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2009-2010 Season
The Pavilion
(October 14 - November 7, 2009)Boise Contemporary Theater opens with a glittering, funny and atypical play
By Dana Oland – Idaho Statesman"The Pavilion" is a magical place, sanctified by memory and imbued with precious qualities that make it more than a wooden structure by a lake in Pine City, Minnesota. In Craig Wright's play it is the center of the universe, where heady themes of time, existence, fate, freewill and the nature of relationships unfold in an accessible story about missed opportunity and lost love.
"The Pavilion" is now in production at Boise Contemporary Theater. This play about time, the narrator says. Just so there is no confusion about it, that idea is restated at the end. Time has been marching forward since the beginning of existence, all for the purpose of allowing Peter (Dwayne Blackaller) and Kari (Hollis Welsh) to meet and fall in love. What they do with their time is up to them. Former high school sweethearts Peter and Kari meet again at their 20th high school reunion of the class of 199-something. It is held, like all the town's significant events, at the pavilion. But this is no ordinary night. It is the last night of building's existence. It's scheduled to be burned down right after the sweetheart dance at midnight. That small tragedy is another way Wright marks the passage of time. The building's destruction will make way for something new, the evolution toward inevitable obliteration. As Peter, Blackaller strikes the perfect balance between his hopeful exuberance at seeing his only love again and frustrated angst at not living up to his own expectations. Losing Kari derailed his future. Now, he's come back to try to set things right, he says. And Kari will have none of it. As played by the effulgent Welsh, she refuses to consider that anything can change. Everyone must live with the consequences of their decisions, whether good or bad. Welsh is marvelous in the role. The center of the play -- and the rest of the 20 or so characters that we hear from by its end -- are handled by the unbelievable Andrea Caban. Based in New York, Caban worked with BCT in last season's "God's Ear." In that play, she had a smaller and memorable role as a barfly at an airport lounge. In "The Pavilion" she gets to really stretch to her limit and then go beyond as the Narrator, who handles some wonderfully poetic and eloquent text, and a bevy of funny characters, such as Cookie, Pine City's stoner mayor, and Angie, the woman he's been having an affair with for years. Caban creates a multitude of characters with ease. She's funny, insightful, annoying and truthful ‹ all with a well-honed Minnesotan accent that all three actors use well. The production has a fresh feel to it. It's a different kind of choice for Matthew Cameron Clark, who as artistic director chooses the plays season. It leans less toward darkness and despair than the more difficult theater his natural aesthetic draws him to, yet it doesn't cop out with a cheesy happy ending. It lies somewhere in a well-centered, yet magical, reality in which both characters still have choices to make after the final scene: live in the burnt out pavilion of their relationship or move on and make new choices to be happy. Clark's heartfelt direction keeps the focus on the characters journey though this poetic landscape. He's also working with a new set designer, architect Dwaine Carver who recreated The Modern Hotel and built the award-winning J Crist Gallery building. His first theatrical set is stunningly simple and creates a perfect stage. It is a large open wood platform above which dozens of light bulbs hang at different heights to create the pavilion's ceiling, the night sky and the greater universal cosmos. Thanks' to lighting designer Jeremy Winchester, the bulbs twinkle, create space, moods and show the passage of time beautifully. As Caban's Narrator closes the play with a canon of voices and thoughts that have been said at every reunion since time began, the lights lower in ever more interesting ways until she appears outlined in increasingly darker layers of velvety light. From beginning to end the production is richly rewarding, well acted and beautifully conceived. It's a great way for BCT to start the season.
The Pavilion, Boise Contemporary Theater
by Tara Morgan – Boise WeeklyAndrea Caban currently plays the role of Narrator in BCT's production of The Pavilion.
With a wave of her small hand, The Pavilion's black-clad narrator creates the universe from a drop of water, triggers shooting stars and bathes BCT's wood-floored stage in "a most poetic lavender light." Played exquisitely by Andrea Caban, the narrator changes roles continuously throughout the performance, morphing into dozens of characters--from an all-knowing Creator to a petty Minnesota housewife to a pot-smoking small town sheriff. Set at the Pine City class of 1990 high school reunion, Craig Wright's three-person play follows the reconciliation of high school sweethearts Kari (Hollis Welsh) and Peter (Dywane Blackaller). As the night progresses and imaginary wine cooler bottles pile up on the venue's imaginary tables, you begin to see the wrinkles caused by 20 years of longing and regret. BCT's stage is set minimally—with hundreds of single, dangling light bulbs that act both as stars and warm dancehall lighting. Though there are only three actors, each fills the room with their delicately portrayed emotions. Check out this fantastic play about the effects of time before time runs out.
2008-2009 Season
I Have Before Me…….
(January 28 - February 14, 2009)Boise Contemporary Theater's 'I Have Before Me' is a strong season-ender
By Dana Oland – Idaho Statesman“I Have Before Me a Remarkable Document Given To Me By A Young Lady From Rwanda,” is about two people from different worlds who are essentially seeking the same thing: their voice. She, to express the horror of the Rwandan genocide she survived; he, to get his career back on track and save his marriage.
