KPLU Local News
(2010-09-19)
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Stokley Towles, the writer and star of "Talking Trash: The Social Life of Garbage."
Photo by David Baum
(KPLU) -
It's a quirky world out there and someone's got to tell you about it. Which is what happens when Stokley Towles takes to the stage. As part of our weekly "Artscape" series, KPLU's Florangela Davila profiles the local performer whose latest show is "Talking Trash: The Social Life of Garbage."
Full Story:
What does garbage smell like?
Stokley Towles shares what a bunch of third graders told him.
"One thousand skunks. Like giant gym socks filled with rotten eggs. The smell of garbage is a smell that makes you wish you couldn't smell."
Garbage collectors actually have a system for rating the stench of trash, he says. The worst has a "four gag smell" - raw chicken baked in the sun for a week. The best includes lavender and eucalyptus from a place that makes soap.
On stage, Stokley wears a blue oxford shirt and khakis. And with just a few props -- a toy red truck; some canning jars - he takes audiences on a trip to the dump and a landfill and introduces them to an assortment of people who work with garbage.
In a little under an hour, he threads all kinds of narratives - interviews; random anecdotes, historical asides.
Seattle playwright Bret Fetzer is the show's director.
"He's not presenting you with some sort of academic paper," Fetzer says. "It's this sense of 'oh, I just learned about this thing!' And it's like you're talking to some friend on the bus or something like that, who has happened to have distilled down everything they've learned into these really delightful little chunks."
Anima LaVoy saw Waterlines Stokley's performance last year, in a show that explored the city's water system. She's been a fan of his ever since.
"I'm not much of a theater performance person," she says. "I'm kind of like more of an intellectual stays-in-her-head all the time. But this is why in part stokley's work fascinates me. It's like really vibrant and alive and it has all those little images that stay with you."
Stokley is 48, lanky, and with a brain that's - no surprise - cluttered with facts.
Like the number of rats that crawled up Seattle toilets in just one year: 57.
Or the knowledge that every day, people leave things on top of their trash cans for the garbage truck drivers.
"They might leave a can of soda, or a plate of cookies or a bag of gift soaps. This one driver he said he doesn't like soda. He told his customers this. And he said he likes fruit. So he receives a dozen apples every week."
For this show, Stokley didn't just want to just tell us the usual stuff about garbage, like how much we consume. He wanted to hold a mirror to how emotional we get about trash. Like how we feel when our garbage cans get swapped out for new ones.
"The person's thrilled. They're like "Wow, new garbage cans!'"
But when your can gets switched accidentally with your neighbor's? Stokley says people freak out.
"That seems to be a recurring theme in the garbage world which is 'There's my garbage, which is just the stuff I'm managing. And then there's your garbage which is like gross.'"
We're in his car, driving through one of his favorite parts of town: Seattle's SODO neighborhood. He points out his "garbage" landmarks - like Cleanscapes, which delivers recycling bins.
He divides Seattle into two: the part that gets the spotlight... "Like the city, and the shopping center and the people eating in the restaurants. And then there's this behind-the-curtain or the backstage, Which is all this infrastructure, which is these companies that provide all this not-very-sexy but totally important aspects of our day-to-day survival."
We're on our way to see some of this infrastructure in action: the departure of the Garbage Train, which leaves daily, chugging Seattle's trash all the way to a landfill in Arlington, Ore. All Stokley wants is to look at the train.
"And why is it important?" he's asked.
"Because it's a missing piece, partly, because It's a question. Like, Where does our garbage go? Did you know where it went before we started talking today? Did you know it went to Oregon? I didn't know. I had no idea. So it's an important part of the story. And so if you're going to say it goes to Oregon well, then how does it go to oregon?"
And the questions didn't stop there.
"How we relate to garbage? What we do with it? How we think about it?"
He interviewed people connected to garbage and collected tales about their work and personal lives.
Like Diane, who works at the King County Transfer Station in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood. Stokley tells Diane's story of a love gone bad as part of his show.
"A 35-year-old woman shows up in a black Mercedes and she pulls a cardboard box out of her trunk. She then goes over to the pit and throws it in saying, 'You won't be doing me wrong no more!' She then goes back to the car and grabs some men's shoes, a tie, pants, several suits that still have the tags on. Takes those. Throws those in. 'And you won't be wearing those with some other woman! ' Gets in her car. Drives away. Thirty minutes later a guy shows up. Guess what he's looking for?"
It's quirky and tragic and it's priceless material for a guy who wants to gently prod us into seeing the world a different way. Stokley Towles doesn't preach. But his words will be on your mind the next time you throw out the trash.
Florangela Davila KPLU News.
"Trash Talk: The Social Life of Garbage" continues through Sept. 26, 2010 at The Shoebox Theater on Capitol Hill at 1404-18th Avenue, Seattle 98122. To buy tickets go here.
Stokley Towles website
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