The Rez According to Caleb Penn
Call it the Requiem for a Dream or Schindler's List phenomenon: In the same breath that someone tells you how "great" and "important" a show is and that you "need to see this," they'll admit that it was emotionally "hard to get through" and that he or she probably couldn't bear to watch it again.
Caleb Penn and Gavin McLean in "The Rez as I Saw It."
The story follows "Coyote" (the characters aren't named, they're only identified by their animal spirits in the program notes), played by Penn, a twentysomething young white man come of age on the rez, where his mother moved after his father left because "it was cheap." His girlfriend, "Cougar" (Laine Mullen), a young woman who lives off the rez, would like nothing more than to get them both away, but Coyote is tied down first and foremost by his high school-aged brother, "Squirrel" (Ben Burris), who he's effectively raising. Like Coyote, Squirrel is the object of violence and abuse as a white person on Native land, but unlike his older brother, he seems to lack the courage or wherewithal to face it head-on. Bullied and pursued everywhere he goes outside his own home, he's turning to meth, epidemic on the reservation. His main tormentor, and ultimately Coyote's adversary, is "Bear" (Gavin McLean), a Native twentysomething who, like Coyote, is listless and prone to escapism through substances, to say nothing of resorting to violence to prove his point. He lives with his half-Native half-sister "Owl" (Keely Avery), who spends most of her time smoking and/or dealing marijuana.
The central image in Penn's script is "The Slab," a big piece of flat concrete somewhere on the rez; it's where the play begins and ends, because, as the five actors who perform the play explain, it's where everyone winds up, eventually. It's the crossroads of a society that's closed off from the outside, by external and internal forces. It's also a symbol of poverty and desolation on the rez; at same moment you begin to wonder why it was poured (the foundation of a house that was never built, or maybe was destroyed?), it occurs to you that it's sad that this is the place--the only place, apparently--that the young people have to go, to socialize, to interact.
Caleb Penn as "Coyote" and Laine Mullen as "Cougar."
Clearly, the social glue of shared culture isn't strong enough to pull someone like Bear back from the edge. Ungrounded and possessed by an impotent rage, he takes out his frustrations on Squirrel, prompting retaliation by Coyote in the form of a series of increasingly violent encounters. Like the Angry Young Men, Penn doesn't shy away from putting extreme violence onstage. His first fight with Bear is downright brutal, and the stage choreography is top-notch. Penn, as Coyote, is an explosive presence; he's by far the most comfortable with the language in his script (predictably), and is capable of switching from fierce aggression to emotional evasiveness at the drop of a hat.
The rest of the performances, unfortunately, are more mixed. McLean seems to struggle with Bear's moments of introspection, though he and Penn have enough chemistry that he delivers in the confrontations. But otherwise, McLean, Mullen, and Avery all seem to struggle with the flow. There's a lot of awkward pauses and sighs. Other problems crop up, too, including one of our favorites: Ben Burris, in this case, is the actor who can't quite ditch the good diction (though overall he seems like a fine actor). Similarly, we don't gather that Keely Avery has ever actually been a pot dealer--her character's process of weighing out and bagging small amounts isn't quite mechanical enough.
Still, at the very least the show introduces a talented new voice to the theatre scene; the script's strong, Penn's performance is notable, and the cast seems to have enough raw talent. In cases like this, we tend to suspect that the biggest problem with the show is the directing. All too many fringe theatres fail to live up to their true potential because of a lack of cohesion and direction. Still, The Rez as I Saw It it worth the effort of getting out to Seattle Center House this weekend.
