It opens with a man, blindfolded and bound, sitting alone in his cell. "I wish this were a real letter," hostage Michael Woods says, composing a mental message to his wife as he lays captive at the beginning of Pen, Paint & Pretzel (3Ps)'s latest drama production, "Two Rooms."
The play, written by Lee Blessing, is based on the experiences of the Lebanon Seven, seven Americans who were taken hostage in 1984 and held for three years. It will be performed twice tonight, at 7:00 and 9:30 p.m., in the Balch Arena Theater.
"Two Rooms" follows the story of Lainie Woods (Nicole Frattaroli, '04), whose husband Michael (David Jenkins, '07) is captured by terrorists while the couple is teaching in Beirut, Lebanon. As the title alludes, the play's action takes place in two rooms -- sort of. The two rooms, Michael's cell and a room in Lainie's house, are actually represented by the same space on stage.
Since Michael's absence, Lainie has set up a room to resemble what she imagines his cell looks like. Thus, the two characters inhabit the same space, but are never able to talk to one another. When Michael is in his cell, Lainie is able to leave the stage, but he is always present (in the corner) during her scenes. This effect is supposed to represent the fact that while Lainie can get away from her room, Michael is always unable to leave.
The idea of imprisonment proved to be one of the challenges for David Jenkins, the actor portraying Michael. "For half the play I'm blindfolded and in handcuffs, which is something I've never had to do before," Jenkins said.
Michael's isolation is further emphasized by the fact that most of his scenes are delivered as monologues. Michael writes imaginary letters to Lainie in his head; actual accounts of hostages show that this is a technique that prisoners of war use to maintain their sanity.
Like Michael, most of Lainie's scenes consist of monologues. Nicole Frattaroli, who plays Lainie, cited this as one of the challenges of the role. "I talk to myself a lot, imagining that he's there," Frattaroli said. "I had to get into the mindset of frustration that goes with not knowing what's happened to [Michael]."
Through these monologues, which span the course of three years, both actors must convey the characters' transformations -- a hard thing to do, Frattaroli explained, "in just an hour and a half."
Over the three years of her husband's imprisonment, Lainie must come to grips with a government spokesperson who cares more about protecting the government's own interests than about the individual people involved in the hostage situation, and with a reporter who keeps trying to push her into giving an interview to let America know what has happened to Michael.
Michael's transformation is more internal -- he goes through stages of self-discovery as he develops an understanding of the plight of his captors. Both Jenkins and Frattaroli affirmed that such development was a challenge to portray through the monologue structure of the play.
Jenkins stressed that though he didn't know much about "Two Rooms" before he became part of the cast, it has since become "a very large part" of his life. The political overtones of the play apply to the United States' current role in Iraq, but Jenkins believed that the "social situations" the play explores are just as important as its politics.
The play itself was chosen long before the current hostage situation in Iraq developed, but the escalating of the kidnappings there have made the subject of the hostage drama even timelier. Still, the director, graduate student Natka Bianchi, said that she tried not to make the politics the central issue of the play.
"I think the most interesting part is the relationship between the central couple of the play," Bianchi said. "The politics set up a dramatic event, but it's really about this one woman."
Junior George Rausch, who plays journalist Walker Harris in the production, said that though the play deals with relations between the United States and the rest of the world, it's also a love story. "There are personal values as well as values that would be important to Americans as well as foreigners," Rausch said. "It's personal, but it's also political."
Graduate students don't normally direct drama productions with 3Ps, but Bianchi has proven to be the exception. Her production of "Two Rooms" cuts down to what Rausch described as "the essence of the play," minimizing the political rhetoric as much as possible.
But the cast of "Two Rooms" still hope that their production leaves the audience with something to think about.
"In the end, it's just like, hmm, it just makes you think," Rausch said. "It's really a great piece."
-- Amber Woods contributed to this article.
