‘Speed of Light’: The pleasures and pitfalls of putting sci-fi on a theater stage.
The reams of lines devoted to gates that keep out aliens or a machine too complex to get built make it seem like the real story of “Speed of Light” takes place offstage.
When we think of sci-fi and fantasy, there’s a reason we imagine it more in film, comic books and novels than in theater. In live performance, which is often on a shoestring budget, it’s especially challenging to render vividly the imagined worlds and beings that are such an integral part of the genres.
So in dedicating itself to sci-fi and fantasy, new company Quantum Dragon Theatre takes on a formidable task. But given the youth and energy behind various nerd cultures in the Bay Area, these genres could also be a savvy choice of emphasis: If you want to bring more, newer and younger audiences into theater, why not tap
into an interest group whose members have already proved themselves avid fans of storytelling and imagination?
Quantum Dragon’s second show, “Speed of Light,” embodies both the pleasures and the pitfalls of moving sci-fi out of its traditional media and into theater.
It follows Mayra (Becky Raeta), an idiot savant who discovers the secret to travel at light speed at a time when the prospect of alien invasion imperils both her planet and that of her childhood friend Valki (Celeste Conowitch).
Though Mayra’s brilliance is so once-in-a-lifetime that Nevik (Casey Spiegel) courts her to be the first female member of a religious order of geniuses, she doesn’t crack the secret to light speed fully on her own; she takes a dangerous, addictive drug — “a fine, rose-colored powder that will crack the universe open at my feet.” It briefly multiplies one’s existing genius before feeding on and stupefying the brain, so that a user who once could make enormous calculations instantly can soon no longer do basic multiplication.
What works about Bella Poynton’s script, which is directed by Sam Tillis, is that when you can’t make cinematic cuts from planet to spaceship, illustrate with CGI every combusting molecule of an explosion or lavish paragraphs of imagination-inspiring description on an alien’s appearance, the complex web of relationships among characters comes into sharper focus.
Mayra feels both daughterly affection for and betrayal by Tazmen (Dave Sikula), who’s housed her for two decades but also profited from her inventions; she admires her suitor Frey (Tony Cirimele) for his loyalty and doggedness yet can’t bring herself to requite his love; she endangers her health to help save Valki’s planet, then endangers Valki’s planet to gratify her drug habit.
But when you contain a sci-fi tale of epic proportions within the “counting room” of an old factory in a tiny black box theater, the exposition that’s almost always a big part of the genre can feel ponderous and silly.
The reams of lines devoted to gates that keep out aliens or a machine too complex to get built make it seem like the real story of “Speed of Light” takes place offstage.
As Mayra, Raeta is at her strongest when she’s embodying the physicist’s contradictory impulses as if from a distance, never fully giving in to one or the other. But her bug-eyed portrayal of Mayra’s addiction looks cartoonish, especially in the shoebox-size venue that is the Mojo Theatre.
Conowitch and Spiegel give thoughtful, grounded performances as those who best understand Mayra, but Sikula as Tazmen and GreyWolf as Ferrin, a businessman who wants to invest in and build Mayra’s machine, often perform the default version of an emotion rather than one that emerges from a particular situation and character.
Still, as a pioneer of genres that themselves are all about pioneering, Quantum Dragon is a welcome addition to the Bay Area theater scene.