COHORT REPORT: 𝙉𝙞𝙣𝙖 𝙎𝙞𝙢𝙤𝙣𝙚: 𝙁𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙒𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙣 – 𝙒𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙥𝙤𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡 𝙞𝙨 𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙢𝙪𝙨𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡

By Karla Sorenson
MRT Cohort

At the confluence of Black History Month and Women’s History Month, Merrimack Repertory Theatre delivers a powerful exposé of racism and sexism in America through the eyes – and voices – of four very different black women. It’s a unique rendering by Christina Ham. Both a full-fledged play and a musical, 𝘕𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘚𝘪𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘦: 𝘍𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘞𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯 demonstrates music’s ability not just to entertain, but to heal and motivate, a political tool more effective than a bullhorn – or a gun.

Directed by Kenneth L. Roberson and loosely based on Simone’s song “Four Women,” the play mirrors the artist’s real-life transformation from jazz pianist to activist in the aftermath of the 1963 bombing of the 16th Baptist church in Birmingham that claimed the lives of four girls. It’s a transformation that is bittersweet for, she says, “I gave up who I was to become who I am.”

The play opens with Simone – representing the angry and defiant Peaches in the original song – amid the rubble of the church, struggling to write a protest tune, one that would be “like throwing ten bullets back at them.” Their world shaken to its core, the other women enter the church one by one – a pilgrimage of sorts – and each responds uniquely to this unforgivable assault on the African American community, young women, and the sanctity of a church, as well as to the day-to-day ignominies they encounter. The brilliant set by Christopher Rhoton, with its soaring and partly-shattered stained glass, lends an otherworldly tone to the play. Are these four women indicative of who the murdered girls might have become? A child’s shoe stained with blood becomes a symbol of all that has been lost.

The question of identity looms large in 𝘕𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘚𝘪𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘦: 𝘍𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘞𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯. While the women in Simone’s original song are purposely archetypes, the women in Lam’s play are complex, defying the destiny of “mule of the world.” Though loud and proud, they still must contend with the low expectations that suppress and diminish their talents. The women themselves struggle to overcome their own prejudices and narrow-mindedness. Aunt Sarah, unapologetically “black” and “strong” and played by the inestimable Deanna Reed-Foster, feels the burden of providing food for “twenty people,” while being ridiculed as a “Jemima.” Sephronia – “lighter than a paper bag” – is “between two worlds.” Actor Ariel Richardson convincingly relays the sting Sephronia feels when “my own people turn against me.” The final woman to arrive is Sweet Thing, played by Alanna Lovely. Enticing, with desirable “fine” hair and “tan” skin, she is alternately self-destructive and menacing; everything in her life has been reduced to a commodity. She alone refuses to be named, stating “My real name is my business.”

The women’s varied histories lead to different paths as they seek answers about the world and themselves. Should we “go slow” and maintain hard-won rights – or rally for revolution? Is violence an acceptable option when one’s very life is at stake? Do you straighten “woolly hair” or go natural? But despite the differences in the women’s experiences, prejudice is the great leveler, whether it’s sexism in the civil rights community or racism in the women’s movement. Angry at women being segregated during King’s march on Washington, Nina warns of the dangers of accepting a lesser role. “If you aren’t in the spotlight—you’re in the dark.”

This is a brutally honest play. The women fling barbed insults at each other, as colorism and classism is in full display. “High yellow.” “Good hair and green eyes.” The hierarchy of feminine beauty is another factor in their oppression, one that seems to defy all cultures. So how do they find their unity, their true voices? Well, through song of course. On stage, Dionne Addai, in an achingly candid portrayal of Simone, holds forth like a fire and brimstone preacher. No longer willing to “do it slow,” she also rejects violence – for now, stating “I’ll slay folks with my lyrics and save my bullets for later.” The music in Four Women is as varied as the characters themselves. From gospel to folk to soaring anthem, the actors fill the theater with sound and hope – even in such turbulent times.

