Humana Festival: O GURU GURU GURU Looks to Julia Roberts for Answers

Playwright Mallery Avidon likes to stand at "the intersection of individual and collective experience," she writes in program notes for her new play O Guru Guru Guru or why I don't want to go to yoga class with you, an autobiographical (sort-of) piece that premiered at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville.

First, the individual. Like the heroine of O Guru Guru Guru, Avidon really spend some of her formative years in an ashram and now has a complicated, somewhat troubled relationship with the hierarchy. The issues in the play -- figuring out how to be an adult, finding out who you are, getting past a central unease and unhappiness you can't identify  -- are focused on Avidon's singular childhood.

Adding the collective mass media experience, Avidon was partially inspired to write O Guru Guru Guru by the popularity of the book and movie versions of Eat Pray Love, which creates a sort of capitalist/spiritual/pop culture contradiction she found intriguing, as well as a path to bring an audience into the specifics of her childhood.

That conflation of different ideas is what creates the very specific, very distinct three-scene structure of O Guru Guru Guru (with one Guru for each part of the play). In the beginning, we see Lila, Avidon's stand-in, at a lecture where she attempts to explain the ashram and its personages as well as the title question. Her aversion to going to yoga classes with pals has nothing to do with posture or breathing or stretching or lack of skill or lack of friendship, she tells us. Instead, it's rooted in what it felt like to be a child in the ashram's immersive environment, and the cracks she saw in its foundation. For others, the ashram and its all-important guru provided answers to life's questions. But for Lila, it only created more alienation, more questions, less sense of her place in the world.

Actress Rebecca Hart, who played Lila for Actors Theatre of Louisville, was our only guide to that entire first section. Hart's warmth, humor and engaging performance kept the piece alive as she navigated a slide show with no pictures and a presentation based on notecards and observations.

The tone changes considerably as we segued into the second part of the play, one where the audience is invited to come down to the floor of the playing space, take off their shoes and participate in yoga, as guided by a very serene guide in a beautiful sari, played by Daphne Gaines. The audience is asked to chant, to listen to speeches on the spiritual peace to be found in yoga's methodology, to do a little breathing, and to watch a shadow puppet play about how the god Ganesh came to be. The colorful saris and lovely young guides (Maya Lawson, Kristin Villanueva and Gisela Chipe) made it pretty to look at, if a little odd and unformed.

After that, Avidon pulls back the curtain to reveal that what we've just seen is not what we thought at all, not at an ashram at all, but a scene being shot for the movie Eat Pray Love. And our girl Lila is an extra in the movie because of her yoga skills, even though she really still hasn't found herself. Just when you think our heroine is hopelessly adrift in the modern world, here comes a deus ex machina in the form of... Julia Roberts! Actress Khrystyne Hadje, a beautiful woman who once appeared on TV's Head of the Class, stands in for Roberts, acting as Lila's final guru, a font of wisdom and advice learned in Hollywood instead of yoga class.

If nothing else, O Guru Guru Guru created a lot of discussion amongst audience members. Around me, I heard some say they were only interested in the first section, with Lila's straighforward, uncomplicated lecture, while others were drawn to the third, where Julia Roberts Ties It All Together for You, as a satisfying answer to the questions illuminated in Part I.

As usual, I'm staking out my own turf. For me, the highlight of O Guru Guru Guru was the shadow play in the second piece, which employed some of the magic of theatre -- shadows and light, puppetry, art design -- to tell its story.

What's interesting about these discussions, however, is that almost everyone felt the need to embrace one part and reject the others, as if there were a competition among those discrete Gurus. While Avidon was attempting to set up and pay off one story, she ended up with three competing parts. I also found the ultimate answer -- that Julia Roberts will invite you over to her place for Taco Night -- sweet, but unconvincing. No Guru can ultimately offer peace or answers or a place in the world. Not even Julia Roberts.

Humana Festival: APPROPRIATE is More than Appropriate

I don't know about you, but when I think "plantation," I don't think Arkansas. The Walmart State may just be something I don't think about all that often in general. But Branden Jacob-Jenkins' Appropriate, one of the new plays produced as part of the 2013 Humana Festival, makes its Arkansas plantation -- or the remains and consequences of it -- unforgettable. After seeing this play, it's impossible not to think of Arkansas as a plantation state.

By the way, I'm thinking the title is Appropriate, as in the verb appropri-8, meaning to steal, purloin, take and make your own, not the adjective appropri-it, meaning suitable or acceptable. That's important as the story goes on, as Jacob-Jenkins' haunting family drama dredges up painful memories of the plantation's terrible past, when people were property, something a slaveowner like the one who bought this plantation could appropriate.

