The writer and performer of Horripilation!, John Sowle, is unquestionably a shining light in the fields of research and preservation of obscure global theatrical traditions, as well as being an imposing performative figure in the relating and embodiment of these same traditions. In 1973, with a Fulbright fellowship to research a doctoral thesis in dramatic art, he spent time at the Kerala Kalamandalam in southern India, where he was obliged to rise each morning at 3 a.m. in order to begin his day’s grueling training in traditional dance movement and actorly craft. Kept on his feet for hours at a time, in a highly repetitive form of dance stepping, his relief would come finally in the form of a massage administered by his teacher (asan), who would walk up and down his back while he lay in a formally controlled position. It should come as no surprise that classical traditions of drama and dance, wherever they originate, involved a regimen of severe physical hardship and mental discipline, but the sharing of these events in the performance by Mr. Sowle, as he reproduces the exercises nearly forty years later, is quite something to witness.

He is telling us about the southern Indian tradition of Kutiyattam, and of the Natya Shastra of Bharata, an ancient text on the rules and aesthetics of theater – a medium itself imparted to humankind as a divine gift because its sacred deviser would not entrust the gods with such a potent form of diversion. The historical and mythic dimensions of the tradition are complex and rich, and as involved as the formal rites, rules, and roles of the drama are exhaustive. Alone on stage, in traditional Indian garb, Mr. Sowle enumerates some of the primary categories of consideration as to theatrical principles: for the erection of a theater, the composition of such, the qualities requisite in an actor, and the physical language of actorly expression. He demonstrates for us as he does so, at one point marching out into the auditorium with a length of rope in order to show the necessary dimensions required in establishing both the performance space, and the audience space. Indeed, and not surprisingly, there are rules that extend to the audience too, as to their composition, number, and receptiveness. In many ways we are witnessing a form of cultural archaeology.

As he speaks, gestures, and dances, the actor casually moves the minimal props around the space, and matter-of-factly attires himself in various parts of his costume and make-up. He segues easily into excerpted scenes from classical epics of sanskrit, demonstrating the formalized expressions and gestures he has introduced to us. Short of an enticing image of himself as a young man, cycling in the hours before dawn, through monsoon rains to classes, he does not deliver any personal content. Indeed, at the heart of the Kutiyattam tradition is the notion of a non-empathic experience on the part of the audience, a learned, highly abstracted and aestheticized appreciation of the codified artifice of performance. Mr. Sowle here seems uninterested in breaking with this tradition. To whit, at the end of the show I felt like I had been attending a highly informative lecture that made imaginative use of demonstration. I did not feel I had witnessed a dramatic performance. If I had anticipated attending an educational presentation, I might have been a little more prepared to sound the depths of my considerable ignorance.  As it was, I felt a little cheated out of my expectation of a moment of imaginative catharsis. Consciously or unconsciously, we come to theater with our own inherited expectations of  in what a drama should consist.

Mr. Sowle does have one great “dramatic” trump card in this piece, which he plays to perfection right at the conclusion. Horripilation, a word we should all adopt into our vocabularies, is a term describing the upward movement of the hairs on our skins on account of goosebumps stimulated by something observed. In Kutiyattam, all performers should be capable of producing this effect in their audience. For the jaded audiences of the present, it sounds like a tall order. But eerily, almost quietly, the actor creates just this effect in the final five minutes of his show as, fully painted and costumed in high finery, he becomes an extraordinary character while dancing in a quaint, exotic manner, eye and head movements formally observing the codes he has related. You were looking at something quite other, quite riveting. I didn’t check to see if I had goosebumps but, for several minutes together, I was experiencing something quite beyond them.

~~~

Horripilation! was featured as part of the Times Square International Theater Festival at the Roy Arias Studios & Theatres located at 300 W. 43rd St, NY, NY.

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Deploying a short and narrow raised, wooden platform, with a total area surface of 21 square feet, seven actors in blue spandex outfits (that’s 3 square feet each they have to work with; you do the math!), no scenery or lighting effects, and just 35 minutes, Theater Un-Speak-Able set out to tell that well-worn saga of our age, Superman, transposing it to the year 2050. No actor gets to leave the platform during the telling. All of the fantastical visual effects necessary in the elaboration of this story – illustrated comic book panels, complexly designed camera shots – must be generated solely by the actors as they shuffle, dip, duck, dodge and dive while dramatizing such a highly visual narrative. This is both extreme physical performative stagecraft and compacted theatrical story telling.

Despite an unavoidable aura of farce, the adaptation is purely deadpan in delivery. There’s barely a hair out of place as we are introduced to the familiar cast of characters – Clark Kent, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Perry White, and Lex Luthor. Even Lana Lang gets a look in here. All proceeds in orderly fashion as the villainous genius Luthor schemes to destroy the mid-western high-speed rail network (I know we don’t have one now, but in 2050…) and, of course, take out Superman in order to achieve that end. Will his dastardly plan succeed, or will the man of steel save the day? (Oh, come on.) Tropes from the popular Alexander Salkind movie of 1978 (will we ever get passed this rendition?) – John Williams‘ music (dum-de-de-dum-de-de!), lifted lines of dialogue (“You’ve got me? Who’s got you?“) – are sprinkled into the mix to create a narrative shorthand, generate atmosphere, and, cunningly, a sense of nostalgic conspiracy. After all, this piece is fundamentally reliant on the audience’s imaginative participation. And this is where and how it scores. Make no mistake, for all the light-weight silliness at play, this is a sophisticated and highly disciplined piece of theater, and its steel is what brings it off. Which really is the ultimate pleasure about Superman 2050; it is a meringue developed by engineers and architects, who just happen to be savvy chefs too.

An ensemble-developed project, it emerges from the Lecoq-styled approach which stresses disciplined physical performance and improvisational story-telling. As director and original conceiver, Marc Frost must rank as the head chef.  A quietly enchanting Clark Kent/Superman, Frost is to be commended also for his direction and for assembling such an extraordinarily winning cast of cartoonishly perfect performers, each of whom seems to resonate with the recalled ghosts of by-gone cameo role greats. As well as characters, actors stand in for scenery and  objects, in forms both hackneyed and original, generating illusions, visual and audial, that deftly and economically command attention.  There are even some moments of transcendental beauty, such as when Superman is flying with Lois, and the other actors, huddled at their feet, making low whooshing noises, hands sweeping softly to an fro, suggest clouds and the passage of air over the duo. It’s simple and startling. No green screens needed here. No super-padded and enhanced costumes either. There’s enough firm flesh to ogle that could while away more than twice the tale’s duration. Just say no to CGI.

My one small cavil, if I could be allowed, is with the determined G rated feel of the exercise, the refusal to develop subtext or analyze the original tale. The well-worn frame is broken in only one instance, in the character of Jimmy Olsen, who is shown to be more than a little slavishly attached to the company of Clark Kent. At the finale, Brittany Bookbinder, in the role of Jimmy, emits such a hysterical shriek of complex delight when the Daily Planet employees are rejoined by the mysteriously absent-for-everything Clark, that it opens up all sorts of imaginative new perspectives on the saga. But perhaps I’m asking for too much here from this otherwise masterful, rapid-fire condensing of one of our great modern fairy tales. It’s a mistake, after all, to look for the yolk in a meringue. With it, it would simply be something quite other. That it’s taken out is frankly the pleasure of it.

A Chicago based outfit, the hard-working cast and crew is rounded out by Kathleen Wrinn, Thomas Kelly, Melissa Cameron, Becky McNamara, Lily Emerson, Zachary Baker-Salmon, and Alice da Cunha. More good works must be anticipated from this imaginative group, who surely are struggling to keep theatre performance alive –  for truth, for justice, and the American way.

Superman 2050 was featured as part of the Times Square International Theater Festival at the Roy Arias Studios & Theatres located at 300 W. 43rd St, NY, NY.

