Deputy Editor Lillian Rountree and Senior Staff Writer Camille Sensiba review a School of the Arts Directing Thesis “Mud” and “Springtime,” two plays written by María Irene Fornés and directed by Colm Summers (MFA ’21).

After being redirected toward the correct building—it had been a long time since either of us had been to Lenfest—the two of us, slightly rained-on and tired from the amount of energy required to do this whole “in-person” living again, sat down to experience Colm Summers’ vision of playwright María Irene Fornés’ two short plays, “Mud” and “Springtime,” in a tight one hour and forty-five minute runtime. 

The plays, thematically similar but not originally paired together, explore love and poverty in Great Depression era America and in an unnamed Eastern city in the 1950s, respectively. This thematic unity is most pointedly drawn out by the play’s casting, with Mazvita Chanakira playing central characters in both plays—both women burdened by the caretaking they undertake for their ill loved ones.

“Mud” was the first of the two plays presented, with an appropriately sparse set for its characters’ abject poverty. The most luxurious aspect, thanks to its rich and amplified sound, is the cello, played by Daniel Bindschedler—also the play’s composer—up in the rafters of the stage, providing the only music of the chilling soundtrack to the characters’ descent. Whatever lull this initial score sets the audience into, however, is immediately taken aback by the striking start with which the play jumps into motion: the number “17” projected onto one of the walls of the set, accompanied by a harsh sound and red lights. 

This sharp beginning is confusing as the play first starts, and Mae (Chanakira) and Lloyd (Delano Montgomery), two unrelated-and-not-quite-siblings-since-they-sleep-together partners bicker about, among other things, arithmetic. The intention is quickly revealed, however, as a scene change precipitates another dramatic lighting, audial, and visual shift out of the play, punctuated by the number “16”—projected, this time, on another place onstage. This countdown, which we both found one of the most effective directorial choices of the two plays, continues throughout the piece establishing a strong sense of momentum and—especially as things go precipitously south—dread for what will occur when the ticker gets to “1.” 

In between these sharp reminders of the conclusion the characters are hurtling to, actors Chanakira, Montgomery, and Mike Gerbi—playing Mae’s new lover, a man with an amazingly severe and period-accurate middle part named Henry—handle the cycles of rot, illness, and entrapment the play explores with aplomb. Gerbi and Montgomery both get to dig into physical aspects of acting beyond dialogue. This is used both for surprisingly comedic effect—in one scene, Montgomery hurtles himself across the stage, doing cartwheels and handstands—and to best inhabit the sickness both characters become burdened with: curling up on the floor, hunching over in bandages, fiddling with what little food they have. 

It’s the character of Mae, however, which grounds the piece, and Chanakira successfully makes her, and the selfish choices Mae makes in search of her own happiness, the undeniable center of attention for the characters and the audience. While at times aspects of the production and script felt a little too pointed—the anguish a little too loud, the monologues a little too rushed—by the time the conclusion of the play comes about, with its two gunshots not seen but only heard off-stage, the vision of the horror show that stagnancy, jealousy, and poverty bring about feels fully realized.

After a brief intermission, we were ushered back into the theatre for “Springtime,” for which there was a new set— a humble bedroom with a twin bed sitting only about two feet from the audience, foreshadowing the quiet intimacy of the play to come. 

As with “Mud,” a projection—this time of words describing the scenes, not numbers—was used to punctuate the transitions between an exceedingly snappy series of vignettes showing the breakup of two women, the German-born Greta (Kate Vozella) and her partner, Rainbow (Chanakira). 

Greta, whom Vozella portrays with a fine-tuned accent and lively charm, falls ill in the first scene and spends the rest of the play in her pajamas. Due to her illness, Rainbow is charged with supporting them both and with getting Greta treatment, and she must resort to small crimes to help the woman she loves. Chanakira’s performance adds a heavy armor of confidence to the character, making it all the more heart-wrenching when that confidence and belief in Greta is broken. 

“Springtime” manages to create an even more intimate space for storytelling than “Mud” beyond its literal greater physical proximity to the audience. The play focuses almost exclusively on Greta and Rainbow’s world, a small apartment with just the two of them. This space is only briefly invaded by Ray (Gerbi), a man who employs Rainbow and enters the apartment in one scene, but never speaks, underlying the centrality of Greta and Rainbow’s story in their apartment, in their world. 

While Rainbow flits in and out of the scenes to find money, Greta is always in the apartment. Sometimes, however, she opens the curtains to their only window, letting warm sunlight bathe her skin (a lighting effect executed gorgeously). One of the projections early in the play reads “HEUTE SIND KLEIDER ENG,” or, “Today, clothing is tighter,” and this was a motif emphasized throughout the rest of the scenes—their world has gotten tighter since Greta’s illness and their financial troubles, and, while tightness can sometimes mean closeness and intimacy, in the case of Greta and Rainbow, the world becomes too small. 

Rainbow begins enjoying her days working away from the apartment, and Greta craves the times of day when the sunlight and the outside world pours in through the window. Their breakup feels inevitable, not a product of a lack of love, but rather, of a lack of the space, freedom, and resources that is symptomatic of poverty. The tightness, once their relationship’s strongest asset, eventually suffocates it. 

We felt the tightness of the pacing of the script, too, and perhaps that was one of the show’s weaknesses. The relationship dynamic is so complex that, at times, we found ourselves wanting more time with Greta and Rainbow—perhaps more scenes, or longer ones that were not broken up with projections. Ultimately, though, the play nurtured intimacy, and not just the dying closeness between Rainbow and Greta, but also a strong connection between the storytellers and their audience.

At the end of the two plays, we left the Lenfest Center feeling reinvigorated by the liveliness of in-person theater after so many months without. Despite our minor misgivings about the script, Summers’ direction kept us engaged throughout and gave us enough to wonder about without venturing at all into overly-pretentious territory. Particularly impactful were the lighting choices Summers and Betsy Chaster (the lighting designer) made: the white projections against the darkness between scenes provided some continuity between the two plays, while also adding a contemporary flair to the twentieth-century scripts. It was also refreshing to witness the production’s use of darkness, not shying away from dramatic vacillations between a lit and unlit set—frequently paired with similarly stark sound effects from Liam Bellman-Sharpe, the sound designer. Summers left very little room for delicacy in any aspect of these plays—no gentle lighting, no cozy sets, and few moments of real tenderness—only further emphasizing the stress of the environments these characters inhabit.

The tragic antagonism of poverty is further transmitted Summers’ keen awareness of space and the movement within it, with the careful blocking of the actors within the small space. In “Mud,” this is especially evident in the verticality of the blocking, as both Lloyd and Henry are seen lying on the floor in their illness and, in the end, Mae is the character lying elevated on the kitchen table— except, unlike the two men, Mae will never be vertical again. In “Springtime,” Summers’ spatial direction takes shape in the way that Rainbow flutters in and out of the apartment, meeting new people and expanding her world, while Greta never leaves the stage, staying largely in bed or in the chair, unaware of Rainbow’s life outside of their room. In both plays, Summers makes it clear that the underlying antagonist is not the characters, but their circumstances. 

The final live showing of “Mud” and “Springtime” is at 2 pm today, September 26. A performance of the pieces will also be available to stream from October 28 to November 1 of this year. More information on the Directing Thesis can be found via the digital program and the School of Arts’ event page.

Image via School of the Arts