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Nurturing the Playwright
Shepherdstown, in the Eastern panhandle of West Virginia, at the edge of the Antietam Civil War battlefield, hosts the Contemporary American Theatre Festival on the Shepherd College campus every July. Since its inception in 1991, CATF has staged 59 new works. This year the fresh work of 4 playwrights was highlighted, all timely: Sam Shepard's The God of Hell, Lydia Stryk's American Tet, Sheri Wilner's Father Joy, and Melinda Lopez's Sonia Flew. When I asked Ed Herendeen, the founder and producing director of the festival, what he has learned staging new American plays over the past 15 years, he replied:
Contrary to accepted beliefs, there is an appetite and adventurous spirit in the audience and community for new work. Right from the beginning we knew what we wanted to do, why we wanted to do it, and that there was a need to do it. Not workshops, not staged readings, but fully professional productions of playwrights, that would attract actors who are in hiatus during the summer. That's it, that's all we do….
CATF foregoes the use of dramaturgs as intermediaries to guide playwrights. Instead the theatre encourages directors, actors, and designers to tackle a play from the viewpoint of the playwright. It is the playwright's responsibility to make their point of view clear.
Sam Shepard's God of Hell, directed by Ed Herendeen, uses stage metaphors that resonate with traumatic psychological and environmental stress; signals of potential disaster. On an isolated farm in Wisconsin, the "dairy land", Emma (Carolyn Smith) and her husband, Frank (Anderson Matthews) work through their daily chores. Emma waters the plants in her kitchen in a slow motion ritual of isolation and boredom. Frank attends to his heifers outside. When Welch (Lee Sellers), a government agent, knocks on the kitchen door, Emma's "open door policy" with strangers is sorely tested. Down below in the basement, underneath a trap door, Frank has given a friend refuge. Emma has yet to meet him.
Welch works his way into the house, pedaling red, white and blue cookies and American flag decals at $12.95 per packet. He has serious national security issues in mind. He is on a witch-hunt for Haynes, a fugitive from Rocky Butte, where plutonium is the name of the game. "How can he back out of a project like that?" Welch asks, never explaining the project. "No more of that nonsense of checks and balances" he says, "we are dealing with a ruthless, diabolical force. You didn't think you were going to get a free ride on the back of democracy forever, did you?" Emma runs outside and summons her husband with loud clangs from a small replica of the Liberty Bell. Frank arrives and slowly but surely complies with Welch's increasing demands.  Welch discovers the trap door leading to the basement. Have Emma and Frank been lying to him about Hayne's presence? He lifts the trap door and shouts for Haynes to come out. Silence. Welch then descends into the darkness with electric prods, like Pluto, the god of hell. Haynes is driven out of his hiding place in a state of "static shock", terrified. Lightning bolts shooting out of his penis. Haynes and Frank eventually fall into a lockstep of obedience. Emma stands aside in shocked disbelief. Intimidation, fear, and subjugation take over in an atmosphere of guilt by association. "We weren't paying attention, Emma," Frank says. "We let things slip right past us."
Lydia Stryk's American Tet, a world premiere directed by Tracy Brigden, takes a troubling look at the War in Iraq and the dilemmas of families who support their loved ones fighting the war. Stryk writes: "I hope audience members will experience something of what it is like to live through the events of the day from inside them, in an environment – the military family – where distance or withdrawal is not possible."
Elaine Krombacker (Bonnie Black), a traditional army wife, delivers a  pep talk to military spouses from an Army Family Team Building manual – projected on a screen - point by point. Her husband, Jim Krombacker (Michael Goodwin), retired from the Army, suffers from Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam. He spends his days in the garden planting, uprooting, poisoning and cutting down weeds. Although Elaine has moved 31 times in 17 years, she firmly believes in what she does. "If I had to choose, I'd live my life all over again." When her son, Danny (Michael Alperin), arrives home on leave, before heading out to Iraq to be a prison guard at a place with a strange name, family bonds are tested to the quick. Elaine's daughter, Amy (Kaci Gober) is adamantly opposed to the war. Danny's friend, Angela (Tanya Perez) has been severely disfigured by the war, and Amy tries to convince her brother not to go back.
When Elaine develops a friendship with Nhu Mai (Ako) – a Vietnamese woman, whose name means peacefulness, the playwright leads us, in a series of insightful events, to see the experience of war through the eyes and mind of each character. Nhu tells Elaine how Buddhist monks protested the war in Vietnam by setting themselves on fire with gasoline, their faces focused and serene, as the flames engulfed them. Elaine is shocked, how could they do that to themselves? In another scene, Danny's disfigured friend Angela from the Iraqi war shows up in a wheelchair. Danny lifts her veil and kisses her. She asks Danny for a gun. We never hear a gunshot, but we know she has gone to deliberate her fate. Finally, at Danny's home coming party, Jim Krombacker visualizes, seemingly as real, a young Vietnamese child who runs into his garden. He chats with her. Nhu also sees the child. The little girl is her younger sister who had been killed in Vietnam by an explosive. Outcome: one person (Angela) who experienced war and wants to kill herself. Another person (Nhu) who decides to return to her country and rebuild her life. As for Elaine and Jim, they continue, as before, to sit on lounge chairs in the backyard; perhaps never asking themselves the questions they need to face. Tet is the Vietnamese New Year and also the first day of Spring. It is also the name of a major battle in the Vietnam War.
