REVIEW: Imogen Says Nothing

Imogen Says Nothing by Aditi Kapil is a spinoff story of the character Imogen in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. She’s a character some have interpreted as a typo because she says nothing. However, Kapil turns this character, who serves no purpose in the original, into the main character of a “revisionist comedy in verse and prose” that SMTD describes on their website as a “feminist hijacking of Shakespeare that investigates the voices that have long been absent from the theatrical canon and the consequences of cutting them.” It highlights how women have historically been only seen as an image and deprived of their words. The play not only puts a big emphasis on the power of speech but the power of writing too. 

The premise is a bit confusing: Imogen is a bear disguised as a woman and has been living as a woman for a few years. She travels outside of her small village to the bigger cities and along the way gets dragged onto the stage in the middle of a performance of Much Ado About Nothing. In Elizabethan England, all female characters were played by men because only men were allowed to act. As a result, Imogen has to pretend to be a man playing a woman, and that woman is Imogen herself. In other words, she’s a bear disguised as a woman who pretends to be a man acting out a woman.

It has heavy themes of violence and animal abuse and there are explicit drinking and sex scenes. Furthermore, Imogen is constantly degraded for being female and fat; she even says that her only talent is “whoring”. When she is praised, it’s for her ability to make others laugh but it’s usually because she’s mocked for her background and intelligence. 

Nevertheless, it’s still a comedy and masks the darker content with humor and fun character dynamics. My favorite character was Nicholas Tooley; in the beginning, others always teased him because he was so innocent and pure, but in the end, he was so sassy and dramatic. It was also really funny when there were modern versions of objects on set. For example, for the alcohol they used White Claw, and when checking their contact information they would pull out their cell phones. 

Overall, I highly recommend watching it. It’s a play that’s hard to grasp but fascinating, especially the ending which was the best part. It took a sudden abstract twist that circled back to the underlying message with a single chilling line directed at the audience: “Exit man.” 

REVIEW: Accidental Death of an Anarchist

November 16-18 was the showing of Mirit Skeen’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist. Each directing major is tasked with directing a full length show their senior year, and this play was chosen and directed by Mirit Skeen in fulfillment of the requirement. ADOAA a political farce written by Dario Fo and translated to English by Ed Emory. First performed in 1970 in Italy, it’s a timely tale of the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing and on the death of Giuseppe Pinelli while being interrogated by the police. 

As an admirer of Mirit Skeen’s directing work, this was no disappointment. This piece is not for the faint of heart, and a huge work to tackle in just a few weeks. There are moments when I come across performances at SMTD that remind me of the incredibly high level of art we are surrounded by. This was one of those moments. Hailing from one of the best music and theater schools in the country, it is a gift to see peers and colleagues at work creating inventive works of art. 

The cast consisted of 6 actors including: Nathan Goldberg (BFA 24′), Lenin Izquierdo (BFA 24′), Jalen Steudle (BFA 24′), Jack Weaver (BFA 24′), Hannah Gansert (BFA 25′), Casey Wilcox (BFA 24′). With a seasoned troupe of actors, each character was thoughtfully produced and executed. There were moments that indulged absolute clownery—and those were the audience favorites. The energy brought by the actors was reciprocated by the 11pm audience. 

Historically, it was unknown if Pinelli’s death was a suicide or a framed murder. The police claimed the death was a result of suicide, or an unconscious fall. The judge ruled it as an “accidental death”. Although, evidence later supported the event to be a cover-up aimed to avoid investigation and obscure complacency with the guilty neofascist groups. These groups were working to impede the spread of communism, labor, rights and political decent. Four of the characters in the play are police officers aiming to close and cover-up the case (all with unique personalities and intentions). While the character of the Maniac (Weaver) infiltrates the inner workings of the corrupt system, using an archetypal clown-like persona to critique the flawed investigation. This included the Maniac breaking the fourth wall, revealing the innate relevance of the piece to the audience.

There was a note from the dramaturgy team (Naomi Parr and Ty Amsterdam) that particularly spoke to me moments after seeing the show: “Perhaps there’s comfort to be found in 2023 that we are not alone in grappling with staggering polarization, rampant disinformation, and the complexities of responding to terror. Even while democracy dies in darkness and the truth is more important now than ever, perhaps we can turn back to the court jesters to speak truth to power. Or if nothing else, at least we can revel in a Maniac in public office whose term limits starts at lights up and ends at curtain call.” I appreciated this brilliant inscription from the team, and it encapsulates precisely the message transmitted through Mirit’s direction. 

Next from the SMTD Department of Theater is Imogen Says Nothing, a hilarious feminist hijacking of Shakespeare. This Aditi Kapil play will perform at the Power Center November 30th-December 3rd.

 

 

 

Image thanks to Mirit Skeen on Instagram.

PREVIEW: Indecent

What: a historical, semi-nonfiction play produced by the student theater company Rude Mechanicals

When: 

  • Friday, December 9, 8:00pm
  • Saturday, December 10, 8:00pm
  • Sunday, December 11, 2:00pm

Where: Arthur Miller Theater (North Campus, map)

Tickets: $6 for students, $12 for adults, available online, at the MUTO ticket office, by phone at (734) 763-8587), or at the box office 1 hr before the performance. Additional fees may apply.

