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Mariah MacCarthy’s New Play Looks For Laughs In All The Dark Places: Lysistrata Rape Play

Karen Tortora-Lee — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 01:48:21 +0000

There’s nothing funny about rape. I mean … is there? No. Of course not. It’s brutal, vicious and terrifying, a crime that makes no sense, can be difficult to prove, and - even in today’s society – leaves the victim stigmatized. In fact, most victims are embarrassed to report their rape, let alone discuss it – even with (or, sadder still, especially with) close friends and family members.

Guaranteed - several of your friends have been sexually assaulted in some manner and you have no idea. You may think you know everything about someone, but their rape is often a dark fact they’ve pushed down and hushed up which becomes their own dirty little secret rather than their unfortunate violation. The rape will go with them to the grave. Why? Because it’s just easier that way. Huh.

So, while there is nothing funny about rape, what CAN be satirized, parodied, explored and lampooned is the society in which there exists a crime where blaming and shaming the victim is routine. A country where doubting the victim’s story and policing the victimized population by dictating what they should wear, how much they should drink, and how they should act is considered the norm. Start to understand the inherent foolishness and stupidity of this and frankly you’re looking at a play where the jokes just start writing themselves. Then see that the play is written by Mariah MacCarthy and … well … suddenly a dark comedy about rape seems like it’s a play whose time has come.

Lysistrata Rape Play: the title alone should be evidence enough that subtlety is not going to be the direction in which this play is going. MacCarthy tends to do this pretty consistently: title her plays exquisitely boldly with definitions of what you will get upon arrival (see Genderfuck Cabaret , Foreplay Play or Ampersand: A Romeo & Juliet Story). It’s reminiscent of that tried and true Chinese takeout you’ve relied on for years to get you through weekends and hangovers. The menu says Chicken and Broccoli and what arrives at your door is Chicken and Broccoli. The other thing MacCarthy tends to do pretty consistently: like that little Chinese gem around the corner, the secret to her success is the way she piles her story-lines high, not afraid to over-stuff the plot in an effort to get the point across. And, like takeout … she’ll always deliver.

So, let me break it down for you. Lysistrata Rape Play does, indeed, echo the classic Greek Lysistrata by Aristophanes in which women – in an effort to force their men to broker a peace – withhold sex from them. In Rape Play, however in the wake of a particularly headline-grabbing rape that is being held out as a beacon cry for change, women are being urged to withhold sex from their men until all rape stops. Sounds crazy, no? It’s a situation that, even before you begin to wrap your mind around it, you can already find yourself poking holes through. ”But what if ….?” ”And what about the …?” ”And does that mean all …?” ”But wouldn’t that only mean …?” But of course Lysistrata Rape Play isn’t set up to present only one side – that would be the shortcut. And if MacCarthy was fond of shortcuts she’d be the type of writer who wrote very different plays. Ones that weren’t about gender identity, group sex and now … rape.

Rape is discussed, defined, debated, depicted, reenacted, committed, avenged, and ultimately … or so a perfect world would have you believe … eradicated.

In the not-too-distant future of MacCarthy’s Lysistrata Rape Play the US is run by a strong, willful woman who is both broad minded as well as tunnel visioned. She is, as some would describe her – both to her face as well as behind her back – vulgar … a description she seems to both toss aside as well as relish. It bemuses her for its very indication that she is a woman in a man’s world who is taking on a fiercely sexual issue and bringing her politics into America’s bedrooms.

She sets down a ban on sex and, while making it clear that it is more of a “voluntary” opt-in rather than a law, ad hoc patrols are set up throughout society to enforce the new “suggestion” leading woman to turn against woman should any be found breaking rank. This keeps the Matriarch’s hands clean while ensuring that, in essence, America has now become a police state. America is now a nation where loving couples are terrified of expressing their devotion to each other for fear of punishment, imprisonment or even mutilation. Even allies are considered enemies. And the darkest enemies are lurking in the kindest hearts.

MacCarthy intentionally throws the net wide – catching every possible thought, motive, issue, fallout, ripple, consequence – both intended as well as unforeseen by her characters – in order to illuminate not only every issue, but every side of every issue. During the course of Lysistrata Rape Play these textured, endearing and tremendously earnest characters allow us to walk a mile in their sexless-therefore-sexually-frustrated shoes. How would it affect marriages? Friendships? Sexuality? The sex workers? The chain of power? How would it corrupt? How would it implode? How would it change society’s structure? How would people cope? Who would stay and fight? Who would run and hide? Who would do things they never expected to do? For better? For worse? Much, much worse?

