New Mexico Mercury

So this week they closed the national forest, state trust lands and county open space. The Rio Grande is a dry arroyo for much of its length, and most of the rest of the river is too shallow for recreation. The lakes are remnants of themselves, and some are not even usable. In the East Mountains, we watch the terrible wildfires in the Jemez and Sangre de Cristo Mountains and wonder if we are next.

So in these hot, windy days of early summer what are New Mexicans to do to escape?

I suggest The Seven, a collection of 10-minute, one-act, two character skits performed by the Fusion company at the Cell Theater in Albuquerque.

These mini plays are by and large not very ambitious—after all, how much can you say in 10 minutes—but they offer unusual twists and turns, bending our daily reality as light bends passing through a prism.

The Seven tells us that theater doesn't have to be taken seriously, that there is respectful room on the stage not just for weighty matters but also for clever sleight of hand.

It also tells us something about what preoccupies writers and entertains audiences. Of the seven pays, six are dialogues between a man and a woman, and five of those are couples smarting over what they give to and take from each other. Race is an issue in only one. The only scene that is not between a man and a woman involves two male strangers who meet in a restaurant and debate who is or is not the playwright David Mamet.

Thus there are no soldiers, no homosexuals, no friendships, no racism or war or sexual violence or politics, no father-son or mother-daughter or sibling relationships, in fact no families at all. If these seven can be assumed to be a fair representative of the 774 submissions, it is as if couples’ troubled intimate relationships have come to dominate our obsessions.

The performance of The Seven is the last act in a contest, in which some 774 writers from 42 states and eight foreign countries submitted manuscripts, which were winnowed down to 40, of which 20 were then picked by Fusion producer Denis Gromelski (for criteria including diversity and subject matter, he told me), and then finally a four-person jury chose the seven plays for production.
Putting on such a performance, however, is a fairly weighty matter, what with seven directors, seven sets and 14 actors presenting original plays on the theme of “failure to communicate.” Introducing the performance, Gromelski said, “This is like the Super Bowl of theater for me.”

Several of the plays include a surprise twist or an altered view of reality. For example, in The Writer, an off-stage author who creates the two on-stage characters is presented as if he were God.

End of the Rainy Season, by Mark Rigney of Evansville, Ind., was the jury prize winner. It was directed by Laurie Thomas with Kate Costello and Marc Lynch in the cast. It features an argument between a black hotel owner in Togo who says he “can fix everything except my country” and a young white tourist who laments that “where I come from women like bearing crosses.” In the beginning he is the believer in African mysticism and she the rationalist, but eventually they reverse roles.

After each performance of The Seven, the audience is offered an opportunity to vote on its own choice, which will be announced after the run is completed.
My own vote went to Paradise Lost, by Jeffrey Neuman of Denver, directed by Jacqueline Reid and starring Paul Blott and Wendy Scott. I chose it because it is more ambitious than the others and tries us to tell us a bit more about the nature of the human condition.

A middle-aged couple listens to a doorbell repeatedly ringing but they both refuse to answer it. They squabble about squabbling. “We do nothing,” she laments, “we are nothing.”

“We have each other,” he argues back. Later he adds, “Sometimes nothing is the best something you can hope for.”

The Fusion has been doing versions of The Seven as the culmination of each season since 2006. Winners have gone on to achieve considerable acclaim elsewhere, including in New York. All the playwrights, which also include Barbara Blumenthal-Ehrlich of Needham, Mass., Chip Bolcik of Thousand Oaks, Calif., John Kane of West Hollywood, Calif., Tony Pasqualini of Los Angeles and Christopher Lockheardt of Andover, Mass., have extensive backgrounds in the theater—this was not a contest for novices.

The Seven continues this weekend, Friday-Sunday with Saturday being a “pay what you will” night. For tickets and information go to fusionabq.org or call 766-9412.