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Docked and Loaded Mirrorbox Theatre throws a curveball with a surreal take on America’s pastime. BY ROB CLINE
I
spoke with Cavan Hallman, Curtis Jackson and Caleb Rainey—the writer, director and lead performer of the forthcoming play This Is Not a Game of Baseball—the morning following Major League Baseball’s Field of Dreams game. That beloved movie and the W.P. Kinsella novel, Shoeless Joe, on which it is based both celebrate a certain vision of baseball and its role in American mythology. Hallman, Jackson (who lives in Chicago and has worked with Mirrobox and Riverside Theatre in recent years) and Rainey (a writer, spoken word artist and actor) will be stepping into the batter’s box with a significantly different kind of story to tell. This Is Not a Game of Baseball takes as its jumping off point the no-hitter thrown by Pittsburgh Pirates righthander Dock Ellis on June 12, 1970. Ellis accomplished this impressive feat (one of only four that season) under the influence of LSD. He himself could hardly remember the game at all. That game, as the play will illustrate, was hardly the end-all-be-all of Ellis’s life. There is a much more complex and human story to bring to life for audiences—baseball fans or not. Mirrorbox Theatre’s premiere production of This Is Not A Game of Baseball: The Far-Out Story of Baseball’s Most Revolutionary Pitcher will run from Sept. 17 to 26 and will be performed outdoors at Allen’s Orchard in Marion. “Mirrorbox was really happy with the results of our first adventure into outdoor theater when we did The Parking Lot last summer at CSPS,” Hallman explained. That was very much a response to the pandemic and a response to necessity. But sometimes necessity shows you things that can work outside of necessity. And so I was really excited about continuing the use of site specific and outdoor theater as something we could do to bring our mission forward, to keep doing contemporary plays in Iowa.” Hallman got what he called a “wild hair,” and decided the company should produce a baseball play. Failing to find the right one—and given that he is a playwright himself—he decided to write it. The story of Dock Ellis was of a piece with much of his recent work delving into memory and creative adaptations of history. “For me, the thing that really locked me into this story was when I started thinking about the 40 September 2021 LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV298
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tragedy of this amazing man whose legacy, if it’s remembered, is often reduced down to a novelty. And the other side of that with memory is that arguably his greatest professional achievement is something he could barely remember because he was high.” The play centers around Ellis, but other historical figures are also part of the play, serving a purpose traceable back to the earliest days of drama.
Mirrorbox Theatre Presents: This Is Not a Game of Baseball, Allen’s Orchard, Marion, Friday, Sept. 17-Sunday, Sept. 26, 6 p.m., $20
“I went into this thinking structurally that I was interested in creating something that felt
