Getting Playful on Stage

Given the small and rather insular nature of the local theater scene, Santa Barbara’s Ensemble Theatre Company and Ventura’s Rubicon Theatre Company don’t often open productions the same week, let alone ones that kick off their respective seasons. What’s rarer still is that both of the plays are tackling exceedingly current topics that resonate in cultural, political, and interpersonal realms. 

Rubicon’s three-character The Lifespan of a Fact delves into an examination of the meanings of facts vs. truth, or journalistic integrity vs. creative process, in a dramatic story drawn from a real-life situation about when the boundaries can be blurred. Ensemble’s The Thanksgiving Play, from Native American playwright Larissa FastHorse, is a four-character vehicle that takes on political correctness and “wokemess” via a blistering satire about well-meaning white people attempting to put on an educational, culturally sensitive show.

The plays have very different approaches to their topics, each of which carries additional gravitas in our post-George Floyd, “alternative facts” and everyone’s-a-journalist era. And as autumn represents the start of the academic year for those still in the educational environment, one can imagine there’s lots of learning as well as entertainment in these early October openings. While each can certainly be seen and enjoyed just for the theatrical value, people might want to come prepared for plenty of pondering and perhaps protracted discussions on the car rides home. 

The Truth of the Matter

The Lifespan of a Fact is an adaptation of a nonfiction book written by the principals about their struggle over a magazine essay back in the early 2010s. A literary essayist has written a piece about the real-life death of a young man who jumped from the roof of a Las Vegas hotel, but has taken a lot of liberties with the details of the case with an eye for flow and art. That alarms a zealous young writer on his first professional assignment as a fact-checker who becomes ever more determined not to keep every error out of the published piece. 

Rubicon co-founder and Producing Artistic Director Karyl Lynn Burns, who returned to her leadership position after a short hiatus earlier this year to help the company stay the course in emerging from the pandemic, at first thought there was no question about where to land on the ethics of stretching facts in a magazine story when she read it. But then she was smitten by the play when she saw it at the Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles last winter, and decided to import it wholecloth in Ventura, complete with the same cast and director. 

That evolution continues. 

“I have a conversation after every rehearsal that I watch, and there are nuances that have me leaning a different way every time,” she said. “[The writer] is trying to tell a story that he thinks could be life-changing about the death of a teenager… with an emotional commitment to unearth the deeper concerns. He believes the details can get in the way, and that he can shape what he considers the non-important facts to feed the truth of the story.”

Meanwhile, the fact-checker is so overzealous as to become obsessive, Burns said, which maybe pushes the writer to be even less willing to compromise. 

“So it’s more complex than it seems, just as what divides our world in such a polarized moment is complex. Through the piece, you can see that there might be greater complexity about everything than we first realize.”

Theater, of course, is where art is king and the only full allegiance is to the word of the playwright, which is sacrosanct. What matters is creating a production that is vibrant and worth watching, but literal truth isn’t the goal. 

“As a theater practitioner we are aspiring to share truths, but it’s essential truths,” Burns said. “We leave out tying your shoelaces and shift time and details in the stories that we tell so that the truth is more clear.” 

That might mean inserting comedy into a situation that gave life to Lifespan that was nearly always super serious. The play’s humor – which comes from the characters’ passionate points of view that get so extreme they become ludicrous enough to laugh at – helps the audience have access to their own inner worlds, Burns said. 

“That helps us to laugh at them and ourselves, and our commitment to our own biases,” she said. 

Lifespan not only inaugurates but is largely the centerpiece of Rubicon’s 25th anniversary season, dubbed “Truly Yours” because several of the plays are based on true stories or characters, or look at the idea of truth, or both. But it’s also to reference the concept that RTC belongs to the community, Burns said, at a pivotal point when the company is still emerging from the pandemic. 

“The theater was built initially by artists who wanted to have inclusion, a dialogue with the community,” she said. “That’s what we’ve done for 25 years.” 

The Lifespan of a Fact opens Wednesday, October 4. For more information, visit www.rubicontheatre.org.

A Play to Be Thankful For

Ensemble’s The Thanksgiving Play also comes at a pivot point for the company, as it represents the first ETC production since the June departure of artistic director Jonathan Fox after 17 years at the helm. Then-managing director Scott DeVine – who was elevated to executive director, which just earlier this week became a sole leadership position in a merging of the artistic and administrative functions – put together the new season in short order. DeVine also tapped ETC Education Director Brian McDonald to helm one of the plays. 

McDonald chose The Thanksgiving Play – which just played on Broadway this spring – because he found it “horrifying and challenging and scary… But also really exciting and full of fun and heart.” 

FastHorse’s “satire within a comedy” finds good intentions derailed by absurd assumptions when a couple of “terminally woke” teachers try to create a holiday pageant for elementary school students to celebrate both Thanksgiving and Native American Heritage Month with elementary school students. The play is set in the rehearsal room, where, one reviewer said, “it twists the drama teacher who is creating it, along with her colleagues, into pretzels of performative wokeness so mortifying they induce a perma-cringe.”

The messiness induces the laughter as well as empathy, McDonald said. 

“These characters are really proactive about wanting to learn and get it right, figure out a path forward that is inclusive,” he said. “But they’re terribly flawed in their execution, and it all goes terribly wrong.” 

The play does a great job of skewering the characters, and by implication ourselves, in our attempt to be inclusive of cultures we don’t understand, or even just not to offend, McDonald said. 

“Even just using the correct terminology when we talk to each other, or how we represent each other, and our allegiances to each other. What does that mean? How do we go about that? The play depicts that very well… The characters are very likable, even though they are very flawed. They’re not terrible people. There’s a tremendous amount of heart and love and fun.”

The play itself addresses that part in all of us, he said. 

“It speaks to a wider personal desire we share to make our world a better place. People have different ideas of what that is, but it’s a very honorable pursuit. That’s the heart of the play. As absurd as it is, its characters come from a place of real care and sensitivity.” 

The zaniness of the action is balanced with more intimate moments, as well as some that might surprise the audience, McDonald said. 

“It’s almost shocking that in one moment you can be laughing at something, and then start thinking, ‘Should I be laughing at this? Am I uncomfortable with this? Why?’ I think there’s going to be a lot of that kind of afterthought when the play ends.”

Performances for The Thanksgiving Play begin on Thursday, October 5. For more information visit https://etcsb.org.