Sometimes you find great theater in unexpected locations. Such was the case with my recent visit to Shepherdstown, W. Va., for the Contemporary American Theater Festival. I learned about this annual event — now in its 26th year — three years ago when the American Theatre Critics Association held its annual conference there to attend an array of new plays. The logistics of my life didn’t permit me to attend in 2013, but my bucket list included showing up sometime in the future. The future became now when I drove to the far eastern reaches of West Virginia to enjoy this annual showcase of new plays, some commissioned, some getting a second production, utilizing the excellent theater facilities at Shepherd University.
CATF is a separate entity from the university, but coexists and brings considerable attention to West Virginia’s top-ranked baccalaureate institution. Artistic director and founder Ed Herendeen is also a professor at Shepherd. Including the 2016 season, the festival has produced 115 new plays by more than 80 American playwrights. Many of these have been world premieres. Audiences from nearly two-thirds of the USA have attended CATF productions. The plays are professionally produced using professional actors, directors and designers.
From July 22-24, I saw all five 2016 productions, since the festival presents them in rolling repertory using three different theaters. CATF opened on July 8 this year and concludes on July 31. Here are my comments on each show. It’s worth noting that four of the five productions were works by female playwrights.
Not Medea, a rolling world premiere by Allison Gregory. As its title alludes, this 90-minute piece was not Medea, Euripides’ Greek tragedy about a woman who murdered her children in response to her husband Jason’s faithlessness. But Medea’s story is the underpinning of Gregory’s play.
Joey Parsons portrays a contemporary woman who wanders in as the show begins as if she’s a latecomer. She apologetically explains that she’s taking a night off from her parental responsibilities and thought a night at the theater would be a good break. But when she sees that Medea is about to be staged, she blanches and considers leaving. She has had a horrific experience of her own that’s not all that different from Medea’s, so this is a little too close to home.
As the story unfolds, Parsons slides back and forth between the mythic tale and the sad reality of the woman’s recent life. Two other actors are incidentally involved: Rachael Balcanoff is Chorus, providing commentary on the action but also stepping into moments as the woman’s child; Ben Chase is Jason, both the philanderer of the ancient tale and the woman’s feckless husband.
The interweaving of these stories and their tragic outcomes adds dimension and understanding to how a woman could be so dispirited by circumstances that she would do something dark and tragic. Parsons turns in a tour-de-force performance not only as the beleaguered woman but also as the mythic character; she moves fluidly and choreographically from one to the other on the square stage (the show was presented in Shepherd University’s CCA 112, a black box theater), featuring nothing but a bed and a pool of water used in several evocative ways.
Gregory’s script employs the here and now for further effect: At one point the woman directs women in the audience to take out their smartphones and find a picture of a child, then delete it. This simple but chilling action illustrates and distills her sense of loss. It’s a powerful piece of writing, made memorable by Parsons’ bravura solo performance.
pen/man/ship, a new play by Christina Anderson presented in a larger flexible studio, the Marinoff Theater. The slightly cryptic title of this play points to several facets of the work — writing and words, the egos of men (and a powerful woman) and a sea voyage. Performed in the university’s Marinoff Theater, it’s set on a sailing ship bound for Liberia in 1896 with a crew of black seamen.
They’re bound for the young African nation where Charles Boyd (Brian D. Coats) says he will survey land for new settlement; he is a man of devout faith who browbeats his son Jacob (Damian Thompson) during weekly Sabbath lessons. He also questions the younger man’s decision to include a woman among those on board.
Ruby Heard (Margaret Ivey) desires to leave the still-racist environment of late 19th-century America for a new life in the freedom of Liberia. But she doubts the veracity of Charles’ claims about the mission; we learn there are ulterior and less-than-altruistic motives. The crew rebels under Charles’s domination. Suspicious of his possible murder of a sailor, they mutiny and make Ruby their leader. This leads to a horrendous impasse on the voyage, with sails dropped and all suffering as the becalmed ship drifts off course.
A fourth character, Cecil (Edward O’Blenis), represents the crew and provides musical accompaniment on a squeezebox accordion. He is a sympathetic ear who Charles woos to his cause, but the earnest young man eventually sees how he’s being manipulated.
The story of pen/man/ship is also about growing affection between Ruby and Jacob, as each of them grows to understand the complexity of the issues at hand and wrestles with how to move forward to find the answers they need. I found the script’s ending a bit too pat, but this was a provocative work by a promising writer.
20th Century Blues, a world premiere by Susan Miller, presented on the proscenium stage in the university’s Frank Center. This play feels very in-the-moment: It opens and closes with the central character, Danny (Betsy Aidem), a renowned photographer delivering a TED Talk. She describes her intention to present a career-culminating exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, based on annual photos she’s taken across a 40-year friendship with three other women.
Sil (Alexandra Neil), Gabby (Kathryn Grody) and Bess (Franchelle Stewart Dorn) met in the curious circumstance of being thrown in jail. Their lives have dispersed: Sil sells high-end real estate; Gabby is a veterinarian; Bess is a rabble-rousing journalist. Sil and Danny are WASPs, Gabby is likely Jewish and Bess is African-American. Together they represent a cross-section of Baby Boomers. They are only grudgingly willing to admit that they have aged, and each has fears of wider response to personal photos that reveal their march across time.
Concerns are expressed about conjuring up sensitive moments from specific points along each woman’s life path. This conceit enables playwright Miller to draw in numerous topics and references to historic moments, social trends and other events that many in the theatergoing audience could relate to. In that sense, it’s a smartly crafted play for today’s theaters. (This should be a worthy candidate for D. Lynn Meyers to consider for a future season at Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati.)
