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I managed to get to four of the plays in Little Box this year, which is excellent for me considering the year I was in Little Box I only made it to one other than my own (K. was due with Henry virtually any day at that point). I’ll say right at the outset that the thing that characterizes the works that I say, almost universally, was their length.  My God do they need cut.  And mine did too.  So, I realize that there is an element of Karma involved here, as I was repaid for what I made others sit through two years prior.

I felt that all of the works that I saw were strong works.  So, I guess I should probably mention the ones that I went to see: Projecting, You Can See the World from Cleveland, Flock of Seagulls, and Waves.  I will talk about them each in turn, reflecting back, as I am working from memory now.

Projecting, by Rachel Baird, Directed by Jaime Bouvier, Featuring Faye Hargate.  Rachel is a classmate and, I felt, did a very fine job with this piece.  It is, I think, early in the development of it, but Projecting did some very interesting things with space and audience.  Perhaps the most transgressive action that I have ever seen in a theater occurred in this play when the lone character took a Polaroid of one of the audience members and then integrated it into the piece.  This action, along with its inclusion in the play, was perhaps the signature event of the piece, in that it dramatically re-shaped the meaning of the play almost instantaneously, as the lone character recalled the Polaroid photograph as a record of an event that happened substantially in the past (i.e. years before) when, in fact, the audience just witnessed the act of the photograph–thus throwing very much into doubt the sanity of the character on stage.  Baird describes Projecting thus:

Photographs are a way of telling stories, of tracking and keeping human histories on an intensely personal level. They are often the only real proof that a life has happened. Projection is a method of sharing these images; it is also a method of separating the self from the self, of hiding personal realities safely away in plain sight. Projecting is the story of one woman through photographs.

There are several points in this description that become interesting in light of the Polaroid.  For one, that the photographs are “the only real proof that a life has happened” of course begs the question, proof of what life?

The one that we really experience or the one that we imagined we experienced?  And is there a difference between the two?  No matter what your answer, the question is certainly raised by this play.  It is interesting, as well, that Baird notes that the “self can be separated from the self” using projection and of course this is precisely the reality that we as an audience encounter.  It is interesting, as well, to consider the term “Projecting” and its psychological implications in describing the state of ascribing to others the feelings that one has.  This state is usually a defensive posture and used to protect oneself, and the lone character in this play is clearly in a defensive state and has been, in some way, harmed: though how is unclear.  In the play, the more obvious use of projecting is the images that are shot onto the wall for the audience to consider, but clearly this form of projecting is deceptive, as the projection is actually moving the opposite direction, and thus makes for a very intriguing experience.

The use of props in this piece is equally startling, but not for their use in and of themselves, but rather what they represent as artifacts of the character’s life; and their representation of things that have passed by and gone to the great beyond.  I am, perhaps, more sensitized to this with the recent death of my grandmother and the even more recent death of my wife’s grandmother last Saturday.  This history of how we relate to each other and, especially, to those we love most in the world–and how we deceive ourselves is very much on display in this piece.

Jaime Bouvier does an excellent job of staging a play that could quickly run into the danger of boring the audience by its rather conventional format and approach: that is, one woman standing and directly addressing the audience.  But through various props and interactions with the audience, (including the distribution of small photographs of a stop light in various stages of its process: red, yellow, and green; with accompanying comments for meditation), this piece comes alive quite nicely and, but for a few long-winded points, is fresh and funny and very interesting.

The next piece on the menu this first evening I attended Little Box was You Can See the World from Cleveland Written by and Featuring Aaron Calafato. This one man show is a reflection on Calafato’s time as a struggling actor in New York City and the sort of Look Homeward Angel effect that this time had on his desires, ambitions, and ultimately decision to return to Ohio.  This piece was great fun and was, in fact, quite touching at times.  It was way too long, and at points I was simply lost as the title led me to believe the piece was about something that was simply not in the action itself: i.e. I’m watching a play about how I can see the world from Cleveland and yet all the action is taking place in New York, and is this a sad commentary on how we should view Cleveland.  The point of this action, however, becomes clear by the end of the piece, when he decides to return to Northeast Ohio, but there needs to be some attention to this ambiguous story line early on in the action to let the audience know where they are.  Calafato is very talented and very good at creating vibrant characters that are distinctly drawn.  There were moments, however, when it felt as if he was too aware of this gift and the characters were on stage just for the sake of his ability to go into them, rather than serving any purpose in the story.