Sonja Linden’s quiet play is problematic, as many works of social conscience are. It is filled with too much exposition, telegraphed plot developments and clumsy transitions. But Boise Contemporary Theater’s production, which opened Saturday to a sold-out audience, transcends those flaws and renders a cohesive and deeply moving piece of theater, thanks to Maureen Towey’s layered direction, rich production values and the affecting performances by Richard Klautsch as Simon and Nylda Mark as Juliette.
The play is an example of when the depth and quality of a production exceeds material. From their first awkward encounter as Simon and Juliette, Klautsch and Mark set their characters on a collision course of purpose and consciousness that never wavers.
From the beginning, you know that Juliette has experienced unspeakable things. You wait for it knowingly, so the production’s power comes not in the reveal; but in catharsis. And it is delivered in full, rich terms by Mark’s lyrical and textured performance.
Juliette comes to the refugee center for help with her book, a personal account of her experience five years earlier in Rwanda, when Hutu extremists slaughtered her family. The problem is, it isn’t a personal account. She has removed her feelings from the page, but she desperately wants to write her story.
Simon coaches refugees on how to process their experiences through writing. He took the job because his own creative reservoirs have run dry. He is perhaps a little jealous that Juliette has a story to tell, though he doesn’t realize the depth of it, or how it eventually will change his life.
Klautsch has to make Simon sympathetic. Simon is basically a self-indulgent, self-involved twit. Klautsch manages to pull it off by really not just letting his Simon be changed by Juliette’s story, but seeking to face his own limitations brought about by ego.
Mark inhabits Juliette body and soul. Her deep strength — present in every molecule — becomes the core of her vulnerability that draws the audience to her. Like Simon, we can’t take our eyes off of her. The moment is powerful when she lights candles for each member of her family killed and introduces them.
Towey’s subtle direction mines gem-like moments from the play and creates a lovely contrast between the two energies at play: Simon’s British resolve and rigidity and Juliette’s African determination and softness.
Brian Scott’s lighting deftly illuminates each scene and helps facilitate and heighten the dramatic flow. It also creates some beautiful images against Michael Baltzell’s minimalist set. Baltzell creates a three-platform installation, using the exposed brick walls as its borders. The design for Juliette’s room is inspired. Set on top of thick, twisted and gnarled tree roots, at once symbolizing her connection to her past in African culture, and her attempt to grow new roots in this very foreign culture.
Peter John Still’s beautiful sound design uses everything from recordings of African birds to Buddhist-inspired tonal chants to underscore Juliette’s progress to her emotional center.
This play comes at the end of one of BCT’s strongest seasons yet, and unfortunately, it will end it. Artistic director Matthew Cameron Clark cut the season short, canceling April’s production of “Eurydice,” because of lost grant funding.
Lost World: BCT balances hope, horror in latest production
by Deanna Darr – Boise Weekly
In its new play, Boise Contemporary Theater manages a delicate balancing act, leaping between stark dichotomies—hope and fear, life and death, future and past—to create a production that first cuts at audiences' hearts and then fills them anew.
I Have Before Me a Remarkable Document Given to Me By a Young Lady From Rwanda is both a celebration of life and a testament to the cruelty mankind is capable of heaping on his own kind.
It's a rare achievement to pull an audience to the depths of despair, while giving them a glimmer of hope, leaving them exhausted but fulfilled. Yet playwright Sonja Linden manages the tricky task with elegance, grace and humor.
The play tells the tale of a survivor of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, Juliette, who makes it to England after watching her family be murdered. Juliette finds herself alone in a strange world and begins writing an account of the genocide. She brings it to the refugee center, where she meets Simon, a poet who is seeking his voice.
The two broken souls begin to form a friendship as Simon encourages Juliette to tell her own tale, to bring to life the characters from her life on the page. Bit by bit, Juliette's story begins to emerge in details that are both heart-warming and horrifying. But as she writes, both characters begin to heal.
This play would not work without the outstanding performances of both leads. Nylda Mark portrays Juliette in a way that is both haunting and endearing as she shows the alternating strength and fragility of one who has "survived too much."
In one particularly wrenching scene, Juliette sits on the floor of her stark room in a London hostel, pulling out a menagerie of candles. One by one, she lights them in honor of her murdered family members, remembering each in turn, until 10 candles flicker on stage. On opening night, muffled sobs filled the audience as each member felt the impact of the moment.
Mark is joined by longtime Boise actor Richard Klautsch, who masters the inner turmoil Simon feels as he is drawn to a girl with a dark and guarded past.
Director Maureen Towey allows the story to speak for itself, with a minimal set, simple but dramatic lighting, powerful performances and a 90-minute production without an intermission.
The rough brick wall of the theater as the backdrop gives the set an industrial feel, with a series of three raised platforms representing Juliette and Simon's personal areas and the place where they come together. Nearly everything is a dull shade of gray, symbolic of Juliette's world, from which all color and life has been ripped.
