Do you believe in magic?
By KAREN SHADE, 7/10/2005
From left, Coyote played by John Cruncleton with Cat played by George Romero and the Moon played by Whitson Hanna in "References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot." STEPHEN PINGRY / Tulsa World
Troupe takes on challenge of staging 'magic realism' play by Jose Rivera
When the cacti close in around you and the moon plays a violin to woo a lonely woman, you understand that you've stepped away from ordinary life. But don't call it surreal.
Instead, "References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot" doesn't try to find a better or alternate world. This one contains enough mystery to cover all possibilities.
Written by Jose Rivera, the play uses magic realism to display the complexities in relationships.
"It's not complicated in the way that Shakespeare's complicated, where you have to work to get to the themes. They're right there. Anyone in a relationship understands (the question), 'What do you do when you have opposite views about even the very basics of . . . our relationship,' " said director Devin Meadows.
Midwestern Theater Troupe will present the play starting 8 p.m. Thursday at the Nightingale Theater. The show will run through this weekend and the next.
"Jose Rivera is . . . he's kind of an up-and-coming writer," Meadows said. "Magic realism has a great literary tradition, but it doesn't have a strong theater tradition yet. He's important in bridging that gap."
And what magic realism introduces is a world in which extraordinary elements are accepted and unquestioned. Ultimately, Meadows said, "References" is about men and women and how they view things differently.
This tale centers on Gabriela and her husband, Benito, who has just returned from a conflict. Their drama is played out in this unfamiliar world.
"They are trying to redefine their relationship now that he's come back. Because of the timing of the original production, it would've been the first Gulf War, but the references are vague enough. Today we'll hear it as if he's just back from Iraq or Afghanistan," he said.
"If you lifted them out of the context of the other, it would just be a contemporary drama about this couple, but it's bracketed with these fantastical scenes."
Scenes like the opening act, which features a cat and coyote talking with each other.
"Instantly you're in a different kind of world," he said.
Meadows first read the play two years ago.
"I very much wanted to do it and was looking for the right place. I was with Theatre Tulsa at the time, and it clearly wasn't a Theatre Tulsa kind of show," he said.
He'd also wanted to work with John Cruncleton of Midwestern Theater Troupe and the Nightingale Theater. After some discussion between them, "References" was added to the Midwestern Theater's line-up.
The genre also is connected with a vast Hispanic literary tradition.
The first Rivera play Meadows read was "Each Day Dies With Sleep," which he considered but dropped because it was "very culturally specific" and none of the area's theater groups was prepared to accurately portray anything with such a strong Hispanic reference.
"This play is somewhat culturally specific and certainly (it is) stylistically, and we're doing the best we can with the people who are available to do it," he said.
The cast includes Alli Tunnell, Whitson Hanna, Annie Ellicott, George Romero and Cruncleton.
Ellicott will play a teenage Latino boy, but casting a woman to play a young boy is hardly new (think Peter Pan). "I would never want to say that I'm not thrilled to have her in the show and to be working with her. If there had been a talented 15-year-old Latino boy available, I probably would have gone that way, but there wasn't," Meadows said.
But a lack of Hispanic actors at the auditions wasn't the only concern. He needed actors who understood or were willing to take on Rivera's vision.
"A lot of people who looked at this script early on first commented, 'Well, where are you going to get the actors who can do that? This is Tulsa; where are you going to get those people?'
"But I'm just thrilled with what they're doing," he said.
Tunnell was cast as the longing Gabriela after she auditioned for Meadows for another play, Heller Theatre's "Lester's Breakdown Suite." When Meadows thought she would fit the role, he talked with her about it and gave her a script to read. Rivera's work reeled her in.
"You don't see this type of work often. It's easy to get caught up in the writing. It's very poetic and makes you think," she said.
Though Tunnell can identify with Gabriela to a degree (her fiance recently returned from serving in Afghanistan), there is little else in her own life to compare.
"I like the challenge of finding her because I'm nothing like her," Tunnell said. Tunnell and the rest of the cast were well-prepared before rehearsals began, leaving Meadows to focus his attention on character motives and experiment with scenes to keep them moving.
"When you have two people (on stage) who've got to hold our attention by themselves for a long time, and they're not necessarily likable people, you need to find lots of different rhythms for those same two people so it doesn't become a one-note issue, and you can't do that in one week," Meadows said.
Even with magical realism.
"In fact, I said that to one of the actor's mother, and she thought I made it up. She said, 'Magic realism? That's a silly phrase.' A German art critic coined that phrase in the '20s, so it's not mine."
What
Play by Jose Rivera presented by the Midwestern Theater Troupe
When
8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and July 21-23
Where
Nightingale Theater, 1416 E. Fourth St.
Admission
$8 at the door.
For more
call 583-8487 [As of February 2007, 633-8666] or go to www.nightingaletheater.com.