Note: This is a review for New Play Project’s last show, Lost & Found, which ran April 10-12 & 14, 2008.

“That’s how we live: having to fight not to feel lost as often as we feel found.” This line from James Goldberg’s introduction to New Play Project’s Lost & Found show was an excellent description of the theme that ran through this series of NPP’s religious plays (for the uninitiated, see the introduction to my last NPP review). I’ve decided once again to review each play individually:

Hope of Israel
Playwright: Arisael Rivera
Director: Maelyn Gándola
Asst. Director: Sierra Ortega
Actors: Hunter Brown (Jacob), Becca Esmerelda Bailey (Kaitlyn), Christian Cragun (Ryan), Brissa Porter (Emily)

Synopsis: Four college-age friends find their casual banter turning into a discussion about what they would do if they weren’t Mormon. This initial tongue-in-cheek discussion takes a more serious turn when one of the friends reveals that she seriously struggles with understanding the law of chastity.

Comments: Ari Rivera, a longtime participant in New Play Project, is very good at writing casual scenes with quirky yet realistic characters and snappy dialogue. As I may have mentioned previously, he has the makings of an excellent sitcom writer. It was intriguing to see his talent applied to a more serious subject. While watching “Hope of Israel,” I at first found the transition from banter to serious a bit jarring, but then I remembered that college students’ discussions often play out this way. The more weighty conversations are often book-ended with jokes and flirtatious teasing. This is an example of one of Terryl Givens’ paradoxes of Mormonism: the disintegration of sacred space. It’s one of the things I appreciate most about student and singles wards: those moments when the young adult preoccupation with self (and the opposite sex) is set aside to make space for more sacred things. This sounds sappy, but I love going to church Sunday morning and seeing the kid who was juggling knives at the ward talent show the night before sitting at the sacrament table, white-shirted and dark-suited, ready to perform a sacred ordinance. I think that “Hope of Israel” in a way illustrated this paradoxical duality of Mormon student life.

The ending scene in “Hope of Israel” is a priesthood blessing, and I was impressed by how respectfully this was done: hands laid on a head as the lights fade to black. I don’t have much of a problem seeing certain priesthood ordinances displayed in works of film or theatre, so long as they’re warranted. But in this instance, the actual words of the blessing weren’t as important as this moment of two male friends offering to give spiritual strength and comfort to a friend who clearly needed it. I felt that the way this scene was done showed a sensitivity to the audience, which I appreciated.

Safe and Sound
Playwright: Ben Crowder
Director: Brian Ramos
Asst. Director: Anna Ellsworth
Actors: Maelyn Gándola (Abbie), Parker Wilkinson (Dave)

Synopis: Dave, recently home from his mission, visits his friend Abbie and discovers that her activities over the last two years have become increasingly, well, unorthodox. She talks about her theories regarding the City of Enoch and the lost 10 tribes of Israel, and confesses to recently have discovered the lost 116 pages of the Book of Mormon on eBay!

Comments: This was very good. I laughed aloud more than twice. Ben Crowder is getting better as a playwright, and Maelyn Gándola did the script justice. The plot was tighter than some other of Ben’s pieces, allowing the interaction between the characters to be the focal point, which for me works best in plays of shorter length. But then, I tend to be more interested in character development than plot development in general.

One of the fun things about this particular play was the almost science fiction turn that it took once Abbie started talking about all of her wild theories. Ben Crowder let his imagination wander to all kinds of bizarre National Treasure-like conspiracies (what exactly was Abbie planning to do with a map of the Granite Mountain record vault?), with very entertaining results. The conspiracy/science fiction elements of this play reminded me of some of the modern Mormon “last days” fiction currently being written by such authors as Wendie Edwards, Linda Paulson Adams, Jessica Draper, Chad Daybell, Stephanie Black, and Greg West (I should in full disclosure mention that I haven’t yet read any of these authors), only Ben uses these elements satirically rather than seriously.

Up Deer Creek
Playwright: Melissa Leilani Larson
Director: Rachel Herrick
Costumes: Bethany Merkling
Actors: Devin Malone (Simon), Sarah Nasson (Anna)

Synopsis: A young mother tries to convince her husband that they should keep their new-born baby, who has some developmental problems, rather than leaving her at the hospital as they’ve been advised.

