Displaying items by tag: Lauren Gunderson

Prolific, and routinely recognized as being one of the most produced playwrights in the country, Lauren Gunderson’s range is as impressive as the quality and popularity of her work.  Inspiration for her plays often springs from things she loves, with history and science at the top of the list.  They can also arise from sheer curiosity or when she notices a subject matter void.  I and You can be said to fall in both latter categories.  Now playing in Lake Forest’s Citadel Theatre, it burrows into the lives of people we don’t see enough on the theatrical stage, the young.  By centering on youth, she gives us an opportunity to better understand ourselves from a rarely observed perspective. 

In I and You, a genetic condition diagnosed at birth has Caroline (Amia Korman), now 17, homebound.  She used to be able to go to school, but the progression of her illness now has her doing remote learning exclusively.  With a wonderful wall of photographs and images covering its back wall, a not too frilly bedroom and her stuffed turtle make up her universe.  The only human contact she has is with her mother; someone we never see.  Understandably, she’s both surprised and alarmed when Anthony (Jay Westbrook) bursts into her room after a perfunctory knock on the door looking for help with a homework assignment.  Directed by Scott Shallenbarger, it’s a tense encounter.  Anthony’s Black, and there’s a tinge of racial fear detectable in the scene.  But through it we get a baseline on the character of these two young people; or at least on how they relate to other people.

Caroline’s prickly, defensive and sharp-tongued.  We soon detect too that she’s angry about not having a normal teenage life and psychologically weary of waking up to the possibility of imminent death every morning of her life.  Anthony’s just a regular pleasant teenager intent on getting an assignment done.  Sports, other interests and procrastination have put him behind the eight ball and, with the assignment due the next day, he’s a little anxious.  When he lets slip that he volunteered to team with Caroline on this project, he’s compelled to admit he did so because she was a topic of curiosity at their school, and he wanted to meet her.  Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass is the assignment and, despite being an avid B-baller, Anthony’s a big fan of Whitman’s poetry.  Beautiful and still groundbreaking 170 years after it was originally published, Whitman’s classic looms large over the entire play.  So much so you might find yourself checking your bookshelves for a copy when you get home to reacquaint yourself with the poet’s seminal genius.

Gunderson’s writing and Shallenbarger’s direction perfectly capture the almost exasperatingly rapid speed and quirky fluidity of teenage-ese.  Well matched in its fluency, Caroline and Anthony also happen to be very intelligent and willing, once trust is gained, to speak candidly to one another.  Something not easily done with someone who’s accustomed to closing herself off from a world that hasn’t given her much to believe in.  What Caroline doesn’t want is pity, especially in the form of reflexive or obligatory niceness.  It’s the reason she initially closes the door to kindness of any type from Anthony. 

Picking up cues from the way Anthony talks about his father, his love of jazz and his interaction with girls, she feels he has it all.  It’s a notion he quickly disabuses her of by revealing personal flaws and confessing to missteps he’s taken that bring balance to her perception of him.  Flashes of vulnerability that they both share lead to frank, thoroughly absorbing dialogues about death.  When she confesses her dream of being a photographer and travelling the world, and then demurs saying she knows it’s all fantasy, it's Anthony’s turn to bristle by demanding she “stare it down and don’t give up”.   Both young actors display a natural and refined intuition for their craft. The deeper their roles take them, the greater their appeal as they invest an uncanny honesty into their characters.  As they disclose more and more about themselves, barriers between them begin to quietly tumble.  Something that they both notice, resist, slowly accept and finally embrace. 

As with so many who share her craft, displaying the universal need for connection between people was a conscious goal of the playwright in I and You.  That the two characters be of different races or ethnic backgrounds was a casting condition for Gunderson in this play as well.  As the playwright has noted, it’s reflective of the real world and doing so created a silent but constant reminder of the arbitrary boundaries we create between ourselves.   As Caroline and Anthony gain deeper insights into each other, and as they explore together the wonders and possibilities Whitman’s words engender, the barriers separating them, including that of race, fade like a mist.  They quite unconsciously begin to focus on what they have in common.  An affection that only deep understanding arouses begins to germinate, preceding an ending that’s so startling it makes some people gasp. A shock that prods us to take stock of ourselves and the world we live in through a more illuminating and expansive light. 

