Raw red circles line J Scott’s left cheek. A pus-filled welt marks the center of each palm. They’re from cigarettes, he explains, that were snuffed out on his skin two nights ago. “I have a taste for dominatrices,” he says. “Most people would never burn you with cigarettes. They just lie about your dreams, or your goals, or you. Belittle and put you down whenever possible. But people in the S-M world get to hurt you, so they don’t have to lie to you and fuck you emotionally. Their damage has already been done.” The 25-year-old playwright and director sees damage all around him. “The whole world, at least to me, seems like it’s all ending. I just want to know I tried and I fucked the bullshit up a little when it’s done.”
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The burn marks are real enough, but its tough to tell with Scott where the genuine anguish ends and the nihilistic pose begins. He made his local theatrical debut in 2001 with Gelo to Oblivion, a squalid, calculatedly unpleasant fantasy about a household of bloodthirsty clowns and a leather-hooded slave who torment a boy mime thrown into their midst. Forgoing any semblance of narrative, he let his id run wild, staging 50 vivid, uncomfortable minutes of sodomy, torture, dismemberment, and humiliation with a raw lyricism reminiscent of Jarry and Artaud. Before the show began, a whiny clown named Sneer met paying customers at the door and forced them to sit across the room from whoever they’d come with.
Eventually he dropped out and headed to London, where he took some classes in Shakespeare. Then he charged off to Columbus, Ohio, to hook up with a comedy troupe called Shadowbox Cabaret. After one show, however, he gave up on them–because “they ended up being a bunch of dicks”–and started his own company, performing in the warehouse of a comic book store. In 1998 he mounted his first version of Gelo to Oblivion, deciding not to use any “real actors” because, of course, he hated actors. Instead he posted flyers around town announcing auditions and ended up with a secretary, a stripper, two bouncers, “someone who called himself the Reverend something-or-other,” and a homeless midget. “I found him on the street begging for change,” says Scott. “I said, ‘How would you like to be in a show for me?’ He started yelling at me, and I’m like, ‘I’ll give you a 12-pack of beer and a couple hamburgers a week.’ And I got him.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Saverio Truglia.