Beneath Juliette's room, tree roots cascade to the ground, literally allowing her to stand upon her own roots, while sheets of paper pour out around Simon's area as a nod to a life built on words in which unfinished novels lie in drawers. As Juliette's story is fully revealed, she begins to find peace. She steps forward to present her book, with Simon at her side, wearing a brilliant yellow scarf as a glowing symbol of her new outlook, one shared with an audience eager to witness her hope.
No... You Shut Up
(November 19- December 20, 2008)
Boise Contemporary Theater put fourth an interesting offering this holiday season.
Sandwiched between Thanksgiving and Hanukkah and Christmas - the ultimate family time holidays - is an original comedy that dissects our expectations, hopes, fears and feelings about family.
Lauren Weedman's "No You Shutup" is a one-woman show that turns her latest neurosis into a delightful night of theater.
Three years ago Matthew Cameron Clark, Boise Contemporary Theater's artistic director, made a commitment to supporting and creating new work. Since then the company has given three new plays their all-important second production - including Weedman's "Bust" in 2007 - and commissioned three new plays.
Of the new work, this show is the most successful and has the potential to go forward. The fact that there is only one actor helps.
Weedman developed and wrote "Shutup" with her partner and director Jeff Weatherford, who kept the creative process on track.
Weedman's way of examining her own life for collective truths seems to work. The upshot is that family is complicated, something everyone can relate to. Weedman's is especially so.
She is adopted and has strained relationships with both her biological and birth families. She is divorced, and now lives with a widower and his son, who isn't ready for a mom-replacement. All the while her own biological clock is ticking out of control.
They all make appearances in Weedman's extraordinarily flexible character work. Weedman is energetic, frenetic and funny throughout the hour and 15 minute play.
The premise is a countdown to Mother's Day, a dreaded event in a household where the mother has tragically died. She explores her own fears about motherhood, visits with her Indiana families and goes to an adoption agency where she is forced to watch a tacky, sappy video (which she acts out).
There are plenty of jokes to go around, but Weedman manages to mine some terrifically true and touching moments, such as when she shares a memory about her birth grandfather that makes her happy, yet turns out to be false.
Or the struggle of a lesbian couple who had to fight to be able to adopt three children with emotional disabilities and just want someone to acknowledge them as a family, which the mailman does.
Or Weedman's one moment when Jack (the son) accepts her in his life by simply not rejecting her. It's an offhanded act, but deeply significant in the end, because it sets them on the path to an actual relationship.
The show will surely evolve during its run and beyond. Weedman will continue to streamline the script and hone the story, but its heart is terrifically intact from the get-go.
She offers a beautiful balance between the longing for an idealized version of the nuclear family and the frustrating reality of pseudo- and step-parenthood, touching on truth as she goes.
Hopefully another theater will pick it up for a second run and let it continue to grow. Seattle Repertory Theatre will come to see it during its Boise run.
-The Idaho Statesman
Boise Contemporary Theater put fourth an interesting offering this holiday season.
Sandwiched between Thanksgiving and Hanukkah and Christmas - the ultimate family time holidays - is an original comedy that dissects our expectations, hopes, fears and feelings about family.
Lauren Weedman's "No You Shutup" is a one-woman show that turns her latest neurosis into a delightful night of theater.
Three years ago Matthew Cameron Clark, Boise Contemporary Theater's artistic director, made a commitment to supporting and creating new work. Since then the company has given three new plays their all-important second production - including Weedman's "Bust" in 2007 - and commissioned three new plays.
Of the new work, this show is the most successful and has the potential to go forward. The fact that there is only one actor helps.
Weedman developed and wrote "Shutup" with her partner and director Jeff Weatherford, who kept the creative process on track.
Weedman's way of examining her own life for collective truths seems to work. The upshot is that family is complicated, something everyone can relate to. Weedman's is especially so.
She is adopted and has strained relationships with both her biological and birth families. She is divorced, and now lives with a widower and his son, who isn't ready for a mom-replacement. All the while her own biological clock is ticking out of control.
They all make appearances in Weedman's extraordinarily flexible character work. Weedman is energetic, frenetic and funny throughout the hour and 15 minute play.
The premise is a countdown to Mother's Day, a dreaded event in a household where the mother has tragically died. She explores her own fears about motherhood, visits with her Indiana families and goes to an adoption agency where she is forced to watch a tacky, sappy video (which she acts out).
There are plenty of jokes to go around, but Weedman manages to mine some terrifically true and touching moments, such as when she shares a memory about her birth grandfather that makes her happy, yet turns out to be false.
Or the struggle of a lesbian couple who had to fight to be able to adopt three children with emotional disabilities and just want someone to acknowledge them as a family, which the mailman does.
Or Weedman's one moment when Jack (the son) accepts her in his life by simply not rejecting her. It's an offhanded act, but deeply significant in the end, because it sets them on the path to an actual relationship.
The show will surely evolve during its run and beyond. Weedman will continue to streamline the script and hone the story, but its heart is terrifically intact from the get-go.
She offers a beautiful balance between the longing for an idealized version of the nuclear family and the frustrating reality of pseudo- and step-parenthood, touching on truth as she goes.
