Jeremy Maxwell sauntered onto the Dad’s Garage stage on a recent dank Wednesday evening with quiet confidence.
In a gentle Southern drawl, Maxwell read a fictional story he wrote about a man at a rescue farm having to put down a dying pig, dramatically throwing pages behind him as he finished each one. As the seconds ticked down on the seven-minute countdown clock, he prepped for his big finale. But four words into his final sentence, the clock hit zero.
Maxwell stopped. He had the pained look of a kicker who just missed a field goal by a foot. The crowd groaned, then applauded. “It always hurts,” said Nick Tecosky, host and co-organizer of Write Club, on stage, “We’ll let Jeremy redo that last line after we vote.”
Per Write Club rules, the crowd of 200 had to choose which person had written and performed a better seven-minute piece: Maxwell or his rival Christina Schmitt, who ruminated on grief after her mom died way too young.
Tecosky had assigned a trio of front-row attendees to deem who received louder applause. They couldn’t decide so he had the crowd applaud again. Finally: a decision. Schmitt was named the victor.
The host handed Schmitt a three-inch trophy dubbed the Loving Cup of Deathless [Expletive] Glory. She grinned. It was her third victory in three tries.
“My husband was a collegiate pole vaulter,” said Schmitt, a 30-year-old Atlanta nonprofit development director, after the win. “We have all his big trophies and my little plastic ones next to them.”
The Write Club concept is appealingly simple. Once a month, for an energetic hour and change, Write Club organizers set up three duels between two writers, each given a related theme to provide a seven-minute performance ― and not a second more.
The three themes in early April were seasonal: birth and rebirth, blossom and wilt, and fresh and rotten. The writers — who ranged in age from 23 to 46, with jobs such as customer service rep and professional puppeteer — touched upon serious topics like death, suicide and race while garnering laughs about therapy, white guilt, the science behind figs and the now semi-obscure 1990s show “Blossom” starring Mayim Bialik.
“It’s the artifice,” Tecosky said. “People love a fight. We call it the tenderest blood sport. It’s a competition but it’s people baring their hearts and souls. Writers come to win but also come to bring the best of themselves.”
Write Club has been a monthly Atlanta staple since 2011, first at Push Push Arts followed by a long run at Highland Ballroom, which was razed during the pandemic for mixed-use development. After a long break due to COVID-19, Write Club came back last fall and landed a new home, Old Fourth Ward improv theater Dad’s Garage the first Wednesday of every month.
“They have an incredible community that fits perfectly with people who come to Dad’s,” said Jon Carr, Dad’s Garage executive producer who recruited them there. “There is so much crossover between the amazing writers they have and our performers.”
Indeed, long-time Dad’s Garage ensemble performer Gina Rickicki, a self described “weirdo” who performs as a clown at local hospitals, won the second round at Write Club this month. She was able to use her improv background to her advantage because she realized her piece was too long and edited as she went to ensure she finished with two seconds to spare.
“I had a whole ending I had planned,” she said. “I had to cut it. But I knew I had the audience on my side.”
But Rickicki is fine with the time limit. “Jeremy and I were talking about it before the show,” she said. “One thing the time limit does is really force you to cut the fat away. And as a show producer, it’s a great time limit because it’s over by 9:30.”
Dad’s Garage has also enabled Write Club to seed future “combatants,” as they are facetiously dubbed, by introducing a class led by Dani Herd, a veteran Write Club performer who works at Center for Puppetry Arts. Herd now teaches people how to write for live performance.
Credit: EVAN HUNTER
Credit: EVAN HUNTER
Ian Belknap, a 58-year-old longtime actor, came up with Write Club in 2010 in Chicago. He then convinced Tecosky and his friend and podcast producer Mykal June to oversee the Atlanta version.
“I wanted to do a show about ideas,” Belknap said. “I wanted a show that would be loud and fast. The show became a series of tricks where the competition is incidental and meaningless. Yet at the same time, I wanted the audience involved Roman Coliseum-style live or die. I believe the quality of attention you pay is denser.”
While five of the six performers this month had done it before, Tecosky and June are always seeking newcomers. Delaney Tarr, a 23-year-old Atlanta-based freelance journalist and University of Georgia graduate, was recruited. She checked out a show in February and decided to go for it.
Two weeks before the event, she was given her theme: rot. Tarr blanked. “I kept writing single sentences in different notebooks in Google doc,” she said. “Nothing materialized.”
She had just three sentences written until six hours before the show. She thought of a trip she had taken to Costa Rica where she learned about how figs get made courtesy of wasps procreating and rotting. She eventually tied it to the tragic school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 17 of her schoolmates were murdered six years ago.
“Now, rotten things are my solace,” she said on stage. “My friends like to say we rot in bed, or that our look of the day is rotted. Like shuffling corpses. I study it. Leave my produce in my fridge way past an okay point until I have to slam the door shut just to trap the scent inside.”
Her piece didn’t win, but Tarr was okay with it.
“I’m kind of glad I lost,” she said. “It takes the pressure off. I’d like to do it again. I can go and give it my all with nothing to lose.”
For Maxwell, victory is an ego boost, however small. He has won four times before. So he was mad at himself for not finishing on time.
“I definitely wanted to win,” he said. “I’m not like salty about it. But I would not get up there in the first place if I didn’t expect to win. I believe my best is good enough to win.”
The camaraderie among the writers was readily apparent. Schmitt came up to Maxwell. “It was wonderful sharing the stage with you,” she said.
Maxwell smiled, looked her in the eye and said, “Congratulations. You deserved it.”
After Maxwell lost, director and filmmaker Domenic Porcari came up to him and told him he should have won. “You’re the only one who gave us literature,” he declared.
And that last, unfinished line of Maxwell’s tale? “I reached inside the crate and the little pig nuzzled up against my hand.”
IF YOU GO
The Write Club
8 p.m. first Wednesday of every month. $12. Dad’s Garage, 569 Ezzard St SE, Atlanta. dadsgarage.com.