~~~

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Younger minds may find entertainment and diversion at 3 Ghosts, this stage musical adaptation of Charles Dickens‘ story, A Christmas Carol by Pipe Dream Theatre Productions. Everything about it resonates with an enthusiastic note of, well, glee. The attractive and animated cast strut and stand about stage looking very pleased with themselves, and the energy level is up; positive; high. They know enough to drop the smiles when the mood switches to somber – as the tale of a haunted, miserly materialist may necessitate – but you know it won’t be long before the scene is lit once more with those megawatt smiles, so de rigueur for the current generation of spotlight-hungry performers. And with an ensemble cast of forty plus, that’s a lot of light, a lot of energy. There are almost twenty musical performances, several involving choreographed dancers, and all on the modest sized stage at the Beckett Theatre. Just imagine the stage direction logistics alone!

More is more is the discernible aesthetic working here. Every actor and dancer’s costume is lovingly stitched, patched, distressed, flounced, bustled and ruffled well beyond any parameters that realism might allow. Styling itself “steampunk“, the production is utterly devoted to the notion of a theatrical world divorced from any day-to-day, humdrum existence. This is the world of musical theatre, after all, and everything is big, bold, brazen, and better. And therein, alas, lies the rub. In love with its own artificiality, it persistently overplays everything. In fairness, the theme of Time is given a thorough going-over, convincingly evoked dramatically and musically, but there’s something intrinsically callow about the perspective. Devoid of a hint of maturity, the entire production – music, direction, choreography, costumes, singing, dancing, and acting – is dramatically unsophisticated. 3 Ghosts looks very believably like what might occur if a group – maybe forty or so - of young people said, “hey kids, let’s put on a show!”

