When I first met Aunt Dan on the page, it was clear to me that she is passionate and bold, and that she lived her life with an almost violent intensity.  I absolutely fell in love with her free spirit—with her Victorian blouses and nineteenth century men’s caps—and I was drawn in by her worldliness and non-conformance to societal rules.  Aunt Dan seems to let every moment of her life on earth have its richness.  I knew upon my introduction to Aunt Dan that getting to know her was going to be both a treat and a challenge.

Lemon recalls so vividly that some of Aunt Dan’s favorite memories included a week long rendezvous with a married man eating decadent foods and hardly leaving the bed as well as that pivotal moment of falling in love with a woman sitting stark naked on the sofa sharing the secrets of her life.  And just as I was enjoying learning about this interesting woman Lemon calls Aunt Dan, (though of no relation), I was stunned to find this whole other complicated layer.  Something took Aunt Dan off guard, shaking her inner being and coloring the rest of her life–and that something makes her fight hard to give everything she can to Lemon while destroying a very close friendship with Lemon’s mother.

As I got further into the play, it became clear to me that this “wordy” play, as some critics have complained, is rather a complex set of images, thoughts, powerful moments and truths—and though on the surface there’s no action in the play, I’ve learned that the action is in these characters’ hearts and minds—the evolution of the thoughts and emotions is the action.

As I sat with Aunt Dan, taking her on word for word, her firm concepts on war blew me away.  I became afraid of letting myself become this woman on stage.  She faces the heart of conflict and the ugly truths of war dead on and sharply asks “what about the things that would have happened the next day if the bomb hadn’t been dropped?”  She tears downs critics and journalists who mock our country’s leaders, saying they would be begging for help if they found themselves in the middle of the jungle facing the enemy.  She continues to say that these critics and journalists are cowards who never had to make such weighted decisions and instead they live this great way of life that is only possible because of our country’s leaders making grave choices.  Her intense views on Henry Kissinger’s role in the Vietnam War simply shocked me.  I do not share the same views as her, or at least I didn’t think I did at first—and this has been challenging to me as an actor.  How am I supposed to let awful images pour out of my mouth and with such venom?  And such things that people argue to this day are war crimes?

In preparing for rehearsals, I sifted through the events of the Indochina War leading to the Vietnam War and read through excerpts of the book, The Trial of Henry Kissinger.  But then I found that reading the black and white of the war still distanced me from the core of emotional truth that Aunt Dan harbors towards Henry Kissinger and why she so strongly believes in preemptive war.  My homework has had to become more visceral, looking at images and reading personal accounts of Vietnam and even the atomic bombs dropped in WWII.  The more I search to the find the truth in what Aunt Dan’s saying, the more I understand where she’s coming from—and that scares me beyond belief. War is happening right now, but that doesn’t cross our minds as we’re sitting in Starbucks.  I don’t know, it makes sense that I was initially stunned by some of Aunt Dan’s ideas, but they started to make sense.  She says “if there are people attacking our friends in Southeast Asia, you and I don’t have to go over there and fight them with rifles—we just get Kissinger to fight them for us . . . all these other people use force so we don’t have to, so we can sit her in this garden and be incredibly nice.” I had moments where I felt uncomfortable by how much I could begin to understand her perspective.  I have to think–if we believe our friends in another country are being murdered by power hungry people who are confiscating our friends’ farms and raping their children, why wouldn’t we fight to end that?  And if there are only one or two countries where this is happening, why would we wait until the number of countries we’ll have to fight are twice the number we’d have to fight now?

This piece is wildly intimidating–as Wallace Shawn states and doesn’t shy away from, evil triumphs in this play.  It’s as if the actor and audience is asked to let their mind ponder darker thoughts of what would happen if we truly were outright killing for power.  I am thankful that director Matthew Reeder dedicated the entire first week of rehearsals to discussion, table work, and several full read throughs of the play.  We started to dissect and digest this play from the onset, and as we put this play on its feet, the questions and discussions didn’t stop.

This play takes us through some very dark and murky places, but I have to say I am captivated.  I read something somewhere that if it doesn’t scare you, it’s not courageous.  I am sitting here right now so thankful for BSTC’s courage, my fellow cast member’s courage, and I am very much looking forward to seeing the audience take this journey with us.

–Brenda Barrie

I suppose that it is worth noting that this past season has been a challenging one, not only for BSTC but for many emerging theatre companies around the country who suddenly find themselves struggling to hold onto the small audiences they worked so hard to develop. Global socio-economic woes has kept the philanthropic institutions as well as the general public close to the tickers on CNBC and to their wallets. People are losing jobs, families are suffering, and artists are having to face the reality of programming to a public that is acutely and justifiably distracted.

