PILLS review by Tom Wachunas

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The Life and Death of Possibilities
By Tom Wachunas


In an ambitious new endeavor, Canton’s Players Guild Theatre is kicking off its 78th season with The New Play Conservatory, coordinated by Jeremy P. Lewis. He and a critic’s circle of 13 individuals read and evaluated dozens of script submissions from around the country, and ultimately three plays were chosen for production as world premieres in the Guild’s William G. Fry Arena Theatre.

First in the trio of plays that run for three performances each is “Pills,” (which opened on July 9) written by Michael DeVito of Hartsdale, NY, and directed here by Lewis. It’s a wondrously facile piece of stage literature – part comedy, part morality-play, all riveting and bittersweet in its drama – and a solid vehicle for demonstrating Lewis’ well-honed sensitivity to complicated human relationships.

What fuels this play’s poignant originality, though, is not just its intricate human interactions, but the entities in the form of three characters who are not yet human in a fully physical sense. Whether you call them urgent yearnings, or curious wantings, they represent the essences of unborn children. In those roles, Justin C. Woody, Sonny Gzybowski, and Stacey Essex are marvelously energetic and haunting. They badger and cajole their patient “Guide” - played warmly, with convincing if not enigmatic authority by Kathy Boyd – to help them understand where and what they are, and where they want to go. They are simultaneously the sources and victims of their potential parents’ mental and emotional anguish over whether or not to bring children into the world.

The potential parents are two New York City couples – one married (Max and Sally), one not (Seth and Karen) - struggling fiercely with their relationships as well as deeply conflicting decisions about having children. Marvin A. Vance Jr. plays the free-wheeling Seth with a disarming combination earthy honesty and detached emotions, tinged with cavalier wisdom. Karen is his new girlfriend, still smarting from a recent breakup. To that role Bethany Taylor brings an endearing desire for answers and stability, sometimes tainted with vitriolic sarcasm.

As Max, Nate Ross is both hilarious and scary in his credible portrayal of an obsessive-compulsive, right-fighting moralizer who distrusts any medication designed to balance a depressed mind, and thinks bringing children into this miserable world would be an intolerable selfishness. He – not birth control pills or mind-fixing drugs - is the real pill in this scenario. Megan Rosenberg plays Sally with equal authenticity – a combination of genuine pain, uncertainty, and desperate hope amid emotional turmoil. For them, resolution comes in the final scene. We see them on their backs, gazing up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, in an intriguing recap of the scene when we first met them. They recall Max’s dream of seeing the painted image God, in the act of creating Adam, crashing to the floor, leaving Adam in the presence of a gaping hole. It’s a thoroughly tender scene that promises the couple just might be filling in the void that plagued them.

Yet for all of the electrifying performances that these artists consistently imparted through their crisp, rapid-fire dialogue, one scene has seared itself into my memory as the high (or “low”, depending upon your predisposition) point of the evening. And ironically enough, the moment, delivered by Stacey Essex (one of the unborn children whose time on stage is relatively brief), wasn’t powered by spoken words at all. It came at the point in the story when Karen aborted her child, fathered by Seth. One can only wonder how director Lewis was able to elicit from Essex such heartrending emotion, or what depths of memory and experience such a young actress needed to plumb. Fallen to a crumpled heap, she unleashed a long, liquid cry that chillingly escalated to a bone-shattering scream.

For those of you think it’s not a theatre critic’s place to moralize, get over it. The fact of the matter is, the scene I just described utterly impoverishes any defense of abortion, and makes even the most eloquent verbal objections to it pale by comparison.


New Play Conservatory at the Players Guild William G. Fry Arena Theatre, located in the Cultural Center for the Arts, Canton, Ohio. All performances at 8p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2:30p.m. Sundays, Tickets $10. Call (330) 453 – 7617.
Next up: “Mona Lisa” by Ron Burch, July 16 – 18 www.playersguildtheatre.com

PLAYWRIGHT BIO's - Get to know the Playwrights!

PILLS by Michael DeVito from Hartsdale, NY
World Premiere July 9, 10 and 11, 2010
Directed by Jeremy Lewis

About the Playwright
Michael DeVito’s plays are up and running across The United States. His play In Loco Parentis will be produced as part of the 2010 New York International Fringe Festival (inlocoparentisplay.com), and Pills (already booked for its second production – following its World Premiere at The Players Guild Theatre, Canton, OH) will be part of Chicago’s Black Ship Company’s inaugural season in 2011. He has had productions and readings in New York with Ten Grand Theater Company, Emerging Artists Theater, The Playwrights Group, and The Manhattan Theater Source. His He has studied playwriting at Queens College, Gotham Writers Group, and is a founding member of The Playwrights Group. He also has studied literature at Brooklyn College, and teaches high school in Westchester County. He lives in Hartsdale, New York, with his wife and two young children.

