We reach the end of our final week of rehearsal-room exploration for “On An Average Day.” This has been a breakneck process built around a muscular piece of theatre. As always, the director wants another week of rehearsal, but that is a luxury that we (like so may other smallish companies who rent rehearsal and performance space) literally cannot afford. So here we are.

And as the week comes to a close, as I look out over the approaching onslaught of a whirlwind tech process, I feel charged by the lingering snaps of dramatic electricity that have slowly developed in that tiny room during these last few weeks. Despite a full-blown viral invasion that eventually compromised the health of both actors, forcing me to actually cancel an actual rehearsal (a first, ever) the story stands strong on its skeletal legs. The actors are pointed headlong into the arc of this comic near-tragedy with strong hearts and hungry instincts.

Kolvenbach’s play is a delectible challenge: a visceral two-hander about two decent, flawed men who are battling to hold together authentic lives in the shadow of a mysterious and distant father. It is a play about men written by a man concerned with the increasingly inarticulate nature of the male heart.

On a technical, structural level “On An Average Day” appears to be a back-to-basics excersize: Kolvenbach has placed two complicated characters in a claustrophobic room, loaded them with a volcanic set of given circumstances, and set them loose on each other. And yet, there is something else, something spooky and intangible that lurks around the edges of this seemingly conventional setup. Something like a strange face in an old photograph, or footsteps in an empty hallway, or a sourceless smell. Something haunted, and theatrical.

For the last three weeks, we’ve been thrashing out the story in our tiny flourescent room. In three short days, we take that story, step into the dark, and attempt to turn it into theatre.

When considering the idea of story, any story told anywhere in the world, the question of origin always comes into question. Every story ever told contains both a grain of truth and the seed of a lie. Human tells story, human hears story, human remembers story, human tells story. Between the time that the human changes from the hearer to the rememberer and finally to the teller, the story shifts, taking on characteristics of each subsequent tellers’ history; their own sense of self. Certain details are either emboldened or diminished, and the thrust of the story shifts. The identity of the teller comes into clearer focus as he becomes a summary of the stories he remembers and chooses to call his own. The tellers’ identity is revealed not only by the stories he chooses to tell, but how he chooses to tell them.

“Memory of Water” closed this weekend. In one of the funnier moments of the play, the three sisters bicker over the reliability of a prominent childhood memory. Catherine tells the story, and Mary claims actual ownership of the story’s circumstances. Teresa confirms Catherine’s inaccurate recollection of the story. Mystified, Catherine cannot fathom this new truth. “You appropriated it, because it fits,” Mary explains. In spite of the fact that the events of the story didn’t actually happen to her, the story had become a inextricable facet of Catherine’s identity.

This is the way story infiltrates our lives. For as long as there have been stories and a campfire to tell them around, human beings have used the strands of narrative to bring order and meaning to our own lives. Stories provide us with tangible identities and ground us in a chaotic world. In the course of a lifetime, we collect the stories that float around us and put them to use. The way we use those stories says more about our identities than the origin behind the stories themselves.

At its’ core, a theatre company is simply an organized collection of storytellers. A very wise father of a very wise friend observed that the function of storytellers in a community is to unlock the grip of broken stories and to engage the community in working ones. Soon, BackStage Theatre Company will present its’ final show of the 2008-2009 Season. John Kolvenbach’s “On An Average Day” directly addresses the dire consequences of living a life within the parameters of a broken story.

We, as storytellers and as human beings, need to constantly reexamine our universal stories. To endure, a community needs new stories, and it is our job as theatre artists to tell them. These days we light our campfires from the grid and color them with gels, but we still gather in the dark to hear a good story.

Observing a mid-process, rehearsal-room run of “Memory of Water,” I was awestruck by a particular passage of Stephenson’s remarkable writing. In this mysterious scene, Mary appears to be having a conversation with the ghost of Vi, her mother. As is the case with all great writing, nothing is exactly as it seems. But the enigmatic exchange is full of mystery and regret, pain, and longing.

“VI: You invent these versions of me and I don’t recognize myself–

MARY: I’m not listening to you–

VI: I’m proud of you, and you’re ashamed of me–

MARY: I am not–

VI: I hear you say it all the time. I’m not like my mother, I’m not. I’m like my father. Look in the mirror. Why can’t you see it? Everyone else can. Look at the curve of your cheek, look at your hands, the way they move. You’re doing it now. That’s me. I got it from my mother. She got it from her mother. And on it goes, so far back that we don’t know who began it or on what impulse, but we do it, we can’t help it–

MARY: I’ve inherited some of your gestures. So what?

VI: Don’t try and reinvent yourself with me. I know who you are.

MARY: You don’t know anything.

VI: I look at you and I see myself.

MARY: Have you finished?

VI: Never.”

This remarkable passage of dialogue, so dense with the inescapable legacies that our families imprint upon our psyches, is a paradigmatic example of the kind of thematic questions that BackStage hopes to raise. Enjoy the writing. Come see the show.

Rebekah Ward-Hays

Rebekah Ward-Hays will be seen as “Catherine” in BackStage’s upcoming The Memory of Water. Rebekah is a Jeff Award winning actress and an ensemble member of BackStage Theatre Company. She offers the following thoughts about her ongoing relationshp with this character that she will very soon bring to life on our stage.

