Doing “The Dumb Waiter”

Back in the day, kids looking for something to do would say, “Let’s put on a show!”

They’d make up a few lines, rummage around for props, and a few hours later they’d stage a play.  Out in the barn.

Here’s the 2010 version.

Recent Staples graduate Adam Bangser and current Staples Player Matt Van Gessel decided to create a piece of theater that’s their own — a 2-man show.

Adam’s uncle Tom Shaner — a former Player, and Tisch School graduate — suggested “The Dumb Waiter.”  Harold Pinter’s play — a dark comedy about two hit men who receive strange messages while waiting in a basement to kill someone — is “short, quick and fantastic,” Adam says.

They booked Toquet Hall, for this weekend (Friday and Saturday, August 13-14; doors open at 7:30 p.m.).

They bought plywood at Home Depot.  With help from a carpenter working on Matt’s house, they build a dumbwaiter.

They painted the set, and procured props.

Matt designed posters; he and Adam put them up around town.

The pair did everything themselves (though the dumbwaiter is operated by Max Samuels, a fellow Player just back from the Yale Summer Drama program).

“This really is our own little 2-man production, with as few outside influences as possible,” Adam says.

Last month, Adam appeared in Players’ spectacular production of “Rent.”  “The Dumb Waiter” is as different from “Rent” as possible.

But it’s all in a summer’s work for today’s theatrical teens.