Stinky Cheese Man- Arden Theater

Sarah Grimke works in performance of all types in the Philadelphia region. They’ve been on stage, backstage, and in the office for years now.

In my pockets:

If you’ve ever watched or worked in children’s theatre aka Theatre for Young Audiences (if you will, TYA), you’ve probably noticed some real problems with it.

Here are my top 3:

1. The scripts are terrible! I once read a retelling of Peter Pan where the scene just stopped in the middle with absolutely no explanation and picked up somewhere else. IT WAS THE MOST PRODUCED VERSION. Even with such an obvious error, it was less terrible than the rest. Directors just covered it up with movement and added dialogue.  If you ever want to be a playwright and don’t know what to do, just write good TYA. You’ll get produced immediately.
2. It talks down to children, assuming they can’t follow almost any level of plot.
3. It is most frequently based on the same problematic and biased children’s books and fairy tales we shudder about when we look back now. Lots of rescued princesses, mysticized people of color, strange morality, and lots of white characters with male heroes.

Our children deserve better.

If you are a part of the Philadelphia Performance Community (PPC, if you will), you’ve probably already gotten this advice, but just in case, here it is again.

Go see Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) at the Arden Theatre and try to go for a 10am weekday matinee.

There are many reasons for this. Here are my top 3.

1. The Arden treats Theatre for Young Audiences with great respect, giving them the same budgets and designers and performers that they use for their mainstage Theatre for Fully Grown Audiences (TFGA, if you will).
2. Going to a weekday matinee means you are going with school groups = about 15 kids to everyone adult.
3. Kids have zero audience shame.

Even if you don’t care what the story is, even if you don’t particularly like children, you’ll be changed by it.

This writing is particularly about The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales (TSCM, if you will), the Arden’s most recent offering in TYA, but this is also sort of a reaction to TYA in general and especially at the Arden.

And maybe art and theatre in general.

WHOA! I know! Crazy leap, right? Hold on, friends. I’ll get there!

Another Bonaly writer the other day told us all how tired they were of people using “diversity” to only mean casting. Their point was that true diversity includes the audience, designers, cast, administrators and anyone else involved in the organization. It isn’t enough to cast diversely if your audience is still homogenous, if your admin team and your designers are homogenous. If you embrace diversity as a mission for your organization, you have to do more.

Diversity noun,  di·ver·si·ty \də-ˈvər-sə-tē, dī-\

 

• : the quality or state of having many different forms, types, ideas, etc.

• : the state of having people who are different races or who have different cultures in a group or organization

 

If your art is being made by and for predominantly one group of people, a small touch of difference put forth in the most obvious way you have at your disposal does not make you diverse. Show me your playwrights of color. Show me your female directors. Show me your economically heterogeneous audiences. Show me your queer Managing Directors of color before you dare call yourself diverse. Hold yourself to a higher standard. Casting is the bare minimum. We can do better.

In the Arden’s case, I can’t praise everything, but I can say they have invested in their audience. Through a program called Arden for All, they reach out to the schools where the parents and the school itself  are less likely to have expendable income, and they invite them in. They get free tickets, free copies of the books the play is based on, a teaching artist in the classroom, and buses to and from the show. The Arden is looking at the big picture here. They are creating a more diverse audience. Diverse in class, race, culture, background. Truly diverse.

And they complement the diverse audience with diverse casting.

___________________________________________________________

This is where going to a matinee comes into play. I walked into a theatre filled with 8-10 year olds. About half were from a lovely private Quaker school, and half were from a North Philadelphia public school. It was the most diverse theatre audience I had ever seen. Class, race, gender presentation- all of it.

They were all losing their g-d minds singing along loudly to the pre-show music (shout-out to sound designer Mike Kiley for bringing the Top 40 anthems so that I could hear 100+ 9 year olds sing Chandelier, a song about alcoholism and drug addiction, at the top of their lungs). They were laughing and yelling and singing and waiting for the show. ZERO SHAME. Those kids were living their lives. Together. They were doing it with kids from a very different world. Turns out all kids love Chandelier.

Then, the show started and the pre-show speech was delivered by actor, Doug Hara, who then told the kids what they were doing was 100% correct. Laugh! Yell! React! Enjoy it! Those kids were thrilled. He pointed to the stage manager’s booth, all decked out with lasers and a disco ball, and identified their DJ for the performance, DJ Blingwood (Katie Ringwood, a marvelous Stage Manager). She immediately played a song I am sure is really cool these days. The crowd went wild.