The theater world needs more plays like 𝘕𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘚𝘪𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘦: 𝘍𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘞𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯. This is a work that sticks with you and makes you think and want to learn more, even as you are humming the tune of “Mississippi Goddam” all the way to your car.

At Merrimack Repertory Theatre until March 8.

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Cohort Report: 𝗠𝗥𝗧 𝗽𝘂𝘁𝘀 𝗹𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝙈𝙖𝙮𝙩𝙖𝙜 𝙑𝙞𝙧𝙜𝙞𝙣

By Karla Sorenson
MRT Cohort

Playwright Audrey Cefaly is not afraid to write a love story. Or a two-hander. Or a lot of two-handers. Because, she says, “People don’t fall in love with plot. They fall in love with people.” Cefaly gravitates toward “stories of healing” and characters whose lives are afflicted by what she calls “reckless apathy.” Alternately comedic and elegiac, 𝘔𝘢𝘺𝘵𝘢𝘨 𝘝𝘪𝘳𝘨𝘪𝘯 proves the redemptive power of love – in all its aspects.

Perspective is what the clever set by Kris Stone brings to mind. Two homes sit on opposite sides of the stage, while the action takes place in the middle ground, where laundry is hung, memories are shared, and dreams revived. And beyond that middle ground, your eyes zoom to infinity – the future and all its potential for love and loss.

Kati Brazda and David Adkins deliver powerful performances as Lizzie and Jack. Initially, the new neighbors find that middle ground quite broad. Wounded by life, they eye each other warily over an ubiquitous clothes line, flinging one defensive witticism after another. As director Eleanor Holdridge notes, Lizzie and Jack are each “suspended in their own world.” Both teachers, they share another commonality: grief – his, lingering over the years like his wife’s prolonged death, while hers, more recent, like an open sore.

Cefaly skillfully peels away the layers of armor that Jack and Lizzie have adopted to deflect the memories that haunt them. When Lizzie – fearful of her nascent attraction to Jack – considers a fence between the two houses, he asks her: “Just what exactly are you tryin’ to wall in?” Lizzie’s “trust issues” with the Maytag dryer aren’t just meant for laughs; they reflect her general opposition to the false god of convenience; she knows life is not so easy.

But Jack is in a different place, his grief dulled by time. He challenges Lizzie’s isolation, even as he struggles with his own self doubt. Jack’s in-your-face display of a Catholic statue intrigues Lizzie as much as his naked torso, which she can’t help but admire from the safety of her porch as he performs the minutiae of suburban life. It’s forbidden fruit that could save her – or damn her. The question is not only whether she is ready to have faith in love, but whether she is ready to have faith in herself.

And to figure it all out, one needs that perspective. The kind that time – and compassion and introspection – can bring. Only then can we be confident that no matter what hard times came before, there is always hope for the future.

𝘔𝘢𝘺𝘵𝘢𝘨 𝘝𝘪𝘳𝘨𝘪𝘯 – now playing at Merrimack Repertory Theater in Lowell until February 2.

Cohort Report: Banish the Holiday Blues with The Wickhams

By Karla Sorenson
MRT Cohort 

It’s no secret, the holidays can be bittersweet. Channeling Ebenezer Scrooge, we wistfully retrace the shadows of things that have been, while stressing over Christmas present (and presents) and wondering which shadows shall remain unaltered by the future.

To relieve all that heaviness, one seeks the safety and warmth of the holiday show. Lighthearted and bighearted, they provide the salve of escapism that gets us through the season. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘪𝘤𝘬𝘩𝘢𝘮𝘴: 𝘊𝘩𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘮𝘢𝘴 𝘢𝘵 𝘗𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘭𝘦𝘺 – a companion piece to last season’s 𝘔𝘪𝘴𝘴 𝘉𝘦𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘵 at Merrimack Repertory Theatre – exceeds on all measures. But leave it to MRT to throw in a few twists that distinguishes this holiday show from the average Hallmark special.

