Peter Zinn
Peter Zinn is no stranger to Retro Productions, having helmed their incarnation of Holy Days and Women and War. He was kind enough to answer a couple of questions regarding his past, his upcoming plans and what it’s been like to be directing Michael Frayn’s Benefactors, which you can still catch tonight at the Spoon Theatre.
We’re going to start this review off with a quiz to illustrate a point. What’s the title of the poem that begins “By The Shores Of Gitche Gumee?” Go ahead, I’ll wait while you find out for me.
Back so soon? And your answer? That’s right. “The Song of Hiawatha” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. And just about how long did it take you to find out the answer? Well, if you were like me you typed the title into Google, hit “search” and in .29 seconds (that’s literally the blink of an eye) not one, not two but 27,800 results were at your finger tips. You could have the text of the poem itself, the Wikipedia entry that gives the history of the poem, the 1996 novel by Tama Janowitz, a link to amazon.com where you can buy the Janowitz book if you wanted to, or some videos from YouTube.
What in the world did we we do before Google? Easy. Before Google there were Gals . . . or more precisely there was The Desk Set: Bunny Watson, head librarian of the reference department at the International Broadcasting Company, and her team of librarians. These gals were equipped with an encyclopedic knowledge of everything from batting averages to the names of Santa’s reindeer. And they’d give it to you in . . . well . . . the blink of an eye.
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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