Comments: This play was short and sweet but explored a difficult issue and, of all the plays, was the only one that took place in an earlier time period. While I wouldn’t say there was anything explicitly Mormon about this work, it tapped into general Christian values of compassion and caring for the sick and afflicted—in this case a disabled baby—that is a situation which, judging from those “Latter-Day Saint Voices” articles at the end of the Ensign, a lot of Mormons have found themselves in. I thought that Melissa Leilani Larson did a good job of imagining what this kind of decision would be like for a young married couple at a time when people were generally less knowledgeable about developmental disorders.

The Wait is Over
Playwright: Arisael Rivera
Director: Alan Bahr
Asst. Director: Jeff Moffat
Actors: Sam Nelson (Robert), Jeff Moffat (Robert’s voice)

Synopsis: A man named Robert sits on a bench outside the temple, having an inner dialogue where he tries to convince himself that he really is worthy to visit the temple for the first time after having lost the privilege.

Comments: This play was really lovely. Next to “Prodigal Son,” it was my favorite of the set. The thoughts that went through Robert’s head were believable, and at times even humorous. Robert ponders his own worthiness, sometimes addressing himself, and sometimes addressing Heavenly Father, trying to gather courage to enter the temple. At one particularly humorous moment, Robert decides to open his scriptures at random in an attempt to gain inspiration and comfort—only to turn unnervingly to a verse about “utter destruction,” no doubt in the war chapters of Alma. Anyone who has tried this with the Book of Mormon has probably had a nearly identical experience.

What could be a touchy subject was dealt with very respectfully, much like “Hope of Israel,” Rivera’s other play in this set. Rivera doesn’t go into why Robert lost his temple privileges to begin with, because in this narrative, it’s not important. The important moment is the moment of struggle that Rivera has imagined: Robert has the institutional Church’s sanction to attend the temple again, but that’s not enough. Having official approval to attend the temple doesn’t erase Robert’s feelings of unworthiness, and neither is official approval exactly the same thing as God’s approval. Robert has to feel it directly from God. In a way, it’s a recasting of a tension that Mormons are often preoccupied with—how to negotiate the principle of personal revelation and the principle of obeying counsel from Church leaders. These factors involved in Robert’s struggle made this play very Mormon, yet the character was drawn in a way that would make his struggle understandable to a non-Mormon audience, which is why I thought it a strong piece.

Book of Mormon Story
Playwright: James Goldberg
Director: Jana Lee Stubbs
Asst. Director: Sara Forsyth
Actors: Jane Barlow (Sis. Griffeth), Christina Phillips (Sis. Nielsen), C. Adam Stallard (Carter), Asenath Rallison (Lindy), Wyatt Felt (Tim)

Synopsis: Two sister missionaries on the first day of a transfer go to teach a discussion to a man who relates to the Book of Mormon in a rather strange way: King Noah was a coke fiend?

Comments: The premise of this play was quite good: we all relate to tenants of the Gospel based on our own experiences. That’s the beauty of the Gospel—it’s universal. What was a bit peculiar was that in the context of this play, the protagonist, Carter, goes one step further than relating to stories in the Book of Mormon—he re-interprets them for the sister missionaries based on his own experience, constructing a new story of the Abinadi/King Noah/Alma episode where King Noah is addicted to cocaine. The implication being that Carter has struggled with drug addiction.

Carter continues to use Book of Mormon narratives and imagery throughout the scene to first indirectly and then more directly express his own struggles. He says that he thinks the illustrations in the Church’s published version of the Book of Mormon are all wrong—that they aren’t “translated correctly.” Take King Noah, for example. In the picture, King Noah is the image of corpulent extravagance, but “sin doesn’t look ugly on the face of it,” he explains. That’s why it’s tempting and deceitful—because people who are sinning look like they’re having the time of their lives. The protagonist continues to describe his own struggles in the context of Book of Mormon imagery, saying, “I feel like I’ve checked out of the great and spacious building, but I don’t know how to get down.”

