It was a great piece of theatre! I loved it, I was moved, inspired, fired and drawn into it as it progressed. There were three parts to it with two breaks and as it built it grew for me and I was more enthused and inspired and pleased to have been there.
It was tough to get excited to drive into Washington D.C. with Hurricane Sandy on the horizon and it felt good after so much work to simply stay home. I was considering staying home and yet I knew that I could be really inspired and that it could make a difference for me being a visual artist myself? I had worked all day getting ready for Hurricane Sandy and was feeling good about that and my wife had made my friend Barry and me a great dinner of a fillet of salmon baked, some fresh zucchini and a baked potato and our neighbor Katarina had brought us over a bottle of the blue bottle FIRESIDE BLU Hand Crafted in Marengo, Iowa white blend : " a fruity semi sweet white wine crafted from a blend of Seyval and Geisenheim grapes ,
www.firesidewinery.com " to enjoy ; so we were feeling pretty secure as the rain started to fall. The wine was off-dry and really pleasant and a bit sweet for the salmon but tasty and we all enjoyed it. I liked Matt's story about how the owners had made a real success of growing the gapes in Marengo, Iowa and getting a whole lot of people there that love their beer to also embrace wine. Bravo!
That's all okay, we drove into Washington D.C. anyway and got to the Studio Theatre without any problem and got our tickets and found our seats and settled in nicely into a very comfortable space to enjoy this last night of the " Invisible Man " inspired by the novel written and published in 1952 I believe by Ralph Ellison, and adapted for the stage by Oren Jacoby. It was dark and so my friend did not have enough light to see his brochure. I looked at mine more carefully and read the names of the actors out-loud ( Teagle F. Bougere, McKinley Belcher III, Brian D. Coats, John Lee Davenport, De'Lon Grant, Edward James Hyland, Joy Jones, Jeremiah Kissel's, Deidra LaWan Starnes, Julia Watt, ) for Barry and then counted them : ten actors for this play.
The actors were all great, the setting, too was great with the staging, the small stage, the three parts behind the stage with screens and old footage, a thin partially see-through screen/wall that we could see through - and the actors filling the whole room that we occupied so that we became part of the stage as well. vet well-orchestrated, very personal, very powerful, and with so much great dialogue being delivered, spoken-sung, chanted, screamed, shouted, ... the drama was palpable and visceral and guttural and so primal and raw.
I knew two people in the audience like myself, a customer and someone that sold to me. I met the young black female understudy from Columbia, Maryland and we talked some. It was very special to speak with her just after having spoken to one of the actors that was waiting in place at the door and aisle. I recognized him. he was Brother Jack that had just solicited the Invisible Man to come work with him.
I recognized Jeremiah Kissel's / Brother Jack and stopped to tell him that he was doing a great job and that I was really enjoying the production. Brother Jack immediately thanked me for coming , that he, too was pleased that I was there and that I was enjoying the performance and that he appreciated me coming out in the rain and on the eve of Hurricane Sandy. It was a nice, quick exchange. I discovered that this was the last performance, that he would be returning to Boston later. I told him that I thanked him for offering a job and that I was looking forward to their meeting soon. Brother Jack immediately told me that it was he that needed to thank the Invisible Man. I liked that. It was a good exchange as I repeated quickly a lot of what I have written above to him.
Then I passed the understudy black girl sitting with her book in the alcove to my left, sort of a cubby that she said she had enjoyed using to watch the play. She told me that she had not had the chance to be on stage but that she had really enjoyed her experience and that it had been very enriching.
I talked about my response, told her how powerful it was, how relevant it still seemed 59 years later. I asked her if anything had changed since it was written? She said " no " that it was still the same. I said that even for me as a white man I felt invisible sometimes, that with the internet and Facebook and leaving comments that I often felt invisible as very few people ever commented. That though they might say they " liked " something that I never was quite sure what they liked or did not like about the posting, that it was vague at best and that I wished they would write : " I like this because of this or that ".
She said that she felt that she made people feel invisible and was aware of this and that she was inspired to work really hard to understand why this was and that when it happened to make it happen less as she realized that it was not a good thing. I really liked this comment and I wish that I had got her name. I liked her smile and told her my name as left quickly to find my seat as the third part of the play was about to start! I told Jeremiah my name too, and when I asked him his he responded : " Brother Jack " with a warm smile. Thanks Brother Jack!
I have to complement Vince Brown my friend and member of the Studio Theatre. Vince is an actor, too as well as on the Board of the Studio Theatre. We have worked together through the store where I manage the wine Department - Cleveland Park Wines & Spirits
www.clevelandparkwines.com to supply some of the wines to be served over the years at the fundraisers and special dinners for the patrons of the Studio Theatre. Vince is a tireless promoter of the Studio Theatre and I have marvelled for the last few years how passionate he is about it and how hard he has worked selflessly to promote it. Bravo Vince, you are the very best, and a fine human being and individual, too. I applaud you, really I do. Thanks for making so many of us aware of the fine work being done and performed at the Studio Theatre.
I wish that I could have met more of the actors after the show to thanks them for their excellent work tonight. I write this in part to thanks them, too. It is my small thanks as a fellow artist to them and their really fine acting tonight. All ten of you really inspired me tonight. I loved how you changed into different roles. I loved how you changed from one scene to the next so quickly and adjusted this or that in your outfits and were immediately in another equally believable and powerful character. Bravo to you all, you all were amazing!
Hope everyone gets home safely and survives the onslaught of Hurricane Sally.
I loved one of the last bits of diologue from Teagle F. Bougere the " Invisible Man " as he said that the black man was getting more white and gray and less black and the white man was becoming more black : both loosing themselves and their personalities, their focus and clarities. Sad.
The writing was great, the adaptation to stage was brilliant. Thanks Oren Jacoby and Christopher McElroen, Troy Hourie, Mary Louise Gelger, Kathleen Gerdard, David Remedios, Robb Hunter, Adrien-Alice Hansel, Alaine Alldaffer, Jesse Aashelm, John Keith Hall, Ellen Houseknecht, Jeremiah Mullane, Michael Donohue, Jaylee M. Mead, Share Fund, and everyone else involved in carrying off this amazingly complex, multi-faceted and intricate piece of theater that worked so brilliantly and so successfully on so many levels that to truly appreciate it all you would have to have done like the young and enthusiastic understudy and watched it time after time after time to grasp as much as possible as there was so much " pith and substance " to be gained. Cheers, Anthony ( TONY ) Quinn