Then, they slowly met all the cast members. There were only 5, 2 women, 3 men. 1 man was black.  The rest were white. The cast all played multiple characters with a million quick-changes and silly voices, all adored. If you don’t know, this play and book are retellings of classic fairy tales, but with a silly twist. This allows for all the terrible tropes to be removed, for instance, the princess in the Princess and the Pea based section was played by Rachel Camp, who did an entrance to Beyonce’s Run the World that will stay with me for years. That Princess was in control and playing those parents’ scheme for all it was worth.  Ashton Carter’s Prince was charming, a great rapper, and had a cool as hell costume (designer Jillian Keys), and black. I watched about 50 ten-year-olds have their first crush.

Those kids gasped, laughed, ooooohhed, clapped, yelped, and danced around. Some of them got to go on stage and participate in different ways. I’ve never seen a clearer expression of Aristotelian theatre than TYA. If what I saw wasn’t ethos, pathos, and mythos, I’ve never seen it.

Those kids experienced empathy, they experienced strong emotion in a room full of people different than them, and they did it all with people they might have normally been uncomfortable in front of.  

And that made me experience all of those things instead of being embarrassed. I laughed loud, shrieked with surprise, sang along. It was wonderful.

The post-show talkback and meet and greet let the kids mingle and react together. They were much more at ease after they just had the experience together. Hell, I was more at ease around all those kids.

It made me realize what theatre is so often lacking and so inappropriately full of. It lacks abandon, and it is too full of tradition. As an audience in most theatres, we all clap at certain times, we are all silent as much as possible, we all politely clap and maybe stand at the end with some polite woohoo-ing. I’ve frequently witnessed that all it takes is one loud laugher in the room to loosen up an audience. Now, imagine a room where half or more of the audience are loud laughers. It’s infectious. It’s joyful. It’s pathos at it’s purest.

Was the play  intellectually stimulating? No. Was the script wonderful? No. Did it let me see these very talented actors at their full breadth and depth? Absolutely not. (Although I saw SCM and Underground Railroad Game in the same weekend, and that really puts Scott Sheppard in an amazing light.I highly recommend the experience). In fact, I had some real problems with it. However, if I learned anything in that room, it was that I had learned to take theatre too seriously all the time. Maybe it was ok to relax this once.

I left with a smile on my face.

Straight White Men- InterAct Theater

Goldie is a dramaturg and director who loves socially conscious and feminist work. Goldie attended the show late in its run. 

Jane is a multidisciplinary theatre artist living and working in Philadelphia. Jane attended the performance while the show was still in previews, and attended again later in the run. 

Goldie

So, what did you think of the show?

Jane

Although I love InterAct, I don’t know if I think the production succeeded in getting the point across.

Goldie

I totally agree! Young Jean Lee wrote a play where she spoke for four straight white men. That’s a subversive, intentional thing for a female playwright of color to do! It puts the male cast in the position that female actors and actors of color are almost always in- the position of being spoken for.  And that makes me wonder why on earth this show was directed by a man. If there had been a female director, it would have been consistent with that intent.

I did not get the sense that Matt Pfeiffer understood what the show was about. And although I think it’s a director’s job to understand that, it was the company’s misstep in choosing him. The play is a reflection on straight white guys. The cast is necessarily four straight white guys. The play is too subtle for the story to be told without some outside reflection. By choosing a straight white male director, I think InterAct really missed the point. It’s no surprise that they failed to communicate the play. They missed it from the outset.

Jane

I completely agree! I read the script afterward and felt like I had missed the meat of the entire argument. All of these wonderful points in the text that, on paper, seemed radical and surprising, but on stage fell short of feeling anything other than… white guys complaining some more. This was supposed to serve as the opposite of that. They kept the conversation the way it’s always been- who was in the room? Just straight white men telling the story of straight white men.

 

Goldie

I think that’s why the beginning seemed so slow- those first scenes before Matt cries really drag. Now I wonder if that’s because the text was laying down a foundation that the production just didn’t get?  The whole first act felt like it was saying “these are brothers! They’re being brothers!” But was Lee trying to comment on masculinity?