I enjoyed the thoughtful discussion that was the focal point of this play. Some of the critiques of Mormon cultural quirks (e.g. Mormons portraying sin as aesthetically as well as morally unappealing) just narrowly escaped giving this play a message-driven rather than a story-driven bent. But Adam Stallard lent earnestness to the character that was appealing and made some of the more message-y elements work. And the bit at the end with the Goth boyfriend whose aunt “turned Mormon” last year and is super excited to see the sister missionaries was just really great. Well played, that.

December Roses
Playwright: Elizabeth Harris
Director: Dick Merkling
Asst. Director: Dean Gibbons
Actors: Katrina Southwick (Kate), LoriAnn Caldwell (Celeste), Ted Lee (John)

Synopsis: Having just lost her fiancé, Kate travels to Paris with her sister Celeste on what was supposed to be Kate’s honeymoon tour. The evening after arriving in Paris, Kate sits on a bench in front of the Eiffel Tower feeling not-so-great, when a teenager with a camera strikes up a discussion with her. They end up in a debate about what kind of backdrop is best for taking pictures of the Eiffel Tower—a cloudy sky or a clear sky.

Comments: The message of this particular play seemed to be this: if you believe in God, all of the struggles of life add up to something ultimately beautiful and redeeming. With an eternal perspective, the cloudy days are just as important as the clear days (i.e. trials are important to spiritual growth) and thus have their own beauty when viewed from this perspective. This message was brought about in the debate mentioned—the teenaged John explains that the best pictures of the Eiffel Tower have clouds in them, whereas Kate argues that a clear sky is better. It’s an understandable perspective. Kate’s fiancé just died, after all, and she doesn’t have a strong belief in God. With that kind of perspective, painful experiences can seem meaningless.

At first I felt like the situation portrayed in the play was rather unrealistic. What kind of teenaged kid goes out of his way to try to comfort a strange woman sitting by herself on a park bench in Paris? I kept thinking, “This kid has gotta be from Idaho. No one else would be that nice.” And then, to have the discussion develop into a kind of allegory about seeing things with a spiritual perspective was very nearly a bit much. But again, as in “Book of Mormon Story,” the earnestness of the actors and the interesting development of their interaction drew me into the story in spite of myself. By the end of it, my disbelief was duly suspended, and I was genuinely touched.

Prodigal Son
Playwright: James Goldberg
Director: Katherine Gee
Asst. Director: Ben Crowder
Actors: Dave Dixon (Son), Katherine Way (Girlfriend), James Goldberg (Dad)

Synopsis: A son becomes increasingly interested in Mormonism, much to the disapproval of his father, who joined the Church some years ago and then lost his faith.

Comments: This play was really, really excellent and thus deserves its own post. Which I plan on writing once I’ve purchased the script and read through it. Which brings me to this item of news: New Play Project is selling scripts of some of their selected productions for $10. While the binding isn’t top quality, it’s a decent product, especially considering that the proceeds go to helping support NPP’s future productions. A worthwhile investment, I must say.

Language (and literature) has often been used as an effective means of conveyance: eliciting change, advocating change, perpetuating a discourse/conversation, even setting out a message that the writer feels strongly needs to be heard.

Known first to Mormons for her moving and lucid poetry, Carol Lynn Pearson attained new fame with the publication of Goodbye, I Love You, the tale of her life and marriage to her homosexual husband Gerald who dies from AIDS. Since his death, Pearson’s main goal has been to reach out and embrace gays and lesbians everywhere, especially those caught in the confusion and often paradoxical predicament of finding oneself gay and Mormon.

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James Goldberg recently sent me the essay he read before two series of New Play Project’s religious plays (”Psalms” in Oct. 2006 and “Thorns & Thistles” in Oct. 2007). His sentiments resonated with me, so with his permission, I share them here:

Toward a Mormon Renaissance

In 1920, while riding on a train, Langston Hughes wrote a poem on the back of a napkin. Maybe you’ve heard it. It was called “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” and it goes like this:

I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

It’s a beautiful poem, I’ve always thought. And a wise poem. There’s something about the way that poem reaches so far back into the past and so deep down into the soul that communicates a grounded, mature kind of confidence. You know what I’m talking about? That’s a poem that can give depth and strength instead of just describing them.

