by Karen Tortora-Lee on November 19, 2009
Holy
Premiering this Friday, November 6th at The Spoon Theater, is their production of Holy Days, a play set in the Great Depression written by Sally Nemeth and directed by Peter Zinn.
AM: You come from a theatrical family – your parents (Jack and Rebecca Cunningham) are a dynamic set design duo. What’s it like working with them? And do you always see eye to eye when those sketches are presented?
HC: I could not do what I do without my parents’ support, first and foremost. Sometimes they think I’m nuts (Dad might still be in denial that we are doing The Desk Set in May!), and sometimes when I say “let’s do this bare bones” I get this incredible set! I usually make my requests before the design is conceived, but on those rare occasions when I ask for something afterwards, they are great about incorporating my requests. But above all, I am a huge fan of their work. I think it is stunning.
AM: What can we expect from your upcoming production of Holy Days?
HC: Holy Days is a beautiful play, and on surface quite simple. These are stoic people and they don’t (or can’t) always express their feelings. It makes for a lot of palpable tension between the characters.
The play takes place during the Great Depression in the Dust Bowl. Our characters are farmers and their wives and they are struggling with the devastation around them. There is dirt and dust piled up, there is loss everywhere they look; out in the fields, in their homes, in each other.
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You can catch Heather Cunningham in Holy Days from November 6-21 at The Spoon Theater. Be on the look out for our lovely managing director Karen Tortora-Lee’s review of this production.
Retro Productions’ latest show, Holy Days (Written by Sally Nemeth and directed by Peter Zinn) comes off as deceptively simply until you’ve sat with it a while. It’s been several days since I’ve seen it and I find that I’m haunted by the seemingly stark yet surprisingly deep performances by Heather E. Cunningham (Rosie), Joe Forbrich (Gant), Lowell Byers (Will) and Casandera M.J. Lollar (Molly).
Holy Days begins with a metaphor, one which shifts the more you think about it. At the opening of the play, Rosie addresses the audience with an empty gaze and a lilt-less voice to explain how she had once seen her garden full of daffodils which were in danger of being covered in frost; she gathered as many as she could into her arms, thinking she’d taken more than enough to fill all the vessels she had in the house. But when she was able to arrange them, they barely filled one pitcher. She went out to take more, but the remaining flowers were dried up … gone.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on August 19, 2009
You can tell it’s Fringe Season when theatres ’round the city are suddenly bustling with life at odd hours of the day and escorting people in and out quickly so they can strike a set and get ready for the next show which is happening in, oh, about a minute. Yes, it’s all about endings and beginnings at Fringe which is why it’s rather fitting that I started my rounds this year with two very different plays that both dealt with the same fine line between living and dying, and what you do with that quick snap of a moment in between the two blackouts. Eli and Cheryl Jump takes you off on the wind of fanciful, magical, dreaminess while Look After You shows the realistic portrait of a life interrupted by a flash of illness that comes quickly and takes certainty with it. Both plays speak to the frailty of what we take for granted every day, both highlight what it means to be a survivor.
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