Jane

I went with a few friends and my male friend spotted it immediately. The jokes that weren’t funny but were (but weren’t.) The relationship between the brothers definitely set up a foundation of men who are “conscious” but unaffected. By putting the story in a world run by women, YJL highlights the importance of being conscious because she puts it in a world where they HAVE to be affected. The production definitely missed the mark with that, highlighting the brotherhood between them more than the issues discussed. I can’t help but feel all of these things we’re mentioning would have been alleviated if the director was a woman of color. The assistant director, Bailey Roper, is a queer woman, but the title is Straight WHITE Men for a reason. 

This is also what I felt with (The Wilma’s) An Octoroon, when there are no people of color on the production team- you can feel it. The story is told through a white gaze. I felt many subtleties throughout the piece were passed over due to this gaze and I was thrown off while watching it. I didn’t have that experience reading it.

The loudest laughers in the audience were straight white men and that should tell you something right there. They seemed to enjoy it most when it should have left them the most conflicted.

By them. For them. Again.

Goldie

And what were they laughing at?  Physical comedy that seemed sort of pasted into an environment where it didn’t go.

Jane

A lot of the choreographed dancing was in the script (except, surprisingly, Hail Hitler) but the bond of brothers and the community amongst men was the most highlighted part of these pieces, rather than the well intentioned yet misguided and inevitably offensive nature of the dances themselves.

It’s like… even when they are trying to be helpful, their own position in life prevents them from seeing what they truly need to do to help. Which is such a metaphor for this whole production anyway.

Goldie

Very meta.

I felt that way about so many of the production elements. They didn’t settle into a style. Samina Vieth’s set was hyper realistic, but it was surrounded by a black frame that made it feel like what happened inside was supposed to be stylized somehow.

The same with the acting. These men were all incredibly comfortable with their bodies and very expressive. Was that the characters? Or a production choice? What does that say about masculinity in the world of this play? But that’s the director of course, not the actors.

Shannon Zura’s lighting was also naturalistic, but it kind of confused the sense of place. I thought we were in the basement at first, but then the light came in the window in the second act.

Jane

I thought it was upstairs actually. Because of the windows and the Christmas lights on the outside. Which kind of confused me. Because it felt like a second floor to me? I don’t know. Maybe it was something about the angle of the windows that confused me.

Goldie

The costumes from Alison Roberts were straightforward. Dad and Matt are in muted colors that match the palette of the set and tie them to the place. Jake is in grey/black so he fits the palette but is an outsider– but Drew is in this intense black and red check which makes me think that he is going to be the catalyst or the center of the story, and I expected that throughout.

Jane

Yeah, Drew confused me. He didn’t feel as complex as his text suggested.

Goldie

I think it’s because Lee intended him to be one thing, and the play made him another.  The text makes him this sort of hypocrite who goes on about about recognizing feelings and listening but doesn’t really practice either. But in the production he’s made very sympathetic.

Jane

All of the characters are half-wrong, because there is no right answer to the questions asked. But he production did not highlight that dynamic. It washed them over as all one sided. It felt more like a story of “But we are all trying our best!” than a story of “But HOW do I help?”

Goldie

And maybe that’s because a straight white guy sees this play and thinks that he gets what it’s about. Jake’s the bad guy. He’s old masculinity. “Straight White Men” are just the worst– meaning Jake.  The text isn’t saying that. It’s incredibly empathetic to the complexities of straight-white-maleness. This production takes something really compassionate and novel and turns it into a cliche

Jane

I don’t even think he focused on Jake. I just think he didn’t imagine their world much different than our own, which made all the men more right than wrong.

Goldie

Yeah. That’s exactly right. The men who spoke.

Jane

It’s unfortunate because the production is so well intentioned.

Goldie

And InterAct is so well intentioned! I love that they want to choose these stories. It’s a great play! There were some really great moments in this production. When the play is about what’s happening to the characters, Pfeifer nails it. He’s a good director and he’s working with good actors. I really, really loved the scene between Matt (Steven Rishard) and his father (Dan Kern.) It was so heartbreaking. Dan Kern was really endearing as Ed, and I though Steven Rishard was fantastic. He was totally understated and totally present. It’s a hard balance.

What did you think of the acting?

Jane

I think everyone was great. A little too stylistic for my taste at times because the argument is so subtle that sometimes they screamed right through it. But it was definitely a directing problem, not an acting problem

Goldie

I feel like at the end, the play managed to punch its way through the production and some of the message got through.

