SCSU steers ‘How I Learned to Drive’

Six performances set at Lyman Drama Lab

The budding thespians at Southern Connecticut State University are increasingly confident about their department and staged shows, having produced “The Addams Family” recently and benefiting from the university’s partnership with Elm Shakespeare. The next offering by SCSU Theatre and the undergrad Crescent Players will be another big test.

Pulitzer Prize-winning play “How I Learned to Drive” by Paula Vogel, directed here by theater department chair Kaia Monroe Rarick, tells the adult-themed story of a young girl, Lil’ Bit, and the relationship she has with her Uncle Peck that spans from her pre-adolescence into adulthood.

It’s a nuanced but strained and sexual relationship, so there’s a lot on the table here. The metaphor of driving covers issues of pedophilia, incest and misogyny as the play explores ideas of control and manipulation.

“How I Learned to Drive” premiered on March 16, 1997, off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre. It will have six performances from Tuesday through Dec. 2 at Lyman Center’s Kendall Drama Lab.

Molly Flanagan, a publicist for the Crescent Players and dramaturg on the show, said “just seeing it in full the other day (in run-throughs), my big thing I took out of it, especially now with current political events, is how you always have the men who ... have people who come to their side, these perpetrators of sexual assaults.

“... So specifically for Uncle Peck in this show, he has PTSD and alcoholism, his own childhood sexual abuse. And then you have the girl who was has been molested since she was 13 years old and people call her a slut and

blame her — in her own family while they’re also coming to the aid of her uncle.”

So Lil’ Bit has the ultimate challenge in “just trying to grow up from these things, to grow up as a woman and try to make your own name, especially when your family is not coming to your aid,” Flanagan said. “It’s really like the different perspectives when a man is accused.”

Flanagan said the SCSU productions draw a lot of family members and friends of crew and cast, of course. But there are outside people who attend, too, especially for “Addams Family,” and the troupe is trying to build on that.

Flanagan said SCSU’s theater professors are working theater professionals and some work on the quite-professional summer productions of Elm Shakespeare.

Elm’s summer base at SCSU’s Lyman Center features a pro-quality set design shop. Flanagan said a new faculty member is a set, projection and lighting designer. That led to an ambitious set for “Addams Family” and will bring projection graphics to this show.

That mix of “interdisciplinary elements ... brings our theater department out to the whole community.”

Flanagan will be hosting a symposium after the Thursday performance with faculty members talking about childhood trauma, sexual abuse, Vogel’s work, the play, its themes and where you can find support on campus. Drama Lab, Room 14, 501 Crescent St., New Haven. 8 p.m. except Dec. 2 at 2 p.m. $15 public, $5 students. 203-392-6154. tickets.southernct.edu

Contributed photo Jason Carubia plays Uncle Peck and Julia Raucci is Li’l Bit in a rehearsal of the play at SCSU.