A ‘New’ season
Theater marks its fifth anniversary season in Main Street home with selection of diverse new plays
“Becky’s New Car” among shows set for Carpenter Square Theatre’s season.
Six years ago, Rhonda Clark watched in horror as Carpenter Square Theatre’s furniture, costumes and props floated among the flotsam and jetsam of the final flood of Stage Center.
The 2010 deluge was a heartbreaking moment in the theater’s three-decade history, said the longtime artistic director. But after a season performing in a motel, Carpenter Square is happily celebrating its fifth anniversary in its Main Street home on the edge of the burgeoning Film Row district.
“We love our new location … and we’re so excited about 21c (Museum Hotel) opening and being just a block away,” Clark said. “Having the autonomy of your own space is amazing. … We do eight shows a season, so there isn’t a lot of downtime, but we are looking at ways of renting out the space when it’s not in use. In fact, we’re going to start trying out some regular karaoke nights.”
The community theater is preparing for its 33rd season, which opens Friday and will feature plays that primarily spotlight stories about women and families.
“Half the season is comedy, but then we’ve got some grittier things in there,” Clark said. “It’s a big variety and lots of fabulous roles for women, while the men are not neglected.”
The lineup not only includes four comedies, three comedy-dramas and one drama, but it also features seven Oklahoma City premieres. The commitment to contemporary plays is what Carpenter Square stands for, said longtime play selection committee member Vikki Simer.
“I think it’s important that we bring new theater to the city. It’s a lot different than redoing plays that have been done. … I think that’s vital also, because there’s always new generations of theatergoers and they haven’t seen those classics,” Simer said. “But I really think that doing new theater is a reflection of where the entire country is at this point in time.”
Focusing on women
Five of the eight plays slated for Carpenter Square’s 2016-17 season feature women as the main characters, including the opener “Becky’s New Car,” a fourth wall-breaking comedy by Steven Dietz. It will play Friday through Sept. 24.
“Because so many plays center around men, we do
have several shows this season that have amazing roles for women,” Clark said. “One of the things you see a lot of are men’s midlife crisis stories, but this is a woman’s midlife crisis story, and that’s what makes it unique.”
Rebecca Gilman’s comedy-drama “The Sweetest Swing in Baseball,” set for Oct. 14-Nov. 5, pitches the timely tale of Dana, an artist whose struggle with paranoia lands her in a mental hospital.
“When she finds out that her insurance is going to run out after 10 days, it’s like ‘But wait, I know I need more time.’ That sounds like a very dark subject; the fun of it is this kind of psychosis that she concocts, this persona of being Darryl Strawberry. And of course, some of the fellow patients that are in there with her are happy to help her concoct this,” Clark said.
“I love plays that can mine comedy out of a very serious topic, and mental health is a very serious topic.” Based on a true story,
“Bakersfield Mist” pits Maude Gutman, a bawdy, boozy yard sale enthusiast, against Lionel Percy, an uptight New York art appraiser, after Maude buys a $3 painting she believes is by Jackson Pollock. Carpenter Square will stage Stephen Sachs’ comedy-drama Jan. 6-28. Paul Elliott’s comedy
“Exit Laughing,” scheduled for Feb. 17-March 11, is described as “The Golden Girls” meets “Steel Magnolias,” as it follows the antics of three Southern ladies who “borrow” the ashes of their recently deceased gal pal for one last weekly bridge night.
After staging Joe DiPietro’s comic and creepy “Art of Murder” last fall, Carpenter Square will take on his new comedy-drama “Creating Claire” May 12-June 3. It tells the story of Claire, a docent at a natural history museum whose growing religious faith affects her outlook on her family and job, to the consternation of her strictly scientific boss, Victoria.
“I think it’s going to give a lot of people food for thought, and some people
will take one side and some people will take the other. But it’s not really trying to tell us which is the side,” Clark said. “It deals with some very interesting issues of science and faith, but it really, at the core, it is (about) this family, this couple and their autistic daughter.”
Telling family stories
“Creating Claire” won’t be the only family story Carpenter Square shares this season. After staging Phil Olsen’s “A Nice Family Gathering” several years ago, the theater will dedicate this year’s Nov. 25-Dec. 17 holiday slot to the sequel, “A Nice Family Christmas.”
“We think about when we get together at the holidays of crazy Aunt So-and-So or that slightly off cousin or whatever; well, you don’t have to feel bad about your family after seeing this. It puts together some really unique, outrageous, funny characters in this family,” Clark said.
“There’s always a lot about family because that’s what playwrights write about so often, whether it’s a traditional family or an ad hoc family.”
Although the title isn’t new to OKC theatergoers, Carpenter Square will close its season June 23-July 15 with Christopher Durang’s Tony-winning comedy “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and
Spike,” one of the most popular and widely produced new plays of recent years. The absurdist romp is about middle-aged siblings Vanya and Sonia, who never left their childhood home after caring for their now-dead parents. Their lives are upended when their movie-star sister Masha and her boy-toy Spike swoop in for a surprise visit.
“It really comes back to kind of that age-old conflict of the siblings who stayed and took care of things with the sibling that got out,” Clark said. “These kind of comedies just don’t come along very often that are so intelligent and funny.”
Getting dramatic
Family and faith also are core issues explored in Matthew Lopez’s gritty post-Civil War drama
“The Whipping Man,” which won the New York Outer Critic Circle’s 2011 John Gassner New Play Award. Set in Richmond, Va., just after the war, it follows a Jewish Confederate officer who returns to his home to find it abandoned, except for the family’s two now-freed slaves.
“It’ll be great both for the subject matter itself but also with the historical aspect of it. All kinds of educational opportunities,” Clark said, adding that the March 31-April 22 production will be part of the theater’s educational program for at-risk teens. “The script is remarkable. It is so powerful.”