Lysistrata Rape Play takes the topic and gives a series of “if / then” scenarios where each hero is all the more enticing because they are flawed, each “villain” actually makes sense, and there are degrees of good and evil that often meet in the middle. MacCarthy’s gift is being able to write characters who are often at odds with themselves and who betray not only themselves but their best friends, their loved ones … and those they have no idea they are affecting. Yet throughout, they clearly express their own confusion at their own actions in a way that defines their motivations. While the audience may not identify with anyone in particular, there are moments when we identify with all of them at least once.

While I was cautioned that this was a simple workshop and not to expect a full-blown production I came away from Lysistrata Rape Play feeling strongly moved and affected by what I’d seen, and frankly didn’t see much lacking. The performances where superb, the message was strong and the theme was fully realized, both in homage to the original Lysistrata as well as in the brand new world it was meant to capture. If this was a simple first incarnation I can’t wait to see this play re-mounted.

Rape, it has been said over and over again, is not about sex. It is about power. The message here is: In the fight against rape, the way to combat its insidiousness is diffuse its power. With laughter … with knowledge … and with equally powerful messages. So don’t be afraid to say the word rape. And don’t be afraid to reclaim the power of understanding when it’s okay to laugh at the things that are ridiculous. The only way to change something is to refuse to stay silent about it.

~~~

Lysistrata Rape Play was part of MicroFest and ran for 3 days only. Look for future updates to find out more about when you can see a full scale production of this play.

Magic Trick – Baring It All (Fringe Festival 2012)

Karen Tortora-Lee — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 16:58:43 +0000

Sure, Mariah MacCarthy’s new play, Magic Trick, is full of sexy goodness, what with its burlesque routines, girls kissin’ boys, girls kissin’ girls, full on nekkid scenes and all the steamy, flirty, hungry passion that can erupt between two (or three) people caught in a windstorm of lust and love and like and leaving. But scratch the surface of all the seduction and right below you’ll find a strong play filled with true emotion, hard choices, honest conversation, not-always-likable characters, and unanswered questions.

Magic Trick clocks in at over 2 hours but don’t let the run time fool you – the pacing of this show has it feeling much faster thanks to the solid direction of Christina Roussos who uses every opportunity to bring as much information to the audience at once so that each moment is filled to the brim with the identities of these individuals.

The story revolves around Bana (Diana Oh) the beautiful, sexual, confident, wheelchair-bound girlfriend of Eric (Nic Grelli) who, on the night we meet them, are in a club hooting and hollering their admiration for Clara (Kim Gainer) who is performing a sizzling burlesque number. Talk turns to the couple taking the performer home, and while it doesn’t happen this first scene nicely sets up the parameters of Bana and Eric’s relationship, their views on their sexuality as a couple, and exactly where Bana’s paralysis falls on the spectrum of difficulty- for the couple, for Bana, and for the tone of the play. It also lets the audience in on the secret that Bana and Clara have already been involved for a while. Additionally MacCarthy neatly informs the audience, with this first scene, that while Bana is paralysed this detail does not define her … it’s simply another one of her characteristics as much as her sense of humor; something to be taken into consideration, but nothing to be singled out. Like setting up the chess pieces on a board, everything is now in place for the game to be played with a vengeance.

Hereafter MacCarthy plays hard and fast with the timeline mixing present day with flashback so vigorously that – even with the help of cue cards – it can be a bit of a task to sort out where you are in the story line. If Magic Trick were a more linear story where “A” leading to “B” was the only thing you could rely upon in order for Sherlock Holmes to reveal the criminal in the end, all this jumping around would work against the plot. For Magic Trick, however, it’s not necessary to follow the time-line as much as follow the need. While cause and effect generally occurs in a linear way, our minds put the pieces together in an altogether different way, one which lines up events according to importance and flavor and color and texture and sight and sound … not time. That’s something that McCarthy intuitively understands as she delivers her characters in snapshot moments of happiness, confusion, lust, honesty, despair and anger.

So while the relationship of Bana and Eric is a complicated one, so is the one between Bana and Clara – and the one between Eric and Clara. Each coupling produces a different side to the individual and Gainer, Grelli and Oh are all fantastic at portraying not only the many different sides that one other individual brings out in them, but then the whole palate and range of different sides that another individual coaxes out. We watch as Bana goes from loving Eric to experiencing feelings of emotional and physical betrayal. She moves out and on to a relationship with Clara – one which she does not label or define, even as Clara longs to define it. In a powerful scene that highlights Gainer’s raw strength Clara – with Bana’s blessing – couples with Eric only to turn on him in a way that is unnerving to watch.

Whether it’s with a brooding strip routine that coincides with a scene of despair, dancing as metaphor, stripping in anger or baring one’s body because it’s easier than baring one’s soul, all forms of display are evident in Magic Trick - there to illuminate the person as a whole, not simply to titillate. And while Diana Oh, Kim Gainer and Nic Grelli all strip seductively, with expert wickedness and nuanced allure there’s no mistaking that this play is not about baring skin but about baring emotions. Which, once revealed to another, can’t be hidden again behind a feather boa.