“First of all, I love Catherine – let’s just get that out in the open! She is one hot mess, and I can relate to more than a couple of her quirks and downfalls. This play is so beautifully written and the relationships are full of honesty and pain and laughter. It’s a true delight to look forward to the words I get to say and finding all the ways I want to say them. There is something special and frightening about being given an opportunity to play a character with whom you truly identify, especially if it is an identity recognized by some your less desirable qualities! I know what it’s like to talk too much when you’re nervous, to monopolize out of the need to be liked, the desperation and fear at the idea of being alone – all of these parts of Catherine are the things I love about her. Which is why, I guess, I come at her with compassion – because I have to find that for myself in my own “disaster” moments. This play makes me think of my sister and my mother – with whom I have close, loving, passionate relationships. It reminds me of how we’ve always done a dance in terms of communicating – someone wins, someone takes sides, someone loses. This play is a waltz of taking turns and cutting in – dynamics at their best. One of my favorite moments thus far involves a scene at the very end of the play where Catherine recalls something their mother used to do – wake them up at night and have ice cream sodas and dance to Nat King Cole. My own mother loves the snow, and one of my favorite memories is the time she woke my sister and I in the middle of the night, then we all went out into the first season’s snow and made snow angels. Those are the times to remember – when everyone danced together.”

Vi: Have you noticed anything about the view?
Mary: No.
Vi: It’s closer.
Mary: What is?
Vi: The sea. Fifty yards closer. It’ll take the house eventually. All gone without a trace. Nothing left. And all the life that happened here, drowned, sunk. As if it had never been.

These are some of the very first lines in the play The Memory of Water. Vi is Mary’s mother, or more precisely a ghostly vision of Mary’s dead mother. Her observation about the sea keeps coming to me as I ponder the play and its themes.

Water: lapping, washing, erasing, eroding water is the play’s metaphor for the mind losing its memories. When alive, Vi suffered severe memory loss. I keep thinking of her listening to the sound of the sea as her grip on her memories loosened. Just imagine what that’s like. As we get older our memories, once sharp and solid, take on the blurred, slow-motion wateriness that has us groping for names and dates that were once available to the tongue for the asking. Now in my forties I know my mind isn’t as sharp as it once was, and that’s scary. I can only imagine the terror that senility, dementia or Alzheimer’s holds for those afflicted. I mean, who are we if we don’t remember?

And what of others’ memories of us? When we die, do we get slowly washed away in the minds of the people we love until there’s nothing left? To a mid-life aged person like myself (or like Mary in the play) this thought fuels the already persistent mid-life questions that prick and prod at me as I go about my work asking, Is this it? Is what you’re doing now important enough? Will it last? Will we be remembered?

And it’s not just age and death that robs us of our memories. It seems to be a constant human condition. How often does one find that a family member remembers something differently than you do? Do you assume your version is the right version? Is there a right version? Or has each of us rewritten the past in our minds? Memory seems to be not only fleeting, but elastic and malleable. Like water seeking its own level, our memories seem to lack a definite shape of their own and instead assume the imperfect shape of their vessel.

Our design team already has some ideas about how we can bring this watery blurriness into our production. We are excited to play with water sounds and watery colors. We want the set to reflect the way the mind’s eye is often blurred, then brings something surprising into sharp focus. So we will not have hard edges or clear delineations between set and audience. Instead, we’ll blur the lines of reality, making our play a clear spot in a fuzzy world. Wall paper patterns may blur and fade around the edges, photos may lose their focus, furniture may seem less solid at the edge of the room. We’re even playing with the idea of making the air hazy to reflect the uncertain nature of memory.

As I think about all this, the title of the play comes to mind. It’s a reference to a homeopathic theory that asserts that water “remembers” or retains some essence of whatever is dissolved in it, even after all trace is removed. If that’s true, then there’s a hopeful side to our metaphor and to our play. Our water-like memories may wash away and fade, but there’s some essence, something essential about who we are that can never disappear. We’re still us. Even if our minds lose their grip and there is no such thing as a true memory of the past, the family members that shared that past still belong to one another. They’re still a family. Even if we die and are forgotten, in some immeasurable way our influence will still exist in the ether. We are eternal.

This play is about families, and it makes the case that you never stop being a family no matter how old you get to be. It makes me want to call my sisters. It makes me want to understand my mother better. It makes me giggle at our conflicts and it frustrates me in the pursuit of life’s elusive truths. I think I understand my family better because of this play. I know I think about them more because of it. What better goals can a playwright have than these? What better reasons to produce a play? What lasts? Will this? I don’t know, but I’m glad we’re asking the question.

–Frances Limoncelli

About Frances:

Frances is an ensemble member with Lifeline Theatre. She has appeared in their productions of Pistols For Two, Precious Bane, Pinocchio, Bunnicula and as the title role in Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. She has also directed several productions at Lifeline including Simple Jim And His Four Fabulous Friends, The Story Of Ferdinand, Miss Bianca, Half Magic, and Cooking with Lard and Queen Lucia: A Musical Romp. As an adaptor she created The Emperor’s Groovy New Clothes and Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch with Queen Lucia’s composer/lyricist George Howe and the Dorothy L. Sayers mysteries Whose Body?, Strong Poison (Non-Equity Joseph Jefferson Award: Adaptation) and Gaudy Night (Non-Equity Jeff Award: Adaptation). Around Chicago she has appeared in Shear Madness at the Blackstone; The House Of Martin Guerre and Cry, The Beloved Country at the Goodman; Master Class at Northlight Theatre; Falsettos at Appletree Theatre; Lifeline’s Pride And Prejudice for Chicago Theatres On The Air to name a few. At Vermont’s Weston Playhouse she has played some of her favorite roles including Mary in Merrily We Roll Along, Emma Goldman in Ragtime, Carrie in Carousel, Fraulien Kost in Cabaret and Mrs. Montgomery in The Heiress. Frances graduated from the Boston Conservatory with a BFA in theatre performance and an emphasis in directing. This is her first production with BackStage.