Humor of "Horrors"

Ashman and Menken created their iteration of Little Shop of Horrors during a moment of cultural pessimism. It's current popularity belies a certain amount of anxiety in our modern society.

Howard Ashman and Alan Menken created their musical adaptation of the 1960 horror comedy during the beginning of the Reagan administration, when the former Hollywood B movie actor was ramping up the arms race with his "Star Wars" program and cutting funding to public goods like art and education. This poppy musical about the extinction of the human race is currently playing in two TCG member theaters (the Bristol Riverside Theatre in Pennsylvania and A.C.T. in Seattle), and at least one university theater (Southern Oregon).

Loveable loser Seymour Krelbourn (played by Andrew McNath at Bristol, Joshua Carter at A.C.T. and Ethan Niven at Southern Oregon) works at a flower shop whose cash flow is drying up. He's in love with the beautiful Audrey (Laura Giknis at Bristol, Jessica Skerritt at A.C.T. and Alyssa Birrer at Southern Oregon), who's in an abusive relationship with a sadistic dentist (Danna Vaccaro - Bristol, David Anthony Lewis - A.C.T., Cameron Gray - SOU). Seymour's luck turns around when he discovers a mysterious flytrap (voiced by Carl Clemons Drake and puppeteered by Nate Golden at Bristol, by Ekello Harrid, Jr. and Eric Estebb at A.C.T., and Karen Fox and Michael Hays at SOU). People flock into the flower shop to see the curiosity, unaware that Seymour is keeping it alive by feeding it his own blood. As the flytrap Seymour realizes he doesn't have enough blood to keep her alive. And thus he sets out on a path of serial killing in exchange for fame, fortune and the girl of his dreams.

 

When Little Shop of Horrors premiered off-Broadway in 1982, our country was facing the possibility of another World War, except this time with more nuclear weapons. Reagan's emphasis on military build-up only exacerbated anxieties. Between the two of them, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. had enough fire power, anecdotally, to obliterate human life several times over. Little Shop's humor comes from a place of powerlessness: if we can't stop human extinction, we might as well make a joke about it. While he was moving money into defense, Reagan was taking money from the arts. If arts were to succeed, they would have to adapt to the capitalist model that the nation was pushing them into. Hence, Little Shop of Horrors needed to be a poppy musical with a laugh a minute and songs the audience would hum in the lobby. Its continued popularity is a statement on our national mood. All the defense and public safety infrastructure we've accumulated couldn't stop the 9-11 attacks, or the Boston Marathon bombing. We can't even stop non-political violence like the Isla Vista killings. And even if we don't die in some awful instance of mass violence that all our defense spending apparently can't protect us from, how's our quality of life? The students at and in SOU's Little Shop of Horrors will earn their bachelors hopelessly in debt, and then they'll have thin opportunities to get the kind of employment that will dig them out of that debt. For all it's frolicking, Little Shop of Horrors opines that, if the earth is going to hell with all of us on it anyways, then we might as well just sing.

The Little Shop of Horror's perennial popularity tells us something about our relationship with the 80s, specifically, that we're not a whole lot happier or more secure than we were then. As such, it's an enduring indictment of Reagan's presidency. Sure, he thought he was helping the country by building up our defense infrastructure and pushing his brand of capitalist ideology on us, but look where we are now. If all theater's political, and every artistic choice is a social statement, then surely Little Shop of Horrors is one of the most nihilistically leftist plays there is. Bristol, A.C.T. and SOU's choice of Little Shop belies an unhappy acquiescence to unpredictable violence and the economic blight of neo-liberalism.

The Miracle of Theater

www.milagro.org

If you want ethnic authenticity, turn off the radio. Instead, go to the theater and you'll see in-depth yet entertaining discussions of the complicated American ethnic landscape in plays like Enrique Urueta's Learn to Be Latina.

Currently playing at Milagro Teatro under the direction of Antonio Sonera and starring Olga Sanchez and Nicole Accuardi, Learn to Be Latina is a satirical take on the pop music industry's treatment of ethnicity as part and parcel of their corporate package. It's a good example of how, in the family of entertainment genres, theater's the only place you can get this kind of authenticity.

Hanan (Accuardi) is a Lebanese-American singer with dreams of stardom interviewing for a trio of robotic auditors (Orion Bradshaw, Kelly Godell and Matthew Kerrigan). They love her voice, and they love her body, but she's just a little too ethnic in a - how do they put it? - "shawarma-eating, suicide-bomber kind of way." Hanan's about to walk out the door in righteous indignation when the auditors' boss, the Irish-accented Mary O'Malley (Sanchez) makes her an offer she can't refuse: learn to be "Latiner" and you can be a star. Hanan's Faustian bargain just gets worse and worse as her sense of identity becomes fragmented by the parts she has to play. She's Lebanese-American, but she's pretending to be from Buenos Aires. She's discovering that she's gay, but she "needs to be impaled on star cock by Saturday" if she's going to retain her credibility as a Latina pop star. After all, "Good Latinas don't eat cunt."

