Amy Seeley and the Moline Madman
Then along comes Amy Seeley to remind us just how powerful theatrical autobiography can be. Amy Seeley and the Moline Madman may look like its numerous predecessors: Seeley just stands onstage and tells us about her odd family, building to her father’s battle with cancer. But her efficient storytelling–her keen eye for detail, sophisticated humor, and refusal to sentimentalize even the biggest tear-jerking moments in her life–separates her from the crowd. She never seems to be acting or even speaking from a script. You might think you were sitting around in her living room, listening to a story she can’t help but tell. It’s an evening so honest you might wish you’d brought something to hide behind.
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Perhaps Seeley’s most intelligent departure from the one-person formula is her relative lack of interest in herself. In fact, her life story is something of a tangent; her real preoccupation is her father, the notorious downstate drag racer Wicked Sid Seeley, the Moline Madman (he got the moniker when his dragster’s parachute didn’t open and he crashed through a barricade into a cornfield–but as Seeley makes clear, he may as well have been born with the name). It’s his story she can’t help but tell, from his repressive fundamentalist childhood to his glory days on the racetrack to his harrowing confrontation with lung cancer. When she appears in her own narrative, it’s typically as a fidgety adolescent with nothing of interest to say. Next to her colorful father, she all but disappears.
Seeley’s portrayal of her father is something of a marvel. He screams every word at the top of his lungs, takes every step as though he were crushing jumbo cockroaches. Devoid of psychology, he merely pursues what he wants and goddamn anyone stupid enough to get in his way. Yet Seeley finds great nuance in his character, turning what might have been a one-note performance into a gorgeous melody. And through tiny, well-placed details she hints that the Madman’s sledgehammer of a personality may have been in part a defense against his childhood. He never had a birthday cake, she tells us in passing, until he turned 29.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo by Bo Blackburn.
