Running With It

Photo by Anne Cusack for the Los Angeles Times

The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity continues its nationwide sweep, all the more remarkable because of its exceptional staging demands (real wrestling moves, multimedia), with its upcoming run at L.A.'s Geffen Playhouse. Three things I didn't have room for in my Los Angeles Times feature:

• Playwright Kristoffer Diaz delineated three types of wrestling fans: There are marks, or "nine-year-olds who think it's all real"; =smarts, the rest of the world that realizes that, as Kris put it, "If it's on TV, it's scripted"; and smarks, those who appreciate that it's showbiz and follow the narrative behind the curtain, the real-life intrigue of the WWE, its politics, its semiotics. Frankly, that sounds like most contemporary political punditry.
• Where did this third-generation Nuyorican from Yonkers get the Scandinavian spelling of his first name? Kris: "This is the story that may or may not be true. It's from my father, so I have to take it with a grain of salt because he lies—in a good, fun, happy, jokey way. Allegedly he wanted to name me Alejandro and my mom wanted to name me Christopher. The compromise he came up with, thinking that he was being brilliant, is that she could pick the name if he could pick the spelling. He picked Kristoffer, spelled like Kris Kristofferson, thinking she would be like, 'No, that's dumb,' and that they would have to go and pick something else. And she was like, 'Yeah, I like it,' and they ran with it. That story may or may not be true, but I love it."
• I liked this quote: "My wife makes fun of me a little bit; when I'm writing I usually have the television on with no sound, sometimes the radio on—usually music with no words, instrumental—and then on my computer I usually have files for at least two different plays open, Facebook is open, Twitter is open, gmail is open. Sometimes I sort of have to break down and turn everything off and be in the room by myself, walk around and talk. But a lot of the time, I have everything on, and I work in very small bursts: 10 minutes on this thing, and then check Facebook. There's something about movement and overload of information, that kind of quickness and multitasking and multi-focus, that I think is really important...It's always said that we have short attention spans, but I think we have massive attention spans—I think the ability to focus and remember and concentrate on multiple things at once, is something totally new."