Description: A monologue about the role of money in our lives and the price or "worth" of art in the world.

First Produced: 2000
Date Added: 1/9/2012
Content Advisory: Some strong language
Keywords: Documentary  Art and artists  Behind the scenes  The Theatre 
1 Act, 65 Minutes
0 Females, 1 Male

From the Playwright:

The play is a hybrid. It is equal parts stand-up routine, confession, docu-drama, sermon and, finally, ritual. It is a solo show, maybe the reductio ad absurdum of solo shows, as it would most likely lose all of its power and probably coherence if it were performed by anyone but the author. It was also written specifically for the physical space, now gone, that was The Present Company Theatorium, 198 Stanton Street, New York, NY 10002. A friend of mine wanted me to perform it in another theater, and we thought of a way of doing that, the financial details and production of the other theater could be inserted to replace the details and history of the Theatorium, but that would mean whoever runs the other theater would have to tell me exactly how much the entire operation costs, which I would then tell the audience. I don’t know if anyone would do that. I would also have to make current all of my financial details and I’d have to check with my wife before doing that, since they are all her current financial details as well. She’d probably be fine with that.

Another difficulty with the show being performed in another space is that the play depends entirely on a cash box office. This is the major prop of the show. It is essential to have the actual money given by the actual audience that night on stage. That was standard procedure on the Lower East Side back in 2000, but I don’t think they do that in the more upscale venues.

So, this is the text of the show I wrote and performed, in, for and about a place and a time that is gone.

NOTE: Notice of Default and Opportunity to Cure is fully protected by copyright law and is subject to royalty. All inquiries concerning production, publication, reprinting or use of this play in any form should be addressed to Rochelle at rd@indietheaternow.com.

Original Production Information

Notice of Default and Opportunity to Cure premiered at The Theatorium in New York City in March of 2000. It was produced by The Present Company, directed and designed by Nancy Walsh and performed by John Clancy. It was inspired and made possible by Brookshire Equities, Ltd, the landlords of The Theatorium and their decision to serve papers on The Present Company in an attempt to evict the company from The Theatorium. The play was written in the three months between the serving of the papers and the court date given to the plaintiffs.

Review by Martin Denton

Even a theatre as young as The Present Company Theatorium has ghosts: this haven (and soon-to-be landmark; check out the neighborhood maps in the Delancey Street subway station) for New York's downtown arts production has been around for only a year-and-a-half, but already something like two hundred productions and eight thousand actors, directors, writers, and designers have trod its boards. John Clancy, who is the artistic director of The Present Company, conjures all eight thousand of these specters during his new one-man show Notice of Default and Opportunity to Cure. The specific moment when that happens in this vital, compelling work is almost magical, and it encapsulates the most important reason we have theatre: to experience that unique and ethereal mix of art and danger that is live performance: to share a moment of community with our companions on- and off-stage that will, if we're lucky, remind us of our humanity and our humanness.

Indeed, Notice of Default is, in its way, a wake-up call to humanity. Its title and ostensible subject are taken from a legal document that The Present Company received from its landlord at the beginning of this year. The effect of this notice was to instigate a fiscal crisis for Clancy's company (which he runs with managing director Elena Holy); and also an identity crisis for Clancy himself. Both of these crises--especially the latter--became the subjects of Notice of Default; and the passion and insight that Clancy has applied to them are what make this piece so entertaining and so valuable.

I picked that last word very deliberately: "value" is at the very heart of Notice of Default, the concept that gives it both raison d'etre and vast resonance. During the course of this long monologue, Clancy relates the story of the The Present Company's "$100,000 Or Bust Campaign" (the solution that he and Holy eventually found for their theatre's immediate difficulty). He also tells us a lot about himself, as a young downtown theatre artist, trying to balance his very real artistic success against the equally real fiscal pressures that once led his father to tell him that he "would be poor in Bolivia."

But beyond the story-telling is rumination, with surprising depth, on the whole nature of what theatres and theatre artists do, and how (and why) society attempts to place--here comes that word again--a value on that. The journey that Clancy takes us on in Notice of Default--including that memorable moment when those ghosts I mentioned earlier come floating out of the ether--consistently brings us back, again and again, to one central question: how can the worth of artistic endeavor be measured in a currency that finally has nothing to do with art? That question leads Clancy to perform a ritual that will undoubtedly cause you, depending upon your personal feelings about money, to either cringe or celebrate. More importantly, it leaves us to ponder the implications of this Notice of Default (and its accompanying Opportunity to Cure): how do we, as a society, ensure that the creation of art persists and endures in an increasingly materialistic and commercialized culture?

I fear that I've made Notice of Default sound hopelessly polemical and serious; it is neither. Clancy has written a very accessible, very funny play (or sort-of-a-play), and he performs it with restrained elegance and good humor. That it manages to resonate and rankle is a bonus.

review of the original production in 2000

Excerpt from Notice of Default and Opportunity to Cure

Now the thing about this world and this is what I’ve always said and believed although never really acted on, is that there is a lot of money in this world. I don’t have any of it, true, but it’s there. The question is how to get to it. How to get next to it, chat it up and convince it to come back home with you.

This has always been a hypothetical question to me. One year my father did my taxes and he said,

John, you would be a poor man in Bolivia.

My wife worries more about money than I do and so she has always had a decent job in this city. For the past five years she has essentially supported us. Because I work here. I run a nonprofit theater in Manhattan and it’s not Lincoln Center. I don’t make a goddamn thing. But it never occurs to me. In that way, I am not a responsible adult. In that way, I am a child. So, I now have twelve days to grow up.