In the present, the Appropriate story unfolds around siblings Toni, Bo and Frank Lafayette. They were mostly raised elsewhere, but now they've returned to try to sell the place after their father's death. Was Dad crazy? Alcoholic? A hoarder? Or maybe a racist who kept horrifying memorabilia related to his home's unspeakable past?

As the siblings argue over who owns what and who is responsible for what, they reveal details of their unhappy lives, accompanied by a rising cacophony of cicadas from outside. It's a ghostly, disturbing sound, and you can't help but think it has something to do with all the slaves whose bodies and bones were tossed into the woods behind the house when their "service" to the plantation had ended. Are there unquiet spirits out there haunting this place? Will anybody ever find peace here?

The legacy of slavery, of cruelty and inhumanity and toxic power, hangs heavily over Appropriate. Whether they were raised in the place or not, the Lafayettes are poisoned by its past, and there is no more escape for them than there was for those slaves buried out back.

In the Humana Festival program, Jacobs-Jenkins says that he is "interested in the relationship between collective memory and collective forgetting." As dramaturg Amy Wegener puts it, "[A]bsolution from past wrongdoings doesn't come easily, and moving forward without taking a clear-eyed look backward comes with a price." Even if that look backward brings up memories your family would very much like to forget.

Jacob-Jenkins has created a provocative, disturbing play, one that deals with buried secrets of the family and national variety. For Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival, director Gary Griffin brought out all the mystery and conflict beneath the surface of the play, with excellent performances from Jordan Baker, Larry Bull and Reese Madigan as the Lafayette sister and brothers, Natalie Kuhn and Amy Lynn Stewart as the in-laws, and Gabe Weible, David Rosenblatt and Lilli Stein as the mixed-up kids. Antje Ellerman's decaying mansion house was grand and a mess, all at the same time, while Matt Frey's lights and Bray Poor's sound design contributed very nicely to the Gothic atmosphere.

Appropriate will open the 2013-14 season for Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago, again directed by Gary Griffin, and I'm not surprised at the rapid pick-up. There are a lot of issues to dig into in this murky, messy mansion.

Top Steinberg/ATCA Prize Goes to Robert Schenkkan for LBJ Drama

The Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New Play Awards are handed out every year during the Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville. This year, the finalists were Johnna Adams for her script Gidion's Knot, a teacher/parent drama about suicide and grief; Ayad Akhtar for his political thriller The Invisible Hand; Luca Hnath for Death Tax, a life, death and taxes struggle that premiered at last year's Humana Festival; Mia McCullough for Impenetrable, about beauty and its impossible standards; Dan O'Neal for The Wind Farmer, a mythic piece about hanging on to old traditions in a changing world; and Robert Schenkkan for All the Way, a new play about President Lyndon Johnson.

A committee within the American Theatre Critics Association reads scripts suggested by its membership, choosing six finalists -- new plays first produced outside New York City -- from among the field submitted. The ATCA reports that this year, they evaluated a record 42 plays for consideration for the Steinberg/ATCA New Play citations, which awards a total of $40,000 to the winning playwrights. That sum represents "the largest national new play award focusing on regional theaters as the crucible for new plays in the United States."

Robert Schenkkan

Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Schenkkan was the big winner, with a $25,000 check presented along with a plaque, for his LBJ play, All the Way, which was commissioned to be performed last summer as part of the "American Revolutions: The United States History Cycle" project at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Schenkkan is no stranger to American history; his Kentucky Cycle won the Pulitzer Prize back in 1991. Characters like Hubert Humphrey, J. Edgar Hoover and Martin Luther King, Jr. populated the landscape of Schenkkan's play, an exploration of how Lyndon Johnson came to power and how this "charismatic, conflicted Texan hurl[ed] himself into Civil Rights legislation, throwing the country into turmoil." The ATCA judges called the play "an engrossing, epic" play and described Schenkkan's version of LBJ as "complex, obscene, brilliant and ruthless." 

Actor Jack Willis as Lyndon Johnson in the OSF production of All the Way

The two $7500 citations went to Adams' Gideon's Knot and Hnath's Death Tax, both gripping dramas about the American way of life and death.