Hopefully another theater will pick it up for a second run and let it continue to grow. Seattle Repertory Theatre will come to see it during its Boise run.
-The Idaho Statesman
No... You Shut Up
(November 19- December 20, 2008)
"It's a baby, not a bomb. It's a baby, not a bomb." Lauren Weedman chants half-jokingly, taking terrified steps backward to escape an imaginary blinking newborn. In this vignette, from her new one-woman play No...You Shutup, which premiered at Boise Contemporary Theater, Weedman visits the expansive Los Angeles mansion of a man we assume is an ex, his startled wife and their bundled baby. Her breathless stream of compliments on hallway drapery, peppered with subtle stabs at her current boyfriend and the Baja Fresh franchise across from the apartment she shares with him, hardly mask the central issue at play—Weedman wants a kid of her own and that terrifies her.
Fortunately, Weedman's sparsely decorated, one-woman play about motherhood is not nearly as tediously saccharine as that description would lead you to believe. She's far too flawed, flustered and foul-mouthed for that kind of feel-goodery. No, Weedman's new comedy is a gut-clutchingly frank, partially autobiographical journey that winds through a gynecologist's office, a gay gym and a funeral parlor in the eight days before Mother's Day, as Weedman comes to terms with those two, often-inseparable F-words: failure and family.
Though the stage design, created by the Modern Hotel's interior designer Kerry Tullis, is starkly minimalist with simple, high school bleacher-esque wood benches and an inexplicable splotch of green turf grass, Weedman skips around the space, adding color and depth to all that she touches. In a deep-cut, purple American Apparel T-shirt, a star belt and gray-brown khakis, she seems to fit naturally in Hannah K.E. Read's costuming. Whether it's booty dancing to Fergie or mellowing out to Enya, Leah Stephens Clark's choreography helps punctuate Weedman's skits and provides the play's most avant garde flourishes.
In No...You Shutup, Weedman lives with her widower boyfriend David and his teenage son Jack in a home "where the word 'mother' has already been taken." No stranger to feeling out of place, Weedman grew up as an adopted child in the Midwest, where she learned to garner attention by turning both daily mishaps and greater tragedies into fodder for her self-deprecating comedy. Watching Weedman frantically reveal tidbits about her family life, from being introduced to her birth mother (her "BM") to inheriting her adopted mom's "Too Pooped to Party" figurine set, we're able to glean the origins of Weedman's insecurities about starting a family of her own.
Though No...You Shutup is the second play Weedman has performed at BCT, following 2007's buzzed about hit Bust, it's her first world premiere in Boise. Weedman and her boyfriend, the play's director Jeff Weatherford, are based out of Los Angeles, which provides fodder for a contemptuous, yet passive, look at the frivolities and decorum of "The Industry." Whether Weedman is playing a TV executive who grinningly chastises her for talking about "bodily fluid stuff" at big network pitches, or a sleazy gynecologist who croons, "Hey, hey pretty lady. Put your feet in the stirrups and spread your legs," Weedman nails the impersonations flawlessly. At the same time, she's so unabashedly complicit in the events that transpire throughout the play that her character becomes just another one of the eccentrics that she harpoons.
A particularly revealing scene finds Weedman at The Lost Lambs Adoption Agency after she's decided to split with her boyfriend. She tells a lispy, older receptionist that she's "just browsing," but gets sucked into watching a promotional video about an adopted Chinese baby whose name means "girl who does not adapt." As Weedman fills out an application, citing income, age and marital status, she realizes that her time to adopt might have already passed and that, maybe, she should take a closer look at the family that she already has: her boyfriend and his son.
Ultimately, the pleasure of watching Weedman struggle through these awkward situations is the fact that her humor doesn't overpower the oh-so-relatable emotion lurking beneath. Though Weedman completely overhauled No...You Shutup just days before the play opened, the results couldn't seem more expertly rehearsed or the story more round. And whether that's more of a comment on Weedman's ability to dredge through her personal emotional reserves to find compelling stories, or her ability to pull through under pressure, No...You Shutup provides the perfect showcase for the talents of this sometimes neurotic, sometimes vulnerable, always charming, one-woman phenom.
-Boise Weekly
"It's a baby, not a bomb. It's a baby, not a bomb." Lauren Weedman chants half-jokingly, taking terrified steps backward to escape an imaginary blinking newborn. In this vignette, from her new one-woman play No...You Shutup, which premiered at Boise Contemporary Theater, Weedman visits the expansive Los Angeles mansion of a man we assume is an ex, his startled wife and their bundled baby. Her breathless stream of compliments on hallway drapery, peppered with subtle stabs at her current boyfriend and the Baja Fresh franchise across from the apartment she shares with him, hardly mask the central issue at play—Weedman wants a kid of her own and that terrifies her.
Fortunately, Weedman's sparsely decorated, one-woman play about motherhood is not nearly as tediously saccharine as that description would lead you to believe. She's far too flawed, flustered and foul-mouthed for that kind of feel-goodery. No, Weedman's new comedy is a gut-clutchingly frank, partially autobiographical journey that winds through a gynecologist's office, a gay gym and a funeral parlor in the eight days before Mother's Day, as Weedman comes to terms with those two, often-inseparable F-words: failure and family.