Unobtrusive yet discreetly distinctive, David Solotke’s set design held insinuating touches that added notes of mystery to the play and Jodi Williams’ lighting during pivotal moments amplified its drama in hugely rewarding ways.  Paired with an exemplary story, very fine acting and discerning sure direction, Citadel’s production of I and You is a delight that can be savored long after the lights come up. 

I and You

Through March 23, 2025

Citadel Theatre

300 S. Waukegan Road

Lake Forest, IL  60045

https://www.citadeltheatre.org/

“It may be fiction but it’s not fake.” says French revolution-era playwright Olympa De Gouges to Charlotte Corday in a fictionalized meeting between the two in Lauren Gunderson’s play ‘The Revolutionists’. Rounding out the chance encounter are Haitian slave revolt activist Marianne Angell and Queen Marie Antoinette herself. If you find yourself only recognizing Marie Antoinette as a prominent female figure of the revolution, don’t worry, Strawdog’s production of ‘The Revolutionists’ will catch you up to speed in this delightful new comedy.

In the midst of the Reign of Terror, Olympe De Gouges (Kat McDonnell) is struggling to write a play that will leave a legacy. Her friend Marianne Angelle (Kamille Dawkins), needs a place to stay while her family returns to Haiti. A frantic pre-assassin Charlotte Corday (Izis Mollinedo) rushes into her studio to commission some final words before she goes to murder Marat. And then somehow, a lost and nearly condemned Marie Antoinette (Sarah Goeden) wanders in. The four women discuss each other’s ambitions, disappointments, joys and outrage as the French Revolution entered its darkest period.

Director Denise Yvette Serna’s modern vision for this show is very cool. The costumes by Leah Hummel are even cooler. Lauren Gunderson’s dialogue is also very contemporary for her fantasy meeting of these often-overlooked revolutionists. For a script about the condemned to the guillotine, this play is awfully funny. In many ways it’s shining a mirror up to our own world politics and asking us what has really changed. Those familiar with the French Revolution will be tickled by all the trivia thrown in.

The performances here are stellar. Kat McDonell leads this ample cast of Strawdog ensemble members. Her character is the narrative backbone of the play as she tries to write what she’s seeing. The real Olympe De Gouges delivered a powerful rebuttal to National Assembly on the forgotten women’s rights. Sarah Goeden’s somewhat satirical performance as Marie Antoinette is almost a Karen Walker-ish version of the mysterious queen. Most of the evening’s laughs come from her sympathetic but hopelessly entitled shtick. This cast’s secret weapon is Kamille Dawkins whose portrayal of freed abolitionist Marianne Angell is devesting by the end. The play is mostly a comedy, but Dawkins’ touching performance mines the depths of the Gunderson’s script and finds the true heart of the play.

As Sophia Coppola did in 2006, Gunderson’s play attempts to make the French Revolution seem modern or rather, more allegorical to our own times. She succeeds when the women from divergent paths find the common things between them: love, fear, motherhood, and motivations. The ways Gunderson weaves history with fantasy and structures it in such a way that you never want it to end is riveting. Another touch borrowed from Coppola’s cult classic 2006 film is the killer modern soundtrack chosen for this production. St Vincent’s ‘Paris is Burning’ is well placed and well appreciated. Strawdog seems comfortable in their new North Center space and this production of ‘The Revolutionsts’ is very confident. This will likely be a hot show as Gunderson was the most produced playwright in the country last year. If it’s a French Revolution era drawing room comedy you’re after, or even if it’s not, ‘The Revolutionists’ will surely spark your interest.

Through December 29 at Strawdog Theatre Company. 1802 W Berenice Ave. 773-644-1380

Some of us are born with a passion, a passion for music or art or math. In the case of First Folio’s Silent Sky, one woman gives up almost everything in her personal life because she senses furiously, in her heart, that HER passion is going to lead to a discovery that will help all of humankind. This special woman, Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868–1921), turns out be absolutely correct. 

