IN THE WILDERNESS
Organic Theater Company Greenhouse
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Sitting in a rough-hewn wooden chair, with no props except a few candles and a book of letters written by a distant relative at the turn of the century, Porter leads us on an intentionally uneventful adventure–its very ordinariness is the greatest obstacle. In Troy, Ohio–an arch-Republican town where the mayor still dresses in mourning over George Bush’s defeat–she meets her childhood friend, Johnny Bravo, now rich and wholly predictable. In Kansas, where she stays at the home of an old boyfriend, also newly rich, she’s overwhelmed by the disquietingly middle-class sensation of domestic bliss as she washes dishes in a sunny kitchen. Other friends welcome her days later with steaks on the barbecue, a gesture so generous yet stupefyingly suburban she can hardly comprehend it.
In these episodes adulthood seems rich and secure but impersonal. The other extreme of the adult world is worse, rigid and out of touch with reality: born-again relatives who will not speak of their son’s death from AIDS; a paranoid, abusive husband holed up with his wife in a log cabin in the middle of nowhere; stuffy “aristocrats” who refer to the town’s only gay resident as “a bachelor.” But neither extreme offers Porter any genuine reflection of herself, pushing her ever onward in the search for a true home.
JACKIE TAYLOR’S OUT HERE ON MY OWN
Black Ensemble
Ultimately Jackie Taylor’s Out Here on My Own left me feeling sad, thinking that Taylor may actually believe the superlatives thrown about in her program. That kind of spiel may sway potential donors, but once it becomes internalized it can also pollute an artistic sensibility. Without proper restraints–she’s not only the producer of this show but the producer and artistic director of the Black Ensemble–Taylor may be working on stardom to the detriment of her own talent.