Uber playwright Lauren Gunderson along with co-writer Margo Malcolm have not just re-imagined the characters of Jane Austen, they have created their own world by adding a touch of “upstairs/downstairs.” The Darcy’s leisure class stands toe to toe with the vibrant men and women who inhabit the lower level of the Pemberley estate. These are the folks who do the hard work, not just physically but also intellectually, as it turns out. They also seem to have a lot of fun, judging by how often the upstairs folk gravitate downward. (Yes, there are a lot of metaphors in this play.)

But not only does 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘪𝘤𝘬𝘩𝘢𝘮𝘴 acknowledge the humanity of the working class, the play recognizes their inherent equality, a radical notion in Austen’s day. A similar subtext is the woefully restrictive lives of the female characters, regardless of class. Dependent on husbands, fathers, and benefactors, with limited work options, it’s no wonder that women flocked to the mills of industrial England (and New England) for employment, as difficult as the work was. These are the painful truths that propel 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘪𝘤𝘬𝘩𝘢𝘮𝘴 past mere pleasant diversion.

But what a diversion it is. Like 𝘔𝘪𝘴𝘴 𝘉𝘦𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘵, there are gorgeous costumes and sets, mysterious letters, handsome actors, and – of course – love, both the romantic and sibling variety. Also from last year are Katie Grindeland as the ebullient but troubled Lydia Wickham and Alexis Bronkovic (𝘚𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘚𝘬𝘺) as Elizabeth Darcy. Rounding out the cast are Lewis D. Wheeler playing the bighearted Mr. Darcy; Laura Shink as Mrs. Reynolds, the wise housekeeper; Paul Melendy as Brian, the ambitious footman; Philana Mia as the self-doubting housemaid, Cassie; and finally Ed Hoopman, playing Darcy’s arch nemesis, George Wickham. (What is he doing at Pemberley?) Directed by Shana Gozansky – who noted that it is every director’s “dream” to do a holiday show – 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘪𝘤𝘬𝘩𝘢𝘮𝘴 is both entertaining and provocative. In other words, the best kind of holiday show.

At Merrimack Repertory Theatre from Nov 26 to Dec 22.

CAMBODIAN ROCK BAND

Gail Gauthier
By MRT Cohort

When you arrive in the theatre, you will see a sparse, stark set except for microphones and band instruments. There is a truss – steel beams with hanging lights and audio equipment. The black rolling trunks filled with “outfits and props” allow the actors to perform story changes on stage. And, there is music of many artists including Dengue Fever, the American band from LA that has played Cambodian psychedelic rock and popular music of the 60’s and 70 ’s from 2001 to the present.

The music fills the MRT theatre to tell one story of Khmer Rouge, the brutal regime of the Cambodian genocide under the leadership of Pol Pot, which resulted in the deaths of about 2 million people from 1975 to 1979, nearly a quarter of Cambodian’s population.

If you are confused by these two seemingly different connections, you will be moved by the intertwining relationships of people within these cultures and times performed by amazingly talented actors.

At the opening of the play lights flood the theatre and the music is loud and not understood, unless you are Cambodian and speak Khmer – the second most widely spoken Austroasiatic language. Soon, you will soon understand the power and strength of the story that is about to unfold.

The play brings forth the history of 1975 when the US pulled out of Vietnam…as the music ceases, a savage song expresses the rise of Vietnam entering Cambodia for destruction of the forces. During this time, the Khmer regime attempts to erase music and musicians once and for all. So, the music, then stillness, on stage, serves as the background of fear, silence, and horrifying violence.

At the heart of this is a dramatic, angry, loving relationship between a Cambodian father, residing in NYC, who visits his daughter while she is doing research work in Cambodia. Try to imagine the impact of their time together reflecting his history of war and genocide, filled with secrets, with her seeking fulfillment of his distant past. It becomes both terrifying and loving, as only it can be when we learn our parents are more than we knew them to be.

As the story unwinds, the music rocks, the dancing vibrates and we understand, not the words perhaps, but rather the way music can bring forth the history, comedy, and mystery of this outstanding play by Lauren Yee, and we understand how it is she has won so many awards.

