Lolita - Young Matrix, Unknown Heart

“Please, reader: no matter your exasperation with the tenderhearted, morbidly sensitive, infinitely circumspect hero of my book, do not skip these essential pages! Imagine me; I shall not exist if you do not imagine me; try to discern the doe in me, trembling in the forest of my own iniquity; let's even smile a little. After all, there is no harm in smiling...”

Vladamir Nabokov- Lolita

This is a confession: I am exactly the kind of person who Humbert Humbert wants to reach in his self-described confession. Intoxicated by the mere sound and visceral feeling of words on the palette, I willingly overlook the crimes of Nabokov’s narrator and am not, as ethicists argue I should be, entirely disgusted with him. Instead, I marvel at him. I inhale the delectable images, the depth of his passions, and find myself drawn in.

I find myself admiring a pederast, because he loves beautifully.

When Peter Steeves, Professor of Philosophy at DePaul, and President of Theatre Y’s board of directors, asked us if would perform a twenty five minute rendering of Lolita for his “Making the Novel Novel” series, I jumped at the chance. The name of the book inspires such division that, despite my limited knowledge of the novel, it was exciting to be part of the discourse.

I also fully understood Peter’s reasoning behind his presentation of the book. That H.H.’s real crime is not his rape and imprisonment of a 12 year old girl, but his misogyny. Replaced with a woman of legal age, his crimes would be no less appalling, and in fact reveal behavior that is fairly common. He hurts, and then attempts to make himself more lovable by showing how hurt he is by his own actions. How regretful he is. This is the language of a circular, abusive relationship, of codependency that sustains itself not in spite of, but because of abuse. Remorse covers up, and allows the pattern to continue until it ends, often brutally.

Nabokov also uses the language of traditional, romantic discourse, whose passion often covers up the questionable behavior of its writer. By transferring this language to the love of a girl under the age limits of what is societally acceptable, he stoops under our defenses. He problematizes this discourse, but also brings H.H’s actions down to a level where they are more acceptable, because we are allowed to feel with him.

However, this was obviously not Nabokov’s intent. In fact, when he was alive he made it very clear that he balked against any piece of literature in which he detected a social or moral lesson. “…Lolita has no moral in tow. For me a work of fiction exists only in so far as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, in that sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm.”

An author’s intent, as Adorno, among other 20th century philosophers have pointed out, has little to do with the context or content of an artistic work.  And yet I think it is important to dwell on his objection. Lolita is one of the most contentious novels of the past century, and it is so because it allows so many different interpretations. It is about pedophilia, it is about poetry, it is about normative sexual relationships, anarchy, and even about America. None of these are mutually exclusive. To argue for an interpretation can clarify certain aspects of the text. But to argue that there is a single interpretation does violence to the raw text. H.H.’s self-condemnation gives Lolita a moral slant. But the pathology of the meta-novel, its obvious fictionality, obscures it. Nabokov distances our moral condemnation through his mastery of the poetic form. Thus, the novel rests in ambiguity.

As a theorist, I do have a preferred interpretation of the text. But as an artist, my task as I saw it was to create something that aped the novel, while at the same time bringing something new to the table. Instead of making a piece that favored one particular interpretation, I decided that formal novelty was the best option. Lolita Remixed in the form of a textual collage, sampling significant portions of the novel and of Kubrik’s film adaptation. With the text in hand, Evan (playing H.H.) and Melissa (Playing Lo) have created a performance that is at once utter blasphemy to Nabokov’s technical structure, but simultaneously retains the novel’s emotional heart and poetic imagination.  By inverting, scrambling the novel, we hope to do what Humbert Humbert, with his beard and his putrefaction, could not: apply voracious lips to her young matrix, her unknown heart, her nacreous liver, the sea grapes of her lungs, her comely twin kidneys…​ 

Georges Bigot Workshop

As recounted by Theatre Y's new Dramaturg Dan Christmann

Georges Bigot performing at the Theatre du Soleil in Helene Cixous nine hour epic

 The Terrible but Unfinished Story of Norodom Sihanouk King of Cambodia

What is my text?

Make some sort of proposition.

For my text?

Sure, why not propose something, that’s all there is. It’s for the work. It’s the base to begin. You’ll rewrite the whole thing again in fifteen minutes anyway. So make something. Propose it.

Now.

“What do we want to say about this Bigot thing?”

