Like many theater organizations, Real Live Theater (RLT) was shut down from producing live performances for over two years due to the pandemic.

But the Valley performance ensemble, now celebrating its 10th anniversary, is swinging back into action, with staged readings June 16 and 17 at the Shea Theater in Turners Falls and a full performance in August at CitySpace in Easthampton.

Ellen Morbyrne, co-founder of RLT with her partner, Dan Morbryne, says the group went into a bit of “hibernation” during the worst of COVID-19, doing a few Zoom-based staged readings as well as producing an audio play, “Far Reaches.”

“We decided we’d just do stuff that was fun and easy until we could all be together again,” Ellen Morbyrne said during a recent phone call.

Now, though, RLT is returning to the kind of work the company set out to do when it formed in 2013: cooperatively produced theater that brings lesser-known voices to the fore and reflects the different communities in the Valley.

“We’ve always been open and interested in supporting the evolution of different artistic directions,” said Morbyrne. “Different projects will tap into the different strengths of members of our company.”

That company has been drawn primarily though not entirely from actors, directors, playwrights and other theater specialists in the Valley. Today RLT has 13 core members, and the group has worked (and continues to work) with a range of guest artists.

One foundation of RLT’s work has also focused on using Shakespeare as a guide for creating new or adapted plays, ones that explore some of the classic themes and ideas from The Bard’s dramas.

That approach has had particular appeal for one of RLT’s core members, Toby Vera Bercovici, who has directed and devised a number of productions in the Valley for RLT and other groups such as Silverthorne Theater, Pauline Productions, and the Serious Play! Theatre Ensemble.

Bercovici is also the director and co-creator of “When the Mind’s Free,” a work modeled loosely on Shakespeare’s “King Lear” that will be the subject of the staged readings (with live music and choreography) at the Shea Theater next week, at 6:30 p.m. on June 16, and 7 p.m. on June 17.

In “When the Mind’s Free,” the family of a lesbian couple faces a dilemma when Colleen, one of the two mothers, develops early-onset Alzheimer’s. As Sharon, her partner, witnesses Colleen’s decline, she summons the couple’s three daughters — Gwen, Rowan and Delia — home so that the family can consider their options for caring for Colleen.

The play, devised in part by Bercovici and also by cast members following improvisational work, draws on themes from “King Lear” but is set in the modern U.S., and the portrayal of the daughters in particular “feels quite feminist,” said Bercovici.

“People who know ‘King Lear’ think of the daughters as devils and angels, where they’re either destroying each other, or the youngest daughter (Cordelia) is an innocent who’s destroyed by other forces,” she said in a recent phone call.

But in RTL’s play, the daughters “find ways to support each other,” Bercovici added.

That’s especially important, she notes, as all the family members have to confront the reality that the Colleen they know is vanishing as her memory disappears; each person will have to let go of the past and find some manner of peace in the present.

“When the Mind’s Free” brings in another element: The family’s youngest daughter, Delia, is struggling with opioid addiction, though that problem is alluded to in the production rather than stated outright.

The larger thrust of the play, Bercovici says, is to examine a huge problem confronting Americans across the board, as more and more elderly people struggle with dementia, Alzheimer’s, and more gradual memory loss. How this affects an LGBTQ family has rarely, if ever, been addressed in a theatrical work, Bercovici believes.

“There are so few pieces of theater in general that are built around lesbian couples,” she noted. “So this piece gives us a unique way to approach this broader issue.”

It’s not just a drama: “When the Mind’s Free” also features three dance pieces involving cast members.

Production work began in 2019 during a residency Bercovici had in Connecticut, and development continued on Zoom during the pandemic and at in-person rehearsals last year. Bercovici has maintained her work on it while teaching theater during the last three years at Cleveland State University.

The goal, she said, is to offer a full, staged production next summer in the Valley and then tour the play.

Another goal is to make the drama accurate, not a caricature of people with failing memories. Bercovici says “When the Mind’s Free” has been developed in consultation with a range of memory care organizations, caretakers, and families dealing with the issue.

“We want to do this right,” she said.

A bizarre oil slick

RLT’s summer production, which will take place Aug. 4 through 13 in The Blue Room at CitySpace, has the risqué name “Pussy Sludge,” and as such has had some issues so far getting a full stage premiere in the U.S., Morbyrne says.

The work, by American playwright Gracie Gardner, won a 2017 Relentless Award, an honor named after the late actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, and has been staged in New York, London and Berlin.

Morbyrne says RLT is calling its August presentation a “workshop production” for legal reasons since there has been no “official” premiere of “Pussy Sludge” so far. But she says the eight performances scheduled in Easthampton will otherwise be complete, with music, stage sets and a cast of eight.

The play is based around a woman who calls herself Pussy Sludge because she is menstruating oil. She moves to a state park, where various characters, including park rangers, offer her suggestions and commentary on her problems, some of it designed to be helpful — or not.

“It’s not a linear story,” said Morbyrne. “The oil is also a metaphor for depression or trauma… the play really wrestles with the idea of how our bodies deal with grief.”

It also offers plenty of dark humor, Morbyrne says, and it deals with adult topics like masturbation and sex, as well as patriarchal systems and power structures.

The RLT website describes it like this: “Pussy Sludge is a fever-dream Queer love story/adventure about how we deal with trauma; how we heal and how we do not. It’s about bodily autonomy and bodily functions.”

Gardner also wrote another play, “Athena,” that RLT staged in its last full live performance, in fall 2019. That production, about two highly competitive high school fencing champions preparing to duel, won a number of awards and had sustained runs in New York and London.

“Gracie is a really brilliant playwright, and we’re excited about doing more work by her,” said Morbyrne. The RLT production is directed by Rachel Hall, one of the group’s longtime members.

And as RLT looks forward to its next decade, Morbyrne says she hopes the group will be able to resume the regular training sessions its members used to hold, sessions that were also opened to the public for educational purposes.

“We have some ground to make up from the pandemic,” Morbyrne noted. “But we’re all still committed to working together to create important theater.”

For more information on RLT’s upcoming productions, visit reallivetheatre.net.

Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.

]]>