Does He Kill Her?

Never a Happy Ending

Audiences like to hear and see a story told well. They want to be drawn in. They want to relate to the story and to the characters on stage. The very best actors (and the directors behind them) know how to create realistic characters and tell a believable story so the audience can feel swept away to a different world.

And they want to know how the story ends.

Not every story has a happy ending. Happy endings, in fact, don’t usually make for good drama.

A Young Man. A Violent Past.

In my latest theatrical project, Feeding The Moonfish, by Barbara Wiechmann, the playwright leaves us with as ambiguous an ending as they come. We watch as two characters are drawn to one another and become intertwined in a psychodrama of violence, fear, mistrust and codependence. Nothing is resolved. Secrets are shared, vulnerabilities are revealed, and our final image is one with his hand on her throat as he whispers in her ear.

Intense. 

Without fail, after every performance so far, someone has asked me, “So. Does he kill her?”

Wouldn’t you like to know?

The protagonist, “Martin,” is a young man with a violent past. He has seen violence, lived violence; he has watched someone die and he may have killed someone, or at least allowed her to die through apathy and inaction. We come to believe he is, at the very least, most likely capable of great violence and cold-blooded indifference. He may have even killed a man simply to prove he could.

He has fantasized about it, anyway.

We also learn that perhaps the only people who ever cared about him have left him. His mother died when he was probably an infant, and his father commits suicide before Martin’s very eyes, only a few years after that. He has known disappointment and tragedy at a very young age and has suffered in his young days more than many of us suffer in a lifetime.

In his mind, he has been, in a word, abandoned.

And his antagonist in the story – teenaged “Eden” – knows a lot about that, too. 

I Would Never Leave You

She knows the secrets of his deep dark past. She has sensed they were there – according to our interpretation, anyway – and through psychological kill and manipulation draws what she doesn’t know but merely suspects, out of him.

[Great story, btw. Brilliant drama, brilliantly acted by Jared Lee Morgan and Colleen DiVincenzo.]

Throughout the course of her 45-minute mind game with Martin, Eden also confesses and, quite convincingly, assures Martin she will not abandon him. She will always care for him, no matter what sins he has witnessed, committed, or could ever commit. She never says she loves him. But she may be the only one left who even cares.

Eden manipulates Martin. She provokes him to the edge of violence and she taunts him with her worldliness and knowledge of his secrets.

What he feels towards her …. is also, not love.

I’m not entirely sure what it is.

But it makes for really, really good drama.

By the end of Feeding The Moonfish, we know Martin is capable of violence. He feels abandoned. He has been set up and now emotionally tortured by the only person left on the planet who could ever understand him and accept him despite who he is and what he has become.

But does he kill her?

You’ll just have to come and find out. *wink* 

It Never Really Ends

Local friends in the Rochester area have one more chance to see Black Sheep Theatre’s Feeding The Moonfish, by Barbara Wiechmann, featuring Jared Lee Morgan as “Martin” and Colleen DiVincezo as “Eden.” An open dress rehearsal is planned for Friday, June 12 at 8:00 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall of the Lutheran Church of the Reformation, 111 N. Chestnut Street, downtown Rochester. Donations to help the campaign to send Feeding The Moonfish to the AACT Fest National Theatre Festival competition on June 23, are most welcome at the door.

If you are unable to make it on Friday and would still like to help with production and travel expenses, please join us for an afternoon/evening of merriment, mayhem, and other forms of frivolity at “Slouching Towards Grand Rapids,” our gala fund raising event on Sunday, June 14, at The Bachelor Forum in downtown Rochester. The Forum is located at 670 University Avenue. The event runs from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. and features a silent auction, 50/50 raffle, games, prizes, drag queens and jello-shots!

What’s more, your donation also helps to support our upcoming 2015-16 season including our next offering, Del Shores’ Sordid Lives, directed by Charlie Cooper and Kristy Angevine-Funderburk, which opens just a few weeks after the AACT Fest.

You may also make your donation to Black Sheep Theatre at any time via PayPal at donations@blacksheeptheatre.org; or call our Ticketline 585.861.4816 if you want to make the payment some other way (like a check or cash).

And we all THANK YOU, from the bottom of the depths of our fishy, wishy hearts!

[Photo credits Marty Nott and David Sokolowski]

"At least, she DID something."

In just a few short weeks, Rochester’s Black Sheep Theatre’s Feeding the Moonfish by Barbara Wiechmann will compete on the national stage with a dozen other groups from across the country, as part of the National (American Association of Community Theatre) AACT Fest 2015 in Grand Rapids, MI.

Regular readers of this column will know this because lately, I won’t shut up about it.

Preparations have had me re-reading the script. I am always amazed that, even fully after a year of working with this text, I continue to find revelations and insights I hadn’t seen before.

Something. Anything.

There’s a passage where our young heroine, Eden – a tough-little-cookie of a young lady, brilliantly and sensitively portrayed by Rochester’s own Colleen DiVincenzo – is relaying a story about a classmate who pulled off a petty heist from the local Sears. Yes, Eden agrees: stealing is wrong. But she goes on to say, in a voice laden with awe and admiration, “You gotta admit, at least she did something.”

Action. Initiative. Taking matters into your own hands.

This is not to say I advocate theft in any form, either. Of course not. No.

Feeding the Moonfish is an exploration of the deep dark places we all harbor in our souls, which exist inside each of us for a multitude of reasons. Naturally, this passage is included (at least, that’s our interpretation) because the characters here are stuck. Paralyzed by their own loss. Loss in the past – of family, home, loved ones – and current loss for anything to do to get unstuck. They don’t know who or where to turn for help. They’re frightened and feel very much alone in the world. Hence why our hero and heroine are so drawn to one another.

And hence Eden’s admiration for a girl who did something. Anything. To beat boredom. To rally a cry for help.

Work That Feeds My Soul

I’ve been out of work for a couple of months. Those of you who have been there know how tedious and downright depressing it can be to have to look for work every day. I’ve been fortunate to have had several promising interviews. And second interviews. And third interviews.

But still, no offers.

And believe it or not, I’m beginning to tire of talking about myself that much. I know: hard to believe.

But I am positive things will turn upward soon. I believe in fate and faith and that the universe (with me in it) will unfold as it should. I’m learning also, to have patience.

A great deal of patience.

And I am hopeful.

I am hopeful that whatever I end up doing for a living – i.e., work to feed my bank account – I can do something that will contribute to the world. And if I can’t do it with my formal career, I hope at least to have done it with some other aspect of my life. Theatre, perhaps – the work that feeds my soul.

Bottom line, some day, when the time has come and I am at the end of my life, I hope I can look back with confidence, and hear the world say sincerely, even at a whisper, “At least she did something.”

Maybe taking this team to the AACT Fest in Grand Rapids will be my something.

[If you would like to help with Black Sheep Theatre’s journey to Grand Rapids later this month, there are a number of ways you can help. Contributions are now being accepted via PayPal at donate@blacksheeptheatre.org. Arrangements for donations can also be made by calling 585-861-4816. Local supporters can join us on Sunday, June 14 at 5:00 p.m. for “Slouching Towards Grand Rapids,” a gala fund raising event featuring a Silent Auction, 50-50 Raffle, Door prizes and much more! The Bachelor Forum, 670 University Avenue, Rochester, NY, from 5 pm to 8 pm. Donations are also needed for the Silent Auction, any items valued at $25 or more, especially “big ticket” items, are especially appreciated. Thank you for your support!]