Adams' play premiered at the Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Gidion's Knot involves a grieving mother who clashes with her dead son's teacher to try to find some explanation for his suicide. Fifth-grader Gidion wrote a horrifying story for school, something powerful and violent and strange, but no more violent, no more strange than the medieval literature his mother studies. Was Gidion too aggressive to stay in school? Or pushed around by other aggressors? Either way, who's to blame?

The issues in Hnath's Death Tax are equally compelling, as we see a withered old woman, a dragon sitting on a pile of money, who tries to bargain with her nurse in an assisted care facility to keep herself alive. Nurse Tina is not on the take to murder her patient, even if she can't convince the old dragon of that. "Without positing easy answers, the play dissects greed, dysfunctional human relationships and the potential implications of a medical paradigm that can keep people alive indefinitely," noted the ATCA. 

Since its inception, the Steinberg New Play Award has singled out and honored playwrights like
Arthur Miller, Marsha Norman, Lynn Nottage, August Wilson and Lanford Wilson. Yussef  El Guindi took the prize last year for his play Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World. For the complete list of winners and runners-up, click here.

For more information on the Steinberg/ATCA Award, contact William F. Hirschman, chair of the ATCA New Play Committee, at muckrayk@aol.com or 954-478-1123; Jay Handelman, ATCA chair, at criticjay@gmail.com,or 941-361-4931; or Christopher Rawson, ATCA communications chair, at cchr@pitt.edu or 412-216-1944.

Humana Festival: Tension and Neurotic Writers Clash in THE DELLING SHORE

Playwrights love to write plays about writers. Writing is a tough world to try to make a living, with most writers spending a whole lot of time scrambling to be successful enough to consider writing a career instead of a sideline,  so it's only natural that playwrights and screenwriters and novelists would all be attracted to the conflicts, dashed hopes and complete injustice of the world of books. Plus, of course, if you write about people who write, you get to use all your best words.

Conflict, dashes hopes, injustice -- along with lots of books and lots of words -- are on display in Sam Marks' The Delling Shore, the first play I saw yesterday at Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival of New American Plays. Marks' central notion is familiar to anyone who's written books over a period of time, where you band together with friends and colleagues at the beginning, everyone supporting each other as you line up at the start. But when the race begins, it often happens that one friend pulls away, lapping everybody else. It may be that this writer is just really superior, really talented. It may be that he or she worked hard to make connections, find a path, blaze ahead. Or it may be that it makes no sense at all, that it was a random and crazy occurrence in a random and crazy career.

The two writers at the center of The Delling Shore grapple with that complex question of success in the writing biz. Grad students together 25 years ago, Frank and Thomas thought they were both good writers. But Thomas has become a superstar, a guy with awards and money and movie rights, while Frank is still struggling, editing a third-rate journal just to scrape by. With a new book in hand and a daughter who is desperate for an internship with Thomas -- she wants to learn from the master, a sentiment not lost on her dad, who realizes he is not that master, not even to his own daughter -- Frank arrives at Thomas's lovely summer home, a place as scenic as it is remote.

There are tensions right from the get-go. Frank (Bruce McKenzie) and his daughter Adrianne (Catherine Combs) are hours late. Thomas (Jim Frangione) and his daughter Ellen (Meredith Forlenza) are peeved at the tardy arrival, unconcerned that their guests are hungry or that they were unable to get through on cell phones to get directions or warn of the delay. Things only get worse from there. Frank's jealousy of his old friend's fame and fortune overshadows everything, but Thomas isn't exactly gracious about their supposed friendship, either. And neither man is on great terms with his own daughter.

I enjoyed the bookishness of The Delling Shore and I suspect other writers will, too. I may've lived in the world of romance writers (who get a pot shot in the script. Of course.) rather than literary writers, but the bruised and inflated egos, desperation for a chance, and complete identification with one's literary product are familiar to me. It's a writer-eat-writer world, no matter where you're at in that world.

And I would love to incorporate the Book Game into an evening's entertainments. As far as I know, that game, much discussed and threatened before they actually get to it, was invented for The Delling Shore. If it is original, it's a good idea, not too difficult, designed to make literary folks feel smart. But it is also in no way a sufficient pay-off for all the ominous discussion that precedes it. Let's just say the build-up feels like we're headed toward "Humiliate the Host" or "Get the Guests" from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and instead it's Fictionary. That's just not good enough to get us to buy into or get behind these characters and their squabbles. Yes, they're familiar as neurotic writers. But there's just not enough at stake here. We know from the start and Thomas's general behavior that he is not going to do anybody any favors, and from the chip on Frank's shoulder that he's not going to emerge a victor. Thomas is such a jerk that it seems much better for Adrienne if she does not get the internship. Only Ellen, the spoiled, pretty daughter with the six-figure income from a job in banking -- the one character outside the writers' circle -- has the energy and spark to seem like a real human being.