Sheri Wilner's Father Joy uses fantasy and wit to turn a tale of a disappearing father inside out. "The father in my play doesn't feel like he's disappearing," Wilner notes, "he is disappearing. I became very excited about the idea of a metaphor becoming the action of the play". The action of the play is that of a father who fades away while literally being here. Out of sight is not out of mind.
When Abigail (Kaci Gober) graduates from art school, she goes to the studio to thank her mentor Paul (Michael Godwin) for all that he has done for her. Paul's work as a sculptor is "to show how fragile things are". His dedication to that goal has been the inspiration for Abigail's decision to devote her self to art. When Paul confesses that he is in love with her, Abigail reciprocates. Abigail's mother, Ruth (Carolyn Smith), uses every means at her disposal to break up her daughter's affair with a man old enough to be her father. Harry, Abigail's Father, starts to fade away. Ruth, obsessed with control, belittles him. She tells him that he is becoming "transparent", and that he should go see a "doctor". She even uses a vacuum cleaner to clean up the remains behind him. Hypocritically she lectures Abigail "to speak a little more respectfully about the man. A: He's your father, and B: he's disappearing".
Jonathan Bustle's performance as Harry is funny, sad, touching, gentle and  utterly believable. With white tufts of hair, and a loveable demeanor, Bustle portrays Harry as living in a world of his own making. He will have nothing to do with raging against the dying of the light. The more he disappears, the more his presence is felt. He is even neat enough to carry his leftovers out of the house in soda cans. Hiding the cans under a trench coat to escape the wrath of his wife. Eventually he will quietly hand over his remains to his daughter, to use as medium in her art. The play is gently ironic, alive with the possibilities of Harry's dichotomies. There are no special effects. Abigail learns how fragile life can be. At the end of the play, she blows away the last remains of her father as an emblem to his memory. Harry's caring withdrawal has set her free to be who she is. Under the wise direction of Pam MacKinnon, there was no Freudian dust left on the floor.
When Castro took over Cuba, 'Operation Pedro Pan' were Cuban children who were flown out of Cuba and smuggled into the United States. For the most part, they never saw their parents again. Hence Sonia Flew – the play by Melinda Lopez. The play is about family history. How people try to repress their history because it is too painful. It's better to forget and go on with your life. But what is covered up often ends in disaster. Sonia was a teenager in Castro's Cuba when she was smuggled out of Cuba. The play is her story.
When the play opens, like a dream, Sonia's mother walks into the crashing waves off the coast of Cuba, trying to swim to the United States to find her daughter. She doesn't make it. Switch to Minneapolis, 2001, post 9/11 America: terrorism has struck home. Sonia (Bonnie Black), now a successful public defender, her Jewish husband Daniel (Lee Sellers) and their two children, Zak (Michael Alperin) and Jen (Tanya Perez), are preparing for the holidays. Center stage is a Christmas tree with a Star of David on top; a symbol of the contrasting roots of the couple. When Grandfather Sam (Anderson Matthews) arrives for the celebration, the chatter is lively, cheerful, full of Jewish humor. Until Zak tells his grandfather that he wants to enlist in the Iraqi war. Shocked at Zak's decision, Sonia refuses to light the candles, or sing the songs. Zak's decision to go to Iraq bitterly reminds her of how she was forcibly exiled out of Cuba by her parents and never saw them again. "I'm not asking him not to fight", she shouts. "I'm saying fight here! Read between the lines, damn it, can't you see through the lies?"
The second act is a flashback: Cuba, 1970's. Young Sonia (Tanya Perez) wears the uniform of Castro's revolutionary guard.  She plans to go out into the sugar fields with her boyfriend Jose (Michael Alperin). They are dedicated to cutting sugar cane and meeting the quota that Castro demands. Her father Orfea (Anderson Matthews) is suspected of counter revolutionary activity. Tito (Lee Sellers), ostensibly his friend, warns Orfea of the consequences of his actions. He must move fast if wants to smuggle young Sonia into the United States. Sonia knows nothing of her parent's plans. Her protests against forced exile are to no avail. When she is shipped secretly to the states, her parents are equally devastated.Sonia Flew examines the ambiguity of well-intentioned actions that lead to wounds, from one generation to the next, like a permanent fingerprint. Performers in the play, directed by Ed Herendeen, play both American and Cuban characters, which add to the double indemnity of the theme.
The performers did a superb job in all four plays. They managed to catch in a short period of time, not only the psychic wounds of forced exile, loss of civil rights, and the shadows and contradictions of war and family feuds, but also the back firing elements of repression that destroy the essential human camaraderie of all peoples. All four plays are testimonials to the hard work of the artists involved, and the dedicated backing of those who support the original work of the Contemporary American Theatre Festival. American playwrights who care about their nation hopefully will be seen, and continued to be heard – whether we agree with them or not.
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