Ouch! I can hear the wrathful screams of young gleesters everywhere howling, “well, what’s wrong with that?” In truth, nothing; nothing’s wrong with that. But if older eyes are watching, older ears are listening, older minds attending, then they might observe: Given the enormous amount of work in developing a coherent musical narrative, why did the creators, Collin Simon and Liz Muller, set out to produce something that comes as close to resembling other recent Broadway style productions as they might dare? Is there such a thing as Broadway muzak? Was this set designed and constructed in one afternoon? Does this choreography read as generic? Has the makeup artist ever heard of soot? Can the director tell the difference between sweet and saccharine? Does the term “creative risk” play a part in the producers’ vocabulary? And, given the monumental efforts at play by all parties involved, why, why, why aim so low in the first place? Youthful enthusiasm can overcome many obstacles but not, finally, creative timidity and conceptual immaturity.

~~~

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Heading into the new play written by an “A-list lineup of writers with 2 Pulitzer Prizes, 4 Obies, 1 Emmy® and 3 Tony® nominations” I expected that the evening would make me laugh … but not till my sides hurt. I expected to be moved … but not to tears.  Standing On Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays manages to take a controversial topic and give it a 360; some aspects are made endearingly simple yet never does this show shy away from the frustration and confusion that the issue of gay marriage brings with it.  What Standing On Ceremony does so elegantly is show how gay marriage is just as easy as, just as complicated as, just as worthy as, just as demanding as, just the same as, and completely different from straight marriage.  There are no two marriages on this earth that are the same because there are as many ways to live on this earth as there are human beings.  The two people who join their lives together define what makes the union – the two personalities melding together will create the new whole.  Gay, straight – these issue and roadblocks, these milestones and hurdles are to be celebrated together.  That is what defines a marriage.  Standing On Ceremony explores this brilliantly.

Ultimately there will be a revolving cast with writers offering up different material so your experience may vary.  Currently the show is featuring ‘The Revision‘ by Jordan Harrison, ‘This Flight Tonight‘ by Wendy MacLeod, ‘On Facebook‘ by Doug Wright, ‘My Husband‘ by Paul Rudnick,’Traditional Wedding‘ by Mo Gaffney, ‘Strange Fruit‘ by Neil LaBute, ‘The Gay Agenda‘ by Paul Rudnick, ‘London Mosquitoes‘ by Moisés Kaufman and ‘Pablo and Andrew at the Altar of Words‘ by Jose Rivera.

Conceived by Brian Shnipper and directed deftly by Stuart Ross, Standing On Ceremony couldn’t be more robust.  The bookend plays both deal with the biggest lynchpin of the wedding: the vows.  The first offering – Harrison’s The Revision - finds Craig Bierko and Richard Thomas hammering out a way to best use words that will reflect their union.  It playfully pokes at how each line must be revised in order to correctly and accurately communicate the event (I take you to be my lawfully wedded husband turns into my domestically partnered partner).  Conversely, the final play of the evening – Rivera’s Pablo and Andrew at the Altar of Words - simply allows the joy, the giddiness and the love to wash over the couple (Bierko and Mark Consuelos) and their friends (I want to lie with you in a bed of exclamation points).  It is a beautiful way to end a show which, in between, shines a light into every dark corner of the issue.

Particularly hilarious is Harriet Harris, although this comes as no surprise.  She is deliciously devilish as she plays both ends of the argument – in one short The Gay Agenda (written by Paul Rudnick) she plays Mary Abigail Carstairs-Sweetbuckle who is a staunch Right Wing Conservative.  When attempting to welcome her gay neighbors to the community, she finds that a small gay voice has taken up residence in her head. (How did I know it was gay?  Because it was bitchy!)  Suddenly she is seeing gay people everywhere, in everything.  Her nagging doubt leads to full blown hysteria that is as funny as it is maniacal.

Harriet Harris, Mark Consuelos

Later in Rudnick’s second offering, My Husband, Harris comes off winningly again – and once more hilarious – as Gabrielle Finkelstein – a liberal and progressive New York mother who, in the race to keep up with her friends, bemoans her gay son Michael’s single status as she watches all her other friends marry off their gay children in lavish ceremonies.  (One such extravaganza had the rabbi flown in from the ceiling on a blazing chariot.  “Who was the wedding planner?“  “Julie Taymor“). Michael (Mark Consuelos) reflects the exasperation of every unmarried child (gay or straight) … half wishing they could give their mother what she wants, half wishing she would just back off.

Wendy MacLeod’s This Flight Tonight and Mo Gaffney’s Traditional Wedding both pair Polly Draper and Beth Leavel who are beautiful to watch together.  They have a chemistry, an ease and a natural physicality together which underscores their believability as a couple. Both plays deal with the pre-wedding jitters that can fall on a couple even after they’ve been together a long time, underscoring the fact that there’s a difference between living together as a unit and actually having that piece of paper that says you’re bound and committed to each other for the rest of your life.

On Facebook by Doug Wright unites the whole cast in a dramatization of an actual Facebook-Post-gone-mad. While possibly the least creative of the works it is also the most reflective of the times.  What begins as a “let’s just agree to disagree (Smiley face!)” type exchange slowly escalates into a heated debate on the use of the word “marriage” and what it actually stands for.  Ultimately the woman who is against gay marriage — or at least the use of the word “marriage” to describe a gay union — turns out to be divorced.  When that irony is pointed out to her she storms off in a virtual huff.

Throughout all the laughter of the evening there were two stirring, thoughtful, emotional pieces which acted as a reminder of how far the movement has come — and how far it has still to go.  Neil LaBute’s Strange Fruit takes two monologues and intertwines them; Craig Bierko and Mark Consuelos discuss meeting, falling in love, starting their relationship, deciding to marry.  Their current of words moving, melding, combining until the moment when it all doesn’t quite go as planned.  As you begin to see what is happening it’s like the breath is being squeezed out of you.  Bierko and Consuelos are astonishing in this one.

Moises Kaufman’s London Mosquitoes is perhaps the biggest gem of all.  Richard Thomas is Joe, who has lost his partner of 46 years and now stands at his memorial attempting to eulogize not only Paul, the man, but also attempting to color in the different shades of their life together. He starts from the beginning when what they did went unmentioned … when they didn’t even have a name for what they were doing.  He moves on to the middle of their life together – when the AIDS epidemic swept through and took all their friends … not some, but all.  He winds through the decades of their life together that saw the towers fall; just blocks away that day he and Paul stood, watching.  People plummeted to their deaths and the crowd below screamed and turned away.  But not Paul.  “Someone needs to bear witness to their death,” he said.  “I need to witness“.  We see this man who is no longer alive as more vibrant because of how Joe witnessed him.  In a heartbreaking moment Joe explains why Paul didn’t want to get married – what would that mean for the last 45 years of their life together? What would that have been?  London Mosquitoes covers themes of love, hope, secrecy, passion, despair, loss, silence, and triumph – tying in tragedies both great and small, spiritual, profound, personal and universal.  It is an utterly breathtaking, heartbreaking piece that honors in death as it also reverberates with celebration of life.

If there’s a viewpoint to be found regarding the issue of gay marriage you’ll find it in Standing On Ceremony.  Each opinion is handled with truth, raw emotion, tears of joy, tears of pain, and nods of recognition.  For a topic that deserves to be discussed, debated, written about, mulled over and one day agreed upon, this is the perfect place for the discussion to begin.

~~~

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Ever wonder what it might be like to hang out for a weekend with the casually wealthy?  Ever yearn to be part of a clique of old friends who sit around and poke fun at each other for small transgressions such as packing five pairs of shoes for a four day trip or dropping, say, 30K on a Birkin bag?  Then meet the people of playwright Molly Moroney’s Kithless In Paradise now playing at the Lion Theatre at Theatre Row. Hosts Tim McCall (David Wirth) and his wife Janice (Liz Forst) open their comfortable San Francisco home – as they do each year – to old friends Phil (Brit Herring) and Polly Barrett (Tracy Newirth) who come from Texas for the yearly shindig.  Casual.  It’s all very casual.  The way they catch up on what’s been going on since they last met, the way they drink and drink … and drink.  And drink.  The way they bring up their successes as well as their failures.  It’s all tossed off casually as they pass around the three thousand dollar bottle of wine and enjoy the hors d’oeuvres.  Drop in on them briefly and you’d wish you were one of them.  But stay awhile and you’ll start to miss your cramped apartment where the wine may come out of a box but at least you’re guaranteed a far better quality of kith.

As this quartet have their patter we get a rather complete image of who they are – while they’re all the same age and the same tax bracket the McCalls are a sturdier couple with heartier values – or so it would seem from the bits of weightier conversation we’re allowed to listen in on.  Their house guests, the Barretts, on the other hand come off as at least a decade younger.  They’re friskier (when Tim and Janice leave the room for a moment Phil wastes no time lunging for his wife’s breasts which have been on display and apparently calling to him) and just seem edgier and more fun-loving risk takers.  Together these rich folks seem to know all the best wines, the up and coming artists, the best shows and the hottest investments.  They’ve known each other so long that they can recall stories of high school, yet they can’t bring themselves to delve into a conversation any deeper than the eternal struggle of who should change the toilet paper roll. They’re all a friendly bunch, and while you’d be hard-pressed to find a nugget of meaningful conversation between the four of them they’re nice enough to spend an afternoon with.

