THEATER : A mango and a man in exile
Posted on Sunday, July 20, 2008
FAYETTEVILLE — One of Clinnesha Dillon’s newest plays looks a lot different from what she started with a year ago. The only thing that remains is “a leading lady who fails to listen to an inner voice.” Dillon, 24, started working on the play, How to Get the Mango (When the Lizard Is in the Way ), a year ago. It had a script-in-hand reading in January and a workshop production in the spring. Then it went through the University of Arkansas’ summer development for new works, along with a play by Larry Mitchell.
Dillon’s play will be performed Thursday through July 27 at Nadine Baum Studios. Mitchell’s adaptation of Edward Everett Hale’s short story “The Man Without a Country” will be performed July 31 and Aug. 1-3.
Her main character, Jo Kimble, is pursuing her doctorate, but facing obstacles from every direction. A storm at the start of the play triggers the childhood memory of Jo’s main struggle.
Originally, the character’s struggle came from a desire to go to Africa to make a documentary film. That desire was distracting her from her educational pursuits; other obstacles were her marriage, her mentor, her best friend and her friend’s daughter. Dillon describes the character as a puppet being pulled by those around her.
But Dillon discovered during script development that she really had about three plays in one. So, in addition to her job, she developed three plays this summer.
For this play, “We tried to make this about one journey, one struggle.” Dillon had to find the “spine” of the leading lady — “what gives her something to struggle for.” It was hard for her to determine the main objective, she said, because her character “had so many things going on in her life and so many things to fight for.” If a scene didn’t serve the objective, she cut it. She could have tweaked it, but felt it needed more structural change.
“I have to be a craftswoman and go in that play and take out what’s not serving the main character,” she says.
The 85-page script tells the same story about Jo, but her struggle and back story have changed.
Instead of dreaming of Africa, the character is gifted with an ability to perform miraculous works.
“Once she discovered that she had that ability, she ran from it,” Dillon says.
Jo wants to forget about her gift and be normal. The show’s question becomes: “How hard and to what degree can you try to escape something that you’ve been anointed with ? And what has to happen in order for you to embrace your gift ?” “The mango is your gift and the lizard is fear of pursuing that gift,” she says. “Fear is also a very subtle thing, and it really can put us on the run.” The 10-member cast is made up of college students and members of the community, including three youths and an older woman who plays the grandmother. In the first draft, the story was set in Boston, but this Mississippi-born playwright wanted it to happen in a more familiar place. Now, it’s set in present-day Louisiana. Jo struggles to get her doctorate and pursue a normal life — “or what she thinks is a normal life.” But the story is about much more. “I think it’s a story of the human spirit — literally,” Dillon says, laughing.
BALLOONING Larry Mitchell has written an adaptation of Edward Everett Hale’s short story “The Man Without a Country,” which he remembers first reading in middle school. The idea of an American who ends up in exile from his home country always stuck with him. When he was living in Wichita, Kan., he found a version of the story published in the late 1800 s, with notes in it from Hale. While at Humboldt State University in California, Mitchell attempted to adapt it into a play. But it was shot down in class during development. He kept it in his ideas folder and started thinking about it more seriously in the last couple of years, while in graduate school at the UA.
Mitchell, 29, started to develop this piece for last year’s new play showcase, but he decided it was more than a one-act play. Last fall, he looked at it again and thought it could be a full-length play. He wanted to understand why Phillip Nolan ends up in the position of being exiled from his country. He started studying Nolan’s relationship with Aaron Burr. Mitchell took Post-it notes and mixed scenes around.
“Everything else just started really ballooning toward the end of development,” Mitchell says.
He began the story at the trial — which had come much later. It’s a “Hollywood beginning,” where there’s a big event and the audience finds out later what happened.
Realizing he had three storylines, he cut 30 pages instantly, sometimes summing up entire scenes in single sentences. It’s now 100 pages, minus his three favorite scenes — which indicates his maturation as a playwright through this process.
“They were definitely the best scenes of that script,” he says.
The story, although written at the end of the Civil War, was set in the Revolutionary War — to give the story some distance. It’s a condemnation of the Confederacy and deserters, Mitchell says.
“I gave Aaron Burr a much more balanced treatment, I think, than the book,” Mitchell says.
Hale’s tale has been told before, including a 1917 silent film, another story printing in the 1940 s and a TV movie in 1973.
“There’s kind of this lineage of this story getting picked back up and being used to shed light — but at an arm’s length,” he says.
Mitchell, who calls this an “anti-apathy play,” thought about what patriotism means. Some people are “unquestionably patriotic,” he said, and others are called unpatriotic if they don’t adhere to a certain political line.
“I don’t believe in blind patriotism,” he says.
He wanted his play to mean something different from Hale’s short story, while still doing justice to the original work.
“To make it usable now, I had to make it my own,” he says. “The story became more about home and what home means.” The toughest aspect was deciding how to treat history. Some elements are fact, but the story is a fictional construction.
“Are we going to be historically accurate or are we going to tell a story that goes beyond history ?” he asks.
His version, he hopes, “gets more at the heart of history” New Play Showcase How to Get the Mango (When the Lizard Is in the Way ) by Clinnesha Dillon, 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 2 p.m. July 27 The Man Without a Country adapted by Larry Mitchell from Edward Everett Hale’s short story, 8 p.m. July 31, Aug. 1 and 2, 2 p.m. Aug. 3 Nadine Baum Studios, 505 W. Spring St., Fayetteville Admission: $ 14 adults, $ 12 UA faculty, staff and senior citizens, $ 5 children and students (479 ) 575-4752
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