Not exactly ‘PERFECT LOVE’
‘We’re all screwed up’
Talia Pura named it “Perfect Love,” but the scenes in her original play showcase the exact opposite.
“It’s all screwed-up relationships,” Pura said during a recent rehearsal for the comedy. Her series of some 20 vignettes, nearly all of which depict relationships ending or ones in crisis, premieres Friday, Dec. 7 at Warehouse 21.
The scenes, all performed by a cast of four, are nearly all stand-alone stories. While the situations differ, Pura said something all of the stories have in common is how they point out the foibles of human behavior.
“I’m afraid (the characters) all have serious flaws, and sometimes when I finish a scene, I’ll look at the two actors and say, ‘You deserve each other,’” she said with a laugh.
“There’s no real villain in the pieces. They kind of do deserve each other. They get themselves into some relationship issues (and), well, life happens. People respond badly most of the time when they’re not getting what they want. So there’s a fair bit of that. And we’re mining it for comedy, of course.”
Most of the scenes, Pura said, are based on true stories. Many of them come from submissions she read in a love advice column in her hometown newspaper, the Winnipeg Free Press. She moved from Canada to Santa Fe in late 2015, the same year she finished the play. She now operates the local Blue Raven Theatre company.
Those seeking advice from Miss Lonelyhearts included a married man who was upset that the woman he was having a 20-year affair with had found someone else; a young girl who had just found out her boyfriend was gay; and a guy who discovers he’s been left for his best friend. Pura said she used the problems posed in the letters as jumping-off points.
“I took the moment of highest crisis, shall we say, in each of those questions that a reader may have posed to the Lonelyhearts columnist and imagined what it would have been like if the people (in my scenes) had been involved in that situation,” she said. “That’s where the conversation would begin and that’s where the situation would evolve from.”
But not all of the stories came from the column. She created a tale from a “ridiculously memorable” conversation she overheard at a restaurant — a man insulted his female waitress and then tried to ask her out. Another set of scenes was fashioned after she saw a call for a play in which the casting was genderless. A twoperson vignette about friends faced with the possibility of developing a romance will be done four times, Pura said.
“At one point, it’s an older man and a woman, another time it’s a younger man and woman, and then it’s two men, and it’s also two women,” she said.
The script is identical in each performance, but she said each tells a slightly different story. With differing emotional intent and context, the endings are varied.
The message Pura says she’s trying to get across is simple: We’re all messed up. It’s about recognizing oneself and others in the short stories, and laughing about it, she added.
“I think anyone can come see this and say, ‘Oh, I’ve been there,’ (or) ‘Oh, that reminds me of somebody,’” said actor Tyler Nunez, a member of the twomen, two-women ensemble. “I mean, I think I’ve found myself in one or two of these situations in my life.”
But even when the scenes are relatable, particularly ones that use humor to show people behaving badly, oftentimes people don’t link it back to their own situations, Pura said
“You’ll recognize someone you know,” she said. “You’ll recognize other people up there. We don’t often look at ourselves and say, ‘Oh I was really messed up.’ You look and go, ‘That’s just the way — fill in the blank — my friend, my brother, reacted.’ ”
“Perfect Love” also stars Amanda Cazares and Hamilton Turner. The show is suggested for ages 14 and up.