I could definitely be into an examination of the power dynamics and destructive nature of The Writing Life. There are also intriguing hints here of the effects of privilege and money on one's talent and character. In the end, however, those hints don't really pay off. Kind of like the Book Game.

THE DELLING SHORE
by Sam Marks

Humana Festival of New American Plays
Actors Theatre of Louisville

Director: Meredith McDonough
Scenic Designer: Daniel Zimmerman
Costume Designer: Lorraine Venberg
Lighting Desgners: Russell H. Champa and Dani Clifford
Sound Designer: Benjamin Marcum
Media Designer: Philip Allgeier
Stage Manager: Zachary Krohn
Dramaturg: Hannah Rae Montgomery
Casting: Henry Russell

Cast: Catherine Combs, Meredith Forlenza, Jim Frangione, Bruce McKenzie.

Running time: 1:30, played without intermission

Remaining performances: April 6 at 7 pm and April 7 at 2:30 pm.

For information on Actors Theatre of Louisville and the Humana Festival of New American plays, click here.

THE ADDING MACHINE Opens Tomorrow at ISU

Elmer Rice's The Adding Machine has long been cited as a fine example of American expressionism. That means the tone is a bit surreal and strange, with a dark, nightmarish story and characters like Mr. Zero, the antihero hero, who personifies man's inhumanity during the Machine Age more than a real person.

Rice was a major player in American theatre in the early part of the 20th century, even though he wrote only two well-known plays, The Adding Machine and Street Scene, both of which made it to Broadway. Street Scene was made into a 1931 movie starring Sylvia Sidney. The Adding Machine also got a movie, but not till 1969. In that one, Milo O'Shea and Phyllis Diller (!) played Mr. and Mrs. Zero.

The plot is pretty simple, in an expressionistic and surprising sort of way. Mr. Zero is a nothing, a nobody, as you might guess from the name, and he works (and has worked for the last 25 years) as a bookkeeper at the same company. But progress marches on, and the day comes when the boss tells Mr. Zero he's been replaced by an adding machine. His job -- annoying and monotonous as it is -- is the only thing he has, and he strikes out when he's fired, killing his boss. That results in a murder trial and execution, after which Mr. Zero gets sent to the Elysian Fields. Happily ever after in the afterlife? Nope. He's still just a cog in a huge machine, doomed to continue to repeat his mistakes.

Companion pieces for The Adding Machine might be Fritz Lang's Metropolis, an example of German expressionism with a similar critique of industrialization at the expense of the worker, or Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times, which gives the Man vs. Machine issue a comic twist and a sweet, appealing hero, or Stairs to the Roof, a Tennessee Williams play inspired by The Adding Machine.

Third-year MFA director Jeremy Garrett has put his stamp on Illinois State University's Adding Machine, with David Fisch as Mr. Zero and Caitlin Boho as his nagging missus. Others in the cast include Storm Angone, Pat Boylan, Trace Gamache, Lizzy Haberstroh, Matt Helms, Dominique Jackson, Drew Mills, Kent Nusbaum, Jenny Oziemkowski, Jason Raymer, Allison Sokolowski, Kelly Steik, Kaitlyn Wehr and Arif Yampolsky. Jake Wasson is the scenic designer, with Olivia Crosby as costume designer and Deborah Smrz as lighting designer.
The play opens tomorrow night in the ISU Center for the Performing Arts, with performances at 7:30 pm through April 13, and one Sunday matinee on April 7 at 2 pm.

Click here or here for ticket information.

Summer On Stage Is Back, Now with Fewer Mutants but More Lockers

Illinois Wesleyan University is offering its second annual Summer on Stage Theatre for Youth program. So if your child wants to keep busy this summer, learn some fun new skills, and even put on a play, you can sign them up right away. Space is limited, the young actors from last summer enjoyed themselves immensely, and spots may be hard to come by. That means you are advised to register now.

The whole idea of Summer on Stage is to "provide a safe, nurturing and professional environment in which students can explore the dramatic arts." All activities take place inside the E. Melba Kirkpatrick Laboratory Theatre at the south end of the IWU quad.