~~~

Magic Trick
Caps Lock Theatre
Writer: Mariah MacCarthy
Director: Christina Roussos
Bana: Beautiful, paraplegic, missing. Eric: her (ex?) boyfriend, looking for her. Clara: That burlesque dancer they almost took home. Bana’s donning pasties, Eric’s losing his sh*t, and Clara gets naked and won’t leave. A love story with burlesque.
2h 40m   Local   Manhattan, New York
Drama   Vaudeville/Sideshow/Magic/Burlesque
Staycation: Ride the Rollercoaster of Love   My NYC Story
www.capslocktheatre.com/
VENUE #18: HERE Mainstage Theater
Sat 18 @ 12  Sun 19 @ 3  Tue 21 @ 4  Thu 23 @ 8  Sat 25 @ 7

The Foreplay Play – What Comes Before

Karen Tortora-Lee — Fri, 04 May 2012 01:46:41 +0000

There is a very telling moment which comes two thirds of the way into Mariah MacCarthy’s play The Foreplay Play which is currently being produced by CAPS LOCK THEATRE at a site-specific location (WAY off-off Broadway) in Williamsburg. This dramedy about the tension which builds between two couples as they tentatively (and sometimes not so tentatively) lay the foundation for a night of orgiastic bliss has many titillating moments, but the one which encapsulated this show for me was probably the least sexual of the night.

After a series of awkward missteps, false starts, jumping the gun (but not without a few hot hot, drrrrrty, breathtaking, throw-you-up-against-the-wall, take-you-right-now-on-the-kitchen-counter moments) Kyle, the sole male of the intended foursome is strumming a guitar and the quartet has just finished a rousing rendition of Springteen’s Hungry Heart. In and of itself Hungry Heart is a beautiful moment – each character singing with completely different motivation: some with actual hunger in their heart, some with nothing more than Springsteen Joy, and others with the taste of a memory, perhaps. Regardless of subtext, the four voices blend beautifully, and yet perfectly naturally – the way any four people with decent singing voices might automatically take the harmonies. They all know the words, they understand the nuances, they enjoy the camaraderie the singing produces, and the moment is binding. The telling moment comes right after, when three of the four decide to launch into Since You’ve Been Gone.

Nic Grelli, Lindsey Austen,Diana Oh and Parker Leventer (Photo by Kacey Stamats)

“I don’t know this song,” pouts Anika (Lindsey Austen) and soon her pout erupts into full-on anger. She has a tantrum, runs from the room, and leaves the others feeling awkward, embarrassed, perhaps guilty, but – let’s be honest – a little smug. We know something you don’t know.

Herein lies the key to good group ANYTHING – but for the purposes of this review we’ll stick to group sex. In order for it to work, everyone has to be in harmony. Everyone has to feel comfortable. Everyone has to know where to pick up, where to leave off, where to come in, and when to hold back. Moving forward when someone clearly doesn’t “know the words” to a certain song (read – doesn’t know the rules of a certain situation) is only going to lead to tantrums.

