So this weekend I saw two! (I wanted to see three, but the Red Line derailed and I couldn't make it from the matinee of The Play About My Father to the evening performance of Love And Information tonight.)
The Firestorm - Stage Left Theatre
The script was engaging...maybe even enthralling. It touched on politics, race, sexism...so many 'trigger' topics with such a strong grounding in reality. It didn't preach to me about how wrong or bad someone or something was - it introduced me to interesting people that I cared about, then showed me how they dealt with a realistic conflict. How can something that happened 20 years ago affect the person you are now? How did it affect the person it happened to?
The relationships of the characters were beautifully personified by all the actors (I was personally super proud of Kanome Jones, since I got to work with her recently in Titus Andronicus, and this was something completely different to see her do!!). A marriage, a work relationship, a re-connection with a virtual stranger...all were filled with the nuances of reality. The inside jokes of a marriage. The short-hand of a working relationship. The discomfort of trying to make a great first impression. The tension of attempted reconciliation.
I was struck by the depth of the issues, but the questions I was left with were of a more personal nature: Does it matter why you fell in love with someone? Or does it only matter that you are in love with them? I love the fact that when tackling the bigger picture, culture-sized issues, it's the individual experiences that define the tension & drama. That's what I am able to relate to - that's how I'm able to link in and think about the bigger picture. I highly recommend seeing this show, if you can, before it closes November 29th (c'mon, you have almost a whole month!)
The Play About My Dad - Raven Theatre
I enjoyed this play, but not as much as I wanted to. The premise of the play is that you are watching a play...as it's being worked on. At first I was on board with this conceit. The set I walked into was an 'unfinished' set, there was a visible light board on stage in the corner, an actor came on stage before the show started to prep the stage...cool.
Then the 'play' started and it was a series of 'magical realism' scenes & vignettes of true stories of Katrina victims and survivors. These vignettes were wonderful - truly engaging, interesting, entertaining, poignant. Pretty much everything I want my theatre to be! But every once in a while, the vignettes were interrupted to follow the playwright's process in understanding the stories, and comparing them to how the other character's experiences mirrored her own experiences and feelings. There was a feeling of manipulation that took me out of the world of 'the play' - "See how this story is reminiscent of how I felt when you did this to me?" It was as if she was using the act of writing the play to understand her relationship to her father - which is an admirable use of art for the artist, but as an audience member, I didn't feel as connected to the 'playwright' and her 'father' (the characters) as much as I felt connected to the family stuck on the roof of their home as the waters rose, or the EMTs huddling in their ambulance, or the older woman who insisted that "nothin' is nothin'" until the storm literally swept her house away.
The performances made this show a very worthwhile afternoon of theatre and I'd certainly recommend it - I just wish I could recommend it more. And, who knows, maybe subtly hinting that there's a universal connection in relationships is too obtuse for today's theatre goer. Maybe you do have to spell out - "I'm making this art to better understand my relationship with my Dad, so that you, the audience, may have a better understanding of your relationship with your Dad." For my money, I'd rather be able to draw my own inferences and connections to my life.