When Rob Ackerman, a longtime New York-based property master for commercials, isn’t arranging grapes to bring out their lushness or getting a cup of vegetable soup just steamy enough, he likes to write plays. His latest work, Tabletop, a real-life comedy about just that, was optioned earlier this year by producing director Mark Plesent and artistic director Robert Arcaro of The Working Theatre, New York.
"I wrote the first draft of the play in ’91 out of the pain of being absolutely humiliated by [tabletop directors I had worked for]," said Ackerman. "The truth about these small shops is there’s an incredible amount of sadism and brutality going on. They’re like a small dictatorship-with not many phone calls and little access to the outside world."
After nine years of professional critiques and rewrites, though, Tabletop has become less a depiction of a ruthless tabletop director with his helpless underlings, and more a complex, subtle production where "villains have reasons for their villainy, and audience sympathies shift between the characters." All in all, said Ackerman, "it’s much better."
Tabletop takes place in the equipment-filled studio of "Marcus Gordon Films." Marcus (Rob Bartlett, a performer on the Imus in the Morning show) and his five-person crew are just getting back to work after lunch. They had spent the entire morning doing unsuccessful re-shoots of a new bubble gum-colored slush drink called "Fruit Freeze," which is simply being poured into a plastic cup. Marcus is grumpier than ever.
Although the director’s harshness seemed exaggerated, Ackerman commented that "a lot of the meanest things that Marcus says are things that were said to me. He’s a combination of [many of the] directors I worked for."
During the 90-minute play, the actors take the audience through several actual tabletop reshoots of a "pour shot" and a "heroic beauty shot" (wherein the swirl-topped drink is slowly rotated and raised before the camera). The team carefully sets up the cup and its bed of ripe fruit for each take, but Marcus inevitably finds something is off: The drink is either too lumpy or too watery-and in one pour shot, Ron, the young production assistant, misses the cup altogether. With each flopped attempt, Marcus gets a bit
more agitated-until the nation’s leading tabletop director goes too far.
Several subplots also take place within the lively bunch. The assistant director Andrea (played by Elizabeth Hanly Rice) knows that Marcus is on the road to becoming obsolete, unless he adopts the flashier style of several up-and-coming tabletop directors. Her minor stylistic suggestions, though, utterly appall Marcus.
The grip Dave (Jack Koenig) is a closeted homosexual during the workday because he wants to fit in with what he considers the rough-and-tough world of tabletop. But his infatuation over his new boyfriend is starting to influence him on the set, much to his co-workers’ curiosity.
Oscar the gaffer, (Harvy Blanks), whose dream is to open his own hardware store, is about to lose the financing for his shop, when Marcus takes sympathy and helps him out.
Ron (Jeremy Webb) is putting his job in serious jeopardy by constantly annoying Marcus with his idealistic pronouncements about what tabletop is, and by suggesting new ideas-that are ingenious-but which slow up the day’s work that is already behind schedule.
Ackerman called Ron "his alter ego," even though occupationally that would instead be prop master Jeffery (Dean Nolan). "The way Ron thinks, his idealism, his belief that we can have a better world [is similar to my views]. But he is a blabbermouth and not always likable," said Ackerman.
Although none of the actors was familiar with tabletop commercial production, Ackerman said that the cast performs "a lot of real work" in the play. Serving as a consultant, "I had a gaffer and assistant camera come in, and I myself had to show [the actors] how to use the lighting and grip equipment," said Ackerman. Additionally, Tabletop’s director Connie Grappo sat in on two commercial shoots, one via TBWA/ Chiat/Day, New York, and the other through Inserts Film Production, New York. Except for the camera, the machinery in the performance is also real, lent by equipment supplier CECO International, New York, and New York-based freelance director Peter Wallach.
Ackerman also created the Fruit Freeze product by putting the cotton from baby diapers, shaving cream, and pink food coloring into a blender. "I just intuited the mixture. It’s very creamy, and doesn’t even need to be refrigerated," he said. "This is the kind of thing I do."
Most recently, Ackerman served as prop master on Nippon Lever’s "Mod Hair," directed by Kim Dempster of Compass Films, New York, via J. Walter Thompson Japan, Tokyo; Breathe Right’s "Kinda Weird," directed by Tricia Caruso, now of Highway 61, New York, via Campbell Mithun Esty, Minneapolis; and Saturday Night Live spot spoofs "Veterinary ER" and "Desire," both helmed in-house by Jim Signorelli.