Jane

I cried definitely at the end of the play. I loved Matt, and I liked Jake (Tim Dugan Jr.) a lot, too.  I think I liked him because I still felt bad for him. Maybe it’s me, but he was so misguided but well intentioned that I wanted to help him. It was almost like… I hope really successful white men were secretly this woke because that’s almost consoling for me. While Matt’s character is the most overt example of male repression on that stage, all of the characters exist in response to the question of How do I respond to my own privilege, when that same privilege is it’s own pressure to be more, or better, or in charge?

Goldie

How about sound? Larry Fowler designed. That preshow music was intense.

Jane

There is a note in the script that says the preshow music and the set changes are supposed to make you feel like you are in a world run by women. It says “Loud hip-hop with nasty lyrics by female rappers plays for the pre-show. It should be loud enough that people have to shout over it to be heard” To establish a world of women in charge. That’s a hard note to follow though. Much of the music chosen, although written and performed by women, still exists as a response to men so it falls flat on feeling empowering.

Goldie

Oh my god, is that what that was supposed to be? Is that why the set changes were lit?

Jane

Yes, but those set changes felt long and drawn out and more like they (the stagehand) were cleaning up after the men. I hoped they would come back somehow in the end or something would happen where these transitions would make sense. Maybe if the music behind them had felt like this was THEIR world, or if their behavior was more fun and there was more ownership of the space, it wouldn’t feel like the stagehand was uncomfortable in the world of the men. It also specifies that the stagehand should be a trans/genderqueer person, preferably of color. So- missed opportunity there.*** [Please see the editor’s note below]

Goldie

It looked exactly like they were cleaning up after the men. I wondered if the set changes were supposed to be saying something, but it mostly looked like the stagehand just wasn’t very good at their job. Is this what Pfeiffer thinks a world run by women looks like? I didn’t recognize the preshow music, but two women threatened to leave if house management didn’t turn it down. Anneliese Van Arsdale, who is the Managing Director there told them it was in the script and urged them to stick it out as part of the artistic experience and they did. She’s really good at her job.

Jane

Beyonce, Lil Kim, Missy Elliot. Mostly hit singles. Cleary googled.

What was your audience demographic like?

Goldie

Old and white.

Jane

Same. The white man struggle definitely shines through, but honestly at some points, it was definitely at the expense of the woc in the audience. I left with some really angry people. I also felt at some moments some things hurt me in a deep way because I didn’t think the production was always on my side.

I am happy InterAct wants to tell these stories, but it was so misguided. I wish they could do it again with a woc director. Because they could do it right. I think InterAct could do it. Seth Rozin is good at seeking out actors of color and I know he would be great at getting other members of the crew who are appropriate too. [***Please see editor’s note below]

Goldie

I agree with you 100%. It’s a great play. I think InterAct had the best of intentions producing it. But they either didn’t understand or didn’t respect the material.

 

***Editor’s note: Since this response was published, several people have reached out to us to point out that the woman playing the stagehand was a queer woman of color. Also, the team for Straight White Men included sound designer Larry Fowler, who is a person of color, Samina Vieth who is a woman of color, and lighting designer Shannon Zura who is a queer woman. When we published this response implying that InterAct didn’t do the work to put women, queer people, and people of color on the team, we didn’t do our research, and that’s a complete failure of our mission.

We sincerely apologize to these professionals for whitewashing them and their contributions to the production, and deeply thank everyone who took the time to set us straight about the mistake. We’ll keep working, and we hope you’ll keep letting us know. 

~Editor

 

 

The Christians- The Wilma Theater

Melissa is a white cis woman, a new play enthusiast, a feminist, a lapsed Unitarian Universalist. She craves theatre that connects urgent ideas to human stories. She has a big lady boner for Lucas Hnath’s playwriting.

Jane is a multidisciplinary theatre artist living and working in Philadelphia.

Jane

What was in your pockets coming into this show?

Melissa

I had read the play and really enjoyed it; I’m a big fan of Lucas Hnath’s work; and I went with someone who had seen its world premiere at Humana in 2014 and adored it. So I went in both expecting to enjoy it but also expecting a lot of it

Jane

I don’t know much about his work. I should say that I was raised in a very religious household, so the content of this work is pretty close to me. 

I didn’t know anything about the play at all, but I usually enjoy Wilma shows so I was really surprised. I feel like I need to preface this by saying I think it was my least favorite show that I’ve seen in at least the last two years.

