Part 78, page 372

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."

Orlock also wrote the 11 songs in this, his first musical. In fact, in the

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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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