Fishtank
It’s tempting to dismiss Scott as the lesser half of the brain trust behind Half Cocked Productions. Arik Martin is easily the more prolific of the two playwrights and a much better craftsman. While Grand Guignol horror is the company’s stock-in-trade, Martin tends to exercise a modicum of restraint: every action serves a purpose, and every moment is imbued with a deeper meaning. Martin favors structure. He’ll hand you a glass of water to swallow his bitter little pills while Scott would rather straddle you, pry your jaws open with a rusty crowbar, and choke you with his.
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In the program notes, Scott offers thanks to iconoclastic writer Aldous Huxley, performance punk GG Allin, gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, and dour singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen. He also joins the descent into madness onstage under the pseudonym “Jarry Schwartz,” a tip of the hat to the Ubu roi playwright, perhaps the best point of reference for Scott’s brand of jagged, nonlinear dadaism. That list of inspirations could easily be expanded to include any and every practitioner–from Antonin Artaud skyward–of the confrontational anarchic style.
