Whether the reality of their child's death was sudden and shocking or a long time coming, the sense of loss stays with the parents for years; possibly until they, too, perish. While far too many people have succumbed to gun violence in recent decades, there is one particularly unfortunate subset of unnecessary deaths due to inexcusable circumstances.
Founded by Candace Lightner on September 5, 1980 in memory of her 13-year-old daughter Cari, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) now has an office in every state of the Union and every province of Canada. Although it claims to have helped halve the number of deaths due to drunk driving since it was launched 37 years ago, MADD has never been able to bring a single victim back to life. Its mission, simply stated, is "to stop drunk driving, support the victims of this violent crime, and prevent underage drinking."
Trying to dramatize the trauma of losing a child to a drunk driver (or a hit-and-run accident) and struggling to cope with the remnants of a shattered life offers a steep challenge for any writer.
- One could approach death through a flashback.
- One might let the audience know what happened at the very beginning of the story (on the assumption that there's nowhere to go but up).
- One can attempt to yank the audience's emotions back and forth, testing their loyalty and patience while making them feel trapped as witnesses to a slow-motion disaster in the making.
- Or, when all else fails, one can resort to magical realism.
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As part of its Sandbox Series to promote new works, the San Francisco Playhouse is presenting the world premiere of Kirsten Greenidge's play entitled Zenith. Set in New England, the action is divided between two families.Hazel (Nia Fairweather) and Tim (Khary L. Moye) are two overworked parents who love their young children despite being stretched thin by their responsibilities at work and at home. As carefully as she tries to stay in control of everything, Hazel doesn't seem particularly interested in pampering herself by going for massages or mani-pedis with old friends and colleagues. Nor does she have the stamina to party like she did while in college.
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| Indiia Wilmott, Atim Udoffia, and Nia Fairweather in a scene from Zenith (Photo by: Ken Levin) |
Tim's sister, Angela (Atim Udoffia), is in a strained marriage with Chuck (Adrian Roberts), who gets a lot more sympathy from his dog than from his wife. Although their son, Charlie, is still at a very innocent stage of life, Charlie's tightly-wound mother is losing her battle with impulsiveness, perfectionism, and a nasty tendency to bully the people she professes to care about.
When Angela suddenly volunteers to take Hazel's daughters on a camping trip to New Hampshire (without giving her sister-in-law prior notice), her hunger to dominate the situation quickly becomes apparent.
- Despite Hazel's insistence that the drive from Boston to New Hampshire takes three hours in real time, Angela insists that it can be done in one.
- Despite Hazel's concern that her daughters might not even want to go camping with Angela, she ends up acquiescing.
- Not even Chuck's query about why Angela found it necessary to install two TV screens in the back of their van is enough to make his wife question her need to be seen as everybody's hero.
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| Khary L. Moye as Tim in a scene from Zenith (Photo by: Ken Levin) |
When Angela and Tim were children, their father (who was apparently dying of cancer) rowed out toward the middle of a lake one night and never came back. Although his insurance policy left the family with a plenty of financial security, no amount of money could have filled Angela's emotional neediness. The relationship with their estranged mother remains troublesome, at best. Although Chuck has tried to be a good father to their son, Charlie, he has been looking for a way out of his marriage for quite some time.
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| Sally Dana in a scene from Zenith (Photo by: Ken Levin) |
In its present form, Zenith has two obvious problems which need to be rethought. The first is purely physical. The seating in ACT's Costume Shop (which is essentially a black box theatre) was designed to accommodate a floor plan that resembles a highway. Not only does this leave the cast with an extremely narrow playing field, it means that a third of the audience is going to be watching the backs of key players for much of the play's duration. I'm willing to bet that if the seating configuration were changed, Zenith would have a stronger impact.
The larger problem involves the narrative structure chosen by the playwright. Imagine a pendulum that keeps swinging back and forth until it finally lands at the moment of truth in the middle of its arc. This zig-zag approach to laying a dramatic foundation for a story's tragic outcome loses its effectiveness midway through the performance. Why? Angela's overbearing personality requires an actor to sustain intense levels of anger and self-righteousness throughout the evening; a factor which not only makes her an increasingly unpleasant character but grows tiresome for the audience.
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| Nia Fairweather (Hazel) and Atim Utoffia (Angela) in a scene from Zenith (Photo by: Ken Levin) |
That criticism in no way is meant to disparage the cast, which delivers thoroughly committed performances. Atim Udoffia's Angela burns brightly (and unrelentingly) throughout.While Adrian Roberts and Khary L. Moye seem a lot more stable than their spouses, Nia Fairweather's Hazel manages to keep her emotions under control until a searing confrontation with her guilt-ridden brother-in-law.