The talent of the actors, musicians, stage direction, lighting, sound and director is riveting. So, if you have not yet seen this “unabashed jukebox musical concert” (Broadway World), to celebrate the resilient bond of family and enduring power of music, please do so before it leaves MRT November 10th after the Sunday Matinee.

Gail Gauthier, MRT Cohort

MRT’S HILARIOUS PLAY CLOSES THE SEASON

By MRT Cohort Gail Gauthier

 

Cry It Out is the last MRT production this season. It is roar-out-loud hilarious. The opening scene of two women sipping coffee in the backyard, holding baby monitors, sets the tone for humor. It is quickly obvious that Jessie (Erin Felgar) and Lina (Natasha Warner) are from vastly different backgrounds. As moms of newborns, they have common emotions and feelings, the bond of their friendship. They engage in non-judgmental humor and support. There are lots of tears and breast milk spilling on the stage.  Playwright Molly Smith Metzler, has the two women in survival mode socializing their babies.

Along comes Mitchell (Mark David Watson), the wealthy next-door neighbor, pleading with the women to be friends with his wife Adrienne (Polly Lee), who is not connected with her newborn.  When Adrienne arrives at the backyard coffee-time, she obviously does not want to be there. She is wealthy, artistic, and egregious toward the women and about newborn care. Jessie tries to engage her, while Lina’s responses are very blunt (and hilarious).

So, there sits three women together because they have newborns – conceived, born, and raised in different styles. So, what do they have in common?  The playwright says it is challenges facing new parents and unfair socioeconomics for childcare. And parenting is not only a woman’s issue. That is surprisingly seen through the male character, who does most of the loud crying-out in frustration.

The differences or similarities of the women emerges when they discuss if they will let their baby be left alone to “cry it out” until they fall sleep. Who will, or will not, use this controversial “teaching” sleep method?

I sat in the front row between two men of different ages who were laughing out loud all during the play, as I was. This play has humor for all. The characters and emotions are perfectly portrayed.

BEAT SCENE: A singular event in Beat history is taking place in Jack Kerouac’s hometown

Beat Scene

By Peter Anastas

“But we haven’t lived.  We have only thought.”

–Jack Kerouac, The Haunted Life

Lowell, MA—A singular event in Beat history is taking place in Jack Kerouac’s home town.

The Merrimack Repertory Theatre has, since March 20, been staging to great acclaim a dramatization of Kerouac’s long lost novel, The Haunted Life.  The production will run until April 14, 2019.

Written by Sean Daniels, the company’s outgoing artistic director, and co-directed by Daniels and christopher oscar peña, the play is based on Kerouac’s second novel, believed by Kerouac to have been lost in a New York taxi cab shortly after it was written, in 1944.  As it turns out, Kerouac actually left his only copy of the hand-written manuscript in the closet of Allen Ginsberg’s dormitory room at Columbia.  Discovered later, and held in private hands until 2002, the manuscript re-surfaced in a Sotheby’s auction catalogue in New York, where it eventually sold to an unnamed buyer for $95,600, according to U-Mass Lowell English professor Todd Tietchen, who edited the novel for publication in the US by Da Capo Press, in 2014.

The novel, as published, is a nearly 100-page integral text, meant by Kerouac to be the first section of a longer novel that was never completed. Instead, Kerouac went on to write his first published novel, The Town and the City (1950), in which the story of the Martin family, begun in The Haunted Life and based on Kerouac’s own French-Canadian family, is given fuller treatment.

What is so important about The Haunted Life for an understanding of Kerouac’s oeuvre, is that in this early manuscript nearly all of the major themes of the work to come are present—the yearning to move, to travel, to be on the road; the tension between Kerouac’s attachment to his family and home town and his desire to free himself from both; and his desire for important intimacy in conflict with his need to set all entanglements aside in order to write.   There is also Kerouac’s incredible sense of place: the Lowell streets on summer nights, talk from neighborhood porches, trees shaking in soft breezes, and the silence followed by the thunk of bat on ball from nearby ballgames.