Though the stage design, created by the Modern Hotel's interior designer Kerry Tullis, is starkly minimalist with simple, high school bleacher-esque wood benches and an inexplicable splotch of green turf grass, Weedman skips around the space, adding color and depth to all that she touches. In a deep-cut, purple American Apparel T-shirt, a star belt and gray-brown khakis, she seems to fit naturally in Hannah K.E. Read's costuming. Whether it's booty dancing to Fergie or mellowing out to Enya, Leah Stephens Clark's choreography helps punctuate Weedman's skits and provides the play's most avant garde flourishes.
In No...You Shutup, Weedman lives with her widower boyfriend David and his teenage son Jack in a home "where the word 'mother' has already been taken." No stranger to feeling out of place, Weedman grew up as an adopted child in the Midwest, where she learned to garner attention by turning both daily mishaps and greater tragedies into fodder for her self-deprecating comedy. Watching Weedman frantically reveal tidbits about her family life, from being introduced to her birth mother (her "BM") to inheriting her adopted mom's "Too Pooped to Party" figurine set, we're able to glean the origins of Weedman's insecurities about starting a family of her own.
Though No...You Shutup is the second play Weedman has performed at BCT, following 2007's buzzed about hit Bust, it's her first world premiere in Boise. Weedman and her boyfriend, the play's director Jeff Weatherford, are based out of Los Angeles, which provides fodder for a contemptuous, yet passive, look at the frivolities and decorum of "The Industry." Whether Weedman is playing a TV executive who grinningly chastises her for talking about "bodily fluid stuff" at big network pitches, or a sleazy gynecologist who croons, "Hey, hey pretty lady. Put your feet in the stirrups and spread your legs," Weedman nails the impersonations flawlessly. At the same time, she's so unabashedly complicit in the events that transpire throughout the play that her character becomes just another one of the eccentrics that she harpoons.
A particularly revealing scene finds Weedman at The Lost Lambs Adoption Agency after she's decided to split with her boyfriend. She tells a lispy, older receptionist that she's "just browsing," but gets sucked into watching a promotional video about an adopted Chinese baby whose name means "girl who does not adapt." As Weedman fills out an application, citing income, age and marital status, she realizes that her time to adopt might have already passed and that, maybe, she should take a closer look at the family that she already has: her boyfriend and his son.
Ultimately, the pleasure of watching Weedman struggle through these awkward situations is the fact that her humor doesn't overpower the oh-so-relatable emotion lurking beneath. Though Weedman completely overhauled No...You Shutup just days before the play opened, the results couldn't seem more expertly rehearsed or the story more round. And whether that's more of a comment on Weedman's ability to dredge through her personal emotional reserves to find compelling stories, or her ability to pull through under pressure, No...You Shutup provides the perfect showcase for the talents of this sometimes neurotic, sometimes vulnerable, always charming, one-woman phenom.
-Boise Weekly
God's Ear
(October 8-25, 2008)
In this production, a little boy's death is a catalyst for each character's reaction to loss.
When tragedy befalls us, does God hear our pain or does He She (They?) turn a deaf ear to our prayers? Our pleadings? Our plays?
In "God's Ear," Jenny Schwartz's remarkable new piece of theater premiering regionally at Boise Contemporary Theater, God listens to everything, all at once, all the time.
The action shifts among the characters' stories as each tries to coexist in the same moment, like a live version of channel surfing. It is a theatrical device that works because it mirrors how we experience life today. No one watches just one thing anymore.
In the play, that device becomes a metaphor for how individual emotional pain is felt constantly, whether we're dealing with it or not. Whatever we're saying, it's not what we're feeling. And we each have our own flavor of it - parents, barflies, unhappy husbands, imaginary icons and even 6-year-old girls.
Schwartz starts with one deeply felt tragedy: the death of Sam, the young son of Mel (Tracy Sunderland) and Ted (Matthew Cameron Clark).
As their pain and marriage unravel, the strands connect with a variety of characters. Some are real, such as Lenora (Andrea Caban) and Guy (Beau Baxter); and some are imaginary, such as the tooth fairy (Lynn Allison) and G.I. Joe (Christopher Thometz).
At the center is Ted and Mel's 6-year-old daughter, Lanie (played by a fully-grown Therese Barbato), who has absorbed Sam's death as fact but is not trapped by it.
The most intriguing aspect of the play is Schwartz's use of language. She collages cliches, maxims, hyperbole, saws and sayings - language that is tired, derivative, ubiquitous - and somehow gives it new meaning though a stream of consciousness delivery. It creates a poetic form that borders on musical, so Schwartz writes songs for several of the characters.
The result is wonderfully funny, poignantly ironic and emotionally satisfying. Director Patrick McNulty captures and keeps the audience's ardent attention throughout.
As an actor he was in the workshop cast for the play that led to its New York debut in 2007. His intimate knowledge helps keep a handle on crisscrossing stories as he orchestrates the emotional arc and deftly mines the pathos and comedy in the script.