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| Hazel (Nia Fairweather) and Adrian Roberts in a scene from Zenith (Photo by: Ken Levin) |
In his program note, San Francisco Playhouse's artistic director, Bill English, notes that:
"The heart of darkness often hides behind a placid face so carefully disguised that we have no inkling of the turmoil seething within. When someone does something inexplicably terrible, those around them (and all of us, by extension, through the media) are stunned. How could someone with heinous impulses seem so effortlessly benign? How could a destructive impulse burst out of the unconscious without the awareness of the conscious? We wonder if the nice neighbor, brother, or aunt was even aware of what was brewing inside and spilled out against their will?"
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| Atim Uddofia as Angela in Zenith (Photo by: Ken Levin) |
"In Zenith, Kirsten Greenidge works backwards to piece together clues (family background, a difficult childhood, societal pressures), creating a tapestry of what could have led an exemplary woman to commit an uncharacteristically horrible act. Does Ms. Greenidge provide any easy answers? Of course not, because in life as in drama, there are none. We must wrestle with the complexities of human behavior and yearn to understand, even when actions are beset with contradiction and incomprehensibility."
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| Adrian Roberts, Atim Udoffia, Nia Fairweather, and Khary L. Moye appear in Zenith (Photo by: Ken Levin) |
Directed by Lauren English, the cast of Zenith includes Sally Dana and Indiia Wilmott, who play supporting characters ranging from hospital staff to neighboring mothers (Dana is especially effective in her short yet powerfully poignant cameo appearances). Special credit goes to Madeline Oldham for her excellent sound design. Performances of Zenith continue through September 10 at ACT's Costume Shop (click here for tickets).
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How do filmmakers working on an extremely limited budget take a seemingly mundane story about two retirees moving into a rundown public housing complex in Osaka and transform it into a sleeper hit? They can start by peppering the script with bizarre clues about strange people. They can also use their storytelling skills to guide unsuspecting viewers down an unassuming path toward a surprise ending. |
| Naomi Fujiyama (Hinako) and Ittoku Kishibe (Seiji) are an elderly couple living in Osaka's public housing in Dan-chi (The Projects) |
Shakespeare provided the witches in Macbeth (1606) with some pretty weird ingredients for their magical stew: a slice of swamp snake, a newt’s eye, a frog’s tongue, fur from a bat, a dog’s tongue, the forked tongue of an adder, the stinger of a burrowing worm, a lizard’s leg, an owl’s wing, and a toad that sat under a cold rock for a month, oozing poison from its pores.
Written and directed by Junji Sakamoto, Danchi (The Projects) contains similar bits of weirdness:
- A quiet retiree (Ittoku Kishibe) who built a trapdoor in the kitchen floor of his apartment so that he could hide from the world whenever he felt depressed. Thankfully, whenever Seiji Yamashita goes for a walk in the nearby park, he feels young again.
- Seiji's wife, Hinako (Naomi Fujiyama) who can't find her dead son's umbilical cord when she needs it. Having been fired from her part-time job, she is suspected by a group of local gossips of having murdered her husband without showing the slightest sign of remorse.
- A quiet, teenage boy who seeks refuge in a public park where he can avoid his abusive father.
- A crotchety, self-important retiree (Renji Ishibashi) who is having an affair with a younger woman while trying to retain a firm hold on his power as president of the local tenants' association.
- His lonely wife (Okusu Michiyo) who is constantly sorting everyone's garbage because none of the other tenants are willing to recycle their trash. In order to get back at her husband, Kimiko enters Seiji Yamashita's name on the ballot as a candidate to take over the presidency of the tenants' association.
- A handsome and extremely respectful young man (Takumi Saito) who looks like he might be Chinese, frequently carries an umbrella, mispronounces words, and gets his hand stuck in doorways. Curiously, Takashi has no nipples and needs frequent doses of herbal medications. He lets very few people see that his chest is covered with fish scales instead of human hair and skin.
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| Seiji Yamashita (Ittoku Kishibe) tries to revive the mysterious \ Takashi (Takumi Saito) in a scene from Dan-chi (The Projects) |
Why did the Yamashitas shutter a successful business and flee their home town? Following the unexpected death of their teenage son, Naoyo, in a hit-and-run accident, they could no longer bear the well-intentioned concern and unending kindness of friends, customers, and neighbors. Instead, they just wanted to be left alone so they could quietly live with their grief. The last thing they ever expected was to land in a fetid microcosm bubbling with intrigue and gossip. Nor could they imagine that a former customer might be able to reunite them with their deceased son.
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| Naomi Fujiyama (Hinako) and Ittoku Kishibe (Seiji) are visited by their former customer, Takashi (Takumi Saito) in a scene from Dan-chi (The Projects) |
Danchi (The Projects) is that rare domestic comedy that sneaks up on its audience and takes them for a wild, other-worldly ride. Although many small and intimate moments may be lost on a non-Japanese speaking viewer, there are plenty of comic bits that need no translation whatsoever. The best of these is a scene in which the Yamashitas try to communicate with Kimiko and her husband in a way that gives new meaning to the familiar marketing slogan for Verizon Wireless: "Can you hear me now?"
The Japan Film Festival of San Francisco will screen Danchi (The Projects) on September 3. Here's the trailer:
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