The novel—and the play—focus on Peter Martin, Kerouac’s stand-in, and his family.  Peter is home for the summer after his first year at Boston College, where he has matriculated with the help of a track scholarship.   Peter reads Thomas Wolfe, William Saroyan, and the proletarian novelist Albert Halper.  He reconnects with his high school love Eleanor; and he and his best friend Garabed, based on Kerouac’s friend Sebastian Sampas, talk about the books they will write and the travels they will embark upon around the world.   What neither of them know, as they walk the streets of Lowell until dawn, is that Garabed will eventually be killed in action on the beach at Anzio in the Second World War.  It is a loss that Kerouac will never fully recover from.

Peter is compelled to listen to his father, a Trump-like figure and owner of a failing print shop, who attacks the immigrants who’ve come to Lowell as degenerates that are destroying the city.  The father’s virulent racism, as war rages in Europe and will soon involve America, increases Peter’s sense of feeling haunted.  He is haunted by the books he wants to write, the places he hopes to visit, the sex he yearns to experience, and the call of big cities like New York.  What haunts him equally is the possibility of joining the Merchant Marines, which he and Garabed talk excitedly about, along with the war itself, which his friend Dick Sheffield urges Peter to participate in by enlisting in the army (Peter will later be haunted by Sheffield’s death.).

As Peter recollects:

“This was the last of his magnificent summers… Something grave and perhaps terrible was impending, the war maybe, or some violent change in the structure of his [Lowell] world.”

The novel leaves Peter with his personal issues and the pressures on him unresolved.  What writer and co-director Daniels has been able to achieve by the use of Kerouac’s writings about his novel-in-progress, including an existing outline for its completion and correspondence made available by the Sampas family of Lowell, is a play that transforms an intimate yet incomplete novel into a vibrant play.  Daniels has also been able skillfully to incorporate Kerouac’s lyrical descriptions of life in pre-war in Lowell, along with much of the narrative itself into the dialogue of the play and the directly spoken thoughts of the characters that connect the viewer with the time and place of the drama:

“Soon it would be summertime dusk.  Voices below rose softly in the air. A tender shroud was being lowered on his life. With the darkness and the smell and feel of it would come the sounds of the suburban American summer’s night—the tinkle of soft drinks, the squeaking of hammocks, the screened-in voices on dark porches, the radio’s staccato enthusiasm, a dog barking, a boy’s special nighttime cry, and the cool swishing sound of the trees: a music sweeter than anything else in the world.”

Daniels’ The Haunted Life is staged in two acts. The setting consists of a backdrop of windows that appear to represent the windows of the mills and factories of Lowell, which Kerouac himself described as “eyes” looking out on the world and through which the workers of Lowell peered daily.

In keeping with the MRT’s reputation for world-class theatre, each of the actors has worked regionally as well as nationally, and many internationally.  Their resumes, described in the play’s attractive program, are impressive.

Peter Martin is played by Raviv Ullman, who not only looks like the young Kerouac but speaks as he must have.   Joel Colodner plays Peter’s father Joe, gruff and opinionated but with a tender side.  Peter’s long-suffering mother is portrayed by Tina Fabrique.  Vichet Chum is precisely how one might imagine Garabed to be while reading the novel; and Caroline Neff is an ideal Eleanor, who loves Peter but learns to protect herself from his conflicted and wandering spirit.

Kerouac is in good company at the Merrimack Repertory Theatre.  Founded in 1979, this versatile company has mounted prize winning productions of Waiting for Godot, Hamlet, Harold Pinter’s Homecoming, Marsha Norman’s ‘Night Mother, canonical plays by Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller, and a host of exciting plays by new writers.

In recent years, the theatre has held a staged reading of Kerouac’s only play, The Beat Generation, the script of which was discovered in a New Jersey warehouse, in 2005, and a full production of Kerouac’s bittersweet Lowell novel, Maggie Cassidy.

