Playwright says ‘Superstitions’ sprang to life and made sense in OKC
Absurdity and anxiety prove natural if uneasy neighbors in the unabashedly strange new play “Superstitions.”
Described by the playwright, Emily Zemba, as “an unconventional dark comedy about navigating our personal and national terrors,” “Superstitions” is getting its professional theater debut courtesy Oklahoma City Repertory Theater, which is performing it through March 5 at Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center’s Te Ata Theater.
Here’s what you need to know about “Superstitions”:
Just how new is ‘Superstitions?’
“Superstitions” was first staged in 2021 by New York City’s The Pool, which uses an artist-led pop-up theater model in which three playwrights produce their plays all together in repertory, meaning they use the same pool of performers.
Zemba, a New York-based playwright originally from Connecticut, went to graduate school at Yale with Oklahoma
City Repertory Theater Artistic Director Kelly Kerwin, who read an early draft of “Superstitions” in 2015. It stuck with her, and it’s not hard to figure out why once you see the show.
Last year, Zemba joined Kerwin in Oklahoma City to help develop “Of a Mind: OKC,” an innovative and immersive guided audio tour of the urban core. Oklahoma City clearly made an impression on Zemba: She writes in the “Superstitions” program that the show “takes place in an American city. For a long time, I considered the setting to be something like New York.”
But in the second week of rehearsals with OKC Rep, she writes that, “The play suddenly sprang to life and made more sense to me here, in OKC. People really talk to each other here — on the street, on a bench, at Elemental Coffee. They strike up conversations — both sweet and odd.”
What is ‘Superstitions?’ about?
Sweet and odd conversations form the basis of “Superstitions,” an eerily atmospheric and somewhat abstract show.
Staged without intermission, the 85minute play follows eight people making their way through an unnamed city, highlighting the conversations and connections that happen as their lives intersect.
On a bench, the hustling Neredia (Breezy Leigh, a New Jersey native based in California) stops for a stick of gum and encounters Grieg (OKC actor Ronn Burton), a foreigner boasting a large map and obvious accent. He offers her a penny he finds on the ground near her feet, which leads to a discussion about superstitions, including the surprisingly dark origins of some of those commonly held irrational beliefs.
Next, we meet a chatty, upwardly mobile couple — Jane (local actor Emily
J. Pace) and Michael (a Brooklyn-based Philadelphia actor who was in the original Broadway cast of Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird”) — anxiously waiting on a real estate agent to show them what they hope will be the first home they buy together.
And at the base of an intriguing skyscraper, we find two wandering characters known only as Older (OKC actor Ford Austin) and Younger (nonbinary Edmond-based performer Ashley J. Mandanas): They are a neglectful father guiltily treating his disillusioned adolescent child to a trip to the city.
Who should see ‘Superstitions?’
“Superstitions” is for adult theatergoers looking for something new, different and odd, who would be into a show that is more about characters, dialogue and mood than a traditional narrative.
The surrealist play touches obliquely on contemporary concerns about jobs, housing and climate change while delving into timely and universal themes of isolation, uncertainty and loss.