[ back ]
The ties that bind
(by Rebecca S. Rivas - September 03, 2008)
Some of the most thrilling mysteries begin with the reading of a will.
Scorched, a play by French-speaking writer Wajdi Mouawad, doesn’t break that timeless structure. But the audience should be prepared for the unexpected when the Orange Girls Theater Company performs the award-winning play for the first time in the United States Sept. 12 through 28 at the Center of Creative Arts, 524 Trinity Ave.
“The writing is unlike anything I’ve seen before,” said Director Tom Martin, who has worked with the Repertory Theater of St. Louis for 28 years. This is his first production with the Orange Girls.
Scorched follows two siblings, twins, whose mother’s dying wish for them is to seek out the truth of her life and the origins of their own birth. As they embark on the challenge, their journey takes them into a war-torn country, which could be anywhere from the playwright’s birthplace of Lebanon to North Africa or the Balkans.
Martin saw the play in Canada, where Mouawad currently resides, and raved about it to Michelle Hand, an Orange Girls founder. After reading the script, she said, “literally all the hairs on my neck stood up.”
When Hand passed the script along to the other two founders of the not-for-profit theater group, Brooke Edwards and Meghan Maguire, they had the same experience.
And despite swearing that all three of them would never act together while still trying to produce a play, they couldn’t resist with this one, and all three co-founders will be acting in Scorched, she said.
“It’s a timely script in that it speaks to the state of the world right now,” Hand said. “It doesn’t fall along a particular political stance, but rather on a personal way of how this one woman endures this world, driven by the love of her children.”
The almost three-hour performance requires the audience to invest in taking a journey with the characters, she said.
But don’t all plays ask the audience to come along with them?
“Yes, but this one does it in such a personal way that it requires the audience to completely surrender,” Hand said. “If the audience members are willing to put that trust in us, they are going to walk out of the theater feeling that they’ve taken part in something unlike anything they’ve seen before.”
Besides the emotional demands it places on the audience, the play also jumps through time and place frequently, making it equally intellectually demanding, she said.
“It takes you to places physically and emotionally that you’re not expecting,” Martin said. “It’s episodic with 38 scenes. We travel in time and to different continents.”
The audience also has to keep a careful watch because almost every actor plays more the one role. And vice versa, as the mother’s role is played by three different women: Magan Wiles, Hand and Nancy Lewis.
Mouawad intentionally made the country non-specific because he wanted the audience to make the connection of war throughout the world. The play, however, does reflect upon Mouawad’s childhood experience.
Mouawad was born in Lebanon in 1968. When he was 6, Mouawad witnessed Christian militiamen fire machine guns at a bus in Beirut that was carrying Palestinians; the event occurred shortly after a Christian was killed outside a nearby church. It was the beginning of the Lebanese civil war, and Mouawad’s family was forced to flee. They lived in Paris for a few years and then settled in Montreal.
Although Scorched is set in conflict, the heart of the story is about a woman and her children.
“Anyone who has a mother,” should go see the play, Hand said. “We hope that by coming to witness [the mother’s] story, people will better understand the relationships in their own lives and … the choices they’ve made.”
• All performances of Scorched will be held at the Anheuser-Busch Black Box Theatre at COCA. Friday and Saturday performances are at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. The play is not suitable for children. To reserve tickets, visit www.orangegirls.org or call 520-9557.
[ back ]