But all the stops were pulled out for the MRT’s stunning production of The Haunted Life, created in collaboration with Jim Sampas and the Estate of Jack Kerouac.   One came away from the play with a sense that Kerouac had been given both the attention and the respect due him and his work by his hometown.  You could enjoy the play without ever having read a work of Kerouac.  This would not prevent you from feeling in awe of the writer’s early struggles to become one of America’s most important novelists, in the face of family strife, impending war, and the attractions of the new bohemia emerging in New York and San Francisco.  If you had read Kerouac and knew him through his books and the numerous biographies that tell his story, you would emerge from the play with an even deeper understanding of how seriously Kerouac lived his writerly vocation.  The seeds of everything Jack Kerouac would become may be found in both the novel and the play.   But in the play we participate in ways that only a beautifully made and staged drama can make us see and feel what the words on the page open us to: the pathos of a major writer’s life.

    (Peter Anastas is a Gloucester MA native and writer.  He has written about   Kerouac and the Beats in Beat Scene, House Organ, and Dispatches from the Poetry Wars.  This article will appear in the Spring 2019 issue of Beat Scene.)

 

 

 

Cohort Report: Kerouac’s Nashua Roots

Tracing Jack’s Nashua Roots by Suzanne Beebe

Many of those familiar with Jack Kerouac know he was born, raised, schooled, and buried in Lowell, Massachusetts. Fewer, however, know that his parents, paternal grandparents, aunts and uncles all came from Nashua, New Hampshire — a busy mill city of the era, somewhat smaller than Lowell but with a French-Canadian population that at one time was proportionately higher. Kerouac’s paternal grandfather, Jean-Baptiste Kerouac, migrated from Quebec in 1890 to work in Nashua, and the six Kerouac children who survived to adulthood lived and worked there until Jack’s father Leo, with new wife Gabrielle in tow, broke ranks and moved to Lowell for a printing job there.

But the Lowell and Nashua Kerouacs continued to visit back and forth, and Jack was well-acquainted with his grandfather’s and other relatives’ houses in Nashua — and most probably with other points of interest, including the French churches and cemetery so intertwined with the family’s history. It’s surprising to many that Jack himself is not buried in the family plot at St. Louis de Gonzague Cemetery, where his parents, brother Gerard, and daughter Jan Michelle rest beneath a large memorial stone engraved with their names. But he had married his childhood friend Sebastian’s sister, Stella Sampas, and had ended his own journey in the Sampas family’s Edson Cemetery plot in Lowell.

For anyone wanting to explore the Kerouac family’s roots in Nashua, a tour is available every year as part of the Lowell Celebrates Kerouac festival held the first week of October in anticipation of Kerouac’s anniversary of death on October 21. The tour is led by Reverend Steve Edington, a life-long student of Kerouac’s work and a pastor for twenty-four years at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Nashua. Realizing his good fortune in living and working where Jack’s family first settled, Reverend Edington made ample use of city, church, cemetery, and library records in Nashua to flesh out the Kerouac family’s history, residences, and relationships in the Gate City and surrounding communities. He sought out current family members, collected family stories and memories of Jack and the relatives he would have known at the time, and learned about the rich cultural and religious life of the French-Canadian communities entrenched in what are still known as Nashua’s French Village and French Hill.

In 1999, he published Kerouac’s Nashua Connection, a now out-of-print book that can still be found on Amazon and other websites for purchase through third-party resellers. But for those who want to see for themselves and hear from a knowledgeable source about where and how the Kerouacs of Nashua lived, worked, and worshipped, the annual tour, which begins and ends in Lowell, is the route to go. And the tour’s final stop at the headstone in St. Louis de Gonzague Cemetery is a heart-wrenching pulling together of the major threads in Jack’s troubled and tumultuous life.

For anyone interested in taking the October tour — or taking advantage of other tours and events available as part of the Lowell Celebrates Kerouac Festival — I suggest bookmarking the following URL and getting on the Festival Committee’s e-mail list: http://www