What is it really about?

While attending the current production of Savannah Disputation, a friend asked a truly perceptive and intriguing question: what is it really about. This was in response to someone else's comment about another play - "of course you know what that was really about." Bringing my thoughts squarely to rest on the playwright's thinking for Savannah Disputation in particular was a happy place to land.

This play examines the disappointments of women, priests as people and as symbols, religion, power, mortality (sort of), the role of constraints and those thing forbidden, relationships generally, the South vaguely, America and it's use and mis-use of religion, how we fight and 'getting along', and likely more to add mess to a well constructed run-on sentence. Evan Smith's new play pushes a whole bunch of buttons.

I suspect a certain flatness to the production comes from a linear construct within the play itself because the writing appears to run through a list of questions rather than creating a carefully constructed dramatic progression. The female actors had to work to portray real people because most of the dialog supported light weight characters going after heavy weight material and getting flattened in the process. Occasionally the character of Mary gets something meaty to set up action for Father Murphy. And Robert Scogin's portrayal of the priest has real depth and pathos, partly the result of stellar acting on top of a character with real issues. He shines with masterful power as he commands Margaret to stop second guessing all of catholicism as a result of an afternoon's chat with a sophist-fundamentalist. And his cynicism is front and center when he tells Mary she may as well remain a catholic because she doesn't believe in anything else and, "then you can go to the same church as Margaret."

I would like to see Smith go back and make a less orderly examination of his questions, shake up the situation comedy. But the production is well done and affords laughter about serious rather than solemn topics that invites continued disputation over time.

Cooks, Cubans and the role of atmosphere in theater and our daily lives

This is the second in a series of posts that will be dubuting in the space as "works in progress'. I plan to post these only partially completed in case I can convince some of my collaborating artists to participate prior to completion of the product. This will involve some necessary mess because the pieces will change in mid-stream. This will also require me to leave commentary posts up that may not make sense as the pieces change in scope and even perhaps in direction or conclusion.

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The Cook, in a production currently playing at the Goodman started a conversation on the role of set design in creating atmosphere. In a world that is highly theatrical away from the theater, I wonder if part of the intrigue of that play is a sense of 'trying out' a space. The story itself revolves around people who are preserving a house for differing reasons. The audience reaction so far is that the set is itself a character, one that sets up expectations and then follows up with the process of aging we all must endure.

In shelter magazines the notion of a kitchen as stage is nothing new. The fabulousness of our kitchens tells our friends something about each of us. I long for a kitchen that is the heart of my personal and social life. My kitchen has always been my 'best' room, the place I spend the most time and where most of my friends participate in various creations and evenings of learning. Recently I have been spending a lot more time in my new, small kitchen cooking and contemplating how to make it more mine.