It’s incredible that it does that, when you think about it, because that poem was written in 1920. You know what most people thought of black history and culture back in 1920? The vast majority of white Americans and all too many African-Americans thought of Black as different, backward, inferior: the blacker physically or culturally, the worse. There was nothing to be confident about, as far as most people were concerned. But Langston Hughes wrote my black soul is deep like the rivers and 86 years later we remember him for it. Not because he was the greatest individual writing talent of his day, but because he had something to say–something that went beyond himself. He wrote about the culture and heritage of his people with pride and artistry. He and other like-minded writers, not ashamed to call themselves Negro poets, gave this nation a literature of black dignity. All those individual writers, works, and goals clumped together are remembered as the Harlem Renaissance. And I hope that long after hundreds of movements from the last century have been forgotten, the Harlem Renaissance will be remembered; because America desperately needed the gift it offered to take another step toward being whole.

So. Here we are, 86 years later, in a makeshift theatre in the Mormon community. Mormonism is technically a religion, but it’s also a tradition and a people–trust me, my last name is Goldberg; I understand how these things work. A religion can form a people. It’s been done before.

This people is a good people. We have a rich heritage that goes back far beyond the founding of the church in 1830. We’ve got unique institutions that have helped us keep a sense of community in an age when many communities are falling apart. And we have wisdom, you know? We know something about how to treat each other, about our relationship to God, about the spiritual power that runs all through this world. And along with that, we’ve also got online resources with wisdom on food storage and stuff. Profound or practical, inherited wisdom is part of who we are.

And who are we? Unlike most tribes and peoples, none of this heritage is restricted to any ethnic group or country. Anyone can choose to adopt this heritage as part of their own identity. The whole world is getting less national and more global and Mormonism is one of the world’s first great post-national cultures.

All this means that Mormon writers, like the men and women of the Harlem Renaissance, have a lot to say…if—let me emphasize that—if we have the courage to undertake the same kind of project they did. I mean, black history and black culture in 1920 were already incredibly rich. The black community already had an incredible strength, but hardly anyone had ever managed to write about it in a meaningful, resonant, artistic way. There was a black tradition and a black heritage but no body of black literature. The Harlem Renaissance changed that, and that changed the world.

What I’m trying to say is that maybe it’s time for us to help change the world again. Look, I know it sounds arrogant to say that. I’m 24 years old, and the only times I can focus on theatre full-time are when I’ve saved up enough money to quit my day job for a few months. I mean, I don’t even have insurance–who am I to change the world? Who’s Katherine Gee or Ben Crowder? Who are any of the actors you’re going to see tonight? You know, most of them aren’t even trained actors. They’re just nice people who wanted to help us put on these plays.

Who are we? Well, we’re Latter-day Saints. We’re people who have wrestled with some of life’s big and little issues and have been lucky enough to have help. We’re people who think and act a little differently than most of the country does. We’re people who know a little about God and a little about life. And we’re people who believe that’s enough to say something big.

Are we going to make a difference? I hope so. And I take hope in history.

See, when Langston Hughes was sitting on that train in the evening, watching the sun set, when he wrote, with the voice of his people, “I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins,” he was 18 years old.

The scripture says that through small and simple means great works will come to pass. And maybe with our work, your prayers, and the heritage that binds us, they will tonight. And maybe this will be a part of a process that people can look back on some day and call a Mormon Renaissance.

So, thanks for coming. And enjoy the show.

This year’s Association for Mormon Letters annual conference was at BYU on Saturday, March 8. The theme of the conference was “Literature as Scripture and Literature in the Scriptures,” and there were some great presentations. I would have to say my favorite was Harlow Clark’s discussion of depictions of the Atonement in LDS literature. The number of sources he pulled from and the connections he made were fabulous. I had a difficult time keeping up. In the same session, previous to Harlow’s comments, David Hulet talked about “Creating Mormon Narrative,” and Harlow’s discussion showed how Mormon writers have done just that, which made me think of the ongoing discussion we’ve had at Mormon Renaissance about a Mormon aesthetic and how our own particular doctrines and history contribute to that aesthetic. One example Harlow gave as a distinct Mormon doctrine was that, while other Christians tend to believe that God is the one necessary being and all other beings are contingent on God’s existence, Mormons believe that men and women are co-eternal with God. Harlow then went on to describe how this shows up in Mormon writing (I regret that I was so engrossed in his discussion that I didn’t write down the examples he gave).

