Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati (ETC) brings together a handful of recent theater grads annually to provide backstage assistance and understudy professional actors in ETC’s regular season productions. These interns gain valuable experience, perhaps the best of which is to be part of a showcase at season’s end that they not only perform in but write original material for.
This year’s group — JoLen Carlos, Daniel East, Ben Kaufman, Michael Miller, Elizabeth Simmons, Ashley Turin and Lance Willoughby — seem especially adept at athletic stage movement, a performance dimension that director Cheryl Maxine Couch has used for the opening and closing sequence of Pulse in addition to choreographed scene transitions between the dozen or so brief pieces presented. While ETC has done a year-end showcase annually for several seasons, this is the first time it’s been offered as a Fringe production. The 70-minute compilation is worth seeing.
As ETC’s D. Lynn Meyers noted on the performance’s opening night, these works are — in the vein of ETC’s stock-in-trade — all world premieres. Some are a tad pretentious, but several are very engaging, and a couple are comic pieces that audiences will love.
The piece I expect everyone will remember is “Typical Shituations,” which places three toilets in spotlight-defined stalls onstage. Two women (Carlos and Simmons) find themselves trapped without toilet paper; a third (Turin) can barely be pried from her cell phone to help them. Then the scene turns to the men’s room (where cell-phone girl goes briefly for supplies — and transition), where we witness an angst-ridden conversation about urban gentrification that’s clearly informed by the rapid pace of development in Over-the-Rhine in the blocks around ETC. It’s a well-written and well performed set of sketches, perhaps because the restroom setting is one where conversations have an overlay of behavior not evident elsewhere.
“Just-a-Tic” has a Samuel Beckett-esque flavor: Familiar phrases and thoughts are strung together in ways that make linguistic sense but ultimately seem abstract and empty because they don’t relate back to a concrete situation. “I am restless, and you are boring my teeth out,” one character shouts as the two women (Carlos and Turin) argue about an imaginary cat named Demetrius.
Lance Willoughby has written several angry monologues which he performs, one in a straitjacket, another about a “Breakdown” as a break-through. “Lasting Scars” is a set of interlaced monologues about girlhood friendships that have become more complex as young adults, and “Don’t Get Married” is about a young woman who finds herself in love with her best friend, who’s engaged to be married.
Humor is present in many skits, too. One of the toilets returns for “Call the Plumber,” a piece about the futility of modern existence played out through comic stereotypes. “Wuza-Uman” is about the creation of a Frankenstein-like woman (she “was a human”) who might have the solution to peace and love — if only people can beyond their horror.
There are a few poetic moments and soundscapes that felt too indulgent to me, but that’s the nature of young artists trying on different modes of writing and performance styles. All are well presented — these are seven fine young actors — and with ETC’s high professional standards. It’s a good, if miscellaneous, glimpse of the future of theater. Grade: B+
— Rick Pender
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