‘We’ll Get Back to You’ world premiere at Mirrorbox Theatre in Cedar Rapids

CEDAR RAPIDS — Would you apply for a job in a company you knew nothing about? Why continue the interview process when your answers are so awful that you have no chance of being hired?

These questions lead to more questions that begin to pile up in “We’ll Get Back to You,” making its world premiere April 4 to 28, 2024, at Mirrorbox Theatre in Cedar Rapids.

And why would a New York Times bestselling author team up with the Tony-nominated director of “Rock of Ages” to launch their project on an intimate stage in Cedar Rapids?

Why not?

“I get to come to Cedar Rapids and meet all these wonderful people there who love plays,” writer Rob Bell, 53, of Ojai, Calif., told The Gazette via email. He’ll be in town next week for the premiere, just as he was here for the live reading of the play July 19, 2023, at Mirrorbox Theatre and online.

If you go

What: World premiere of “We’ll Get Back to You,” produced by Crooked Path Theatre Company and Mirrorbox Theatre

Where: Mirrorbox Theatre, 1200 Ellis Blvd. NW, Cedar Rapids

When: April 4 to 28, 2024; 7:30 p.m. Thursday to Saturday; 2:30 p.m. Sunday; 90 minutes, no intermission

Tickets: $50 VIP opening weekend; $30 April 11 to 28; mirrorboxtheatre.com/upcoming/

Opening weekend: Includes post-show talkback with playwright Rob Bell and director Kristin Hanggi; show poster; autographed play script

Looking back on that experience, “I loved it,” Bell said. “I was blown away by how the audience responded to the play — and it was just a reading. I kept thinking, ‘What if this was a full production?’ And now here we are. I’ll be the guy in the audience with the huge smile.”

Director Kristin Hanggi, 46, of Woodstock, N.Y., had the same reaction from being in the audience for last summer’s live reading.

“When we heard it out loud, we went, ‘Oh, oh, oh — we have something here,’ ” she said. “And I think it just became obvious to all of us in the room that the play was being asked to be put on. It was just saying, ‘Put me on.’ It was just so obvious. It was electric, the feeling we had in the room.

“The audience had such a great time. We had such a great time doing it, that it just felt like the obvious next step is that we do the play here,” she told The Gazette during a March 21 roundtable interview with several cast members.

“I also got really excited because I’ve worked extensively in Los Angeles and New York, but it was really fun for me to come to the middle of our country and meet these wonderful human beings that were so talented, and so generous of spirit. And I think it really came out of the ‘Let’s put on a show together’ (spirit).

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“And it also felt like this play was of this moment in time. There’s something about this play that’s about systems that aren’t working. We’ve been having that conversation a lot in rehearsal. And it felt like it was of this moment, and it just felt like maybe there’s a reason that this play needs to be done in the middle of the country right now.”

Bell described its themes as: “Why are humans so incredibly interesting? What do we do with the ache that comes from believing your life could have been something else? What do you do when you feel trapped in your job?”

Evolution

The seeds were planted in California. Bell, already an established author, began writing plays in 2018. “What’s a Knucka?” became his first one published in book form. On his website, robbell.com, he calls it “a surreal, absurdist tale of climbing to the top, only to find yourself on a very different kind of mountain.”

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So what sparked “We’ll Get Back to You,” which appears to start at the bottom and also plays with perceptions?

“That’s why I love writing — the more I do it the less I understand how it actually works,” Bell said. “It’s so mysterious. I had this image of a woman interviewing for a job and various people from the company taking turns asking her questions, and gradually it gets quite surreal and surprising.”

Being in the right place at the right time sparked his collaboration with Hanggi.

“I used to do shows at a club called Largo in Los Angeles,” he said, “and Kristin came to one of those shows. A friend introduced us afterwards and when I heard she was a director I said, ‘Can I send you a play?’ And she said yes.

“I finished the first draft and sent it to Kristin, and she said, ‘Yes, let’s make this.’ And now five years later we’re staging it in Iowa. How cool is that?”

He said their collaboration was “really enjoyable, because I read her pages and then she interacts with what I’ve written and immediately sees larger themes and how it could be staged, and how to make it better, and what questions it raises for her about what it means to be human.”

It unfolds with comedic and serious tones.

“My work has always been about the magic that happens when the funny and the profound dance together,” Bell said.