Evan Shrugs. “I don’t know. Its. It’s not even a thing at this point, as far as I know.” He reaches over with his fork and spears a piece of French toast from Melissa’s plate, just as she takes a sliver off of the duck tacos on his. This exchange has been going on for the past fifteen minutes without anyone realizing it, or at least no one is mentioned it, and so it seems like there is some sort of unspoken equilibrium between the two of them that always has to be balanced, scales weighed, justice measured. Evan wipes his mouth on one of the many suit jackets he always wears, and keeps right on going through the food, his hands flowing through the air as if to demonstrate each nonexistent point. “We might be doing Shakespeare, we might be doing something else with him. But anyway, there’s a workshop Melissa has going with Georges at the end of the month or so, so maybe he could come to that?

He glances over at Melissa. Her face lights up. “Oh yes, of course, that’s perfect Buddy!” I like talking with these two, but it’s especially entertaining to watch Melissa’s face when an idea strikes her. You can almost see the process from consideration to unrestrained joy, from zero to fifty, from seed to blossom.

“Sure.” I nod. Probably I am unconsciously pulling at my facial hair. Laconic, as always. Do I have any questions about the workshop? A few. Do I have any thoughts about my role? Maybe. But, because I am a kind, affable soul who tends to acquiesce to everything, all of the answers satisfy me. We go on to talk about other projects, which excite me more at the time. A new Andràs Visky play, an integral role in organizing the company’s season. I do not even know who Georges Bigot is, and the Theatre du Soleil I have heard of maybe once or twice in passing, and, since I do not remember much about them, don’t interest me particularly. If I don’t remember, it must not be interesting, right?

Right.

 But I am off of my text.

“Have you any commission from your lord to negotiate with my face?”

No, by the rood, not so. But we will draw the curtain and show you the picture…

 Monsieur Bigot, when I first meet him, reminds me of what would happen if Peter Lorre and Sean Connery had a love child who, estranged from his famous fathers, grew up in France, and developed all of the quirks and verbal habits that a Frenchman speaking broken English inevitably develops. He is shorter than I imagined, and balder too. But his face is remarkably plastic, and the wrinkles around his eyes emanate a kind of effortless grace that has characterized his entire acting career. I shove my hands deep into my pockets as we walk from the airport terminal to Melissa’s car, and keep my thoughts to myself. I am a hermetic sphere bobbing through velvet black of the benthic zone.

By and large this characterizes my interaction with Georges, even throughout the workshop. But you can’t remain an impenetrable singularity in work like this, even if it is your job, more than anything, to sit and absorb. Little by little, you participate whether you want to or not, contribute and are permeated. Georges, I think, takes unresponsive introverts like me as a personal challenge.

I could be bounded in a nutshell and call myself the king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

 These dreams begin essentially as ensemble work. There are about twenty five of us in the workshop, though we are never all together at once. This Irks Georges. But nevertheless, he makes us get up and dance. First we do so individually, and then in groups, with a single person as the chorus leader, who the rest follow in movement. But he doesn’t want us to dance, not really. The intent here is to “follow the score, or the text”.  You move as the music interpenetrates you. It is a model of how we are to work with Shakespeare’s text, not to plan forward, but to react, along the contours of each line, to take each turn no matter how sharp or unforeseen.

We spend some time on other exercises as well. We group together and improvise soundscapes. We play games to keep us sharp. But soon it devolves into scene work. Georges is unforgiving in the way he side coaches, yelling out directions from the front of the house to move now, find the internal state, make a proposition, and for the love of god, don’t go home! He communicates as best he can, but there are communications issues that even Bob, the dramaturg and temporary translator, can’t get past. There are a specific set of rules that he has to pound into us before a scene will go forward, and he will sometimes stop a scene even before a word has been said if you aren’t following those rules. After the first week, many of us are confused and frustrated. Fewer and fewer of us show up consistently.

 But there are moments of brilliance. Breakthroughs occur, and for those of us who are there to catch those sparks, they illuminate a whole depth of technique and experience that we cannot see to the bottom of. A couple of us slip and fall as we struggle toward the bottom. An actor punches the floor and cries while doing a scene from Macbeth. You can tell from his frustration that, like in me, there is something that resists the way Georges works. We want to have a plan. We want to have an idea and be right. Georges couldn’t care less about whether an idea is good or bad, fair foul, or foul fair. Many of us don’t know which way is up because of this. We hover through the fog and filthy air.

