Creating a character or performance usually centers on a script, and actors develop their roles around the information given by the playwright. Yet, in creating “Peripeteia,” a senior thesis performed last weekend in the ’92 Theater, Josh Lubin-Levy ’06 and Kaneza Schaal ’06 decided first on actual historical figures as their characters, and, according to Lubin-Levy, “…used the characters to tell the story…we let the characters lead, and actively create a relationship between themselves.”
Based on John Wilkes Booth and Nina Simone, Lubin-Levy and Schaal forged a beautiful and moving hour of theater through a collaborative, creative process, working directly from each figure’s actual statements and documents.
“Our points of departure were these two performers,” Lubin-Levy said. “We worked from the central question, how do you find your way out of tragedy?”
“Peripeteia” sums up the answer to this central question, a Greek word which (according to the program notes) “refers to the moment of reversal – the vortex of transformation in which trauma can lead to knowledge.”
“Peripeteia is a way of getting out of tragedy – it gives us agency,” Lubin-Levy said. The performance circulated around moments of peripeteia for Simone and Booth.
“Genius and madness,” repeated both characters throughout the performance, and their moments of peripeteia seemed to stem from this phrase. Lubin-Levy effectively portrayed Booth’s “awakenings in the face of tragedy” by discussing the invoking of martial law and the eventual burning of Booth’s hometown of Richmond during the Civil War. Addressing elements of the Civil War era often forgotten by Americans who deify and “hero-ize” Lincoln, Lubin-Levy allowed the audience to sympathize with the man who murdered our beloved sixteenth president, a feat which demonstrates Lubin-Levy’s talent as an actor.
Schaal presented Nina Simone’s moments of peripeteia by invoking her music.
“The 1963 Birmingham Church bombing in which four girls were killed (along with many other experiences, perhaps all of them) incited Simone into her protest music,” Schall said. “I was looking at that as her moment of peripeteia.”
Simone realized, in the face of tragedy, “what it meant to be black in America,” and she wrote “Mississippi Goddamn” soon after.
“Mass hypnosis is certainly something that is really alive; I use it all the time,” drawled Schaal as Nina Simone, and, looking over my scribbled notes after the show, I realized how much this line sums up Schaal’s performance.
Schaal brought an absolutely unparalleled presence to the stage, and she channeled her energy into the part so directly I felt almost hypnotized watching her, especially as she portrayed Simone’s moments of peripeteia, radiating the singer’s anger and madness through her realization, her eyes flashing and defiant. Schaal’s voice and movement worked so fluidly together, even as she sat in the audience at points during the performance, and I absolutely believed in her as the role she played.
Schaal and Lubin-Levy invoked the “Antigone” myth to connect their characters, which, as Lubin-Levy said, “fits many eras.” This tactic effectively enabled the audience to draw its own conclusions concerning the characters’ association and relationship onstage, through a popular, well-known storyline. Schaal related Simone’s moment of peripeteia to “the death of Antigone’s brothers and Creon’s edict that one of them should not be given proper burial [as that which] incited Antigone into her resistance and rebellion.”
“Our primary focus in this project is acting,” Lubin-Levy and Schaal explained in the performance notes, and their piece allowed the audience to focus directly on that aspect through the show’s lack of set.
“Part of the intention behind ‘Peripeteia’ was that audience members would absorb what resonated with them from the performance,” Lubin-Levy said. While I believe ‘Peripeteia’ allowed the audience members to react and reflect in their own fashion, I felt a much stronger connection with it after discussing the show with Lubin-Levy. Many directors and actors stage plays hoping to leave the audience “thinking” long after they exit the theater, yet, without understanding the creators’ process and purpose in the making of this piece, I fear the audience may have exited the ’92 feeling a little unconnected or slightly confused by the performance, while still enjoying it. Therefore, the audiences’ full appreciation of the piece may have been contingent on the actors’ “talk-back session” after the show, a good idea to allow the audience a fuller understanding of the performance, but its necessity portrays how the piece needed an explanation in order for the audience to fully connect with and appreciate it. While criticizing this aspect of the play, however, I realize that senior theses and college theater exist for experimentation, and Lubin-Levy and Schaal took full advantage of that – quite a difficult and challenging task, and their results surpass any performance I’ve seen here.
Remarkable actors, Schaal and Lubin-Levy created an amazing piece of theater through an arduous process, working through two extremely multi-faceted characters, and struggling with challenging historical themes. “Peripeteia” stands as an example of student theater that forced both actors/creators to take enormous risks that directly paid off in the form of an effective and moving performance.
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