Flux Theatre Ensemble

Those words are the surprisingly subtle climax in a production of far larger and louder moments. While they may not be the climax of the play as written, as heartbreakingly uttered by Karen Sternberg's in her luminescent portrayal of Teri Guffin, they are the human center of this production. Under Nat Cassidy's direction in the tiny Manhattan Theatre Source space, David Ian Lee's sprawling epic political thriller Sleeper compresses around Sternberg's performance to become a play about the ownership of loss.

Teri knows loss: she has lost her romantic relationship with Al (Craig Lee Thomas), a man far more capable of intimacy than her husband Bobby (David Ian Lee); she and Bobby have lost their daughter Katie to a truly horrific illness; and over the course of the first act, she will lose Bobby to the lure of a life of meaning, building roads in Afghanistan. When Bobby is kidnapped by Kadir (Micah Chartrand), a Pashtun determined to repel the imperialist do-gooders, it appears that Teri may have lost him completely.

In the second act, she uses the fame brought her by Bobby's capture to become the leader of a progressive political movement. This brings Teri into direct conflict with Rachel (Kristen Vaughan), a right wing talk show host who capitalizes on the War on Terror to become a mega-star. It was Rachel who broke the news of Bobby's capture, and she has passionately fixated on the truth of his uncertain whereabouts on her program, The American Agenda. The center of Act 2 is the scene where Teri goes on the Agenda to challenge Rachel's politics, only to have Rachel shock her with the truth of Bobby's whereabouts. The two woman fight for ownership of Bobby's loss, and Rachel seems to win.

That's when the page who has been running the interview shows clear sympathy for the heartbroken Teri, and Teri asks her name in gratitude. In that moment, feeling the loss of her husband, which reminds her of the loss of her daughter, Teri shows her true character by reaching out to thank this stranger who works for her enemy. When the page says her name is Katie, something about that coincidence, that little karmic gift in that moment of incredible need, makes Sternberg's reply, "Thank you, Katie", feel like the realization that Rachel can NEVER own Bobby's loss; that is only hers, Katie's loss is now only hers, and for the first time in the play, she is grateful for it.

Teri's journey into an ownership of loss echoes out to Mahid, an unwilling ally of Kadir, who doesn't want the US to own the death of his father (an architect in Afghanistan who became a janitor working at the Twin Towers); and it echoes out to Rachel, who uses the deaths "of the 3,000", (as she calls the victims of 9/11) to wage an impossibly righteous and incredibly lucrative war on the Left. Katie's death, the central loss in this play of loss, is given to Mahid by Bobby, and he repays that gift by denying a terrible man ownership of Bobby's death; and it is given to Rachel by Teri in the final scene of the play, where at last Rachel is called to account for making politics of the most intimately personal.

When Flux developed Sleeper at Flux Sunday, I was struck by the overwhelming power of Rachel within the play. She is by far the wittiest, smartest and most vital character in Sleeper; as Bobby is drugging himself and Teri is sputtering forth Leftist platitudes, Rachel omnivorously devours every good thing in sight with the righteous pleasure of one of God's chosen. At Flux Sundays, this role was indelibly stamped in my mind by Jane Taylor, who twirled malevolently through Rachel's verbal and moral twists with voracious delight and humanity. Though we had many excellent Teri's read the role, Jane's Rachel seemed the black hole center of the play; making its climax the moment where Rachel watched the mysterious video tape revealing the truth about the Guffins.

But in this production, all the great reckonings of the play happen in such a little room that the more subtle journey of Teri takes over; and Cassidy and Sternberg have found a vitality, though wounded and uncertain, to rival Rachel's. In a seemingly throw away 1st act scene with Al, Teri defines herself as someone bad at grief and so ill-suited for life; by the end of the play, she owns and belongs to both. I hope readers of this blog will make the trek to see her journey in David's thorny and heartfelt play, and I hope this play will see further production. There are very few plays that can take the impossible contradictions of politics and transmute them into the simple loss of a daughter, of a father, of a lover. Sleeper not only viscerally gives us that loss, but finds the difficult way to move from it back into life.

Yes, she's a warm, loving, talented, vegan, master chef, yoga professional sweetheart. But...she is also fierce. If the picture from Midsummer above isn't enough proof, our Candice Holdorf is now writing theatre reviews for The Hatchet. As befits a Georgian, she rates the plays with peaches. And her reviews at Curtains are more than just fierce - they are funny, insightful and hopeful. Check 'em out!

