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"Wars" is billed as, "three Arizona writers who bring you into their fight with what's real." What ensues and becomes apparent is that the production is at war with the very real limitations and restrictions of lack of funding, and lack of support. Yet what also ensues and becomes apparent is there certainly is no lack of courage, commitment, enthusiasm, and talent on the part of all involved with this production. This could and would be called "minimal theatre" if that had been a choice, but that was THE only choice most likely by default.
The production opens with the first scene of THE MACHINE. The machine in this case is a telephone answering machine. Mother calls daughter. Daughter is not home. THE MACHINE answers. Mother starts to leave message, becomes confused, pauses, machine disconnects mother sensing mother's message is over. Mother calls back, machine answers, etc.
It is amusing, because its all too real for those of us who have experienced this sort of thing. Whether it be the voice of the mother, who seems befuddled by THE MACHINE as well as by her daughters free spirited lifestyle, to the collection of boyfriends who have adapted the reality of THE MACHINE as a "natural" part of their relationships, the audience must ultimately accept THE MACHINE as a character itself.
Director/author Mychele had perhaps done her piece a disservice by separating the four scenes of THE MACHINE between the other works on the program. The audience had trouble reconnecting the threads. Regrettably, the work suffers in the process. By scene three at the top of the Second Act, the novelty of THE MACHINE has worn off. Perhaps the audience is tiring of the repetition of the "outgoing message" and is beginning to tune out the incoming messages as well. The end result only seemed trite, an inconsequential yet amusing foray into a sort of dating game process of the 90's. By scene four at the end of the program we frankly don't care.
SOLITAIRE is more of a vignette or sketch than a one act, also by Mychele. Mother at 87, played by Sylvia Vizcaya, wiles away her days playing solitaire and reminisces about her former life. Her monotony is broken only by an occasional visit by her son Danny, played by Ryan Wright, and a friend who comes down to play cards on occasion. The vignette is poignant, as the aloneness of wasting away in old age always is, but it is not all that touching. The themes of lost youth, lost love, lost hope, lost life have been so overworked that we have become jaded and perhaps just a little insensitive to the reality of it.
Here the reality war of the theme is turning in on itself. The piece is struggling to establish contact with the audience, and like the mother is confined to playing solitaire. The audience never quite had a chance to empathize with the mother's situation, perhaps because the piece is so short or perhaps because it doesn't want to.
IT STARTS IN THE MIND follows as a multimedia presentation of the writings of Carol Martori and the graphic designs of Yogi Proctor. According to the program notes, Martori, was "compelled to give voice to the figures she saw before her," upon viewing an exhibit of Proctor's works. Some of the images projected on the screen were stunning and seemed to be more neo-abstraction in the vein of Picasso, rather than graphic art. Brilliant colors, sharp edges, and a proliferation of hauntingly limpid eyes.
Martori reads her works as accompaniment to the images on the screen. Again the program notes state, "These written works are explorations of the 'self' amidst a rapidly changing landscape". Somehow we missed the landscape. The images are so graphic that the combination of word and image become more introspection than circumspection. The writings of Martori are often as brightly colored, sharp edged, and proliferated with haunting visions as the visual images we see before us.
Like the graphic images her words are sometimes witty, sometimes bitting, sometimes callous, sometimes sympathetic, but almost always self-analytical. Therein, at least for me, is the rub, for the end result is one self detachment into a brothel of soul-searching. We are not moved into a comfortable landscape of like spirited members, but rather isolated and detached into the semi-reality of our own little shells.
Between scenes three and four of THE MACHINE are two works that prove to be the most delightful of the evening. THE LIGHT INSIDE is an extremely clever and well crafted piece written and directed by Mychele. The plot revolves around a lonely, slight overweight young women, Maggie, played by Ginny Harman and her relationship with her refrigerator, portrayed by Sylvia Vizcaya. Yes, the refrigerator is an actor.
The piece is clever, witty, poignant, and profoundly insightful at times. Maggie is struggling with a weight problem and the "fridge" becomes her comforter and consort. After all, if you can't talk with your refrigerator who can you talk to. Yet it proves to be a co-dependent relationship in the worst connotation of the term. Ultimately Maggie realizes that her refrigerators comforting ways are actually a thinly veiled disguise for its dependence on her.
There is much to empathize with, and the performance is worthy of much greater accolade than the small audience was capable of mustering. Harman and Vizcaya offer up very believable and enjoyable performances. The piece is extremely well written and effectively staged by Mychele, who is to be commended for crafting a difficult concept into a most enjoyable piece of theatre. THE LIGHT INSIDE proved to be the piece-de-resistance of the evening.
WAITING FOR GOOFO was a staged reading of a play by Perry Sams, directed by Virginia Ikeda. A staged reading can be disconcerting to both actors and audience alike as both must contend with scripts in the hands of the actors. Everything else appears as we would expect theatre to be, save for these occasionally encumbering sheathes of paper in the actors hand. It is to the commendation of Carol and Jill Martori that the scripts-in-hand performance seems neither to dampen the enthusiasm for their portrayals, nor restrain their action and interaction with each other.
The piece is charming. WAITING FOR GOOFO cleverly revolves around two "has been" cartoon characters who find themselves not only removed from their celluloid world, but put into a new reality. A reality where they can be real, be themselves and not be stereotyped by their cartoonist creators.
The work is a fun and fascinating interplay between the two characters Roads, obviously an allusion to Road Runner, and Wiles, for Wil E. Coyote. Yet, we do not see them in their cartoon persona as seen every Saturday morning by thousands. Instead we find they are actually fast friends exploring their new freedom, new realization of their true characters and new reality of their relationship. Wiles actually professes having amorous feelings for Roads. WAITING FOR GOOFO, is a charming and almost enchanting piece one could only wish had had the opportunity for a more fully realized performance.
Theatre is perhaps best known for creating "moments" within the broader spectrum of the work, and in REALITY WARS there are many moments. Some moments build one on the other as in THE LIGHT INSIDE and portray to the audience a delightful sense of seeing some moments of itself both cathartic and commending. Other moments don't work, perhaps only because they are too separated and disconnected as in the much distanced scenes of THE MACHINE, or underdeveloped as in SOLITAIRE.
Overall, this intrepid band or authors, actors, directors and in fact audience must be commended for their efforts. They are for the most part successful in creating this thing we call theatre - a relationship between an actor and an audience.
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