Intense 'Blackbird' looks at the dark language of love

Broken hearts, shattered lives and fractured dialogue combine in Peppermint Creek's two-character drama

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It’s not your typical love story. He was about 40, shewas — 12. Peppermint Creek Theatre Co.’s “Blackbird,” which opensThursday, is a dramatization of their unexpected reunion 15 years afterthe affair. While David Harrower’s intense one-act has been compared tothe iconic “Lolita,” “Blackbird’s” fractured dialogue and real-timeplotting are unlike Nabakov’s text.

That staccato style blended with the thematic, twistedlove story intrigued director Lela Ivey back when Chad Badgero firstpresented her with the script. Ivey has made a name for herself inLansing theater by directing darkly compelling stories of unorthodoxlove like “Salome” at Lansing Community College and “Dark Play, orStories for Boys” for Peppermint Creek Theatre.

“It’s all these incomplete sentences and people talkingon top of one another, which I rather liked but I knew was going totake a certain kind of work that I wasn’t into at that time,” Iveysays. “But I (thought), ‘I’m attracted not only to the story but to thelanguage.’ It’s proved to be a real motherfucker.”

Doak Bloss agrees. The distinguished community theateractor plays Ray, a man now in his mid-50s who, after serving time forhis crime of passion, changed his residency and identity.

“This is the hardest role I’ve ever done,” Bloss says.“This is the hardest script I’ve ever tried to understand. The materialis just so disturbing. For a while, I couldn’t read it without shaking.Just reading the script.”

Bloss says part of the difficulty comes fromunderstanding the motivations behind his character’s actions withoutexternal judgment. “When you’re playing Hitler, you’re playing Hitler.In this case, audiences could potentially judge Ray as a pedophile, butRay certainly does not think he’s a pedophile. Therefore Doak can’tthink Ray is a pedophile.”

As the now-adult Una, actress Angela Mishler finds the affair far simpler from her character’s point of view.

“It’s way easier to be Una than Ray. I mean I could be in love with Doak,” Mishler says.

“I think it’s just totally different. I can just see a12- or 13-year-old girl or boy being swept up by an older person andreally feeling that connection and being in love. It’s just easier.”

Still, both actors admit their greatest challenge ismemorization of pages and pages of seemingly disconnected, incompletesentences. Ivey analyzes the dialogue’s apparent randomness: “Thesepeople have a great need to communicate with each other. However,they’re both not particularly articulate people. So it comes out infits and starts. The need is so strong to be clear and not to bemisunderstood that it’s hard. But when they get really angry, they canbecome extremely articulate. When I say ’articulate,’ the sentences arewhole.”

Part of the rehearsal process is completing the character’s thoughts to fill in the gaps left by the script.

Ivey encouraged Bloss and Mishler to complete the lines,even if only in their minds. “Otherwise, it’s going to sound like(they) have Tourette syndrome,” Ivey says. “There has to be a certainclarity in the inarticulateness, like when someone doesn’t complete asentence and you know what they’re going to say but for some reasonthey shift gears and approach it from a different way.”

Beyond the technical elements of cryptically descriptivelanguage moral questions without answers, Ivey feels the most importantelement of a good love story is audience empathy.

“We’ve gotta get the tone right at the beginning becauseyou’ve got to like these people,” she says. “And if they come in andthey’re defensive and they’re argumentative and they’re angry, nobody’sgoing to like them.” For a script steeped in explosive confrontations,creating likable characters may be the most exciting challenge of all.


‘Blackbird’

Peppermint Creek Theatre Co.

Through Oct. 1

8 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays

226 E. Grand River Ave., 

Lansing

$15 adults; $10 students and seniors

(517) 372-0945

www.peppermintcreek.org

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