Director hopes plays help build community
Neither of theater director Christopher Ashley’s recent projects were supposed to speak specifically to the political moment of 2017. But that’s the accident of release dates — sometimes productions, years in the making, end up having excellent timing.
The first of these is “Come From Away,” the Broadway musical about a small Newfoundland town that welcomed thousands of stranded passengers after their airplanes were grounded in the wake of 9/11. The fact that audiences responded to its themes of duty, service and community could have been a factor in Ashley’s Tony Award win in June for Best Director of a Musical. It was Ashley’s first Tony win.
The second is “Freaky Friday,” which recently wrapped up its run at Houston’s Alley Theatre, a story about a daughter and mother who learn to empathize with each other after spending a day trapped in each other’s bodies.
“This is such a fraught American moment, that with both ‘Come From Away’ and ‘Freaky Friday,’ there’s something really satisfying about doing pieces about people understanding each other better and bridging gaps between people,” said Ashley, who has directed other Broadway musicals, including “Memphis” and “Xanadu,” and has been the artistic director of La Jolla Playhouse since 2007. “To imagine someone else’s reality, and to use compassion instead of just shouting across the divide, seems to be the big American thing at the moment.”
Theater artists have been debating the role of art especially hotly since the Public Theater’s “Julius Caesar” drew opponents and protesters for its portrayal of a Trump-like character being assassinated. Ashley notes that, in times of heightened emotion, many plays, even those that are 400 years old, seem more relevant than they once did. But he cautions against comparing his projects to “Julius Caesar.”
“Shakespeare wrote those plays to be provocative,” he said. “It’s about what your intention is of your play. Both ‘Come From Away’ and ‘Freaky Friday’ are trying to build community.”
In other words, these are musicals that explore “the things that can bind us together, as a family, or as a nation or a town,” he said. “As an artistic director I’m looking for plays that build community as opposed to rip people apart.”
Ashley and other directors of easy-to-love pieces of art might be the unconventional answer to political turmoil. That’s not to say that controversy isn’t welcomed, Ashley said. It’s simply another option in how to respond to the current world.
“Theater can do both. There’s a real function for both the plays that sear and tear, and the plays that build and heal,” Ashley said. “Society is tearing itself so much right now, so there’s a case to be made that one of the functions of theater is to bring people together.”