I saw Resurrection Theater’s “Talking With“ last night at The Artisan Theater. The play is 11 monologues delivered by 11 different women. The cast was Margaret Morneau, Gay Cooper, Lindsay Jones, Eliza Webb, Ruby Sketchley, Laura Kaya, Susan Madden, Amy Williams, Shaleen Schmutzer-Smith, Rachel Lanyi and Tara Henry. The play was directed by Shawn B. O’Neal.
The play consisted of the actors, a few chairs, a basket, several very interesting lamps, marbles, cowboy boots. The stage was black.
What we have in “Talking With” is a study in existentialist drama. Which is not to say absurdity, or angst. It’s more like “existentialist quirk”. Because the characters are caught in the middle of their story, and alone, they become eccentric. Well they actually are eccentric to start with, but more so because they are completely out of context.
Some of characters had a distinctly mystical attitudes — the snake handler who discovers emptiness, the baton twirler who communes with god through baton-flagellation, the woman who sees lamp light as a metaphor for life-energy. Some were more-or-less common: a bag lady, a pregnant woman in labor, a rodeo worker. One was grieving for a lost mother and expressed that grief with marbles, one was grieving over loneliness and stage fright, another was a over-sexed neurotic at an audition. There was a frightened woman who made a patch-work costume to hide behind, and a women who experienced enlightenment through scars and tattoos.
What they all had in common was drama. The pacing was even, the characters completely at ease. The monologues were delivered in-the-moment. As the characters were suspended it time, so was the audience. This particular kind of suspension of disbelief encourages a subtle out-of-the-body experience.
A cast of 11, each one standing alone on the stage, limited props, no cues, no breaks. It’s what I would called naked theater. The show runs until April 22nd.
Cheers.