Melissa

Why is that?

Jane

Intention vs. execution. I felt like the intention was bold. I loved this idea of this church splitting and how that throws the members for a loop. However I felt like when Joshua (DeLance Minefee) left to start his own church that was the most exciting part of the play- because it was the largest action- and it happened in the beginning.

I kept waiting for something else to happen but it was just static discussion and repetition until the end. Except for maybe his wife leaving him, but that was predictable. And the fact that she just sat silently in the background for the majority of the show really rubbed me the wrong way.

Melissa

I would disagree that the discussion was static. I really appreciated the way these arguments were framed as both public and private performances–that even in scenes when Pastor Paul (Paul DeBoy) and his wife Elizabeth (Erika LaVonn) were supposed to be alone, or when Pastor Paul and Joshua were meeting privately toward the end, they were still speaking in microphones and performing a bit to us

Jane

That’s what I felt was static though. I wanted so much to just see two characters interacting and not performing.

Melissa

I definitely agree with the discomfort of his wife sitting in the background, but I think that’s a conscious choice. Because in the scene he asks her whether she’s going to support him and she says no, but she’s not quite able to do that in front of everyone, until she decides to leave him.

For me this play has a lot to do with faith, fear, and privilege. Of course Pastor Paul feels like he’s the person who can make this decision for everyone. Even if it’s well-intentioned, even if–particularly to a more liberal and probably less religious theatre audience–it makes sense, it still shows this enormous arrogance.

The way that Pastor Paul–as a wealthy man, as the leader of this church, as an older white cis straight man–experiences faith is radically different from how everyone else on that stage does.

Jane

Definitely.

Melissa

I’m interested in your distinction between “interacting” and “performing.” Because for me, those smaller scenes were enormously interactive. For instance, after Joshua leaves and Pastor Paul has to confront each individual person, for me that was loaded with interpersonal nuance, made complicated by the public implication. So I’m curious what you mean by interacting?

Jane

I did enjoy certain moments. I enjoyed Joshua’s monologue even though I detested his character. I think the ideas behind the play were thought-provoking. However, in terms of how I felt watching? Bored.

I felt like I knew the ending 10 minutes in. But it took a long time to get there. I should also mention I saw the final preview. Depending on when you saw it we could have had different experiences.

Melissa

Right, and I saw two days after opening, so maybe there was some growth in between.

Jane

But to answer your question about interaction vs performance, I didn’t feel like the characters were really talking to one another or considering the actual points of view. It seemed like everyone knew what they had to say and we’re just waiting for the deliverance of their counterparts line so they could then speak.

Melissa

I see what you mean

Jane

What was your impression? It seemed like you had a better experience than me, but you were also a bit underwhelmed.

Melissa

Actually, I really loved it. I kind of wish I had gone in with less knowledge, but I felt engaged the whole time, and was very moved by a couple of moments. Especially during the scene with Jenny (Julie Jesneck). I feel like she’s the person who most desperately needs faith and certainty, and who wants to understand and engage, but who’s most being taken advantage of by this change from someone who she trusts so much.

Jane

Well I guess it’s good that we had this discussion! I’m surprised honestly since I had such a negative reaction when I saw it. Maybe it’s because I wanted to know this story. I think the playwright had good intentions, seeing this church fall apart in this very specific way was provocative and creative. But I left the space feeling like I was cheated, or like I wanted more. And poor Jenny.

Melissa

I wonder if the frustration you felt with the way they spoke has to do with the form the playwright’s working with? Like when I was watching, I felt like Hnath was trying to mimic church sermons, which are inherently not dialectic, right? One person presents their arguments and because they’re up there, they have to be certain of what they’re saying. And they’re super prepared. The only person who breaks that for me was Jenny, who was really trying to engage in an immediate way, and listening and receiving what Pastor Paul was saying while wrestling in the moment with her pernicious doubts and fears.

Jane

Yes, I think I definitely grew tired of the presentational way everything was done, so I enjoyed Jenny’s scene, it made things more personal, but again, I wanted more. I also felt that it was a bit unrealistic that the conversation would go on and on like that as long as it did, or that this shaky scared young woman would really feel comfortable unloading all of that on her entire congregation.

Talking with you though had helped get to the nuts and bolts of what I think they were trying to do with the play, but I’m not convinced the effort was a success. At least not for me. At the end of the day, it just wasn’t the play I needed or wanted.