Those lines are meant to be rude and unappealing. Urueta alienates us from the characters representing the recording industry by putting abhorrent language in their mouths. Sonera accentuates this effect by giving them cartoonish physicality, most notably the auditors' mechanical movement in the opening scene. The satire demonstrates the ways in which popular music harms us by oversimplifying our ethnic identities. The truth is more nuanced than you hear about on the radio.

Learn to Be Latina is not alone in discussing the complicated reality of ethnicity in America, but theater might be. Playwrights today are writing about their ethnicity in ways that defy stereotypes. And they're getting noticed: Quiara Alegría Hudes won a Pulitzer for Water by the Spoonful. Eliza Bent published a five-page interview with Branden Jacobs-Jenkins in the latest issue of American Theatre about his plays like N(E)IG(H)G(BO)ERS. Stories with recognition in the theater community like these are not being told by theater's rich siblings, cinema/TV and pop music. Those media are notorious for their heavy-handed use of stereotypes. Hipster headdresses at Coachella and George Lucas' anti-Semitic aliens make theater a refreshing venue where we can talk honestly and within a supportive environment about race and ethnicity in America.

So if you struggle with issues of ethnicity, or are simply curious about them, turn off the radio and get to the theater. In spite of the Urueta's auditor's quip that "Whites aren't anything, except for Italians, because Italians are wops and wops aren't white," we're all of us something. And all of those somethings are living in closer proximity than perhaps any other time in America's history. If we want to have any kind of chance living well together, then we need stories like Learn to Be Latina.

Responding to Ulf Schmidt's "Agile Theater"

This January, dramaturg Ulf Schmidt presented a paper titled "Auf dem Weg zum agilen Theater" ("On the Way to Agile Theater") at the Jahreskonferenz der Dramaturgischen Gesellschaft in Mannheim. In it he explores ways in which contemporary theater is failing, and how it can regain social relevancy. His interest in using digital technology on stage has merit but is not new, while his assertion that we appropriate production models from other industries constitutes a categorical error.

 

He begins by drawing a bleak scenario of contemporary German theater. By his report, it' doesn't appear that much different from American theater. Still, his writing features un-cited charts and hyperbole (e.g. "das Ende des Stadttheater-Schauspiels [ist] in den nächsten zehn Jahren denkbar." - "the end of publicly funded theater could occur in the next ten years.") Bob Abelman and Cheryl Kushner's diagnosis in A Theater Criticism/Arts Journalism Reader is more trustworthy. What Schmidt dramatically refers to as "die digitale Naissance" is more prosaically defined by Abelman and Kushner as modern audiences' "access to a wide variety of entertainment options through an increasing array of personal and social media." (2) Not covered by Schmidt with any kind of thoroughness is theater's "relegation to high culture status." (4) Abelman and Kushner attribute theater's seeming elitism to the "digitale Naissance," but ongoing experiments in ticket pricing seem to tell a different story, or at least a parallel story. According to Portland Center Stage Artistic Director Chris Coleman, Signature Theater's $20 price cap has promoted a younger and more diverse audience. Mixed Blood Theater in Minneapolis has seen similar results by not charging for tickets. Finally, Abelman and Kushner distinguish between screen and stage by noting that the former promotes audience passivity and the later audience activity. (8)

 

Schmidt proposes two primary solutions: incorporating digital content on stage, and following a corporate production model. The first has merit, proved by the experiments of 3-Legged Dog Media + Theater Group (3LD) and their associated companies. In January's issue of American Theatre, 3LD's artistic director Kevin Cunningham noted that "Many of our more recent projects surround and immerse the audience in moving image and sound." The connection to immersive theater is notable in light of Punchdrunk's long-running Sleep No More, and Alex Timbers' use thereof in his current Broadway project, Rocky. In 3LD's specific case, immersive theater addresses the omnipresence of digital technology in our modern lives. Generally, immersive theater embraces theater's capacity for audience activity.

Schmidt's second proposal, following a corporate production model inspired by the work of Hollywood and Silicon Valley makes a categorical error: TV and technology companies create products for mass consumption. Such is the nature of broadcast supplemented by archival platforms like Netflix and Hulu, and the creation of iPads to be sold worldwide to enable access to Netflix and Hulu. Theater, by its nature, is a limited time event. As such, it suffers the same market weakness as any handmade craft: limited production leads to higher cost.

While hyperbolic and un-cited, Schmidt is correct that one of the challenges faced by modern theater (in both Germany and the United States) is the ubiquity of digital technology and entertainment platforms. His assessment that appropriating these technologies for use in the theaters offers one viable solution to this challenge is being born out by American theater companies, and has been since at least the 90s when 3LD emerged from the Ontological-Hysteric Theater. His rather involved fascination with Hollywood and Silicon Valley production models, however, misses the point. Those industries have developed their processes to match the products they create, which are mass producible. By its nature as a live, site-specific crucible of human interaction, theater needs its own production models. Schmidt might do better to look at theaters who have been addressing his digitale Naissance.

