This month’s West Village Original is playwright David Van Asselt, born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. A PHD in Philosophy, David is the author of such works as “Winning,” “A Trip to the Beach,” “Dog Daze,” and “A Fable.” He is also the founding Artistic Director of Rattlestick Playwrights Theater on Waverly Place, which is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year.
It took playwright David Van Asselt a couple of tries before he found a career he could flourish in. “I first went to NYU to study film,” he says. “Then I went back to school and got a PhD in Philosophy. But I soon realized teaching didn’t sound very appealing to me. So, I went and built houses for a while but I got bored with that, too. Since I’ve always been interested in theatre, I started to write plays somewhere in there while doing carpentry. One play was produced here so I thought I would give New York a try. It didn’t take me long to realize I didn’t know nearly enough, so I gave myself a crash course in theatre: assistant director, carpenter, designer, manager, etc. I did a lot of everything!”
It also didn’t take long for Van Asselt to realize that it was networking that got your work both performed and seen. So, he started a group of seven playwrights who met regularly and read each other’s work. “Inevitably these meetings turned into gripe sessions,” he says. “We complained that theatres weren’t presenting a lot of new work which, at that time, was true. After a while I got kind of tired listening to this and said, ‘Why don’t we start a theatre company ourselves?’ So, Rattlestick was born. It was me and Gary Bonasorte—also a playwright—who were the driving forces and de facto artistic directors of the company at first.”
Finding their current space turned out to be a case of serendipity. “In 1994, when we did our first play here, the space was known as Theatre Off Park and it was a rental house,” Van Asselt recalls. “We had a successful show running in a midtown theater, but we wanted to extend it. It happened that this theater was going to be dark that whole summer, so I grabbed it. I thought it was kind of a nice spot for us. It wasn’t Theatre Row. Rather, it was a place where you could actually establish an identity as a theater company.” After two years of booking the theater for all their productions, the opportunity arose for them to take over the lease and they jumped at it.
Of course, it helps to have a landlord one can work with and Rattlestick has been blessed (pun intended) with the cooperation of theirs: St. John’s in the Village Episcopal Church. “One of the reasons we can stay in this space is that St. John’s has been a terrific landlord,” Van Asselt admits. “They’ve worked with us to keep the rent at a reasonable rate. All of the theaters downtown are closing because rents are being so jacked up, so it’s nice to have someone who’s not just thinking about money. In the theater, you have to have some angels.”
Does Van Asselt think that their theater’s presence in the West Village influences their choice of plays? “I think so, yes,” he says. “In the sense that we’ve been able to be a lot more adventurous and a lot more challenging. Again, a big part of that is because we have St. John’s support. They’ve never attempted any censorship whatsoever. And also because we tied into the West Village tradition of being Bohemian and experimental.” Is that tradition still alive? “Not so much anymore,” Van Asselt has to admit. “It has changed tremendously here. If anything, Rattlestick has probably lost a little of our audience because the Village has been scaled up so dramatically as of late. Unlike the old-time Villagers, I don’t think the new Villagers are necessarily theatergoers. I think they just want to go to very fancy restaurants!”
Van Asselt punctuates this observation with one of those small, personal stories that best illuminate the kind of seismic shifts the West Village has gone through recently. “The old Waverly Inn restaurant was a wonderful place to hang out in,” he says. “It was just down the street, and I could drop in after a show and the cook would whip up a plate of jambalaya for me. We did a lot of cross marketing for each other, too. They lost the lease a few years ago and a very posh restaurant went in. Suddenly, it became a very different atmosphere and we were excluded. Perhaps, as they get more established, the new restaurant will be a little more willing to embrace other aspects of the Village. But for now, it’s sort of a sad thing.”
Photo: John Lamparski