zoom through logic right off the wall, often into surprisingly tender emotions.

"The humor is so important," said Orlock, "in terms of holding an audi- ence. If you can make them laugh they'll follow you anywhere, right through logic into areas you could never get them to follow you normal- ly. You simply can't bore an audi- ence and move them too. I'm learn- ing that more and more, how to hold an audience and how I can turn that back in on itself or into a different level."

He pulls his comedy from many styles. "I've been watching Abbott and Costello lately," he said. "It's just absolutely primal, basic materi- al, beautifully built. The 'Who's on First?' sketch is to comedy what Bach is to music. I also watch old television series, like Sgt. Bilko. It was well written formally and just needs a content injection. And I love Moliere.

"What I'm after is situational com- edy, the kind that builds from char- acters to the point where the audi- ence finally says 'Oh, no, he isn't really going to do that!' It takes a bit more time to build those situations as opposed to just joke humor, but it's so much richer."

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John Orlock Cricket, featured a mesmerist from the International Institute of Science and Populism. The mesmerist, it turned out, was mute and had to be accompanied by a friend who said all his words for him though the ideas behind the words, we were as- sured, were the mesmerist's.

He has also written plays about a man who played the organ in a Bos- ton subway station and about the Golden Girl, the first female baton twirler to march with a college marching band. His latest play, re- cently given in the Cricket's works- in-progress series, "Revolution of the Heavenly Orbs," is about a 12th-cen- tury French cathedral builder.

If there's one thing that typifies Or-

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Orlock also wrote the 11 songs in this, his first musical. In fact, in th[e]

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