Tea time

Nuts! This weekend is going to be the bomb! The only way things could get any better for the Wesleyan campus this weekend is if I get laid.

Seriously, folks. I wasn’t kidding last week when I said, “there are about one million shows being sponsored by Second Stage this semester.” And about a hundred of them (read: two) are happening this weekend. It’s going to be a huge weekend of mammoth proportions. Playwrights will become directors, Beat authors will become playwrights, the past will become the present, and alcoholism will become a reality for us all. There are many (again, read: two) exciting shows going up this weekend in the ’92, and even more (read: infinity) reasons to come out and see them.

This week: “The Same House,” by Martha Jane Kaufman ’08

AND

“Life and Death in the Charity Ward,” by Charles Bukowski

Exciting reason to see “The Same House:” the director is also the playwright!

Kaufman, who has been writing and directing her own plays since high school, began working on the script for “The Same House” about a year ago. When she decided last spring to direct her own production of it during the fall semester, the script seemed to be completed. However, bringing the text into rehearsals proved that maybe things weren’t as fleshed out as she had expected. “I had intentionally left these gaps in the text,” she explained, for possible directors or actors to play around with, “but now I realize that I’m more interested in the space than in the text.” This experience of writing and directing her first full-scale production was, to Kaufman, “really overwhelming.” But, when given the script, the actors immediately joined in her collaborative energy, taking creative liberties and helping her to patch up the script.

In creating “The Same House,” Kaufman set out to create something challenging, both for potential actors and directors and for audiences. The script is structured in order to undercut the dominant American dialogue which Kaufman feels is flawed in at least two different ways. “The mainstream narrative is really heteronormative. We need to challenge that constantly.” With “The Same House,” Kaufman is interested in confronting the ways people think about queerness and lesbianism. Additionally, the play casts aside the traditional narrative conventions of the linear model. Characters exist as fantasies, or as extensions of others in the story. The liminal seems to meld with the concrete as characters travel through a reordered space and time.

When asked if she had gained any sense of her own personal style in the process of creating “The Same House,” Kaufman replied, “Style? Well, now I know how to trust my instincts. I know how to make big choices.”

Exciting reason to see “Life and Death in the Charity Ward:” it’s an original adaptation! And, I’m in it! And, if you are lucky enough to snag a seat in the front row you just might get a sneak peak of my own or fellow castmates’ genitals! For real!

Anthony Nikolchev ’08 decided last spring that he wanted to share Charles Bukowski with Wesleyan through his own theatrical adaptation of the Beat author’s texts. He was attracted to the seeming moral absence of Bukowski’s stories, where one must struggle to glean any redemptive qualities in the main characters, or the author (who, Nikolchev would like to add, “is very popular in Europe”). Bukowski’s texts also posed a danger in presentation to a progressive-minded crowd like Wesleyan, because of the author’s fairly blatant support of alcoholism and misogyny. This risk peaked Nikolchev’s interest, this potential to fail, revealing that, “Wesleyan is a good place to do the wrong thing.” The issue in adapting Bukowski’s texts, however, was their inherent un-theatricality. Most of his stories span across a plethora of locales, providing a distinct challenge in staging. So, Nikolchev went about sorting through his favorite Bukowski short stories – i.e. “The Most Beautiful Woman in Town,” “The Gut-Ringing Machine,” “The Fuck Machine,” “Twelve Flying Monkeys Who Can’t Copulate Properly,” “Politics is like Trying to Screw a Cat in the Ass,” or “6 Inches.” Then he came upon “Life and Death in the Charity Ward.”

The story encapsulated the many tragic truths of Charles Bukowski’s life: a victim of alcoholism, a victim of classism, a victim of disfiguring acne, and a victim of himself. These comprised Bukowski’s unnamable “pit of shit in his stomach” that Nikolchev hoped to share. He adapted the story into his own 30-minute, one-act play, highlighting Bukowski’s dark insight towards classist dejection and society’s isolation of subcultures. Says Nikolchev, “He is left to die with those others left to die and those who have left them to die.”

Together, with an especially savvy team of designers (Set: Marty Schapiro ’08; Lighting: Frani Geiger ’07; Costumes: Rachel Fischhoff ’08), and a rather tremendous cast (if I do say so myself), Nikolchev’s vision of obscenity and visceral truth becomes a reality. In the words of Bukowski, “We sat and talked and drank and smoked. Then we fucked. We fucked as the red horse flew. It had ended a better night than most.”

“The Same House” opens Thursday, Sept. 28 in the ’92 Theater and runs through Saturday, Sept. 30. Performances: Thursday at 10:30 p.m. Friday at 10:00 p.m. and Saturday at 2:00 and 8:00 p.m. Starring: Keren Dasken ’10, Brittany Delany ’09, Chiara Di Lello ’10, Rachel Fischhoff ’08, Rikki Goldenberg ’09, Greg Malen ’07, and Susanna Mryseth ’10.

“Life and Death in the Charity Ward” opens Thursday, Sept. 28 in the ’92 Theater and runs through Saturday, Sept. 30. Performances: Thursday at 8:00 p.m. Friday at 8:00 p.m. and 12:00 a.m., and Saturday at 10:00 p.m. Starring: Jesse Coburn ’09, Kieran Kredell ’08, Lee Pender ’07, Austin Purnell ’08, and Randa Tawil ’09.