Exiles
Summer 2011
(Part 1 of The Exiled Trilogy)
Lacuna Artist Lofts
by James Joyce
directed by Kevin V. Smith
assistant directed by Elisabeth Barnick
featuring Melissa Lorraine, Rafael Franco, Evan Hill, David Bettino, Daiva Bhandari, Laura Jones and Theo Tougne
The first part of Theatre Y’s ambitious three show summer repertory series, The Exiled Trilogy, performed at Lacuna Artist Lofts (a former macaroni factory in Pilsen) Joyce’s rarely produced early twentieth century text about the marital crisis of a writer and his common-law wife was sent through the kaleidoscopic lens of the main female character’s perspective: Extremes of scale, restrictive physical precision, and polar auditory dynamics. Gender exaggerating RuPaul’s Drag Race influenced hair and makeup design and lip sync performance were set to work in an exploration of gender inequality and voicelessness in Joyce’s work. A ticking automatic time clock obeyed by the female performers with a militaristic snap of the head, a bouquet of overblown roses hung upside down as a menacing omen, and a billowing pink room revealed by the thunderous fall of a huge wooden partition, all culminated in Lorraine’s frightening climactic lip sync of Mariah Carey’s “Vision of Love”, bedecked in a rhinestone tiara, a psychological freefall of delusion, desperation and madness.
Photo Credit: Marianne Bach
