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.
Marta Portillo is an Ovation Fellow from Los Angeles City College.
Watching Brewsie and Willie last week I was struck by the strong parallels of the past and present. The piece could not have been done at a more relevant time. It is based on a Gertrude Stein novella and definitely speaks to our present state as a country.
It analyzes the anxiety present in soldiers and nurses getting ready to return home from France during WWII. Anxiety is a theme throughout the piece and is expressed through movement, song and conversations the soldiers and nurses have amongst themselves. Our nation is in a state of anxiety, much like the soldiers in Brewsie and Willie. We are in a state of limbo. We can feel that huge changes are coming about; the uncertainty of the future has created a fear and anxiety in many of us, from the most conservative to the most liberal.
The set for Brewsie and Willie is simple but effective. White walls, sandbags and large open windows allow the high-rise buildings of downtown Los Angeles to play their part. The backdrop of downtown seeping into the set as the soldiers and nurses talk about the depression they once lived through and whether or not they will have jobs once they return home allows the past and present to become one. This is the reality that many Americans are facing today and they are asking the questions, “Will I find a job? What does the future hold? Will I keep my home?”
These are the same questions characters in Brewsie and Willie ask themselves. We all want to have a sense of security but when that is taken away, be it by a war, a depression, the loss of job or finding our way back is scary. Can we return to something that has left us? Will it ever be the same again? How do we find it? Sometimes we can go back and sometimes we cannot. The same way characters in Brewsie and Willie have their own future to embark on once they leave war torn France, we have to experience life in our own way and have to set forth on our own path. As human beings we do this best, to use a word that was used throughout the piece, despite the anxiety and the fear we PIONEER into the future.