There are moments when it almost feels a bit too contrived; we meet Danny’s son Simon (Jason Babinsky), a drifting Gen-Xer, and her mother Mac (Mary Suib), whose dementia is a concern — devices to remind us of the perils of the “Sandwich Generation.” But the four women’s relationships and ultimate decisions of the quartet of friends are portrayed with genuine feeling, and the show’s final moment is one that evoked both tears and smiles in the audience. This script will likely be picked up by theaters that know it will appeal to their patrons.
The Wedding Gift, a world premiere by Chisa Hutchinson, also presented in the Frank Center. Although this was a spectacular physical production in terms of costuming (Peggy McKowen) and scenic design (David M. Barber), it’s the one I’d say needs the most work. The program says it’s “set in a far-off place, so far in the future, it’s stupid.”
That’s not exactly evident from the opening moment, since we seem to be witnessing a marriage ritual, perhaps in an African nation. (The production includes in its large cast all the actors featured in pen/man/ship.) They speak an unintelligible language, leaving the audience to guess at the details of what’s happening. Gifts are brought forth to the prideful bride Nahlis (Margaret Ivey) and her groom Beshrum (Damian Thompson). Several are disdainfully rejected.
But then a large cage is revealed to contain a white man, Doug (Jason Babinsky), dumbfounded to find himself relegated to the role of an enslaved pet. He can find no path to escape, and soon is emotionally involved with Nahlis, despite their inability to communicate. Beshrum becomes jealous, commits an inadvertent murder and is essentially banished from the story.
When Doug and Nahlis flee from the restrictive confines of her world, she reveals to him that he’s a relic from the past, living in a “stupid” future. Hutchinson wraps the play up with Doug AWOL and Nahlis back in the fold, but perhaps expecting a child.
Where will this lead? Who knows? That’s part of the problem with The Wedding Gift. What are we meant to extract from the fanciful tale? Perhaps it’s an allegory for the daunting position of an outsider in a judgmental society. Perhaps it’s about being enslaved. But the script’s resolution leaves so much hanging that it’s hard to gauge what conclusion to draw.
Nonetheless, the show is the work of an intriguing writer. The manufactured language is expressive, although perhaps used too extensively. But the gestural rituals surrounding marriage and death that we witness are expressive and beautifully conceived. McKowen’s futuristic costumes (reminiscent of the outlandish styles featured in The Hunger Games movies) are especially memorable. The Wedding Gift presents an imagined world that might have fearful implications for us in the 20th century. Maybe.
The Second Girl, a new play by Ronan Noone, back in the Marinoff Theater. Perhaps the most traditional work in the 2016 CATF is Noone’s piece that’s a sidebar to Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night. That autobiographical play (winner of the 1956 Tony Award) portrays the lives of the dysfunctional Tyrone family — father James, a bombastic actor; his addled, morphine-addicted wife Mary; and two angry, dominated sons, aspiring actor Jamie and poetically inclined Edmund. O’Neill’s play has one other character: Cathleen, described as “the second girl,” a house servant who brings meals from the kitchen.
Noone extrapolates on the circumstances from the perspective of the kitchen, on a set surrounded on four sides by the Marinoff’s seating. We hear the Tyrones offstage, but never see them. Bridget (Jessica Wortham), the cook, is the aunt of Cathleen (Cathryn Wake); Jack Smythe (Ted Koch) is the family’s driver who’s enamored with Bridget. The entire show (nearly two hours in length) happens in the kitchen, with occasional excursions to the dining room to deliver meals that we’ve watched being prepared.
It’s evident that Bridget feels boxed-in and frustrated, and the free-spirited Cathleen makes matters worse with her outlandish behavior and dreams of a career on the stage, encouraged by James Tyrone. Jack is in love with Bridget, but she refuses to take even a step toward happiness. Cathleen is the catalyst for and sometimes the stumbling block in the evolution of the pair’s relationship.
The Second Girl is fully steeped in an Irish perspective on life and romance. (Playwright Noone, from Ireland, now teaches at Boston University.) The two women are distinct Irish types, one careworn and unhappy, the other naïve, imaginative and eager for adventure. Jack is a stolid American, who represents a way out for Bridget, but she’s deeply fearful — and she’s relying on alcohol for escape. There’s a lot of wry humor in this show, but the fates of the “downstairs” characters don’t seem much more promising than those of the tragic Tyrones.
It’s worth adding that audiences unfamiliar with O’Neill’s play will likely be a bit at sea in terms of what’s going on. At least in the CATF production, offstage remarks and orders from the Tyrone family were muffled and too often unintelligible. Perhaps some setup in the program about O’Neill’s play would make for easier entry into the story, really as much about Bridget and her plight in life as it is about “the second girl.”
As a footnote, I will add that CATF has had considerable luck in launching its plays to broader audiences. Jeffrey Hatcher’s Compleat Female Stage Beauty (1999), a story about the Elizabethan theater, was made into a fascinating 2004 feature film, Stage Beauty. Fiction writer Joyce Carol Oates’ only play, Miss Golden Dreams (2008), based on her novel Blonde, became a TV miniseries about the inner life of Marilyn Monroe; it’s been optioned for a movie. Lydia R. Diamond’s Stick Fly (2009) had a Broadway production in 2011. Perhaps most familiar to Cincinnati audiences is Beau Willimon’s Farragut North (2009), which became the 2011 motion picture The Ides of March, starring George Clooney and Ryan Gosling. That political thriller was filmed largely in Greater Cincinnati.
To learn more about the CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN THEATER FESTIVAL, a worthwhile summer destination for theater fans, visit catf.org.
This article appears in Jul 20-27, 2016.