Team Danger

esley Hazleton cannot pronounce the word “asshole” properly. It turns out, it’s a distinctly American expression.

“Goddamn” and “son of a bitch” come across fine in her sultry British lilt. But “asshole” sounds flat – a little ridiculous, even. 

Hazleton, an award-winning author and political journalist from England (she moved to Seattle in 1992 to get her pilot’s license), and Lane Czaplinski, the acclaimed artistic director of On the Boards who hails from Kansas City, Missouri, are meeting for the first time inside Hazleton’s small houseboat on Lake Union. The two have been selected as one of eight director-performer teams that will present at Heineken City Arts Fest’s Soliloquy.

Curators Wier Harman, executive director of Town Hall, and local culture provocateur Michael Hebb asked each team to select a piece of writing that inspires the pair and then collaborate on creating a compelling, live performance of that piece. The hope is that, through these unique pairings, fresh interpretations can make the texts even more relevant.

Czaplinski, the director on this team, suggested the works of William S. Burroughs, in particular “The Man Who Taught His Asshole to Talk” from Naked Lunch, as a starting point. Hazleton, who will perform, was initially on the fence. But, as fate would have it, days before she had purchased a pin-striped fedora, which she called her “Burroughs hat.” So Burroughs it was.

Inside Hazleton’s cozy, floating living room, we sip chilled Bison Grass vodka as I watch Hazleton and Czaplinski at work. Hazleton is wearing the hat, of course, and Czaplinski is accompanied by two charming young guests visiting him from Croatia. 

Czaplinski guides the discussion with all the right provocative director’s questions – How might an asshole sound if it could speak? How do you see yourself when you perform? – and Hazleton riffs right back – I don’t know. Vulnerable; maybe bare armed. They each scribble notes as the other speaks, and neither is shy about leaping up – lit cigarette in one hand, script in the other – to deliver lines from the center of the small living room. I scoot my chair back to make room.

Though these artists work in totally different disciplines – one a lightning rod for exciting contemporary performance art; the other an expert on Middle Eastern religion and politics – they seem destined to collaborate.

“I think they put us together because we both like to drink and smoke,” Czaplinski jokes.

That they do. But they also share a kind of worldliness – an easy manner. It’s a quality one gains, perhaps, from experiencing aspects of non-American cultures – like smoking indoors, or watching tennis, which both of them do. 

They also both love cats. Hazleton’s pretty but shy cat, Dashi, likes to swim. Once in a while, Hazleton says, she will just jump off the back of the houseboat and go for a paddle. And so will Hazleton. She tries to convince one of us to join her for a swim on the spot, but doesn’t succeed. In the end we dip our feet in the cool dark blue. The Croatian girls marvel at Gas Works Park, while Hazleton points out the Sleepless in Seattle houseboat floating on the dock next door and giant termites flying over our heads. “The cats love them,” she says. 

As smoke fills the living room, Czaplinski reveals that he actually met Burroughs while he was living in Lawrence, Kansas. He notes that the writer, a rough-and-tumble figure in our collective consciousness – the notorious drug addict shot and killed his wife by accident while high – was also “brutally intelligent, mannerly, kind and gentle.” 

“Really, it was the ideas he represented that became dangerous,” Czaplinski says.

Hazleton’s current book-in-progress is a biography of Muhammad, which, she says, will offer an entirely new look at his life. “What he was advocating in seventh-century Mecca was a social revolution of the most drastic kind. The idealism behind it – it’s absolutely stunning.” As part of her research, Hazleton spent three months rereading the Koran, moving through four different translations simultaneously. “An amazing exercise in frustration and revelation,” she jokes.

Language and knowledge swirls around Hazleton the way I imagine a jazz bass line and hallucinations swirled around in Burroughs’ head. During our conversation, she imagines out loud that her houseboat is a bit like the Koranic idea of paradise, “gardens watered by running streams.”

Czaplinski is energized by what her persona adds to Burroughs’ prose. “I think the British accent is fantastic,” he assures her. “I also like the idea of having a woman do it; it’s a loaded proposition, given who Burroughs was.”

Because of the softness she brings, I notice something I’d never considered about Burroughs’ work. His narrator comes across not just as a fast-talking bad boy but as someone pleading with his audience to see what is so simple and plain to him, and so desperately out of reach for everyone else.

At this private rehearsal at the beginning of this collaboration, there are no closed doors or inside jokes, only questions, possibilities and the hurried enthusiasm of kids who can’t wait to see what’s in the other hand.

As a conversationalist, Hazleton jumps from one intriguing subject to another. One minute she’s explaining how a life lived in a community of houseboats – like living in Cairo to her – is more private than any apartment building, even though people can see directly into each other’s windows. The next she is contesting my claim that I have never looked good in hats. She grabs a floppy burgundy Annie Hall affair and plunks it on my head, ordering me not to touch it as I find my way to a mirror. She is right. I do look good in hats, so long as I don’t wear them straight or too far back. Meanwhile, I’ve learned that my vodka, on the other hand, should be straight more often – so long as I sip it slowly. And finally, I learn that the water in Lake Union is not too cold for a swim in September – so long as I do it quick as a cat. •