 As the work progresses, more and more of us are able to find our way in the charnel theatre space. We grow more comfortable with Georges, and each other. But as soon as we reach a plateau, Georges Sweeps the rug from underneath our feet and tells us that we have to go deeper. You give him an inch and he wants a mile. Each scene goes through a hundred different versions of itself. The three witches from Macbeth dance in on the blasted heath to Little Darlin’ by the Diamonds, a do-wop band from the late fifties.

 Two weeks into the process, we throw a party at Chuck’s house.  Like in the scenes that we are creating, we collaborate to finish off sixteen bottles of wine between the twelve or thirteen that are able to make it. The night is a kaleidoscope of limbs that dance spiderlike across my memory, of profound conversation, and song. We all trudge to rehearsal the next day with the legacy of the sulfates still hammering on our skulls. But we go on.

 At the beginning of the process, many of us were intimidated by Georges and by each other. But now we hang to each other like drunk sailors on the risers, watching whoever it is gets to perform that day. Going on becomes an act of being present. If it be not now, tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. If you can free yourself enough to get through a scene without Georges stopping you, you will be rewarded with a small cry of “Yes!” as he leans toward the stage. He reminds me of man people in the evangelical tradition, who vocalize their assent during prayer. But to him, I think, Theatre is a sort of prayer. It is good that we are working, at least for now, in an old worship area in the back of St. Luke’s, where you can see the arched windows and a cross or two even underneath the black paint.

Georges decides, on the last day, that when he returns from France in May, we will begin rehearsal on Macbeth.  But even before then, he instructs us to rehearse, continue working together so that we can all reach by that time the place that only a few of us have been able to get to. Because, in the end, this workshop has to go beyond itself, and is designed to go even beyond this show. From where I stand, it means the creation of a new, or at least more collective version of Theatre Y. It means, even with the loss of the space at St. Luke’s, a new jolt of energy for us. The way we’ve worked, and the connections that we’ve made, should hold, and give us the ability to go beyond where we’ve been before. I’ve heard Melissa call it a new chapter, but I think that’s true in ways that even she couldn’t imagine. It’s the gift that Georges leaves with us.

Yes?

 Yes. Well, what do you think?

It was not so bad. But Dan, You must stand straight when you walk. And do not make your feet all Charlie Chaplin.

But I am not shaped for such sportive tricks, nor made to court an amorous looking glass; I that am rudely stamped and want loves majesty to strut before a wonton ambling nymph-!

Ok, is very good, but you are looking always at the ground, so I do not receive this. Try again. From the beginning, ok? 

Ok.

An Interview With Dramaturge Zsolt Láng

An acclaimed Hungarian writer and editor, dramaturge Zsolt Láng accompanied director Éva Patkó from Eastern Europe to bring Penelope from the French text to the English stage.

AD - What kind of writing do you primarily do?

ZL - Mostly fiction. I’ve written six novels along with some short stories. And I’ve written six or seven plays, a few of which have been translated and published in English.

AD - What themes do you tend to write about most?

ZL - I love history in Eastern Europe. And I find the relationships between women and men very interesting and enticing.

AD - So, having written both novels and plays, what do you think theatre can offer storytelling that fiction can’t?

ZL - If a play is going to be produced into a show, then the text is very similar to fiction. But, live theatre can offer something that’s more tangible. And I develop a different movement and feeling when I write for the stage than when I do for fiction. Fiction is more speculative – you can imagine many characters and such. But theatre is much more present.

AD - What exactly is your role as dramaturge?

ZL - I’m here for the text. A dramaturge’s work is to know how the text works into the show, and how show works into the text. So, for this show, Éva and I began by reading the text in French, its original language. Since this show is a translation, a lot of my work was to help Éva interpret and transform the text.

For example, in French, the text focuses more on the love story. But in English, it’s more a story about conflict between Father and son; the English is more technical, the English is more dramatic. Maybe because it’s the language of Shakespeare? Who is very dramatic.

But, French is more poetic. And it was very interesting to see the focus of the story shift during the translation process. In French, it’s a love story with Dinah and Elias clearly as the focus. In English, the text is now more about the relationship between the mothers and their sons – Nuritsa and Elias and Dinah and Theos. It’s interesting.

AD - What has made Penelope worth traveling from Eastern Europe?

ZL - I’m very curious to see how the show will be. Not nervous, but curious. I like how Theatre Y works. The actors and crew are very talented and committed, so we wanted to work with them.