Indecent follows the tumultuous story of another play, God of Vengeance, which was written by the Polish-Jewish playwright Sholem Asch in 1906. The story is grand in scope, sweeping from the origins of God of Vengeance in 1906, to its production in Europe, to the devastating effects of xenophobia, antisemitism, homophobia, and censorship during its attempted production in the United States, and finally detailing the lingering effects of the play on its actors and authors during the Holocaust and into the 1950s. The Rude Mechanicals are a student theater company emphasizing creative innovation on classic plays, where students take charge in the entire production process. I am excited to see how they interpret this play with its richly layered themes which feel increasingly salient today.

PREVIEW: Home

Come see the interesting and ambitious idea to build a house on stage. The advertisement that this play will feature the making of a real house on stage was enough to make me get the ticket. However, there’s a deeper intention behind why this is being done: the play is supposed to be a question about what makes our home.
A home is an interesting place: it’s people’s most intimate place to rest, yet it doesn’t have to be a fixated area – remember the strange feeling you felt when you haven’t been to a place long but felt so relaxed and comfortable when you’re there. It’s also a reflection of taste-imagine the diversity of dorm rooms. Also, it can be threatened as well, because of social, political reasons, gentrification, or various reasons. Musing about the idea of home shows that it’s an interesting concept with lots of debates to be done on it- come see it done on the stage this Friday and Saturday(April 22th, 23th), at the Power center.

More information about the tickets can be found here.

REVIEW: Somebody’s Children

Somebody’s Children, a tale of children who lives just next door to the land of the fairy tale, Disney land, but whose life isn’t so fairy-tale-like, asks the audience whether it’s really ok that some people are actually living in sucn unstable homes and clearly provides the answer-it’s not Ok. The play is written by José Casas, assistant professor at the University of Michigan, and the actors were consisted of students in SMTD. The setting takes place in a run-down motel just outside Disneyland, and while their personal stories are told in beautifully and powerfully written vignettes, the sorrows in characeters’ lives expands into a problem of social structure by the contrast of their unsafe living place and children who laughs happily in Disneyland, which is so close to where they are living. The stage design made this interesting setting even more clear – there was a huge and gorgeous sign that spells out ‘Disneyland’ on the right side of the stage. Glowing white, the sign had an aura that made sure that the audience was not missing it, but the actual shape of Disneyland was not shown; as if symbolizing that the real Disneyland did not existed to children living in the motel. With this direct contrast, the deprived feeling and anger that the characters are feeling is strongly delivered while raising the point that they could have also been the careless children who have a great time in Disneyland, and highlighting the brutallity of reality in which the children were pushed into. They were somebody’s ‘Children’. Their sorrow is valid and raw, but they are children, who should be kept away from those things. Who are to protect them? the play asks.

I want to highlight the actor’s amazing performances – as mentioned before, the play mainly consited of vignettes, so the lines were symbolic and poetic, rather than straight to the point. The actors expressed out the emotion that the children is reciting the vignette so well; the sad but happy, nostelgic look of a girl who danced with her imaginary quinceañera dress, how two boys exchanged roles to between a police man that stopped them on a night’s walk to get some ice and the boys who got pinned down even though they did nothing wrong swiftly was just awestrucking. Production was amazing as well – using sitting actors as poles to put up police line was not only visually intersting but also symbolized that the children in the motel were deeply embedded in all the tragedy happening in the place.

In all, Somebody’s Children was a beautiful and socially-conscious play that used experimental lines-vignettes-to deliver the theme and did it, not over-dramatically but emotionally affluently. Highly recommend to anyone looking for performances that speaks about the modern world.

REVIEW: Play of the Month – 4 Genres by Ron Riekki

‘4 Genres’ is a short play written by Ron Riekki, produced as part of the Play of the Month series through Theatre Nova. Theatre Nova gives the opportunity for new works to be performed professionally, spotlighting the voices of new playwrights and making theatre more accessible and relevant to current times. ‘4 Genres’ was a perfect example of a playwright writing for the time and medium–I felt that Riekki really used Zoom as a tool rather than simply working around it, which brought something special to the performance.

Four characters reveal that they have been trapped within four respective genres in their Zoom boxes: horror, musical theatre, slapstick, and documentary. In order for their genre experience to end, they must say what they learned during their time there. After living in their respective realms, it’s clear they don’t seem to be enjoying it that much.

One by one, our characters reveal what they’ve learned. Our documentary character encourages the others to share, before he quietly bemoans that he’s disappointed that he feels he didn’t live through anything. While the other genres experienced running from vicious werewolves, learning about the power of friendship through song and dance, or slipping on banana peels, the man in the documentary says, he’s just sat there with a camera in his face. Sound familiar? 

It took me a while for the underlying messages of this short play to sink in and really take root. Since March of last year, I’ve so often felt like I’m living in the dark and dull page of a far-off future’s history book. How many times have I wished to be elsewhere, living in another time or realm free of the troubles COVID-19 has brought with it? But just as our documentary character realized: What we are living through is important. We are brave for having lived through this time. We are resilient and we’ve learned to adapt.

Like I said before, I applaud the writer and production team for really using Zoom for what it can do, in regards to effects and lending to commentary on our current times. My only perceived drawback to live Zoom performance is technical issues–lag between cast members, differences in sound quality, inability to hear overlapping lines. These are things that seem to be natural aspects of the Zoom culture most of us are experiencing right now, but they don’t always lend well to a scripted performance where every line counts. 

However, until we are able to see live shows again in person, I continue to appreciate how artists are working to keep theatre alive and growing through these difficult times.

For information on the next Play of the Month performance, go to Theatre Nova’s website: https://www.theatrenova.org/current-show