In the near future, the toxic anti-immigrant rhetoric of today has paved the way to a harsher reality: A terrorist attack in New York City has prompted the Trump administration to declare martial law and round up thousands of immigrants in concentration camps run by private contractors. Eventually, amid increasingly chaotic conditions, some of those camps become killing grounds.
Liberal hysteria? Or a plausible narrative of how fascism could take root in America? Whatever your opinion, “Building the Wall,” a new play that opens Sept. 21 at Northampton’s Academy of Music, does not lack for political drama.
And as the Academy begins its 2017-18 season, executive director Debra J’Anthony says “Building the Wall,” by Pulitzer-Prize-winning playwright Robert Schenkkan, represents something she’d like to bring more often to the theater: thoughtful and provocative productions that resonate with Valley audiences — and that the Academy produces itself.
“Putting on new work can be challenging,” J’Anthony said during an interview at the theater last month. “There’s the question of funding, and new shows don’t generally attract a big audience … there’s definitely an element of risk taking.”
But the 126-year-old Academy, which primarily rents its theater to performers who produce their own shows (with the assistance of Academy staff for services such as lighting and sound), has staged a number of its own productions in recent years. In March, the theater featured the play “Sweet, Sweet Spirit,” an intimate drama that examined how a family in a conservative Texas town dealt with the fallout from a horrendous incident connected to a teenage son’s homosexuality.
“Building the Wall,” which will have four presentations at the Academy (Sept. 21-24) in what marks its New England debut, will be an even tighter drama, with just two actors, a minimalist set and a blackbox-theater-style setting. J’Anthony said seating will be limited to 100 chairs set up on three sides of the stage, like a horseshoe.
“It’s a very intense piece, with an Orwellian feel to it,” noted J’Anthony, who became Academy director in 2008. “It’s something you want to see up close.”
J’Anthony is also excited about some other dramatic shows the Academy is helping produce this fall: “Albatross,” a one-person play based on the famous poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” and another one-person performance, “Einstein!” that’s set in 1914, a turbulent period in the life of the brilliant scientist.
She’s hoping the Academy will gradually be able to bring more of these cutting-edge performances to the theater; a recent economic analysis by Northampton’s Economic Development Office, which estimated the Academy helped generate significant revenue in the area (see sidebar), would seem to point to the ability to do that, J’Anthony noted.
“I think we’re moving in the right direction,” she said.
“Building the Wall,” which opened this spring in New York and Los Angeles and earned generally favorable reviews, is set in 2019, in the aftermath of the imagined N.Y. terrorist attack, the imprisoning — and then killing — of immigrants, and the subsequent impeachment of President Trump.
Rick, a white supervisor at a private prison in Texas, where some of the atrocities have taken place, is now in jail himself, awaiting sentencing — possibly the death penalty. He’s being interviewed by Gloria, an African-American journalist who’s determined to get him to tell his story.
In early September, as director Sheila Siragusa watched and took notes, veteran Valley actor and director Sam Rush, as Rick, and Shannon Lamb, as Gloria, faced each other across a small table on the Academy stage. But in terms of trusting one another, at least at first, the two characters might as well have been standing on opposite sides of the Grand Canyon.
“Can you be honest with me?” says Gloria. “I want to tell your side, Rick. Your words — no filter, no editing.”
Rick responds skeptically, to say the least: “Whatever I think is gonna be misunderstood,” he says in a Southern drawl.
Yet as the two begin to talk, both reveal details of their lives. Rick remembers growing up under an abusive father, quitting school early and floundering before finding a path in the army and then law enforcement; Gloria recalls losing her beloved brother to post-9/11 fighting overseas and the anger and depression that brought on for her.
It seems like the two are opening up some lines of communication. But tension quickly mounts again as they review the run-up to the horror of the immigrant camps. Gloria wants to know why Rick became a Trump supporter in 2016, and Rick, while acknowledging the ex-president’s bombast, says his message resonated with those who felt ignored by Washington, D.C.: “You didn’t feel little anymore, put down anymore.”
In interviews earlier this year, Schenkkan, who’s also a movie screenwriter (most recently for the acclaimed WWII drama “Hacksaw Ridge”), said he wrote his first draft of “Building the Wall” in a furious, one-week session just after last November’s election. In a negative review of the play in May, the New York Times suggested such haste led to thin, stereotyped characters — redneck prison guard, liberal journalist — and a story lacking real drama.
But Siragusa, who teaches theater at a number of colleges in the area and directed “Sweet, Sweet Spirit” this past spring, points to positive reviews of “Building the Wall” in the Los Angeles Times and other publications. She says the challenge with the divisive play is to “find the humanity” in Rick’s character and to not typecast him, while also examining the larger issues of anti-immigrant feeling and the country’s political divide.
“You might say this play kind of preaches to the choir here in the Valley,” added Siragusa. “But I think we’re all struggling to listen, to understand this new era we seem to be in.”
And in casting Rush, with his everyman look rather than that of an ex-military figure, she believes she has found a good way to let audiences understand how someone like Rick could get caught up in violence against immigrants: “If anyone can do it, it’s Sam.”
Still to come
J’Anthony says the Academy puts on about 148 shows a year, including a growing number of concerts (though as she said in a Gazette interview earlier this year, she doesn’t intend to turn the theater “into a music hall”).
Instead, the focus will continue on varied programming — music, theater, dance, film — and what J’Anthony sums up as “spoken-word” performances.
Here’s a look at three fall shows:
“Albatross,” Oct. 14 — Benjamin Evett stars in this adaptation, co-written by Evett and Matthew Spangler, of the 1798 poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” about an old sailor who’s the only survivor of a cursed sailing ship. Nominated for several awards, and produced by Poets’ Theatre, a Cambridge-based collective, the show is described as part sea yarn, part character study, and part celebration of storytelling.
National Geographic Live: On the Trail of Big Cats, Oct. 21 — Photographer Steve Winter narrates in person this show of still shots of rare Himalayan snow leopards, elusive Central American jaguars and American mountain lions, among others. Winter describes both his own assignments to distant locales to try and find the big cats and the effort to save them from growing threats to their habitats.
“Einstein!” Nov. 18 — Before he discovered the Theory of Relativity, Albert Einstein, in 1914, was dealing with all kinds of headaches: the outbreak of World War One, anti-Semitism, a crumbling marriage, colleagues trying to steal his ideas, even thoughts of suicide. A hit when it debuted at New York’s Fringe Festival in 2016, “Einstein!” is written by and stars Jack Fry, who based his play on the release of 15,000 new documents about the landmark scientist.
Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.
Additional information on “Building the Wall” and other productions at the Academy of Music can be found at aomtheatre.com.