One message of the show is that many times in our lives we repeat the lives of our ancestors. And history repeats through generations and generations. The strongest power that can stop this cycle is love; when a man loves a woman, this power can stop these tragic cycles. In the play, Elias repeats the cycle of violence in war. But afterwards, he doesn’t want to murder any longer. And his son, Theos, has fallen into this cycle because of how badly he wants to kill Ante. But Elias, by loving his son, saves Theos from a criminal lifestyle. By killing Ante himself, Elias breaks the cycle of violence to spare Theos from becoming a murderer.

This interpretation of the show is very interesting. Éva has made some changes so that the same actor plays both Elias and Theos. This decision to make them the same actor is very important because this relationship between son and father now has another angle of complexity. We can now ask how the life of father can affect the life of the son. We can  more deeply see the love between son and mother, father and mother. In this show, because one actor plays both characters, we see that in a mother’s love for her son is a woman’s love for her husband.

These are a few complexities and details, such as these messages, that made us excited for the show, that made it worth traveling for and committing to.

Within Limitations

Within a week’s time Penelope must face her debut. No longer will it just be myself behind the lights, but the seats will fill with an audience. Rehearsals are no longer run with makeshift props, and we now have a leashed rat: what was once theoretical is now concrete.

But even though there’s only a week left, the to-do list is still in a constant state of flux. We’ve achieved many victories, yet there is still much to be done. We now have dirt for the floor, but our rats have yet to fly. And though we managed to host a successful fundraiser, weather has permitted us from projecting our goddess Odessa to the stage. With only a week left, the company is faced with a demanding reality: if theatre is truly human, then theatre is truly limited.

We are limited financially, materially, emotionally, in manpower, and even by the laws of our universe (as I said, the rats still aren’t flying). And these limitations are heightened under the looming limitation of time. We are therefore required to pursue solutions through endless rounds of considering and reconsidering that the dreaded state of compromise may be avoided. And like the burning end of Nuritsa’s cigarette, the friction of these restraints emits a tension that hangs like smoke in the air.

Since the artistic mind is kneaded and stretched when solutions are not readily presented, this tension may be exactly what the artists of Theatre Y need. As straining as this process is, it’s within the tension of limitation that creativity is flourishing. By embracing the tension, the company is producing a show that is neither easy nor simple, but a show that is fully art. As the dirt on our floor perpetually reminds us, this is the grit of theatre. It’s not despite, but in light of these limitations that Penelope will find herself ready for the lights.

A Conversation With Director Éva Patkó

For a second production, director of Penelope, O Penelope Éva Patkó returns to Chicago and returns to Theatre Y.

AD - How did you get connected with Theatre Y?

ÉP - In 2005 Melissa and her team came to Romania and saw the opening of my dissertation performance. It was called The Escape by András Visky and was my first big work in theatre. It was also my first collaboration with Zsolt Lang, our dramaturg. Melissa liked it very much, and afterwards said that she wanted to work together. Since then they visited Romania again, I visited the United States, and then there was Porn and we started to work on the show, first we rehearsed in Romania, then here in Chicago.

AD - Can you describe your work in Romania?

ÉP - I teach and direct in different theatres in Romania, Hungary and wherever I’m invited and feel there’s a reason to go. It’s slowly expanding, which I love. I founded a theatre group at a high school while I studied at the University and worked with them for four years. That was a very important experience for me, we existed together as a team, even organized a huge festival together. I’ve also taught master classes at the Budapest Broadway Studio, which is an interesting event every year.  It’s a very intense eight to twelve hours per day acting workshop for students wanting to become actors.

When I came back to Romania from the United States after living and studying here for one year I started to teach at the University of Arts in Targu Mures, Romania.

AD - When did Theatre Y reach out to you about directing Penelope? In other words - how did you get here?

ÉP - In 2014 they visited Romania as they were preparing for Happy Days; then we talked about working together in 2016 or 2017. But after a few months Melissa contacted me and said, “I have a play for you.” I read Penelope, O Penelope in French and it immediately attached to me or I attached to it. This is very rare when you don’t find the text, but it finds you. And this text found me. So, I said yes.

AD - But it was less than a year ago that she even visited?

ÉP - It was less than even a year ago when we spoke in Romania, and at that time there was no Penelope on the horizon. The process for me coming over to direct this show happened very fast.