Kithless in Paradise (Photo by Carol Rosegg) L to R: Bob Manus (Ken Loring) David Wirth (Tim McCall) Liz Forst (Janice McCall) Jill Melanie Wirth (Sandy Loring) Brit Herring (Phil Barrett) and Tracy Newirth (Polly Barrett)

Just when you’re wondering what could possibly go wrong here – red wine spilled on the pristine white couch?  Someone tearing a hole into the precious piece of art hanging prominently on the wall? – Two more guests arrive.  Ken Loring (Bob Manus) is another old high school friend but obviously not part of the inner circle.  That much is made clear as he and wife Sandy (Jill Melanie Wirth) seem to hover on the perimeter of the merriment.  Soon enough  – though small and somewhat meek – Sandy manages to drench the party in black humor.  Apparently the skittish Sandy can’t help but quickly mention that she’s dying imminently of leukemia.  This dark announcement brings the joyful gaiety of the party to a halt  – but only for a beat.  Soon enough the chatter bubbles up again and while everyone seems as if they know they should care the truth is no one of this bunch can seem genuinely concerned about anything for very long.  Within minutes Polly is distracted by the lovely sweater Sandy is wearing (going so far as to reach in and check her label) as well as her Chanel purse.  Sandy’s comments about her illness are simply peppered into this conversational mix as casually as the previous ingredients were — and no one stops to consider any of it.  Every comment is given the same weight regardless of worth.  Even as Sandy grows agitated and attempts to make a sweeping confession (to relative strangers) she is brushed aside because, after all, there is wine to be had.  Better to keep the conversation to cellulite and sports.

Moroney’s dialogue sounds real and flows quickly, however the story rings hollow as far too many issues are raised, only then left to wither, resolved only partially if at all.  While director Niki Flacks moves the piece along with a comedic bent and an upbeat tempo there is still too much ground to cover here.  The actors are enjoyable, but with dialogue which never amounts to more than cocktail party chatter it’s hard for us to come away feeling as if we’ve grown to know them, or what makes them tick.  While we certainly learn that these people can afford to buy thirty thousand dollar handbags we don’t find much more about what has kept them close over the years, especially with so much tension right below the surface.   Friends betray friends, men make plays at each other’s wives, women cheat on their husbands, secrets are kept with disastrous results … and ultimately the resolutions feel very thin.  If it can’t be waved away by a joke, a smarmy remark, another drink, or have money thrown at it then it’s simply ignored.  Apparently, if Kithless In Paradise is to be our blueprint, we are to believe that rich people really don’t process very deeply.