The space is Mel and Ted's house - kitchen, bathroom, TV room - but it also is an airport bar and terminal, a hotel room, an airplane - all the locations Ted visits on his continuous business trip. At home, Mel tends to Lanie and talks with the Tooth Fairy, who plays the ukulele, sings, offers bits of advice and flirts with G.I. Joe while she waits for Lanie's tooth to fall out.
It is all so beautifully surreal that it wraps around itself and becomes a disturbing realism. This is how we talk, and we do know these people extremely well, as they are vividly rendered by a refreshing mix of Boise Contemporary Theater actors and actors imported from New York.
Sunderland, a longtime Boise Contemporary Theater artist, continues to find ways to push herself. Her Mel spews mountains of words while she attempts to untangle her own emotional coil. Sunderland adeptly balances Mel's harshness and deep tenderness.
Clark is equally affecting as Ted, wandering on some never-ending business trip, trying to find the woman he fell in love with.
Baxter and Caban offer up lively, colorful interpretations of their heartbroken characters - a guy, named Guy, who also lost a son and now hates his wife, and Lenora, an airport barfly who fears she's "damaged goods."
Allison has few lines as the tooth fairy (and wears the most striking of Katherine Hampton Noland's sleek costumes) yet she never leaves the stage. She is like a silent chorus - reacting, listening, offering perspective with layers of deeply emotive expression.
Thometz, a Boise native who has been working in Chicago, has thankfully moved back home. He is wonderfully funny as a transvestite stewardess and G.I. Joe, and brings heart to both characters.
Barbato is simply superb as the exuberant Lanie, who wants everything now and seems more alive now that her brother is dead.
If you are wondering about the direction theater is taking in the 21st century, don't miss this play. It is a clear indication of one direction evolving out of the media-saturated culture we live with every day.
It is proof that theater is still alive and growing. There will always be room for traditional stories told in traditional ways on stage, but this fast-paced, shifting storytelling technique is perfect for this post-post-MTV era.
-The Idaho Statesman
Boise Contemporary Theater's production of Jenny Schwartz's God's Ear starts simply enough. In ambiance and language, it spares the audience all things extraneous.
A man and woman stand symmetrically isolated in a linoleum-outfitted space, lit by florescent lights. The stage is cluttered with objects draped with white sheets, creating an estrangement of familiar components of a modern domestic landscape much like a Rachel Whiteread sculpture.
In this pared-down forlorn space, the woman—realized with great nuance by Tracy Sutherland—makes declarative, eerily telegraphic, deadpan statements providing information about her dying son's condition to her husband, masterfully captured by BCT artistic director Matthew Cameron Clark. She lays out the facts one by one: "He's in a coma. He's hooked up to a respirator. He has a pulse. He has brain damage." The statements are dry, curt and unequivocal.
The economy of language is frustrating for such a tragic situation; however, these initial abrupt declarations are nearly the only instance in the play when words allow information to be delivered in a straightforward, succinct manner. In the subsequent moments, covers are pulled away from objects and sentences become overgrown with verbiage. The physical and expressive space becomes crowded. Candid speech becomes exceedingly impossible for the characters as a noisy world infiltrates and compromises every statement.
In the next hour and a half, the characters attempt with pitiful earnestness to communicate profoundly personal emotions through torrents of ambiguous pop phrases obliquely sutured together based on shared letters, rhyme or rhythm. Idioms and cliches send speakers off on polyvalent linguistic tangents unable to impart anything concrete or illuminating.
At one point, Sutherland's character delivers a brilliant and lengthy monologue attempting to reconnect with her estranged husband: "And you'll swoop down and save the day. And I'll bend over backwards and light up the room. And we'll thank God. And God will bless America. And with God as our witness, we'll never be starving again. And the fog will lift. And we'll see eye to eye. And the cows will come home. And we'll dance cheek to cheek." While laced with humor and hope, it is pathetically impersonal and highlights the characters' isolation and helplessness.
This challenging play features some familiar faces from the Boise acting community, including Lynn Allison and Christopher Thometz. Each rises to the challenge of unexpected and demanding roles, which take guts and breadth of talent. They are joined by visiting artists Beau Baxter, Andrea Caban and the haunting and poignant Therese Barato. Together, they advance a narrative that is as arresting as it is exasperating, as fascinating as it is obscure, as heart-wrenching as it is phlegmatic. Under the direction of Patrick McNulty, Schwartz's work requires the audience's willingness to recognize the work as not absurdist but chillingly familiar. God's Ear exposes the concurrent density and insubstantiality of modern life, and the tragedy that this jumbled existence leaves so little space and so few tools for human connection.
-Boise Weekly
In this production, a little boy's death is a catalyst for each character's reaction to loss.
When tragedy befalls us, does God hear our pain or does He She (They?) turn a deaf ear to our prayers? Our pleadings? Our plays?
In "God's Ear," Jenny Schwartz's remarkable new piece of theater premiering regionally at Boise Contemporary Theater, God listens to everything, all at once, all the time.
