"BATTLE SCARS," Fillet of Solo Festival at Live Bait Theater
BY LUCIA MAURO
Combat on both the literal and figurative levels drives the story lines of "Battle Scars," two mainstage solo performances that are among the varied offerings of Live Bait Theater’s seventh annual "Fillet of Solo" Festival. Lotti Pharriss opens the program with "Fear Itself," a pungently calibrated ode to the paradoxes of obsessive-compulsive anxiety over imminent disasters. She is followed by Beth Ann Bryant-Richards’ tug-o-war-style "salute" to her late military father, "Daddy Died for His Country."
But, unlike Pharriss – a charmingly confident yet self-deprecating performer capable of letting brilliant little shafts of recognizable light poke through her dismal musings – Bryant-Richards struggles to find the defining kernel of her understandably ambivalent tribute. The latter artist, while an engaging performer, loses sight of what she is really trying to say, which results in a confusing – even trite – examination of tragedy.
On the other end of the creative spectrum, Pharriss spins a litany of brittle-edged paranoia into polished comedic gold (interspersed with specks of cautionary wisdom). She enters in a gas mask and hauls orange sand bags – interrupted by a ritualized series of making the Sign of the Cross. She then artfully pulls us into her terror-driven world as she describes the emergency items in the back seat of her car (flares, an inflatable tent, three palm fronds from the last three Palm Sundays). Later, Pharriss dons an apron fashioned out of clippings from health magazines to illustrate her mother’s incurable "worry wart" tendencies.
Yet, amid concerns about checking smoke-alarm batteries or the possibility of her "eggs aging," a genuine sense of pained urgency hovers over this production – tautly and honestly directed by Laura Nicholas. When Pharriss’ nightmares of airplanes crashing into tall buildings comes true, she begins to wonder whether or not her fears are justified. After all, how does one connect to a post-9/11 world in which "fragility is normal, and normal is crazy?"
Even news of the recent West Nile Virus seeps into this theatricalized emergency evacuation drill and, eventually, an explosion of information is blamed for the affable writer-performer’s unstoppable survival saga.
Quirky yet crucial life snapshots -- from Pharriss’ early recollections of watching Sunday-morning slasher films with her fearless atheist dad to her conversion to Catholicism (the perfect religion, she quips, for people suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder) – the writer-performer taps into all of our small- and large-scale worries without turning us into crouching paranoids hyperventilating about the toxins in the air-conditioning system or the possibility of electrocution or, in one of Pharriss’ funniest segments, figuring out the fastest "barf route" (just in case the urge to throw up unexpectedly manifests itself).
She also skillfully maneuvers within the irony-laden gray area of our times: Our government’s uncanny ability to scare us half to death at the same time it keeps us in the dark and pretends that our lives can be normal again after Sept. 11. "Fear Itself" is ultimately a jolt of hope and affirmation tempered by a necessary degree of debilitating uncertainty. "My fear is part of me," Pharriss proclaims. Her apprehension oddly reaffirms her existence even if -- as one of the newspaper columnist she cites warns -- her focus on staying alive prevents her from really living.
Bryant-Richards, on the other hand, lauds her drill sergeant-style dad for teaching her never to be afraid. But, as the daughter of an ultra-patriotic World War II and Korean War veteran, she critiques her father’s "militarization" of the home environment. What appears to be the heart of the story – this all-American soldier’s inability to adjust to civilian life or separate child-rearing from barking orders at an armed forces division – gets sidetracked by mixed messages.
In addition, her father’s cut-and-dried approach to life runs counter to Bryant-Richards’ growing ambivalence over the virtues of war, nationalistic fervor and those deeper, inexplicable dilemmas that involve admiring the discipline and tenacious spirit imparted by her father but lamenting his inflexibility and her own emotional quandaries.
This aching ambivalence hovers over "Daddy Died for His Country." But instead of underscoring the writer-performer’s gnawing anxiety, it fosters a confounding portrait rife with unexplored issues and unfocused storytelling. Director Tekki Lomnicki needs to more decisively coax out the crux of Bryant-Richards’ piece (which uncomfortably and incompletely mixes politics with personal memories) – despite clever touches like pulling her father’s letters out of hand grenades.
The piece swerves into a dramatic minefield the moment Bryant-Richards tackles the possibility that her dad contracted leukemia as the result of exposure to radiation from the Atomic Bomb. In 1994, during her father’s chemo treatments, she learns that he was in Hiroshima five days after the Bomb was dropped. Although not wholly proven in this monologue, the performer believes he was a victim of that ongoing controversy-laden tragedy. But she also wades into murky waters.
Bryant-Richards seems to empathize with the scores of Japanese civilians who were killed or maimed, then she shifts her attention to her father (an alleged victim of an act sanctioned by America on whose side he was fighting.) This is such a touchy topic – and one that’s almost impossible to argue. Bryant-Richards even alludes to the controversy surrounding the Smithsonian’s proposed exhibit of the Hiroshima carnage coinciding with the event’s 50th anniversary.
The most unsettling moment of her monologue, however, unwittingly reaffirms the lingering sense of American superiority in relation to this horrific and endlessly debatable chapter in history. Bryant-Richards relates how she grew incensed when a woman lambasted her parish priest after mass. In his sermon, he urged congregants to pray for the Hiroshima victims, whereupon the woman blurted out several negative remarks against "the Japs." Bryant-Richards was almost compelled to shout that her father, a full-blooded American, died as the result of that fateful day, too.
Would that somehow make this woman more empathetic because she could relate to this American soldier’s death? I suddenly got the sense that I was listening to a script for a wartime propaganda film.
If there’s some way that she can explore this issue more deeply and sensitively, Bryant-Richards’ heartfelt statement would not come across as so awkward and offensive. She also needs to remove the Sept. 11 references altogether. Her experiences say nothing new about the tragedy, and she even makes another inadvertent faux pas by commenting on how she lamented all the women of policemen and firemen who became instant widows after the terrorist attacks (her husband is a police sergeant). But Bryant-Richards neglects to mention all the women police officers and fire fighters who left husbands, partners and family behind.
There is an important story here. Bryant-Richards just has to probe deeper into the emotional rubble to find it.•
"Fillet of Solo" Festival runs through August 25 at Live Bait Theater, 3914 N. Clark St. Other mainstage performances include Susan McLaughlin Karp’s "Still" and a diverse lineup in the smaller "Bucket" space, as well as a "Solo Sampler." Tickets: $10. Call 773-871-1212 or log onto www.livebaittheater.org.
