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KPBS AIRDATE: January 12, 2007
Theater’s supposed to be provocative, right? So what better way to kick off the year than with a few plays about sex and politics? Or sex and war, to be precise. 6th @ Penn Theatre is filling its schedule with beguiling titles and bewitching fare.
On weekends, it’s “Slut,” a solo show about a woman who really likes sex. And for that heinous crime, and more than a few willing partners, she gets arrested for prostitution. We meet Matilda in jail, as she struggles to come to terms with her incomprehensible predicament, forced to explain her life to a sex addiction therapist and a macho but potentially sensitive cop. Written and directed by Brenda McFarlane, the one-act gets bogged down in an unnecessary backstory about Tilda’s noisy, messy neighbors in the senior residence next door. Susan Hammons is most engaging when she’s playing multiple characters at once. The writing, direction and comic timing could use some tightening and sharpening. But the piece is noteworthy for shining light on one of those pesky gender stereotypes: how society perceives men vs. women as sexual beings. There may be some frank language, but the ideas are the most titillating part of the presentation.
Off-nights, Sunday through Wednesday, 6th@ Penn is premiering Challenge Theatre, a provocative concept it its own right. Local playwrights were challenged to write a one-act about War, with particular reference to Iraq. In addition, each writer was assigned an object that had to figure in the story: a ticket stub, a key, an address book or a wallet. They were given nine weeks to write, cast, rehearse and stage the play. Each writer had a lot to say, and no more than 20 minutes to cram it all in. All chose to direct their own work for the evening entitled “War and Quiet Flowers.” The timing couldn’t be better.
“Drafted,” Jason Connors’ intriguing play with music, is set in 2046 and concerns a young guy with an activist girlfriend, a hawkish father, and a crisp new letter from his local Induction Station. In George Soete’s Wagner-inspired play, “Glorious Victory Street,” an American soldier and an Iraqi woman make a life-changing connection. Matt Thompson’s “Opera of the Oasis” is a spoken word trio of perspectives – from a torpid reporter, a pedantic teacher and a frantic prisoner of war. Experimental in form, potent in language. “Flowers of War,” by Jim Caputo, takes a pointed look at two families, Red and Blue, coming to terms with the death of a loved one in Iraq. Butting up against these fantasies is a bracing dose of reality: the gut-wrenching poems of Carrie Preston, about life with a jet pilot about to be deployed to Iraq.
This is thinking person’s theater, the kind that might even change some minds.
©2007 Patté Productions Inc.