The action shifts among the characters' stories as each tries to coexist in the same moment, like a live version of channel surfing. It is a theatrical device that works because it mirrors how we experience life today. No one watches just one thing anymore.
In the play, that device becomes a metaphor for how individual emotional pain is felt constantly, whether we're dealing with it or not. Whatever we're saying, it's not what we're feeling. And we each have our own flavor of it - parents, barflies, unhappy husbands, imaginary icons and even 6-year-old girls.
Schwartz starts with one deeply felt tragedy: the death of Sam, the young son of Mel (Tracy Sunderland) and Ted (Matthew Cameron Clark).
As their pain and marriage unravel, the strands connect with a variety of characters. Some are real, such as Lenora (Andrea Caban) and Guy (Beau Baxter); and some are imaginary, such as the tooth fairy (Lynn Allison) and G.I. Joe (Christopher Thometz).
At the center is Ted and Mel's 6-year-old daughter, Lanie (played by a fully-grown Therese Barbato), who has absorbed Sam's death as fact but is not trapped by it.
The most intriguing aspect of the play is Schwartz's use of language. She collages cliches, maxims, hyperbole, saws and sayings - language that is tired, derivative, ubiquitous - and somehow gives it new meaning though a stream of consciousness delivery. It creates a poetic form that borders on musical, so Schwartz writes songs for several of the characters.
The result is wonderfully funny, poignantly ironic and emotionally satisfying. Director Patrick McNulty captures and keeps the audience's ardent attention throughout.
As an actor he was in the workshop cast for the play that led to its New York debut in 2007. His intimate knowledge helps keep a handle on crisscrossing stories as he orchestrates the emotional arc and deftly mines the pathos and comedy in the script.
The space is Mel and Ted's house - kitchen, bathroom, TV room - but it also is an airport bar and terminal, a hotel room, an airplane - all the locations Ted visits on his continuous business trip. At home, Mel tends to Lanie and talks with the Tooth Fairy, who plays the ukulele, sings, offers bits of advice and flirts with G.I. Joe while she waits for Lanie's tooth to fall out.
It is all so beautifully surreal that it wraps around itself and becomes a disturbing realism. This is how we talk, and we do know these people extremely well, as they are vividly rendered by a refreshing mix of Boise Contemporary Theater actors and actors imported from New York.
Sunderland, a longtime Boise Contemporary Theater artist, continues to find ways to push herself. Her Mel spews mountains of words while she attempts to untangle her own emotional coil. Sunderland adeptly balances Mel's harshness and deep tenderness.
Clark is equally affecting as Ted, wandering on some never-ending business trip, trying to find the woman he fell in love with.
Baxter and Caban offer up lively, colorful interpretations of their heartbroken characters - a guy, named Guy, who also lost a son and now hates his wife, and Lenora, an airport barfly who fears she's "damaged goods."
Allison has few lines as the tooth fairy (and wears the most striking of Katherine Hampton Noland's sleek costumes) yet she never leaves the stage. She is like a silent chorus - reacting, listening, offering perspective with layers of deeply emotive expression.
Thometz, a Boise native who has been working in Chicago, has thankfully moved back home. He is wonderfully funny as a transvestite stewardess and G.I. Joe, and brings heart to both characters.
Barbato is simply superb as the exuberant Lanie, who wants everything now and seems more alive now that her brother is dead.
If you are wondering about the direction theater is taking in the 21st century, don't miss this play. It is a clear indication of one direction evolving out of the media-saturated culture we live with every day.
It is proof that theater is still alive and growing. There will always be room for traditional stories told in traditional ways on stage, but this fast-paced, shifting storytelling technique is perfect for this post-post-MTV era.
-The Idaho Statesman
God's Ear
(October 8-25, 2008)Boise Contemporary Theater's production of Jenny Schwartz's God's Ear starts simply enough. In ambiance and language, it spares the audience all things extraneous.
A man and woman stand symmetrically isolated in a linoleum-outfitted space, lit by florescent lights. The stage is cluttered with objects draped with white sheets, creating an estrangement of familiar components of a modern domestic landscape much like a Rachel Whiteread sculpture.
In this pared-down forlorn space, the woman—realized with great nuance by Tracy Sutherland—makes declarative, eerily telegraphic, deadpan statements providing information about her dying son's condition to her husband, masterfully captured by BCT artistic director Matthew Cameron Clark. She lays out the facts one by one: "He's in a coma. He's hooked up to a respirator. He has a pulse. He has brain damage." The statements are dry, curt and unequivocal.
The economy of language is frustrating for such a tragic situation; however, these initial abrupt declarations are nearly the only instance in the play when words allow information to be delivered in a straightforward, succinct manner. In the subsequent moments, covers are pulled away from objects and sentences become overgrown with verbiage. The physical and expressive space becomes crowded. Candid speech becomes exceedingly impossible for the characters as a noisy world infiltrates and compromises every statement.
In the next hour and a half, the characters attempt with pitiful earnestness to communicate profoundly personal emotions through torrents of ambiguous pop phrases obliquely sutured together based on shared letters, rhyme or rhythm. Idioms and cliches send speakers off on polyvalent linguistic tangents unable to impart anything concrete or illuminating.
