Tag: theatre nova

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

Madison Krumins Leave a comment

‘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

REVIEW: Play of the Month – Whatcha Doin? by Jacquelyn Priskorn

Emma Pinchak Leave a comment

Though I hate being on Zoom all day just as much as the next guy, this was a refreshingly creative break from the usual soul-crushing nature of staring at a screen.

Kate Stark plays Marnie, the child actor moved to stay in the entertainment biz through voice acting, and Megan Wesner plays Raven, the interviewer. There was a little bit of a surreal quality to the setup of the play, a pre-written interview between fictional characters delivered through a computer screen to an invisible audience. This feeling of layered disconnection fit well with the subject, though, as Raven interviews a woman miles and years away from her days on set, but whose mentality through adulthood has been shaped by that period. It makes us wonder which parts of our lives can outlast time; how much control we have over such an assignment of importance. Will all our actions made to establish our evolving character be fruitful, or will some long-dead part of ourselves always surpass new identities?

I’m speculating, but it felt like Marnie was inspired by Mara Wilson, the actress who played the title character Matilda in the movie adaptation of Roald Dahl’s novel. Since her childhood acting days, she’s moved on to podcasts and writing, far more removed from the limelight and everything that comes with it. While feelings of burnout and disillusionment are common amongst child actors after they grow up, Wilson is particularly similar to Marnie in how down-to-earth she is in interviews, seemingly well-adjusted with just a slight hint of neurosis. Both explore the idea of what it means to be part of the public domain, particularly at a young age; to be discussed in invasive detail by strangers who cannot see the person behind the character.

Between both the real and fictional ex-child actors, there is an understanding that one’s relationship with the world changes with early fame and adoration and the up-close nature of strangers’ perceptions of oneself. Acting can be a consumer of identity, but it may also create it. It’s a hard business to leave, being so emotionally and literally enveloping, and it can distort one’s relationships, need for approval, maybe even their sense of reality.

The interview with Marnie followed these sentiments, elevating them to extremes, but not to unrealistic heights.

Performance is both a creative expression and a lie; it builds up some character or version of something beyond oneself. Putting on a costume and makeup and a new voice and foreign mannerisms can occur anywhere from a TV set to a board meeting. It’s happening now as I write this, as I impersonate a deep-thinking intellectual with thoughts on The Psyche. Imposterism permeates the mind, and it never really leaves.

And both when the act of performance is recognized as fiction or accepted as a truthful depiction, it can affect one’s presentation of themselves, their understanding of and comfort with other people. Marnie’s discussion works to define a dissociative disorder amplified by the actor’s need to project inhuman versatility, and the creative’s need to continuously create.

PREVIEW: Play of the Month – Whatcha Doin? by Jacquelyn Priskorn

Emma Pinchak Leave a comment

Theatre Nova, while no longer putting on plays for an in-person audience, has been giving online access to live performances each month, garnering a great reception from the Ann Arbor thespian scene. The events feature original, 20-40 minute plays from new playwrights.

January’s play of the month is Whatcha Doin? by Jacquelyn Priskorn. It’s about a former child actor reflecting on their childhood career, and how her being typecast as a goofy loser has affected her throughout her life. It speaks to the effects of being an object of others’ consumption–strangers with no recognition of your own identity apart from a character.

This winter brings another season of performances for your viewing pleasure, beginning Wednesday, January 27 at 8pm via Zoom. The season continues through April. The events are performed live, but are taped and available online as well for the next month.

Find tickets to this individual play ($10) or the whole season ($30) here: bit.ly/TNPOTM1

REVIEW: Constellations at Theatre Nova.

niezi Leave a comment

The observable universe is 13.77 billion years old, holding a galaxy spilt like light-year milk. And if there’s 7.6 billion people in the world, eras before us, great geological epochs – what do the astronomical numbers mean for the chances of two people meeting each other at a barbecue? What are the chances that they might even like each other?

Constellations is a kind of terribly neurotic, self-indulgent exposition for anyone who’s wondered what if? I think about how many times I’ve wished things were different. At any point where we must choose, decisions seem irreversible; we cannot go back. But Constellations allows us and its characters to explore the paths of the multitude of realities.

It’s ambitious – a play of multiverses and the grand loftiness of higher physics, but grounded by the two characters who are full of familiar, earthy things: of frustration, of anger, of loss, love and heartbreak. They talk through touch and intonation, just as they talk through timelines and quarks and other intangibles. Concepts of cosmology and bee-keeping are made into very beautiful, personal lines.

The story of Roland and Marianne ends depending on where you start. Maybe it’s at the ballroom dancing class, maybe it’s at the barbecue – each time they cross paths, a garden of possibilities bloom forth. Scenes are replayed with altered decisions, new futures, and there’s even moments where the same dialogue is given, word-for-word, the short lines repeated like a tape re-wound. But the mood is different. The words are spoken with different inflection, in a different setting, and the slight adjustments tip the whole reality into another.

Their story can start and end at the very place they meet. Or, it can continue, go towards somewhere sweet or somewhere devastating. And yet there’s the idea that they could’ve also had no story at all.

What their relationship ultimately is depends on the coincidence of choices, not only in that moment, but in all the previous seconds not shown to us, in all the ways they were brought here to each other. Conceptually, the play seems like a marvel, but it is actually much more down to earth. For every alternate universe, the actors are earnest, giving equal life to each reality and picking at the subtleties of a reset scene. Meghan VanArsdalen and Forrest Hejkal do a tremendous job of playing the funny, dynamic Marianne and the much more subdued, introverted Roland respectively, a universe of possibility resting on the shoulders of only two people.

It’s a study of a relationship in all its forms, intimate as a two-person play, without any great theatrics of set or costume, and the themes are universal and touching. At the very end – no matter how the story of Roland and Marianne concludes, no matter which of all the realities we might take to be true – there is no right one. Every decision, every cosmic happening is just as right as another.

Constellations runs until Feb 18th at Theatre Nova.