Along with some lovely sessions, the AML Awards luncheon was pretty great. Next to the reception in the evening after the conference, the luncheon is my favorite part (other than the sessions). Where else can you find a gathering of the most influential and involved people in Mormon letters? This year’s luncheon was highlighted by Eric Samuelsen’s presidential address. It was not only deeply profound, it was riotously funny. Eric first spent considerable breath scathingly condemning the concept of mission statements. He’s never relished the idea of writing a mission statement for AML, but at the same time, he recognizes a need to discuss why exactly AML aims to promote Mormon letters. While he never got around to actually writing a specific mission statement, his address characterized the need for inclusiveness in Mormon literature. He said, “It takes courage to write even a bad book, courage and determination and invention. Even writers who aren’t very skilled do something astonishingly revelatory. We can even see the face of God in bad novels.” He then went on to explain that in the Mormon literature community, we need everyone. We can’t dismiss writers (and their readerships) that we don’t like, though we can read them critically and discuss what about them works and what doesn’t work quite as well. It was an inspiring speech, and I highly recommend reading it. I also recommend perusing the list of Mormon authors who won awards this year (thank you, Patricia Karamesines, for posting the winners). Among the winners were Coke Newell for On the Road to Heaven (novel), AnnDee Ellis for This is What I Did (YA novel), and Carol Lynn Pearson for “Facing East” (drama). Segullah and the BYU Studies special “Mormons and Film” issue both won special awards.

As mentioned, one of the loveliest parts of the AML conference–and the one that’s least attended–is the reception at Charlotte England’s (widow of Eugene England) home. The England home is a delightful red brick house North of the BYU campus that, with its exotic furniture, original Brian Kershisnik and James C. Christensen paintings, and numerous overflowing bookshelves (many of which house works by Mormon authors), provides an elegant and cozy atmosphere conducive to mingling and discussion. Many of the AML Award winners (as well as other LDS writers who attended) read from their works: Carol Cornwall Madsen introduced us to some of Emmeline B. Wells’ more radical feminist writings in An Advocate for Women: The Public Life of Emmeline B. Wells, Todd Petersen entertained us with the exploits of the small-town central-Utah natives in his novel Rift, Harold K. Moon brought to life the trials of a plural wife being forced to relocate to Mexico with her husband in The Leah Shadow, and Michael Collings read from of the earthy, LDS-themed poems in his Elementals. Other readers included the editors of Segullah and winners of the Irreantum short fiction contest.

The AML conference, I have to say, provided much food for thought. I gained some insights about Mormon letters that I hope to be posting about over the next couple of weeks. I encourage others to share their experiences at the AML conference. For another overview of the conference, see Darlene Young’s (AML secretary) discussion at her blog.

Saturday evening I attended New Play Project’s most recent show, entitled Eccentricities. For those unfamiliar with New Play Project, you can read about it at their website or in an AMV interview with James Goldberg, one of the co-founders. NPP is a non-profit organization founded by a group of young Mormon playwrights for the purpose of promoting theatre in Utah Valley. Their vision itself is something to admire—that they believe in supporting theatre, specifically theatre that draws upon the unique perspective of the Mormon community—but the way they go about fulfilling their goal is even more remarkable: Every two months, NPP puts forth a theme and invites anyone from the community to respond to it by submitting a 10-minute one-act play that, if accepted, will be performed by volunteers with a series of other short plays. Some of their past themes have been “Beneath the Surface,” “Psalms,” “On the Road,” and “Thorns & Thistles.” Every four months (i.e. every other performance) NPP comes up with a theme that is specifically meant to encourage plays having to do with religious topics.

NPP’s idea is radical, but it’s working. When I first became familiar with the group—a little less than a year ago—they were performing their shows in auditoriums on BYU campus and at local libraries and even in backyards: anywhere they could find a venue. They were having some difficulty getting people to audition and were having to ask actors to take on more than one role in a play. Just in the last several months, however, the group’s excellent organization and advertising seem to have been paying off. They had so many people audition for Eccentricities that they had to turn people away because there weren’t enough roles for everyone who wanted to participate. Also, they recently found a permanent home with the Provo Theatre Company, which has a lovely little theater that allows for more polished productions—lights, music, sound effects, etc.

