John Ahlin (left) and Christopher Patrick Mullen in “Chip and Gus.”
I first saw the kinetic, characterful Chip and Gus: A Comedy With Balls — about two men who boast, bicker and bond over a weekly table tennis game — in an extended run at the 2016 New York International Fringe Festival. This summer, the newly revised ping-pong play, co-written, co-directed and again featuring John Ahlin and Christopher Patrick Mullen, has been swatted across the pond for an appearance at Scotland’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
What a difference a decade makes. Originally 90 minutes long, the play will run 65 minutes in Scotland. It appears in Edinburgh Aug. 13-29 at theSpaceUK@Venue 45, in the basement of an old church. (It’s one of more than 3,500 presentations in the Fringe this August.) Get Edinburgh Fringe ticket information here.
This seemed like a good chance to revisit a Q&A that I conducted with Ahlin (who plays Gus) and Mullen (who plays Chip) in 2016 during its Off-Broadway Fringe NYC bow. But, first, I checked in with Ahlin for a quick update about the play shortly after he arrived in Scotland. As before, the production is produced by New York-based Fat Knight Theatre.
Here’s how Chip and Gus is billed: “A blisteringly brilliant comedy of two oddball men playing ping-pong in a rundown upstate New York bar. Their chemistry explodes with hilarious, heart-breaking revelations. Gus, a flamboyantly stoic professor of philosophy and socially inept genius, spouts jokes and pedantry. Chip is a goofy struggling music teacher and composer, whose life hangs by a thread. A spectacular, gripping, rapid-fire human symphony.”
In addition to the Fringe NYC run, Chip and Gus (former title: ChipandGus) appeared at Center Stage inBaltimore, Bridge Street Theatre, Proctors-Schenectady, Parkside Lounge, Hedgerow Theatre, Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, New Jersey Shakespeare Theatre, Centenary Stage in New Jersey and Arts Center of Coastal Carolina-Hilton Head.
Why is the play shorter now?
Christopher Patrick Mullen (left) and John Ahlin in “Chip and Gus.”
Ahlin told me in an email from Edinburgh, “The Edinburgh Festival Fringe ‘suggested’ we keep it short-ish to fit it into their slot, so we said 65 minutes, and then proceeded to cut. It was a fun and challenging process. We did three performances after a first round of cuts and came in at about 75 minutes, then another round of cuts to get to 65. The fun of it all was to examine the true nature of the play, what it wants to say and what it wants to make the audience feel, experience and think about. We think the 65-minute version does that best of all. We are planning to keep a 75-ish minute version in the bullpen, because if a theatre wants a run of it, a 75-minute show is more of an evening of theatre. That would allow us to reinstate several things that we love, and are on theme, but had to go for 65.”
Is it possible the physically lean comedy, which requires only a table, paddles and balls, might be licensed one day, to feature actors beyond Ahlin and Mullen?
“We’d love to let others do it,” Ahlin said. “Playing ping pong is a vital part of the show, [but] the actors don’t need to be champions, only comparable in their skill. And many actors we know are good enough players to make the play work.”
Ahlin’s Broadway credits include Journey’s End, Waiting for Godot and The Lieutenant of Inishmore. Actor-teacher Mullen is known for his work in regional theatres, including People’s Light, Pennsylvania Shakespeare and Arden Theatre Company.
Here’s an edited version of my Q&A with Ahlin and Mullen, which first appeared on my website in 2016:
Christopher Patrick Mullen as Chip in “Chip and Gus.”
Do you remember the first glimmer of an idea for a ping pong play?
John Ahlin: I remember the exact moment the idea came into my head — and it was at a ping pong table. I was playing ping pong for fun a few years ago, blowing the rust off my atrophied skills, when somehow I awakened the echoes and, like a young me, I laced a screaming backhand down the edge and in an overly theatrical way I turned to an imaginary crowd and drank in imaginary cheers. And then I stopped, mid faux-celebration and thought, “Standing here, at the end of a ping pong table feels very theatrical…I wonder if this game would work on stage?” And with that one idle thought, Ahab-like, I began chasing this leviathan of an idea.
How did your collaboration on this begin, once you had the inkling of an idea?
John Ahlin: One day, Chris Mullen — with whom I’ve never been on stage with, but was sharing a dressing room, was speaking of table tennis with the same impassioned reverence I speak of it. I invited myself into the conversation, and I suggested we play. Well, we were both evenly matched, and knowing him to be a superb actor I broached the idea of a ping pong play, and his mind too, Frankenstein-like, became overcome with this one thought: “Let’s, somehow, someway make this play come alive.”
John Ahlin as Gus and Christopher Patrick Mullen as Chip.
Without giving everything away, can you share a little bit about where the play takes place, and expand a little on the relationship and history of these two guys?
John Ahlin: The play takes place in a rundown game room in the back of a rundown bar in a rundown city in upstate New York. We felt it was important that the two characters of Chip and Gus be simply casual acquaintances, who wouldn’t be drawn together at all, except for their love of one thing, ping pong. We wanted their relationship to have all the chemistry of a carpool, at the beginning, and the events of this one night, and what they find out about each other (and themselves) are what creates dramatic fireworks. We are holding Chip and Gus’ specifics close to our vests, because the details of their lives are where the play lives. We also wanted them to be somewhat smart people so we chose people who work at a (rundown) college.
Christopher Patrick Mullen: The tension stems from a couple different things. There is an old unsettled (or long settled) score left over from a somewhat high profile table tennis tournament in which they faced off. And then there are the almost providential, malignant, unspoken, tensions of life that have brought them together in this particular night of destiny.