Like the popular film "Hidden Figures", the 2011 play Silent Sky by playwright Lauren Gunderson, now making it's Chicago Premiere, tells a very important real life example of how women have been making significant contributions to Science and the Arts against almost impossible odds due to sexism in the work place. Leavitt is wonderfully played with a great zesty and nerdy enthusiasm by Cassandra Bissell who adds just the right amount of seditious touch to the headstrong and very determined character. She is one of the women termed "computers" by their male employers who has been given the great "honor" of painstakingly cataloging all the stars in the sky captured on glass plates by a telescope. As a new employee, she is never allowed to operate the high-powered telescope or use privately her own ideas to validate her own discoveries while earning a whopping $.25 an hour. 

Leavitt is a proud, brilliant Radcliffe graduate. She jokes with her male supervisor Peter Shaw (keenly played by Wardell Julius Clark) that she and he are in fact "colleagues" that "Radcliffe is basically Harvard in skirts." As they fall in love with each other, he begins to soften on some of his more sexist behaviors including "borrowing" ideas from Leavitt to give to the professor (to whom she will never directly report) her discoveries by trying to claim them as his own. Leavitt is hired as one of Harvard astronomer Dr. Edward Charles Pickering's "computers" or, as they were referred to as "Pickering's Harem”.

Leavitt's work came at a time when we as earthlings had no idea where we were located in the Milky Way nor did we know how far away the billions of stars and galaxies made visible by the super powerful new telescope really are from our planet. Leavitt observes closely the luminosity of a class of stars known as Cepheid variables. Others had thought their flashes of light completely random, but through years of study and an epiphany provided by her musically inclined sister, Margaret (Haley Rice), who is composing a symphony in between giving birth to multiple children, Leavitt discovers that the stars are actually making sounds, a music of the stars. This eventually provided the ONLY key to measuring the distance between Earth and other galaxies. Creating the standard to measure the distance of stars from Earth, many male astronomers like Edwin Hubble greedily feasted on her published work to make names for themselves but poor Henrietta dies of cancer before one of them finally realizes she deserves to be nominated for, and win, the Nobel Prize - but the Nobel is not given posthumously and so she was never even nominated for it. 

Annie Cannon (Jeannie Affelder) and Willamina Fleming (Belinda Bremner) play her fellow "computers" with a lusty, strong intelligence. The three characters develop a genuine family, a sisterhood, believing in Henrietta and encouraging her to take her work home with her (the glass plates are not allowed to leave the observatory) even when she is forced to move home to Wisconsin to take care of her dying father. 

In the end, Henrietta gives up a promising offer of marriage to Shaw, the chance to have children of her own, and even her dream of traveling the world in order to complete her work. 

Although I thought the gray monotone set in the chapel at Mayslake Peabody Estate was awfully depressing and didn't change enough to give us the sense of her whole life passing through it's dull indistinguishable doors, we are finally rewarded with the lighting display and music at the end of the show thanks to John "Smooch" Medina's projections, combined with Michael McNamara's lights and Christopher Kriz's musical score. The entire effect was spectacular, almost as if we are finally able to see the universe through Henrietta's passionate, intelligent eyes.   

There really needs to be more biographical plays like this one written with respect and sympathy about women who have changed our place in the world for the better - forever. It is a terrible waste of human intelligence and a dirty shame that if you mention the name Henrietta Swan Leavitt to anyone girl child or even adult today that her life will ring no bells, her name strike no sense of recognition, gratefulness ignored for the contributions she made and the doors she broke down for female scientists to come. 

Touching, beautiful and inspiring.

I highly recommend this thoughtful, poetic and understanding production for showing that some women will give up everything for the love of their work and dedication to humanity. Remembering theses outstanding individuals inspires and empowers us all, male or female, to chase our dreams to the end. 

Superbly directed by Melanie Keller, Silent Sky is being performed at Mayslake Peabody Estate in Oakbrook through April 30th. For more information on this wonderful show or to purchase tickets, click here.