At one point, Sutherland's character delivers a brilliant and lengthy monologue attempting to reconnect with her estranged husband: "And you'll swoop down and save the day. And I'll bend over backwards and light up the room. And we'll thank God. And God will bless America. And with God as our witness, we'll never be starving again. And the fog will lift. And we'll see eye to eye. And the cows will come home. And we'll dance cheek to cheek." While laced with humor and hope, it is pathetically impersonal and highlights the characters' isolation and helplessness.
This challenging play features some familiar faces from the Boise acting community, including Lynn Allison and Christopher Thometz. Each rises to the challenge of unexpected and demanding roles, which take guts and breadth of talent. They are joined by visiting artists Beau Baxter, Andrea Caban and the haunting and poignant Therese Barato. Together, they advance a narrative that is as arresting as it is exasperating, as fascinating as it is obscure, as heart-wrenching as it is phlegmatic. Under the direction of Patrick McNulty, Schwartz's work requires the audience's willingness to recognize the work as not absurdist but chillingly familiar. God's Ear exposes the concurrent density and insubstantiality of modern life, and the tragedy that this jumbled existence leaves so little space and so few tools for human connection.
-Boise Weekly
2007-2008 Season
Brilliant Traces
by Cindy Lou Johnson(October 10 – November 3, 2007)
“Bruner really shines in this role, as she has in other plays when her characters are down and out. Her frenetic physical acting is brilliant, as seen in this summer’s The Tempest and her dark side has intensity, as seen in last year’s Spitfire Grill. Clark brings to this production an earthy strength that counterbalances Bruner. Clark takes his characters’ complexity, and then resonates. He never overdoes his portrayal, which adds to his power as an actor.”
-The Idaho Press Tribune
Souvenir
by Stephen Temperley(November 28 – December 22, 2007)
“…the secret to this warm, witty comedy by Boise Contemporary Theater isn’t Drew Barr’s insightful, rich direction, or even Kim Krumm Sorenson’s beautiful costumes that run from elegant to ridiculous. It’s the onstage chemistry between actors James Valcq (McMoon) and Lynn Allison (Jenkins) that creates a believable touching connection that saves her from becoming a caricature.”
-The Idaho Statesman
The Pillowman
by Martin McDonagh(January 30 – February 23, 2008)
(The Pillowman is a)"spellbinding evening" and "BCT's production is smart and incisive under Gordon Reinhart's clever direction. It is a contemporary play in the best sense because it deals with complex issues that come with living in a complex time."
-The Idaho Statesman
"Laughing while watching this drama, seems, at times, painfully wrong, but there are clearly very funny lines. The Pillowman acknowledges it is OK to commingle droll and dreadful moments."…"Dark, disturbing, sad, funny… and heartwarming - all at the same time."
-Boise Weekly
"The play, due to its steady pacing, skillful acting and natural dialogue, has a consistency inside of its chaos that helps make it accessible and unnerving. These are powerful themes and the piece is produced with tenderness that makes it comfortable to explore."
-The Idaho Press Tribune
Last of the Breed
by Maria Dahvana HeadleyWORLD PREMIERE
(April 9 – May 3, 2008)
“Knowing theater has no limits, Boise Contemporary Theater dares to whisk us away to a magical, although familiar world…” and “Headley’s writing is witty, mixing, pop and Idaho cultural references into all her scenes.”
-Boise Weekly
“Overall, the play is fast-moving fun with plenty of rural ways to laugh at. It’s a sexy sotry, strangely, and Idahoans will relate to the foibles we see in our individualistic culture. It’s a light-hearted comedy that has local flavor – more about the roles we get into than politics. Mostly it’s a great laugh.
-The Idaho Press Tribune
2006-2007 Season
Love-Lies Bleeding
by Don DeLillo(October 11 – November 4, 2006)
“Its unexpected humor, flippant prose and big questions ease us into some very intimate moments. In the end, the play accomplishes what a very good existential drama should: It takes philosophy outside its academic box and makes it personal. … It’s a very human play. Very humbling. BCT accomplishes a thoughtful, warm exploration of death. It’s not to be missed.”
-The Idaho Press Tribune
The Memory of Water
by Shelagh Stephenson(November 29 – December 23, 2006)
“Adeptly led by director Gordon Reinhart, the cast without exception they work exceedingly well together. Christina Lang, Tracy Sunderland, and Kathryn Cherasaro as the sisters are unstoppable, as we watch the idiosyncrasies planted by their mother bloom. Each plays their comedic moments brilliantly…”
-The Idaho Statesman
Bust
Written and Performed by Lauren Weedman(January 10 – February 3, 2007)
“I loved this play. If you see only one play this year, I wouldn’t feel amiss in saying make BUST that one play. It is a one-woman tour de force. Former Daily Show correspondent Lauren Weedman is brilliant. Not only did she write this play, but she stars in it; she shimmers in it; she is simply stunning it!”
-Boise Weekly