AD - After observing and analyzing the rehearsals, what I’ve wondered most is how much of the stage direction is your ideas and how much is from Abkarian –

ÉP - Abkarian doesn’t really give stage directions.

AD - So none? Abkarian gives no stage directions?

ÉP - He gives the freedom to interpret, his poetic text is an invitation to create around it a world where the characters do whatever we want them to do. But the minimal stage directions he gives are very important as they concretize the location of the scenes.

AD - Okay, so then what is your interpretation process like? How do we get from just the text – without stage direction – to flying rats and Argentine tango, which we now see in the production?

ÉP - (Laughing) Well, it’s a process where you let your brain react to whatever happens to it when you first read the text. But it’s not only the brain, it’s the whole system: the heart, the soul, all your past, and all the future. If you let it, the system starts to react and a world is built upon whatever is written.

For example, I had a lot of trouble finding music for the show. I searched and listened and kept feeling, No this isn’t it. But what is it? I made myself forget about it for a while, until one morning I woke up and thought, Of course! It’s Argentinian tango!

Every director, every creator, has his own method of how to create; there’s no recipe. But if I don’t first see images when I first read a text, I don’t do it. And with Penelope images just bombed my mind. The images I get at the first reading are very important; those are the basis for which the universe is created.

AD - How do you take the images – the universe that’s coming together – and as the director guide the cast and crew to not just enter the universe, but to enter and expand it?

ÉP - I process all impulses from the creative team. For me, it’s important to know point A and point B, but the whole magic is to let the road open so that we get to point B together. It’s only together that we can do this.

And I love that when an actor offers something everything can be reshaped. For example, Daiva and I only discussed that Nuritsa would have a cigarette and little heels. We talked about the role and the relationships, but not yet about the way her body would move. And the way she started to move at the first rehearsal shaped all of Nuritsa; this is a “you give, I give” process.

AD - You’ve said that you won’t travel for and commit to a project unless you feel that it’s worth it. So what about Penelope is worth it?

ÉP - For me, it’s love: the way Abkarian talks about love. It’s the way he uses humor and the way he questions everything. That’s what I love: he questions everything. He builds on axioms that we all know and then questions them. That’s how the show talks about love, by showing opposites. When we look into this universe it’s deserted, it has danger and fears. But love has all these things, too.

The way he can talk about these basic human conditions – love, fidelity, revenge – immediately attracted me. It’s all very connected to who we are; it’s very human to have this kind of dialogue.

AD - What do you think is particularly unique to doing this production with Theatre Y?

ÉP - International partnerships are always two-edged. Since we come from different theatre backgrounds and speak different languages, we must be attentive to one another; communication is not a given, it takes work. There is a necessity to constantly take care of and understand each other, which makes the work more tied together and the process more whole. We need to be tuned to one another.

AD - How has production for Penelope been?

ÉP - Having a team with a unified goal means that you’re not alone. I think we have a rarely good cast and a great supporting team. It’s very important to feel that everyone working on the show wants to be here. There’s a lot of positive energy surrounding this work. And because of that we have the luxury of being vulnerable to create and exist together, to agree, disagree, all these.

AD - So we’ve have a French script, performed in American-English, with a director from Romania?

ÉP - …Who is Hungarian. So, there you go! Yes, I think that sums it up.

What's Unique to the Stage

That Dinah’s story was ever on paper is increasingly irrelevant as our focus has become more tangibly minded. Rehearsals are no longer spent flipping through scripts around a table – lines are now memorized (except for the occasional call of Line, line!) – and the actors are familiarizing themselves with the stage’s corners and crossbeams. Just as detail has been honored in each word spoken, it now guides each step taken; it’s not just that you move, but how you move. Now that the text has offered itself to the full scrutiny of the cast, the cast must in turn submit to it.

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As we’ve maturated from lines on paper, I’m now considering what theatre benefits storytelling that written language does not. Not that one trumps the other, but what is exclusive to the stage? Perhaps the actors become the language; if strong verbs promise strong writing, then perhaps strong expressions and movements and gestures and blocking and faces achieve excellent theatre. The answer, I believe, has surfaced as I’ve observed each actor rise to rehearse a new scene; the process begins timidly. Each new scene seems a bit dreaded. I suppose it’s incredibly vulnerable, that moment of embodying new text, the first moment of taking this story – this character, this universe – fully upon yourself.