The plays that were a part of this weekend’s performance were quite good, but before I discuss the plays themselves, I want to mention the introduction James Goldberg gave to Eccentricities before the show. James said that the production we were about to see was an act of faith. Two months previously Eccentricities had been nothing more than a name and a date, and now it was a full production. It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment what a remarkable feat NPP pulls off every two months and how faith really is an important part of the process. It made me think back to my LDS literature class when we talked about how writing—or the creation of any kind of art, for that matter—is an act of faith. When a writer puts pen to paper, the writer must trust that the words will come. When a writer publishes a story, it’s an act of faith—that somehow what the writer intended to convey will be communicated to those who read the story. There’s a lot of talk about trusting one’s readers in creative writing courses, but it seems to me that playwriting must be even more this way. Handing a play over to a director and a group of actors who will translate the carefully-crafted script to an audience must require an enormous amount of faith and humility on the playwright’s part.

And now, to give an idea of what NPP’s productions are like, here is a brief overview of the plays themselves, with short summaries and a few of my thoughts:

“Sick Cat” by Adam Stallard

Brent is unusually devoted to his cat, Mr. Snuggles, a devotion that causes conflict between him and his girlfriend, Sandy. With the help of his roommate, Brent is able to trick Sandy into feeling sympathy for Mr. Snuggles and in the process gain an appreciation of Mr. Snuggles’ rather, um, unique attributes, such as his talent of smashing inedible food into the floor with his head.

“Quirky” would be the best way to describe this particular play. The play didn’t go much beyond the quirky level, and the ending wasn’t as strong as I’d hoped, but next to “Codgers in the Night,” this play made me laugh the most. What worked about it was that you never see Mr. Snuggles, but from the frequent discussion of his antics, we learn quite a bit about the cat—that he’s wretchedly ugly and not the most hygiene-conscious of felines, and that he has some peculiar habits. These habits are vividly described and thoughtfully interpreted by the two roommates, who seem to find their pet an endless source of entertainment and fixate on him almost to the point of idolatry. By the end of the play, one can’t help but gain an odd sort of fondness for the imaginary cat, just as Brent’s girlfriend does.

“Sunny” by Katherine Gee

A father and his daughter, Sunny, are driving down the highway in the father’s truck. Along the way, it becomes evident that the father, a truck-driver by trade, knows very little about his daughter and that the two of them have a strained relationship—a fact that the father deeply regrets, though he hides his regrets behind a cheery countenance and boisterous, unending chit-chat.

This play takes on the difficult topic of strained family relationships. The father’s attempts to feel close to his daughter and apologize for his years of absence are both humorous and sad. What didn’t work quite as well for me was that at times the father’s pain manifested itself in such delusional ways that I began to wonder if he was teetering on the edge of sanity, rather than just being deeply pained by his poor relationship with his daughter. Overall, however, it was rather well done and the scene at the end where Sunny hugs her father when he drops her off before hitting the road again is genuinely touching.

“Snowstorm” by Ben Crowder

A group of eccentrics, having been caught in a snowstorm, end up in a motel together and hilarity ensues. The eccentrics consist of an actor who breaks into different accents every several minutes and fancies himself to be something of a lady-killer, a nurse who faints at the sight of blood, a young hypochondriac who is convinced he has the plague, and a married couple—the wife of whom thinks she’s pregnant, though she clearly isn’t. Their amusing interactions and odd antics reach the highest pitch when it’s revealed that a serial killer is on the loose near their motel.

“Snowstorm,” I would have to say, was the most slapstick of the plays–reminiscent of screwball comedies from the 1940s. Most amusing was the accent-shifting actor, Roscoe, played by Rafe Gándola. The focus of the story seemed to be on the eccentric characters themselves rather than a story arc. This may have been something of a weakness because, as with “Sick Cat,” the ending felt a bit like an afterthought. Still, it was entertaining and Ben’s amusing dialogue made me laugh. I wonder what the play would have been like had there been more than 10 minutes to develop the characters.

