Through Sept. 9, Callan Theatre, Catholic University Drama Complex, 3801 Harewood Rd. NE, www.longacrelea.org, 202-460-2188
Humor, in the flesh
Female playwrights take the stage in ‘Goldfish Thinking,’ ‘Body Awareness’
( C. Stanley Photography ) - William Hayes and Michael Glenn in Longacre Lea's production of “Goldfish Thinking.”
Know this about Eleanor Holdridge, director of “Body Awareness” at Theater J: She does not always laugh out loud when she reads scripts.
Some people laugh at anything. They are easy gigglers. Not Holdridge.
But she did laugh when she read “Body Awareness,” by Annie Baker (who won an Obie Award for her play “Circle Mirror Transformation”). “I find the humor incredibly sly, intelligent and witty,” Holdridge said. “It seems like the humor of the NPR listener.”
Set in Baker’s go-to fictional Vermont town of Shirley (where “Circle” also took place), “Body Awareness” is about a family — Phyllis, Joyce and their son Jared, who may have autism — and what happens to them when Frank, a photographer visiting Shirley College for Body Awareness Week, contributes to the seven-day event by displaying photos of nude women in the student union.
Although the naked photographs spark much of the debate in the play, the audience never gets to see what they look like. “I think it’s important that we don’t see them,” Holdridge said. “We know Joyce says they’re beautiful and they fill her with the idea of women’s strength. And Phyllis says they’re exploitative because it’s a man taking a photo of a naked woman.”
This is the same Phyllis who deemed the week “Body Awareness Week” in the first place. “It’s really supposed to be National Eating Disorder week, but Phyllis has clearly wanted to make it more profound than that,” Holdridge said.
Holdridge was drawn to the way that play addresses “our human need to define or codify,” she said. The photographer “could or could not be a pervert or creepy, how sinister is he?” and Jared raises questions of his own. “Does he have Asperger’s or not? Is he deeply troubled? . . . How potentially dangerous is he?”
She declines to say where she lands on these issues and said Baker withheld her opinion, too. “I think [Baker] is really brilliant at walking the line between not ever really deciding for the audience.”
Saturday to Sept. 23, 1529 16th St. NW,
www.washington
dcjcc.
org/center-for-arts/theater-j, 202-518-9400.
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