Hello Lily On The Lam.com Readers: Usually on Wednesdays, I showcase a product that is new to me. However this Wednesday, I am going to focus on a play instead. August Wilson's Seven Guitars is currently at the American Stage Theatre in St. Petersburg, Florida through February 26, 2012.
I had my taste of an August Wilson play while watching "Fences" on Broadway starring the absolutely brilliant Denzel Washington and the true gem of the theatre Viola Davis (I am happy the rest of the world is finally discovering her!).
Denzel Washington put on an amazing performance and he took home the Tony Award for it. But it was Viola Davis who truly captivating me. "Fences" is not an easy play to watch. I felt like I was put through an emotional wringer watching it and yet I felt so awakened for doing so. Viola Davis' character kept enduring pain and humiliation - more than any woman should be able to withstand. Each time you would think - this is it. This is what is finally going to break her. And yet somehow she kept going. I was left feeling confused whether I should applaud her strength or have her checked out for sado-masochism. Viola Davis also won the Tony Award for her work on "Fences." Like Denzel Washington's Tony, Viola Davis earned it through her amazing performance, layered with so many emotions. They both seized the audience by the neck and said "You're going to take this emotional journey with me. So you better buckle up."
Now I could make the argument that Denzel Washington and Viola Davis reading the phone book would still be jaw-droppingly captivating. With this in mind, I was curious to see if my local theatre in St. Petersburg could wrench the same amount of emotion from another August Wilson play.
The short answer is "Hell, yes."
My friend KRG and I attended the February 2, 2012 performance at American Stage Theatre. We let out an "ooooooffff" twice during the play - as we were literally sucker-punched by the strong emotions of the play. Now that is the sign of a good performance!
We were right there in the thick of it, feeling every emotion that the actors wanted us to go through. I left "Seven Guitars" feeling like I was hit by a truck and it kept me thinking way beyond the length of the play. I find myself so wrapped up with work and the silly drama of day to day life that to be able to attend a play where you are so completely jerked out of your element and taken to another world; well that is powerful to say the least.
If you're looking for an experience that will completely mesmerize you and leave you feeling shaken and in deep thought; you have to see "Seven Guitars."
I am not going to tell you the story of the play. No spoilers here. I will tell you that the performance of every member of the cast was pure perfection. "Seven Guitars" has a seven person cast. Tia Jemison, Alan Bomar Jones, Kim Sullivan, Ambe Williams, Rob Bobb-Semple, Joshua Elijah Reese and Brandy Grant were world-class in their performances.
In a cast where every actor was giving it 1000%, actor Ron Bobb-Semple cranked it up and blew everyone out of their seats. I started out seeing his character as some stock character but as the play progressed, the layers of his character Hedley started to emerge. Ron Bobb-Semple's performance made me laugh with Hedley, cry with Hedley, pity him and respect him. I was amazed how much I was feeling from his performance. Actor Joshua Elijah Reese, playing the character of Floyd, took the audience on a smooth sail into shark-infested waters. You're laughing and feeling good humor and then suddenly you look around and discover the rug is about to be pulled out from under you. Your laughter turns to chills and you can almost hear the clock ticking away to the hour of doom. This is acting on its finest level.
If you have a chance to see "Seven Guitars" in St. Petersburg, I highly recommend it. Otherwise, go out and see an August Wilson play. In preparing for this blog post, I stumbled across a 2004 paper on the internet about "Seven Guitars." I found it fascinating reading about the analogies, metaphors and layers of meaning. One of my degrees is in English Literature, so I guess I'm still an English nerd at heart. So check out the paper if it interests you.
There is one quote from the play that buried itself deep inside my gut and I haven't been able to shake it. Hedley talks about the death of his father and says:
"I cried a river of tears but he was too heavy to float on them. So I dragged him with me these years across an ocean."
I think a lot about that quote and the psychic burdens we carry upon our soul. I also think of the Henry Miller quote from "Tropic of Cancer":
"When you decide to give up the ghost, everything else follows even in midst of wildest chaos."
My life in 2012 so far seems to be filled with metaphors for dragging, floating and treading. I could chock it up to the fact that I am taking a 4 session plus 2 dives in five weeks SCUBA class. But that would be too shallow an interpretation. The image of crying so many tears to try to float the emotional weight on it, but still not having enough to do it so dragging the burden instead ... Man, that image just sums it up and throws it down. Like watching Viola Davis in "Fences," I naively cling to the old adage that "God only gives you as much as you can handle." But sometimes you just wonder if God took a nap on His watch. Is the calibration on His scale off? Like over-inflating a steel SCUBA tank, you wonder just how much you can continue to load on past maximum before it explodes.
At the end of watching both "Fences" and "Seven Guitars," I had the same exact feeling. The childlike naive optimism that hopefully the next day for the characters in the play would be better; that there had to be some reward after all the pain and tragedy. That such emotional trauma would not be in vain. That there was a pot of gold at the end of this terrible struggle that would justify having to go through so much pain. But combined with my feeling of naive optimism is also gut-wrenching angst at the end of an August Wilson play. The dark cloud of suspicion that perhaps it would never get better for the characters; that the cycle of disappointment, sorrow and pain was their life and would always be. That their trajectory was set for downward spiral and there was no changing the controls. Hope and fear.
August Wilson always leaves me heart-broken and perhaps I am the masochist because I continue to go back for more. He was a brilliant playwright and I hope more theaters will showcase his works. I look at the shallow ridiculous drama of reality TV (which of course I am guilty of watching), but if you really want to take an emotional and spiritual journey head to your local theater instead. August Wilson's plays have more humanity in one scene than all of reality TV combined.