John Ahlin: We tried to make them opposite in every way, but it turned out it is the things they share that create the tension. And once again I will leave that cryptically hanging…
Do the personality traits of the guys reflect your own personalities or are they purely of your imagination?
John Ahlin: We kind of fell into being in charge of our own characters as writers, with the ability of course to collaborate on any aspect of the play, but each character obviously begins and remains built on all we have to offer. But then, and here is the cool part, we have total freedom to take our characters wherever the play will let us go. An example of a choice I made for Gus is I once read a casual reference to Wittgenstein, the philosopher, about how his students had to remind him what topic the last class ended with, and once prompted he would simply pour forth in unrelenting gushes, the contents of his mind, speaking extemporaneously and brilliantly on any subject. I said “yeah, I want Gus to be like that.”
Christopher Patrick Mullen: I think that Gus is a somewhat more flamboyant, savant version of John Ahlin. I think that Chip is Christopher Patrick Mullen in different (and somewhat similar) life circumstances. Chip is closer to me than Gus is to Ahlin.
Mullen and Ahlin spar in character in “Chip and Gus.”
To be reductive, ping pong is a fun gimmick for a play.
John Ahlin: The very first thought of this play was “Would ping pong work on stage?” But after all this work and devotion and time, it turns out it is a play about people, about Chip and Gus. They happen to meet over ping pong, but it is the journey they take as people that is the story. Theatre is about how we debate life through our stories. And in Chip and Gus, we get, we believe, two of the most interesting characters you will find.
“Playing ping pong” is a term I’ve heard actors use about the back-and-forth of scene work. Did this idea feed your project?
Christopher Patrick Mullen: Ping pong became an imposed metaphor, and ultimately it has become one of the characters and one of the playwrights. That’s how influential it has been.
John Ahlin: The rhythm of the game was like a secret metronome…lines, words, even syllables would be sweated over, and like Shakespeare, it is more than hearing…you feel when it is right. It may be in some acting book somewhere that a true and honest acting choice is to both receive and give in an instant, and that is exactly what happens when you return a shot in ping pong.
Did you both play ping pong before this project? How much of the show includes the actual act of playing ping pong?
John Ahlin: There is some autobiography in that our characters, like ourselves, were once very good at the game, when youth and free time were in abundance, but time and neglect have turned our skills to clay. And to once again take up the racquet and relive our past, is more than a ping pong thing, it’s a life thing. And a lot of ping pong is played, yet so intertwined with all that is happening it is hard to quantify how much of the play we spend playing.
Christopher Patrick Mullen: There’s a great deal of playing. I think when John was seeking a collaborator on this project he was looking for someone with a table tennis background. I’m pretty sure he heard from my ex-wife that I had played pretty seriously as a teenager.
Christopher Patrick Mullen as Chip.
What if you miss a ball and hit it out of bounds — is flubbing and improvisation part of the experience?
John Ahlin: I’ve been told it is a Meisner acting technique to be doing some physical activity while acting, to ground oneself. Well, I tell people I was trained “in the Method and in the Catskills,” and so I bet it works for all techniques, to have something undeniably real in the middle of a play. The reality of playing table tennis removes all artifice and staginess as you have to play, react, and crawl under the table if you have to, to retrieve the ball, all while keeping all your acting actions going. The lines aren’t improvised but the physical life is never the same thing two nights in a row.
Christopher Patrick Mullen: We have discovered that the precariousness of the ball keeps things fresh and alive. Sometimes the will of the ball makes for great comic moments.
Did you know from the beginning that both of you would act, write and direct the play?
John Ahlin: It just seemed to fall to us to make this happen. It was such a unique project that it never really was a question of “who else can we get?” It must be said it is an intoxicating power to be both the actor and the playwright. To be able to change a line or a bit to best suit your moment, is like being a Queen in Chess who can move twice in a row; it feels all powerful.
Christopher Patrick Mullen: At least to get the project on its feet, yes, that was the understanding. Initially I told John, “Hey, you write this thing and I’ll give you some input and I’ll perform it with you.” John would respond by showing me a title page with both of us listed as playwrights. He wouldn’t take no for an answer as far as the piece being co-written. Oh, boy, did he regret that.
How did you guys meet? What makes you a match?
John Ahlin: We never worked together, but were aware of each other. Collaboration is tricky, in that you often have to defer, but that turns out to be a good collaboration’s strength; listening, trying something different, and having someone to talk out ideas with. I think the key to Chris and me is that we profoundly care about the biggest ideas and the tiniest details.
Christopher Patrick Mullen: We had met only in passing in Florida years ago. But our formal introduction in 2008 was a deliberate “go see” on John’s part when he was looking for a collaborator on this project. To all intents and purposes we met on this project.
John Ahlin as Gus.
What kept you up at night when creating the show? What moment or aspect of the script was the most difficult thing to solve?
John Ahlin: The balance of information for the audience is always the trickiest for the playwright. You want to let them know certain things yet not repeat it half a dozen times. With this play, where the elements are deliberately unfolding before the audience, we worked hard and sweated and hashed out so much to simply tell the story as truthfully as possible.
Christopher Patrick Mullen: The two most difficult moments (sequences) to script were the initial beats and the concluding beats. The body of the play more or less dictated itself to us, with a lot of surgical procedures to keep it natural and to keep it funny.
Did you laugh a lot when you were creating this, or was it deadly serious business?
Christopher Patrick Mullen: This play evolved over our lighthearted ping pong get-togethers: Talking about life, love, sports, music, cosmology, philosophy, history, language, family, past jobs, past theatrical exploits… anything was fair game with a special premium on what made the other guy laugh. We’ve been having a blast. The only time we’re deadly serious is when an audience laugh is on the line. Deadly serious.