The chance encounters continued when Hanggi came to Cedar Rapids to see “Rock of Ages,” directed by Christopher Okiishi at Theatre Cedar Rapids in June and July 2023. They immediately clicked, and decided to join forces for a live reading of “We’ll Get Back to You.”

Not only is Okiishi performing in the upcoming staged production, he and husband Patrick Du Laney, founders of Crooked Path Theatre Company in Iowa City, are producing the show with Mirrorbox Theatre.

Crooked Path is responsible for raising the money to stage the play; putting together the team; sending actor audition tapes to Hanngi and Bell; and working out the logistics of getting the out-of-town folks to Iowa, including cast member Saffron Henke, who lives and teaches in Colorado. Looking toward the play’s life beyond Cedar Rapids, the producers are scoping out costs to take the show to Chicago, New York and other sites.

So far, the price tag is between $40,000 and $50,000, Okiishi said, coming from donors, family, friends, and support from Mirrorbox Theatre’s Iowa Arts Council grant.

“We also will be opening it up through the run of the show to people who are interested in investing in what its next phases may be,” Okiishi said.

Characters

Jessica Link, 46, of Cedar Rapids, plays Viva, who walks into the interview without knowing what the company does.

“She is a bit of an enigma,” Link said, “and that’s fun to figure out. … I think she knows. It’s for the rest of the people in the room to figure out, including the audience.”

Aaron Pozdol, 43, of Cedar Rapids, portrays Glenn Stevens, part of the company’s customer service division.

“What customers purchase and how he services their needs I don’t think is really relevant,” Pozdol said. “The point is that he is someone who has grown up with a strong sense of competition, especially team competition, and he very much sees his role as ensuring the financial stability of the company and everyone who is employed by it, from a team sports perspective.”

Even though he, Link, Okiishi, and a couple more cast members were part of the initial live reading, Pozdol wasn’t sure he really liked his Glen character on paper. But he said the process of putting the show together as been “very easy, very satisfying, really, to do.”

Link likes finding the common ground with Viva.

“I don’t know what I’m doing here either,” she said, eliciting laughter from around the table. “There is a sense to her that she is interested in people and what they can do together, and she really wants to find the humanity within each of us and make that a priority. And that’s something I like to always be aspiring to.

“I like her better as a big old question mark. That’s what’s fun,” she said. “There’s whole parts of it where I just get to encounter different people and what they’re experiencing and what they’re giving and what their challenges are, as I sit in this interview room and people come and go. It’s fun to be a mirror for them and to play the scene. It’s just little scene works, little bits of scenes, and that’s a delight for me.”

She and her character “both delight in that, and who’s across the table and what can we learn from them and with and because of them.”

Okiishi, 55, of Iowa City, a psychiatrist in real life, plays Todd Klosser, the interdepartmental liaison to the company’s human resources department.

“Oh my heavens, there’s so much common ground,” he said. “Todd seems to live in a world where it’s probably his fault if something’s gone wrong, because he wasn’t working hard enough. I recognize that feeling of wanting to be the person that helps everything be OK, and then its twin, that it might be your fault if everything isn’t OK. I like the way he experiences the world in just a little bit 15 degrees off that. I think people like that are curious and wonderful and needed.”

Saffron Henke, 50, of Loveland, Colo., plays Kosa, the community engagement, health and wellness division representative.

“She’s kind of like the wellness guru of this group, and she does … the personality testing portion of the job interview,” Henke said. “It’s very elusive. What the specifics are of this system lie uniquely within Kosa, but somehow Viva understands her. And we've talked about her being sort of a portal …

“She's different in this office energetically than anyone else. She's very centered, very grounded, whereas everybody else is holding on kind of by their fingernails. And secretly I think Kosa is, too. Not holding on by her fingernails, but she responds to Viva like everybody else. Viva has a quality. It says in the script ‘she’s grounded energy so potent that she works the space time continuum.’ …

“There’s a vibrational quality to this play that I think will impact the audience and give them lots to chew on here, but also (in) their hearts,” Henke said.

Bell hopes the actors and audiences experience “the wonder and awe that comes from remembering that you are a human and you’re here. And it’s good that you’re here and you’re just scratching the surface of the joy of your own existence.”

Comments: (319) 368-8508; diana.nollen@thegazette.com