THE SELVES OF THESE KIND ARE BUT WALDOS
"Were you ever instructed by a wise and eloquent man? Remember then, were not the words that made your blood run cold, that brought the blood to your cheeks, that made you tremble or delighted you,—did they not sound to you as old as yourself? Was it not truth that you knew before, or do you ever expect to be moved from the pulpit or from man by anything but plain truth. Never. It is God in you that responds to God without, or affirms his own words trembling on the lips of another."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
But Rob didn't just direct this Sunday...he also brought the first scene of a VERY exciting new play about a descendant of Ralph Waldo Emerson who may or may not be possessed by his famous ancestor. Call Me Waldo features some working class guys rattled when one of their own suddenly starts uttering Ralph's raptures. Lee, played by Isaiah Tanenbaum in one of his finest Flux performances, only wants to keep his life together, and wants none of the attention his wife (Gretchen Poulos) and co-worker Gus (David Douglas Smith) start pouring on him. This was a really exciting first scene (well directed by Brian Pracht) funny and heartfelt, and we are all excited to see what comes next.

THE FITTS OF THIS DAVID ARE BUT CANDICE
(OK, I'm running out of steam with these headers). We then looked at my now favorite scene from Johnna Adam's Oneida, Servants of Motion. Oneida is set in an historical utopian community run by the charismatic founder John Humphrey Noyes. Noyes' creates a communistic heaven on earth, where every resource is shared and a complex marriage is practiced. Men and women take partners as they choose (often prompted by Noyes' eugenics), with the men practicing a male continence taught to them as pubescent boys by woman past child-bearing age. But wait, don't move to this paradise just yet! This scene picks up as Tirzah, denied her love for music and Edward because favoritism doesn't belong in Heaven, is playing the piano on the body of her uncle/lover Noyes in her sleep. Pregnant with a child she is determined to name Haydn after the music she and Edward were playing when they fell too much in love, Noyes realizes he must show Tirzah the harsh truth of her now exiled lover Edward if her heart will ever belong to the community again. Anne, the head of the Criticism community and the only non-direct relative of Noyes to rise to power, produces a series of letters from Edward in the outside world where he denounces his love for Tirzah and their child. David played Noyes, Candice Holdorf a gentle and unsettling Anne, and Amy Fitts a haunted but still passionate Tirzah in this lovely scene.

THE BEST OF THE BODIES ARE BUT OTHERS
We ended with a rewrite from our Fringe play, Other Bodies, with Heather Cohn getting white knuckle performances from Aaron as Terry and Jane as Time.

It was good, very good, to be back.

Tickets go on sale on July 20th - please join us as we continue wrestling with how life transforms the body against the bodies will.

Do you begin with Theseus' first words? Or do you frame the play, pairing some kind of Prologue against Puck's famous Epilogue? We chose two frames - the first could be called the Summoning of the Shadows. Oberon stands in light, his shadow breaking towards the audience, as Puck appears from underneath his cape. Puck walks towards the audience, eventually revealing the flower that will become the Love-In-Idleness. As Puck walks, the actors of the play cross past foot lights on either side of the house, their shadows flickering against the back wall. As they walk past the corners of the audience, they look as if they are carrying a secret that the audience may or may not be ready for. Puck extends the flower to someone in the first row, but before the audience member can grab it, a soldier grabs one of the poles symmetrically placed to match the columns in the West End and slams it rhythmically against the floor.
What did this accomplish? Most simply, it was a gateway into a different world. All of the above was done in silence, and because this production used no sign designer, that silence before the torrent of words and sounds to follow was an effective transition. Additionally, it established our focus on Oberon and Puck's relationship, our use of shadows, and linked the offering of the Love-In-Idleness to the Puck's spell in the Epilogue.

Prop designer Kelly O'Donnell did an amazing job of creating all the horrors in Egeus' list, though we didn't get to spend enough time to really mine this moment for all it was worth.
As the scene continues, the choices of how dark to make this first scene of an allegedly light hearted comedy keep coming. I'm not sure we struck the perfect balance, and this is one of the scenes that I wish we'd had more time with in rehearsal, to more deeply capture the terror of the law that has been swung into its unstoppable motion.