DUCK, DUCK, GOOSE
Wilkie began Duck, Duck, Goose, playing at the Live Bait Theater through November 1, with a monologue, “Enough,” that provides a sort of window on the rest of her work. She has an eye for the odd, funny details of life, and allows them to emerge naturally in the telling. In this monologue, mostly in her own voice, she explains what “big enough” means to her using various examples. She describes, among other things, a child’s absorption in a twig, then shifts into the character of the child’s mother and talks about what’s big to her: a polar bear swimming toward them at the zoo. Wilkie says that Georges Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte makes more sense to her reduced to the size of a postcard: she says that size is big enough.
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Wilkie’s portrayal of the same character as an adolescent in “Carla Two” is riveting. Eerily, amazingly, she’s 14 years old in every detail of her expression and movement. She ends that piece by stepping out of character into her own voice and telling the facts of the newspaper story that underlies this piece.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Debra Steward.
