The golden rule in real estate is location, location,
location. The same apparently holds true for theater. “We want people to
be right there with the actors and the story. It’s hard to detach yourself when
you are in a weird space,” admits Michael
Cotey, artistic director of Youngblood
Theatre Company. He is taking their new non-traditional production
to a non-traditional space, littered with kitchen equipment.
Youngblood premiers the award-winning play The Flu Season in Milwaukee on March 1 in the cafeteria of
the former Columbia St. Mary’s Building at 3321 N. Maryland Ave. (now known as
UW-Milwaukee’s Northwest Quadrant Building A). Written by Will Eno, this
reluctant love story follows the lives of four people trying to survive the
winter in a psychiatric hospital. Eno injects his own voice into the play –
twice – as the characters Prologue and Epilogue, both of whom serve as
narrators.
I caught up with Cotey to learn
more about the play and his interesting choice of location.
JK: Can you explain
a little more what this play is about? It sounds a bit confusing…
MC: It’s really out
there. It very much embraces – in a humble way – that it’s a play and that people
are there to watch a play. We aren’t trying to fool anybody.
The two narrators, Prologue and Epilogue, flank either side of the stage
and are present the whole time. Prologue is the wide-eyed optimist, but
Epilogue is bitter and tainted. Epilogue can foreshadow and he’s there from the
get-go, but Prologue is in line with the audience. He can only comment on
what’s going on in real time. They both exist outside of what’s going on in the
story on stage and the other characters aren’t aware of their presence.
In Act II, the conventions of the play
start breaking down and the writer begins to lose interest. It’s a real concern
– what if you are writing a play and your feelings change? This is a really unique examination of storytelling and
proves that stories, like relationships, don’t always go as planned.
JK: How does the love story unfold?
MC: There are four characters introduced in the first scene: two patients
named Man and Woman, a doctor, and a nurse. Fall turns into spring and two
parallel relationships develop between Man and Woman and the doctor and the
nurse. They ask a lot of rhetorical questions to the audience, all in relation
to what’s developing in the play.
I don’t want to give too much away, but there is a big shift in the play
where expectations of the story change. It taps into that real feeling of
helplessness, about how you don’t know what’s going to happen next, you have to
watch life unfold and let things happen as they may.
A love story has to be either cliché or tragic, but real love, real
relationships, are a mixture of both; they don’t follow a trajectory that makes
sense.
JK: What prompted
you tackle this work? And why the space?
MC: We always try to find stuff that hasn’t been done and aim to dismantle
the traditional conventions of theater. We tend to present stuff that’s more
theatrical than a straight-up reflection of a living room drama. Will Eno has
been done in Milwaukee before, but not like this.
Working in this space was really
difficult at first, but now it feels like it’s a great benefit, as opposed to
another thing we have to figure out.
Flu Season features Youngblood ensemble members Tess Cinpinski and Andrew Edwin Voss along with Greg Flattery, Cheryl Roloff, Jason Waszak, and
Ken Williams. It runs through
March 17 and tickets ($15) are
available by clicking here. Monday
night, March 5 is a “Pay What You Can” show, and tickets are only available at
the door.
Photo
courtesy of Ross Zentner