The general whisper in the theatrical breeze sounds something like this: attendance is down, funding is way down and underpaid artists are having to focus their already overtaxed efforts on simply making ends meet. To complicate matters in a profoundly mindblowing Only-In-America fashion, the state of Texas apparently passed a bill that all but outlawed the profession of theatrical lighting design. All of this adds up to a massive loss of confidence, not only from the general public but from the normally resilient artistic crowd. The theatre-tech blog “Theatre For The Future” puts forth one of the most thought-provoking and eloquently angry examples of this growing feeling of helplessness.

And yet, like the blogger above, BSTC is not quite ready to give up the ghost. In the face of such widespread disenchantment and national distraction, we will continue to proffer the only gift that we know how to give. BSTC has re-committed itself to its distinctive mission and its transformative medium.

All great art attempts to remind us of our undeniable common humanity. I cannot think of a time in recent memory when we needed that reminder as much as we presently do. Theatre, with its uncommon ability to reach through the fourth wall, possesses the unique ability to unify a dark roomful of strangers. And by exploring the universal bonds of family in all its glory, glitter and gore, the BackStage mission endeavors to set the national trend of divisiveness aside, and examines instead the multitude of ways that human beings attempt to connect to one another.

In November of 2009, BackStage Theatre Company kicks off its 10th Anniversary Season. In this powerful triad of complex plays, BackStage invites you to step inside a thematic series of doors. Through the light that spills through the cracks of the family room, the bedroom and the nursery doors, we will afford our audiences intimate glimpses into the lives of three very recognizable, very complicated families. It is our ultimate hope that as the lights go down on the final show of our 10th season, you might be able look around you and feel a little less alone in the dark.

The 10th Anniversary Season:

Door one: the family room.

Aunt Dan and Lemon, by Wallace Shawn

Nov/Dec at the Chopin Studio Theatre

BackStage Theatre Company begins its 10th Anniversary Season by asking you to step inside the home of a woman called Lemon. Lemon has a story to tell. What begins as a deceptively simple coming-of-age yarn about her seemingly ordinary family soon becomes a complex meditation on the persuasive power of intimacy. Written by one of the more controversial playwrights of the contemporary American theatre, Aunt Dan and Lemon is a both a mordant comedy and a chilling cautionary tale about the subversive nature of influence.

Door Two: the bedroom.

Orange Flower Water, by Craig Wright

Early Spring at the Chopin Theatre

After years of maintaining a close, platonic friendship, David and Beth begin an inescapable love-affair with heartbreaking consequences. Through a series of theatrical, voyeuristic scenes which all take place on or around a single bed, we see the painfully intense unraveling of both troubled marriages and, eventually, the construction of a very fragile but authentic new beginning for everyone concerned. Written by one of the most promising young playwrights of this generation, Craig Wright’s “Orange Flower Water” is an unsparing but ultimately hopeful examination of the unremitting need that humans beings have for one another.

Door three: the nursery.

The Play About the Baby, by Edward Albee

Late Spring at the Chopin Studio Theatre

Two chairs stand in a private room inhabited by a gleefully naive couple whose youthful desire for each other is hardly interrupted by the coming of their first child. Soon, however, their playfully sexual exploits are bizarrely interrupted by a mysterious and nameless older couple who may (or may not) have sinister motives. Penned by one of America’s preeminent playwrights, The Play About the Baby is an absurdist black comedy, reminiscent of burlesque in it’s high spirits and banter, that grapples with such issues as reality and the games we play to define it, the ambiguity of existence, and the agonizing bonds between parents and children.

We at BackStage Theatre Company are quite busy these days. On February 27th, we opened our Jeff Recommended production of Shelagh Stephenson’s “The Memory of Water,” which plays through March 28th. We are also now in full pre-production mode for the final show of our 2008-2009 season, “On An Average Day” by John Kolvenbach. At the same time we are shoring up preparation for our upcoming 10th season.

And yet, our ensemble still manages to find time to make impressions in the greater theatre community.

We currently have five ensemble members participating in three Jeff Recommended productions around town. In addition to Rebekah Ward-Hays and Ron Kusava appearing in our own “Memory of Water” (with scenic design by our very own Heath Hays), BSTC Ensemble Member Michael Pacas is currently playing in Griffin Theatre’s Jeff Recommended production of “The Robber Bridegroom.” And BSTC Ensemble Member Brenda Barrie is turning some serious heads and making a major critical impact with her much lauded performance in LifeLine Theatre’s Jeff Recommended “Mariette In Ecstasy,” now playing at Lifeline Theatre.

And now, BSTC Ensemble member and Managing Director, Katherine Keberlein, is currently rehearsing to join the cast of the much ballyhooed mega-production of “Don’t Dress for Dinner,” now playing at the Royal George Theatre. Katherine was least seen in BSTC’s 2008-2009 revival of “How I Learned to Drive.” We are thrilled for her!

You can check out a feature article about Katherine and the extension of “Don’t Dress” here.

Exciting times for our Ensemble!