Illustration by Jesse Hawley.
The Iceman Cometh is one of those plays from the American canon whose name evokes a pretty specific theatrical mood and style. Though it is not one of Eugene O'Neill's four Pulitzer Prize-winning plays, the sprawling length and the melancholy tone easily identify the play as the work of the man often considered America's first great playwright. What could possibly be next for a seemingly sacrosanct play that has been done countless times? Well, when Target Margin Theater, a company known for their experimental interpretations of classic works and support of creative theatrical artists, takes on Iceman, the possibilities are both limitless and exciting!
As a part of their two-year exploration of O'Neill, TMT has just begun performances of the Iceman Lab, a four part performance series dedicated to exploring all four acts of The Iceman Cometh. The Iceman Lab will be performed at HERE Arts Center from June 2nd - June 25th, and will consist of Iceman Act I, a sing-a-long cycle by Julia Sirna-Frest, Iceman Act II, a birthday celebration for Harry Hope by Yuris Skujins, Iceman Act III, an all-female dance exploration by Katie Rose McLaughlin, and Iceman Act IV, an audio and live-action puppetry journey by Jeanette Oi-Suk-Yew. I will be covering all four of these performances in a series of articles, so please follow along!
But before we get into the actual performances, I asked Artistic Producers and Lab Curators Sarah Hughes and Moe Yousuf a few questions about this upcoming Lab project. Here's what they had to say.
Bess Rowen:The Iceman Cometh is one of the many O'Neill plays that is, by today's standards, a very long play. Why choose this particular play to break up into different pieces, often performed on different nights?
Sarah Hughes: I think it was originally David's idea to do this; practically, it's just a way to present material that would normally be too long for the Lab format (of course, by presenting two marathon performances we're throwing that "short-form" idea to the wind). Curatorially, I think it works well with this particular piece because a) many people know the story already, so seeing it out of order doesn't make it hard to follow and b) each Act is much like the others, in terms of where it's set, the characters, the pacing, the plot. The whole point of Iceman is that it's repetitive, and very little happens or changes from the beginning to the end of the play, so having each Act led by a different artist is almost like seeing the same play four completely different ways.
Moe Yousuf: We wanted our Lab program to be as ambitious as the play itself. And we wanted to do BIG works by O'Neill and avoid the smaller stuff, the sea plays, the one acts, all of which have recently been done. The Lab is truly about experimentation on an ambitious but modest budget. Breaking the play up enabled us to support four amazing artists with different perspectives and aesthetics AND turn what's generally a five hour production and into a four week festival and celebration of the work. It gives you time to sit with the play over time and gives an audience a new way to experience a familiar play in a very new way.
BR: Do you think O'Neill is still relevant as written? What do you take away from producing and seeing these pieces today, and what do you think it's time to leave behind, if anything?
SH: Coming into working on the O'Neill season, I have to say I was a little skeptical. I hadn't read a lot of O'Neill and I found what I had read pretty dated and often just totally laughable. And I had only ever seen one piece; a community-theater production of Ah, Wilderness! about 15 years ago, which I just remember being really long. But reading some of his lesser-known work, and becoming so familiar with Mourning Becomes Electra and The Iceman Cometh, I started to understand what might be interesting and important about O'Neill. He might be a great writer, or he might be sort of a bad brilliant writer, but the point is that he was mashing up all these ideas about psycholog