I came away from Kithless In Paradise unable to conclude if the play was meant to be served as nothing but a parody: highlighting the shallowness of the two-dimensional West Coast Rich and pointing out that money can’t buy happiness; or a sincere effort by  Moroney that simply misfired.  The big reveals which would truly shake a marriage do very little to either further the plot or change the trajectory of these character’s lives or their way of thinking.  By the end, despite having lived through – or witnessed – rather stark developments they remain as cavalier and as shallow as they were when we met them.  And while they celebrate this never-ending lovefest which brings them together year after year in a tradition that seems as solid as the ball dropping on Times Square, if this is what you become when you have millions of dollars, I think I’ll pass.

~~~

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Attempting to grapple with the national ideological landscape of the present, James Haigney‘s new drama, The Woman Standing on the Moon, playing at United Stages on 30th Street, is undeniably ambitious. This is a serious minded engagement with the extremism of the times – religious and atheist. Set around Fayetteville, NC in 2006, the story focuses on the character of Mary Latrobe, a documentary filmmaker currently shooting a project examining Christian fundamentalism in the U.S. military. For her subject Mary has fastened on to a former Military Police officer, Randy Wallace, who is now a charismatic preacher in the area, with the glint of apocalypse in his eye. For Mary he is the ultimate bugaboo in the system, an evangelical extremist fashioning a corp elite of like-minded soldiers with a reach all the way up to the Pentagon. The mix is potentially, well, apocalyptic.  She trains her camera relentlessly on Randy, willing him to expose his darker purpose, yet is met with a gentle-eyed, Bob Dylan quoting figure who espouses Christian wholesomeness and accord. We see clips of Randy’s camera self largely projected onto Christopher Thompson’s minimal, subtle set. He gives good face and sounds “harmlessly” idealistic. But Mary’s senses are sharp and she is not easily persuaded. Having both lost loved ones in acts of war, Mary and Randy are traumatized people. In their own ways they are looking to bring off some momentous coup that will bring life back into alignment; both are pushing for “revelation”. One deploys reason, the other, faith.

The Woman Standing on the Moon (Photo by Garlia C. Jones)

Complicating things for both of them are their personal, human lives. Mary has a damaged, alcoholic ex-husband, David (James Patrick Earley), and an attentive if somewhat callow young lover, Jack (Steven Michael Lang). Randy’s young pregnant wife, Belle, is a wide-eyed psychic with an unfettered manner and an aversion to violence. As the drama progresses, and the characters come to know each other, tensions build and the scene is set for, as Randy might say, just one spark to ignite the dry kindling of this world. In an extraordinary and surprising scene, with its own distinctive atmosphere, the spark, inevitably, is struck, and proves devastating for all the characters concerned. For all its broad examination of religious, social and cultural themes, it is simple grief, tended and untended, that is at the heart of this tale.

The use of film documentary is nicely incorporated throughout. In one scene we are presented initially with just rolling film footage as part of Randy’s faithful army community improvise a puppet show aimed at addressing bereavement for the children of army personnel. The show veers off course when the puppeteers, Sgt. Steve and Cpl. Pam, are incapable of maintaining the pretense required, as their own traumatic experiences languish unaddressed. The film stutters to a halt and the puppeteers emerge onto the stage to discuss the problem, a scene that is tellingly away from Mary’s recording camera. At once an incisive demonstration of the limitations of both documentary and fabrication, as well as a grotesquely comical episode, it features two of the most subtly disturbing glove puppets you may have cause to encounter.

Bernard Cummings directs the production with great fluidity, which is saying something given the number of scene changes, and the jarring emotional encounters between characters. Despite the tragic history she is trying to put behind her, there is a dismaying lack of vulnerability evident in Christa Kimlico Jones’s Mary. This may have more to do with the writing than with Jones’s performance, which is both concentrated and guarded. Even when she calls Jack in the middle of the night, having woken from a nightmare, before she has hung up, Haigney has her resume her tone of pragmatic, rational self-control. A woman who has been left, too often, to deal with everything on her own, she is hard to feel in this play. Haigney has a freer time with his characters Randy and Belle, and is well served by performances from, respectively, Taylor Flowers and, especially, Sarah Saunders. Scott O’Brien’s sound productions and Kevin R. Frech’s projections work well at fleshing out both story and atmosphere.

Like Mary’s camera, Haigney’s script is unrelenting and far-seeking. This is an intelligent investigation of large themes and a salutary depiction of how too frequently we can turn into the very thing we set out to counteract. The writing is dense and the allusions go deep. There is no final bulwark against the darkness (another of Randy’s phrases), only the possibility of insight and break-through. In the final scene we are left with the projection of a blue sky hanging over a vista of gently nodding wheat. Is it a clear, fresh horizon; amber waves of grain; or the fields of the Lord? The real question is, who is observing?

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Immediately arresting in this production of Deirdre Kinahan‘s new play, BogBoy, at the Irish Arts Center, is Ciaran Bagnall‘s simple stage set of several scrim panels reflecting projected landscape imagery. The mood is heavy and still – darkening flat vistas of bogland stretching off to meet a cloud-crowded sky broken only in places to admit thin fissures of light. The colors shift slowly between sombre browns and blues, with occasional russet veins of sunset. Amorphous, echoing sounds groan forth creating a mournful, timeless feeling. This is a bruised place. Into this scene walks Brigit, a woman as bruised as the landscape, but prickly, defensive, and verbally alert. She is a Dublin rehab patient, a former heroin addict and prostitute, transported to the rural remoteness of Navan, Co. Meath, and initially utterly at sea in this natural wilderness. Warily she begins an acquaintanceship with her neighbor Hughie Doyle, a solitary, slow-thinking bachelor who seems to her as foreign as the landscape. Gradually we watch as their sad stories unfurl.

Originally written for radio, BogBoy retains some of its original source characteristics. It is short, tightly compact, structurally sophisticated, and brisk in the manner of its verbal exchanges. Jo Mangan‘s direction keeps things moving rapidly and this works well with the tone and tempo of Kinahan’s language. Admirably matter-of-fact and colloquial, Kinahan does permit herself the odd shift to a more lyrical register, introducing some vivid descriptive color to the characters’ humdrum exchanges. Brigit, in a letter, waxes unusually eloquent on her discovery of the bogland’s hidden natural charms. But the dominant tone, for all the aura of tragedy here, is low-key. We observe mundane instances of neighborly exchange between Brigit and Hughie that serve as views to an evolving friendship, opening the door just a crack wide enough perhaps to admit hope. Hughie teaches Brigit to ride a bicycle in a light-hearted scene that has everything to do with empowerment, but which spends no time mulling over the fact. Beginning with just this slender degree of interaction, two psychologically convincing characters, relaxed and in extremis, the story stretches effortlessly to encompass themes of political, social, and historical relevance for contemporary Ireland, north and south, urban and rural. Everything resides most naturally within the unfolding drama. There isn’t a whiff of a sermon here, just the sad appraisal of human damage in the aftermath.

Mangan’s choice to have the characters direct nearly all of their dialogue outward, face forward toward the audience, is compelling and intriguing. We get to witness fully the emotional nuance in their faces, as well as some considerable craft in actorly responsiveness. There is also the suggestion that, as much as they want to connect, these characters can never truly face each other. Sorcha Fox is winningly forceful, bossy and vibrant as the wounded Brigit. She embodies an instinctual energy that livens the atmosphere, her large eyes wide and boldly defensive. Steve Blount, resolutely inarticulate as Hughie, is bemused and enthused by her brio, and there is a fine comic contact quickly established between the two. Rounding out the cast are Noelle Brown as Annie, Brigit’s skeptical if well-meaning social worker, and Emmet Kirwan as Brigit’s scathed and unforgiving husband, Darren, both assured turns in brief parts. Philip Stewart supplies the effective sound effects.

This is an impressively compacted story which errs, if it does so, on the side of brevity, driving us rapidly to an abrupt, almost brutal conclusion. I couldn’t help feeling that there’s at least another scene or two tucked into the narrative. A tale of would-be redemption, it never quite gets there for these two lost characters. Neither have the strength to overcome the forces surrounding them. In a letter she is writing to a murdered boy’s sister decades after the event, Brigit describes having seen the sister in the landscape once, surrounded by “bogmen guards” who seem themselves to have emerged from the muck of the bog. But to Brigit, the woman appears distinctive, separate, in a tight white suit with sunglasses – an anomaly in the landscape. For Brigit she is the definition of freedom, success, escape. But, just like all the characters here, this idealized, seemingly emancipated figure will never truly be rid of the bog. A part of her is buried here. Brigit’s letter, an intention she feels is finally something wholly good, will recall the woman once again, oblige her to step into the muck again, albeit to retrieve something ultimately lost. Kinahan’s play has many hidden leaves like this. It could go on unfolding.

~~~

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Imagine if you could re-visit a tragedy and restore the hope; take away the shadows of doubt, the shudders of despair. Imagine if you could re-visit shabby rooms, where stale air does little but circulate the layers of dust and melancholy, and breath in fresh life imbued with optimism and energy.

Imagine if you could see a classic play such as Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie from a whole other persective, one of possibility, where the “bitter” of bitter-sweet is removed and all that is left is a revving of the heart at what is yet to come. The Pretty Trap currently playing at The Acorn Theatre (Theatre Row) does just that. Written by Williams as one of the earlier drafts of Menagerie it is a sparkling one-act starring Katharine Houghton as the matriarch Amanda Wingfield.