What The Foreplay Play illustrates and illuminates beautifully is that bringing the fantasy (again, of anything, but specifically group sex) into the real world is a daunting process even if all the clothes are laid out neatly on the bed for you beforehand. Just because you have a piano and ten fingers doesn’t mean you’ll suddenly sit down and start playing Mozart. Even further – simply because you can play the piano doesn’t mean you’ll be able to play a complete performance of all the Chopin Etudes. And so – just because you like sex doesn’t mean you can have it with three other people you’re fond of without someone hitting a harsh note. Perception is easy. Reality is hard. Or … let’s go with “difficult”.

The foursome of The Foreplay Play is made up of Kyle (Nic Grelli) who is sweet, earnest and charming. He’s manly and studly but he’s gentle enough to break down and fall apart when emotions overwhelm him. (And this night is rife with overwhelming emotions of all types). Kyle’s girlfriend is Anika (Lindsey Austen) - a yearning, tentative girl who fancies herself experimental but, when push comes to shove, can’t get out of her own way far enough to move past “vanilla” (which, to this crowd, is more of an insult than a subtle flavor choice). They are hosted for the evening by Anika’s co-worker Isabel (Diana Oh) who is a power house of sexuality and seduction. While Izzy doesn’t actively set out to seduce everyone in the room she is somehow the center of the sexual vortex here as both Kyle and Anika find themselves longing for her in ways that (if you’re an audience member with any sort of pulse) will have you catching your breath. The quartet is rounded out by Isabel’s live-in lover Kelly (Parker Leventer) who is sure of herself, a self-professed Dom who dominates in rooms other than the bedroom and enjoys making others feel uncomfortable, even as she insists on ground rules and guidelines for the evening.

Throughout the evening of foreplay each gets their turn to take a spin in front of the mirror, as it were. On display this evening for all of us (and for each other) to see are each character’s most charming qualities, their most annoying habits, their sexiest urges, their most awkward discomfort. Separately and together they all find themselves acting out, taking the lead, taking a backseat, or simply bobbing along as they watch the inevitable happen.

The cast is strong, each delivering a nuanced performance which gives you an opportunity to side with them or against them depending on the flow of the evening. Under Leta Tremblay’s fine direction the night is hyper-real. The play is, as I mentioned, site specific – so this Williamsburg apartment (big by New York standards but rather intimate for a play) creates an immediate fly-on-the-wall scenario. (Be warned that seating is limited and, like a game of musical chairs, there’s a rush for seats once the apartment door opens. Latecomers will be sitting on cushions up front. Those with knee problems who are loathe to sitting on the floor are, unfortunately, SOL).

The intimacy of the space allows Tremblay to give the characters a whole host of real-time actions to work with – actual dinner to be prepared, actual exits from the apartment to be made. Tremblay also deftly balances all the craziness (Twister! Knife play! Costumes and fake accents! Spin the bottle!) with a solid anchor of gravitas so that rather than feeling MacCarthy is throwing a lot at the wall to see what sticks in terms of theme this feels much more like four actual people who are twisting and turning their way through a strange encounter in order to make it fit for all involved. Unfortunately no matter how many games of Twister they play the right combination just won’t fall into place.

MacCarthy aims for – and delivers – a night of questions rather than answers. A night of seeking rather than finding, and a night which flips over the rocks to explore the grime underneath. While no one gets very naked, emotionally the cast strips bare and the four individuals share intimacies on a level much deeper than the simple exchanging of bodily fluids. Ultimately sex is besides the point. MacCarthy, in her Playwright’s Note, admits that the play “ends up being a celebration of love, not sex”.

CAPS LOCK THEATRE, on their website, states, “We like plays where people are at both their worst and their best; where people screw each other–or themselves–over, and have to find a way to deal with it; where people’s hearts hurt, or open, or blossom.” I’d say that The Foreplay Play does all of this – and perfectly.

~~~

THE FOREPLAY PLAY

A new play by Mariah MacCarthy
Directed by Leta Tremblay
This play takes place at a site-specific apartment in Williamsburg - Brooklyn, NY
Location will be disclosed to audience members upon ticket purchase

Thursdays-Sundays at 8pm

April 19-May 6, 2012

Click here for tickets

The Happiest Medium » CAPS LOCK THEATRE

Mariah MacCarthy’s New Play Looks For Laughs In All The Dark Places: Lysistrata Rape Play

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