Ovation Fellows are current students or recent alumni from Los Angeles area universities. Fellows are paired with a Mentor, currently serving as an Ovation Award voter, and see productions and meet artists around Greater Los Angeles throughout the year. Their articles, posted on LAStageBlog, are intended to be their personal responses to their experiences, and not as critical reviews or representing the views of LA Stage Alliance.
Benjamin Rodriguez is an Ovation Fellow from the University of Southern California.
When I think of my experience at Rogue Machine Theatre the Thursday before last-which was Oct. 22-I think of an image that actor Hugo Armstrong described to me when I met him before seeing Medea at UCLAlive a few weeks ago. When we had been discussing the diversity of theatre in Los Angeles, he said something along the lines of “Sometimes you see really great theatre in LA, and then sometimes you see theatre that really turns you off, or that you frankly just can’t make sense of, like a show about Jesus in the Jello or somethin’…”
The experience I had at Rogue Machine as they proudly presented the American premiere of Never Land, written and directed by Phyllis Nagy, was for me a Jesus in the Jello experience.
The overall experience was positive. In fact, it was great. To start off, I found the theatre easily, found ample metered street parking and still had time to prepare for a meet I anticipated at the time was going to be with artistic director of Rogue, John Perrin Flynn. And when Mark (my all- star mentor) and I found out Flynn had unexpectedly gone home ill and would be unable to see us, our disappointment was quickly alleviated by actress/writer and avid theatre lover Penny Orloff who generously offered her time to speak with us about the production and answer some questions I had about LA and theatre.
Orloff’s excitement for the production and about her life in the theatre was palpable. Listening to her accomplishments (including on-going performances of her one-woman show and a published novel) in the theatre and reasons why she loves Nagy’s work were all accompanied by a vibrant smile that stretched from ear-to-ear and that gave off welcoming vibes. She encouraged me to ask all sorts of questions I had and, by the end of our session, not only did I feel much more optimistic about starting my life post-graduation but I felt significantly more informed as a theatre patron and as an aspiring artist/writer. And I felt like I had made a friend in the LA theatre scene.
Mark and I went into the house with high hopes and ready for the production of a lifetime. Nagy’s description of her work in her “A Note from the Playwright” added to the energy. Nagy had even wrote that her characters were prophetic.
The production was definitely a blind-sided swoop across the eyes to say the least. To start, the opening curtains revealed an amazing set complete with what seemed like human-sized trees and shrubs in the background, vibrant colors and details in the production’s living room setting, and an ongoing rain you could see constantly pouring down outside the house’s walls. Simply beautiful.
But there was someone bathing on stage in the nude rambling a lot of nonsense in what one may deem “heightened” language. And she remained nude for quite some time. Then, within minutes of the play’s commencement, it seemed Nagy had instructed every character on stage to come across crazy by morphing into caricatures of what audience members may stereotypically think crazy people behave like. Then an actor, within the world of the play, came in soaked from the rain in Act III and took all his clothes off and recited another “heightened” language monologue (almost like in tongues) about a strawberry blond youth and dream-like images that seemed to be a staple of Nagy’s script.
Three acts and two intermissions later, we left the theatre having loved our exchange with Orloff but confused by what we had seen. I’m not sure I understood why certain things happened and why it was directed the way it was. But I’m glad I had the experience. The confusion turned into elation when I realized, in LA, I can see amazing theatre and I can also have these nights where productions seem to me as random and eccentric as Jesus emerging from Jello.
For more information on Never Land or the Rogue Machine Theatre, click here!
