My overall impression
We were a few minutes late, so I missed the explicit set-up, but I understood that the writer , played by Leigh Curran, had been assigned the creation of a “personal piece”…something about Integration, in the Jungian and not the Selma sense. The occasion that was calling forth the writing of this piece was, I believe, the author’s /character’s imminent retirement from the Virginia Avenue Project, which she founded and led for twenty-two years.
Ms Curran explores the journey…the “lost babies” we all mourn as we make choices in a life. this particular walk though, is set in a time, in the early and mid 1970’s, when so many American women were trying to understand how to have a life that did not mirror their own mother’s frustrated career abortions executed in favor of marrying and having a child. The choices are those of a generation of women, who came after Gloria Steinem but not far enough into something new to not agonize over the necessary losses of trying to find a voice.
Ms Curran is funny and understated, and her writing is insightful and engaging, as she weaves in and out of conversation with her conscious self, and two characters from her own psyche…in an attempt to make peace with, and sense of a life=to-date. The mystery of the writer’s craft and the process of dealing with the voices from…wherever, and the ghosts of yesterday- who insist upon being heard, is a delightful, if slightly agonizing, part of the prelude to the very clean delivery of the story that is trying to emerge.
Mary Pat Gleason’s direction and staging help us to keep track of the different selves, as they struggle to find one another. And the catalyst for their integration into a life that emerges as the piece progresses, is a surprising and life affirming discovery for the character, for us as an audience, and for a future that includes reconciliation with the past. This is a satisfying evening of theatre. Really good work, and a few tears of personal catharsis made the traffic much more than worth it.
See it.