Next on the list, and a week later in real-world time, was Flock of Seagulls by Stuart Hoffman.  I reflected, as I watched with a smile, on the fact that Stuart was the narrator in my staged reading at Little Box almost two years earlier.  Hoffman’s play was written by an actor who clearly would like to, as a character, sock the playwright in the eye.  This play was very much a meta-play reflecting on the relationship between character and action and plot and the relationship between the character and the audience and theatrical space. The play can, at times, be mind-bending as you try to sort out the relationship between the characters, the script, and the writer; and the awareness of the characters of the script, the writer, and the ways they can influence events.  Perhaps the funniest moment for me was the inexplicable repetition of an exchange between the characters who then realize that one of the pages in the script was actually a duplicate.  The moment of déjà vu that occurs is thus quickly and comically dissipated.  Other moments invoke the godlike nature of the writer, such as the crumpling of pages, the throwing of the script, etc.

When the play was over I asked Hoffman where he was going with the piece but he said he wasn’t sure.  I’d like to see more come of it than just some of the more slap-sticky happenings, as the subject offers some interesting potentialities for writers and actors to consider.

The final piece that I’ll discuss is Waves by Jaclyn Villano.  Directed by NEOMFA Playwright Michael Parsons and ably acted by Marla Williams, this piece explores grief as seen through the story of a mother who just lost her school-age daughter.

There is a rhythm to the piece which reflects the title, and there is a definite ebbing and flowing of energy from the script itself.  The whole is very ably written and emotionally engaging (and draining) and has an outlook that ruminates and then chooses life in the face of what I can only imagine as being the darkest moment in the life of a parent.

I have discussed with both the playwright and the director some of the issues that I have with the form of the piece, but that is only my opinion and the form seemed to work well-enough for most of the audience.  Three of the four plays I saw at Little Box took the form of direct audience address, which for some reason I find disconcerting.  I’ve discussed this elsewhere.

I’m not going to go into a detailed analysis of this play as it really would serve no purpose except to be as long an effort as the original to which it refers.  And this is where the point should be soundly made, as much to my own consciousness and to anyone else, that writing is a process and that, for the playwright, what is on stage early in the process is rarely what the audience sees as a finished product and that the process is long and hard and repetitive and that I myself put an audience full of people through a grinder several years back–all on the way to creating a better play, which I’m sure will be the case for all of these pieces in Little Box.

I really enjoy this play by Mike Sepesy, as well as the follow-up: The Douglas Tree.  There were things I liked about the production and things that I did not.  Mostly the things I didn’t like revolved around the sneaking suspicion that Mike wasn’t given the resources that his play deserved.  I don’t want to be an ass and make obnoxious suppositions, but I’ll say that I’ve seen two season-level productions at CPT by local playwrights: The Alice Seed and The Stars Fell All Night, (and some others that weren’t billed this way) and I don’t think either was served very well by the production it received.  The directors were either found or acquired last minute, the sets were questionable, and the productions seemed rushed, the choices made were wrong, etc.  I’ve seen other productions at CPT that were of good quality: Boom, Fefu and Her Friends, Our Town, etc, so why, I wonder, not the local playwrights? (Excepting the caveat of Cut to Pieces, which was very well done.)  It may be that the plays may be viewed as extensions of the process by which they come up: little box, big box, production–and resources are allocated lightly in the first two.  If that is the case, then the evolution of resources needs tweaked.  Otherwise, I may have to speculate on some other cause…

Grieving parents struggle in Sepesy's The Alice Seed

I saw a reading of Mike’s play at the Cleveland Play House in 2007. That was an interesting process, as they actually used music stands.  This was thankfully not the way that Clyde approached my reading in Little Box; but even with this restricted process Mike’s writing came through.  It came through strongly again in the production I saw.

