Lifted – by Charlie Thurston, directed by Josh Short, produced by Wilbury Theatre Group
Performances on October 28th – November 13th, details at thewilburygroup.org
CHUCK HINMAN: Lifted is set in the near future – It’s 10 years after all the birds on Earth have disappeared due to an unnamed catastrophe.
JAMES BAUMGARTNER: There are only three characters in the play. Wayne, his son Shawn, and Ria, the girlfriend of Shawn’s twin brother Max. Max recently disappeared when he was lifted into the air by a flock of crows, the first time birds have been seen since that catastrophe. Now Shawn, Wayne and Ria must deal with the aftermath of Max’s disappearance.
CHUCK: There’s only three performers, but they create three fully-formed characters. And they also function as narrators and storytellers helping to widen the play out so you’re not just watching three actors on a stage, there’s a whole world going on in front of you.
JAMES: The outdoor setting in the Valley district fits perfectly with the play. The action happens in the backyard of a home in an urban setting. We could hear a few sirens in the distance or a loud motorcycle or car stereo from the neighborhood around the Waterfire Arts Center, but rather than disrupt the play, it only enhances the atmosphere.
CHUCK: This future world doesn’t feel too far in the future. Although Max is the first person to be abducted by birds, there are more and more reports of similar abductions in the weeks that follow. There’s a media hysteria about the bird abductions. People go out in packs to hunt down the birds in revenge.
JAMES: The Mayor proposes building a dome over the city to protect its inhabitants – but somehow they can’t build it over the poorer parts of town. It’s a future world where teenagers still argue and fight with their parents and fall in love with each other.
CHUCK: It’s also an apocalyptic story at the large scale with allusions to environmental collapse. But the performers bring us an intimate look at the lives of these characters. Jim O’Brian as Wayne for example…lives the part of an anguished father, carrying the weight of tragedy – losing his wife and one of his sons. You really feel his loss. It’s a masterful performance.
JAMES: The play is performed outdoors, mostly on a walkway between two parts of the audience, similar to theatre-in-the-round. I loved this because so much performance that we see these days is on a screen of some kind. Traditional proscenium theatre or a thrust stage breaks out of that screen somewhat. But the audience is still all looking in the same direction.
CHUCK: For the production we saw, as an audience member, you have to look all over the place in order to follow the characters.
JAMES: You’re surrounded by the action instead of it just happening in front of you. And I felt like this brought me closer to the characters.
CHUCK: The playwright Charlie Thurston says that Lifted is a meditation on the Icarus myth. Where Icarus and his father Daedalus escape the labyrinth of Crete by making wings and flying away.
JAMES: Icarus flies too close to the sun, which melts the wax on his wings and he plunges into the sea.
CHUCK: This is seen as an example of human pride and hubris leading to tragedy, but I think this play takes things in another direction. The characters in Lifted all exhibit the urge to escape from their situations, but their fate is not dictated by pride and hubris, but more by dysfunction, within themselves and in the world at large. In fact, I would subtitle this play with the name of a Bob Dylan song, Everything is Broken. This is a play about broken families in a broken world.
JAMES: The production is outdoors, so you’ll want to dress warmly, but they do have portable heaters for the audience.
CHUCK: And something new this season – the Wilbury Group now has a “pay what you can” policy for their tickets as they are trying to make live theatre more accessible for more people.
JAMES: Lifted is on now through November 13th at the Waterfire Arts Center in Providence.
