Sock & Buskin's fall production "A Lie of the Mind," written by Sam Shepard and directed by Lowry Marshall, professor of theatre, speech and dance, traverses the challenging and complex landscape of family relationships and explores how these relationships can shape character and experience.
The play opens abruptly, creating a confused and uneasy atmosphere among the audience. Characterized by consistent surrealistic and ultra-realistic elements, the play centers around physical violence and abuse, fiery emotions and the often dark relationships between families and loved ones.
The play's central story deals with the abusive relationship between Jake (Morgan Ritchie '10.5) and his wife, Beth (Olivia Harding '12). Jake, who suspects Beth of cheating on him, violently attacks her in a fit of rage. To recover from the physical and emotional trauma, Beth returns to her home in Montana. There, she struggles with her relationship to her family — her insecure and frustrated brother Mike (Zachary Segel '13), naive and complacent mother Meg (Michelle Snyder '10), and the often bad-tempered father Baylor (Ted Cava '11).
Meanwhile, Jake, believing he has killed Beth, returns home to his mother and sister. Described by his mother Lorraine (Ellen Shadburn '12) as "death warmed over," and by his sister Sally (Sasha Spielberg '12) as "dangerous," Jake acts like a savage child incapable of controlling his temper, lying about moaning his guilt and anguish over "killing" and losing Beth.
To find out if Beth is indeed dead, Jake's brother Frankie (Dan Ricker '11) sets out to Beth's house in search of the truth.
"These two families are desperately flawed," Marshall said. "They are both highly dysfunctional." The play is about the failure to obtain the American dream because of the complex problems that seize these families and relationships, she added.
The play's bold portrayal of the infuriated passion that seizes almost all the characters can be uncomfortable to watch but can ultimately provoke interesting contemplation. Jake's uncontrollable, violent fits and Mike's frenzied and desperate need to gain his father's approval illustrate how relationship problems can manifest themselves in severe levels of physical violence and emotional shock.
"I think the line between passion and abuse is very evident," said Assistant Director Mica Fidler '12. The play's many troubled relationships reveal that love and passion can lead to anger and violence.
As the title suggests, the mind is capable of deceiving us. Denial and memory are significant themes that explore the boundaries of truth and lie. Throughout the play, people create lies by locking away certain memories, selectively choosing what to believe, even though nothing may be truthful.
"Young college students want to believe how we want to change the world. … There is the idealism that goes on here," Fidler said. The play serves to make us aware of the ways our mental projections of the world can blur "the line between truth and lie," she said.
The play also incorporates live music played by a small ensemble. The jazz, bluegrass and folksy blues not only make scene transitions smoother but often elaborate on the emotional energy of the recent scene. Most of the time, the music plays on the scenes in a darkly humorous way, creating what Harding called a "great juxtaposition."
The music "also adds so much color and flavor to the American West," Fidler said.
One of the greatest directorial challenges for this play, Marshall said, was to make the scenes around bedridden characters "active and moving all the time." Fidler pointed out the "strategic challenges of working in Leeds Theatre." Because viewers are seated on multiple sides of the stage, "you always have to be conscious of the audience and the picture you're creating," Fidler said.
"I hope the audience leave thinking about the relationships in their lives, the balance between self and others, passion and fear and hatred," Fidler said.
As Marshall noted, "it's a morally and ethically confusing play." It is confusing in the sense that characters are not viewed as flatly belonging to one category. Undoubtedly, Jake is an abuser, and Beth is a victim, but by carefully unwrapping the characters' pasts, the play reveals the impact of their familial relationships and how kinship shapes the people they turn out to be.
"I want (the audience) to realize that it's definitely not a black and white play. It's very gray," Harding said. In spite of its seriousness, Shepard's play "has lots of laughing moments," she explained. "It's the little things about family life that we can find humorous."
"All of us who are working on ‘A Lie of the Mind' have thought long about family, about (guilt), and blame, about victims and abusers. We've thought hard about resistance and enablement and about people's complicity and responsibility in the breakdowns of individuals and families," Marshall wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.
Marshall wrote that she hopes "our audiences will take a similar journey of discovery that may lead to a questioning of the easy answers about guilt, blame and the acceptance of personal responsibility in the lives of the people we love and the health of the wonderful country and deeply flawed society in which we live."