The Alice Seed is a play about grief.  The play is draining.  It is well-written and hard to watch.  As a playwright who has written texts that involve draining themes and intense interactions between characters, there are things I might tweak in this play, as the confrontations between husband and wife can become circular and border on tiresome–they weren’t, but there were moments when I began to think, “okay, we’ve been through this…”  And I was afraid it might go into tiresome; but Mike is a good writer and his sense of that is acute. As well, life is like that, and this story is a tough one.

This play is a screenplay–or should be.  I would love it as a movie/film.  There are things that it needs that are difficult on stage–that is, resources need to be allocated.  They were not.  This required an active imagination on the part of the audience.  I think most people were in this space, at least the people I heard from, and this is what theater should be: imaginative. This is not a play that requires a natural/realistic set; but having some pieces set that way would have helped.  The putting green Astroturf was a distraction, and it disturbed the scenes that took place in the house.  I would much rather the set have been a house with a pretense toward the woods, than the reverse that it was.

The one scene that went way over the top for me was the doctor scene.  A doctor comes to the middle of the stage and we seen the dire diagnosis directed toward Alice. She has cancer.  The dramatics that were attached to this announcement were excessive and unnecessary.  The doctor was reduced to an evil machine that kept repeating ‘your daughter has cancer’ with ominous echoes provided by two musicians (chorus?) above.  The starkness and lighting cast the doctor character with a villainy that shifted the focus away from the grief and bordered on editorial.  The theatrics, being way over the top, distracted from the course of the play.  The effect was almost comic.  I understand the emphasis: that this was the moment when things went bad for the family.  But it was played with too heavy a hand.

Other theatrical points were wonderful.  The hands of Alice reaching out of the ground, cast as shadows on the upstage wall were great.  I liked the effect of the trees on the set.  The musicians: shout out to Bobby Williams of con-con fame, where impressive and the sound effects they provided were often very well done.  The one caveat here being the voice of Alice and the really unnecessary “see you soon, mommy” comment.  The first scene with the mother, Dolores (Jackie Cummins), in the woods and the atmosphere and “swamp” sounds, was one of the best for me and still is with me as a strong impression.
Mike draws very strong characters and the best, perhaps, is Paul (Michael Andrews-Hinders) whose fierce moral system and sense of himself is amazing: and the ominous scene between Paul and Dolores in the house, after Judah (Mark Mayo) has run off, is drawn in hard relief and edged with deep threat and menace.  Sepesy hit his target hard here.

Mike’s sense of storytelling is equally compelling.  He knows balance.  He knows how to heighten the tension and release it.  He knows how to bring you down into the emotional trauma, and then return you with light-hearted moments.

In her notes on the play, Alison Garrigan (who directed and is herself a fine actress) comments that there are “conjure-wive” tales from Appalachia that serve as cautionary tales.  This has that element certainly, with Dolores dying in the end over a promise she made to get her dear Alice back.  When I talked with Mike after the show, I asked him if that was in the reading at the Play House: Dolores dying.  He said it was, but that she should be pulled under the ground with Alice at the end (which did not happen as there was no drop floor/trap constructed for the production). I forgot about this ending, and I think, while I understand that it does serve that cautionary purpose, a stronger story has Dolores and Judah going forward together.  I think a more haunting ending is that there is no easy way out and the loss must be endured forever.  As I get older I realize there are some things that happen in life, some damages, that cannot be undone and from which one cannot recover: that people can get broken and not be fixable.  That is deeply sad and deeply frightening.  I know if something happened to either of my children, something deep inside me would break forever; so the grief in The Alice Seed rings true. In terms of a horror story, I think this reality–the living–is the one that is truly awful–that is to say, I wish Dolores wouldn’t die; even though that detracts from the “contractual” supernatural event.

I love seeing Sepesy’s plays: he is funny, draws startling characters (is himself an excellent reader and character voice), and has a profound mythic sense when it comes to theater and a strong sense of theatrics in the theater space.  I hope CPT considers The Douglas Tree and provides the resources to make it a truly fine production–and I look forward to Mike’s new filmic work.