Melissa

What was the play you needed it to be? What was the play you wanted? I can totally see how this play could be boring. It’s literally people talking onstage for 80 minutes, with no changes in set or costumes. Though I will say I thought the lighting was remarkable. I loved how simply the designer (Thom Weaver) narrowed in on Pastor Paul, each progressive scene becoming darker and colder and isolating him from everyone else–that was really exciting.

It feels like you were looking for more actionable moments, as opposed to the currents of arguments the play was more interested in working in. Is that fair to say?

Jane

That’s great! Honestly lighting is something I most likely take for granted because I’m not versed in it.

I guess what I wanted the play to be was maybe… Braver. I wanted it to go further. It dealt on this one question, “is there a hell” which to me seemed dated and moot. Especially for a Wilma audience. It makes me frustrated when I see so much money thrown into this particular production. And what will we think when we walk away? That Christianity is changing and it causes rifts within congregations… That’s not anything new is it?

Melissa

I see what you mean. I didn’t think it was just about Christianity though. For me, it was about the intersection of faith and fear. Not “is there a hell?” but “do we need for there to be punishment in order for us to be good?” What drives us to believe in something and what makes us want to be good? I think the playwright knows a lot of people who go to theatre don’t necessarily have a solid relationship to religion, so the idea of writing a play that’s about a particular religion doesn’t feel useful. I think he’s interested in pushing outward and looking at why people come to religion in the first place

And for a lot of the people we see on that stage, like Jenny or Joshua, religion is something that defines a world that’s hard to control. And for Pastor Paul to make that change, essentially redefining this world so he can control it, is scary.

Jane

For me though, perhaps based off of my own experiences within religion, I kept thinking “something ELSE has to happen.”

Melissa

Yeah I wasn’t raised with a lot of religion so I wonder if I had been if I would have seen the play differently.

Jane

I grew up very religious. So that may have been part of the reason why I felt so hostile towards the play.

Melissa
We’ve been talking about the thematic stuff a lot. What did you think of the production itself? Like the actors, the choir, the set…

Jane

I loved DeLance Minefee, the actor who played Joshua. Despite the fact that I really didn’t like his character. I felt like any time he was on stage I was captivated by him.

The set 100% looked like a replica of my friend’s church growing up. So that was well done and it certainly made me feel like I was IN the congregation.

The live choir was effective.. Though I think they took the singing one song too far. I remember thinking.. Oh great, okay..another song. When they all left it was effective in creating this sense of emptiness.

Melissa

I loved when they left– but I felt like they could have been used more somehow? The songs were good but my audience was kind of resistant to engage with them. They didn’t clap along or anything.  

Jane

Agreed. I felt like I wanted them to trickle out throughout and then leave us empty. But there was something about them just getting up and leaving.

Melissa

I thought Paul DeBoy as Pastor Paul was excellent–he was different than I had imagined when I read the script. He was more of a calming presence than a galvanizing one, which originally made me feel like like “nah,” but as the play went on I appreciated it, because it cut against the typical fire-breathing Evangelical thing I would have associated with that kind of church

Julie Jesnick as Jenny almost brought me to tears, I loved how earnest and desperate she was. And Erika LaVonn as his wife was remarkable! Watching her listen in the background and then bring her groundedness and vulnerability to the table with him.

Jane

Yes LaVonn was great! I wished so much that she had been used more. I mostly found Jenny grating. I guess I imagined this person in real life (I know many of them) and it just annoyed me that she was so easily manipulated.

What would you say this play’s impact on you was?

Melissa

This play made me think about how faith seats itself within people of different kinds of privilege. I thought a lot about the good intentions of everyone involved; each person is trying to live a good life and help the people around them, but has such a hard time seeing past their own perspective, which seems common in the way people relate to other faiths.

I was also just struck anew by the rhythm and economy of the writing.

How about you, any last thoughts?

Jane

Thanks for having this conversation with me. It has helped me to see the merits of the play while I was so focused on the things I didn’t like. I didn’t enjoy it, but at least some people did.

Our Questions for People Involved in This Production:

(If you were involved in the show, we’d love to know more! Answer us in the comments!)

Why this play now?

How does your relationship to faith affect the way you approached this play?

Erika LaVonn: What do you think about your character’s relationship to the action of the play?