I’ve loved witnessing each scene crystallize from the first attempt to the second then the third in a single rehearsal. This progress is knit together by Patkó’s perpetual challenge to try this, play with it. There’s no right or wrong only the perpetual keep playing with it until we arrive at the blocking triumph of this works.

It is in this way that theatre is inevitably human – human in a way that is unique to its form. Our actors weep beneath a table, thrash on a grave, and sprawl in the dirt – do whatever is necessary – to enter the story and devote themselves to their characters. Their constantly playing with their movements, with their props, and in these choices theatre maintains its humanity. And our universe steadily expands.

Journey from French to English

 “We’re creating a whole universe about a love story,” explained director Éva Patkó. With the company team complete – from cast to designers – the universe for Simon Abkarian’s Dinah, her husband, and her son is leaving the imagination for the stage. Though Abkarian’s script provides the fullest depth of life, it remains dormant until placed in the hands of the theatre. These characters remain only ideas, only words on a page, until they receive bodies, breath, and voices. And Dinah’s home is nothing beyond the imagination until designers and carpenters begin sketching ideas and hammering nails. 

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The creative process is ultimately an exploratory one. For the cast, this exploration has begun with scouring fourteen scenes of text. As they have come to know their characters and the universe they inhabit, I’ve been struck with the depth, power, and beauty of language. Though Penelope, O Penelope was written by Simon Abkarian, this script has become uniquely Theatre Y’s thanks to the meticulous efforts of Artistic Director and actress (Dinah/Sofia) Melissa Lorraine to translate the text from its original French. The cast has therefore been required to examine each word, each syntactical decision, and each movement of text to determine that each translated word is appropriate for the mouth of their English-speaking characters. Through paying such respect to the language, the cast has come to know, inside and out, the world that they’re not just entering, but bringing to life. 

Through this process of language, the cast has consequently been faced with the question of Who am I? As beautiful as the language is, it’s not self-explanatory. These characters are people and people are complex, and even though an actor may have memorized the text, it certainly does not mean that he knows himself. In each line the actors find new questions and new answers and move closer towards discovering just to whom it is that they’re giving voice.

As the cast has pondered lingual nuances, the production team, led by Production Manager and actor (Ante) Kevin V. Smith has begun transforming the chapel into Dinah’s modern Ithaca. From scrutinizing fabric samples to selecting dirt for the floor, there are no choices too meticulously determined. Having been through the script several times, both on my own and with the cast, I have been fascinated to see how these creative minds are interpreting and visually producing the text. These carefully determined choices are what bond Dinah’s story with Theatre Y’s, making them seamlessly one.

Through rehearsals, production meetings, marketing strategizing, and set builds I have concluded that everything is story. With a blanket around her shoulders, we know that Dinah’s cold with no one to fill her bed. And Ante’s inability to master the tango indicates just how out of step his warped mind really is. Everything is characterization, and not just of the characters, but of the universe as a whole. Each detail serves to deepen and expand the universe, which has led me ask, Is Dinah’s story worth it? Is Dinah worth it? It’s stunning to witness just how dedicated the artists of Theatre Y are for, what Patkó claims, is “an art form written in water.” Their dedication is a statement on not only Abakarian’s work, but on art itself. 

Odysseus’ journey is well known. We are learning more of Penelope’s – of Dinah’s – and in the process are learning that of Theatre Y. Though we face no sirens or suitors, the artistic journey is an endeavor nonetheless, and is unfolding itself to be well worth the exploration.

An Introduction

It was my sophomore year of undergrad when I went to my first play in Chicago. As a product of the South I was poorly versed in the stage, the spectacle, and even the audience. I wasn’t off to The Lyric Opera or Goodman, but took the 66 bus to a warehouse. A poster on the door read Porn and we had arrived.

Since this evening two years ago I have toured this city’s box offices, amassing playbill after playbill. From manuscripts to auditions I have continued wandering – with both successes and try-agains – into the community that is theater. I have Theater Y to thank for Porn, my first theatrical experience, and for The Binding and Happy Days that followed. And now I thank this company for my newest endeavor as I continue my wandering. 

How do we get from the script to the stage? Theater is literature and art and human and sacrifice, but why? Over the next six weeks, I’ve received the privilege of sticking my nose into the community of Theater Y to witness – to behold – Penelope, O Penelope! as she is brought to the stage. I don’t claim equity or credits in any playbill that I’m aware of. But with questions and curiosity I’ll be a fly on the fourth wall.