‘Escape’ speaks volumes
Out Loud Theatre production is moving even without words
It’s ironic that an ensemble called Out Loud Theatre is staging a play with no spoken words. But that’s the case with “Escape”; the storytelling is done entirely through movement and music.
Moreover, “Escape” is an entirely original, new work that was “devised” not by a single person, but in collaboration with ensemble members. It’s the second in a three-part series developed simultaneously over the past five months called Seeing Is Believing (An Exploration of Fantasy and Unreality), and being presented by Out Loud throughout this month. “Escape” opens Friday night.
The effort was led by Kira Hawkridge of Pawtucket, the ensemble’s founding artistic director. She is known for incorporating movement into her stage work, but this production underscores the idea of “seeing” a play.
“Escape” explores one woman’s experience of dealing with grief and the ripple effect that emotion has in her life and in other relationships. Natasha Cole plays the woman whose twin brother has passed away, and the play looks at how she processes the sadness as well as how it affects people around her, including her partner, her therapist and, significantly, her mother.
The significance is not only that the mother is, of course, bereaved herself, but also that this mother/character is Kira’s real-life mother, Patricia Hawkridge.
Theater is in this Pawtucket family’s DNA. Last season, Kira recruited her father, Alan F. Hawkridge, to play the title role in a re-imagined production of “King Lear.” Both parents are actors, directors and teachers; Patricia currently teaches at Providence College and at Atlantis Charter School in Fall River, and Alan just retired from the University of Rhode Island, where he was a lecturer and production manager. Together, they ran the former NewGate Theatre in Providence.
Kira, a graduate of Beacon Charter High School for the Arts in Woonsocket, took classes with her dad at URI, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in 2012, and she describes working with her par- ents as an “elevating experience.
“Both parents are so sweet and so gracious,” she says, as well as being professionals from whom she and the ensemble learn while working with them.
The idea of a play about grief has a family connection, as well.
“My mom lost an older brother right before I was born, and the story has stayed with me through my life,” Kira explains. Moreover, in a broader context, loss and grief are things everyone will experience.
Those emotions fit into this season’s theme of fantasy and unreality because, as Kira notes, “What feels more surreal than the loss of a loved one? What changes our reality more than experiencing grief?”
While “devising” this production, ensemble members offered their individual experiences and also did research. They learned, for example, about the psychological phenomenon of being a “twin less twin” after a death.
Still, “This story and its characters are all our own,” Kira says. “It was important to us a collaborative ensemble to give this piece room to breathe, grow and evolve authentically and organically.”
While telling a story through movement “is not unlike dance,” Kira says, this is not a dance performance. Specific movements – Kira calls them “pillars” – are written into the production, but unlike executing steps in a choreographed work, actors have some freedom to express themselves in between.
Original music, written and performed on piano by Stephen Decathlon, accompanies the movement and helps tell the story, as does the set. The therapist, for example, is identified by an area representative of her office. The mother interacts with her son via her memories.
In both of her “mother” roles, real life and in the play, Patricia says, “Creating in community and being given the freedom to explore, and to know that my contributions help to shape the final piece, is a true blessing” as well as “a boatload of fun.
“I cannot wait to share this beautiful and heartbreaking story.”