It's all in the blood

According to Director Marc Frost, the structure of Bare Bodkin's new play, In the Blood is like that of a jazz composition.

"You have the basic melodies, but then there are solos which allow for your own interpretations," he said.

Approaching the one year anniversary of its inception as an active group on campus, Bare Bodkin as a whole appears to thrive on its creative interpretations of theater as an art form.

For instance, as a "found space" company, the group has innovatively interpreted the Crane room of Paige Hall, which serves as a sometime classroom tucked away at the top of Memorial Steps, as a theater. But don't be fooled -- while we may pat the group on the back for discovering hidden artistic venues about campus, it is the production itself that assures to be diamond in the rough.

The multilayered play, which was written by Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, has been considered by many to be a modern day interpretation of The Scarlet Letter while also tackling the validity of current philanthropy. Parks's writing is brutally real and graphic, candidly telling the story of Hester, a modern-day single mother with five children from five different fathers, and her day to day struggles to make ends meet and care for her children.

The circle of characters in the play also includes a doctor, a social worker, and Hester's friend Amiga Gringa, who, as director Marc Frost says, is "not necessarily a prostitute... but who will do what it takes to survive." As an unwed mother with no steady income, Hester represents the low income societal group for which the world at large shuns, even when humanity itself should feel responsible for putting people like her in such a situation.

In the Blood is different from typical plays in that its form is nonlinear (hence the earlier jazz metaphor) -- the action is circular and cyclic. Frost describes Parks's style as one of "repetition and revision." That is, the characters (and the audience) go through seemingly the same situations multiple times, but at each venture, the characters experience some kind of self-modification. In this way, the characters "create a history on stage," a history that Frost hopes will remind audience members of the old adage that history repeats itself.

By instantaneously connecting the events in the play to the outskirts of Boston where the action is actually taking place, the play's events implicate theater-goers as active members of society; the ways in which the wealthy characters treat the more impoverished characters are specifically addressed. Given the world's current political climate, Americans are worrying more about the reconstruction of countries abroad and may be tempted to forget about the problems that immediately surround them. Frost hopes this play will help theatre-goers to reflect on what is actually happening outside of their idyllic Tufts world.

One way he hopes to accomplish this is through his talented, if somewhat inexperienced actors -- four of the six actors are freshmen. Of the six, five of them must play one child role as well as one adult role.

Lawrence Atupem (Jabber/Chilli) cited Frost as a major help in the difficulty of this dual transformation.

"He really went in depth with each of us to help us break down our characters," he said

Besides helping each actor to create two separate personalities, Frost assisted with the difficult task of accurately representing children by having the performers play juvenile games such as "Duck Duck Goose" together.

The difficulty of creating distinct characters is not the only production problem that the cast and crew of In the Blood faced. Parks's writing is full of awkward but necessary situations that are difficult to stage (at one point, one character performs oral sex on another) and the presence of what the writer calls "stills."

Stills are extended pauses that Parks wrote into the script and which she instructs the director to fill as he or she sees fit. Though Frost initially was unsure of how to approach them, during rehearsals the stills forced him and the actors to be impulsive, trying out various methods before agreeing on a final product.

For such a fresh faced cast, this kind of forced collaboration could have been overwhelming. But like Frost, the actors found the challenges to be inspiring rather than frustrating. Eric Misbach (Doctor/Trouble) had never performed in a drama before but enjoyed the stills because they were "a good way to show emotion and characterization without speaking." Kimberly Mitchell (Welfare Lady/Bully) pointed out another difficulty of the play due to its unusual locale of the echoing Crane Room -- performers had to know how to be "powerful without being loud."

This kind of contradiction is representative of the play as a whole, in which the performances are nuanced and subtle but also in-your-face. The characters and their lifestyles are shocking to most students attending the play, but they are also heartbreakingly real.

The cast and crew's wish is that the graphic realism of the play will shock viewers into thinking about the way society treats its unfortunates. Frost hopes that this revamped Scarlet Letter story will make us ask "how have we changed from 200 years ago" and consider the implications of a society that "still creates and condemns Hesters."



Performances: Friday at 9, Saturday at 6:30 and 9:30