Katharine Houghton as Amanda Wingfield, Nisi Sturgis as Laura and Robert Eli as The Gentleman Caller (Photo by Ben Hider)

It’s nice to get a chance to visit with a family we think we know so well, put in a situation we think we understand, and see another experience emerge. Under Antony Marsellis’ direction this tightly staged piece brings us into the family of the Wingfields – aging southern belle Amanda; shy, flighty, distraught Laura (Nisi Sturgis) who is terrified of the evening about to unfold;  likeable, creative, not-too-ambitious brother Tom (Loren Dunn); and the reason for the evening’s excitement: the “gentleman caller” – charming go-getter Jim (Robert Eli).

What is meant to appear as nothing more than a dinner is really Amanda’s scheming intentions to have Laura set as the pretty trap for Jim. (“All pretty girls are traps. And men expect them to be.” she tutors her skittish daughter as they await the caller’s arrival.) It is obvious that with Laura’s temperament she is unfit for work (although she’s gone to business school) and with her mother getting older and her father long gone (save for the photo which looms large in the living room) her remaining choices are either to become the spinster aunt living off the charity of her brother (if and when he himself finds his own way in the world) or find herself a husband.

All the same notes of Menagerie are here – but rearranged and uptempo so that the song is very different … and how it sets your internal toe to tapping depends strongly on how cleanly you can delineate between what you know of this family, and what you want to believe of this particular melody. Taken at face value you’ll find yourself beguiled by this one act that is sweet, charming, magical, and yes … hopeful.

The entire cast is strong and each actor in turn gets their moment to shine; particularly Nisi Sturgis and Robert Eli as the gently tentative couple who share sly romantic moments in the dark and sweetly begin a romantic evolution; one that shows no foreshadowing of the ache that comes to bear in Menagerie.  It is particularly satisfying to watch Sturgis take Laura from terrified to tentative to triumphant as she opens up her world to this new man and allows him to see what she sees, to hold what she holds, to know what she knows.

It is Katharine Houghton, however, as the complex Amanda who sets the tone, draws the audience in, and lays the foundation for the entire play. Her incessant chattering about seemingly nothing is actually a finely woven spider’s web of intricately devised manipulation, and in Ms. Houghton’s delivery the smooth layering and complexity is almost imperceptible – a brilliant slight of hand that is almost unbelievably subtle but leaves the audiences with a wealth of knowledge upon which to draw in order to understand this family.

All of this takes place in Ray Klausen’s two-room set which is a beautiful combination of faded, delicate and fragile pieces, gently worn and all in varying shades of pink (or memories of pink) which at any given moment can remind us of Amanda’s faded blush of youth (“I was as pretty as Laura … prettier even, if you can believe it” she says often) or Laura’s deep stain of embarrassment as she is forced to move from her world of safe imagination to the world of real men … with real intentions.

