How does one get from the tiny border town of Aztec, New Mexico, to the theater-laden if sometimes-frozen creative paradise that is Chicago? In the case of writer/actor/musician Riley Samuel Merritt, it involves a nearly two-year post-college detour through Pagosa Springs, Colo., and Santa Fe, a hefty list of theater credits and, as of this week, the finalized version of a one-man show he’s been crafting for well over a year.
Merritt is slated to mount his production of Trunk this Saturday at Violet Crown Cinema. Part concert, part introspective retrospective and part theater production, Merritt’s show finds him tackling a character loosely based on himself; or, at least, shaped by a lifelong penchant for keeping detailed journals—so many, in fact, that he’s nearly filled a steamer trunk with them, thus the namesake of the production. The show will also feature a number of bluegrass and folk tunes penned by Merritt, as well as a healthy dash of audience participation and improvisational prowess.
“I was living in Pagosa Springs, where my mom lives and…got booked in the Fiesta Melodrama at the Santa Fe Playhouse,” Merritt explains. “That put me in Santa Fe, and I was auditioning for other theater productions, and stuff just kept happening so I’ve been here ever since.”
That’s hardly surprising for a guy like Merritt. He was, he says, the quintessential high school theater nerd. Following a state theater competition in which his tiny school took home top honors, the theater bug permanently sank its teeth into Merritt, and he followed that impulse through a theater
degree from New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. Now, Merritt says, he’s poised to move to Chicago in the coming weeks—both out of a desire to continue honing his craft, but also because the stage scene in that illustrious city feels a little more welcoming than that of New York City.
“In New York, you might try really hard for 10 years, and if you’re lucky you might get something great,” he says. “You can spend that 10 years in Chicago making art with less of a ceiling.”
Indeed, Chicago is known as quite the theater town. Companies like Steppenwolf, Lookingglass and Second City churn out notable performers at a furious clip. Merritt, however, sees the opportunity to possibly carve out his own niche.
“There’s a lot more grassroots theater happening there,” he says. “I decided on Chicago because I want to spend my life making theater rather than auditioning.”
Which brings us back around to Trunk, a show Merritt has been slowly developing as a sort of homage to the elements that drew him to theater work in the first place—and as a take on Everyman, the 15th century British morality play wherein Merritt becomes almost like a cypher for an audience to contend with the same concepts of life, love and existence he’ll present. The idea, he says, was to do something that made him uncomfortable. Initially, for example, Merritt booked his first dates for the performance without actually having
written a word. That deadline pressure helped, as did his insistence upon writing the show by hand and via typewriter—something about writing on a computer makes it easy to slip into nonstop edit mode before you get all your thoughts out, according to Merritt. He’s not wrong.
Still, the hard part was in poring over a decade’s worth of personal journals. These contained no small amount of cringey content, Merritt notes, including tales of lovelorn dramatics, the hubris of youth and some just plain not very good writing. Even so, he was able to cull and categorize a number of promising avenues down which to send his new character, and insofar as Trunk is based on himself, he was able to find a sort of raw vulnerability that taps into a universal desire to be seen and connect with others.
“A lot of my thinking surrounding theater as an art form came out in the overall theme of the show,” Merritt says. “I’ve asked myself plenty of times whether theater still matters in the present world, and I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that it’s about the raw human connection.”
Merritt rounded out the more theatrical aspects of the show with eight new original songs, though he’s quick to point out this was a new-ish creative exercise.
“I mean, I’ve written songs here and there, but in three months I wrote eight songs,” he says. “That was nerve-wracking because it was a new experience, but it was also super-fun and I love those songs.”
Merritt originally learned guitar from his father, a luthier, and pulled from the folk and bluegrass with which he grew up for his own original songs. Like the acting portions of Trunk, the songs are about laying emotions bare.
“One of the reasons it was important to me was that I strongly identify as an actor, writer and musician,” Merritt tells SFR. “If I was going to do my first-ever one-man show, I had to incorporate all three. The other thing is that [the music] gives a sort of relief to the audience, because if you’re just sitting there listening to one dude monologue for an hour-and-a-half…I don’t know.”
So what happens to Trunk when Merritt strikes out for the Windy City? For one thing, he might keep evolving it over time. In fact, Merritt says, his is the kind of show he could see revising in another 10 or 20 years. If his first foray into a complete self-made work has taught him anything, though, it’s the importance of trying to remain as open as you can.
“As an artist, you want so badly to not just be throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks,” he says. “You want some proof that what you did mattered and people witnessed it. I would love, love, love to make someone think about something differently or make someone care about their neighbor a little more. If I can do that or even if I can just make someone smile a little bigger, that would be a big success.”
Riley Samuel Merritt: Trunk: 7 pm Saturday, April 19. $15. Violet Crown Cinema,1606 Alcaldesa St., (505) 216-5678