There are two choices of camps, divided by age. Footlight Camp is intended for kids in the 7-to-11 range (or entering 1st to 6th grade in the fall), and it will involve campers in acting, improvisation, dance, voice, movement, team and confidence-building activities. Instructor Cristen Susong will offer two sessions of Footlight Camp -- one weekday mornings and one weekdays afternoons -- from May 28 to June 7. At the end of the sessions, "campers" will put on a public performance combining the efforts of the morning and afternoon sessions. You can see a picture of last summer's performance below. "This is the perfect camp for your budding actor or actress," Susong notes.

Last summer's Goldie Spock & the Two Klingons

If your child is between the ages of 12 and 16 (or entering grades 7 to 12), they'll want to try Spotlight Camp, a more intensive theatrical training experience. Daily sessions will run from 9 am to 3 pm Monday through Friday between June 10 and 28, with a focus on acting, dance, singing and technical theater classes in the mornings and choreography, blocking, character development and more of a rehearsal experience in the afternoons.

Susong has announced that Spotlight Campers will be working on the play The Locker Next 2 Mine, which has roles for ten boys and ten girls. The Locker Next 2 Mine will be performed on Friday, June 29, with a 4 pm performance for parents and friends to see what their Spotlight kids have accomplished.

To see price and registration details for both Footlight and Spotlight Camp, click here.

New Route Announces Provocative New Season

New Route Theatre has announced a line-up of ambitious and provocative shows for their 2013-14 season. Artistic Director Don Shandrow sent out the list this morning, including work by four Pulitzer Prize winners and one local playwright. Plays range from the well-known, like August Wilson's Fences and Lynn Nottage's Ruined, both Pulitzer Prize winners, to new work like F2M from Patricia Wettig and Hostage, written by Illinois State University Professor Kim Pereira.

Here's what you'll see coming from New Route beginning this May:

Dael Orlandersmith

The Gimmick by Dael Orlandersmith
May 10-19
Directed by Don Shandrow
This moving play, by the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright of Yellowman, tells the story of Alexis, an intelligent girl whose life is complicated by her alcoholic mother and impoverished neighborhood. Only a librarian with a love of words can open a window of hope for Alexis, hope for something beyond the world of “gimmicks” that plague her neighborhood.

Patricia Wettig

F2M by Patricia Wettig
June 13-22
Directed by Irene Taylor
Parker, a transgender freshman college student, is confronted by his parents during an unexpected visit. This new play by Patricia Wettig, primarily recognized for her acting roles in "30 Something" and "Brothers and Sisters," is a funny and poignant look at identity, parenting and making choices.

Lynn Nottage

Ruined by Lynn Nottage
August 2-11
Directed by Don Shandrow
This 2009 Pulitzer Prize winning play is a powerful portrayal of the triumph of human spirit in a war-torn country. Guided by music and the rhythm of life in the Congo, Ruined transports us to Mama Nadi’s bar, a small town refuge where intimacy comes at a price. This remarkable story is rich with humor, hope and humanity as it expertly navigates relationships, politics and the resiliency of the female spirit.

Kim Pereira

Hostage by Kim Pereira
September 12-21
Directed by Heidi Harris
An American journalist is captured by an Arab in the Middle East. What starts as a stereotypical situation takes a few unexpected turns as both men are forced to confront some difficult truths about themselves and each other... and the strange roles they will play in each other's lives. A Semi-finalist for the O'Neill Center National Playwrights Conference.

August Wilson

Fences by August Wilson
November 1-10
Directed by Kim Pereira
The 1950s ushered in a new era for blacks in America. The complex rhythms of be-bop and cool jazz reflected a changing country in which African-Americans began to stake a claim. Fences is the story of Troy Maxson, a baseball player trapped between two worlds -- not just between blacks and whites but between his frustration of the past and his suspicion of the future.

Quiara Alegría Hudes

Elliot, a Soldier's Fugue by Quiara Alegría Hudes
February 14-23
This 2007 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Drama tells the interwoven story of four Puerto Rican family members who represent three generations of military service. Elliot, the son, returns home a wounded hero from Iraq, While on leave, Elliot learns the stories of his father and grandfather who served in Korea and Vietnam before him. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution called the play "A lush and evocative tone poem about the way the landscape of the soul is transformed by war."

New Route's shows are performed at the YWCA of McLean County, located at 1201 North Hershey Road in Bloomington. Friday and Saturday performances are scheduled for 7:30 pm, with Sunday matinees at 2:30 pm. You may reserve tickets in advance by e-mailing new.route.theatre@gmail.com or by calling 309-827-7330. For more information about New Route and its new season, check out their Facebook page.