Overall The Pretty Trap is a satisfying, beautifully done piece which is a refreshing night for those who would love to see a “what if” moment retold with a happier ending.

~~~

.

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• “Kithless In Paradise” – The Rich Are Different
• Elysian Fields (Fringe Festival 2011)
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Gay Plays for Straight People (and also gay people) is comprised of two plays which will play in rep brought to you by the new theatre company Purple Rep founded by playwrights Larry Kunofsky and Mariah MacCarthy.  The plays - Kunofsky’s The Un-Marrying Project and MacCarthy’s The All-American Genderf*ck Cabaret – will run from April 8-30 at The Paradise Factory (64 East 4th Street between 2nd Ave and Bowery).

Larry  and Mariah took some time to answer my questions and give me some straight answers (and also some not-just-straight answers) about what they’re passionate about, how they explore the fuckupedness of both genders, what it means, exactly, to be “un-married”, and how they intend to keep blending it all up in an effort to keep it Purple.  Read on …

Let’s get right into the title. Gay Plays for Straight People (and also gay people).  So – really … everyone, right?  Transgendered, Bi, Bi Curious … poly amorous … even those who are abstinent for personal reasons or just because that’s the cards they were dealt.  So tell me how you came up with that title.
Mariah: We both had these plays we were really passionate about. One is about married people divorcing in the name of gay marriage, and one is about the limitations of gender norms. That’s a lot of queer themes swirling around, but roughly two thirds of our characters are straight and we’re a “straight” couple, which gave us the “gay plays for straight people” idea. But, let’s face it, there’s already plenty of “gay” culture that’s really for straight people, or has been whitewashed to make it “palatable” for straight people, and that’s not what these plays are. These plays come from a real passionate place, as allies and, for me, as a pansexual woman who just happens to be in love with a man. And we want to make sure that the community for whom we are allies knows that these plays are for them. So we added “and also gay people.”But, yes, these plays are absolutely for everyone. Genderf*ck‘s characters, for a start, are gay, lesbian, heteroflexible, genderqueer, and straight–and some of them have not had sex in a longtime, or ever. And the characters in The Un-Marrying Project are gay, straight, WASPs in their 80s, Orthodox Jews, working-class Bronx families, wealthy immigrants, Long Island Italians…you get the idea. These are gay plays for everybody.

Larry: If there’s a link between Mariah’s work as a playwright and my work as a playwright – even before we get into what Purple Rep is about – that link is about Sex and Identity. All our plays are about sex, and there’s usually a fair amount of sex in them. Even if it’s not onstage sex (which does occur, too) it’s the notion that sex has simply MADE these characters.

We’re born from sex and we come alive again on a whole other level whenever we have sex. That’s in ALL our plays! And then there’s identity.  Maybe all plays are about a protagonist searching for who he/she is, and our plays can certainly be seen through this lens. Which brings us to Gay Plays For Straight People (And Also Gay People). Hetero- or Homosexuality is not just about choice or how someone is wired, but also about how someone perceives oneself and is perceived. And we are celebrating this. Sometimes sex and identity issues can be oppressive, so we’re not proselytizing about any aspect of this spectrum (we want to look at and write about all of this as comprehensively as possible), but we think that this kind of fluidity within the too often rigid societal expectations on an individual can be liberating. Something that Mariah & I kept saying to each other to make this clear when we were rewriting our plays was, Gay Is A Color. I tried using that as a line in my play, but it never quite fit. But Purple Rep is about all kinds of colors.

The All-American Genderfuck Cabaret features “eight gender stereotypes”.  How stereotypical are they?  Like … the slut, the prude, the metrosexual, the jock … or will it take some work for the audience to pick them out?
Mariah: You’ll be able to figure it out pretty quickly. You have a Feminine Woman, a Feminine Man, a Masculine Woman, a Masculine Man, a Gay Woman, a Gay Man, a Promiscuous Woman, and a Promiscuous Man. Which translates roughly into Girly Girl, Nice Guy/Metrosexual, Tomboy, Meathead, Feminist Lesbian, Gay Best Friend, Slut, and Player. The play is definitely set up to help you figure these labels out as quickly as possible–so that we can then transcend them, and learn what contradicts or lies beneath these labels.

The Happiest Medium just wrapped up a series on Women’s History Month.  I specifically asked women how gender played a role in how they’ve been treated in their chosen paths.  The answers ran the gamut.  So I ask the same question here, but a little differently – will Genderfuck deal with the fuck-upedness found in both genders, or does it lean a little to one … and if so, which one?
Mariah: Ooh. Love this question! Short answer: Yes, there is fuck-upedness in both genders, and this play definitely tries to explore both. Being a woman, I probably spend more time exploring the fuck-upedness of femininity/the myth of “female identity,” but maybe not–maybe that’s all in my head. This play has been performed before, a year ago, and a lot of men told me how strongly they related to it. When it comes to sex especially, we’re all caught in sort of a weird dance: pursuing/having sex can make us feel special and happy and joyful, or it can make us feel bored and disappointed that it didn’t fix our lives and whiten our teeth and balance our checkbook or whatever we thought it was going to do. And this experience in America is often different for men and women. A statistic I heard about five years ago continues to haunt me: when surveyed, women’s most common fear was being raped and/or murdered, while men’s most common fear was being laughed at. I think a lot of the play comes from the exploration of those fears.

Really, the play is about how we all have infinite choices. If you want to wear a dress, you can. If you wear a dress because you feel pressured to do so but don’t really like it, don’t wear one. If you want to have sex, you should. If you want to stop having sex because for whatever reason it’s not enjoyable for you right now, you should. If you feel like you’re a man or a woman or both or neither or something else, be that. It’s all about what will make you feel happy and connected and sexy.

 

Mariah MacCarthy and Larry Kunofsky (Photo by Marissa Bea)

 

The second part of the Gay Plays For Straight People (And Also Gay People) is The Un-Marrying Project.  It deals with straight married people who are “un marrying” in support of gay marriage … and not re-marrying until it’s legal for everyone. Larry, tell me how this idea came to you.
Larry: I’ve been happily unmarried my whole adult life. But even though I’ve known that marriage was not my deal since forever, it is a right that our laws seem to withhold from a specific class of people and I truly am outraged by this. My patron saint in thinking about how to respond to this issue has been Rosa Parks. A brave and intelligent, but ultimately, by her own admission, a very ordinary person who broke the law in a very simple way that helped change the world. My initial impulse in writing this play was in looking at well-meaning people who would de-marry, if you will, as a similar type of civil disobedience. But that brought me to the notion of how disruptive any deviation from the norm can be. There’s danger in making waves – sometimes people drown. I tend to idolize the individuals behind the civil rights movements of the sixties. I do believe that – with Gandhi as their model – they were hoping for a bloodless revolution. The tragedy was how bloody this bloodless revolution was. And most of the blood seemed to be shed on the side of the just. But ask any survivors if they regret it…

If you two were married, would you actually commit this “act of civil disobedience” if you knew it could bring about change?
Mariah: Yes. We’d do fucking anything if we knew it could bring about change.

Larry: I don’t claim to be a brave or adventurous person, but when I look back at my early years of grade school, my main regret is not getting into trouble enough. I must confess, as an adult, I spend most of my time looking for trouble. That might explain why my past theatre companies broke up and why I’ve been fired from a lot of jobs, but choice and freedom is about calling people (and more importantly, institutions) on their bullshit. So it’s like that early Brando movie, where he’s a biker, and someone asks him, What are you rebelling against, and he’s, like, “Whattya got?!” I’m all for that.

Purple Rep is a relatively new company.  I love your mission statement:” … plays that make you see red and hear the blues … until it all mixes in your mind’s eye into a purple rush.” That’s a tall order. What plans do you have to keep this strong mission alive?
Mariah: We plan to keep writing. Purple Rep will eventually do plays by people other than Larry Kunofsky and Mariah MacCarthy, but we started this company because we wanted to do each other’s work. Our work, while vastly different from each other, come from our hearts and guts. I once had a writing teacher ask me, after I brought in a scene with lots of punching in it, “Do you want to hit people?” I immediately responded, “Yes.” I think sometimes I write plays instead of hitting people.

Yet I consider myself a compassionate writer–and often, that compassion just adds sadness to that rage. When we sympathize with a rapist or an abuser or a cheater or a liar or a murderer, that’s tragedy. We know we could have been them under different circumstances, so whatever happens to them could happen to us. So that rage and compassionate-sadness–that seeing-red, hearing-blue thing–is characteristic of a lot of our work.  And so are our senses of humor–all that rage and sadness won’t sink in unless an audience laughs with you first. We really consider these plays especially to be great expressions of joy. So, we intend to keep doing plays that have their share of red and blue and laughs.

Larry: That’s such a vital question! Right now we’re hoping to stay afloat through THIS mini-season, but we are trying to see what our next mini-season, or the one after that will look like. Basically, we’re trying to explore how we put the REP in PURPLE REP. This time around we shared the same space and the same designers, sure, but perhaps we’ll do a mini-season with one shared director. Maybe we’ll do one shared cast. We want to constantly re-define what our REP is. And PURPLE is clearly about sexuality this time, but next time… PURPLE can be about race; about the body; about the blending of all kinds of themes. PURPLE is a rorschach color for us, and we’re looking at ways to look at Purple in new ways. Maybe that sounds a little Art School, but to paraphrase something I said earlier, Theatre is a color. We’re testing out the hues and shades through which we can continue participating in this medium.

Thanks for answering these questions!  Looking forward to seeing the shows!

Larry: Thank you! These questions were Purple to begin with! You’re One Of Us!!!!!!

I’m honored to be one of you.  Can’t wait to see the shows!

