Joan Marcus Photo
Emily Zemba thinks her generation takes itself maybe a “little too seriously.” Phillip Howze admits that he has long had “a secret crush on musicals.” And “something clicked” — the spark of a new play — when Ryan Campell read Euripedes.
All three are playwrights presenting works at this year’s Carlotta Festival of New Plays at the Yale School of Drama, which runs May 8 to May 15 at the Iseman Theater on Chapel Street.
The Carlotta Festival is a rite of spring in New Haven. Begun ten years ago as a way of fulfilling requirements established by a bequest from Carlotta Monterey, the widow of Eugene O’Neill, the festival named for her features not only first performances of new plays by graduating playwrights, but also presents the final YSD productions directed by graduating directors.
Zemba’s Deer and the Lovers (directed by Sara Holdren) looks at the meaning of feminism for twentysomethings, in romantic comedy fashion. Howze’s The Children (directed by Jessica Holt) suggests the possibilities for creative community among the marginalized in New York. And Campbell’s Preston Montfort (directed by Andrej Visky), freely adapts a Greek tragedy to depict the costs of war on contemporary soldiers.
Set in New Hampshire’s White Mountains where five persons — two potential couples and a fifth wheel — are on a getaway in the wilderness, Deer and the Lovers uses the tried-and-true comedic convention of the fish out of water to set up an existential crisis in the pursuit of romance. As in Shakespeare’s plays, young people literally and figuratively lost in the woods get at the difficulties of pairing up.
For Zemba, the play investigates the nature of romantic commitment for young women of her generation as they also try to position themselves intellectually. Is it even possible to define feminism in a meaningful way, when the dictum “the personal is political” belongs to an older generation? But there is also a mystical aspect to Deer, as Zemba explores the dramatic possibilities of totem animals through puppets.
Zemba hopes the audience will like the characters even if they’re “slightly reprehensible.” Part of the point is that we see how they make choices the play might not fully endorse; it’s important to find out that “the right thing” is not necessarily right for everyone. In Deer and the Lovers, as you find your way through the woods, deciding who you are can undermine something else.
Howze was as surprised as anyone when two characters in The Children “came out singing” as he began writing it. Musicals are rare for the Carlotta Festival, but Jeanie O’Hare, YSD’s current chair of playwriting, encouraged Howze to go for it. Howze also cites a talk in which James Bundy, Dean of the Drama School, told students they should not be afraid to fail. If doing a musical — The Children has 20 songs, played by a four-piece band — seemed infeasible, it made Howze want to do it all the more.
Howze worked in New York for an international human rights organization and that background has made him aware of the need for local community among the disenfranchised. “The situation of the play is dark,” he says, “but the characters and the telling are comic.” His characters are both “incredibly naïve and savvy” runaways who have formed an ad hoc family — Howze thinks of them as a tribe — in the midst of a distressed urban world. On the eve of a large event, internal struggle threatens to destroy their way of life. Howze said that how his characters whether the storm forms the basis for “a kind of story most people will not have seen.”
The inspiration for Preston Montfort came when Campbell was reading Euripedes’ Herakles. He immediately saw the story — in which the Greek hero, suffering from madness due to the ill will of the goddess Hera, kills his own family — as applicable to PTSD. But the long process of adapting the play to contemporary Athens, TX, taught Campbell the first rule of adaptation: One should not necessarily retain allegiance to any part of the original.
In Preston Montfort, which deals with a powerful family that dominates the munitions industry in Texas, there is a theme of rivalry between brothers wholly absent in Euripides. Likewise, the language of Campbell’s adaptation has moved steadily from the heightened to the contemporary. Campbell also said Preston Montfort has been informed by his interest in Chris Kyle and the discussion surrounding American Sniper, the book and the film about him.
Campbell has friends in the armed forces, and his play shows “the disconnection between soldiers and civilians” in our society and the difficulty we have in “sharing the cost of war” as it affects those in the military. His protagonist’s crime should not be overlooked, but the wrongs done to him should force a consideration of how “society is doing something wrong” in its attitude toward those it asks to do the killing, and risk their lives doing so.
Zemba, Howze, and Campbell are using their unique perspectives to create new plays that engage with our contemporary society — its mores, its harsh realities, its expectations and challenges — and have found, in the process, a strong purpose for theater.
Plays in the Carlotta Festival are presented in repertory at the Iseman Theater, 1156 Chapel St. The festival opens May 8 and closes May 15, and each play has four performances. For a complete schedule of show times, visit the Carlotta Festival’s website.