MONA LISA by Ron Burch from Los Angeles, CA
World Premiere July 16, 17 and 18, 2010
Directed by Mark Monday

About the Playwright
Ron Burch is a native of Columbus, Ohio, and makes his living as a screenwriter in Los Angeles. His movies include; Yours, Mine & Ours; Beverly Hills Chihuahua and Head Over Heels. In television he was nominated for a primetime Emmy for the Tom Selleck show, The Closer. His plays have been produced and developed by the Adirondack Theatre Festival, New York Theatre Workshop, The Lark, The Public Theater, ASK Theatre Projects, and others. Mona Lisa won the 2010 Rocky Mountain Theatre Association's Full Length Play Competition, where it was given a staged reading. Other staged readings have been at Northern Writes: 4th Annual New Play Festival, Penobscot Theatre, Bangor, ME, and at Live @ the Libe, Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights, and Los Angeles, CA. Ron's play, The Baby, was a recent finalist for “The National Ten-Minute Play Contest” at Actors Theatre of Louisville; it was produced in April 2010 as part of the American Globe Theatre's “NYC 15-Minute Play Festival” and had a production at Tre Stage in Hollywood, CA. His first novel, Bliss Inc., has just been published.


THEN WAVES by Kevin Kautzman from Saint Paul, MN
World Premiere July 23, 24 and 25, 2010
Directed by Craig Joseph

About the Playwright
Kevin Anthony Kautzman is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, Inc. and the Playwrights’ Center; and has been selected as a 2009 Tennessee Williams Scholar and a 2009-10 Jerome Fellow. A writer of many full length and short plays, his play Down: A Fable recently ran in the Red Eye Theatre’s production of 2010 Works-in-Progress series. The play THEN WAVES was a finalist for the 2009 Yale Drama Series and received readings in New York City during the summer of 2008 at the Living Theatre and Poliglot Theater. Most recently the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis presented a reading of THEN WAVES. He is an alumnus of the University of Minnesota, where he studied history and philosophy, and has been a resident of the Twin Cities for nearly a decade. He can be found online at www.kevinkautzman.com.

CAST LIST announced for PILLS, MONA LISA, and THEN WAVES

The New Play Conservatory Cast List

ALL CAST Memebers (required) for our KICKOFF workshop / production meeting on May 31st. We started promptly at 6:00pm. Arrive 10-15 minutes early.

PILLS
Sony Gzybowski
Stacey Essex
Justin Woody
Kathy Boyd
Nate Ross
Marvin Vance Jr.
Bethany Taylor
Megan Rosenburg


MONA LISA
Amy Crawford
Dave Osso
Tom Bryant
Leland Pettis
Grayden Provance


THEN WAVES
Maria Work
PJ Calac
Christopher Gales

Charactger Roles will be assigned at our kickoff.
Thank you to all that auditioned.

AUDITIONS for Pills, Mona Lisa, and Then Waves (ages 15 through 70)

Audition Dates and Requirements:
Monday, May 24 and Tuesday, May 25 from 6:30-9:30

Men and Women, Ages 15 to 70, All Races (Parental Content Waiver for Minors)
(Any youth under 15 wishing to audition may request an interview considering the youth is extremely mature and willing to work with difficult/adult subject matters)

Call to schedule an audition time for 6:30, 7:30 or 8:30 on either day
Auditions include a cold read and movement; monologues/resumes encouraged, not required

Callbacks on Wednesday, May 26 from 6:30-9:30

If cast, five free acting workshops featuring certified master artists and university instructors

Productions Dates:
Each Play Runs One Weekend (Three Performances) in July on Friday, Saturday and Sunday
PILLS: July 9, 10, and 11 MONA LISA: July 16, 17, and 18 THEN WAVES: July 23, 24, and 25

To Schedule an Audition or For More Information Call
Jeremy Lewis, Director of New Play Development 330-453-7619 ex: 500

PILLS by Michael DeVito from Hartsdale, NY
The Manhattan Theatre Source produced playwright and Masters in Playwriting and English Lit.
(2 M, 2 W and 4 Flex – ages 15 to 70 – content advisory for sexuality discussion and language)
Drama with Comedic Heart: Combining the wit of Seinfeld and the universal tone of Our Town, two New York couples on unstable mental and emotion ground articulate and explore their fears of conceiving children, in doing so, bring to life the ideas and emotions of the children they just might have together.

MONA LISA by Ron Burch from Los Angeles, CA
Produced Writer for Universal Pictures, Disney, American Globe Theatre, and Theatre Studio, NYC
(4 M and 1 W – ages 17 to 70)
Dramatic Comedy Romance: A historical fiction revealing the Mona Lisa painting and why she smiles, this play follows Leonardo da Vinci and his desire to pursue art and forbidden love.

THEN WAVES by Kevin Kautzman from Saint Paul, MN
Internationally Produced Playwright and Yale Drama Series Finalist
(3 M and 1 W – ages 15 to 40 – content advisory for violence and language)
Intense Drama: A discharged American soldier returns from war to do violence upon his estranged son, who may not be his son at all. Set in the American Midwest, THEN WAVES explores the issues of violence’s echo, the cost of war, and the impulses toward destruction that ravage families and destroy the future.