~~~

The All-American Genderf*ck Cabaret

The Un-Marrying Project

The Paradise Factory

64 E. 4th St.

New York, NY 10003

United States

 

 

 

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• The Un-Marrying Project: Passion Is Easy – Commitment Is Hard
• The All-American Genderf*ck Cabaret – Equal Opportunity Exploration
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These women of the arts hail from different disciplines, but they all have an indomitable spirit and a luminescent spark that makes them amazing human beings who are out there every day, doing amazing work.

Today we continue our series with Jenn Boehm.

The first time I saw Jenn she was standing on the stage at the Planet Connections Festivity Awards Ceremony receiving thunderous applause from the Off-Off Broadway community along with hoots and hollers that filled the theatre that night.  She graciously accepted the love. Right away I thought “Gosh, I have no idea who this woman is … but I better get to know her!”

Luckily, I was able to make that “gosh” a reality and while I’m sure there’s much more to learn about Jenn, I’m pleased to say that I’m in a position to do just that.   What I can say is that Jenn is many things to many people, but seemingly an endless inspiration to most.  Currently she’s the c0-artistic director and managing director of Looking Glass Theatre and has a hand in everything they do from the internship program to each season’s productions.

Well, that’s no small potatoes.  Or wait … is it?  You see  - little did I know Jenn’s story starts not on the boards but in the barns … Jenn came to theatre by way of the farm.  Oh, with a stop in pro football along the way.  (What?) I better let her explain.  Take it away, Jenn  -

Absolutely delighted and honored to be a part of this long list of fabulous women!

For years, decades, centuries, women have been told, ‘you can’t.” Like so many others, I’ve heard this statement plenty of times in my life.

Thankfully, my parents always told me “you can.” My folks are organic farmer/ranchers, so I learned the meaning and importance of hard work very early in life. As the eldest of two girls in our farm family, I was, in many ways, the son my dad never really had. We were given loads of responsibility. We all worked together, sharing the heavy-lifting on a daily basis, learning the importance of organization, teamwork and leadership, taking great pride in our work. Those early experiences laid the foundation for the strong, independent person I have become.

Growing up in a rural town (pop. 600) in the Midwest, the majority of “role model” women in my immediate world were farm wives, grocery store cashiers, school teachers, or nuns. (Yes, my hometown is a Catholic community with a huge monastery/abbey and a priory, but that’s a fascinating conversation for another day.) These were awesome ladies who loved their lifestyle, their work and were seemingly completely content. But were they really? My own mother had traveled thousands of miles from her exotic homeland (Thailand) to a foreign country (the good old USA) in 1970 and barely spoke a word of English. She persevered, overcoming numerous cultural and environmental obstacles in the hopes of a better future, a better life. Witnessing her transformation was inspiring. And motivating… I always wanted more, to be more. No matter what society or the small town gossips said or thought that a “small town girl” was capable of doing.

Education, experience and a host of opportunities eventually propelled me into the wide world of sports. Specifically, professional football, a universe primarily powered and led by men. Nevertheless, we – my fellow female co-workers and I – always strived to be stronger, quicker, more-informed and simply better on all fronts, both as individuals and as a team. Accept every challenge. We took advantage of every opportunity to suggest to new ideas, lead new projects, to work harder than anyone else, despite “no, you can’t” responses or eyes rolling “here she goes again.” To which I always thought – yes, here she goes again, get onboard or get out of the way!

Having a deep love for theater since I was a kid doing those awful (but cute) pageant plays in grade school, I decided to pursue my passion full-time and as the stars would have it, found Looking Glass Theatre. Founded by Justine Lambert almost 20 years ago, this is a very special place dedicated to strengthening the voice of women in theater and the arts while creating a community of artistic freedom. I went from a world of men, men, men to a community of women – it was jarring and amazing. We provide a place for women artists of all backgrounds and genres to develop and grow their work. To share their voice as loudly and proudly as they like. To make a difference and empower everyone to create without judgment. There are still hurdles every day, but knowing that there is a collective push and leap to make great things happen, makes getting over them just a little easier. Working together, “no, you can’t” has become a laughable phrase and an accepted challenge.

So yes, we can. We can, indeed.

What’s up at Looking Glass Theatre?

~~  Lincoln on Hester Street AKA 1911 – special “Remember the Triangle Fire” event, staged reading benefiting Planned Parenthood – Friday, March 25
~~  Three By the Sea – children’s show written by Donna Latham, directed by Julia Martin, playing through April 10
~~ Submerged! A night of new works staged readings – Friday, April 8
~~  Just A Reading – a new show written by Ryan Glass, directed by Chanda Calentine – April 28–May 15
~~  EIF Revlon Run/Walk for Women – Saturday, April 30 (join the Looking Glass team!)
~~  Spring Benefit – “Prom II, the sequel” – Tuesday, May 10 (portion of proceeds will be donated to Revlon Run/Walk for Women)
~~  Spring 2011 Writer/ Director Forum – our semi-annual festival of new works featuring emerging women playwrights and directors – June 2-26

More About Jenn Boehm

Originally from North Dakota, Jenn joined Looking Glass Theatre in late September 2005 and is thrilled to be a part of the organization. As Co-Artistic Director and Managing Director, she manages all functions of Looking Glass spaces and Looking Glass Theatre as an artistic, creative not-for-profit organization. From its internship program and acting classes to rentals and each season’s many productions, including children’s shows and two new works festivals, Jenn is at the forefront of Looking Glass business.

Also an actress, her next project is Just A Reading (Looking Glass Theatre). Recent credits include: What Happens to Women Here at Richmond Sheperd Theatre (Stone Soup Theatre Arts); The Maguffin (Philadelphia Fringe Festival) at Second Stage at The Adrienne (Stone Soup); The Hope Chest (Foundry Players, Washington DC); Stone Soup’s world premiere of The Ghost Dancers (Sanford Meisner Theatre) and the production’s return engagement in the Midtown International Theatre Festival (June Havoc Theatre, MITF Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Play); A Chicken Goes to Broadway (Samuel French Short Play Festival/Peter Jay Sharp Theatre); Shapeshifter at The Barrow Group Theatre; Young Jean Lee’s Church at The Public Theater; and Always Family at The Kirk Theater on Theatre Row (Small Pond Entertainment).

Jenn also served as the Managing Director for Planet Connections Theatre Festivity (2008-2010) and works as a graphic designer and freelance sportswriter.

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