It's a familiar rite of passage in the life of a teenager - you turn 17, you finally get a license, and suddenly you have the ability to drive off on your own in a newfound vehicle of freedom.
For the main character in Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive, these rites are experienced a little less ordinarily. Drive - a Pen, Paint & Pretzel's show opening tomorrow evening - juxtaposes this coming of age motif with a dark theme of incest and a serving of witty comic nuances. All in all, it's not your typical theater fare.
Senior Jennifer Bien read the script during her sophomore year and knew right away she'd eventually want to direct the play.
"It's a modern-feeling piece imbued with an incredibly honest story," Bien said. "I was impressed by how human the story was, how it's a realistic portrayal of something so painful -it's tragedy, but sweet."
Drive is told through the eyes of Lil' Bit, played at various stages in her life by junior Sarah Kauderer. Seen in last year's Tales of the Lost Formicans and this year's orientation show, Bad Habits, Kauderer said that playing Lil' Bit was a difficult task because of the choices the character makes in pursuing a sexual relationship with her Uncle Peck.
"She's a complicated character," Kauderer said. "It's clear in the script how Peck feels about her but [the actress] has to decide how Lil' Bit feels about Uncle Peck." After much analysis and discussion, she added, the character finally "just clicked" one day during rehearsal.
Sophomore Graham Outerbridge, who plays Uncle Peck, that his role is also challenging because he has to play out the incestuous situation as if it were completely normal. He described Peck as being "completely smitten" with Lil' Bit, and that he has no choice but to pursue his feelings.
"The hardest part -besides not having any personal experience with incest," Outerbridge joked, "was displaying the decomposition of Peck as he and Lil' Bit get torn apart...it's a tough role to read into."
Peck's behavior is softened by three additional actors that act as a Greek chorus. They also play multiple figures in Lil' Bit's life, ranging from her mother to her grandmother to her childhood friends. Dressed in neutral colors meant to represent the sepia tones an old-fashioned photograph, the chorus acts out scenes from the back of Lil' Bit's memory, emphasizing the incompleteness of her subconscious thoughts.
"There's a reason there are only three people," explained sophomore Megan Hammer, who serves as the Teenage Greek Chorus. "You see the fragmented memories of bad relationships...the only positive came from Peck and he's the only one you actually see."
"Hopefully, if we do our job right, it'll be hard to hate Peck," said senior Ann Blumenstock, who represents the Female Greek Chorus. Blumenstock, who performed in last fall's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, said that the her challenge was separating the distinct personalities of some of the major roles she plays so that they each appear honest, rather than caricatures.
"Once definitive choices were made, subtleties were added so that they're not stereotypes," she said.
The third chorus member, sophomore Sam Rivers, represents the Male Greek Chorus. Rivers said there is a need to lace the plot with humor because of the heaviness of the subject matter. "The author knows the audience couldn't sit through the show without comedy," he said.
But comedy won't be the only thing keeping the audience entertained. How I Learned to Drive embodies a multimedia presentation incorporating film, slides, and music in addition to the usual theatrical lighting and sound design. The technical staff estimates that the hour and a half play contains 190 technical cues, which Technical Director Ben Gomberg said will prevent anyone from possibly becoming bored.
The fact that there's an authentic electric-blue 1960s-era Ford as part of the set doesn't hurt either. The production staff removed an entire section of seats from the arena to make way for the car, which is set up under a screen and resembles a drive-in movie theater. Gomberg said that a drive-in is only one possible interpretation, however, and that the audience members have the freedom to envision whatever they want to see.
Which is one of the keys to making the show a success on stage, says Bien. Though the plot tells a story of incest, Vogel's underlying theme is that of how a woman's femininity can serve as a prison. As Lil' Bit recounts her experiences, the audience experiences a mixture of survival and forgiveness, love and hate.
"It pulls together so many aspects I love," Bien said. "It's a play that needs to be seen, a story that needs to be told."
How I Learned to Drive will be performed this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 8pm. Tickets are $5 with a Tufts ID.