I had my taste of an August Wilson play while watching "Fences" on Broadway starring the absolutely brilliant Denzel Washington and the true gem of the theatre Viola Davis (I am happy the rest of the world is finally discovering her!).
Denzel Washington put on an amazing performance and he took home the Tony Award for it. But it was Viola Davis who truly captivating me. "Fences" is not an easy play to watch. I felt like I was put through an emotional wringer watching it and yet I felt so awakened for doing so. Viola Davis' character kept enduring pain and humiliation - more than any woman should be able to withstand. Each time you would think - this is it. This is what is finally going to break her. And yet somehow she kept going. I was left feeling confused whether I should applaud her strength or have her checked out for sado-masochism. Viola Davis also won the Tony Award for her work on "Fences." Like Denzel Washington's Tony, Viola Davis earned it through her amazing performance, layered with so many emotions. They both seized the audience by the neck and said "You're going to take this emotional journey with me. So you better buckle up."
Now I could make the argument that Denzel Washington and Viola Davis reading the phone book would still be jaw-droppingly captivating. With this in mind, I was curious to see if my local theatre in St. Petersburg could wrench the same amount of emotion from another August Wilson play.
The short answer is "Hell, yes."
My friend KRG and I attended the February 2, 2012 performance at American Stage Theatre. We let out an "ooooooffff" twice during the play - as we were literally sucker-punched by the strong emotions of the play. Now that is the sign of a good performance!
We were right there in the thick of it, feeling every emotion that the actors wanted us to go through. I left "Seven Guitars" feeling like I was hit by a truck and it kept me thinking way beyond the length of the play. I find myself so wrapped up with work and the silly drama of day to day life that to be able to attend a play where you are so completely jerked out of your element and taken to another world; well that is powerful to say the least.
If you're looking for an experience that will completely mesmerize you and leave you feeling shaken and in deep thought; you have to see "Seven Guitars."
I am not going to tell you the story of the play. No spoilers here. I will tell you that the performance of every member of the cast was pure perfection. "Seven Guitars" has a seven person cast. Tia Jemison, Alan Bomar Jones, Kim Sullivan, Ambe Williams, Rob Bobb-Semple, Joshua Elijah Reese and Brandy Grant were world-class in their performances.
In a cast where every actor was giving it 1000%, actor Ron Bobb-Semple cranked it up and blew everyone out of their seats. I started out seeing his character as some stock character but as the play progressed, the layers of his character Hedley started to emerge. Ron Bobb-Semple's performance made me laugh with Hedley, cry with Hedley, pity him and respect him. I was amazed how much I was feeling from his performance. Actor Joshua Elijah Reese, playing the character of Floyd, took the audience on a smooth sail into shark-infested waters. You're laughing and feeling good humor and then suddenly you look around and discover the rug is about to be pulled out from under you. Your laughter turns to chills and you can almost hear the clock ticking away to the hour of doom. This is acting on its finest level.
If you have a chance to see "Seven Guitars" in St. Petersburg, I highly recommend it. Otherwise, go out and see an August Wilson play. In preparing for this blog post, I stumbled across a 2004 paper on the internet about "Seven Guitars." I found it fascinating reading about the analogies, metaphors and layers of meaning. One of my degrees is in English Literature, so I guess I'm still an English nerd at heart. So check out the paper if it interests you.
There is one quote from the play that buried itself deep inside my gut and I haven't been able to shake it. Hedley talks about the death of his father and says:
"I cried a river of tears but he was too heavy to float on them. So I dragged him with me these years across an ocean."
I think a lot about that quote and the psychic burdens we carry upon our soul. I also think of the Henry Miller quote from "Tropic of Cancer":
"When you decide to give up the ghost, everything else follows even in midst of wildest chaos."
My life in 2012 so far seems to be filled with metaphors for dragging, floating and treading. I could chock it up to the fact that I am taking a 4 session plus 2 dives in five weeks SCUBA class. But that would be too shallow an interpretation. The image of crying so many tears to try to float the emotional weight on it, but still not having enough to do it so dragging the burden instead ... Man, that image just sums it up and throws it down. Like watching Viola Davis in "Fences," I naively cling to the old adage that "God only gives you as much as you can handle." But sometimes you just wonder if God took a nap on His watch. Is the calibration on His scale off? Like over-inflating a steel SCUBA tank, you wonder just how much you can continue to load on past maximum before it explodes.
At the end of watching both "Fences" and "Seven Guitars," I had the same exact feeling. The childlike naive optimism that hopefully the next day for the characters in the play would be better; that there had to be some reward after all the pain and tragedy. That such emotional trauma would not be in vain. That there was a pot of gold at the end of this terrible struggle that would justify having to go through so much pain. But combined with my feeling of naive optimism is also gut-wrenching angst at the end of an August Wilson play. The dark cloud of suspicion that perhaps it would never get better for the characters; that the cycle of disappointment, sorrow and pain was their life and would always be. That their trajectory was set for downward spiral and there was no changing the controls. Hope and fear.
August Wilson always leaves me heart-broken and perhaps I am the masochist because I continue to go back for more. He was a brilliant playwright and I hope more theaters will showcase his works. I look at the shallow ridiculous drama of reality TV (which of course I am guilty of watching), but if you really want to take an emotional and spiritual journey head to your local theater instead. August Wilson's plays have more humanity in one scene than all of reality TV combined.
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