 

Aristotelian Tragedy for the Boomer Generation

Linda Alper

Western theater has used stories of death and dying to bring communities together since its Athenian origins. A.R.T. continues that tradition in its current production of Quality of Life.

Jane Anderson's drama tells the story of two sides of one family - one, conservative Christians from Ohio; the other, liberal Californians - both dealing with death. In framing our 21st century political polarization in classic Aristotelian terms, Anderson and A.R.T.'s message is clear - however divided we may feel, we all have death and suffering in common.

Jeannette (Linda Alper) and Neil (Michael Mendelson) have recently survived a devastating California wild-fire. Tim Stapleton's realist set depicts the front of their yurt, surrounded by burnt snags decorated with their fire-destroyed possessions. They are making a temporary life surrounded by an ostentatious display of death to cope with Neil's late-stage terminal cancer. Cousins Dinah (Susannah Mars) and Bill (Michael Fisher-Welsh) come to visit. They have recently experienced a loss of their own - their only daughter was savagely killed in an act of random violence.

Variations of the phrase "I understand" litter the first act. Of course, nobody really does. Neil is the only one whose mortality is really imminent. Bill can't understand, or doesn't want to understand, Neil's marijuana use. Jeanette and Neil don't understand Dinah and Bill's faith in Christ, and it's not clear if Dinah and Bill really understand their faith either. If God exists, why would he take their daughter in such a hellish way? Dinah relates the tales of Abraham and Isaac and of Christ's crucifixion, and admits, "I love the Son, but I cannot stand the Father." Their understanding evaporates with the big reveal at the end of the first act, and their suffering threatens to tear their already strained family apart in the second.

The Quality of Life is a Learish attempt at creating a communal bond out of our shared mortality and propensity to pain. The two sides of this family are representatives of the left and right wing of the polarity that has defined the American political climate of the first decade of the 21st century. Jeannette and Neil represent American liberals, and Dinah and Bill American conservatives. But where they, like our nation, are divided in politics, they are united in suffering and death. An exercise in Aristotelian catharsis, Quality is meant to reinforce some responses to suffering and death while purging us of others. Struggling with Biblical morality and death with dignity are permissible, but suicide born of grief is not.

Death isn't the only thing that unites this family, though. Both American conservatism and liberalism are represented solely by upper-middle class white Boomers. Just as Athenian tragedy was meant to reinforce the supremacy of the power-holding class, Anderson's America is middle-class, middle-aged and white. Not coincidentally, so is A.R.T.'s audience at this play. The Quality of Life is as much a medieval morality play as it is an Aristotelian tragedy. If the Boomer generation doesn't accept death and a (modified) Christian ban on suicide, how will they retain power?

Re-telling "A Wrinkle in Time"

Tracy Young's adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time, playing at OSF through November 1st, is a beautiful re-telling of a beautiful story about learning to live and let live and love.

Alejandra Escalante

Young, who also directs, is credited in the Playbill as an adaptor, but this play is really a staging of L'Engle's original text, abridged. This devotion to text, already a hallmark of OSF's work, brings L'Engle's classic tale of embracing your flaws and allowing yourself to love directly from the private pages of a book to the public space of the Angus Bowmer theater.

Meg Murry (Alejandra Escalante) is swept away from her suburban home with her genius little brother Charles Wallace (Sara Bruner) and friend Calvin O'Keefe (Joe Wegner) by the three Mrs. Ws (Judith-Marie Bergan, K.T. Vogt on opening night, and an unaccredited actress as Mrs. Which) to save her father (Dan Donohue). The children learn from the Happy Medium (Kate Mulligan) that all good things in the universe are at war with the Black Thing, a heavy evil presence. Some of the best fighters in this war have come from our insignificant planet - Jesus, Crazy Horse, etc. The Mrs. Ws tesser the children through space-time to the planet Camazotz where Mr. Murry is being held captive by IT, a malevolent intelligence through whose influence the entire planet has succumbed to the Black Thing. In order to defeat IT and save her family, Meg has to embrace her flaws - particularly difficult for an awkward adolescent girl - and to discover the thing that "she's got that IT hasn't got."

At its core, that's just what L'Engle's story is - an adolescent girl learning to accept herself for who she is. L'Engle and, by staging her text, OSF invest us in Meg's journey by establishing a binary moral code. This isn't hard for the audience to accept - we're brought up on binary moralities, whether they be God versus Satan or American freedom versus foreign oppression. In L'Engle's story, the Mrs. Ws are the standard bearers for Good, and teach Meg to accept herself as an individual. IT, whose modus operandi is to subvert the wills of others to ITs own, bears the standard for Evil. This simple devise is the key to A Wrinkle in Time's longevity and continued appeal - it encourages us, especially the young adults among us who need it the most, to simply be ourselves and to encourage those we care for to be themselves.

A Wrinkle in Time is a joy to read and a joy to see on the Angus Bowmer stage. People of all ages need stories that encourage them to love themselves. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is deeply invested in English and American theater classics, and A Wrinkle in Time is a welcome addition to the OSF canon.