“High School Reunion” by Katherine Gee

The setting is a five-year high school reunion where a man named Chris has been asked to emcee the evening’s events. Bad jokes and awkward moments fill the first half of the play as Chris recounts memories from high school, sometimes revealing things that oughtn’t to be revealed about other classmates. Toward the end of the play, Chris realizes that he was made emcee as part of a prank to publicly embarrass him and that his other classmates consider him to be a loser.

This play, which was essentially a monologue, with Brenan Cartwright performing as Chris, was extremely awkward and painful to watch. It felt very similar to “Sunny,” Katherine Gee’s other play in this show. Both include characters who are trying to put on a happy face in spite of their insecurities. In “Sunny,” the ending is hopeful, but in “High School Reunion,” the ending is the low point of a play that starts out light-hearted and loses all of its light-heartedness 2/3 of the way through. My impression is that these plays were meant to portray these awkward, loser-ish characters sympathetically, which I think worked.

“Irrational Numbers” by Adam Stallard

A daughter finds it difficult to relate to her mother, who has Asperger’s Syndrome and an obsession with irrational numbers, particularly the square root of two. The conflict reaches a point where the father insists the mother and daughter to go on a hike, hoping that if the two of them spend some time together, they’ll come to understand each other better. The story is couched in a narrative about the Pythagoreans, a group of mystics who had unusual habits and believed the world could be explained in terms of whole numbers.

One of the things that I thought worked in this play was the framing of the mother/daughter story with the narrative about how irrational numbers were discovered. I thought it effective that the daughter told the story of the Pythagoreans, rather than the mother. Through this narrative, the feelings of the daughter become evident—how she begins grudgingly to describe the oddities of the Pythagoreans, which parallel the oddities of her mother—oddities she resents. As the mother/daughter story and the Pythagorean narrative progress, not only do we begin to understand the mother’s obsession with irrational numbers, but we see the daughter beginning to appreciate her mother’s peculiarities and trying to find the beauty in her seemingly irrational behavior. A difficult topic to take on in 10 minutes, but surprisingly successful, I thought.

“Codgers in the Night” by Stephen Gashler

Three inmates at an old folks home, led by the visionary DeLoy, hatch a wild plan to foil the nurses and escape from the home…by walking out the front door.

Stephen Gashler’s play impressed me the most of the bunch. It was a fine bit of comedy, well-written and splendidly performed: Nick Herrick, Christian Cragun, and Rachel Herrick all excelled in their roles as DeLoy, Melville, and Doris, respectively. Gashler’s success seems to have come from carefully choosing a simple story with an interesting setting and characters and then milking each of these elements for all they were worth. I appreciated the attention that was given to detail—both in the dialogue and in the acting. Also successful was the implicit contrast the play made to action movies where heroes escape from prison or the villain’s lair or some other such sticky situation. DeLoy’s donning a tux for his grand escape and his heroic attempts at throwing the nurse off his tracks by putting marbles on the stairs were priceless.

“As Simple as That,” “Smaller Than That,” and “That Simple” by Arisael Rivera

A family consisting of a mother, father, and daughter spend an ordinary evening together at home.

At the talkback session after the performance, Arisael Rivera said that he’s thought of developing this particular play into a sitcom. This was very much the feel of the play. Nothing in particular happens—no major events, but a lot of funny little discussions and interactions take place. Particularly entertaining is the ongoing situation of the father’s concern over receiving his coupon mailer already opened. He later discovers that a postal worker stole some of his coupons, and he’s not sure whether or not he should press charges because he didn’t really care that much about the coupons anyway. Other events include the daughter introducing her Hispanic boyfriend to her parents, and the parents trying to figure out where to get dinner. This play was also fairly successful, I thought, in its development of the characters. This may have had something to do with the fact that it was three times as long as the other plays. I enjoyed watching the interactions of the characters and appreciated Rivera’s ability to find humor in everyday things that happen to ordinary people.

I’ve been impressed with what I’ve seen of New Play Projects’ productions, and Eccentricities didn’t disappoint. I look forward to seeing and reviewing future shows. If any other readers attended the show, please respond with your own thoughts about the play—I’d like to hear other people’s reactions.