Lauren Yee's new piece Russian mother Almost arrived on stage without mother. After an autumn 2024 workshop at the Seattle representative, Yee decided to reduce the distribution of the four to three parts, by exciting the figure of the narrator who was there since the early development of the room. With all the main action that takes place between the other three characters, she was not sure if Mother Russia herself still adapts.
Then with only weeks before the room World Premiere at SEATTLE REP On March 12, the New York -based Yee began to have a second thought.
“I arrived on the first day of rehearsal, and I said to myself:” It's a mistake, “recalls Yee. “I tried to remove it from the room, and the room collapsed aesthetically.”
Russian motherlike Yee frequently produced Cambodian rock group And The big jumpis another piece of historical fiction that finds its characters at major social and political upheaval points. Located in Saint Petersburg in the 1990s, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it anatomy the growing pains of a company newly exposed to the free market from the point of view of two clumsy buildings, Evgeny and Dmitri, who exchanged hopes of hope for the sincere governmental for small power entrepreneurship.
Like the other historical pieces of Yee, the implications are wider than once and a place.
“Although the play takes place in 1992 in Saint Petersburg, I wrote this play as a meditation on capitalism, on moments of great societal change, existential crisis,” said Yee. “I do not think it is limited to Russia in the 90s.” Indeed, said Yee, for her, the play was “a way to understand America after the recession. There are people who say: “I have the impression of being a winner”. And there are people who say: “I feel like I have lost everything”. »»
Again, Yee juxtaposes communism and pop culture to illustrate the friction between the hope and the danger that can occur during moments of sudden change.
This time, the cervical boost also occurred. A few weeks before rehearsals started to start the production of representatives, the director of origin Joshua Kahan Brody had to withdraw due to family obligations. Yee contacted Nicholas C. Avila, who had led a 2018 workshop at La Chautauqua Theater Company, to see if he would be willing to get on board. Avila said yes. But the uncertainty of walking in a production which he had not thrown or had no contribution was aggravated by another curve: he discovered that Yee had cut the Russian mother of the script.
“I was surprised because I thought she contextualizes the play,” said Avila. “It looks like the mother of Russia, the character, tells you that you are not sitting in a realistic time capsule which is supposed to be a precise historical representation of the period. It is theatrical and it is absurd.”
Thus, after a few days of rehearsals in which Yee thought about the structure of the play – essentially, a mini -workshop in itself, noted Avila – the playwright decided that the mother of Russia should return. When Yee and Avila proposed the idea to the artistic director of the Seattle representative, Dámaso Rodriguez, he said yes “without blinning an eye,” said Avila. And Julie Briskman, the actor originally in the role, whose contract had been canceled, was ready and willing to join the Giron.
“(Yee) followed an intestinal feeling to cut it, but then having the courage to come back to say:” Maybe I was wrong with that – that's not something that I find common, “said Avila.” The world was overturned for everyone. And I felt a little more at home, because now everyone is upset. “
Adjustments and departures were the standard for Yee's game, Who took steps forward since the start of development in 2017 in Colorado New Play Festival. Invited by the representative of Seattle, Yee initially brought pages on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe which it considered it rather serious. During this development week, however, the most comical form Russian mother started to emerge.
“It is this whirlwind of energy which, I think, lent the crazy quality of the play,” said Yee.
She has spent the coming years finishing Russian mother And had to present it to the Jolla Playhouse in 2020. A postponement of pandemic moved it in 2022. Then Russia invaded Ukraine, and the company drew its productionQuoting a need for “additional time to re -examine certain script and production elements”.
Yee continued to work on the room. Its interest in examining the complex historical systems of power and their implications on our current world have never hesitated.
“There is something scary but also something really exciting to be able to think about world history and know that the seeds of what is discussed there can help us understand what's going on today,” she said. “I love to write history pieces like a means of holding a mirror to the geopolitical situation today.”
Despite its period efforts, Russian mother Also exists out of time because of Mother Russia, an observer who is addressed directly to the public but does not interact with the other characters or the narrative engine of the room. In the production of Seattle Rep, an empty feet of Babushka between elegant and melancholy public members, exciting with charm with a box of donuts and philosophical wax on the many changes which it has witnessed. Also the things that remained the same: “I was disappointed by so many men,” she sighs.
Within the limits of the main story of the room, Dmitri (Jesse Calixto in the production of the representative) completes his business in difficulty in difficulty with a surveillance operation, but he is about as competent at Souterfuge as to attract buyers for his assortment of consumer products: spam cans, Glossy magazines, conferences. He enlisted the friend of the Lycée Evgeny (Billy Finn), whose father was a senior KGB, to help him on the side of surveillance, and together, they take changes to follow their target, a former pop singer and political dissident named Katya (Andi Alhadeff). Formerly a celebrity in Russia, his star was dimensioned when Western music became available and that she was suddenly in competition with Whitney Houston.
Dmitri's non -modulated exuberance and Evgeny's nervous shyness allow classic shenanigans of odd torque while they are trying to tinker with an effective electronic listening strategy. But both are also drifting on the waves of change. Dmitri is disconcerted by folgier advertisements that he continues to see everywhere, while Evgeny has no idea how to meet the expectations of his father now that a predetermined path has been replaced by the freedom to choose. Neither know what to do with the new McDonald's around the block-until they command a Filet-O-Fish, and are sensoryly overwhelmed: “Is that what capitalism looks like?”! “
Closely following the world production of Seattle Rep's Reps are two other standing of Russian mother: one to Penobscot Theater Company (PTC) in Bangor, Maine (May 1-18) and one to Profile theater in Portland, Oregon (June 5-22). (The game has also been announced as part of the next season at New York Signing theater.)
“I fell in love with this immediately,” said Jonathan Berry, Outgoing artistic director of PTC and company production director. “It was intelligent, incredibly funny, and having a very great conversation on the way people suddenly react to this explosion of freedom and what it does to relationships. We can appreciate and love humor in their exaggerated senses, we suddenly understand that this person will do everything he has to know what he has achieved. Go come.
Indeed, as in the other plays of history of Yee, the comedy and the tragedy are often seated next to it Russian mother. “My writing will often find lightness and absurdity in very dark places, because it is so faithful to the lives that we live,” said Yee.
However, there is a difference in your distinct this time, said Josh Hecht, artistic director of the Profile theater, who directs his production. “Many of his pieces are quite funny and have a lot of fantasy,” said Hecht. “But he has the impression of having more J jokes and a farce-almost a slapstick-who feels stylistically different.”
Almost created profile Russian mother Several years ago. This season, Yee was his starwith readings and several main stage productions of his other works; Russian mother is the culmination of the season. Hecht said he saw Yee Hone the themes over the years of rewriting.
“She really teased what I think in our own American cultural psyche around capitalism at an advanced stage – the concentration of power in the hands of billionaires, and how it has an impact on all culture in a way that feels really fresh, really urgent,” said Hecht.
For Yee, the long gestation of Russian mother started with an explosion of inspiration and excitement before deviating in a period, it calls the “valley of despair” when the play simply did not meet. Going out on the other side, with the shape and structure of the now clear room, was a gratifying experience.
“Writing a game is so difficult that it is difficult to manage it,” she said. “You have to somehow write everything that comes out.” A piece, she said, is like a child, and as the mother of Russia herself, Yee adopts a philosophical position towards her offspring. “It comes out and you look at it and you say to yourself,” Ok, who are you? ” What are you interested in? How can I support you? You cannot do anything other than what they want to be, for better or for worse. »»
Dusty Somers (he / he) is a journalist based in Seattle who wrote on the theater and performance for The Seattle Times And City arts review.
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