4 disconnected souls land in NM in ‘Fulfillment Center’
Four displaced people land in New Mexico feeling disconnected from everyone on the planet. Alex is a New York transplant who moved to become the manager of a fulfillment center for a big online retailer during the holidays (think Amazon). His African-American girlfriend, Madeleine, follows him, assuming the assignment is temporary. A 60-something Joni Mitchell wannabe named Suzan, on the run from a disastrous relationship, just wants to earn enough cash to repair her car and take off for Maine. Then a carpenter with a nebulous past named John appears at her campsite.
“Fulfillment Center,” penned by author Abe Koogler,whose family lives in Santa Fe, opens at Fusion’s Cell Theatre on Thursday, Nov. 2. The play recently closed after premiering at the Manhattan Theater Club.
It portends a hard look at the human cost of our brave new economy of nonunion labor and unforgiving bottom lines.
“I don’t think anybody from the Fusion Theatre Company is an original New Mexican,” director and Fusion co-founder Jacqueline Reid said. “Something beautiful happens here –– particularly in Albuquerque –– and you change. It goes back to Mabel Dodge Luhan and D.H. Lawrence; there’s an energy here that happens, and it’s healing.”
The plot seems almost prescient amid the fanfare of Albuquerque’s bidding to become the location for Amazon’s
second headquarters.
The playwright weaves in the technological wonders of cellphones and iPads, as well as the sense of disconnection they can produce as we stare at screens in lieu of direct communication.
Alex has arrived to supervise the shipping crew during the busy holiday season. Madeleine isn’t happy to find herself in the desert provinces of New Mexico, where she feels uncomfortable as a black woman. She thinks she’s being stared at wherever she goes. She drinks too much and spends her idle time surfing the Web.
Alex makes Suzan physically show she can keep up the center’s fast pace without running. (It’s against company policy.) He delivers the robotic corporate line, “New Mexicans depend on us to make their holiday dreams come true.”
Madeleine says she’s willing to stay with him for six months before their planned move to Seattle. But she rejects his marriage proposal. When she meets John, she tells him he must be either a serial killer or “one of those Rain Men.”
An obviously attracted Suzan invites John to join her on the road.
When these four characters talk, they only half-hear one another.
“I think (New Mexico) is a very unique experience,” Reid said. “You can like it or hate it or you can try to understand the work ethic and how it’s different from the East Coast. There’s an incredible possibility for great change and transformation.”
“We have the opportunity to show the play to New Mexicans who know exactly what’s going on.”