Flux Theatre Ensemble

(This post contains some small spoilers for our upcoming production of Jacob's House).

One of the central themes of Jacob's House is Harold Bloom's translation of "more life" for the Hebraic concept of "blessing". Like Tony Kushner's Angels in America, Jacob's House also looks at the enigmatic sequence of Jacob wrestling the angel, asking "what would you do for more life"?

In this play, More Life is meant both literally and figuratively. Literally, the characters who inherit the blessing, Isaac and then Jacob, have extended life spans, living two to three times the normal amount. This blessing of long life also passes on to those closest to them, those who are marked by love and belong to them.

More Life also means the quality of life, a certain vitality and intensity of experience the blessing gives. Finally, it connects with the rich Hebraic notion of the Book of Life, with its questions of extinction, eternity, righteousness, and creation as an act of writing and erasure.

This particular vision of the blessing is both tribal and amoral; it is not wholly a question of right or wrong, but hungry or full; and in the pursuit of this blessing for yourself and loved ones, much is permissible. In this sense, the quest for More Life is a distinctly American one, and in Jacob's House, the Old Testament life spans of the characters stretch out over (and mirror) the full course of America's Manifest Destiny.

The play explores the cost of winning and keeping this particular incarnation of the blessing. How much struggle and pain is it worth to win More Life? What is the cost of taking and living it? You'll see this question answered by our Jacob's House and ForePlay - Divine Reckonings artists in their interviews, and their answers thus far have been fascinating.

These are deeply personal questions for me as someone who has always been death haunted. Almost every day I experience the vertigo of mortality, that black wave breaking over me. And so with our process of Jacob's House dominating my thought, I was thrilled to listen to this interview between neuroscientist David Eagleman and novelist Will Self. Please listen to it - though over an hour long, it is a funny, moving, and fascinating dialogue between two men wrestling with life and after-life.

Self's comic morbidity is contrasted by Eagleman's optimistic curiosity. Both marvel at a world that knows it will die, but acts as though it will live forever. They examine various possibilities for what an after-life might be like; they look at the cost of various incarnations of eternal life in the here and now.

In one of the most moving passages, Self promises Eagleman that his hopefulness will change when the younger man experiences the midlife crisis of mortality (ha, midlife!) The neuroscientist responds that his optimism is based in how little we know about the mystery of life; and imagines an aborigine with no knowledge of radio waves finding a radio, listening to it, tearing out the insides, and determining logically that the sound must have come from within the radio, because it ceases when the machine is broken.

Our machine will break; whether our tune still plays in the air or ends when the gears are out, I don't know. But in Jacob's House, three children deal with the legacy of a father who perpetuated that machine at almost any cost. I hope you will join us as we wrestle with the angel of More Life.

Tickets are on sale now; and as of today, there are still $10 tix available for opening weekend with the code "ELOHIM". Read the full story

VOLLEYBALL WITH EMERSON

AT our 2008 retreat, one of the highlights was workshopping Rob Ackerman's new play, Call Me Waldo. A father struggling at work and with the near loss of his daughter begins to be possessed by his great ancestor, Ralph Waldo Emerson. It is a heartfelt, funny and surprising play, and we all look forward to seeing how it develops.
(Photo: Allison Bolah, Pictured: Rob Ackerman)
Rob's contribution to our first Flux Sunday back from retreat was something altogether different: a highly theatrical fast and funny plunge into the world of high school girl's volleyball. Paired with my as yet untitled 60's play, and our continued exploration of Kushner's A Bright Room Called Day, it was a great return to Flux Sundays.

SIDE OUT, SIDE IN
We came back from the Retreat eager to bring in some new artists to Flux - folks whose work we'd admired for awhile, and in the madness of Midsummer and Bodies hadn't found time to welcome in. Our read through of the first scenes from Rob's Volley Girls gave us the perfect opportunity to hear newcomer Matthew Archambault eerily nail Coach, a driven volleyball fanatic who would rather lose the right way then win the wrong way. Matt was one of the highlights of our Imagination Compact, and it was great to have him back with Flux.

BRIGHT ROOM CALLED LITTLE POND
At the retreat, we were unable to finish our work on Kushner's fabulous Weimer Republic play, A Bright Room Called Day. And so, we saw two scenes from 2nd act, the Malek-Traum comic communists reduced to a less funny paranoia as fascism eclipses their hopes; and the stunning scene where Baz reveals he had a chance to kill Hitler in a movie theatre, but didn't out of fear of his own dying. These scenes saw lovely work from newcomers Zack Calhoon and Nicole Potter, and the lovely debut of FS regular Nancy Franklin's daughter, Kate Neumann. The highlight of these scenes, however, was Richard "Doc" Watson's portrayal of Baz; at first, coy and funny; and then furiously defending his decision to let Hitler live. I won't forget his confrontation with David Crommet's Husz, saying "I don't want to die" in such way that all our little accommodations to the misuse of power were brought horribly into the room. Kushner's play remains as unfortunately timely as ever.

THAT 60'S PLAY
One of the other big projects of the retreat was the workshopping of my play in development, (working title 10 Black Boxes.) This play follows ten people through the 1960's, each year turning into the next through an interlude of pivotal 60's text that takes over the world of the play. Writing specifically for the various voices of the ensemble, and using some of the theatrical discoveries of Midsummer and Bodies, 10 Black Boxes feels like the next big step in my work a playwright. At this FS, I got to see the strange seduction of Cotton Wright's Anisa by Kelly O'Donnell's Tegan,; the haltingly earnest portrayal of savant Lee by Matthew Murumba; Jason Paradine's Bobby talking down Christina Shipp's Lizzie from the Golden Gate Bridge; and Jay Liebman's charismatic turn as haiku hippie Isaac, winning over Tiffany Clementi's Marie against her better instincts. Heather Cohn staged all the moving parts into a exquisite little motor of a scene, helping me come closer to finding the heart of the play.

All in all...it was good to be back, with glow and the green of Little Pon still lingering. Read the full story