by Kirby Lindsay Laney, posted 8 September 2015
In its first four years, West of Lenin (WofL) has brought to Fremont some very creative, and some very experimental, works of theater. From September 10th – October 3rd, WofL, and its founder A.J. Epstein, will host a collaborative production by The Umbrella Project – a full-length performance of ‘Knocking Bird’, by local playwright Emily Conbere.
A psychological thriller, ‘Knocking Bird’ started as a 10-minute play commissioned by Live Girls! Theater. Conbere then revisited her work, several times, expanding the play first to a one-act for the 2013 SOAP Fest, and then into a full-length work for a staged reading at the Seattle Repertory Writer’s Group, directed by Paul Budraitis. Conbere, along with producer and dramaturg Norah Elges, has continued to craft this piece with Budraitis, in order to bring to the stage a story of, as the playwright wrote, “the strange and uncomfortable ways that couples transform and adapt to each other in order to stay together.”
Collaboration, Cooperation & Commitment To Craft
“We have a lot of very talented people working on this,” Budraitis observed, “We’re doing a lot to make a memorable piece of theater.” That is an understatement. Between himself and Elges, along with Conbere, the talented cast (Angela DiMarco, Sam Hagen, and Alex Matthews,) the exceptional design crew and the professional production teams (which also includes The Splinter Group,) ‘Knocking Bird’ has behind it an incredible depth of talent determined to place this play before audiences at WofL.
“The group is putting this together because we believe it is a story that needs to be told, right now,” Elges explained. Budraitis recently noted the ways the work, which focuses on one couple, speaks to very universal, and very Seattle, experiences. Following a traumatic, damaging car accident, the couple decide to make a change by shifting themselves to the country. “A physical move does not a change make,” observed Elges, “that work is internal.” Or, as Budraitis noted, “in a dilettante move, they decide the problem is the city. They make an effort to change their lives, without the heavy lifting.”
Expanded, With Fantastic Elements
As dramaturg for ‘Knocking Bird’, Elges compared her job to that of therapist. “If a playwright says their play is ‘green’ but when we get it up on its feet, it looks more ‘purple’,” she explained, it is her job to figure out where the miscommunication is – in the work, the actors, the director or the playwright’s message.
Elges, and Budraitis, have both been working closely with Conbere to bring her true vision to the stage. Both have championed this play from early on. “I had been working with Emily,” Elges recalled by e-mail, “in the fall of 2012. I first saw ‘Knocking Bird’ in its one-act version the following spring… I thought the language was beautiful and unique. Emily’s writing walks the line between heightened poetry and hyper-realism. I tend to be drawn to plays that are grounded in reality; real, a clear conflict and problems between people with some sort of new twist.”
Elges saw the staged reading at the Seattle Rep a few weeks after its premiere at SOAP Fest, with Budraitis attached as director, “at such a raw point of its development,” he observed, “It was unfinished. Emily had grown it from a 10-minute play, expanded it to a long one-act and she already had in mind a whole second part…” Budraitis praises the direction Conbere has taken with the story, and its expansion from a one-act. “The play becomes much more fantastic, and phantasmagorical,” he said, “with striking imagery.”
“It’s a complicated play to direct,” Budraitis observed, “the process has been a very dynamic one.” Elges has helped Conbere convey her meaning to the director, and cast, to keep the story true. “She wants to get her work done,” Budraitis said of the playwright, “but that doesn’t mean she wants her work done any old way.”
‘Locally Grown Stuff’
“Everyone wants to make this happen the way the playwright wants it,” Director Budraitis acknowledged, “We’re in there day after day, digging up rocks and turning over leaves that the playwright doesn’t have access to.” The written word, in the hands of “tremendous actors,” as Budraitis described Matthews, Hagen and DiMarco, and a dedicated director, often reveals more than the author ever expected or intended, and Elges has helped keep the vision on track even when overturned rocks reveal something unexpected.
“It’s not going to be boring,” observed Budraitis of the finished play at WofL, “It is funny.” Elges agreed. “I’ve seen different interpretations of this play, and it is funny. We know all of these people.” Even out in the country, “problems find them, in the middle of nowhere,” Budraitis said, and the two male characters, both lawyers, find themselves in a scary place…
Get tickets to see Knocking Bird, while it nests this month at WofL, through Brown Paper Tickets. “This is locally grown stuff,” Budraitis pointed out, “this is a Seattle product.” Come support dynamic, intriguing theater, in Fremont.
See a teaser video on The Umbrella Project website.
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