Rehearsal zoom for Blart of Darkness
The cast rehearses for "Blart of Darkness," an original play by Alan Talaga (top row, middle), that premieres on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.
Given the current social unrest and political upheaval, has there ever been a better time for a post-apocalyptic science fiction comedy about a shopping mall security guard?
That’s the setting for Paul Blart 3: Blart of Darkness, an original play by local writer and comedian Alan Talaga, based on the character created by actor Kevin James in Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009) and Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 (2015).
Originally written for the Broom Street Theater stage last year, Talaga’s work was slated for production this fall before the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered Broom Street and other live performance outlets. An online reading of the play is scheduled for Black Friday, the traditional post-Thanksgiving holiday shopping event.
“We’re seeing an upsurge in stories about heroes who have been defeated and have to find their way back,” says Talaga. “It’s an interesting phenomenon that I thought would be funny if we chose the least worthy hero possible. I picked the character of Paul Blart from those silly little studio comedies and dropped him into a very dark world.”
The title Blart of Darkness, of course, riffs off of Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness, which served as partial inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam war film Apocalypse Now. In Talaga’s play, a group of apocalypse survivors wants to establish a shopping mall in an attempt to re-introduce commerce and rebuild society. In a now-feudal land, the founders know the mall will need security and, having heard of the legendary mall cop Paul Blart, set out to find him in hopes that he will join their effort.
Talaga is a frequent contributor to Isthmus. He, along with Jon Lyons, produced the “Off the Square” cartoon for many years. He also contributes opinion columns. But he is perhaps best known by his pseudonym Dan Potacke, under which he hosted The Dan Potacke Show, a variety show sendup performed with friends at the much-missed venue The Frequency. He first met Broom Street creative director Doug Reed when Reed was a guest on the “show.”
The original Blart movie chronicles the misadventures of a hapless, overweight law enforcement wannabe who flunks out of the New Jersey State Police academy and ends up working security in a shopping mall. He is picked on and laughed at but, as Hollywood would have it, ends up preventing a major mall robbery and getting the girl in the process. Blart 2 follows the same scenario, but relocates the action to the Wynn Casino and Resort in Las Vegas.
“I have never seen either of the Paul Blart movies and had to pick up the character through cultural osmosis,” Talaga says. The concept started as a whim and a three-page outline, but quickly took on a life of its own, he says. “When I wrote this in early 2019 we were already seeing the decline of retail and the rise in online shopping, but I had no idea what was coming down the road.”
Blart 3 will have its world premiere reading Nov. 27 at 8 p.m. on the Broom Street YouTube channel. Talaga’s eight-member cast, which draws on acting talent from Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois and New York, will perform from their own homes using Zoom. In keeping with Broom Street policy, admission to the broadcast is “pay what you want,” with half the money going to the theater and the other half divided among the actors. Donations will be accepted via Venmo or PayPal.
This is Talaga’s first full-length play. He’s also written Dog Pope, an unproduced screenplay about a dog who becomes the pope.
Talaga would someday like to see Blart 3 performed on the Broom Street stage. “I first thought about this as a joke, but then I couldn’t stop thinking about it,” Talaga explains. “We’re getting into what may be the roughest winter in recent years and, for good or bad, this is the story I had to tell now.
“Besides, you can’t find a better time to tell a story about shopping malls than Black Friday.”
